Rhian

Breakfast was weird.

Actually, everything since arriving in Leberecht had been bloody weird. Almost everybody we passed along the way to the Reider family cavern was wrong. I'd been a lot of places around the world, seen a lot of people. But even in the best of places, you'd spot your fair share of sad, sorry-looking sacks. Had a crummy day. Didn't eat enough. Ate too much. Stepped in some horseshite on the way to work, whatever. At the very least, people walked around looking neutral or what have you.

On the other hand, almost everybody walked around Leberecht wearing bright colours and big grins. For every neutral son-of-a-bitch we passed, there were about a dozen weirdos. They stopped and said, "Fair morning," to whoever the hells. They tipped their hats, asked about each other's day, and actually seemed to care. I watched a few make lunch plans, and as far as I could tell, they'd never met afore that day.

But not Marta. She seemed normal.

We were still making our way around the city, and I'd finally had the chance to ride the lift. It was all right.

"Why's everybody acting so bloody weird?"

"What do you mean?" Marta asked.

"All chipper," I said. "It isn't right."

"I dunno." Marta shrugged. "Maybe because they're happy?"

"Nah," I said.

"Well, what can I say?" Marta pulled the lever to the lift and up we went. "Leberecht's a good place to live."

We rounded the ramp, passing all the houses in the mountain on the way. Some had little flower pots outside. Some had painted signs with words and pictures of sunshines and butterflies and whatnot.

"When will he be ready?" I asked. "You know—Michael."

"When he's better, I guess."

Marta unhooked a keyring from her belt and searched around for a while. In case you hadn't sorted it out, she had a lot of keys. She'd also been tight-lipped about the Artist and how exactly she could help Michael.

"The Artist—she's one of them, isn't she?"

"Yeah, so?"

"The hells do you mean yeah so? Did you miss the part when I told you one of Those Things hurt your brother?"

All right, so maybe I was being a bit of a hypocrite given I was currently living with one of Those Things. And I had a terrible craving for the garlic potatoes made fresh daily by another one of Those Things. But it's like I said, something wasn't right around there. The niggling in my gut had me feeling spicy.

"I heard you," Marta answered. "But that won't happen here. They don't hurt us."

"So, what—they're just walking around town willy-nilly?"

"Not during the day, obviously."

"Well, piss in a pot and call it gold," I said. Daytime people, nighttime people. "They're the nocturnal residents."

"Yeah."

"So who do they eat?"

We stopped in front of a door with an apple on its sign. Marta paused with the key in the lock. "What? They don't eat. They don't need to."

"You're not making sense, lass. They've gotta eat something—you know, life force."

Marta stared at me like I was spewing nonsense.

I stared at Marta like she was sorely uninformed. She and her brother looked a lot alike.

Whatever. It wasn't a fight I was interested in at the minute.

Finally, we entered the house with the apple on the sign, and I noticed straightaway it smelled like apples. Imagine that. Michael bloody loved apples. A middle-aged couple sat on the couch. When the door opened, the woman stood from her place and rushed toward Marta, showering her in hugs and kisses.

"I'm so glad you made it for breakfast," she said. "We hardly see you anymore."

Marta pretended to be annoyed, but she hugged the woman back.

I just stood there, because what else? I also took a moment to have a look around. The Reider household was cozy and a bit messy. There was no fireplace but there was a mantle (also weird) and above the mantle there was a painting. Mr. and Mrs. Reider, a young Marta who stood out from the rest with her sandy brown hair. Wee bitty Michael—I recognized him straightaway. When we'd first met, he wasn't much older than he had been when he'd posed for the picture. He also stood out from the rest with his steely grey eyes. There were two others, a boy and a girl. They'd been painted in separately. I could tell.

"And who's this?" the lady asked, looking me up and down about a thousand times.

She was a chipper one, too.

"Uh—," I started.

But Marta interrupted what I promise was going to be the single greatest thing I'd ever said. She told Mrs. Reider to sit and asked Mr. Reider to take her hand. That's when she told them all about who I was and what had happened to Michael, obviously.

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For about half a second, they looked a lot less chipper.

"He's in good care." Mrs. Reider smiled and nodded, but I caught her wringing her apron with her free hand.

"Do you think she'll let us see him?" Mr. Reider smiled, but I clocked a faint jitter in his leg. So. Bloody. Weird.

"Yeah, I'm sure she would," Marta replied.

And then the Reiders invited me to join them for breakfast. We sat around the family table and I was sorry Michael couldn't be there. There were loads of tiny apple pies—as if they were expecting me, I swear—and there was milk I couldn't drink on account of the uncomfortable gas it'd give me. I wondered where they kept their cows.

Mrs. Reider poured me a cup of tea. I said thank you on account of I'm not a barbarian.

"He grew up to be a good boy, then?" she asked.

"Aye, Michael's the best boy," I replied after a sip.

Mr. and Mrs. Reider beamed. Marta kept an eye on me the whole time.

"He's a bit of a big deal," I said. "Around Palisade. Led the charge in the assault against Verena, and—wait, you folks have maps and get the news around here?"

They all shook their heads.

"Uh huh," I paused a moment. "Well, Verena's a city here in Amalia. They'd been holding dozens of Partisans captive, and it was your son's lot who managed to free them. The Assembly gave him a ceremony and a sword called Intrepi—Intrepipi—whatever. Point is: they gave him a sword with long name."

Mr. and Mrs. Reider took each other's hands across the table.

For the rest of the morning, I shared stories about Michael, and Mr. and Mrs. Reider acted like they hadn't just found out the son they hadn't seen in fourteen years was comatose and being looked after by an artist for some stupid reason. I helped them clear the table and once we were done, Marta called me over to the corner by the non-fireplace.

"You too?" she asked, pointing to my neck. I had a sturdy steel chain wrapped around it, and the key to the keyhole in the mountain was tucked into my tunic.

"What?"

"It's the key, isn't it?"

I narrowed my eyes. How much did she know? I sure as hells didn't know.

"I was the one to take Andrei to find the lock," she said.

I nodded slowly.

"So, you wanna go?" Marta asked.

I sure as shite wanted to go.

So, we said goodbye to Mr. And Mrs. Reider, and off we went to the keyhole in the mountain. I was looking forward to seeing it for myself.

And besides, I had a clue to investigate.

Standing face-to-face with a portrait of Zacharias Vonsinfonie in the cavern behind the keyhole in the mountain, I patted the canvas a few times, brushing away the dust. I sneezed, and then I turned around to find Marta glaring at me with a furrow in her brow.

"The things in here are probably over a thousand years old, Rhian. You should be careful."

"Just clearing the cobwebs." I shrugged. "Besides, me and old Zacharias here are good mates. And by that I mean, he spied on me, played me a song, and left me this." I reached into my satchel and fumbled around a bit. Once I found it, I handed Marta the card with my name on the front and the golden "Z" on the back.

The furrow furrowed further.

I had a lot of explaining to do, so I did. We sat in the comfy chairs, in front of the fireplace that definitely wasn't a fireplace, but that I'd investigate later. I told Marta all about Oskari, about Istok, about Lidia and Alexander, about what Strauss had been up to before he disappeared, and about our first time meeting Zacharias Vonsinfonie in the crypts beneath the church. If you need me to repeat the details, you should probably start worrying about a memory problem.

"I don't understand," Marta said. "The Anima here are nothing like you describe."

"You sure about that?"

"Yes." She sounded pretty confident for a second, but then she slumped down in the reclining leather chair. "No—I mean, I don't know anymore."

"I know the feeling, mate."

"I guess I've wondered," she added. "It is weird, isn't it? All the smiling and everything. I've never traveled outside Leberecht, but people are supposed to have moods, aren't they?"

"Afraid so," I said.

I looked to the portrait I'd basically just smeared my hand all over. And then I looked to the one beside it. The man in the second portrait was blonde—blonder than Zacharias and even blonder than me. He wore a fancy mask, decorated with feathers and sparkles. It covered about three-quarters of his face. Sebastian, I reckoned, but—

"So, what's he like?" Marta sat up straight and turned toward me. "Mr. Vonsinfonie."

Michael once mentioned the stories of the Vonsinfonie brothers were his sister's favourites. I kept this in mind while I thought about how to respond, and then I answered the same way I would've anyhow: "Weird as all six hells. And he killed Father Belaia—Strauss's mentor and whatnot."

"I just don't get it," Marta said.

"Look, here's what I know: there's a problem that needs solving in this mountain. But I'm a bit busy at the minute. I need to find my friends, and there's something I gotta do back in Oskari. But when I'm all finished up, I'll come around to help."

Marta smiled an appropriately sized smile. "Yeah, sure."

"Say, Marta," I said after a long pause. "Knowing what you know now, do you think Michael will be all right?"

"I think." She shrugged. "But what are our other options?"

Frankly, there weren't many, and they weren't great.

I pulled the lever on the side of the chair, hopped to my feet, and stepped over to the rug in the middle of the room. Be gentle with the rug, he said. Aye, I rolled that sucker right up and revealed a hatch. It wasn't a very big hatch, to be fair. But there it was. Marta yanked the lever on the side of her chair and rushed to my side.

Obviously, we opened the hatch. Great, I thought. Another bloody book. Soft cover, and the pages looked a lot like the pages in the Vonsinfonie's Fables, Foobles, Facts, and Fictions or whatever the bloody hell it was called. Symphonic, I reckoned. Only the first page was written in words I knew I could read, if only I could read. And I know this because I knew how to see the words 'the' and 'of'. I passed the book to Marta.

"What's it say?"

She fanned through the pages before answering my question. "The Journals of Jakob Adler."

I shrugged. Marta shrugged. Whoever Jakob Adler was, we needed Strauss to read the rest.

The only other thing inside the hatch was a ring with an amethyst stone. It reminded me of the ring with the emerald stone I'd stolen from Zacharias once upon a time, so I located that one inside my satchel and held the pair up for a side-by-side comparison. They were practically twins.

In the end, I took the amethyst ring and the book, too. Marta showed me how to open the door built into the fireplace with the keys on the piano. But before we could leave out the back way, I darted back from whence I came. Among all the other bits and bobs left behind, I knew exactly what I wanted. I picked the shiniest looking cane from the lot in the rack—the one with the bright blue topper, engraved with symbols like on the pages.

"I've always wanted one of these," I said. "We can go now."

And then we went, and here's the other thing I didn't see coming: when we rounded the mountain and it was time to part ways, the Commander of the Iron Hand decided she liked my stories so much she'd be joining me in Oskari.

Traded one Reider for another.

Sure, why not.

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