“You okay, Susan?”
Susan looked up with a vague expression, then seemed to wake to the worry on Nell’s face.
“What? Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”
But Nell wondered.
She stole glances at Susan as they followed the Master Watcher across the first garden and toward the wall of the second band. Though smaller than the first, the second band towered over them as they approached it. Balconies hung over the lower half of the building, and here and there Nell could see an easel or a small table draped in colored cloth. Kate pointed to a woman several floors up embroidering a large hanging.
Unlike the outer wall of the first band, this one was full of doors, and Nell wondered what kinds of rooms lay behind them. But the Master Watcher didn’t wait for questions. He moved briskly beneath the balconies to a passageway that cut through the second band, and they followed him into another garden. Here, empty booths festooned with twinkling fabrics sat near the wall, and past another set of walking paths, vegetable gardens in their neat green rows spread out beneath the windows of the third band.
“Why aren’t there any doors in that wall?” Nell asked, pointing.
The Master Watcher squinted at her in the ruddy sunlight.
“Entrance to the third band is restricted to the third garden,” he said. Ahead, another passageway, narrower than the first or second, cut through the third band. The man moved toward it, stepping over winding squash vines that spilled over the short fences around the vegetable gardens and pushing past a drooping tomato plant that had worked loose from its stake and swung into the path.
“A regular old tour guide, isn’t he?” Nell grumbled to Susan. But if she heard, Susan gave no sign.
The third band was smallest of all, and they spent only a minute in the tunnel that cut through it before emerging into the last of the three gardens. If possible, this one was even greener than the others, crammed with bushes and flowers and leafy, looping vines that trimmed the paths. Thickets of shade trees clustered tightly in a few spots, and a dark, long-winged bird with red shoulders burst shrieking from one of these as they passed, sailing out of sight across the garden. Nell glanced that way and caught sight of an ornate metal gate. Beyond it she spied the tip of the dome she’d seen from the mountain.
The man quickened his pace along the path. On this side, there were many doors into the third band, but the Master Watcher moved past them, stopping finally at a narrow opening set off by a length of unbroken stones.
He turned to the children.
“Wait here,” he said to Susan. “You and the younger ones. We’ll be back soon.”
He laid a hand on Max’s shoulder, and Nell didn’t like the way he stood there, as if suddenly he owned Max or had picked him for a team from which the rest of them were excluded. Luckily, Susan was paying attention at last. Her head came up, and she looked quickly at Nell, then Max.
“Where are you taking him?” she asked the man.
Max looked uncomfortable. He shifted his body so that the man released him, and took a step toward his sisters.
“Not far. Just inside, where he’ll have the privilege of meeting our Guide. Few newcomers do.” The man glanced uneasily at Max, who had edged closer to Susan.
“So you’re separating us,” Nell said, figuring it never hurt to make things crystal clear.
The man’s eyebrows came down over his eyes. “For a moment, yes.”
“No,” Susan said in the voice she’d used last night. Her certain voice, her you’d-better-not-cross-me voice. Max squirmed.
“They can come, too, can’t they? It’s only for a minute, anyway. And they’re my sisters. We like to stick together.”
At the word sisters, the man’s eyebrows shot back up.
“You’ve grown attached to them, I see,” he said. He looked as if he were about to say more, but stopped himself.
“Wait here, all of you.” He disappeared through the narrow door and left them standing in the sunlight.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Nell said. She kicked at the white pebbles that lined the path and smiled grimly at the small mess they made coming down in the grass.
Jean had leaned into the wall, and now she slid to a seat in the dirt. “It’s better than other places we’ve been,” she said. “By a lot.”
“Pretty isn’t always better,” Nell told her.
“How about pretty and nobody’s trying to cut us up?” Jean said. “Is that better?”
Nell glowered at her. Little kids were annoying.
From behind, she felt Kate tap her soothingly. “It is pretty,” she said. Nell shrugged her hand away. She looked worriedly at Susan, and then at Max. Susan wore that distant expression that had been on her face since they’d come into the valley, and Nell could tell she was only half hearing what was said. Max looked pained and embarrassed. He caught her eye.
“Just try not to make a fuss here, okay? They know things here. Don’t you want to get home?”
She felt unreasonably angry at him. She knew it wasn’t his fault the man favored him so much, and yet, Nell decided, maybe she could still be mad about his enjoying it. Of course, he didn’t look like he was enjoying it at this exact moment.
“Who’s making a fuss?” she snapped at him. “I’ve barely said a word yet!”
He harrumphed and slouched beside Jean on the wall.
“Yet,” he said. “I hate that word.”
Another minute and the Master Watcher was back, looking drawn.
“Come,” he said sourly. “All of you.”
Nell grinned and followed Max, who had slumped a little in relief, into the building. Max had said they knew things here. They were about to find out if that was true.
The Master Watcher led them into a marble hallway adorned with weavings and the framed pages of old books. It ended in a
