Sharp Sounds: Ten days later
“That’s all that came of it; not that we’d like it even if something else happened. We’re sorry, but it seems like that’s all we have to offer.”
Of course. Reed tried to hold back his eye roll as he nodded stiffly. “Thank you.”
The burly, curly haired man in front of him grinned, teeth crooked. “Our pleasure. We hope you return and spread the word of our excellent service.”
“I will,” Reed promised, inwardly refusing to ever do either of those things. “Now, I’d best be on my way. Places to see and things to do, amiright?”
The man laughed heartily. “Yes, yes.”
The second the man turned away towards the counter, Reed shot off, out the door and down the block until he was well out of sight. Digging around in the satchel that hung from his shoulder, he grabbed his gloves and sunglasses, taking care to make sure there was nothing wrong with either of them. Stars know what would happen if there was.
Then, he pulled an envelope out of his satchel and opened it, pulling out the bright Star dragon scale. Its light was not diminished by the sun that streamed onto the street. It glowed brighter, even.
He looked at its pulsing light disdainfully. Six hundred marks and none of them worth it. The so called ‘Best Testers in the East’ or ‘Druid’s Calling’ as they were formally known, were nothing but a hoax and a scam. They couldn’t pick up anything on how the scale got dislodged.
Or maybe there really were no clues.
The Institute would be better. Reed knew they would have the equipment to actually figure out whether there were no clues or if they weren’t trying hard enough.
However, the fire in the East Quarter had put the officials on edge, and now only authorized visitors were allowed in. They were pre-checked, double-checked, and then submitted to one final check within the building. Too much security, some might think. Even to Reed it was far too much work, and he didn’t want any questions about the scale or his past.
There was the nagging voice in the corner of his mind that he could gain access to the Institute easily, but he crushed it. Reed had sworn never to think about him again, and he was determined to keep his vow, no matter what it took.
Even if peridot green eyes cropped up in his dreams every now and again.
Reed shook his head. He couldn’t afford to get distracted, especially with a Star scale in plain sight for everyone to see. Someone would report it to the authorities, then to the Institute, and he’d be thrown in jail and revealed for everyone to see.
Sliding the scale back into the envelope, Reed placed it into the satchel and sighed. It seemed he had no choice but to return to Fern’s tiny house. She’d be annoyed, but he was too tired to care.
He set off at a brisk pace through the streets of Crupford, careful to avoid the certain patches of land on which he knew were traps. That was one thing – the only thing – he missed about living in the Imperial City: the residents weren’t as paranoid or criminal. There was not an in between in Crupford, and that that was frustrating.
Fern fell into paranoid, hard. She was incredibly changed from the days of their youth, when they loved to run in the sunlight with their parents and splash in streams with their older sister.
Now, if one even mentioned going outside without protection, she’d freak. It made Reed wish for the old Fern, as much as she’d grated on his nerves when they were younger.
While Reed could see her point, he winced as he came upon her house. All the windows had been boarded up from the inside. The door had just shy of twenty-five locks, the doorknob polished so cleanly any fingerprints would immediately show up. The walls were reinforced with spikes, and a barbed-wire fence enclosed the whole property. A gate with as many locks as the door stood closed solemnly.
It was the gate towards which Reed strolled towards now. He let out his usual sigh as he saw the locks, then turned to the small bell hanging from it. As soon as he rang the bell, it would be a good fifteen minutes, possibly longer, before Fern could truly verify it was him.
Overkill? To Reed, yes, but most of Crupford seemed to agree with Fern. Most of the houses he had seen were much the same way. It gave the town the look of a prison.
Not that it couldn’t be one. The amount of shady people lurking in alleys – and even the ones who didn’t fit the stereotypical mold – could leave Adengate Prison in the Imperial City overflowing.
Don’t think about the Imperial City.
Turning his attention to Fern’s house, Reed breathed a sigh of relief as he saw his sister scurry out of the house and down towards her gate. For someone who claimed to be state of the art, she still hadn’t acquired the normal locks, the ones that could be opened from afar.
Reed had half a mind to give them to her, as she shoved the largest brass key into the largest brass lock. After a few moments, it clicked and fell. Fern caught it expertly, shoving it into her jacket in one fluid motion.
The next lock was much the same, and the one after that, and soon Reed found himself staring at the clouding sky as Fern slowly made her way down the locks.
“Nineteen,” she muttered under her breath as another one clicked free. “Just three more and you can go inside.” She shoved a silver key into a rusted lock and sighed. “Just two more now.”
Wonderful. Reed had been looking forward to going inside for the entire time Fern had taken to verify him. He couldn’t wait to retreat to the corners of her spare bedroom and just relax. Maybe he’d look at the Star scale one more time, see if it held anything new. Maybe he’d just nap. Maybe he’d cry about his lost marks. All that mattered was that he was out of the streets and out of his own head.
Finally, Fern unclasped the last lock. She stepped back and pulled at the gate, which swung open with a hiss. Why it wasn’t louder Reed would never understand, but then again, he would never really understand most things in Crupford.
“You can wait at the door,” Fern said. She had turned her attention to the locks, locking them closed with a click. “I’ll be there in a moment.”
Right. The door and it’s many locks.
Reed almost asked Fern for the keys to the door but restrained himself. She’d nearly had a panic attack the first time he’d asked her; the last thing he needed was for her to throw a fit and summon everyone within a few miles.
Instead of fighting back, he trudged to the door and stood by it patiently, studying the locks. They were very clearly old. Rust covered most of them, except for the keyholes, which caught the waning rays of the sun, glimmering like a thousand silver stars.
Maybe Reed should tell Fern about the newer locks. As she walked up her path to meet him, she looked just as tired as Reed felt.
Twenty-three keys later, the door swung open on silent hinges. Again with the quiet. It unsettled Reed and reminded him of another place, where the walls were a perfect white and the doors slid open with barely a hiss and the only sounds were of laughter and –
He closed that train of thought as quickly as it appeared. He didn’t need the distraction, not when he had a dragon scale in his possession. If he were out in the streets he’d probably have been robbed.
Fern gestured for him to enter first, so he did, watching, mildly interested, as she closed the locks from the inside. Then, he walked to the kitchen on light feet and poured himself a cup of coffee. The steam rising in plumes made Fern look like a mythical creature.
She made her way towards him, and Reed had to concede that she did look angry enough to be in the stories they’d heard as children.
“Before you begin –”
“What do you mean, before you begin? You told me you’d be back by seven, not five! Do you know what kind of heart attack you gave me, standing there like a fool? You could have been a murderer or worse!”
Reed smiled a rueful smile. “I am sorry Fern. I got done early.”
She still looked thunderous. “Then you go and do something else. I don’t ever want to have that kind of fear again. Never.”
“Understood, understood,” Reed said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. “I’ll just go get nice and cozy with the leader of a local gang – maybe that’ll be one thing to do in this sorry excuse for a town.”
Fern opened her mouth, then closed it, as if looking for words. “You will do no such thing! I could get in serious trouble, and I’m the one who lives here. You shouldn’t even be here!”
“No, I shouldn’t. But I am, and –”
The tinkling of Fern’s bell froze Reed midway through his sentence. Fern broke away first, running down the hall to the tiny closet where she kept her surveillance equipment. Reed followed her, curiosity enveloping him.
As far as he knew, Fern didn’t have any visitors apart from him and their parents, occasionally. Sometimes their older sister would come, but Cattail was a stickler for timing. She wouldn’t just show up unannounced.
So, who was it?
Fern was bent over her screen, eyes unreadable as she gazed at it. Her ire seemed to have evaporated in the shadow of her fear.
“Do you know who it is?” Reed asked. While he felt no fear, he was curious as to who would be seeing Fern. In his seven months of living with her, she’d never gotten any visitors.
Fern stepped back from the screen. “I don’t know. Do you?”
Reed leaned forward, his eyes focusing on the figure that stood by the gate. The screen blurred and came back to life a few times, making him wonder how Fern even knew who was at her gate. Then, suddenly, the quality became clear. And the instant Reed saw the figure, the memories came rushing back.
Spider.
There was no mistaking the head of blonde hair, the high cheekbones and lean figure. There was no doubt in the width of his shoulders or the length of his legs. There was no mistaking those bright green eyes for anything else, glimmering like emeralds in the light. Reed would know those eyes better than anyone.
It was those eyes he had tried so hard to forget over the past seven months, the eyes that haunted his dreams and made him desperate.
But now the moment Reed had been dreading had arrived. Spider was standing right in front of Fern’s doorstep. Never in all the stars had Reed ever thought that Spider would come see him. He wouldn’t have though he could abandon the Institute.
Apparently, he was wrong. And now Spider was here, standing in front of his sister’s gate, by some miracle of tracking Reed could never achieve.
Fern must have sensed his sudden tension, for she let out a squeak. “Who is it?” she asked, trying to make herself smaller. “Someone come to kill us?”
“No.” Reed steeled himself.
Fern stood up straighter. “Then who is it?”
Reed swallowed and looked at the screen, which had gone blurry again. Good. Reed didn’t need that distraction. “We’re, um, we’re…”
What were they?
They’d been friends, once, two strangers bonding over their love of science. Then they had been lovers, when life was at its happiest and they had no cares in the world. And now, here they were, struggling to define what they could call their relationship.
Fern still looked scared, even if she felt braver, so Reed tried to get the words out as fast as he could. “We had a falling out over my lost job.”
It wasn’t the full truth. His lost job had just been the nail in the coffin.
“Oh,” Fern said. “I guess you’d better talk to him then.” She grabbed Reed’s arm and marched him down the hall and to the door, keys appearing in her hands that definitely hadn’t been there when they’d entered her viewing room. She’d guessed about Spider, and in that guess, Reed thought he could see a glimpse of the old Fern – the Fern who’d lived before Crupford had gotten its greedy hands on her.
“I don’t think –” Reed began, but Fern had already swiftly opened the locks and swung the door open, putting both of them within full view of Spider. “Well.” He’d faced worse than one ex-boyfriend.
Spider stiffened as Reed and Fern walked down the path to the gate. He tried to school his face, but Reed had known him long enough to know even his tiniest tells.
“Fern. Reed.” He greeted them sharply.
“Spider,” Reed returned.
Clearly whatever Spider was here for it wasn’t anything to do with them. He was far too serious for that, his businesslike attitude he carried when in the Institute on full display. It made Reed nervous. Why would Spider feel the need to travel all the way to Crupford?
Green eyes sliced into Reed’s soul as Spider stared at him. His traitorous heart skipped a beat, and he quieted it. Now was not the time.
“What are you even here for?” Reed asked.
“I think the Institute has been compromised,” Spider said. “I need you to meet someone – and fast. We only have so much time.” He leveled his gaze at both Reed and Fern, who were both standing in shock. “You’re the only ones I can trust.”
Winter 
Day 
