It could have been a trap.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you. It was a risk, but it was a risk I was ready to take. He had a proposal that he wanted to talk to me about. It was all very fine and undramatic. I mean, he’s obviously a very traumatised person, but he didn’t try to kill me or anything.”
“Well … that’s a good start, I suppose.”
“He did say he wanted to kill you, though.”
“That hardly seems fair. The only bad thing I ever did to him was kill his mother, and she came back.”
“That’s what I told him,” Valkyrie said. “I think he’s conflicted about the whole thing, but he still wants to kill you. So, this proposal of his. He claims to know how to find Doctor Nye, and he says he’ll tell me if I tell him where Greymire Asylum is.”
Skulduggery tilted his head to the other side. “Greymire, eh?”
“He says there’s a cure there – I think it’s called K-49 – that’ll help soothe his mind. So do you know where Greymire is?”
“Not exactly.”
“Can you find it?”
“I don’t know.”
Valkyrie frowned. “Is that doubt in your voice?”
“Greymire Asylum doesn’t exist,” Skulduggery said. “Not officially anyway. It has no staff and it has no patients. No one knows anyone who’s ever worked there.”
“OK, so it’s a secret psychiatric hospital.”
“No,” Skulduggery said. “It’s not a psychiatric hospital at all. It’s what was once called a lunatic asylum, as barbaric as that sounds. Sorcerers driven mad by magic were sent there. Only the most dangerous. Only the worst cases. They were locked away so that the rest of us could forget about them.”
“China would know where it is, wouldn’t she?”
“She won’t tell us. I wouldn’t tell us, either. Greymire is best left forgotten.”
“Well,” said Valkyrie, “that’s not really going to work for me.”
“We’ll grab Caisson,” Skulduggery said. “The next time he comes to visit, we’ll grab him and send someone into his head. We’ll find out what he knows.”
“No.”
“Valkyrie—”
“We’ve been looking for Nye for months and we haven’t come close to it. Caisson is our only lead, and I’m not going to risk that by trying something sneaky. Besides, his head is so messed up that I doubt a Sensitive would be able to learn anything useful, even if we did grab him. Caisson came to me with a proposal and I’ve accepted.”
“It sounds like you’ve already decided.”
“And it sounds like you’re trying to overrule me.”
“You can’t tell him where Greymire is,” Skulduggery said. “Even if you knew, you couldn’t tell him. That information is too dangerous to be let out into the world. We’ll find Nye on our own. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Too much time has passed already. Alice is eight years old. She deserves a normal life.”
“We’ll give it to her, I promise. We just need another way.”
“The other ways aren’t working. Your ways aren’t working. This is my way. Are you going to help me, or will I have to do it alone?”
He looked at her. “I’ll help you. Of course I will. But you must understand what we’ll be doing. Greymire Asylum contains the worst of the worst, Valkyrie – sorcerers whose names you’ve never heard because no one wants to utter them aloud. To pass this information to someone like Caisson … If we’re discovered, we’ll be arrested for treason.”
“They wouldn’t arrest us. Who’d order it – China? China wouldn’t arrest us.”
“Not without good reason. Which this would be.”
Valkyrie looked at the crowd, then raised an eyebrow. “And what, do you think, would the punishment be for breaking into Greymire Asylum?”
“Why would we do that?”
“If we found this K-49 thing, we wouldn’t have to tell Caisson where Greymire is, would we? We give him his cure, he tells us where Nye is.”
“That could work.”
“So, if China won’t tell us where Greymire is, how do we find it?”
“The only place I can think of where it would be written down is in the diaries of the Grand Mages – but they were all destroyed when the Desolation Engine went off in the old Sanctuary.”
“There has to be someone apart from China who knows.”
“There may be one person …”
“There you go,” said Valkyrie, grinning. “I knew you’d think of something.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
