“What does it mean? Do you mind if I ask?”
“It has something to do with mathematics, which is a jungle I have never set foot in,” said X. “Zoe intended to change my name when she’d collected enough facts about my character, but then I suppose I grew into it—or it grew into me. Why are you called Maudlin?”
“Oh, it’s ridiculous,” said Maud. “I cried when the lords first separated your mother and me. Who wouldn’t have cried? Only a monster.” She stroked the cat. “Even Suvi here wailed.”
“Why was my mother damned, Maud?” said X. “What did she do?”
Maud winced.
“The same thing I did,” she said. “Nothing more.”
“That’s not quite an answer,” said X. “You need not protect me. Tell me what you did.”
Maud looked to Regent, whose pacing had brought him close. She seemed to be hoping that he’d answer for her. He regarded her gravely, and declined.
“We murdered two men,” said Maud, turning back to X. “With a knife and a drill.” She rushed to say more, no doubt so that the bald facts wouldn’t ring as long. “You’ve got the tip of the drill in that silver packet of yours. Your mother kept those things to remind her of what she’d survived. There’s a story behind each of them. I will tell you them all, if you’ll let me, then maybe you won’t judge what your mother did too harshly.”
“I want to know everything,” said X. “Yet tell me, if Regent was not present at my birth, how is it that you even know each other?”
Maud seemed relieved at the change in subject.
“Oh, I’ve known Regent since the day I died,” she said.
She looked again to the lord. This time he spoke.
“Two bounty hunters were sent for Maud and your mother,” said Regent. “It was a century ago, as you know—before I was even a lord.”
“The first one failed to capture us because your mother was too smart for him,” said Maud. “She outmaneuvered him—a mortal woman! So the lords had to send someone else.”
“Dervish was the bounty hunter who failed,” said Regent. “I was the one who did not.”
fourteen
Once they were in the tunnel, the noise of the river receded. The black walls were polished and smooth, and studded with gems, which flickered as they passed.
X turned over what Regent had told him in his mind. So Dervish had failed to bring X’s mother to the Lowlands. How humiliated he must have been! No wonder he hated her—and her son. No wonder he’d ranted and stamped and railed against X at every opportunity.
And Regent … Regent had plucked X’s mother out of the world. He had taken her life, her future, everything. No wonder he had done so much for X, even though it endangered him.
Cool air blew past them as they walked. The Ukrainian unzipped the top of his tracksuit, and gallantly handed it to Maud. He wore only a damp, sleeveless T-shirt now. X could see a field of curly black hair beneath it, as well as a silver necklace bearing a word he couldn’t read, though he recognized the letters: MAMA.
Maud slipped on the red jacket and tucked Vesuvius inside. The cat blinked at her happily, languorously, and was snoring before they’d gone 20 paces.
“I look foolish in your coat, don’t I?” said Maud. “Tell me the truth.”
“Truth?” said the Ukrainian. “Truth is, you look like my tenth-grade girlfriend. Remember, however, Reeper is only true love of mine, as one day I will inform her.”
The tunnel stretched indefinitely onward. For every hundred feet they walked, it seemed to grow another hundred. X was about to ask Maud to tell him his mother’s story, when strange sounds flooded past. First, it was a rush of footsteps over their heads, then the roar of a wave, which seemed to barrel toward them from the other side of the wall. X stared at the rock, waiting for cracks to appear, but the noise faded fast.
Then the tunnel swerved hard, and X was met with a startling sight. On each wall, there was a long row of hands jutting through rock. And they were moving.
Regent steered everyone to the center of the passage, and told them to stare straight ahead. But X kept watching the hands. The fingers were wriggling, spasming, clutching the air. There must have been sinners on the other side of the walls. Who knew what pain they were in, or what was being done to them that he couldn’t see? Two of the hands might have belonged to his mother. He felt sick as he passed.
When Regent let them rest again, X sat down next to Maud. She must have been as desperate to tell his mother’s story as X was to hear it. His first question—“How old were you when you went to work for my mother?”—had barely left his lips when the answer came tumbling out.
“I was fifteen,” said Maud. “I was a very scared little person. About the same height I am now, but skinnier. When I looked at myself, I saw only my nose, ears, elbows, and knees. So I tried not to look at myself. I also tried to be silent one hundred percent of the time, which my parents told me was my best feature. I don’t think they ever liked me very much.”
Maud put her hand inside the sort of kangaroo pouch she’d made for Vesuvius, and pet him as he slept.
“When I reminded the Countess that she had stolen Vesuvius from me? When I told Regent I would never leave Suvi behind?” she said. “I could never have done those things before I met your mother. Whatever I have for a backbone, I got from her.
“I remember knocking on her door. It was the first time I ever wore this dress. This was in Montana, in 1912—”
“Montana?” said X.
He’d meant only to listen, but couldn’t believe it was a coincidence that Regent had sent him to that very place as a bounty hunter. He looked to the lord, who was pacing again.
“Your mother liked the sky there,” said Regent. “That struck me as odd—for isn’t there sky everywhere? Yet I thought you might like it, too.” The lord seemed embarrassed by the admission. He made a shooing-away gesture. “Let Maud tell her story,” he said.
When X turned back to Maud, he saw that the Ukrainian, who sat across the passageway, was listening as well. X wasn’t sure he liked that. He already felt protective of his mother—like he wanted to hold her story close. But when he gave the Ukrainian a questioning look, the guard said, “What? Is interesting! You want I watch TV instead?”
Maud continued.
“I remember my hand being very cold when I knocked on your mother’s door. The knocker was a brass fox with a hoop through its teeth. I guess that’s not important, except that your mother’s husband thought of himself as very cunning and handsome, when he was actually a little knot of hate. Petty and cruel. Not that different from the Countess, in a way. He went by ‘Fernley.’ Your mother had been forced to marry him—something about adjoining farmland. She loathed him. He pretended he was a gentleman farmer—he had all these airs—but he was bad at everything. I remember him being confused by a rake one time. Your mother told me once, ‘It’s like he’s some sort of sea creature that’s been forced to live on land!’ She didn’t talk much, but you always knew where you stood with her because she never masked her feelings, as women were taught to—and when she did say something it was memorable. Fernley called her ‘honeybun,’ in a sarcastic kind of way, which she detested. So she called him Fern, which made him boil.”
Maud paused. X wasn’t sure why.
“I know your life’s been unfair,” she said. “I can’t even imagine. And maybe it’s not my place to say this—but it would have been unlivable if that man had been your father.”
X felt as if Maud were speaking for his mother somehow, like she was a conduit.