He paused to run his fingers through his sandy-brown hair.
‘No wonder you and August had a thing,’ he signed, eyeballing me carefully. ‘You’re the same – neither of you trust anyone.’
I suppressed a retort. I’d never discussed my feelings with Eli, and his insight felt unusually cynical.
‘So what else aren’t you telling me? Does Max know more?’ he added.
I shook my head emphatically, knowing how much it had cost Eli to let Max come between us over the past few months, to relinquish some of our special twin bond.
He seemed momentarily satisfied.
‘Don’t you think Grandpa would want me to help you? That he’d want you to share the burden, especially now that he’s gone?’
A slow dread started creeping through my bones, as the promise I’d made Grandpa echoed inside my head. I’d given my word I wouldn’t tell another soul about Thomas’s research hidden within the Book of Arafel until the day I died. I’d already compromised that secret by trading information about the cipher’s existence with Aelia and August in return for their knowledge of Roman symbology. And now both Eli and Max knew about the cipher on the treehouse floor. But the fact that the Book of Arafel actually contained Thomas’s research notes was still a secret – well, it was until Aelia stole the Book.
I glanced down at my interlocked fingers, recalling the yellowed pages of nonsense lettering and interconnecting circles that always looked so like the scribbling of an imaginative child to me. The knowledge that it coded one of the best-kept secrets of the modern world; and that mythological creatures had actually existed, back in the aeons of time, had seemed so fantastical – but not any more. Since Pantheon, nothing surprised me.
And then there was that one particular faded pencil drawing, buried within Thomas’s notes. Its charcoaled lines had first spun out of the dust clouds in the Flavium when I thought all was lost. It was the moment I’d realized Thomas’s notes concealed a clue about an ancient burial ground for the unique creatures that had once walked the earth, information Cassius would probably trade his entire Roman battalion to own.
I squeezed Eli’s hand.
‘Isn’t the fact that Aelia has stolen the story of Arafel’s emergence from the dust clouds enough?’ I whispered.
I could tell by the slight lowering of his eyelids that I’d failed. I looked down at my leather-soled feet, knowing my loyalty to a promise was dividing us. Pulling us apart. Was it always going to be like this now?
A rustle of branches and raucous cawing saved the moment.
‘Friskers?’ Eli signed before rising to his feet and striding off in the direction of the call. Seconds later, the dense greenery parted and he re-emerged with the tip of an oversized hook beak just visible over his head. I smiled, despite myself.
The griffin always made me stare. Standing around two and a half metres high, its powerful lion forepaws were around the size of my mother’s cooking pot, while its blood-red eyes and vibrant gold plumage were brighter than any exotic bird of prey. But it was its hard, calcified beak, filled with a double set of serrated canines that magnetized me.
They were sharp enough to shred a human arm in seconds, but that was before Eli discovered griffins were living in a world of silence. He’d saved us all from the brink of death by using rudimentary sign language to communicate with the modified beasts and now, this particular creature could understand and respond freely.
Though it still skulked around like a moody, domestic cat.
‘If you were less conspicuous, we could have taken you with us!’ Eli signed to Friskers affectionately. ‘But I’ll tell you the same thing I told my beautiful, wilful Jas. If I’m not back in three days’ time, feel free to come and rescue me.’
He soothed the beast’s burnished neck feathers, which were gleaming in the morning sun, as it lifted its angular head to proclaim its loyalty. A couple of capuchins chimed in, and the griffin eyed the foliage with fresh interest. There was no doubt it had taken to forest life with ease.
‘It’s OK,’ Eli added with a smile. ‘I don’t really expect either of you to play the hero, not a lot for a handsome griffin to do in a city of dust.’
He dug around in his pocket for a couple of sweet hazelnuts. A natural carnivore, the griffin also seemed to have a taste for herbivore treats, and Eli made sure its diet was well supplemented.
‘Sun’s up, it’s time we got going!’ Max interrupted.
He disappeared as abruptly as he’d appeared, back in the direction of our small breakfast camp. Eli threw me a look that cut through every defence like an invisible Diasord.
‘Boyfriend got the hump?’ he signed, raising an eyebrow.
I flushed and stood up. ‘You know it’s not like that!’ I scowled.
Right now, I’d never been less sure of what we were, only that I’d made a promise that was haunting me.
***
‘We believe in natural order, respect for our place in the forest, and taking only what we need to survive.’
Grandpa’s principles rang in my ears as we hiked through the unknown forest in an easterly direction, and I wondered what he would say if he could see us now. Hunting in this area of the outside forest had always been strictly prohibited; it was too close to the Dead City and wall of the Lifedomes.
The dense, untouched foliage made for slow progress, but our hunting machetes sliced where our feet and hands struggled, and we were in good spirits, reaching the fringe of the forest by the end of the day’s hike. We trod cautiously as the trees began to thin, picking our route through a thicket of wild hawthorn with care. And although Friskers had followed us for some time, he’d chosen to retreat while the sun was still high. It seemed even a displaced griffin had better sense than to get within striking distance of the Dead City.
It was only when we finally glimpsed our first view across the landscape of the monolithic domes that we paused to agree final tactics.
‘We try for the city when the sun touches the horizon and regroup here, dawn tomorrow morning. Prolets or no Prolets.’
Max drew a white cross on a royal poinciana with a piece of natural chalk, his voice brusque.
I looked from him to my brother. A similar unease was etched into both their faces. No one from Arafel had ever been close to the perimeter of the Dead City ruins, let alone explored them. And yet we’d all heard the stories, and stared at Arafel’s scant pre-war pictures of impossibly tall stone trees that stretched on and up.
Less well known was the fact that a few of the more agile hunters, including Max and myself, had occasionally glimpsed the City from the highest branches of Grandpa’s Great Oak. The tree’s age meant its thinnest branches extended beyond the rest of the others, and it was from these reedier lengths that you could make out the north-westerly tip of the ruins. But it was only ever a glimpse, and from such a distance there was no sense of the layers of dust and ash – the remnants of the people who’d once lived there.
The years had done their work, and now the ruins were fighting a different enemy, the forest herself. I recalled the moment I’d stepped out onto Octavia’s balcony, and witnessed the endless broken landscape stretching out before me like a nest of grey vipers. Sleeping and waiting.
I repressed a shudder. Being fanciful about the Dead City wasn’t going to help at all. Our first aim was to locate the Prolets and bring them back to Arafel. We wouldn’t be popular, but burying our heads in the sand would buy only time, not a reprieve. And Eli didn’t need any further reason to think I was planning on a different course of action – at least not yet.
‘I suggest we eat up and rest while we can. Tonight we’re going to need our wit,