“Don’t talk that way about the Mage.”
“Where’s your Mage now, Simon?” Baz asked softly, looking up at the old fortress. He looked tired again, his face blue and shadowed in the moonlight, his eyes practically ringed in black. “And what are you looking for anyway?” he asked waspishly, rubbing his eyes. “Maybe if you told me, I could help you find it, and then we could both go inside and avoid death by drowning, freezing, or torn jugular.”
“It’s…” Simon weighed the risks.
Usually when Simon was this far along on a quest, Baz had already sniffed out his purpose and was setting a trap to foil him. But this time Simon hadn’t told anyone what he was doing. Not even Agatha. Not even Penelope.
The anonymous letter had told Simon to seek out help; it said that the mission was too dangerous to carry out on his own—and that’s exactly why Simon hadn’t wanted to involve his friends.
But putting Baz at risk … Well, that wasn’t so distasteful.
“It’s dangerous,” Simon said sternly.
“Oh, I’m sure—danger is your middle name, etc. Simon Oliver Danger Snow.”
“How do you know my middle name?” Simon asked warily.
“Great Crimea, what part of ‘six years’ is lost on you? I know which shoe you put on first. I know that your shampoo smells like apples. My mind is fairly bursting with worthless Simon Snow trivia.… Don’t you know mine?”
“Your what?”
“My middle name,” Baz said.
Morgan’s tooth, he was stroppy. “It’s … it’s Basilton, right?”
“Quite right, you great thumping idiot.”
“That was a trick question.” Simon turned back to the mosaic.
“What are you looking for!” Baz demanded again, snarling through his teeth like an animal.
This was something Simon had learned about Baz in six years: He could turn from peevish to dangerous in half a heartbeat.
But Simon still hadn’t learned not to rise to the bait. “Rabbits!” he blurted out. “I’m looking for rabbits.”
“Rabbits?” Baz looked confused, caught mid-snarl.
“Six white hares.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know!” Simon shouted. “I just am. I got a letter. There are six white hares on school grounds, and they lead to something—”
“To what?”
“I. Don’t. Know. Something dangerous.”
“And I don’t suppose,” Baz said, leaning against the pole, resting his forehead on the wood, “that you know who sent it.”
“No.”
“It could be a trap.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” Simon wished he could stand and face Baz without tipping the boat; he hated the way Baz was talking down to him.
“You really think that,” Baz scoffed, “don’t you? You really think that the only way to sort out whether something is dangerous it to barrel right into it.”
“What else would you suggest?”
“You could ask your precious Mage, for starters. You could run it past your swotty friend. Her brain is so enormous, it pushes her ears out like a monkey’s—maybe she could shed some light.”
Simon yanked on Baz’s cloak and made him lose his balance. “Don’t talk about Penelope like that.”
The punt wobbled, and Baz recovered his cool stance. “Have you talked to her? Have you talked to anyone?”
“No,” Simon said.
“Six hares, is it?”
“Yes.”
“How many have you found so far?”
“Four.”
“So you’ve got the one in the cathedral and the one on the drawbridge—”
“You know about the hare on the drawbridge?” Simon sat back, startled. “That took me three weeks to find.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Baz said. “You’re not very observant. Do you even know my first name?” He started pushing them through the water again—pushing them toward the dock, Simon hoped.
“It’s … it begins with a T.”
“It’s Tyrannus,” Baz said. “Honestly. So the cathedral, the drawbridge, and the nursery—”
Simon clambered to his feet, pulling himself up by Baz’s cloak. The punt bobbed. “The nursery?”
Baz lowered an eyebrow. “Of course.”
This close, Simon could see the purple bruises under Baz’s eyes, the web of dark blood vessels in his eyelids. “Show me.”
Baz shrugged—practically shuddered—away from Simon and out of the boat. Simon jerked forward and grabbed a post on the dock to keep the boat from floating away.
“Come on,” Baz said.
Cath realized that she’d started doing Simon and Baz’s voices—at least doing the version of their voices that she heard in her head. She glanced over at Levi to see if he’d noticed. He was holding his cup with both hands against his chest and resting his chin on top, like it was keeping him warm. His eyes were open but unfocused. He looked like a little kid watching TV.
Cath turned back to her computer before he caught her watching him.
It took longer to put the boat away than it had to get it out, and by the time it was tied up, Simon’s hands were wet and freezing.