Julian Sedgwick - The Palace of Memory

PRAISE FOR THE BLACK DRAGON BOOK 1 OF THE MYSTERIUM TRILOGY

A laudable and likable hero. The unusual location, intriguing characters, and a fast-paced plot further set this series opener apart. A clever mashup of crime drama and magical realism makes for an auspicious series start. Kirkus Reviews

This first installment in the Mysterium series is filled with action and stage magic, though Dannys struggles with identity and his parents deaths are never far from the surface, making this adventure more than gangster brawls and misdirection. Booklist

Gripping series introduction.... The pacing is fast, featuring a strong blend of intense action and inner struggle. The ending is powerful and thrilling. School Library Journal

First American edition published in 2017 by Carolrhoda Books

Text copyright Julian Sedgwick, 2014

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hodder Childrens Books, a division of Hachette Childrens Books, an Hatchette UK company

Cover illustration by Patricia Moffett

Cover illustration copyright 2017 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

All US rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

Carolrhoda Books

A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

241 First Avenue North

Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

Map, skull, and code charts Laura Westlund/Independent Picture Service.

Main body text set in Bembo Std 12.5/17.

Typeface provided by Monotype Typography.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for The Palace of Memory is on file at the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4677-7568-7 (trade hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-5124-2690-8 (eb pdf)

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016008432

Manufactured in the United States of America

1-37418-18416-4/13/2016

9781512432657 ePub

9781512432664 mobi

9781512432671 ePub

For Isabel
2707 13616 0712

Prologue

The body will still be warm. She knows that.

She knows because she was the one to close the mans eyes. Because it was her hands that stuffed his body into the antique fairground ride. Because it was sheLa Locawho fired the three silenced shots that killed him.

Pwoomph, pwoomph, pwoomph the stuffing kicked out of his down-filled parka, his eyes surprised, then horror-struck, then glazing over. Caught up in something much bigger than his own pathetic world of pickpocketing and petty crime, she thinks. But thats life: wrong place, wrong time, end of story.

As she waits in the shadows, she knows precisely when the staff will come to open the bloodred airplane ride and discover the body, knows every step of her escape, how long it will be until rigor mortis comes to lock the young man tight. She knows because shes seen it so many times before. Because shes a professional, meticulously planning the hours, minutes, seconds that lead up to the death. And the ones that come after.

Far below, Barcelona lies spread in pale November sunshine, its buildings jammed against the blue wall of the Mediterranean beyond. Her eyes fasten on the tall, dreamlike spires of the Sagrada Familia cathedral, the yellow cranes spidering up, hanging over its perpetual, slow-motion construction. Its taken them a hundred years already, and still they keep building. And people call her crazy!

Still that smells hanging around her: the back-of-the-throat stench from when she burned the forty-nine dot pattern onto the dead mans back with the cigarette. Well, if thats what the clients want, then thats what they get. And its given her the chance to take care of some other business tooplant some evidence to throw off the police and get rid of a potential problem with her accomplice.

She takes a matchbox from her pocket, glances at the fierce tiger prowling on its label, and places it in the gloom next to the discarded cigarette packet.

The woman takes her leave then, dropping down a forgotten path out of the fairground, her lime-green coat knifing through the twisty pines and cacti back toward the city. As she goes, she pulls the victims mobile from her pocket. With gloved hands she plucks out its heart and brainthe battery and SIMand chucks them away amongst the fallen, dead leaves.

Why the Circus
Waits for No One

Thirty-six hours later.

Danny is on his own, running headlong through the darkened backstreets of Paris. His feet are light, fast on the pavement, his backpack thumping against his back as he races toward the River Seine.

He stops for a moment, his breath thickening the cold air as he peers into the night, checking the next corner for trouble, for dark shadows smudged in the recesses away from the streetlights, eyes and ears straining, heart pounding. Got to be careful. Maybe they already know where I am? But how could they?

He glances at his watch. Five minutes. Five precious minutes left to catch the night train to Barcelona.

Cant miss it. What would I do then? Sneak back to the hotel with my tail between my legs? Wait for the morning and be picked up by the police and then have to argue and plead with Aunt Laura? Wouldnt work. Its not an option.

A voice from the past is whispering in his earRosa, the Mysteriums ringmistresscajoling the company on some long-forgotten, long-distance journey: Faster, pussycats, faster! The circus wont wait for anyone! The memory gives him new strength, and hes already running again, senses so alert that he smells the cold, dark river before he sees it.

He has no ticket. Hardly any moneyjust the forty euros he has borrowed from Laura. Any tiredness Danny has felt has been flushed from his system now by a rush of anxiety and urgency. He thinks of his aunt, asleep in the hotel, numbed by jetlag at the end of their first stopover day in Paris. What will Laura do when she wakes up and finds out? Alert the authorities? Or force Major Zamora to bring him back straightaway? Just got to hope the note will buy me enough time , he thinks, hope that Laura will have the confidence to let me have my own way for a few days at least. Hope my own confidence holds out. I can do it at least I think I can. After all, Ill be with Zamora .

And besides, something else is balancing his nerves, making his feet strike the pavement just that much harder: if only brieflymaybe for just one weird, beautiful night only!he will be reentering the Mysterium, stepping back through the magic portal of the curtain, into a world he thought was gone forever. A smile jumps across his face.

Im running away to join the circus! Or re-join it, more like. Once he could even have said he was going homebut, of course, thats not true anymore. Without Dad, without Mum, what will the Mysterium be? Certainly not the place he knew and loved, but something damaged, sadder, older...