Twelve-year-old Carmen has a secret: she can talk to her cat Grim. But the powerful Brotherhood has banned pets, and the penalty is death.
Ward is the most wanted boy in the world. The only thing standing between him and the hangman's noose is maste...
They went back to searching the room. Half an hour passed. They found nothing.
"It could be any of these," Carmen said, indicating the mass of paper they had strewn across the room.
Ward sighed and collapsed into Corvus's armchair. He watched Mildew desultorily picking through a pile of papers taller than it was wide, seated on the floor with her back to the wall, Grim curled up in her lap fast asleep.
"That's a strange picture," he said.
"What?" Mildew said.
"The one above your head."
She looked up.
It was a strange picture. Only a few faint shadows were visible within the frame. They could have been anything. Ward reached out and tapped the surface. It was glass. He took the picture down, then quickly put it on a nearby table (touching it made his skin crawl).
The others came over to look. Mildew turned the picture over in her hands, then handed it to Nick, who took a knife from his pocket and flicked it open. He lowered the blade to the picture and levered up the four tangs that held the wooden backing to the frame. Then he prised out the backing with the knife-tip. A piece of parchment lay behind it. He gently removed it and laid it on the table beside the frame.
It was coated in some kind of yellowish, transparent lacquer. It was no larger than the span of Nick's hand. Whereas the other pieces of parchment were filled with the symbols, this one had only two sets of lines on it. At the top was some text in the Old Language.
"I can't read this," Nick said. "Perhaps there are Hattoist scholars who –"
"I can try," Ward said.
They all stared at him.
"What are you talking about?" Carmen said.
He didn't answer. Instead, he leaned over the piece of parchment until his nose was almost touching the surface. The others moved out of his way.
"Where did you learn this?" Mildew said.
"Hey, I know this word here," Ward said, ignoring her.
"What's it say?" Mildew said.
"Joy. It means happiness. The rest – I can't -"
"Usually they put the name of the song there," Slops said. "And the guy who wrote it."
"It could've been a chick," Mildew said.
"If it's a name it's a strange one," Ward said. "The question is, how do we read this?" He pointed at the symbols.
"It looks like people climbing up and down a ladder," Carmen said. "Maybe when they're at the top you blow a high note, then at the bottom -"
"Either way we don't have time," Nick said. He handed the parchment to Ward. "Study this on the way back. Carmen, lead the way," he said, pointing at her with the knife. It made what should have been a benign gesture into something more sinister. As if realising this, he closed the knife with one hand and returned it to his pocket.
Carmen didn't answer. She had taken the parchment from Ward and turned it over. "Wait, there's writing here. I think it's in the Old Language."
She handed it back to Ward. He tilted it so that the light wouldn't reflect off the shiny surface. The note was handwritten. The ink may once have been black, but was now a pastel brown that made him think of dried blood. His eyes moved slowly along, piecing the sentences together. There was only one word he didn't recognise. There was another that, from memory, he thought meant the sky. When he thought he had it down he translated it for the others.
Dear David,
You once told me we were riding on an elevator to Heaven. Well this is the elevator music.
Love Leah
"David,"Carmen whispered. She glanced at Ward.
Why does that name keep coming up? Ward thought. It was a peculiar, foreign-sounding name, like that of some Barbarian king from olden times.
"Enough," Nick said. "Let's go. Corvus could be back any minute."
Ward put the parchment in his pocket and followed Nick out. Slops followed him, taking a last guilty look back at the ransacked room.
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Elevator music for this novel provided by the Insipid Supermarket String Orchestra (1965).
