Secret Breakers: The Power of Three (22 page)

It took Brodie several seconds to realise that, above her, the trapdoor had swung open wide.

The feather tumbled from her fingers and fell down into the void.

A hand reached into the half-light, feeling for connection. Brodie tried not to breathe; not a single breath to give away their location. The hand stopped moving. The fingers long and still. A scrabbling sound above. Then a face filled the hole of the trap, and violet eyes pierced the gloom.

Brodie’s breath burned in her chest.

She could feel Miss Tandari trembling beside her.

There was only one way out, and that was metres beneath them, at the end of a rope. They were simply seconds away from being seen.

What happened next became a blur, a confusion of noise and movement and fear. More voices in the room of the tower. Shouting and the sound of scuffling. A woman pulled back from the opening as if rescued from her impending fall. ‘Madam. Madam. You must leave now. This part of the building is strictly prohibited.’

Then an angry shout. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t understand!’ Next, a struggle. A fallen chair. The crash of the trapdoor, closing.

‘We’ve got to use the rope,’ Hunter hissed.

‘Are you sure it’ll take our weight?’ asked Miss Tandari.

‘We’ve got no choice. Either we get down to the bottom, or we’ve got to hand over what we’ve found to the Pavilion guards or whoever followed us from the Chamber.’

‘The rope then,’ said Brodie. ‘There’s nothing for it.’

Leaning back into the recess of the shelf, she took off her blazer and pushed the silver box into one of the sleeves. Then she tied the end of the sleeves together around her waist, like a belt.

‘Is the phoenix secure?’ Hunter whispered.

Brodie tapped her waist to check.

‘You two go first,’ Hunter said. Brodie made as if to argue. ‘Come on. My parents raised me to be polite.’ He waved his hand elaborately. ‘After you.’

Miss Tandari moved closer to the rope.

‘Nice and carefully,’ said Hunter. ‘And don’t look down.’

Brodie watched as Miss Tandari curled her arm and leg around the rope and swung slowly free of her perch on the shelf. Hand under hand she began to climb down, her legs wrapped tight around the rope, the bracelets on her arms glinting in the half-light.

‘You next,’ Hunter said to Brodie. ‘I should be last.’

Brodie could hear his voice tremble a little.

The shouting above them grew to a crescendo. There was the sound of glass smashing and falling like rain on the boards above their heads.

It was as Hunter swung himself at last on to the rope, there was a scrabbling at the trapdoor again. Brodie scrambled lower, hand under hand, her legs burning against the rope. She could see Miss Tandari still climbing just below her. She could hear Hunter’s voice calling from above. The three of them hanging in line one above the other.

And then, with an ominous creak, the trapdoor swung back once more on its hinges.

It was hard to know how far she’d climbed, how near she was to the bottom, when the rope began to sway erratically, side to side. Hands half seen through the light high up near the trapdoor scratched at the fixings above her, tugged at the metal claw, attempting to loosen the rope on which they hung.

Brodie couldn’t see the ground. She couldn’t breathe. The weight of the silver box cut a line against her side. Through the darkness a voice sliced the air.

‘We’ll find you. This isn’t over.’

Colours kaleidoscoped. And Brodie fell, tumbling and sprawling, winging the air like a newborn bird tossed from the nest.

The ground came up to meet her.

Way above her, Hunter hung like a weight on a plumb line as the rope swung and twisted. Then the rope tumbled free of the claw. Hunter crashed to the floor, his arms splayed. And the unloosed rope coiled like a snake across his body.

Brodie blinked and the space she was in flickered into focus. A long white-walled corridor, stretching towards the light.

‘Hunter?’

He was still.

She scrambled to her knees.

‘Hunter?’

‘Have I died?’ His eyes flickered open.

‘No. Not quite,’ Brodie laughed in relief.

Miss Tandari knelt beside them. ‘We’re going to get you out of here, just as soon as we can.’

Hunter tried to smile and failed. He tried to sit and swooned back down against the ground, the red feather bent and crumpled beneath his arm.

‘A bit wobbly,’ he mumbled. ‘From that height, I reckon there was slightly more than a fifty-three per cent chance of death. Seems I came off lightly, BB.’

Brodie rubbed his arm reassuringly.

‘The phoenix?’ he said at last.

‘Safe,’ she said. She held up the box still tucked in the sleeve of her blazer.

This time Hunter managed a glimmer of a smile.

‘Do you think you can manage to stand?’ Miss Tandari asked, casting a nervous look up above her.

Hunter grimaced. ‘Not sure my foot should be stuck at that angle.’

Brodie tried not to look.

‘I think I’ve sprained my ankle,’ Hunter moaned, sinking his body back to the ground.

Brodie’s stomach turned. ‘So what do we do?’

‘You’ll have to try and escape with the phoenix, Brodie,’ said Miss Tandari.

‘What?’

‘I’ll need time to get Hunter out of here, and time isn’t something we have. Any moment, Vernan and the others’ll work out where we’ve fallen. Hunter and I can stall any guards here and spin some story to keep them back, but you,’ she said and her eyes were steely, ‘you’ll have to take the phoenix.’

Brodie tightened her grasp on the precious container.

‘The work you do now’s important, Brodie,’ said Miss Tandari. ‘It’s what all the training and the learning was for.’

Brodie tried hard to smile in return but her mouth wouldn’t move to make the shape she wanted.

‘Now,’ said Miss Tandari, ‘we’ve obviously landed in some sort of servants’ corridor. You need to follow the corridor till it leads you back into the state rooms. Then you need to make for the music room.’

‘The what?’

‘The music room. To the north of the palace. According to what I’ve read, there’s a secret tunnel there that leads out under the gardens and to the building that used to be the Prince’s stables. If you make it through the tunnel you’ll be free. And,’ she added seriously, ‘the phoenix will be safe.’

Brodie nodded weakly.

Hunter stretched out his hand. ‘You can do it, Brodie,’ he whispered, and the way he said her name as if he might never see her again made her want to cry.

The corridor was narrow, lined with large white tiles, cold and spartan. Brodie counted them as she passed, as she knew Hunter would’ve done. To make the walk easier and escape more certain. It didn’t help.

At last she came to a small anteroom and the colours of the state rooms of the Pavilion blazed ahead of her. She hurried into another gallery lined with high cream marble pillars with golden snakes curled round them. A sign told her it was the ‘music room gallery’. Her heart thumped. It was difficult to breathe.

At the end of the gallery was a door.

The door was open.

Brodie clutched the phoenix close to her chest and stumbled inside.

And then, the door swung closed behind her.

‘Well, well, well.’ The voice was slow and metered and accompanied by loud, rhythmic clapping. ‘Then there was one.’

Brodie’s heart was forcing itself against her ribs as if it was trying to make its escape without her.

‘At the very end I must take my prize from a child,’ the voice continued from behind her. ‘I think the Director would like that.’

Brodie turned and there, blocking her escape through the now closed door, was a woman dressed in high black boots and a short pleated skirt. Her tight-fitting red blouse was the same colour as her polished fingernails. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, straining the skin around her eyes. Thin blood-red lips cracked into a smile and on her hand a diamond ring glinted.

She stopped clapping and moved further into the centre of the room, her arms stretched wide as if welcoming a guest to her home. ‘Magnificent, don’t you think? Of all the rooms in this palace, this must be, of all of them, the most impressive.’

Brodie’s heart was still jumping in her chest. Yet she couldn’t help but look up at the splendour around her.

The room was huge and even more ornately decorated than the Banqueting Room. A golden domed ceiling held nine lotus-shaped chandeliers. Painted dragons supported scarlet canvases against the walls. Carved, silvered, flying dragons carried blue silk satin window draperies, fringed with golden tassels. A blue carpet was spread with dragons. On the far wall, pipes of an organ were set against red and gold, while on the wall facing the windows a mirror stretched above a marble fireplace, bouncing the light around the room, catching the dragons in flight.

‘One hundred and eighty-five dragons,’ laughed the woman. ‘Your friend Hunter, with his ridiculous obsession with numbers, would like that fact.’

‘You know about Hunter?’ Brodie said slowly.

‘My dear child. I know everything. I’ve the power to read your mail, scrutinise your computer use and watch you from cameras in the sky. I’m all-seeing. It’s my job to know.’ Her violet eyes flashed in the light. ‘I’ll agree it took us a while to catch on. A crafty old thing, Smithies. Deception of the very best sort. Right beneath our noses. But it hasn’t taken us long to catch up.’ She flexed her hands and her knuckles cracked. ‘I know about Tusia and her glorious chess wins. I know about Miss Tandari and her complicated family. I know about the washed-up has-been Smithies recruited to work alongside him.’ She waited. ‘And I know about you.’

Brodie looked away.

The woman’s voice was measured. ‘All that happened to your mother. So sad. Such a shame with you not even knowing your father. Cruel to be without both parents. Still,’ she paused, ‘I suppose there was always your granddad. Him and his romantic love of the code. I expect he was glad to get rid of you, that’s why he let you leave and be part of the madness.’ She laughed. ‘Such a burden you must’ve been to him. I bet he could hardly wait to see you go.’

Brodie clutched the silver box closer to her chest. She felt her pulse racing in her ears.

‘But your little tussles with danger are over now, Brodie. Code-cracking is no pursuit for has-beens or children. There are rules. And rules need to be obeyed. It won’t be long before the guards arrive and by then you’ll have handed me what you found and the whole sorry mess will be over. That,’ she added sharply, ‘is how this story will end.’

The woman began to pace, the heels of her black boots leaving impressions in the carpet. When she spoke again her voice was almost gentle. ‘Hand me whatever precious gift Van der Essen left hidden here and I’ll let you go.’

Brodie tried to breathe.

The woman spoke again. ‘Give it to me, Brodie.’

Brodie’s breath burned at the base of her throat. Then in a voice she wasn’t even really sure belonged to her, she said, ‘No.’

The woman’s violet eyes flashed wild. ‘You seem to think there’s a choice.’ Her smile was thin. ‘Give it to me.’

Brodie reached up and grasped the locket from her grandfather in the cup of her hand. Things looked bad, but it wasn’t over yet. Somehow she knew she shouldn’t give in. She’d stand her ground as her granddad had done, as her grandmother had done, and as she knew her mother would’ve done. Whoever this woman was, and whatever she stood for, Brodie knew deep down that passing Van der Essen’s phoenix to her would be wrong. Smithies had explained how much Van der Essen had done to protect the secret of MS 408. He’d saved the code-book from the fire of war; he’d protected the phoenix under a cloak of code. And he’d wanted worthy code-breakers to find her. Over the last few weeks that’s what Brodie hoped she’d become. A worthy alchemist of codes. And she had the phoenix in her hands. Now nothing would make her give it up. She let the locket fall free against her skin. ‘I’ve got to look after the phoenix,’ she said. ‘You can’t have it.’

The woman merely smiled. Then she folded her arms across her chest and waited. ‘I think it’s time, Brodie, I filled you in on a few details you appear not to grasp. Once I’ve finished perhaps you’ll see things my way.’

She looked down at the ground, tracing a circle with the toe of her boot.

‘As soon as we join the Chamber they tell us about MS 408. They warn us about its pull, its power. It works like a drug, a virus, you know, that gets into your blood and before you know it, it’s taken over. The need to read the unreadable. The need to make sense of madness.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘And that’s the only place MS 408 can lead, Brodie. To madness. The manuscript destroys all who touch it. That’s why we wrote the rules. I’m simply here to protect you from working on a mystery that can only lead to unhappiness.’ She paused as if allowing time for her words to run through a filter. ‘Smithies was wrong to involve you. Children. Vulnerable children. Selling you a dream. A promise of discovery. It cost Friedman his job, Ingham his health. And for your mother,’ she waited for a moment, ‘the cost was her life.’