He frowned at the door to the burial building. When his father didn’t return, Alex shrugged and headed down a street that cut through the heart of Quill, out of the Ancients Sector, and through the Wanted Sector. He skirted the amphitheater in the Commons where he’d been Purged and went down a row of houses in what looked to be a deserted Necessary neighborhood.
Deserted, Alex thought with a snort, because all the Necessaries had escaped from Quill to Artimé, not the other way around. Sure, Artimé had lost a few people to Quill during the tough times, like Cole Wickett. Alex wondered what Cole was doing now. But the majority of the movers were moving into Artimé, not out of it.
As he pondered the whereabouts of Cole Wickett and company, Alex came across two neighboring houses with a strange, bluish-white glow coming from the windows. He looked from one house to the other, scratched his head, and looked again, wondering if the desert heat in Quill was making him see things. After a moment he shuffled off, leaving the mystery unsolved, and pushed onward to Haluki’s house.
On the step he hesitated, thinking about Aaron’s plan to cut all ties. “Good-bye forever, I guess,” he said to nobody. With a shrug, he went inside the house to Haluki’s office, stepped into the tube, and went home.
Seeds of a New Plan
The High Priest Aaron, straining for breath as he stared at the gray ceiling of his office, muttered, “Well, I suppose I deserved that.” After a moment more, he picked himself up off the floor, using the corner of his desk to pull himself up to standing. He leaned against the desk and gently fingered his cheek, then opened his mouth, gingerly testing his jaw’s hinges to see if anything was broken. It was a pretty impressive punch, he had to admit. He picked up the paper from his desk and turned it over, looking at his scribbles for a long moment. Then he folded it and put it in a drawer, slipping it under his two remaining heart attack spells.
He wasn’t sure why he wasn’t mad at Alex for punching him. Truth be told, as much as he pretended to have it all together, Aaron had been constantly second-guessing himself lately. He’d felt driven by fear, and frankly, that bothered him some. But now going back to Justine’s ways seemed right. If only he could be absolutely sure that he could protect himself and Quill from everything, he’d be able to relax a little. Because right now, after that attack on Artimé, things were way too dangerous. He just had to get the last reinforcements in place. Once Quill was stabilized, Aaron could focus on his future plans . . . taking over Artimé and getting rid of the Unwanteds once and for all.
He thought about the dark, musky-smelling jungle where he’d been last night, and fear tore through him anew. He’d been so close to getting attacked. What luck that the creature had backed off at the last moment. The night was a blur to Aaron. He still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to get his shackles off.
“Secretary!” he yelled, trying to clear the jungle from his mind. “Is the opening to Artimé secure?” She didn’t answer. He went to the door and shouted for her once more.
After searching all around the palace for Secretary, to no avail, Aaron finally began barking orders at the guards to arrange to have the back hallway of the palace blocked off so no one could get in through the magical passageway that Mr. Today had once used. And as long as the old hag was actually taking care of the gate to Artimé, that left only the tube . . . and Aaron would take care of that himself.
He looked around the palace, gathering tools, and made his way past the portcullis to Haluki’s house. Once inside, he entered the office and opened the closet. He peered at the tube, wondering how it was attached and how to dismantle it. It seemed to be freestanding. Aaron pushed against it, trying to tip it, but it didn’t budge.
He wandered through Haluki’s house, looking for anything at all he could use to cover the opening in the glass. Some tin, perhaps. Or a blanket. But neither would be hard to break through.
Aaron would have to destroy the button, he supposed, which would prevent someone from going into Artimé. But would that prevent someone from arriving here? Aaron didn’t know. It was a puzzling phenomenon to begin with, this magic. Still, he didn’t want Artiméans able to get into Quill to attack without him having the same advantage.
He scratched his head. Maybe he was being hasty. Was it really a bad thing that he could stage a surprise attack on his brother, right in the heart of Alex’s own office? “Perhaps a lock on the closet doors,” Aaron murmured. He closed the double doors to the closet and looked at the knobs, trying to imagine a way to lock them so that anyone trying to come to Quill through the tube would be stuck inside the closet.
He’d have to fashion something, he supposed. A tiny thrill ran up his spine as he thought about it—the design it would take. It reminded him of the excitement he’d felt when he’d designed the Favored Farm and when he’d thought he’d figured out how to solve the oil problem that the Quillitary was having with the vehicles using too much of their drinking water. It was like a different part of his brain woke up.
Aaron searched the house again, coming up with a thin, rusty chain attached to a yoke, which had once supported water buckets. It would have to do for now. Anything to block off the strange tube. What if that creature in the jungle figured out how to use it? It wasn’t impossible that it could press a few buttons by accident and find its way into Quill.
As Aaron wound the chain around the doorknobs, he frowned. That creature had had every chance to attack Aaron. But it didn’t. It was like it understood Aaron’s words. Did it—could it possibly—?