Wilkin turned to Nott. “We don’t keep the helm in your pack, Nott. We keep it in mine.”
“I know that. I never said we did. But you just said he wasn’t allowed to wear it anymore.”
“I’ve changed my mind. He won’t be able to help us without it.”
“He’s not helping us at all!”
“Give me the helm, Nott!”
Nott turned slowly toward Wilkin, finally understanding what his partner meant. The older boy’s dark eyes flashed impatiently in the light filtering through the fortress’s stunted trees. A twinge of sickness stabbed through Nott.
“You have the helm,” Nott said slowly. “You took it off him in that city—Kong Kong.”
The older boy looked taken aback. “I don’t have it. You have it! Where is it?”
He crossed the broken floor and grabbed Nott, examining his head and roughly feeling his cloak and his small pack, as if Nott had the helm hidden somewhere and was lying about it.
“You’ve lost it? You’ve lost our helm?” Nott asked. His nausea transformed into the sensation of outright terror. The helm was the one thing their master demanded they keep track of.
“I have not lost it!”
“Then where is it, Wilkin?”
Nott remembered hunting with their master near Dun Tarm years before. They’d gone into the woods and killed a deer—the way their master liked to kill deer, which was very slowly. It’s all right to enjoy it, he’d explained. We are meant to enjoy putting creatures in their place.
The hunting and killing had left their master in a good mood, but when they’d returned to the fortress, one of the older Watchers was waiting nervously by the entrance. That boy, shaking so much he was barely able to speak, had admitted to misplacing his own helm. Their master had flown into such a rage, the very memory of it still caused Nott’s heart to beat frantically in his chest. How can you have any value to me without your helm? their master had roared.
Eventually all Watchers had been roused and that particular helm had been found. It hadn’t mattered. Their master had sent that careless Watcher to his cave anyway, and that had been the end of him.
Wilkin was now tossing around his own things as though he might have overlooked the helm during his first inspection. When it did not magically present itself, he turned back to Nott.
“You left it There, didn’t you?” Wilkin accused. “In the blackness? Where we’ll never find it!”
“You had it!”
“I did not—” A different look passed across Wilkin’s face. Nott guessed that Wilkin was remembering that he was, in fact, the one who’d had the helm last, when the two of them had been struggling in the trees with Briac, just before jumping into the anomaly.
A moment later, Wilkin looked as sick as Nott felt.
“It’s still your fault, Nott,” the older boy said weakly. “You were the one who took it out of the pack in Hong Kong.”
“But you were the one who wanted to follow him”—Nott jabbed his finger at Briac—“instead of our orders.” They sat glaring at each other. Wilkin was rapidly deflating, and Nott pressed his advantage: “Did you drop it in the woods? Or did you drop it There, Wilkin?”
Aside from the prospect of their master’s rage and their inability to carry out their orders, the idea of the helm lying somewhere where they might never find it made Nott desperately upset. It had already been such a long time since he’d gotten to wear it.
“I—I think I dropped it in the woods,” said Wilkin. “In Hong Kong.”
“Well, that’s something, at least.”
Quin walked into the basement, letting the door shut behind her. She ran her hands over the nearest armoire, where mother-of-pearl dragons twined through forests and rivers. The basement was full of chests and cabinets with similar designs: samurai, lakes, villages, eagles.
She turned back to find Mariko MacBain watching her closely from a spot by the basement door, her fine Japanese features full of concern. Mariko was Shinobu’s mother, who lived in this small, lovely home tucked into one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Hong Kong. Though Mariko had kicked Shinobu out—when his drug use had gotten unbearable—she still had his whipsword, because Shinobu had left it here, in hopes of forgetting it altogether. That had been nearly two years ago, when he’d tried to erase Seekers from his life, just as Quin herself had done.
Now, lying in Hong Kong, recovering from his injuries, he’d asked Quin to get the whipsword