Curse of the Midions by Brad Strickland Page B

here.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œHe has gone away, my lord.” The tipper’s voice quivered.
    With a snarl, Tantalus Midion raised his cane and struck the man a quick blow on the leg, making Jarvey wince. “You will find the traitor Zoroaster, or I shall have you put to death. I shall have you flayed alive, boiled in oil, torn to pieces, and fed to the ravens. Do you understand me?” He had not raised his voice from a conversational level.
    â€œYes, my lord.”
    The old man growled, swiveling his head, sniffing the air. “Something odd is happening. Something here is not in order. Zoroaster left my Council without permission, and the palace guards say he took a servant with him. He brought no servant into my house, and Zoroaster is a secret man. He shares his carriage with no one.”
    The tipper was sweating. “No, my lord.”
    Tantalus Midion raised his bony hand, his fingers slipping against his thumb, as though he were feeling the atmosphere. “The air feels wrong here. Something is disturbing the fabric of my city. Zoroaster would be able to tell me what the problem is. Scour the entire city, man. Find Zoroaster and bring him to me. I will crush his secrets from him.”
    â€œYes, my lord.”
    â€œThe air is wrong,” Tantalus repeated. “If Zoroaster dares to challenge me—let it be known to all that I can destroy this city if I must. I have days of life left to me on Earth. I could return there, retrieve the Book, and make another world if I chose. If I did that, I would rip out this chapter, and you and everyone else would perish. Do you understand? Be advised. Find the man.” With that, the old man turned and stepped back into the carriage. The tipper closed the door, and the driver whipped the horses into motion.
    As soon as the carriage had driven away, the tipper groaned, limped to the edge of the drive, and vomited in the gutter. Jarvey shivered.
    Other tippers appeared from the doorway of Number 3, each one forcing a man or woman ahead of him. “We haven’t seen the master since yesterday,” one old man protested.
    The tipper steering him slapped him hard. “Quiet until we ask! Sir, this is the lot.”
    The tipper who had spoken to Tantalus wiped his mouth. “Take the servants to the lockup to be questioned.”
    Jarvey counted six of them in all, two men, one old woman, and three middle-aged women, all of them weeping. The tippers forced them into the carriages, and then the carriages rolled away.
    â€œLet’s go,” Bets said.
    Their trip back to the cellar was somber. Bets muttered, “If Nibs is after Lord Z, you’d best keep your distance from the man. Lord Z might be strong, but Nibs would snap him like a matchstick. Looks like you got no one to help you find your parents but us, Jarvey.”
    Charley slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll find your mam and dad for you. If we have to, we’ll leave the city until this hunt for Lord Z ends one way or the other. We’ve stayed in the Wild before this.”
    â€œWon’t come to that if I can help it,” Bets returned. “It’s no life in the Wild.”
    â€œWhat’s the Wild?” Jarvey asked, not sure if he really wanted to know.
    Bets shrugged. “Well, there’s Lunnon, and there’s the farmlands all about, see? And the rest of the whole world, that’s the Wild. Strange trees that talk at night, animals that might’ve been humans until Nibs got mad at ’em, mountains that move, ground that sucks you down under and smothers you. It’s poison land, land that’s almost alive. Most of the farmers, they’re people who are glad enough to be out of the tippers’ sight and striking, but every year a few of them are taken off by the things that live in the Wild. Besides, if you run into the Wild to get away from Nibs, and he finds out about it, he comes