Chapter 26
Master Talik and Damon led us toward the nearest buildings. We were to have our hoods on at all times, keep our heads down—and whatever happened, we weren’t to talk to anyone about anything.
We walked through side streets and back alleys that the Timekeepers navigated without hesitation. It was clear to see that Master Talik had been here before. His feet seemed to know the way just like our feet had known the palace in the Labyrinth.
We passed a bakery with the windows fogged with steam that smelled of cinnamon and something sweeter underneath—which then made my stomach turn again. My body hadn’t forgotten the runner.
We went past a square where children chased each other around a fountain under the fresh sunlight, their laughter ringing off the stone.
Then, we walked by an old woman selling roses from a cart, who looked at us like we were the most curious thing—and that’s where March broke formation, snuck out of the line when Master Talik and Damon weren’t looking, and went straight to her.
Most of us covered our mouths to keep silent as we laughed.
March stepped up to the woman sitting behind the wooden cart, said something to her we couldn’t hear, and then she was smiling, standing up, hands hovering over the many roses in front of her—she had reds and whites, yellows and pinks in all shades—but she picked up a red one from the edge of the cart.
She sniffed it hard, then gave it to March, who bowed his head and brought her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles.
The woman about melted with her other hand to her chest, her silver-white hair bouncing as she laughed. I bit my tongue to keep silent while the others buzzed in whispers—show off!—you’re making the rest of us look bad!—they said no talking to anyone!
But Master Talik and Damon were walking ahead, their own hoods drawn so they didn’t see anything, and March was back in line within seconds, a single red rose in his hand.
He gave it to me.
I knew he would, but even so, my cheeks were about to melt off me completely, and my poor heart was trying her very best to break out of my ribcage to go to him.
“The most beautiful rose doesn’t compare, but I’m hoping you’ll like the color,” he whispered in my ear—and how was I even still standing?
The others were on him, some patting his back, some booing him, some teasing him about what a hopeless romantic he was, but March couldn’t care less.
He was grinning ear to ear, and he looked like a completely different person from the March he was in the beginning.
(and had I done that?) He shrugged their comments off easily, and he wasn’t shy in the least. Instead, he looked proud, which made the whole thing better somehow.
The rose redder, the smell of it sweeter.
“Thank you—it’s perfect,” I barely whispered back before Master Talik turned to look at us—we were whispering and buzzing like bees here.
Only Silas, who walked just in front of the group with Russ and Anika, smiled in a way that was both happy and sad at the same time as he glanced back at the rose in my hand.
A rose I was never going to let go of. I would take it with me to my grave, together with everything March made me feel—like I was on top of the world.
No—like I was his world, the only thing that mattered. That’s how he looked at me now.
I wondered, had he looked at me like that before?
What a silly thought, but I was tempted to be jealous of past Ora if he did. Who knew roses could make a girl so silly?
“Keep it down,” Master Talik said from the front, and that put the comments and giggles and laughs to rest.
At one point I leaned into March’s ear and whispered, “Where exactly are we in the court?”
He shrugged. “Second quadrant, but not close to where I grew up. I recognize the street names, though. We must be on the other side,” he whispered back.
On and on we went.
My feet were tired, but I was full of energy at the same time. The cloak was heavy over my shoulders, and it was hot outside, but we all kept our hoods on at all times, just in case.
The roads narrowed the farther we walked.
The wide, swept streets gave way to cobbled lanes, then to dirt paths lined with hedgerows so tall and thick they blocked everything but the sky.
The red faded too—not entirely, but softly.
The buildings were smaller in these neighborhoods, older, made of stone that looked to have been white once but was now slightly yellowed with sunlight.
Fewer banners and fewer lanterns, but way more wildflowers growing together with roses, pushing up through cracks in the road, climbing over fences, rioting across rooftops, too.
I hadn’t noticed the noise much as we walked, but I noticed it when the streets became quieter. No shops here, and no carts, no children running and playing—only houses. In perfect rows, lining wide streets, with only birdsong and wind in our ears.
“How much farther?” Levana asked for the third time—safe to say she wasn’t from this quadrant or at least this part of it.
And Master Talik had the same answer for her this time, too. “Close,” he said, then turned off the path we were walking, and onto a trail between two houses, so narrow we had to walk single file.
I was tempted to doubt he knew where he was going, but how could I when every step, every turn he took was so precise? No, Master Talik knew.
March still didn’t. Every time I looked at him with the question in my eyes, he’d shake his head to say he had no idea in which part of the quadrant we were.
But even though we’d been walking for the better part of an hour, this time when Master Talik said close, he’d actually meant it.
On the other side of the narrow trail, surrounded by tall hedges like they were trying to impersonate isolation walls, was a single house.
It was smaller than the rest out in the main street, one story, maybe one and a half if you counted the attic window peeking out from beneath a roof covered in moss and climbing roses.
It was absolutely beautiful, very unlike the clean, white rooftops of other houses we saw on the way.
The walls were the same sun-bleached stone, though.
And this house also had a garden—if you could call it that.
More like if a garden had gotten into a fight with a forest, and neither side had won.
They’d just…stopped mid-fight, had settled wherever they’d landed.
Flowers grew everywhere, spilled across the path, climbed the walls, and tangled themselves around a wooden gate that hung half open on its hinges.
Roses had dominated every yard and every shop out there, but here, tulips and daffodils and orchids were mixed in together so beautifully with the roses you could hardly tell them apart.
Beyond the gate was a small yard—with a table and a chair and a teapot.
In the chair sat a woman.
“Ah. Vesta,” Master Talik breathed—almost as if he were relieved to see her.
I was relieved to see her, too. A part of me really had believed we weren’t going to find what we were looking for here. A small part, but still.
We couldn’t see too clearly from the distance, but she looked quite old, her hair snow-white, cut close to her chin.
Her skin was dark, her shoulders small—and her feet barely touched the ground from her chair.
She wore a red shawl over a plain white dress, and she was drinking tea slowly, lifting and lowering her cup a few times before she finally turned her head toward us.
We’d stopped in front of the low gate, and Master Talik had only raised a hand to tell us to be quiet.
The woman finally put her cup down and stood up, wrapping the red shawl around her arms as she slowly walked over to us on the narrow, cobbled path, barefoot.
She was smiling, but it wasn’t entirely pleasant. The closer she came the better we saw her. Her eyes were a rich brown, her dark skin deeply lined. She looked much older than you’d think considering the ease with which she moved—not any different from me, really.
Then she stopped halfway to us, still six or seven feet away.
“Talik, you old fool,” I thought she said, that smile still on her lips as she shook her head a little.
Master Talik had pulled his hood down and had a hand over his chest. “Vesta,” he said with a nod. “You look well.”
“I look eighty-three—which is well enough, considering the alternative,” she said. Her chocolate-brown eyes moved from his face to Damon, then to the rest of us.
We all wore our hoods still, but I felt like she could see us. See right through us.
And a second later, her smile dropped.
“No,” she said. Just no.
Master Talik chuckled—and it was so strange to witness it. Don’t know why I’d had the impression the man never even smiled all the way.
“You haven’t heard what I’m going to ask,” he said.
“I don’t need to. I see all the…trouble you’ve brought to my door.” She raised her brows, made a point of looking at us again. “The answer is no. Go home.”
Yet she didn’t back away.
Master Talik said, “Give me five minutes.”
And I was sure she’d say no. I was sure she’d turn us away, and I was already dreading our way back through that metal ribcage, and I was already dreading not having my memories for the rest of my life, when—
“You can have two,” the woman said with a sigh, then turned around and walked back to her table.
Master Talik looked back at us, raised a hand to tell us to stay here, then pushed the low gate open and walked across the yard to Vesta’s table. We all watched in silence for a moment, until he pulled the chair across from her and sat.
Then they talked.
Too far. We couldn’t hear a single word they said.
“Anybody know how to read lips?” Russ said, earning a look from Damon. “What?”
But the Timekeeper said nothing, only turned back to the yard.
“I think she’s saying…I’m too old for this,” Mimi said, then flinched.
“She’s too old for everything,” Seth muttered.
“Actually, she looks like she could still kick your ass,” I said—but only half-jokingly because she did.
Others laughed. Seth threw me a look. Opened his mouth to speak, and I expected a comeback, but…
Then his eyes moved to March, who was standing on my other side.
He closed his mouth and he turned ahead again.
I looked at March, too, squeezed his hand, but he only shrugged. “I didn’t do anything.”
He was a damn liar, and the way he was trying to stifle a smile said so.
“I think it’s a not my responsibility,” Anika said.
“You sure? I think it was that’s not my tea recipe,” said Cook. With a straight face.
So, of course, we were all looking at him.
“What?!”
“Why would she talk about tea recipes?” Mimi asked.
“Have you seen her table? There’s tea there. And her garden—there’s herbs there. A lot of herbs,” was his reasoning.
“Ignore him,” Erith said.
“I’m just reading lips!” Cook complained, but we listened to Erith.
“I think Master Talik is saying, “she will find out.”
Shivers ran down my back “The Red Queen?” I wondered in a whisper.
Probably.
Then Vesta laughed. Short and sharp, she laughed, throwing her head back, and her hair was all over her face, bouncing up and down. She said something else, but it was impossible to read her lips when she was still moving her head a little.
“This does not look good,” Russ muttered. It really didn’t.
“She’s going to turn us away.” Mimi, waving her hands up and down, shaking her fingers.
“I really don’t want to go back with that thing. I can’t handle it.”
“Tick it—I will walk.”
“Not setting foot in the runner again.”
“Agreed—”
“Ditto—”
“We can steal a carriage—”
“We can steal clothes—”
“We can wear wigs—”
“Guys, look!” Mimi again, pointing both fingers toward the table in the yard.
Master Talik had stood up, hands over the table, and he’d leaned in halfway to Vesta, who was no longer laughing, but sitting back on her chair. He said something, but his lips barely moved. There was no way we could read the words he said.
Then Vesta reached for her cup of tea on the table, took a slow sip while we held our breaths. She said one word, but we couldn’t make that out, either. Could have been anything.
But Master Talik stepped away from the table then. Look at us. Nodded once.
Damon pushed the gate open the next second. “Get in.”