his eyes nor his mind deviate from their path. He must count and walk properly. He reached the fifty-ninth step and turned to the left. Quin was still gripping his shoulder, her hand warm and reassuring. He paused to listen to her chant and discovered it was slowing down.
“A clear picture…of where I came from…where I…”
He couldn’t waste time. She was good at keeping her focus, but she wouldn’t be able to do it indefinitely. Fifty-four steps now, then turn right.
Who cares if she loses her focus? the focal whispered to him. What if she doesn’t matter as much as you think she does…
Shut up!
He came to the end of fifty-four steps and turned to the right. Thirty-four steps for the last leg. He began to walk. They were almost there.
“…the…speed…of things…between…will…see me…”
Quin was still chanting, but her words were slow.
All this while, the light from Shinobu’s lantern had hung before him like a perfect yellow sphere in the blackness. But now, when he reached the final twenty steps, the lantern’s rays met something up ahead, directly in his path. After a few more paces, he could see the outline of standing figures, their blinking eyes reflecting the lantern’s glow. This was both frightening and exhilarating; they had discovered the Middle Dread’s secret place.
The focal murmured more insistently: My Watchers, waiting for me; all of this, waiting for me. Shinobu pushed these ghostly thoughts away and concentrated on the weight of Quin’s hand.
Four figures were now clearly visible, two on the right and two on the left. He could see, in the flickering reach of the lantern, wool clothing and cloaks and young faces.
They’re waiting for me…
They walked between the two sets of Watchers, the smell of death hanging heavy around them. Shinobu had no need to count anymore. The lantern illuminated a great pile of objects ahead. As he pulled Quin onward, these became recognizable. There were disruptors, a great row of them, there were whipswords, there were athames…and there were countless other objects that looked dangerous and valuable.
All of this is for you. Quin is slowing down…Let her slow down…
No!
He walked with Quin to the very center of this collection and held up the lantern. Faintly, at the edge of its reach, he could make out other pairs of Watchers, forming a circle around the treasure.
He shut his mind to the focal, held its whispers at bay. Yet he could feel them trying to seep back in. One thought came to him, so gently and irresistibly that he was not sure if it was his own or not: What if she’s safer here?
What would happen if he and Quin woke these Watchers and tried to use them for their own ends? The stone medallion should give them authority over the boys, but even if it did, Shinobu didn’t believe that gaining control of them would happen easily or smoothly. All on its own, his mind ran through every time he’d seen Quin’s life in danger: John galloping after her on the estate; John and his men beating her on the Bridge; Briac attacking her on Traveler; the Watchers in the hospital room, and jumping through the anomaly, and on the estate, and on the Bridge canopy. Each time had felt like death to him, but worse than his own death would be.
Anyone who’d followed the Middle—the Watchers, Briac, Seekers who were willing to kill each other—was a danger to Quin, whether she had the Middle’s stone medallion on her side or not. Yet here she was, with Shinobu, walking in the Middle’s very footsteps. They were surrounded by Watchers, sleeping in the darkness, waiting to wake up. What else might be hidden here, between, ready to attack?
Is she safer here? came the thought again, stronger now, almost like a physical blow.
Without any awareness that he was doing so, he had slipped a hand into a pocket of his cloak, and he was gripping the stone medallion there. He felt the cool disk in his palm, and his thumb and the tips of his fingers clutched its smooth edges.
If Shinobu could take the Middle Dread’s place, if he could gather to himself whatever tools the Middle had found, whatever schemes the Middle had begun, if he could understand them and use them for his own purposes—for Quin’s purposes—he could protect both of them. He could make up for the bad things that had been done in the name of Seekers; he could change their future. He and Quin would