Map of Fates (16 page)

I bristled, but it didn't seem like he was accusing, or taunting.

Stellan picked up the package he'd taken from the boat, and when he peeled back the white paper from one edge, I was definitely not expecting to see a rack of raw ribs.

“Toughening me up by feeding me raw meat?” I asked warily.

“It's not for eating.” Stellan set the ribs on a large, flat rock. “Stab it.”

“Excuse me?”

Stellan picked up my knife, slipped off the sheath, and handed it to me. “Stab the meat.”

“Why—”

Stellan took my hands, the knife clutched in them, in his. “Do you remember stabbing me at Notre-Dame?”

I nodded hard. We were escaping the wedding. We had to make it look like Stellan hadn't just let us get away, and I remembered it
too
well. The initial cut where I broke his skin myself, like pricking a water balloon until it burst. Then when he grabbed my hand and stabbed the knife farther into his shoulder, and I could feel the muscle ripping under my hand. I shuddered.

“That's what I thought,” Stellan said. “This will help.”

He led me to the slab of meat. “Remember what you know about the grip,” he said. “Try to loosen up. Let your shoulders go. And then . . .”

He stabbed into the meat and then pulled my hand back, and the knife came out sticky.

I swallowed. “Isn't the actual stabbing the easy part? I don't have to practice this.”

“Okay, show me,” he said.

I stabbed out at the meat, and even I could see all my form go out the window. I did it again, defiantly, and the knife barely glanced off. I sniffed.

“Have you never cut meat before?” Stellan said. “Are you a vegetarian?”

I shook my head.

“Pretend it's a steak you're making for dinner. Start by slicing off a piece. Whatever you need to do to get comfortable with it.”

I scowled up at him, but he shrugged. He was serious. I faced the hunk of meat. “Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.” I stabbed at the meat.

I hit a rib.

“That's why stabbing in the heart is so difficult,” Stellan said. “Now try again with better form. Don't rush.”

I frowned and stabbed the meat again. This time my blade sank deep into the muscle, and I thought for a second that I might throw up.

“Do it again,” Stellan said.

I did.

“Again.”

I did it again. Just meat. I could be cooking this for dinner. Don't think of it as a person. Don't even think of the animal it came from. It's something in your kitchen. I stabbed it again. And again, and again. I was hitting muscle consistently now. The revulsion pulsing through me was cut in half, then half again, and then I could barely remember feeling like the meat was anything else, and I was able to really think about holding the knife correctly, and how to stand.

I pushed back a sweaty strand of hair and dropped the knife to my side.

Stellan was watching me, his arms folded across his chest. “Is it starting to feel better?”

My fingers tightened around the bloodied knife, and I nodded.

“You cringe every time you talk about training. Or fighting. Or if you so much as look at a knife.”

“No I don't.” A single fly buzzed along the surface of the mangled rack of ribs, settling on one end.

“You do. It's perfectly normal,” Stellan said. He flicked the fly away with the tip of the stick he still held in one hand. “You don't have to be ashamed about being afraid to stab somebody. Or of getting hurt.”

“I'm not afraid—” I started to say, but stopped myself. If fear wasn't my problem, would this little therapy session really have worked so well? I took my knife to the edge of the water, where I knelt and let the waves lap at the blade.

When a more powerful wave soaked the bottoms of my leggings, I jumped up. I wasn't surprised to find Stellan standing quietly next to me, his boots making hard indents in the wet sand. “When I first came to the Circle, the Dauphins sent me straight into training with the older kids,” he said. “I had no idea what I was doing. My childhood was . . . sheltered. Easy. I had never so much as gotten in a fistfight. And here I was, twelve years old, straight from the hospital, most of my family dead, and they had me learning to kill people. There was no pretense of it being self-defense. It was a declaration that you would be doing jobs for the Circle, and some of those jobs would involve killing.”

We both watched a seagull skim the water, then dive and come up with a fish flopping in its mouth. “What happened?” I asked.

“The first time I—” He paused and scratched at one eyebrow. “I had a full-on panic attack. I almost compromised the whole mission. I was in danger of being terminated if I couldn't pull it together.”

“What?” A wave lapped at my toes. “They'd terminate a
kid
?”

“I was a liability. It's how it is.” Stellan turned the stick over and over in his fingers. “I'd just started my tutoring with Fitz. He was the one who brought me to the Circle, so it was his responsibility if I turned out bad. And he did this with me.” He gestured to the slab of meat. “Classic desensitization therapy. After that, I didn't panic anymore.”

I thought again about the Order's attack at Prada. Stellan had driven that knife through the guy's heart like it was nothing. “Are you sure detaching is a good thing?”

He looked down at me now. His expression was unreadable, searching. “You shouldn't forget that question.”

I shook the last drops of salt water off my knife. “Why didn't Jack ever have me do this?” I said, casually bringing him back into the conversation. Back into our consciousnesses.

We headed back up the beach, and Stellan wrapped the paper around the meat. “Fitz probably never had to give
him
remedial lessons.” There was an unexpected note of bitterness in his voice, but when he saw the question in my eyes as I pulled my sneakers back on, he continued. “Jack grew up in the Circle. He didn't have to learn to be okay with it.”

I would have laughed at the thought of
Jack
being more acclimated to violence than Stellan, but I could see that he was telling the truth. I realized that Stellan would probably tell me the truth about anything I asked. He had this mysterious air about him, but his secrets sat close to the surface.

“I've never shot a gun, either.” I looked at the bulge at the back of Stellan's waistband.

He raised an eyebrow. “I'm not teaching you to shoot on a beach. We'll get arrested.”

“Obviously,” I said. But I was feeling brave now. Curious. “Can I just hold it for a second? Show me how to do that? Just in case.”

“You've never even
held
one? Jack didn't do that with you?”

I shook my head.

Stellan looked up and down the beach and, seeing that we were still alone, pulled the gun from his waistband. I held out one hand.

“This is the safety,” he said, flicking a switch back and forth. “This is on; this is off. I'm leaving the safety
on.
You don't turn it off, ever, unless you're going to shoot the gun.”

“I'm not stupid,” I said, and he set the gun in my hand.

It was heavy, warm. Stellan showed me how to wrap my hand around it and where my fingers rested when I wasn't about to shoot. Told me this particular gun was too big for my hands, and that it would feel better if it was the right size.

It felt okay.

“Jack hopes you'll never be forced to defend yourself. That's why he tries to keep you so sheltered. But if you had to—” Stellan leaned over to show me where to sight the target. “I'm sure he thinks you'd be a natural. That's why he didn't see you flinching with the knife.”

I lowered the gun from my line of vision. It suddenly felt heavy.

“He has you on such a pedestal,” Stellan continued. My thumb skimmed the handle of the gun as he took it away. “It's . . .” He trailed off.

“He believes in me.” I scratched my nose. My fingers smelled like metal. “That's not a bad thing.”

Something flitted across Stellan's face; then his expression went blank and he turned away. “Or maybe he thinks you're bad at fighting and doesn't want you to kill yourself. He's probably right. We shouldn't do this again.”

Stellan stashed the gun and pulled his sweatshirt back on as I watched, taken aback at the abrupt change of tone. He tossed the mutilated slab of meat onto the rocks at the edge of the cliff, and a cluster of scrawny cats appeared.

“You coming, or are you going to stand there feeling sorry for yourself?” he said over his shoulder.

For once, I had nothing to say. I just frowned at his back and followed him around the rocks and up to the boardwalk.

O
nce we'd gotten to the dock, I'd told Stellan I wanted to stop and get pastries, and he just shrugged and left me alone. Back at the boat, Elodie was lounging on the deck. She opened one eye. “There you are, and without either of your boyfriends. I'm sure at least one of them is looking for you.”

I glanced behind her, hoping neither of them was listening. “That's not fair.”

“It's true, though.” Elodie stood and crossed the deck to lean out over the railing. “I understand why they're so fascinated with you, what with the whole savior of the Circle thing, but you're right—it's not
fair
to mess with them both, and it's not
fair
to the rest of us for the three of you to be doing . . . whatever you're doing, when you should be clearheaded and concentrating on not getting us killed.”

“We're not—” I snapped my mouth shut. Elodie
wanted
an argument. “We're on the trail of maybe the most important discovery in world history and
this
is what you want to talk about? I'm already bored with this conversation,” I said, stepping around her and ignoring the obnoxious smirk on her face.

“You should find Jackie, though,” she called after me. “He has that worried look on his face. I hate that look.”

Jack was pacing back and forth on the front deck of the boat, and came into the kitchen when he saw me. Through an upper window I saw Stellan sitting on the top deck, alone.

Jack didn't ask where we'd been all morning, but the quick narrowing of his eyes said everything he didn't.

I held out the bag. “We woke up early,” I said awkwardly. After I'd almost drowned last night, Jack and I hadn't talked about the fight we'd had, but now it was hanging in the air. “We were taking a walk, then Stellan wanted to come back, but I wanted to get food and—” Why was I lying? “Breakfast,” I said, shoving the bag of pastries in his hands.

Jack looked over his shoulder at the giant bowl of fruit on the table, at the fridge stuffed with food.

“Colette doesn't have fresh
bougatsa.
” He opened the bag, and the smell wafted through the room. “It's phyllo dough and custard. I thought you might like it.”

The boat swayed just a little bit in the morning breeze.

After a second, Jack tossed the pastries on the table, pulled a chair out, and pulled me down into his lap. I hugged him tight.

“How are you feeling?” he said into the top of my head.

“I'm actually fine.” Surprisingly. My chest and throat were still a little sore, but running around and training didn't seem to have aggravated it.

Over his shoulder, I saw Elodie emerge onto the upper deck and glance in at us before talking to Stellan. I got off Jack's lap and spread the
bougatsa
on a plate. In a few minutes, Stellan and Elodie joined us, followed by Colette.

“I hate to break up this party, but I may have to,” Colette said,
tying shut a rose-colored silk robe before taking a seat at the booth next to Stellan. “I have a film festival to attend.” Stellan rested his arm across her shoulders. I pretended not to notice. I wasn't sure why I
did
notice.

“There's nothing else to find here, anyway,” Jack said. “Is there?”

“And there's no more
time,
” I said.

They all exchanged glances, and I knew they were thinking about my Saxon-imposed deadline. Even
I
wasn't sure what I'd do when the clock ran out, but the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that marrying Daniel Melech or Jakob Hersch or any of the others wasn't an option.

“I talked to Luc earlier,” Elodie said. “He's been looking into the twin bracelet. He doesn't have anything yet, but he thinks he will soon.”

“I hope ‘soon' means in the next few hours,” I said under my breath. I grabbed the bracelet from the top of the fridge, where it had been sitting since we'd retrieved it from the ice bucket the night before, and spun the rings of letters, willing it to give up its secrets.

“I have to leave tonight,” Colette said. “Until then, we hope for a miracle.”

For the next few hours, the five of us sprawled around the yacht, on lounge chairs, on the floor, in the sparkling midday sunlight out on the deck, all deep in thought. Elodie was muttering to herself about the scientific implications of what a blood union could mean. Jack had written all the clues down and was trying slightly different translations. I had a thesaurus, a translation dictionary, and regular old Google search up on my phone. The bracelet was next to me, and every once in a while, I'd try a new password. By lunchtime, though, I could barely put a sentence together, much less think about synonyms and riddles and how I wished I knew French idioms. I was about to throw the bracelet across the room.

“Where will we go?” Jack said quietly from the deck chair next to me. “Paris?”

I buried my face in my hands. “I guess.” The bracelet being in France made as much sense as anything.

Jack nodded. “I'll tell everybody.”

I glared at the bracelet through my spread fingers. We had to be missing something.

Look where he looks. Those who gave all hold the key.
Then there was the bracelet we already had:
Only to the true.
True. Accurate. Authentic. Legitimate. Genuine. The words were still scrolling through my mind, like my subconscious was trying to tell me something I was missing.
True.
Factual. Trustworthy. Morally right. Like Jack's compass, true north.

But it wasn't like Napoleon had anything to do with the Saxons' compass. He was a Dauphin relative. I'd tried the word
north
earlier, anyway, even though it wasn't in French, just in case. I rubbed my eyes hard. It did seem like Napoleon liked the physical in his riddles at least as much as he liked wordplay. We'd had to actually
go
to the gargoyle at the top of Notre-Dame to discover where he was looking. And that was where we found the diary Mr. Emerson had hidden inside the sarcophagus at the Louvre.

Suddenly, the fog cleared.

Look where he looks.
That was what the clue had said. And on the first bracelet:
Where he looks, it will be found. When it is found, my twin and I will reveal all.

I sat up straight. Oh my God. That was it. This was what had been at the tip of my tongue for days. We'd been ignoring the “where he looks” clue that kept popping up because we'd already found the diary by using it, but
Mr. Emerson
had hidden the diary.

Not Napoleon.

We were such idiots.

Mr. Emerson had figured out Napoleon's clues and knew where the gargoyle was looking, so he hid something in that line of sight—at the Louvre.

But the “where he looks, it will be found” clue Napoleon left on the bracelet
couldn't
refer to the diary we found at the Louvre. It had to refer to something that was there in
Napoleon's
time. At the Louvre or anywhere else the gargoyle might be pointing.
Look where he looks. Where he looks, it will be found. Those who gave all hold the key.

The password was somewhere in the gargoyle's sight line.

I was so keyed up, I had to type
the louvre paris
into my phone four times before I spelled it right. Finally, I brought up pictures. It was unlikely we were looking for something inside the museum. The collection would have changed too much since Napoleon's time. Maybe there was a really obvious inscription on the building that unlocked the bracelets.

But I got frustrated quickly. Most of the photos weren't good enough to tell if there was anything there at all. I called everyone into the kitchen.

“This isn't a bad idea,” Jack said, his eyes lighting up. “Or maybe it's not at the Louvre. That was the right direction for the gargoyle, but there are an infinite number of other buildings in the same direction.”

“‘Those who gave all,'” I thought out loud. “It sounds like someone who's dead. Like a martyr. Or a saint? Could it be a church?”

“It could be any number of things,” Stellan said.

He pulled up a map of Paris on his phone, but it was too hard to continue the gargoyle's sight line on the small screen.

“We need a map,” I said.

Elodie shook her head. “What we need is to go to Paris.”