The Door to the Lost Read online

  “Divination rods! Guaranteed full of animus!”

  “Try on a vest, girl? A colorful vest with infinite pockets! Hide your valuables! Hide your pets! Hide anything!”

  The merchant grinned and flapped the vest like a washerwoman snapping a wet towel. When Rook paused to look, he slipped his large, russet-brown hand into a pocket that couldn’t have been more than two inches deep, yet his whole forearm disappeared into the fabric. Dark eyes dancing, he pulled out a handful of butterflies that took flight, iridescent blue and orange specks that zigzagged around Rook’s head once before vanishing.

  “Pretty,” Rook said, smiling politely but shaking her head as the man shooed a butterfly off his nose and tried to get her to put on the vest.

  She pushed her way through the crowd and out the opposite door of the car for a breath of fresh air. Not that the scenery of Skeleton Yard was much to look at. Mostly it was just another reminder of how magic was fading from the world.

  The ruined cars had once been part of the Hover Project, a sleek, tubular train that whizzed along on a cushion of air and magic—the first of its kind and a marvel of overland travel. At least, that was the intention. The Great Catastrophe had happened before the train could be completed, so it had been abandoned along with so many other innovations that relied on large amounts of animus.

  It had been two years since the disaster, and those two years had taken their toll. The skyships no longer flew, and the moon globes that once lit all the houses in Talhaven had gone dark, replaced by candles and crude gaslights. It was a different world now, but some people still held on to magic and its wonders as hard as they could, while others wanted nothing to do with it.

  Or with the children like Rook who wielded it.

  Rook huffed out a breath. She shifted the sack of bread and turned to go back inside the car. She still needed to get eggs and a couple of wheels of cheese, if she could make her coin stretch that far, before she went to meet Drift.

  A distant shout made her freeze, her hand gripping the door latch. She couldn’t make out any words, but it sounded like the shout came from one of the other train cars. The Night Market had its own eyes and ears, watchers who kept a lookout for trouble. Had the constables found them? Rook fished in her pocket for her chalk, just to be safe.

  And then a second shout echoed from somewhere off to her left, louder, urgent.

  “Frenzy!” the voice screamed.

  Rook went cold all over, the skin of her arms erupting in gooseflesh. A Frenzy mob, in Skeleton Yard? It had to be a mistake. The outbreaks almost never happened here, so far from the populated areas of the city. The Night Market chose places like this for that very reason.

  Rook bolted back into the train car, shoving past the other patrons and merchants who were crammed at the windows to see what all the commotion was. She ran right up to Gert’s stall, dropped her sack of bread, and snatched the black-lensed spectacles. She needed to see what was coming. Swallowing her trepidation, she pushed the spectacles onto her face, wondering whose eyes she’d be seeing through.

  “Hey, no free samples!” Gert snapped, tugging on Rook’s arm, but Rook just batted her hand away.

  “Do these things work?” she demanded. “All I see is black!”

  “Course they work,” Gert said, sounding annoyed. “Just give them a minute.”

  Rook was afraid they didn’t have that long.

  Not if the Frenzy had found them.

  Snow-white eyes, pitch-black tongues

  Run and hide, the Frenzy will come

  It was the warning all children knew, exiles or not: Run or the Frenzy will tear you apart. As Rook repeated the words in her head, the black lenses on her face suddenly expanded, filling even her peripheral vision until she was truly blind. For a second, Rook’s chest heaved with panic. She should have known better than to take a risk on Meddlers’ goods.

  Just as she was about to tear the spectacles off her face, a pinprick of light appeared, slowly widening to reveal a view of the field outside. In the moonlight, she could just make out a slice of the harbor on her right. The vision blurred at the edges, bobbing up and down in a way that made Rook’s temples throb. What was she seeing?

  It was through someone else’s eyes, Rook realized, just as Gert said. And that someone was running. Fast. That was what was causing the motion. But Rook didn’t see what they were running from.

  “How do these work?” Rook groped for Gert’s arm. Luckily, the woman was still standing right next to her. “Can I move to someone else?”

  “Absolutely.” There was a note of pride in Gert’s voice. “Fellow I bought them from said to turn in the direction you want to see, tap the lenses twice to jump to another set of eyes. They work up to a mile away,” she repeated, ever the saleswoman.

  Rook tapped the lenses twice. The vision changed so abruptly she was almost sick. When she recovered, she was facing one of the white train cars at the farthest edge of the yard, bordering the nearby theater district.

  And there they were.

  Rook squeezed Gert’s arm so hard the woman squealed. There were six of them, and judging by their dress—suit jackets and ties for the men, lacy blouses and light coats for the women—they’d just come out of a show. They’d probably taken a wrong turn heading for the cafes and restaurants and accidently strayed too close to the Night Market, to the magic all gathered in one place.

  That was when they’d changed.

  Now they walked stiffly across the railyard like dolls balancing on wobbly legs, their eyes gone white, black tongues darting between their teeth. The Frenzy illness was yet another scar on the world, a side effect of the Great Catastrophe. No one knew why some people reacted to magic in this way, becoming mindless monsters when exposed to large quantities of it. But those people were dangerous now, and if they weren’t removed from the market and its magic soon, they would tear the place apart and attack anyone who strayed into their path.

  “We have to get out of here!” Rook shouted, her eyes still tracking the group shambling across the yard. “Gert, warn the others. Six Frenzy victims headed this way. Tell everyone to pack up and run!”

  Rook tore off the spectacles, and her vision went black as the image of the Frenzy mob disappeared. She blinked, waiting for the darkness to clear, while Gert snatched the spectacles from her hands and shouted for the market to pack up. Footsteps pounded toward the exits. Fabric whipped and metal clanged as the merchants yanked their stalls down.

  But Rook was still blind.

  Panic blossomed inside her. Someone bumped into her from behind, and Rook stumbled, her arms outstretched, but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing but a black abyss. She didn’t know which way was out or where to run. She rubbed her eyes until they burned, as if the darkness were something she could wipe away.

  “I see them! They’re coming!”

  Rook recognized the terrified voice. It was the merchant who’d tried to sell her the vest of deep pockets. Still shouting, he ran past her, accidently shoving her into the wall, and there came the clatter of objects falling to the floor.

  “Watch where you’re going, girl!” shouted another voice. “Get moving!”

  “Wait, please!” Rook shouted after the fleeing merchants. “I need help! I can’t see!”

  Her only answer was the sound of the train car door slamming. Outside, there were the echoes of running footsteps and more shouts, but inside the car, a space of quiet had fallen. Rook was alone.

  Well, at least the merchant who’d shoved her had shown her where a wall was. Turning, Rook felt along its smooth surface, trying to see if she had enough space to draw a door. Luckily, she didn’t need her sight to do that.

  As long as she didn’t drop her chalk.

  With that ominous thought echoing in her head, Rook clinked chalk against metal and drew a wobbly, prob
ably hideous-looking rectangle on the wall of the train car. She went down on her knees to finish the lines where the wall met the floor. Take me to safety, she commanded her magic. Take me to Drift.

  Heart in her throat, she listened to the screech of metal warping and twisting. When the sounds died away, she stood on her knees and all but lunged for the wall, searching frantically for a knob or latch. The Frenzy must be close. All the magic trinkets were clearing out of the yard, but Rook’s own innate power would still affect the victims, keeping them in their monstrous state.

  What would they do if they caught her? Rook had never heard of an exile cornered by a Frenzy mob before, and she didn’t want to be the first.

  In her frantic scrabbling, her hands fell on a square metal latch. With a swell of relief, Rook lifted it and pulled her magical door open. With her other hand, she felt along the ground beyond the threshold to see where her power was taking her.

  Her fingers plunged into a pile of cold, wet snow. The scent of pine needles filled her nostrils, a sharp contrast to the stale air of the old train car.

  “No!” Rook screamed in frustration and fear.

  It was the forest. Again.

  Without thinking, Rook slammed the door shut and willed it to vanish. Every time she thought her magic was under control, just when she risked trusting it, it betrayed her. Usually at times like this, when she needed it most. And when it failed, it always seemed to return to that mysterious, snow-covered forest in the middle of nowhere.

  Rook had never actually stepped through to that place. Something about it frightened her, as if there was a presence waiting in the trees, eyes watching from just out of sight beyond the threshold.

  But this time she should have risked it. Rook berated herself as footsteps rattled on the metal stairs leading up to the train car. She was out of time.

  The Frenzy was here.

  The door at the far end of the car opened, slamming against the opposite wall, and though Rook couldn’t see them, she sensed their weight filling up the room like a nightmare. Teeth clacked together in anticipation, howls and moans growing louder and louder as the Frenzy tore through the train car.

  Frantically, Rook drew another door on the wall with one hand. She heard the sounds of a second magical door forming as she searched around the floor, fumbling for a weapon, anything she could use to protect herself or distract the approaching mob.

  Her hands fell on a bit of fabric, fingers finding the seams of pockets sewn all over it. It was the vest, Rook realized. A vest to hide valuables.

  To hide anything—even magic butterflies.

  Rook dug her hand into pocket after pocket, searching for the illusory insects.

  The footsteps and wailing were closer.

  Louder.

  Finally, Rook’s hands encountered a soft, fluttering mass inside a pocket as dozens of tiny insect legs latched onto her. Thankfully, they weren’t alive, but made entirely of diluted animus. She drew them carefully out of the pocket and threw her hand up in the air in the direction of the approaching mob, hoping the small distraction would buy her enough time to escape.

  At first, she heard nothing, but an instant later, there came a confused scuffling, and the moans and howls reached a terrible crescendo as the Frenzy flung themselves after the illusory butterflies. Rook wanted to fold up into a ball and cover her ears, but she forced herself to get to her feet and turn to the door.

  Luckily, she found the latch on the first try, yanked open the door, and dashed through, no longer caring where she ended up. Her foot caught on the raised threshold, but Rook managed to pull the door shut behind her before she fell, knees scraping stone as she tumbled to the ground.

  “Whoa!” came a surprised voice from somewhere off to her left.

  It was the sweetest, most welcome voice Rook had ever heard, because it meant she’d arrived at the right place. She swallowed a relieved sob and banished the door she’d just fallen through. Then she collapsed in a heap, her limbs weak.

  She was safe. Safe. No black tongues and colorless eyes waiting in the dark.

  “Rook! Rook, are you all right?” Drift’s hands came down on her shoulders, coaxing her to sit up. “You’re shaking! And filthy! What happened?”

  “Trouble at the market,” Rook said breathlessly. “I’m blind, but other than that, I think I’m all right.”

  Drift’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “What?”

  “STOP RUBBING THEM,” DRIFT CHIDED her gently. “Just try to be patient.”

  For the hundredth time, Rook forced her hand away from her eyes. It felt like someone had poured a bucketful of hot sand into them, but she wasn’t about to complain. Apparently, the fierce itching that had started not long after she’d filled Drift in on everything that had happened at Skeleton Yard meant there was some kind of healing going on. Sure enough, over the last few minutes, her vision had slowly been returning. At first, it was just shafts of patchy light piercing the darkness, but gradually she’d begun to make out the blurred shape of Drift’s head, then the fine strands of her friend’s short, choppy blond hair, and finally her concerned blue eyes.

  Once she was certain she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life groping in the dark, Rook breathed a sigh of relief and paused to take stock of everything else. “So, we’re in Gray Town?” she asked, just to be sure, although the answer was obvious once her nose recognized the sulfur fumes in the air.

  The smoke-belching factories that dominated this part of Regara had also given the neighborhood its unfortunate nickname. The rest of it was lumber mills and of course the abandoned skyship yards, haunted by the skeletons of half-finished flying vessels that no longer had an animus to power them. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, but then again, Gray Town had always been an unpleasant place, even before…

  Even before the Great Catastrophe.

  “We’re on Farer’s Street in the alley behind the navy warehouse,” Drift confirmed. She sat down next to Rook, leaning against the alley wall. “We’ve been through here before.”

  Rook froze in the act of reaching up to rub her eyes again. A ripple of fear passed through her. “I remember, but isn’t Farer’s Street close to—”

  “I know,” Drift interrupted, and a quick, angry breeze filled the space between them, blowing Rook’s hair back. The uncontrolled spate of magic told her better than words that her friend wasn’t happy. “It’s just a few blocks from the Wasteland, but the clients wouldn’t agree to come any farther away. I think they live nearby and wanted to meet somewhere close to their home. Don’t worry—Mr. Baroman thinks they can be trusted, and they brought the money, so all we have to do is wait for them to show up and collect.”

  “Right, simple enough,” Rook said, but the fear refused to go away. With everything that had happened so far that night, she’d almost forgotten they had a job to do.

  It turned out exiles weren’t the only people who needed to escape or hide. The Frenzy sickness had caused some citizens of Regara to abandon the city entirely for fear that they too might fall victim to the strange, terrifying illness. But while these people tended to leave the city by normal means, there were others in Regara—thieves, people being hunted over a debt, even simply those who couldn’t afford to travel—who needed another option. People who were desperate enough to trust an exile like Rook to send them far away in the world for a new start.

  For these people, Mr. Baroman, a clockmaker in town, was their first contact. The potential clients came to him with their situation, negotiated a fee and a meeting place, and then Mr. Baroman left messages for Drift in his attic, which she checked every few days. If all parties agreed to the terms, Rook and Drift met with the clients secretly somewhere in the city and Rook opened a door to wherever they wanted to go. The clients went through, and that was the end of it. Deal concluded. Everyone was happy, and Rook and Drift had money to survi
ve on until the next job.

  Drift rested a hand on Rook’s shoulder. “Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said. “How many knots in your stomach?”

  Rook bit her lip and considered the shape of her worries, how they coiled inside her like sleeping snakes. “Three,” she decided. “One’s for the door I have to make.” After the way her power had failed earlier, Rook wasn’t in a trusting mood where her magic was concerned.

  “Not a worry,” Drift said, waving a hand. “You’ve already faced a Frenzy mob tonight. This will be nothing. Clear skies and smooth strides.”

  “A knot for the Wasteland,” Rook said, wishing she shared Drift’s confidence. “We’re so close to it.”

  Drift nodded, not even bothering to try to reassure her on that one. Every person in Regara avoided that part of Gray Town when they could help it. Who could blame them?

  It was the site of the Great Catastrophe.

  “And there’s a knot for…” Rook swallowed as she tried to dredge up the words. “I lost the bread,” she said.

  “You what?” Drift’s brow furrowed in confusion.

  “I bought bread at the market, a whole week’s worth, and I lost it when the Frenzy came,” Rook said, remembering those fresh-baked loaves with a stab of regret and longing. It was food they couldn’t afford to lose. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s not your fault a Frenzy mob crashed the market,” Drift said. She reached into the pocket of her trousers and pulled out a small cloth bundle. “But that reminds me: Mr. Baroman asked me to give this to you. He got one for each of us.”

  The object wrapped in the cloth warmed Rook’s hands and filled the dank air of the alley with the tantalizing scent of blueberries. She unwrapped it and pulled out a big fat shroom bun.

  Rook’s breath caught. “Mr. Baroman got this for me? Why?”