Sealed by Midnight

Chapter Three: The Third Key

THORNWOOD

Chapter Three: The Third Key

There were exactly three keys to the executive floor, and Idris Vale did not need to look at the register to name the third.

He looked anyway. He stood at the north terminal in the grey hour before dawn, the tablet cold in his hand, while Teo hovered at his elbow pretending not to watch his face. On the screen, the key log scrolled down in small, indifferent letters. I. VALE. T. MARSH. S. VALE.

"Sabine," Teo said quietly.

"My aunt." Idris's voice was very even. "My father's sister. She raised me after the east road took him. She has been the head of finance at Bramblecourt for eleven years." His thumb moved over the glass, once, as if he could wipe the name away. "She taught me how to read a ledger. She sat with me every night that first winter, until I could sign my own name without my hand shaking."

Teo did not say I'm sorry. He had learned that much about this man in three days. He said, "Then we ask her."

"We ask her carefully."

"Carefully," Teo agreed, and Idris looked at him, and something in his shoulders eased a fraction.

* * *

Before they went down to the finance floor, Idris did something strange. He took Teo out onto the high balcony, where the rain had thinned to a fine silver mist, and pointed out across the province.

"You've lived in this city your whole life," he said, "and I would bet you have never seen it from here."

He was right. Teo gripped the cedar railing and looked.

Thornwood lay below them like a map unrolled by a giant's hand. To the north the old mountains rose, worn down by ten thousand years of rain into broad grey shoulders, riddled with caves and carved into stairs and towers. Hollowrock lived there, a whole city cut from the stone itself, its windows glowing amber in the mist. West of it the hills rolled green toward Cragmoor, and beyond them the long meadows of Meadowmere ran down to the western road.

"Nine cities," Idris said. "Nine, in a province that has no airport and two roads. Crownthorn sits in the very centre, where the plains are widest, and the council meets there. Hollowrock keeps the north, Cragmoor the northwest, Meadowmere the west. In the south the delta takes over. Saltmere to the south-west, Reedhollow at the south, and Tidemarch to the south-east, where the rivers finally reach the sea."

"And us?" Teo asked.

"We are the east." Idris's hand swept slowly right. "Stonewake in the north-east, built on the quarries. Tidemarch in the south-east. And Alderreach in between, on the hills where the rock gives way to the water. Three cities in the eastern region." A wry note crept into his voice. "We are the third most powerful of them. Stonewake has the stone, Tidemarch has the ports, and we have the seed. Nobody respects seed until the winter comes."

Teo followed his gaze south. Below the hill district the land fell away in long green terraces, and then the delta began: a vast braided tangle of silver channels, reed beds, and stilt-houses, all of it spilling south and east toward the sea. It was his home. From up here it looked like a jewel set in mud.

"Every river in the province runs downhill to the delta," Idris said. "From the mountains through the plains to the water. When the storms are heavy, the water backs up at Tidemarch and surges north along the lowland. And the east road is the lowest road in the province."

"That's why it floods at midnight."

"The tide arrives at midnight. The road has no say in it." Idris looked at him. "My father knew that. He simply thought he had more time."

The mist drifted between them. Teo wanted very badly to touch his sleeve, and kept his hands on the railing.

"Thank you," Idris said softly, "for not saying anything."

"I wasn't sure what to say."

"That," said Idris, "is exactly why it helped."

* * *

Sabine Vale kept her office on the fourth floor, where the grown walls were hung with seed charts and old maps, and the air smelled of dried lavender and ink. She was sixty, small, and straight-backed, with Idris's grey eyes and a way of looking at a person as though she were quietly adding them up.

She rose the moment they came in, and opened her arms. Idris went into them without hesitation. For one second Teo saw something he was not meant to see: the CEO of Bramblecourt with his face pressed against a shoulder, eyes closed, like a boy.

"You haven't slept," Sabine scolded. "Look at you. And this must be the famous Marsh."

"Famous?" Teo said.

"The boy who stayed longer than a week." She patted his cheek. "Sit, sit. I'll make tea."

Idris did not waste time. He told her everything, in short flat sentences: the missing crates, the override, the stolen badge, the warm chair at the north terminal. All the while Sabine kept stirring her cup, and her face grew graver and graver.

"And you think," she said at last, "that I was sitting at Nell's desk."

"I think someone with a key was."

"Yesterday afternoon I was in the vault accounts, three floors down, with two auditors. Ask them. Ask the guards." Her voice was gentle, hurt, and perfectly steady. "Idris. I have not set foot on your floor since Monday."

"I believe you," Idris said.

Teo glanced at him. It was not quite the truth. But it was the truth that Idris needed to say, and Sabine closed her eyes and let out a long, shaking breath.

"Thank you. Now. You will both eat something, and then you will stop looking at me like I am a stranger."

She turned to pour the tea. Teo's eyes drifted across her desk, politely, aimlessly, and caught on something at the edge of the blotter.

A letter. Folded once, pushed halfway under a ledger. The wax seal was plum-coloured, pressed with a pattern of leaves.

He had seen that seal before. Yesterday morning, on the sleeve of Councilwoman Halloway's robes.

Teo said nothing. He took the tea, and thanked her, and drank it, and he did not look at the letter again. But when he glanced at Idris over the rim of his cup, he saw that the CEO had noticed it too, and that his hand, resting on his knee, had curled into a fist.

* * *

The storm warning came at five. Red lanterns lit along every bridge in Alderreach, and the tower's speaking vines whispered the same message on every floor: pressure rain, heavy, lower districts at risk by seven.

"The delta," Teo said, standing. "My aunt. I have to go."

"I'll drive you."

"Idris, you've been awake for thirty hours."

"Then I will be awake for thirty-two." Idris was already pulling on his coat. "Get in the carrier, Marsh. That's not an invitation."

"That's not even one sir," Teo muttered, and Idris, in the doorway, made a small sound that might have been a laugh.

The delta at night was another world. The carrier crept along a raised causeway between black water and tall reeds, its lamps throwing gold on the rain. All around them, stilt-houses glowed with hearth-light. Lanterns made from woven grass swung from every porch. Children's voices carried across the water, and somewhere a woman was singing the same low delta song Teo had heard all his life.

Aunt Ife's house stood at the end of the third pier, tall and crooked and painted the blue of old rivers. She was on the porch before the carrier had stopped, a heavy shawl over her shoulders, a lantern in one fist.

"Teo! You're soaked. And who is this you've brought, in a machine like that?"

"Mr. Vale," Teo said, then, helplessly, "Idris. My, my employer."

"Idris Vale?" Aunt Ife's eyebrows rose into her headwrap. "The famous one? Come inside, boy. Come in, come in, you look like something the river threw back."

"I should not," Idris began.

"Nonsense. I am making pepper-fish stew. You will eat, or I will be offended, and nobody wants to see me offended."

Idris looked at Teo, helpless. Teo shrugged. Ten minutes later the CEO of Bramblecourt was sitting cross-legged on a reed mat in a house the size of his office closet, a bowl of steaming stew in his hands, listening gravely to Aunt Ife describe how Teo had once fallen into the river at six years old and come out holding a fish.

"A fish," Idris said.

"Alive!" said Aunt Ife. "Very angry!"

"It was a small fish," said Teo, scarlet to the ears.

"It was the size of your head."

And Idris Vale laughed. A real laugh, startled and low and warm, and it filled the little house, and Teo forgot how to look at anything but him. The lantern light moved over his face. The rain beat on the roof. For the first time in his life, Teo thought, there was a person in his aunt's house that he did not want to leave.

* * *

It was nearly ten when the tablet buzzed.

Idris was standing on the porch, one shoulder against the post, looking out at the rain-silvered water. Teo had followed him out with a cup of tea. They were standing close. Neither of them had remarked on it.

The tablet lit his face blue-white. He read the message once, and every trace of the evening drained out of him.

"What is it?" Teo asked.

Idris turned the screen so he could see. It was from the finance floor. It was from the key log. It was timestamped four seconds ago.

S. VALE: Come to the seed vault tonight. Alone. There is something I should have told you eleven years ago.

Teo's breath caught.

"It could be a trap," he said.

"It could." Idris was staring at the words. His voice had gone quiet and rough. "It could also be my aunt, finally telling me the truth."

"Then I'm coming with you."

"She said alone."

"She also said that to you in a message sent from a terminal she told us she hadn't touched." Teo set the cup down on the porch rail. Then, before he could lose his nerve, he reached out and closed his hand around Idris's wrist. "I stopped your convoy with you. I'm not letting you walk into that vault by yourself."

Idris looked down at the hand on his wrist. Then up, into Teo's face. The lantern swung overhead and threw gold across his grey eyes, and Teo saw the exact moment he decided.

"Teo," Idris said, very low. "If this goes wrong."

"Then we go wrong together."

Thunder rolled across the delta. Somewhere out on the dark water a bell began to ring, slow and heavy, calling the storm in.

"Get the carrier," Idris said at last, and his hand turned in Teo's grip, and held on.

North: Hollowrock (cave city carved into the old mountains)

North-west: Cragmoor (the hills)

North-east: Stonewake (the quarries)

West: Meadowmere (meadows, and the west road out)

Centre: Crownthorn (the plains, and where the council meets)

East: Alderreach, where Idris and Teo are. It's the third most powerful of the three eastern cities, and the east road and east gate are here.

South-west: Saltmere (delta)

South: Reedhollow (delta)

South-east: Tidemarch (delta and ports)

The rivers run downhill from the mountains, through the plains, into the delta. At midnight the tide backs up at Tidemarch and floods the east road.

The firm's reach (it feeds a third of the province) is bigger than its city, so it's powerful but not the top.

End of Chapter Three