The Map of Stars, page 10
Jaime moved their pawn to g6.
And the game continued like this, slowly, with some unconventional game play from the Turk, but nothing shocking until . . .
The Turk moved his bishop to g5.
“That’s weird,” said Tess. “Isn’t that weird?”
“That’s weird,” said Theo. “Even weirder, I think we’re supposed to offer a knight sacrifice. Knight to a4.”
“What do you think, Jaime?”
“We’ve come this far,” Jaime said.
Tess made the move.
The Turk responded with his queen to a3. Jaime sat down. Their knight took a pawn on c3. Back and forth they went, move after move. Nine snuffled all around their feet, tickling them with her whiskers, calming them. Even though the moves were on the flyer, even though the game seemed as if it were predetermined, Theo’s heart thwacked against his rib cage as if he were in a real match with a real opponent, trying to beat a real clock.
Pawns and rooks and knights shifted all over the board, move twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Then the Turk moved his king to f1.
“What now?” said Tess, who was sitting at the board. “We have to protect the queen, right?”
“Uh, no,” said Jaime. “I think we have to sacrifice her.”
“That can’t be right. Are we trying to lose?”
“Maybe,” said Theo.
Both Jaime’s and Tess’s heads whipped up. “What?” they said, in unison.
“Remember what Grandpa Ben always said? That the process is the thing? Not the end result? Maybe that’s what we’re dealing with here. We’re trying to solve the Cipher, not win a chess game.”
But on their forty-first move, rook to c2, the Turk’s head turned left and right, surveying the board for what seemed like hours. And then he lifted his hands in a signal of surrender.
“Wait . . . that’s it?” said Tess. “We . . . won?”
“I think we did,” said Jaime.
A mechanical clunk issued from the tabletop. The chessboard, instead of rotating the way it had before, stayed level, rising up on a pair of scissoring hinges. Underneath the board was a deeper well than had been revealed before, this one lined in black velvet. In this well were more chess pieces, very different from the black and white pieces they had played with. These were made of some silvery metal that glinted like Rollers in morning sunshine.
The Turk reached into the well and pulled out an elaborately decorated queen. He held the piece out to Tess. She hesitated only a moment before taking it. The Turk reached in again and pulled out a king. He swiveled in his seat and held this piece out to Jaime, who took it. The Turk reached into the well one last time for a knight. He held the knight out to Theo. Theo took the piece, strangely warm and tingly in his hand.
They were expecting the Turk to pull something else from inside the well—another flyer, a business card, a map, a photograph, something that would guide them to the next clue—so it was a shock when the Turk spoke. His tinny voice was so startling that the three of them nearly fell backward onto the dirty floor.
“Find. The. Other. Eliza. Who. Still. Haunts. The. Heights.”
And then the chessboard flipped over, the pieces crashed into the well, and the whole tabletop slammed shut.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jaime
When Jaime was pushed off the ferry into the river, it happened so fast that he was underwater before he knew what had happened, before he even knew to swim. He drifted, still and stunned, as the fish teemed all around him, the whole world hushed, the whole world blue and blue and blue.
Until Ono buzzed against his chest, prodding him to kick till he reached the surface. He gasped for air, scratching at the pocket that held Ono, hoping that the water wouldn’t hurt it, hoping the water wouldn’t kill it.
“Ono!” Jaime said. “Ono!”
Ono beeped and buzzed in his hand. “Land of Kings,” it said, and shuddered. Its arms and legs collapsed and rearranged themselves until Ono was not a bot but a boat, a little metal boat with a blocky Ono head sticking up out of the middle, two eyes that shone red in the late-afternoon light. Ono chugged around Jaime in a circle, his own personal homing beacon.
“I guess you’re okay,” said Jaime. And he was okay, too—well, if you didn’t count the whole being-shoved-into-the-river part.
“Look out!” someone yelled.
Jaime turned to see a sailboat banking sharply away from him.
A man in the boat screamed, “What are you doing in the water, kid?”
“That’s a good question,” Jaime said to no one. The sailboat didn’t stop to help, however. It kept tacking away as if Jaime were nothing but a nuisance.
Jaime turned again to see the ferry in the distance. It had slowed some, and seemed to be trying to turn around, but that could take a while. He told himself to relax as best he could, to remember the swimming lessons he’d had as a kid, his dad teaching him how to tread water by gently cycling his legs and keeping his arms spread out on the surface, sweeping back and forth. But his clothes were sodden and heavy, and it wasn’t as easy as it had been in a bathing suit. And there were other boats in the river, so many boats. Ono was doing his best, buzzing and blinking so that Jaime was easy to spot, but if help was coming, it was taking its sweet time, and Jaime didn’t know how long he could last out here before he got hit. Someone on the ferry must have called—
Called! His phone!
Jaime dug around in his side pocket. The phone was still there.
“You better be waterproof like the salesman said you were,” Jaime told it. He kicked his legs harder so he could punch in 911.
“What’s your emergency?” said a staticky voice on the other end of the line.
“I was pushed off the ferry between Manhattan and Hoboken,” Jaime said.
“Where are you now, sir?”
“I’m in the river!”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m in the river! Treading water! And if someone doesn’t get here soon, I’m going to have to take off all my clothes before they drag me to the bottom!”
“Do you have a life jacket?”
“No!”
“Do you know who pushed you?”
“No!”
“Okay, I’m going to get some people out to you right now. Can you tell me about how long you were on the boat before you fell in?”
“I don’t know . . . about halfway to Hoboken?”
“Stay on the line with me. Let me know when you see the police coming.”
Jaime was getting more and more tired. “Can you tell them to hurry? I like swimming, but not this much.” A thought came to him, something that Tess said all the time. “What if there are sharks?”
“There aren’t sharks,” said the voice on the phone.
“How do you know?”
“Don’t worry about sharks.”
“How can I not worry about sharks if there are sharks?” said Jaime.
“Even if there were sharks, sharks don’t like the taste of people.”
“Now I’m thinking about the taste of people,” Jaime said.
“Keep an eye out for boats,” said the voice.
“Land of Kings! Land of Kings!” Ono buzzed.
A rescue boat powered toward Jaime. “They’re here!” Jaime shouted into the phone, and hung up.
When the boat got near, someone tossed an orange life jacket at Jaime. He tugged the jacket over his shoulders as the boat lurched and bobbed its way over to him. By the time a ladder was lowered over the side of the boat and hands were reaching down for him, Jaime was more tired than he’d ever been in his life. Still, he made sure to scoop Ono out of the water before allowing himself to be hauled over the side.
He lay gasping on the deck of the boat as rescue workers swarmed him. Did anything hurt? Did he think anything was broken? Was he having trouble breathing? What happened? Was he sure he had been pushed? Could he have simply slipped? Could it have been an accident? Did he have a history of fainting and falling off ferries?
Jaime answered their questions as well as he could, Ono resting on his chest. At some point, Ono had transformed back into its robot shape, but its little form still hummed with heat and energy, as if it were trying to keep Jaime warm all by itself.
And that was what holding this chess piece felt like, as if he weren’t holding a king but a tiny thrumming engine. He half expected it to grow legs and arms or maybe wings; he half expected it to start talking. But the king’s face was as inscrutable as the Turk’s, keeping its secrets to itself.
Tess yanked him out of his reverie. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starving.”
Theo said, “I could use some ice cream. And pizza. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Yeah,” said Jaime. He tucked the chess piece into his other front pocket while Ono chanted, “Kings, kings, kings,” like a mantra.
Lunch was pizza and then ice cream, followed by freshly made funnel cake so hot it burned the roof of Jaime’s mouth. But he didn’t care. It was delicious.
“So,” said Tess as they sat down on a bench to finish their funnel cakes. “What do you guys think of the riddle?”
The riddle! He’d almost forgotten what the Turk had said.
“‘Find the other Eliza who still haunts the heights,’” said Theo.
“The other Eliza,” Tess said thoughtfully, licking sugar from her fingers.
Jaime stuffed the last bit of funnel cake into his mouth and pulled out his sketchbook so that he could write down the clue. He chewed, swallowed, said, “Since Eliza Hamilton was already a clue, I’m guessing it’s a different Eliza.”
“And the heights,” said Tess. “Which kind of heights? Like, high heights, or heights as in a neighborhood positioned on a hill?”
“Hmmm,” said Theo. He consulted his phone. “If I search ‘heights’ and ‘Eliza,’ I still get Eliza Hamilton. She built a school in Washington Heights. And a library in Inwood.”
“Has to be someone else. Maybe somewhere else,” Tess said. She tore off a small piece of funnel cake. She was about to eat it when she saw Jaime watching. “Did you finish yours?”
He was embarrassed to say yes, though he couldn’t imagine why. Plus, he was supposed to be mad at her. Mad at them both. But it was hard to be mad while sitting on the boardwalk in Coney Island, the taste of a funnel cake on your tongue.
“Here,” said Tess, offering him a piece.
He should refuse out of principle, he thought. He should refuse so that she was reminded that she was a liar and a thief and he was Not Happy about that. But he took the piece of cake, because, well, cake. And because he was not Not Happy. He had the same satisfied feeling that he always had when they figured out a clue. Plus, the king thrumming in his pocket felt magical somehow. A whole different kind of clue.
“Aha!” said Theo, still scrolling through his phone. “I might have found it. Her, I mean. Listen to this: ‘In 1921, at the oldest house in Manhattan, the Daughters of the American Revolution held an auction—an auction with a specific purpose in mind. They wanted to scrub the historic house of any evidence that Eliza Bowen Jumel had ever lived there, though she spent fifty-five years of her life within its walls. Bags full of Eliza’s letters, allegedly about such people as Benedict Arnold, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, even Napoleon Bonaparte—were sold for a pittance.’”
“Eliza Bowen Jumel,” said Tess. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“Me neither,” Theo said. “But she was married to Aaron Burr.”
“Wait, the Aaron Burr? The shot–Alexander Hamilton Aaron Burr?” Jaime said.
“That’s the one,” Theo said. “When they got divorced, only three years after they were married, she hired Alexander Hamilton’s son to be her lawyer.”
Jaime laughed. “Petty. I like it.”
“Her house is called the Morris-Jumel Mansion, so whatever the Daughters of the American Revolution did to make people forget Eliza Jumel didn’t work. And it’s still standing in Washington Heights,” Theo said.
“I guess I know where we’re going tomorrow,” said Jaime.
Tess glanced at him sharply, then looked away.
“What?” Jaime said.
“Nothing,” she said. “Morris-Jumel Mansion it is.” Then she smiled. “So who wants to ride the roller coaster with me?”
A Cyclone, Electro Spin, Sling Shot, and two Underway trains later, they parted ways, promising to meet the next day at the bike rental kiosk in Central Park by Columbus Circle. Instead of walking to the ferry—Jaime wasn’t going to risk the ferry again for a while—he took the Underway downtown. The Guildman in the box, a short, hard-faced man with close-cropped hair and brown skin, took no particular notice of him. And neither did the Guildman on the PATH train that took Jaime to New Jersey. Just the day before, he had been treading water in the river above him, and now he was traveling through a tunnel below it. He felt as if he’d lived on two entirely different planets in twenty-four hours.
He put his hand over the pocket with the chess piece inside it, resisting the urge to take it out and examine it in front of everyone. It had cooled somewhat, but Jaime still felt a kind of itch in his fingers as he touched it, the tiniest vibrations, like when a ladybug crawls over your skin and you feel the brush of its minuscule feet. The question rose unbidden: Why had the Turk given him the king? And the real question came after it: If the Biedermanns were the Morningstarrs, why had they given him the king? What was he supposed to make of this? Or was he not supposed to make anything of it? Was it entirely random? But nothing the twins did—either set of twins, Biedermanns or Morningstarrs—was random, not really. Even Tess, who Theo claimed was so erratic and chaotic and nervous, was logical about the things she did. It was just a Tess kind of logic.
And Tess said that she and Theo weren’t the Morningstarrs.
He wanted to believe her. But his friends being the Morningstarrs explained so much—too much. Like the chess game they had just played, which was less a game and more like plugging a code into a machine. A code that Tess and Theo had left for themselves. But how? And why? And why was Jaime a part of it now, if he hadn’t been a part of it two hundred years ago?
Unless he had.
He ran his hand over his hair, still a little fuzzy from his dunk in the river, though he’d washed and conditioned his ’locs and retwisted the roots. What if Tess and Theo were the Morningstarrs, but they didn’t know it and couldn’t believe it? That would mean they would have to find a way to travel back in time. And despite how many comic books he’d read, and how often time travel happened in those comic books, nobody could travel back in time.
A little voice in the back of his head said, Not yet, anyway.
He shifted in his seat. The woman next to him, mom aged and redheaded and white, glanced at him and then clutched her computer bag tighter.
Ono popped out of his pocket. “Oh no,” it said disapprovingly.
The woman got up and grabbed one of the poles instead, her eyes cutting to Jaime every few seconds.
Warmth flooded his face as he tried to ignore this woman and the weird way she was looking at him, the weird way she was acting. Even if he had a time machine or a wormhole or a worm machine, what would make a person want to travel back in time? Jaime had had a good life, but there were still people, like this creepy carrot hanging on to the pole, who looked at him as if he were about to club them and steal their shoes. And that was now. Today. What would happen to him if he were to go back even twenty years? Fifty? One hundred? What would happen to him if he traveled all the way back to Civil War times? To the Revolutionary War era?
He knew what would happen. The same thing that had happened to so many people who looked like him back then.
Nothing could make him go back.
Nothing.
The train stopped and the redheaded woman shot out the door, running off to wherever creepy carrots lived. Ono made a buzzing noise that sounded as if it were blowing a raspberry.
Jaime patted Ono. “Thanks, dude.”
“Land of Kings,” Ono said.
Jaime took the steps two at a time and burst into the sunlight. Even though the bros of Broboken bobbed all around him, he had to admit that the place was growing on him. A little. The view of the river was pretty, at least. And his father was here. And he was staying. For good. That was something that Jaime had never dared hope for, and it had happened.
So Jaime was in a good mood when he opened the door to his apartment, a good mood when he stepped inside.
Which was when he saw Mima and his dad sitting at the kitchen table with two big white men he’d never seen before, men wearing suits.
“Jaime,” said his dad. “These men are here to ask you about the ferry.”
One of the men stood. “I’m Detective Cherry and that’s Detective Murphy.” He held out a meaty hand for Jaime to shake. “How are you feeling today?”
Even though Jaime hadn’t done anything wrong—not today, anyway—a flutter of nerves erupted in his gut. “I’m feeling fine, thanks.”
“Good, good,” said Detective Cherry. “That’s good.”
Jaime’s dad got up and motioned for Jaime to sit in his seat. Detective Cherry sat down next to him.
Detective Cherry said, “Listen, Jaime. I know you’ve been asked this before, but I need to ask you again. Do you remember what happened on the ferry?”
Jaime told the detectives what he’d told the rescue workers and the cops who had interviewed him right afterward: that he had been leaning against the rail, looking out onto the water, when someone behind him shouted, “Look out!” and shoved him over the side. He didn’t see anyone, and he didn’t know why anyone would push him.
“Hmmm,” said Detective Murphy, scratching notes.
Jaime wanted to say, “Hmmm? What does ‘hmmm’ mean?” But he said nothing.
Detective Cherry said, “Listen, Jaime. We interviewed a bunch of people on the ferry, and we found some witnesses. One of the witnesses got photos of the person who pushed you. I’m going to show you some pictures, and I want you to tell me if any of these people look familiar, okay?”
