crossed the harbor, and beyond that were even higher buildings climbing up Hong Kong Island toward Victoria Peak.
The sky was full of towering clouds, but the sun appeared in bursts from time to time, illuminating the ends of her hair and the nap of her old wool sweater, and changing the look of the world. She would not allow herself to worry about John while he was on the Bridge; his decisions were his own—no matter what she might wish for him. She turned her thoughts away, took a seat in the open air, and spread her thick, gray cloak out before her.
This cloak had become as familiar to her as her own skin, but it was not originally hers. It had belonged to her dear master, the Old Dread. During the fight aboard Traveler, he had settled it onto her shoulders before stepping There and leaving her to be the Young, the Middle, and the Old Dread all by herself.
The cloak had brushed the ground when she’d first worn it, too long for her. Now it hovered just above the ground when she stood—she’d grown in this month awake. She suspected she was growing more slowly, aging more slowly, than a typical fifteen-year-old, but she was growing and aging nonetheless.
The cloak held a number of items that belonged to the Old Dread. As she had done once or twice in secret over the past weeks, she pulled objects from the cloak’s many pockets and set them before her. She’d gazed at her master’s cloak when she was a little girl and wondered at the mysteries it contained. Now some of those mysteries were in her own possession, yet they were as mysterious as ever.
Among the items in the pockets were a few small metal tools. Only one of them was familiar—she’d seen her master use it in the secret chamber that lay far beneath the ruined castle on the Scottish estate. He had used that tool to tap a wall of rock in a hidden cavern, setting off a tremor so deep Maud had thought it might bring the roof down. The other implements, however, meant nothing to her.
The cloak also contained items made of stone. One or two were carved from the same translucent white stone from which athames came, but others were different, darker and muddier. There were weapons also, mostly knives, but only a few that had come from her master; the rest were hers.
A vibration drew her attention. A burst of sunlight was playing over one of the strangest items from the cloak, and it was shaking against the gravelly surface of the roof. Maud picked it up, making sure to keep it in the sun. It was made of stone but also of metal, and it had a face of glass set into it. The glass was dark and thick, as though many layers had been stacked on top of one another. It was no bigger than her outstretched hand, and it was now vibrating against her skin. A moment later, the sun went behind clouds and the stone object fell still. Yet it had come to life with the touch of sunlight, as disruptors and focals did. Perhaps many of these items would wake up if she left them in the sun long enough.
Her master had worn two faces—one ancient and one almost modern. These objects were like him. Some looked as old as the natural rock beneath the ruined castle in Scotland, but others might belong to the strange world of the present day.
Perhaps John, as a modern person, could identify these things, but she could never allow one who was not a sworn Dread to see the contents of her master’s cloak. And yet, she’d seen a change in John that had begun to alter her view of him. After his run across the desert in the focal, she’d seen him question, for a moment, his purpose in chasing after the other Seeker houses. She’d begun to turn him toward better things.
John kept his gaze pointed straight ahead, examining the crowds on the Transit Bridge through his peripheral vision as the Young Dread had taught him, taking in the motions around him with clear and steady eyes. He’d begun to see his old weaknesses plainly—his scattered mind, his temper—as he carefully shed each one. Maud was turning him into the Seeker he had always wanted to be. If he could learn to control his mind, perhaps his training would be almost