Cave of Wonders Read online

  “Why?” Sera asked. “The vizier knows who we are. He can vouch for us.”

  “No,” Dak said. “You don’t get it. Hulagu’s general Guo Kan is a Time Warden, and he told us about his spies in the city. The vizier is SQ!”

  THE GUARDS marched Sera, Dak, and Riq up from the river toward the palace. Knowing the SQ had agents both outside and inside the city made the situation seem that much more hopeless. But Sera refused to give up. She couldn’t. They had to fix the Break no matter what.

  “At least we know why the vizier gave the caliph such bad advice,” Dak said. “He was working from the inside to make sure Baghdad gets destroyed.”

  “Yes,” Riq said. “And that makes me feel so much better about being his prisoner.”

  They entered a smaller building near the palace. It had thick walls and very narrow windows. The guards pushed the three of them ahead, down a hallway, into one of several cells. Metal squealed as the guards swung the iron bars shut on them and locked the door, then left without another word.

  “So this isn’t good,” Sera said.

  “Hystorians?” The voice came from across the hallway in the cell opposite theirs. Abi stepped forward from the shadows. “Is that you?”

  “Yes!” Sera felt relieved to see him again, even here. “Are you all right, Abi?”

  “I am unharmed,” he said. “They arrested me shortly after I helped you get out of the city. Were you able to convince Hulagu to spare the libraries?”

  “We never even saw him,” Dak said. “Riq and I got caught by General Guo Kan, who’s a Time Warden, by the way. Sera tried one more time to convince Tusi, but he wouldn’t listen to her.”

  Abi hung his head, and the broad smile he normally wore fell from his face. “Then it seems we have lost hope.”

  “Please don’t say that.” Sera had to fight pretty desperately within herself to keep from feeling the same way. There had to be another option. Something they hadn’t thought of. If she still had her long hair, she’d be pulling it clean out right now as she studied the bars and their cell for a way to escape.

  “It’s okay,” Riq said. “We’ll think of something.”

  “Right,” Dak said. “This isn’t the first cell we’ve been locked in.”

  Sera took a deep breath. Then she grabbed hold of the bars and tested them one by one to see if any of them were loose. They weren’t. She went to the narrow window and peered outside. Their cell wasn’t up high, so there wasn’t a fall to worry about on the other side. The window was just too small. But the mud bricks were soft enough that they might be able to chip away at them if they had some kind of tool.

  “Do any of you have anything on you?” she asked.

  All the three of them had with them were the Infinity Ring and the SQuare. But from deep within his robes, Abi pulled out a small knife.

  “They missed this when they arrested me,” he said. “I keep it on me for sharpening quills. It’s useless for anything more than that.”

  “Maybe not,” Sera said. “Can you toss it over?”

  Abi approached his bars and stuck his arm through them. “Watch out. Here it comes.”

  He lobbed the knife gently into the air, and it sailed toward them. But it clanged against their cell door and bounced back into the middle of the hallway.

  Sera rushed up to the door with Dak and Riq. Abi’s arm still hung through his own cell’s bars. They all stared at the knife on the ground between them.

  “I’m a scholar, not an athlete,” Abi said. “I never could throw well.”

  Riq dropped to the ground. “My arms are the longest.” He reached through the bars, along the ground, straining to reach the knife. The tip of his middle finger almost touched it, but not quite. He grunted and pushed but couldn’t get close enough. Finally, he stood, dusting himself off. “I can’t.”

  Sera looked around again, this time with an eye toward anything that might help them reach the blade. They had nothing. She glanced across the hallway at Abi, who looked completely defeated, resting his turbaned head against the bars.

  His turban!

  “Abi!” she said. “How long is your turban?”

  Abi lifted his head. “Several cubits. Why?”

  “If we stretch it between us, and then drag it along the floor, we might be able to snag the knife and pull it closer.”

  Abi seemed reluctant at first, but eventually sighed, closed his eyes, and reached up to his turban. He began uncoiling it from his head, a process that took some time and showed how intricate the headpiece was in the first place. Beneath the turban, his dark hair was long, and he wore it braided.

  “I’ll try to do better this time.” He held one end of the fabric in one hand, and bunched up the rest of it in the other. He tossed the bunched end toward Sera, and it unraveled through the air toward her, landing safely within reach. They lowered it to the ground, pulled it tight between their cells, and held it against the ground over the knife. Then Sera pulled it toward her. The knife didn’t move, so she let Abi pull some fabric back and they tried it again. And again.

  Finally, the tip of the knife caught in the weave of the fabric, and as Sera pulled, it pivoted the knife to a standing position, the blade pointing up. She pulled some more, and the knife came down.

  “I can reach that now,” Riq said.

  He dropped to the ground as Abi pulled his turban back and began rewrapping it around his head. Then the sound of a door opening came from down the hallway.

  “Hurry!” Dak whispered. “Someone’s coming.”

  Riq reached through the bars, the knife just barely within reach of his fingertips. He swiped at the blade.

  “Careful,” Abi said. “It’s sharp.”

  “I know,” Riq said, grunting.

  Sera heard footsteps just around the corner.

  “Riq,” she whispered.

  “Got it!” He whipped his arm back into the cell, the knife in his hand, just as two guards came into view. The grand vizier wobbled between them.

  “So, you three” — he cleared his throat — “scholars have come back to join the traitor?”

  “I am no traitor,” Abi said. “It is you who have promoted a disastrous course of action with the caliph for your own gain.”

  “It’s more than that,” Dak said. “He’s SQ.”

  Abi blinked. “What?”

  “Yeah,” Riq said. Sera noted he had already hidden the knife out of view. “So is the Market Inspector. They’re working for Hulagu’s general Guo Kan.”

  “I see.” Abi’s normally soft expression had become suddenly hard and angry.

  The grand vizier sneered. “You see nothing. For all the books in your House of Wisdom, you are not very wise.” He turned toward Sera, Dak, and Riq. “And now give me the device.”

  Sera folded her arms.

  The vizier raised his voice. “Do not make it necessary for me to kill any of you! Hand over the device!”

  Sera looked at Dak and Riq, she looked at Abi, and she couldn’t imagine letting anything happen to any of them when she could do something to prevent it. She reached into her coat and pulled out the Infinity Ring.

  The vizier held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  Sera clenched her jaw. She slowly passed the Ring between the bars. The vizier took hold of the other end, and for a moment they played a silent game of tug-of-war before Sera allowed her fingers to relax and let it go.

  The vizier tucked the Ring inside his robes. “You will remain locked in here until the House of Wisdom falls. After that, you will be released, and it matters not what you do.”

  It wouldn’t matter because they would be stranded in the ancient Middle East. Sera wondered if she’d made a mistake handing the Ring over so easily, but she also knew there wasn’t much else she could have done. She’d bought them some time, at least.

  The vizier turned with his guards and marched away. No one said anything. They all seemed to be listening to the fading sounds of footsteps. When it was sile
nt, Dak threw up his hands.

  “Well, that’s just great.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Sera said. “We’ll just have to find a way to get the Ring back after we save the House of Wisdom.”

  “Which we still don’t know how to do,” Riq said.

  “Well, the first step is to get out of this cell,” Sera said. “You have the knife?”

  “Yeah.” Riq pulled it out. “What are you thinking?”

  Sera pointed at the window. “We chip away at the bricks until we can break a few of them free and we climb out.”

  “What about Abi?” Dak whispered. “He can’t escape through our window. We can’t just leave him.”

  Sera hadn’t thought about that.

  “What about picking the lock?” Dak asked.

  “Right,” Riq said. “Have you ever picked an ancient Baghdad lock before?”

  “No,” Dak said. “But how complicated can it be?”

  “Quite complicated,” Abi said from his cell. “But not impossible.”

  “Do you know how?” Dak asked.

  “I know how the mechanism works,” Abi said. “But we’ll need more than a knife. We also need a pick of some kind.”

  Sera had already taken inventory of what they had available in the cell. There was only one thing left, and it made her feel queasy to think about it. She reached into her coat and pulled out the SQuare. The vizier didn’t know to ask for it, so she’d managed to hang on to it.

  She spoke hesitantly. “I could probably take this apart and make something to use.”

  “The SQuare?” Riq’s eyes grew wide. He seemed afraid of something.

  Dak nodded. “Why not? We were going to have to go to the future to get a new one, anyway.”

  “And I’ll try to put it back together when I’m done.” Sera wasn’t sure why Riq looked so frightened. “It’ll be okay.”

  Riq took several deep breaths. “Okay. Okay, do it. The mission is what counts.”

  Sera sat down with the SQuare in her lap. There was a seam between the screen and the metal body. She took the blade of the knife and teased it into the seam, then slipped the knife around the entire edge of the SQuare, breaking the seal. Then she popped the screen off, splitting the SQuare open like a clam’s shell.

  Dust and debris filled the cracks and hollows inside the device, covering some of the circuitry and the battery. All their adventures until now had apparently been taking their toll, and Sera felt guilty for having neglected the device. The particles that had found their way into the SQuare had come from eight different times in history and almost as many locations from all around the world.

  “It really needed to be cleaned, anyway.” Sera inhaled and tried her best to blow the dust away. “I can’t believe I let it go this long. I clean the inside of my phone more often than this.”

  “You clean the inside of your phone?” Riq asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Dak said. “She cleans the inside of her calculator.”

  Sera felt her face flushing. “So? What about it?”

  “Nothing.” Riq was hiding a smile, Sera could tell.

  “For the love of mincemeat,” Sera said, “I can’t help it if I’m the only one who knows about the proper care of electronics. Dust is death, you know.” She blew on the SQuare again. “And I can’t believe this thing is still going.”

  “It was made to last the whole mission,” Riq said.

  “Not the whole mission,” Dak said. “Can we use anything in there?”

  Sera scanned the components. Most of it was pretty much what she expected. There were a few surprises in the placement of things, but overall it was a pretty well-made device. She immediately saw some metal brackets that she could pull out. Even if she couldn’t get them back in afterward, the SQuare would work without them, as long as it didn’t get bumped around too badly.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think we’re in business.”

  DAK WINCED a little as Sera ripped some thin pieces of metal from the SQuare. But Riq looked like he felt actual physical pain at seeing the device gutted. Sera pressed the two halves back together and slipped them back into her coat. She held out the metal strips.

  “Who wants to try?”

  Dak laced his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “I’ll give it a shot.”

  Sera handed him the knife and the metal pieces. He walked to the door. Abi stood across the way, nodding.

  “All right,” the Hystorian said, “there are pins inside you must lift with those picks, and then turn the lock with the knife.”

  Dak knelt down. “Okay.” He took the metal pick in one hand, and the knife in the other. “You sure you don’t want to take a crack at yours first?”

  “Your fingers are far more nimble than mine. Start by exploring with those picks. Listen to the sounds inside the lock. Feel what’s going on inside it.”

  Dak reached his arm around through the bars and slipped the pick inside the keyhole. He poked around, exploring, forming an image in his mind of what the inside of the lock looked like. He thought he could tell where the pins were. He experimented with pushing on them, figuring out how they moved, and when he thought he was ready, he stuck the tip of the knife in the lock and tried to lift the pins and turn the lock at the same time.

  It was not easy.

  In fact, it was hard. Really hard.

  His impatience and frustration got the better of him. The pieces were just so tiny, and he couldn’t get them to work right. He jumped to his feet with a growl. “Someone else take a turn.”

  “You’re doing well,” Sera said. “You were figuring it out. Keep trying.”

  Dak frowned. Maybe they should try chipping away at the window like Sera had suggested, after all. Dak walked over to it and looked outside. He noticed that during his lock-picking attempts, the sun had started to rise. The pink dawn light and the blue shadows it cast fell on the clay walls and buildings around them. Within moments, Dak heard what sounded like thunder. But he recognized the noise for what it was.

  “The Mongols have started up their siege again,” he said. “Day two. Five more to go.”

  “Then what happens?” Riq asked.

  “Well . . .” Dak resisted the urge to point out how useful historical facts could be. He’d been resisting saying a lot of things like that the past few days. He was trying hard to be nice, even though it was really starting to bother him that he didn’t know what was going on with Sera and Riq. “After that, Hulagu moved into the city. He set up his own temporary palace. Five days after that, the caliph surrendered, and the Mongols went through the city, destroying everything.”

  “So we better get this door open,” Sera said.

  Dak sighed. Some of the frustration he’d been feeling had faded a bit. “Okay, I’ll keep trying.”

  He went back to the lock, and was about to kneel down, when the sounds of footsteps approached again from down the hallway.

  “They’re coming back!” Dak backed away from the door, and shoved the knife and pick inside his coat.

  Two guards came into view holding some clay bowls. They unlocked the door to Dak, Sera, and Riq’s cell and opened it just wide enough to push the bowls inside, along with a pitcher of water. They did the same with Abi’s cell.

  “Food,” one of the guards said, even though that was obvious. They relocked the doors and left.

  One bowl had some kind of beans in it. They were mushy and tasteless. The other bowl had some kind of oatmeal or something. There weren’t any utensils, so they just took turns eating with their dirty fingers. It was pretty gross, but Dak was hungry enough that he didn’t care.

  After he’d finished eating, he went back to the lock, but still couldn’t get it. He passed the knife and pick off to Riq. “You try. I can’t.”

  But Riq couldn’t either. And neither could Sera. After a full day of trying, Dak realized that even if Abi said it was “not impossible” to pick the lock, that didn’t mean it was likely.

  “I think we need to g
o back to busting out the window,” Dak said. “But it’ll take a while, and I don’t know how we’ll do it with the guards dropping in on us.”

  “We need to wait and see when they come back,” Riq said. “Once we figure out their pattern, we’ll know when we stand the best chance.”

  “That still doesn’t solve the problem of leaving Abi behind,” Sera said.

  Oh, right. Dak turned to look at the scholar.

  Abi shook his head. “Young Hystorians, you must fix the Break. Do not worry about me.”

  That didn’t sit well with Dak, but right now, they didn’t seem to have any other options. So they settled in to wait for the guards to return. While they waited, Sera tried to put the pieces back into the SQuare, but all the lock-picking attempts had apparently taken their toll.

  “I can’t get them back in,” Sera said.

  “So what does that mean?” Riq’s voice had an edge of panic.

  “Maybe nothing,” Sera said. “They were just brackets holding things in place. It will still work. For a while.”

  “For a while?” Riq asked.

  “Probably for as long as we need it to,” Sera said. “Things are just a little loose inside.”

  Dak watched Riq’s reaction, and started trying to put things together. The guy was really worried about the SQuare breaking. But Dak didn’t get that, because they had to go back to get a new one, anyway. But now that Dak thought about it, he realized Riq had been acting weird ever since they’d gotten that message from Brint and Mari. Was Riq worried about going back to the present? Why? The only thing Dak could come up with was that it had something to do with his Remnants.

  Remnants. It had all started with Aristotle’s Remnants, and it always seemed to come back to Remnants. Even though Dak wished he knew what they were like for Sera, he was mostly grateful he didn’t have Remnants. They didn’t seem to bring anyone anything but pain. And fear.

  But having actual parents missing in time was worse. Dak hadn’t yet seen a sign of his parents in this era. He’d been trying really hard not to think about it, but he couldn’t help wonder if that meant something. Maybe Dak, Sera, and Riq had fixed enough Breaks that his parents had gone home. Would they be there in the future when he went back for a new SQuare?