THE SHATTERGRAVE KNIGHTS

By David M. Haendler

Copyright © David M. Haendler 2011

Cover Art by Jarreau Wimberly

David M. Haendler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of David M. Haendler.

Smashwords Edition June 2011

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

For Molly

CHAPTER ONE

A great cry went up from the hunting party as they charged through the tall grass in formation. “Death to the goblins!” they cheered. The hunters knew that wealth and glory awaited them if they could bring a goblin’s head home as a trophy, and they were anxious for a chance to prove themselves as warriors.

“Hey, watch it!” Bill Tuck squealed, as the business end of a sharpened stick poked past his ear. “You nearly skewered me!”

“Sorry about that,” another boy said sheepishly. “I can’t see a thing with all these reeds around.” In fact, few of the goblin hunters were tall enough to see above the reeds. The oldest member of the party was only fourteen.

Jack and Olive Merriwether stood by the creek, waiting for goblins to pass by. Jack had armed himself with a bow and some arrows, and Olive had sharpened a long stick into a makeshift spear. Henry Alish, the most popular boy in town, had made himself into the unofficial leader of the hunting party, and he had assigned Jack and Olive to wait and watch while some other kids flushed out a grassy area nearby. Jack could hear the whoops and roars of the others as they ran flailing through the reeds, and thought it sounded like they were having more fun than he was.

“This is stupid,” Jack grumbled. “Even if Mike Shandle did see a goblin here yesterday, there’s no reason to think it’s still here now. What we should be doing is looking for its tracks.”

The gossip in Muddy Hollow tended to follow the seasons. In the fall, people talked about the goblins. A wandering band of the little monsters passed through this area every year not long after the leaves changed. They usually managed to make a pretty severe nuisance of themselves, attacking travelers, vandalizing property, and engaging in petty theft on an epic scale. Fortunately, there hadn’t been a really bad goblin attack since the spring of 307, six years ago, when some of them had torched the covered bridge just outside of town and then raided every henhouse in Muddy Hollow while the villagers were busy putting out the fire.

In the winter, people talked about the fishing. Muddy Hollow was a fishing village, and most of its money was made in the winter when the cod came through to spawn. If the catch was good, the next year would be prosperous and easy. If it was bad, hard times were in store.

In the spring, people talked about taxes. Spring was when taxes came due, and they were always heavy, and they were usually heavier than the year before. The town magistrate, a round, harried little man with a ridiculous mustache, was extremely unpopular at this time of year, and spent as much time as possible holed up in his house.

In the summer, people talked about the fair. Muddy Hollow held its village fair at the beginning of every summer, and this single event usually produced enough gossip to last the next few months. At a bare minimum one could expect five or six stories of romantic misadventures, eight or nine incidents of public drunkenness, a juicy allegation of cheating in one of the baking contests, and usually a pretty good fistfight or two.

But it was fall now, so all the talk was of goblins. At school on Friday, Mike Shandle had sworn that he had spotted one over by Farrow Creek. Even though Mike was generally regarded as a liar who would say anything for attention, he seemed to be telling the truth this time, and on Saturday almost all of his classmates were in hot pursuit of the monster. Every fall the town magistrate offered a running bounty of ten ducats for every goblin captured or killed, and that was a nice bit of money even when split up many ways.

“Nobody’s stopping you from leaving,” Olive told Jack coldly. “You can go off on your own and look for the tracks, and I’ll stay here and wait for the goblin. But you don’t get any of the reward if I catch him by myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t let you fight a goblin all by yourself.”

“What would you even do if a goblin showed up?”

Jack held up his bow.

“Now you’re the one being ridiculous. We both know you can’t hit anything with that bow.”

This was not entirely fair. Jack was nearsighted, but he was not a bad shot up close. He had spent many happy hours of his childhood plinking away at woodland creatures with a toy crossbow his father had made for him, and had sent his fair share of luckless squirrels into the stew pot.

“You’re right, there’s probably no goblin here,” Olive said. “And even if there is one, I can handle him myself. You take off and look for tracks, and I’ll wait here. It’s a good idea.”

Olive was being more reasonable than usual, and that made Jack suspicious. His twin sister probably could handle a goblin. She was only fourteen, but she was big for her age and something of a tomboy. She liked hunting, and she had fought and beaten several other girls and even a couple of boys. Goblins were known for their short stature and cowardice. Then Jack noticed something strange sticking out of one of the pockets of Olive’s jacket. “Wait, what’s that?” he asked, deftly swiping it from her to get a closer look. It was a little bundle of twigs and string with a dried frog at its center.

“Give it back!” Olive squealed, trying to grab it back from her brother without breaking it. “That’s none of your business!”

“Is this a love charm?” Jack asked slyly. “Did Goody Allsop make this for you?”

“Give it back! Give it back! Come on!”

“By Saint Hugo, it is a love charm! These are illegal, you know. Evil witchcraft. Now I see why you want me to go off looking for tracks! You want to be alone with Henry when he comes back to check on us!” Jack mimicked his sister’s voice. “Oh, Henry. I’m so glad you’re back. You’re the handsomest goblin hunter alive!”

“Shut up! I’ll tell Melissa Ashworth how you feel about her!”

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Jack said, handing her the amulet back. “How’s this supposed to work, anyway?”

“It’s got one of Henry’s hairs in it. When he’s near it, all his bad thoughts go into the frog, and he’s always happy and carefree. So he’ll want to be around it all the time.”

“Huh. Seems a little elaborate. Also, you have to carry a dead frog in your pocket all the time.”

“Goody Allsop had a love potion as well, but it’s a lot more expensive, and I couldn’t think of any way to slip it into Henry’s food.”

“Oh, that’s not a hard problem. You can just bring along a canteen sometime and offer him a drink. Although if the potion’s got a strong taste he might notice and that—”

“Weren’t you going to look for tracks?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said as he started examining the muddy creek side. He chuckled to himself. Henry was good-looking all right, but he was dumber than an oyster. Jack thought his sister could do better. He wasn’t worried, though, for two reasons. First, everyone in town knew Henry was courting Jan Ogglesvy, the magistrate’s daughter. Second, although Goody Allsop had sold love charms, good luck amulets, and treasure-finding rods to most of the children in town (and some of the adults), her clients generally remained loveless, unfortunate, and poor. It was actually not a bad little racket, now that Jack thought about it. He wondered if anyone would buy “magical” items from him.

Jack’s plotting to defraud his friends and neighbors was cut short when he noticed huge footprints, easily twice the size of his own, in the rich black mud of the creek bank. Whoever had left them hadn’t been wearing shoes, and had eight long toes on each foot. Jack followed the tracks for about two hundred yards, where they turned off and headed into the forest.

Jack ran back to get his sister. The other kids had finished beating the tall grass and were back at the open spot where he and Olive had been posted, milling about with their makeshift weapons like a poorly armed, underage militia, loudly arguing over what to do next. Olive’s plan to get Henry alone had backfired after all.

“Why’d you leave your post?” Henry yelled as Jack returned. “What if a goblin had run past?”

“I’ve found something!” Jack said. “Goblin tracks, down by the water! Maybe we can follow them back to its lair.” Henry’s frown showed that he did not like having his plan upstaged, but he failed to suggest any better ideas. The group fell in behind Jack and Olive, and they followed the tracks into the forest.

It soon became clear the goblin had chosen one of the most dismal parts of the forest to hide in. The kids found themselves in a dark, foul-smelling patch of swampland that few of them had ever been to before. The frog croaks and bird chirps of the creek side dimmed away behind the hunting party as they went deeper in. Even the animals seemed to avoid this bleak stretch of wilderness.

“I think we’re getting close to Prudence Kingfisher’s house,” said Henry.

“Who’s that?” chirped Olive. Muddy Hollow was a small town. The fact she didn’t know one of her neighbors was a big surprise.

“She’s the cat lady!” Mike Shandle replied. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the cat lady?”

Olive shrugged. “Does she have a lot of cats or something?”

“Kind of,” said Mike. “She eats cats. She got my grandma’s tabby last year. Gran was hysterical. I’ve heard she’s crazy.”

“I’ve heard she worships Maxander,” said Henry. That got the whole group’s attention. Maxander worship was a serious crime, one of the very worst offenses in the Protectorate, and the witches who belonged to his cult were some of the most dangerous people alive.

“I think I see her house over there,” Olive said quietly. A miserable little shack squatted in the middle of the swamp. Its foundation appeared to be crumbling, its roof visibly sagged, and a few of its windows were boarded up. If not for the thick black smoke pouring out of the chimney, one would have thought the place long-abandoned. A cryptic red symbol had been painted onto the rickety, barely-standing fence. Just looking at it made Olive dizzy. “Is that the sign of Maxander?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

The goblin’s tracks passed by the house and kept going north, towards a dense grove of willow trees. As the group reached the edge of the grove, a shriek like that of an angry bobcat erupted from behind them.

“You lousy kids geddaddaheah!” Prudence Kingfisher was standing right behind the group, just a few feet away, although nobody had seen her approach. The cat lady’s face curled up in an angry grimace, and as she yowled she waved a rusty knife at the children. Her left eye was milky white, and the ring finger on her right hand had been lopped off at the first knuckle. It was impossible to guess her age. She was either a very old woman who was aging gracefully, or a middle-aged woman who had aged horribly. She was barefoot and her dress was faded, torn, and stained.

Nobody had seriously expected they would run across a goblin, let alone an insane, knife-wielding witch. A troubling question passed through the minds of the group. If this woman eats cats, would she be willing to eat kids as well? Some of the more faint-hearted slowly backed away. Olive, however, was not willing to retreat quite so quickly. “Listen, lady,” she growled. “We’re not on your property, so leave us alone. And put that stupid butter knife away. There are lots of us and we’re all armed.”

Prudence spat. “Ain’t impressed.”

“Olive, maybe we should go,” Jack said, in the most casual fashion he could muster. The whole party hoped Olive would follow this advice.

“No! She doesn’t own the whole swamp. She can’t tell us what to do.”

Prudence smiled horribly, revealing a mouthful of jagged yellow teeth. “My word is law, Olive,” she gurgled. “I do own the whole swamp, and you are not welcome here.” She took a step forward.

“Hey!” Olive barked, holding up her crude spear. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Bah,” said Prudence. “Drop it.” She hissed something in a strange, high-pitched whine and every member of the hunting party, including Olive, immediately dropped his or her weapon to the ground. Olive found herself keeping a knife-wielding witch at bay with a handful of nothing. Some of the kids broke off running.

Jack was too astonished to be scared. “Wait…how—?” he stuttered.

Olive reached down for her spear. The witch hissed again, and the spear slipped back through Olive’s fingers.

“Let’s get out of here!” Olive cried.

“First smart thing you’ve said,” Prudence said, and then she made another strange noise, louder and more shrill than before. The air in the swamp froze. The temperature tumbled like a falling rock, and the kids who had dressed for a pleasant fall day found themselves shivering miserably. Jack was hit hardest. He felt like his blood had turned to ice. The goblin hunters scattered and sprinted for home. Prudence watched Jack and Olive closely as they ran from her, and did not turn away and go back into her house until they had disappeared from her sight.

Fortunately, the witch’s spell wore off fairly quickly. Jack and Olive felt warmer, or at least less cold, as soon as they were out of the swamp. Jack still shivered, but now felt as though he were in the middle of an unseasonably cold autumn afternoon rather than the dead of a winter night. “How did she do that?” he asked.

“Easy,” Olive said. “She’s a witch.”

“Yeah, but how did she make it so cold all of a sudden? What just happened to us?”

“You want to go back and ask her?”

Jack pondered the suggestion briefly. “Probably a bad idea,” he said. “She’s most likely still pretty mad. I ought to give her some time to cool off. No pun intended.”

“Wait, what? You’re serious? You want to go back and talk to her again? What are you, a lunatic?”

“Well, maybe. I haven’t thought it through all the way. But you’ve got to admit, that was pretty amazing. I just want to know how it’s done. I mean, I know it’s probably not legal…”

“Probably not legal? Jack, you’re talking about learning black magic from an honest-to-Patheon witch. It’s completely and totally illegal. You’d go to jail for the rest of your life if you ever got caught! And if Dad found out, he’d kill you.”

“Hmm. Yeah, like I said, I guess I haven’t thought it through all the way.”

Mysteries wore heavily on Jack. When he was younger, a traveling magician had come to town for the summer fair. Jack had mercilessly pestered the poor man until he gave up the secrets of all his tricks. And he had driven his schoolteacher, Ms. Macklesford, half insane with questions about life before the Protectorate was established, a subject the official textbooks covered very poorly. Not understanding something was like having an itch in his mind. Jack couldn’t help but want to scratch.

~~~

When Jack and Olive got home, their father Edwin was attaching metal pipes to the top of a copper kettle. Edwin fancied himself an amateur inventor and frequently tinkered with unfathomable gadgets. He had made a similar contraption several months ago and sold it to Frank Bocco for twelve ducats. Their mother, Jeanne, was stitching up their costumes for the Saint Hugo’s Day pageant. “Hey there,” Edwin said. “What did you two do today?”

“Went goblin-hunting out in the woods by Farrow Creek,” Jack said.

“You get any of them?”

“Nope. We found some goblin tracks and followed them for a while, but we lost the trail.”

“Too bad. I hate those wretched little things. They’re like a horrible cross between a rat, a monkey, and a pickpocket.” Edwin had loved the old covered bridge that the goblins had burned down, and had never forgiven them for its destruction.

“You kids shouldn’t go out hunting goblins,” Jeanne said. “Those things are dangerous. Reward money doesn’t mean anything if a bunch of goblins have got you strung up over their cooking fire.”

“C’mon, Mom,” said Olive. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“You think you can take care of yourselves. Everyone thinks they can take care of themselves and a lot of them are wrong. Besides, there are worse things than goblins in those woods. What if you ran into a redcap or a skulkling?!”

Olive snorted. Her mother might as well have threatened them with savage tigers. “Redcaps never live that close to humans,” she said. “They live in the middle of nowhere. And the Protectorate wiped out all the skulklings in the Unification War.”

“Not all of them,” said her mother. “That’s just what the skulklings want you to think.”

“Well, okay,” said Olive. “But even if there were some left alive, why would they be here in Muddy Hollow? They lived on the other side of the world, over in the Howling Mountains.”

“You never know…”

“Could run into bears,” their father said as he tightened one of the bolts on his contraption. This was a threat that Olive couldn’t dismiss so quickly. The bears around Muddy Hollow were large and ferocious.

“There were a bunch of kids all together,” Jack said, stepping in on his sister’s side. “A bear wouldn’t attack a large group.” He neglected, of course, to mention the long stretch of time he and his sister had been separated from their companions.

“We just want you two to be safe,” their mother said.

“You’re just completely paranoid,” Jack whispered under his breath, too softly for anyone else to hear.

“We passed by Prudence the cat lady’s house!” said Olive. “Henry Alish says she worships Maxander. Do you think she does? She looks like a witch. Maybe we should ask the magistrate to investigate. I do feel like there aren’t as many stray cats wandering the streets as there used to—”

There was a sudden crash of metal as their father threw down his tools. “Listen to me carefully,” he said. He did not raise his voice, but his speech turned very hard and precise. He only talked that way when he was furious. “Maxander was a vicious, evil monster. There is nobody in Muddy Hollow who worships him. Nobody. When you accuse someone of being a witch, you’re accusing her of being human filth. That’s a rotten charge to spring at an old lady who never hurt anyone.”

Olive tried to protest that Kingfisher had cast some sort of spell on them, but her father wouldn’t let her get even a single word in. “No!” he said. “No! I don’t want to hear any excuses. It’s a horrible thing to say about someone. I raised you better than that, and I’m disappointed in both of you.” He picked up his tools and went back to his work , but his family spent the rest of the evening in a tense, sour silence. Edwin’s anger slowly faded away, but nobody wanted to be the first to speak up.

~~~

Every week, the magistrate of Muddy Hollow had to make a report to his superior, the military governor of Alesbury Province. The magistrate strongly doubted anyone actually read the Muddy Hollow weekly reports, but he took pride in his job and wrote them with great care, regardless. For the most part, his reports were supposed to discuss fairly mundane matters like births, deaths, crimes, taxes, harvests, and so on. The Protectorate kept detailed records about the lives of each of its subjects, its philosophy being that those without guilt had nothing to hide.

Section I required information on all births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and new arrivals in town. Susan Holleng had just given birth to a baby boy, so there was that. Nothing else to report. Section II required information on trade and commerce, and was generally the most difficult to complete, forcing the magistrate to relentlessly pester the town’s merchants for receipts and account books. Section III was about criminal activity. The magistrate scrupulously filled in the details of a few instances of drunk and disorderly conduct and discussed the discovery and destruction of an illegal moonshine still in the woods outside town. He suspected it belonged to Frank Bocco but couldn’t prove anything. Section IV was about contact with non-humans. The magistrate wrote down everything he knew about the recent goblin sightings, even though the Protectorate had never shown the slightest interest in putting an end to the little beasts’ seasonal raids. Section V was about incidents of dissidence, anti-Protectorate speech, and other such forms of disloyalty. Nothing to report here, as always.

But Section VI…Section VI was a little tricky to fill in this time. Section VI asked about any recent supernatural or occult activity. For the past one thousand, one hundred and twenty-two weeks, the magistrate had filled this part in with a succinct, “Nothing to report.” However, this time there actually was an incident to include. Like everyone else in town, he had heard the story about Prudence Kingfisher cursing the kids in the swamp, although he thought the whole thing was probably just a tall tale that had been blown far out of proportion. If the Ecclesiastical Court witchfinders or the Thirteenth Division got involved, they would waste everyone’s time and get a harmless old woman in trouble. But on the other hand, the entire town was talking about it. If the magistrate didn’t report this incident and word somehow got back to the governor, a disaster would result. The magistrate would certainly lose his job. He might even go to prison.

In Section VI, the magistrate wrote, “A woman known as Prudence Kingfisher reportedly threatened a group of children with a curse. Nobody was harmed. She is a hermit, and is known to be eccentric.” He read and reread his words and decided that he had done his duty. In the unlikely event the military governor read his report and asked anything more about it, he’d explain the rumors weren’t believable and Kingfisher was just a lonely coot.

After thoroughly proofreading the report and deeming it satisfactory, the magistrate folded it up using his ruler as a straight edge, sealed it with his official signet ring, and gave it to his butler to hand off to the courier. By suppertime he had forgotten about it entirely.

CHAPTER TWO

That Wednesday was the Veneration Day of Saint Hugo, the illustrious pinnacle of the righteous and bane of the wicked, and Jack was decidedly grouchy about it. He had advanced to that awkward, unfortunate age when he was old enough to find participation in the Veneration Pageant to be thoroughly humiliating, but still young enough that his participation was mandatory. Not only that, but he hadn’t even gotten a good part. He had to be a tautho warlord for the third year in a row. Despite his mother’s best efforts to let the costume out, it had become uncomfortably snug. It also stank of mothballs but was moth-eaten, nonetheless.

“I don’t see why I have to be a tautho again,” he grumbled, his voice muffled by his suffocating goat mask. “I hate this part. Ms. Macklesford is conspiring against me, I tell you.”

“Buck up, pal,” his father said, clapping Jack on the back. “It’s your last year in the pageant. Do it for your mom’s sake, huh?”

“Harold Ogglesvy gets to be Saint Hugo every year, and he can’t even remember his lines!”

“You don’t hear your sister complaining.”

“That’s because she got to be an evil queen!”

Olive smiled, feeling wonderfully wicked in her long black dress, heavy makeup, and paper crown. She had been practicing her song at home all week, at precisely the times, places, and decibel levels that she knew would most annoy her brother. “I guess you were just born to play the role of a filthy, disgusting, bloodthirsty animal,” she said, smiling sweetly and batting her eyelashes. She was ordinarily terrified of tautho barbarians, who had been regular players in the bloodcurdling bedtime stories of her childhood, but Jack seemed hilariously harmless in his threadbare getup.

“Kids…” their mother sighed, sounding even more exasperated than usual.

The Merriwether family was heading to church for the pageant along with almost everyone else in town. The main street was crowded with well-groomed adults and outlandishly outfitted children and teens. As he walked behind Olive, Jack noticed the dried frog amulet carefully palmed in her right hand.

“You’re bringing that to church now?” Jack whispered in his sister’s ear. “On Saint Hugo’s Veneration Day? You’re willing to commit sacrilege for Henry? My goodness.”

Olive took a quick sideways glance over at her parents, saw that they were engaged in their own conversation, and whispered back, “I tried to tie it on my arm under my sleeve, but it keeps falling down.”

“You’re going to be in trouble if Henry wants to hold hands,” Jack whispered. Olive turned red, took another sideways look at her parents, and covertly elbowed Jack in his ribs hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs.

The Muddy Hollow church was an old stone building at the very center of the town. A large bronze plaque stamped with Saint Hugo’s handsome likeness hung above the doorway, and a big stained-glass window depicted the moment at which Saint Hugo defeated Maxander at the cost of his own life. Saint Hugo was depicted as a golden-haired warrior in white armor, and Maxander as a beastlike ogre in black robes. The combatants were stabbing each other with huge broadswords. A sunburst of ruby-red blood emanated from Saint Hugo’s wound, while Maxander’s blood was cobalt blue. The window was the greatest pride of Don Teodor, the village priest, and he kept it sparkling clean.

Don Teodor stood by the door, welcoming his parishioners one by one as they came in. The priest was a narrow, birdlike man with a quiet disposition and piercing, intelligent eyes, completely bald but with a long black beard starting to go white. Don Teodor played chess with Edwin Merriwether every week, and almost every week he defeated Edwin handily.

“Hello, Eddy,” said Don Teodor, shaking his friend’s hand and bowing slightly. “It’s good to see you again. Hello, Jeanne. Is that an apple pie?”

“With raisins and cinnamon,” said Jeanne. “I’ll set it down on the feast table.”

“Very good! Hello, Jack. How are you doing? Your father tells me you’ve really taken to your studies.” Don Teodor extended his hand to shake, ignoring the fact Jack was dressed as a goat-headed barbarian.

“Thank you, sir,” Jack said. Don Teodor’s hands were icy and his fingers much longer than most, resulting in a somewhat unusual grip. Jack wondered how the priest’s hands could still be so cold after shaking hands all morning. “I’ve been doing pretty well. I like the material.”

“That’s important,” Don Teodor said. “Maybe someday you’ll go to Thayre and be a scholar. You have to find something you love. Do you know the first question Patheon will ask you when you stand before him?”

“Um…no.”

“Hm. You should be more attentive at church. The first question he will ask is if you regret the way you lived your life. Now, part of that is about being a good and moral person, but part of it is also about doing what you love. You should keep that in mind.”

“I will, sir.”

Now Don Teodor’s attention turned to Olive. Jack saw a sudden look of anxiety pass over his sister’s face. If Don Teodor shook her hand he would find the amulet, and that would buy her a very long and unpleasant lecture on witchcraft the entire town would witness. She palmed the amulet as far up her sleeve as it would go, then curtsied and extended her hand palm-down for Don Teodor to kiss.

“Hello, my dear Olive,” said Don Teodor. “You’re looking lovely today. Every time I see you, it seems like you’ve grown some more.”

“Thank you, Don Teodor,” said Olive graciously. “I’m looking forward to the pageant today.” She gave her brother a quick, sly look, as if to say, “You thought he was going to catch me, didn’t you?” Jack made a gruesome face at her, although it went unnoticed beneath his goat mask.

The Merriwether family filed into the church and settled into their usual pew. The feast table, piled high with meats, cheeses, and pastries, sat directly in front of the altar. Jack reflected that although he didn’t care for the pageant itself, at least he’d get a good meal.

~~~

Don Teodor began officiating the ceremonies once everyone had settled in. First he led a number of lengthy prayers to Patheon through which the townspeople expressed their hope they would meet Patheon’s stern and exacting standards. Then he conducted rituals in honor of lesser gods and saints, as well as an extended ceremony thanking the gods for the benevolence of the Protectorate, their representative in man’s world. Finally, the pageant was ready to begin. It kicked off, as always, with a rendition of Saint Hugo’s birth. Melissa Ashworth, playing the part of Saint Hugo’s mother, sang a little song about what a good and devout woman she was, only to be struck down by a thunderbolt (cue backstage hammering on a tin sheet) on the day of her wedding to the Prince of Thayre. Fortunately, she survived the ordeal and went on to give birth to a little boy named Hugo nine months later. The part of baby Hugo was played by little Otik Holleng, who was proving himself a colicky child.

Next came the dance of the tyrants. Olive and six other kids stood on a crude canvas map of the known world, portraying the evil kings and queens who had ruled before the Unification War and the establishment of the Protectorate. They sang a ditty about how cruel they were to their people, and how much they all hated each other. At a few parts of the song the evil kings attacked each other with wooden swords or daggers. Olive had lobbied furiously to be allowed to do some stage fighting, but the request had been denied as unladylike.

At the climax of the tyrants’ dance, Maxander arrived in the Howling Mountains to the far northeast. It was considered bad form for a child to play the part of such a hated monster, so the role was filled by a scarecrow in black robes, with a sneering death’s head carved into its wooden face, a crown of rusted nails upon its head, and a wooden sword in one of its hands. It was carried onto the stage by three Shattergrave Knights, Maxander’s personal bodyguards and assassins. They wore the same black robes as their master, and black headbands. The backstage hammering started up again, and the Shattergrave Knights sang a dirge of black magic and treachery.

Jack was lurking offstage along with five other kids in unconvincing tautho costumes, and six other kids in unconvincing skulkling costumes. The ersatz thunder was their cue to strike. They scrambled up onto stage around Maxander, then swept in and attacked the kings in a well-choreographed but clumsily executed battle. One by one, the tyrants knelt before Maxander’s army.

As the first act closed, the crowd applauded forcefully and then crowded around the feast table to eat. The young performers took a moment to get drinks of water or rearrange their costumes. Ms. Macklesford gave Harold a frantic, last minute refresher on some of his lines.

When the play resumed, Maxander’s forces were in charge of the entire mainland. Only Thayre remained, isolated as it was on its own island to the southwest. Its king sang a sad little song about how the world was ending, then fell on his sword with some over-the-top gurgling and thrashing. Enter Hugo, the new king of Thayre, from stage left, clad in a suit of tin armor that clanked loudly as he moved. He started with a prayer to Patheon, moved on to a song about showing courage in the face of adversity, and then belted out a rousing ballad about never giving in to evil. Ms. Macklesford’s tutoring must have done some good, because while Harold looked a little green and his singing voice crackled like a raven’s call, for once he did not blow his lines.

At the conclusion of Saint Hugo’s songs, the Shattergrave Knights came to murder him. Each tried to assassinate him in a different and dishonorable way. One tried to stab him in the back, one tried to put poison in his food, and one tried to strangle him while he slept. However, Hugo and his brave bodyguard, Mandelbrot, foiled each of the plots in turn.

Hugo’s four generals came in stage left, holding wooden shields painted with his symbol and lustily waving wooden swords. With Hugo leading the way they ran onto the section of the stage symbolizing the mainland to wage war on the tautho. Jack went down beneath Henry Alish’s sword. As he lay on the stage trying to avoid being trod upon and mostly failing, he comforted himself with the knowledge that this would be his final pageant.

After slaying the tautho, Hugo and his generals advanced to the Howling Mountains where the skulklings crowded around their dreaded master. The generals closed in again and the kids playing skulklings all fell down dead. With the minions defeated, it was time for the final confrontation. The generals and the dead left the stage, leaving Hugo alone with the Maxander scarecrow. Hugo sang a song about how he had been chosen by Patheon to put an end to Maxander’s evil, but before he could defeat his enemy once and for all, one of the treacherous Shattergrave Knights snuck up and stabbed him in the back with a blunted carving knife. Hugo lurched forward and was caught in the chest by Maxander’s prop sword. He swung wildly at the scarecrow, knocking its head clean off of its shoulders. Hugo closed with one last prayer to Patheon and then collapsed. From offstage Jack noticed that many of the audience members were sniffling at this point, and even Olive seemed to have something caught in her eye.

The pageant closed, as always, with the generals’ song. Mandelbrot and Hugo’s four generals came onto stage to gather around Hugo’s fallen body, sing their martyred leader’s praises, and vow to carry on his work. They pledged to protect the common people as Hugo had done, and to remain eternally vigilant against evil. The generals raised the Protectorate’s golden banner at the climax, the cue for the audience to explode into rapturous applause.

~~~

On Saint Hugo’s Veneration Day it was customary for the magistrate to make small gifts to each of the town’s citizens as a symbol of the Protectorate’s care. The magistrate rarely got to enjoy the feast because distributing these presents took up most of his time. This year, the gifts were little honey cakes. Each pastry was wrapped in a piece of golden paper with the recipient’s name written on it.

At the end of the feast there was one cake left in the magistrate’s box. The name “Prudence Kingfisher” was printed on its wrapper. The hermit was the only one in town who hadn’t come to church for the Veneration Day festivities. “Does anyone want another cake?” Magistrate Ogglesvy asked. “I’ve still got Kingfisher’s left over.”

“I’ll take it to her,” Jack volunteered, earning himself an icy stare from his father and quizzical looks from many of the townspeople. “I mean, it’s her gift, she should get it. Maybe she’s sick today.”

The magistrate, assuming Jack would eat the honey cake himself as soon as he got home, simply shrugged. “Here you go,” he said, tossing the pastry to Jack. “Tell Prudence we all missed her at church today.”

On the way home from the feast, Jack and Olive’s father was quietly furious again. “You should leave that old lady alone,” he said. “She lives out by herself because she doesn’t like to be bothered. You ought to respect that.”

“I’m just bringing her a cake,” Jack said. “There isn’t any harm in that.”

“You bring her the cake and come right home. You’re going to be in serious trouble if you’re not back by nightfall.”

Prudence Kingfisher’s home in the swamp was pretty far away from his own by the harbor, but Jack was confident he could get there and back before long. However, he hadn’t counted on getting lost. The goblin’s tracks had washed away in a rain shower. As the sun set, Jack found himself in a part of the woods in which he had never set foot before. Even if he gave up looking for Prudence’s house and tried to go directly home, he wasn’t surehe’d be able to find it. His thoughts drifted back to the bears and goblins his parents had warned him about.

Worst of all, Jack had begun to suspect he was going in circles. He was sure he had seen the same fallen, worm-eaten tree at least three times. It would be one thing if he was making progress, but he was hopelessly lost. Getting in trouble was the least of his problems now. He just wanted to go home.

There was a cracking sound in the undergrowth to Jack’s right. Someone—or something—had stepped on a twig. Jack spun to see what had made the noise, but it was too dark. “Is someone there?” he shouted. His answer came in the form of a low, guttural chuckling, and the sight of two beady red eyes glowing in the darkness.

Jack froze, unsure what to do. He could run, but he was never all that fast, and if he ran through this maze of a forest he was sure to get even more lost than he was already. He could fight, but he didn’t have any weapons other than his fists, and he didn’t know who or what was out there.

There was some more rustling, this time to his left. Jack turned again and glimpsed something scuttling behind a tree. The red-eyed things were surrounding him. Jack frantically picked up a heavy rock. He heard a whizzing noise and a small stone crashed into the back of his head. Jack fell to his knees, seeing stars. He touched the place where the stone had hit, and when he pulled his hand back it was sticky with blood.

Jack got to his feet and ran as quickly as he could. He heard his pursuers crashing through the undergrowth behind him, and the occasional whizzing of stones shooting past his head. One came close enough to nick his ear painfully. His pursuers weren’t very fast and weren’t very good shots, but they knew the forest better than he did. They knew he was running into a dead end. Before long, Jack found himself standing at the edge of Farrow Creek.

Jack slowly turned around and saw about a dozen goblins advancing. He had never seen a goblin close up before. The creatures were about four feet tall and were covered in short, matted green fur. They had large, pumpkin-like heads and bulbous, rose-red noses. Most of them were sniffling. The goblins didn’t wear clothes, but wove little trinkets and pieces of junk into their fur. Some of them had slingshots, but most were armed with daggers. Their tiny red eyes glowed like little lanterns.

“What do you want?” Jack asked, trying not to sound afraid.

“Not sure,” one of the goblins mumbled. It seemed to have more teeth than could actually fit in its cavernous mouth, and as a result its speech was slurred and hard to understand. This one wore a tattered bowler hat that was far too small for its head; Jack supposed it was the group’s leader. “Let’s start with you turning out your pockets.”

“I don’t have pockets. I’m wearing a costume for the pageant.”

“Well that’s no good.”

“We can sell him to Zanzibar,” said another. “Zanzibar gives good prices.”

“Not for kidnappings!” said a third, punctuating its cry with a simultaneous fart and sneeze. “Zanzibar never gives a good price for kidnappings. Let’s eat him! It’s been too long since we had fresh meat!”

“Yeah!” another chimed in. “I’m sick of squirrel and toad. Let’s have some long pig for a change!”

Jack didn’t like the direction the group seemed to be going in. “I’ve got a honey cake,” he said. “I’ll give it to you if you let me go.”

Their leader spat. “A honey cake? What, you think a honey cake is a fair price for your life?”

“Well…no.”

“You think we’re stupid or something?”

“No!”

“Good. We ehn’t.”

“I’m hunnnnn-gry!” screeched one of the goblins. Jack was forced to duck a rock slung at his head. He began to think he should chance his luck in the creek, and wondered if goblins could swim.

“Hold it, lads!” the leader grunted, wiping its nose on its hand. “We’re gonna let the human explain just what his life’s worth and how—”

The goblin was interrupted by a crash from the woods. It sounded like a tree falling, a big one. There was a second crash, closer than the last from the sound of things, and then another, and yet another. Something very big was moving through the woods and towards the creek. Jack felt the ground trembling from the giant’s footsteps. Some of the goblins scampered off. “Cowards!” cried the leader, but he was clearly looking for exit routes himself.

The sound of wood shattering became even louder. Whatever was in the forest was knocking through trees as though they were bowling pins. In the distance, Jack saw a huge form moving towards him at a fast clip, smashing everything in its path. The behemoth couldn’t be more than a hundred yards away. It stopped dead in its tracks and roared loud enough to rumble Jack’s guts and make his ears ring. The goblins scattered, but Jack was too terrified to move.

The crashing abruptly ceased as Prudence Kingfisher stepped out from the edge of the woods. Jack came cautiously to the tree line to get a better look into the forest. He saw no signs of a giant’s passing.

“What’re you doing out here?” Prudence demanded.

Jack held the honey cake out at arm’s length. “I brought you a present.”

~~~

Prudence told Jack that she would get him a lantern for his trip home and led him through the woods towards her house. Although she was still unkempt and disheveled she didn’t seem nearly as threatening as she had at their last encounter. In part this was because she now sported a sour look on her face instead of a hateful grimace, and in part it was because she wasn’t waving around a rusty knife. Jack realized he had been threatened with a knife twice in a matter of days. This was turning into a weird week.

“Thanks for the cake,” Prudence said as she walked along, licking the gooey crumbs from her fingers. “Guess the Protectorate’s good for something after all.”

Jack was stunned. Openly insulting the Protectorate like that was sedition. Not knowing the polite way to respond, he gave a noncommittal grunt.

“How are your parents?” Prudence asked.

“Okay.”

“Your dad still working at the harbor?”

“Yeah.”

“Still tinkering with those inventions of his?”

“Yeah.” Jack wondered how this woman knew so much about his parents. There was a long pause in the conversation.

“What did you do to us the other day?” Jack asked. “How’d you make it get so cold? How did you make us drop our weapons?”

“Didn’t do anything.”

“I won’t tell anybody, I promise!” Prudence remained silent. Jack was glad when they finally reached her house.

Although the outside of the building was decrepit, the inside was surprisingly comfortable, indeed, almost lavish. The floors were lushly carpeted, the walls were lined with well-stocked bookshelves, and the furniture was nicer than any Jack had ever seen. The skull of some enormous animal, like a huge ram with sharp teeth, hung on the parlor wall above the fireplace. Lamps had been placed in its eye sockets, lighting the room with a warm orange glow. A lit incense burner in the corner gave off a queer, faintly acrid odor. “What’s that?” Jack asked, pointing at the skull. It was nearly three feet wide even without counting its horns.

“My chandelier. Hold on a second, I’ll get you that lantern.” Prudence burrowed into a wooden chest and produced a gleaming brass lantern. She filled it with whale oil and lit it with a taper. “You need anything to eat?” she asked. “You’ve got a long slog home.”

Jack suddenly remembered how much trouble he was going to be in when he got back. He was in fact desperately hungry, but didn’t think he could eat. “I’m okay,” he said.

“I’ll get you something for if you get hungry along the way. Wait here and don’t touch anything.” She ducked in back. Jack wondered if he should make his escape, but reasoned if Prudence was going to do anything bad to him, she surely would have done it by now. She came back a moment later with an apple and a piece of cheese wrapped in cloth. “Here you go,” she said. “Now it’s time for you to be off.”

“Thank you. I’ll bring the lantern back when I can, but I think I might not be allowed to leave the house for a while.”

“Don’t come back. The lantern’s yours.”

“Are you sure? This is an awfully nice---” Prudence cut him off with a look that said to stop asking questions and get lost. She held the front door open for him to leave.

“Can you answer one question for me? Just one?”

“What?”

“Is that symbol…on your gate…is that—the mark of Maxander?”

“No. Now get out of here.”

Jack stepped out the door and began his long walk home. Prudence called after him, “It’s the letter cryptospheris, the eighteenth sigil of the Inner Alphabet. It confuses your sense of place. People who see it once have a hard time finding their way back to it.”

Jack kept walking, feeling even more confused after her explanation.

~~~

A military courier came by every Thursday morning for the magistrate’s weekly report. The courier, a tired, weather-beaten soldier who had been stuck on this duty for years, took the report to the military governor’s headquarters at Alesbury and handed it off to a clerk. The clerk, a near-sighted and creaky-jointed fellow who had been stuck at his job even longer than the soldier, made three copies by hand and put the original away in a vast file cabinet.

The first copy went to the desk of the governor himself. He gave these reports a cursory glance to see if there was anything going on that required his attention. However, since he got a weekly report from each town and village in Alesbury province, and since Alesbury province included a lot of towns and villages, and since he had quite a lot of official, ceremonial, and personal duties to take care of, he rarely had time to give them anything more than a cursory glance. He gave the Muddy Hollow report a quick read, vaguely decided he ought to do something about those goblins, threw the report away, and forgot all about it by suppertime.

The second copy was included in a big leather-bound folio in the governor’s library so anyone curious about the goings-on in Muddy Hollow for the past hundred years could peruse the archives and get a detailed, week-by-week account. The governor had a folio like this for every town and village in Alesbury province. For the most part, they only gathered dust. Nobody had looked at the Muddy Hollow folio in a decade, except to update it.

The third copy went to the Thirteenth Division’s library at the Monastery of Saint Mandelbrot. The Thirteenth Division was the Protectorate’s intelligence-gathering service. To fulfill its functions it needed prompt and reliable information about what was going on in the furthest reaches of the empire. However, Saint Mandelbrot’s was located hundreds of miles to the south, on the island of Thayre, and the posts were slow and erratic. To get around this problem, the Thirteenth Division employed a huge fleet of trained falcons as its messengers.

Taking care of the messenger falcon was probably the worst part of the Alesbury clerk’s job. The bird was noisy, it made a deplorable mess out of its cage, and it seemed to take a particular delight in clamping its beak on the clerk’s arthritic knuckles. The clerk wondered why the Thirteenth Division couldn’t just use docile little homing pigeons like everyone else. He rolled the week’s provincial reports into a cylinder, inserted the cylinder into a leather scroll case, then opened the raptor’s cage and slid the scroll case into a harness on the falcon’s right leg. This was the trickiest part of the business, and the time the evil bird was most likely to strike. Finally he let the falcon out of its box and it flew off, bringing the papers back to its masters at the Thirteenth Division. The clerk entertained a distant hope the bird wouldn’t come back and that a friendlier animal would be sent as its replacement, but the wretched beast always returned, usually bearing bad news.

CHAPTER THREE

Zanzibar Ataxerxes stealthily approached Prudence Kingfisher’s house with a musket in his hands. He was a big man, but after decades of going places he wasn’t supposed to go he had learned how to move silently as a cat. Zanzibar stood about six and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders and a plump, round belly. He was a dark-skinned man, balding on top, with a white, intricately braided beard that hung down to his chest. His red fox fur duster had literally been made for a king. It was exquisitely tailored, but years of hazardous travel had left it with a crazy pattern of patches and stains.

Zanzibar snuck over to the window and saw a light coming from inside. He smiled, thinking perhaps he had caught his quarry unawares. Just then, he heard a clicking noise from behind. Zanzibar turned and saw the woman he had come to find. Prudence Kingfisher stood before him, aiming a cocked pistol between his eyes.

“I never could sneak up on you, Prudy,” Zanzibar chuckled.

“No salesmen,” she snarled, although her snarl was not without affection.

Disarming Zanzibar took quite a while. He was possibly the most heavily armed man that Prudence had ever encountered. In addition to his musket, he kept a pair of cutlasses strapped to his belt, a pistol hidden up his sleeve, a stiletto in his left boot, a vial of acid in the right, brass knuckles sewn into his gloves, and a wicked garrote wrapped around his right arm, cleverly hidden beneath a false bandage. There were so many hidden pockets and compartments in his clothing that seeking them all out was like doing a puzzle. Even after she had done her best to root out all of Zanzibar’s toys, Prudence couldn’t be sure her captive didn’t have some nasty little surprise in store. Then again, that unpredictability was part of the reason she got along so well with Zanzibar.

“So what brings you to Muddy Hollow, Z?” Prudence asked a few minutes later over a cup of potent, piping hot coffee. “Business or pleasure?”

“It’s always both for me. But business first.”

“Of course. What do you have for me today? Counterfeit mementos from Maxander’s court? Maybe a rare book of mystic lore penned by those goblins you truck with?”

“You wound me, madam,” Zanzibar protested, adopting an exaggerated look of hurt. “If you have made any purchases from me that have not fully lived up to their warranties, simply let me know and a full refund will be forthcoming.”

“Uh huh. So how about a refund for that cap and ball repeating arquebus you sold me? The one that blew up in my hands while tautho spearmen were running me down?”

Zanzibar cleared his throat. “As I’m sure you recall, at the time you purchased that particular item I informed you it was second-hand and I could not be sure of what treatment it had suffered at the hands of its previous owner or owners…”

“I lost one of my fingers!” Prudence held the truncated digit out accusingly.

“Buyer beware. I’m sorry, but I only stand behind the warranties I’ve actually made, not the warranties you wish I’d made.”

“All right, that’s enough of your merchant cant. What’d you come to peddle?”

“Information,” he said, with a sly grin. “Information you’ve been looking for all your life. I’ve got a reliable lead on the tomb of the Archon. A map leading directly to it, in fact. I’m taking it to Copperpot in Wyrmsreach, of course, but I thought I’d offer it to you first.“

Prudence snorted. “A professional courtesy to a valued customer, eh?”

“No reason to be so cynical about it. As I recall, you would have done just about anything to get this sort of information in the old days.”

“And now those days are gone. I’m retired.”

“Oh, come on. Where’s the mad-eyed girl I used to know? The one who broke into the crawling fortress of the frozen north and faced down a troupe of skulkling sword-dancers single-handed?”

“She got old. Sorry, but you came out here for nothing. I’m just not in that game anymore.”

“That’s all right,” Zanzibar said, looking somewhat distressed. “Copperpot will offer me a better price for exclusive information, anyway.”

“Honestly,…. I know you’ll get a good price from Copperpot, but you’d be better off just leaving it alone. Let the Archon lie peacefully wherever it is. Some mysteries are better left unsolved.”

“You surprise me, Prudy. This is the big haul. Retirement money. A great big house in Wyrmsreach with servants and paintings and all the trimmings.”

“So who wants to be the richest man in the graveyard? The whole world will change if the Archon is brought back. Even Wyrmsreach might fall. You can’t honestly tell me you expect Phineas Copperpot to control something like that.”

“You’re exaggerating. It can’t be as dangerous as you think. These things never are. It’s just been blown out of proportion over the years. I’m sure Copperpot will be gravely disappointed once he actually gets his little hands on it.”

“Z, if you were sentenced to be hanged, you’d tell the executioner you were offering a special, once-in-a-lifetime deal on rope.”

“What can I say? I don’t like missing any opportunity to make an honest ducat.” Zanzibar paused and stroked his knotted beard. “Once I’ve got the big house in Wyrmsreach, you’re always free to visit, you know. I don’t know why you didn’t settle down there when you retired. Seems like it’s more your speed than a little backwater like this, and you wouldn’t always have to be looking over your shoulder for the Protectorate.”

“Muddy Hollow’s where I came from. I always thought it was where I’d finish up. There’s a symmetry there that I admire. Besides, I want peace and quiet in my old age. Whatever else Wyrmsreach has got, it’s not a place for peace and quiet.”

“Fair enough,” Zanzibar said, knocking back the rest of his coffee in a single, throat-searing gulp. “If you’re not interested in what I have to sell, I guess I’m done here…“

“Yep. Give my love to the goblins.”

Zanzibar stood to go, but his eyes were downcast and his brow was knit. “Prudy, if you’re not coming to Wyrmsreach, I don’t know that we’re ever going to see each other again.”

“So what else is new? Every time we parted before we didn’t know that we were ever going to see each other again. That was what made each meeting memorable.”

They embraced. Zanzibar held Prudence tight against his chest, and she felt a frisson of nostalgia as she smelled his musty old fox fur coat. It was a basically familiar smell that changed a little bit with each encounter. She breathed the coat’s odor in until she was sure it was locked in her memory, and then she released Zanzibar. He let her go, collected his weapons, and walked away from her house without looking back.

~~~

The Monastery of Saint Mandelbrot would have been known as the ugliest building in the world if more people had visited it. It was a gargantuan, mud-colored stone box, stuck halfway up a mountain in the most remote and desolate part of Thayre, its only decorations the lattices of iron bars and razor wires that crisscrossed its windows and doors. The monastery’s designer, Abbot Wight, had believed there was a moral function to architecture, and that a well-designed building could cow its inhabitants into moral behavior through overwhelming size and bleakness.

The inhabitants of this tomb for the living were all members of a monastic order known as the Vigilant Order of Saint Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot had been the chief spy-hunter in Saint Hugo’s army during the Unification War, and historians credited him as the man second-most responsible for the Protectorate’s ultimate victory over evil. Maxander’s covert agents had been exceptionally skilled at infiltration and espionage, but Mandelbrot had been even more skilled at rooting them out. His suspicious nature and deductive powers were legendary. The paranoid saint’s teachings filled volumes but boiled down to four main tenets.

Number one: The Protectorate is Patheon’s representative in man’s world, and its officers are entitled to absolute trust and obedience.

Number two: To be worthy representatives of Patheon, the Protectorate must be as all-knowing and all-seeing as the deity that it serves.

Number three: Only the ashamed fear being watched.

Number four: Only wrongdoers are ashamed.

Saint Mandelbrot’s was a monastery whose inhabitants devoted themselves to the study of their fellow man. They worked hand in hand with the Thirteenth Division to keep detailed records of the lives and thoughts of each of the Protectorate’s subjects. Messenger falcons came in daily from every corner of the Protectorate, bearing district reports, messages from field agents, and other such vital information. These were taken to the reading room, a dismal stone chamber where a dozen bleary-eyed monks skimmed through the never-ending stream of information, figured out which personnel files each report was relevant to, and sent novices to update those records. The uniform of their order was a coarse gray robe and a web of leather straps tightly wrapped around the right wrist and arm to prevent muscle strain from constant note taking. Life in the Vigilant Order of Saint Mandelbrot was like living in a cross between an ant colony and an account book.

The monk who read Magistrate Ogglesvy’s report sent one of the novices to update the records on Prudence Kingfisher to indicate she had been accused of occult activities and further attention was required. Oddly enough, there was no mention of Prudence Kingfisher anywhere in the Muddy Hollow files, even though each citizen of the Protectorate was supposed to have a file in his or her hometown records. The novice made haste to the Runagate Wing, the section of the library containing records on outlaws, itinerant travelers, and anyone else with no fixed address, and here he did find a file for Kingfisher. It filled up an entire folio all by itself. That was almost unheard of. A heavy band of iron had been wrapped around the cover and secured by a padlock, and the Thirteenth Division’s seal, a stylized eye with the numerals XIII at the center of the iris, had been stamped on the band’s hinge mechanism in red wax. Anyone opening the locking mechanism to read the folio’s contents would break the seal. The novice had never seen such high-security records before.

He took the folio to his immediate supervisor, the fra superior, who brought the folio to his immediate supervisor, the fra dominus, who brought the folio to the abbot. The abbot was a tremendously old man, gnarled by the decades like a hideous tree. He had spent his whole life immersed in other men’s secrets and was a hard fellow to surprise, but his heart skipped a beat when the Kingfisher folio was set down before him and he was told there was an update for it. The abbot retrieved a long silver key from a pouch that hung around his neck and unlocked the book with the excitement of a child opening a present. He turned to the last page and personally transcribed into it Section VI of the magistrate’s report.

“Alert General Krauzhelm,” the abbot said, his eyes gleaming like daggers. “The Thirteenth Division must hear of this. And bring me all the files on Muddy Hollow. I want to know everything about it.”

~~~

When the goblins came to Zanzibar’s campfire that evening, they found the smuggler in a dark and pensive mood. He sat cross-legged in front of the fire, his eyes fixed straight ahead. A pan of bacon was perched over the flames. The food had been left unattended on the heat for far too long and was beginning to shrivel and blacken.

The goblins were chattering amongst themselves about the day’s haul and the things they had missed and the things they planned to steal tomorrow. Muddy Hollow being the poor, wary town that it was, the day’s thievery hadn’t come to much. The goblins had only managed to swipe a few caged chickens, a silver brooch, a pair of battered old boots, and a pretty good assortment of laundry that had been left up to dry, but they were an optimistic gang of thieves and cheerfully speculated about the major larcenies they would surely commit tomorrow. Those who had loot thrust it in Zanzibar’s face, asking him to name a price.

Only Galgubbin, the leader of the clump, recognized that something was wrong. He had been with Zanzibar longer than any of the other lads and was the only one who could read the man’s mood. Humans were such strange, flighty creatures, liable to get happy or weepy or angry over things that didn’t mean anything at all. If they weren’t so blasted tall, there was no way they could have taken over the world.

“Clear off, all of you!” Galgubbin ordered. “I gotta speak to Zanzibar in private.” The other goblins grudgingly scattered back into the woods, although they did not stray far. Galgubbin and Zanzibar couldn’t see them in the day’s fading light, but they could still hear their sniffling and sneezing. Galgubbin took off his hat and tucked it under his arm as he approached Zanzibar. “How’s it going, boss? Didja make the sale?”

Zanzibar said nothing.

“Boss? Didja hear me?”

Zanzibar remained silent.

“Boss, I’m gonna help myself to this bacon here. You mind?”

Zanzibar shook his head.

Galgubbin took the pan off the fire and gingerly picked the strips of bacon out with his fingers. It was much crispier than he preferred. Like most goblins, he liked his meat as close to raw as possible. Hot food made his nose run. Still, a free meal was a free meal. “Didn’t make the sale, huh?” he asked.

“No.”

“Too bad. Would’ve been good money.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I imagine it would have been. How much longer is the clump going to stick around?”

“Same as every year. ‘Till the sprouts come.”

“All right. I think I’ll stick around a while longer myself. Perhaps business will pick up. You never can tell with small towns like this.” Zanzibar spat in the fire.

Galgubbin crunched the last piece of bacon between his teeth, tossed the pan aside, and greedily sucked his fingers. “C’mon, boss,” he said. “So the old broad ehn’t want what you’re selling. So what? You’ll make big money at Wyrmsreach. You can’t let it get you down.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Galgubbin scratched his rear. “All right, maybe I don’t. But I know that if you were your normal self, you wouldn’t be putting up with all this back talk from me.”

“No. I guess I wouldn’t.”

Frustrated once again by human frailty, Galgubbin gave up. He plopped down and warmed his hands by the fire. The other goblins shuffled back to the campsite when they heard the discussion was over. A heated argument broke out on the subject of who would get to eat the chickens and who had to be satisfied with a dish of stewed boot. The debate quickly degenerated into a free-for-all wrestling match. Zanzibar sat quietly, his mind barely processing the chaos all around him, still staring straight ahead.

~~~

The abbot of Saint Mandelbrot’s was a distinguished and important man with many friends and supporters, but he always felt like a helpless child in General Krauzhelm’s presence. Krauzhelm was the commanding officer of the Thirteenth Division and a member of the all-powerful Generals’ Council that governed the Protectorate. Furthermore, the abbot wasn’t entirely sure he was human.

General Krauzhelm stood close to seven feet tall and always wore a bright blue uniform decorated with gaudy medals and a cape as red as fresh arterial blood. His garish clothing made a sharp contrast with his personal appearance. His skin and eyes were a sickly ashen color and he was completely hairless, lacking even eyelashes. Krauzhelm had been in his position since the abbot had been a youthful novice, but the decades had not added a single new line or wrinkle to his leathery grey flesh. There were no records of his existence anywhere at Saint Mandelbrot’s.

The general was invariably accompanied by a ghostly entourage of silent men (or perhaps women) in long black cloaks and eyeless masks. They had an unsettling habit of circling close behind anyone conversing with their master, adding a touch of intimidation to even the most casual conversations. Not that there were ever casual conversations with General Krauzhelm.

“You have information on Prudence Kingfisher’s location,” General Krauzhelm stated. His voice was quiet and precise, but very hoarse. Somehow he sounded gray.

“She is in Muddy Hollow,” the abbot said. “It’s a small town in the Alesbury province. Population 327. It is uncertain exactly how long she has been there, but from the report we have it seems she has been settled in for some time.” The abbot swallowed. His initial delight over having uncovered this information was fading rapidly.

“Good. The last of the Shattergrave Knights is in our reach at last. We can only assume she has been using Muddy Hollow as a base of operations for her cult. I need information on all potential members.”

The abbot volunteered a thick sheaf of papers. They were the personal files of everyone in Muddy Hollow who had ever been associated with any sort of criminal, anti-social, seditious, occult, or otherwise suspicious behavior. One of the general’s bodyguards accepted them.

“Who is the magistrate?”

“ Charles Ogglesvy. He has served without distinction for twenty-one years.”

“He must be suspended immediately until we have learned why he did not report this earlier. Mark him for investigation, along with his entire family.”

“Already done. Their files are in the papers I just gave you.”

“We will need someone to supervise the local investigations. Someone thorough and merciless, who knows how to deal with Maxander’s servants. The best there is. Do you have any recommendations?”

The abbot was taken aback. The general never asked for advice. The wheels in his head spun uselessly as he tried to think of a good answer. Recommending a poor candidate could be catastrophic. The general’s brow crinkled, as if he were arching one of his nonexistent eyebrows.

“Tom Fisk!” the abbot exclaimed. “Yes, Tom Fisk. He’s one of the Ecclesiastical Court’s witchfinders. Fisk’s got a spotless record, and he’s brought in some extremely dangerous criminals in the past.”

The general nodded, releasing the knot of tension that had been forming in the abbot’s chest. “I know of him,” he said. “Yes, he’ll do. A fine choice. If anyone can bring Kingfisher in, he can.” The general let loose a brief, raspy cackle, more like a cough than a laugh. “By Saint Hugo’s sword,” he gloated. “We’re finally about to win the Unification War.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Tom Fisk considered himself one of the world’s most fortunate men, and it showed in his easy smile and hearty laugh. He was the most cheerful of all the witchfinders, who were generally a stern and gloomy bunch, and also the most effective.

Fisk didn’t consider himself fortunate because of his wealth. He owned few belongings other than a long musket, his favorite hunting knife, and the shabby clothes on his back. His father had been a simple tailor who had left him nothing but a gang of unsatisfied, unreasonable creditors, and although Fisk had spent his entire adult life in the service of the Protectorate, the Protectorate paid most of its servants quite poorly. Nor did he consider himself fortunate because of his power, even though as an Ecclesiastical Court witchfinder he was a powerful person indeed. He could order citizens arrested and interrogated, seize property at will, and even wipe out titles of nobility. Merely coming under a witchfinder’s suspicion could ruin a man’s reputation and business. Fisk liked that aspect of the job, but for him the power was nothing more than a bonus.

Fisk considered himself fortunate because he loved his job so much. As he saw it, the world was full of people who hated what they had to do. Everywhere he turned, he saw ditch-diggers and cart-drivers and other unfortunates who would never know the joy of pursuing a calling. His own father had been nearly blind and crippled by anxiety towards the end. By contrast, his own work brought him the greatest joy in his life. Fisk loved the thrill of the hunt, the joy of the catch, and the satisfaction of hearing the Protectorate’s enemies confess to their crimes and beg for mercy.

To be fair, even he had his bad days. Slow-witted criminals provided little enjoyment. Hunting them was like hunting dairy cattle. The job was best when the prey was crafty and dangerous, and the pursuit of real monsters made him feel gloriously, incomparably alive. When Fisk was a young man he had hunted the Bubonic Lady, one of the world’s most dreaded witches. He chased her for years across the Lokkis Islands, through icy winters and crushing storms, with her always one or two steps ahead, until one day he finally caught up with her on the beach of some nameless rock as she was preparing to launch a barge of plague rats towards civilization. Fisk had burned her ship, put her in chains, and brought her back to Thayre to be tried and hanged. Even now, thinking about the Bubonic Lady brought a big dreamy grin to his face.

Naturally, Fisk was ecstatic when he got the Kingfisher assignment. Prudence Kingfisher was said to be the last of the Shattergrave Knights. Here was an even greater catch than the Bubonic Lady. In Kingfisher’s youth she had been an exquisitely painful thorn in the Protectorate’s side, a living engine of chaos who spread Maxander’s terror wherever she went. She hadn’t been seen in a decade, and no living witchfinder had ever laid eyes upon her. Kingfisher was a legend, and Fisk was the one who would bring her in. He was hunting a beast that was the last of its kind, a hunt that could never be repeated because it would end with the extinction of the prey. No doubt about it, he was a lucky guy.

~~~

Jack and Olive were rolling a cask of nails to the docks for their father when they saw Bill Tuck jogging towards them. He was making alarming wheezing noises and his pale, moony face had turned bright red. Bill Tuck never ran if he could avoid it, so seeing him like this was somewhat of a novelty.

“Hey, Bill,” Jack said. “What’s up?”

Bill stopped, rested his hands on his knees, and took two deep, gasping breaths. “There’s soldiers coming to town!” he proclaimed. “A whole bunch of them! I saw them on the road!” He pulled in a couple more deep breaths, then ran off to keep spreading the news.

“Thanks!” Jack said, waving cheerfully to the rotund messenger as Bill departed.

“Looks like they finally sent some troops to take care of those lousy goblins.”

“About damn time.”

After dropping off the nails, Jack and Olive went to the town square to see the troops arrive. Jack was technically grounded, but his parents were better at handing down punishments than enforcing them, and besides, this was a special occasion. Protectorate soldiers almost never came to Muddy Hollow. Many of their friends and neighbors had apparently been seized by a similar curiosity, and a fairly large crowd had assembled by the time Jack and Olive arrived. Some people had brought banners or flowers. Magistrate Ogglesvy wore his finest suit and held a wicker basket overflowing with cheeses and canned preserves.

Olive climbed up on a fence post so she could see over the crowd. She strained her neck and tried to look down the road. “I think I see them coming!” she cried. The crowd cheered and clapped.

A man on a white stallion led the soldiers. He was only about forty but his hair was as white as snow, and Olive thought him quite handsome in a rugged, weather-beaten sort of way. Strangely, he wore dust-covered civilian clothes rather than a military uniform. A cavalry platoon followed behind him, and nearly a hundred foot soldiers marched behind the horsemen. The clapping and cheering gradually dimmed—but did not cease—as the people of Muddy Hollow came to realize what a large force had arrived in their town.

The man with white hair jumped off his horse, shook the magistrate’s hand with a grip that made poor Ogglesvy wince, then grasped him by the shoulder and hustled him off into his own house. The magistrate’s gift basket fell to the cobblestones, shattering a jar of Mrs. Ogglesvy’s prize-winning apricot jam. The foot soldiers filed in quickly behind them, forming a cordon around the magistrate’s home. By now the clapping and cheering had almost entirely given way to hushed whispers.

A few minutes later, the man with white hair emerged from Ogglesvy’s house. The soldiers parted before him so he could address the crowd. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Tom Fisk, and I am a witchfinder in the service of the Ecclesiastical Courts. I need someone to escort my men and me to Prudence Kingfisher’s house.” Many of the townspeople whispered to each other that they had been expecting this for years, and some hands shot up.

Fisk glanced between the volunteers and pointed at Henry. “You, there. What’s your name, boy?”

“Henry Alish, sir.”

“And you know where Prudence Kingfisher’s house is?”

“Yes, sir. I was there just a few weeks ago. I can show you right where it is.”

“Good man. Come here, I’ll get you a horse to ride.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Jack said to Olive.

“Don’t you want to stick around and see what happens?”

“No, let’s go home and tell Mom and Dad. If they’re going out to Prudence’s house and back, they’re going to be gone for a while. Besides, I’m supposed to be grounded. ”

Olive shrugged and they headed home together. Henry Alish led the witchfinder and his cavalrymen down towards Farrow Creek, feeling very proud of himself. He couldn’t remember exactly the path he had taken to Kingfisher’s house, but felt sure it would come back to him.

Olive barreled into the Merriwether home, eager to tell her parents the big news. “Guess what, guess what!” she yelled. Her enthusiasm was quickly damped when she heard her mother crying.

“I don’t like it either,” Olive heard her father say. “But we’ll be all right as long as we keep our mouths shut and don’t do anything suspicious.”

“What’s going on?” Olive asked. Her father jumped slightly when he saw her, and her mother immediately tried to wipe the tears away.

“Hi, Olive,” her mother said. “Nothing. We’re just having a discussion.”

“Did you hear there are soldiers in town?”

“We heard,” her father said. “Where’s Jack?”

“I’m right here,” Jack said as he came in the door. He hadn’t heard what Olive had heard, but he saw that his mother’s cheeks were wet.

“Come here, kids,” his father said. “Your mom and I want you to stay as far away from those soldiers as possible.”

“But Dad, it’s okay,” Olive said. “They’re from the Protectorate. They’re going after bad guys.”

“I know. But even good guys don’t always know who the real bad guys are. Sometimes they get mixed up and go after the wrong people entirely. You need to just stay away from them and mind your own business. You got me?”

“All right.”

“Jack?”

“I won’t go near them.”

“That’s good, kids,” their dad said. “C’mere.” He pulled them in and hugged them hard. “Your mom and I love both of you a lot. Always remember that. It’s going to be okay.”

That night, their mother prepared a huge feast of roast goose and mounds of fish and vegetables. She even let Jack and Olive have some mulled wine. It was the sort of feast they usually had only on special occasions. Nobody was particularly hungry, though, and most of it went to waste.

~~~

The next day, Jack and Olive snuck out to get the news from Jenny Stoneslane, the barmaid at the White Cod Inn who always knew the town gossip faster than anyone. She told them Tom Fisk and his men had come back from the woods early yesterday evening in a foul mood, accompanied by a thoroughly chastened Henry Alish. The witchfinder had grabbed another guide and spent the night searching the forest but hadn’t found Prudence yet. The magistrate had been removed from duty and placed under house arrest with two soldiers posted by his door. Nobody was surprised by the fact that the authorities were looking for Kingfisher, but Magistrate Ogglesvy’s arrest had caught the whole town off guard.

“I wonder why they’re having such a hard time finding her,” Jenny said. “You’d think a crazy old lady would be easy for all those soldiers to catch, even if she’s in the middle of the woods. They’ve got guys out there now looking for her.”

Jack had a pretty good idea why Henry hadn’t been able to find his way back to Kingfisher’s cabin, but the cryptospheris sigil would only prevent people who had been to the cabin from getting back to it. It couldn’t stop people from blundering across the place randomly like he and the other kids had done. If the witchfinder kept searching the woods near Farrow Creek, sooner or later he was bound to find Prudence Kingfisher. “It was the middle of the night,” Jack said. “And it’s really easy to get lost out there.”

“I guess so,” Jenny said. “I wonder what she did?”

“They’ll probably let us know soon.”

“Did you hear about the time she tried to kill a bunch of kids just for going near her place? What a loon.”

A prickle of annoyance ran down Jack’s spine. “Yeah, she’s an odd one, all right,” he said.

Their curiosity sated, Jack and Olive left the White Cod. Their father’s order to stay away from the soldiers was proving difficult to follow. The Protectorate’s men were everywhere. They had set up a checkpoint at the road into town and were stopping and questioning everyone who passed through it. Some of the cavalrymen were patrolling the streets on horseback, although nobody was quite sure what they were patrolling for. A couple of watchmen had been placed on the roof of the church, the tallest building in town. The Protectorate had even taken to the seas. A trio of warships patrolled the normally placid Muddy Hollow bay. Jack and Olive adopted what they hoped was an inconspicuous manner.

“What do you think Dad’s so worked up about?” Olive asked quietly when she thought she and Jack were out of everyone’s earshot. “He and Mom were really upset.”

“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. You know how over-protective he is.”

“I guess. “ Olive looked up at the soldiers on the roof of the church. One of them was idly aiming his musket at a stray dog. Olive shivered, despite the fact that it was an unseasonably warm day. “Let’s go home. Nobody’s out and about except the soldiers.”

~~~

That night, not long after the Merriwethers finished dinner, there was a knock at the door. Jeanne dropped the dish she had been cleaning. It shattered with a loud crash. She looked pleadingly at her husband. He put his head in his hands. “Gods preserve us,” he whispered.

The knock came again, louder and more insistent. “Open up!” a voice yelled from outside. “Orders of the Protectorate!”

Edwin stood up from his chair. He walked over to his wife, and wordlessly squeezed her hand, then went to Jack and Olive and hugged them both in turn. At this point the knocker was threatening to stave in the door. “Open up, damn it! I’m here on Protectorate business.”

Edwin sighed. Then he unlatched the door and swung it open. A single infantryman stood outside.

“Took you long enough,” the soldier growled. “It’s wet out here, and I’ve got plenty more homes to visit tonight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. Mr. Fisk has called a town meeting for tomorrow, at midday, at the church. He’s going to explain what’s been going on, and what he needs from all of you. That’s all.”

“Thank—thank you.”

“Can I get you anything?” Jeanne asked.

“Oh, no. I’ve got to get going. Thanks for the offer, but like I said, I’ve got more houses to visit. See you tomorrow.” With that, the soldier turned and headed back into the night. Edwin watched him go, then shut and bolted the door.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Olive asked.

“I’ll tell you later. Help your mother clean up that plate. You too, Jack. Get the broom.” Their parents were very quiet for the rest of the evening, but Olive and Jack were kept awake by muffled arguments after they went to bed.

~~~

That night, Jack was woken by somebody shaking his shoulder. “What is it, sis?” he groaned softly, burying his head beneath the pillow.

“Shhhh!” hissed a voice that was definitely not Olive’s. Somebody pulled the pillow away. Jack opened his eyes to see Prudence Kingfisher standing at the side of his bed. Olive was awake as well. Their parents snored from the next room.

“Not a sound,” Prudence whispered, holding a finger to her lips. “Not a sound, if you know what’s good for you. You have to come with me.”

“Dad!” Olive yelled. “Dad, wake up!”

“Eddy and Jeanne are fine, but they’re sleeping very soundly tonight. They’re not going to wake up for a good long while.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you!” Olive insisted. “There’s soldiers all over town looking for you!”

“No fooling. Don’t worry, I know how to handle soldiers. C’mon, I’ve got something I need to give you.”

“What are you giving us?” Jack asked.

“Your birthright. The greatest treasure in the world.” It was an outlandish claim, but she sounded dead serious.

“What is it?”

“Look, kids, old Prudence has had a very long day. I’m not in the mood to argue with you about this. Either you come with me for your treasure, or you spend the rest of your lives wondering what you missed out on.”

Olive and Jack looked at each other. “What do you think?” Olive asked.

“She sounds like she’s telling the truth.”

“Of course I’m telling the damn truth.”

“I don’t like this,” Olive said. “Get out of here, or I’ll call for the soldiers.”

“Don’t do that,” Prudence said. “Think of it this way…would the Protectorate have sent this many soldiers after me if I wasn’t a very dangerous person?”

“No…”

“So am I a person you want to make angry?”

“No.”

“So shut up, come with me, and don’t make me any angrier than I already am.” She drew a stiletto from her boot and brandished it menacingly. Unlike the rusty old cleaver she had been waving around at the goblin hunting party, this blade was finely made and as polished as a mirror. “If you won’t come willingly, consider this a kidnapping.”

A few minutes later, Jack and Olive found themselves being escorted through Muddy Hollow by Prudence. The witch glided through town like a ghost, and keeping the pace she demanded was not easy. Jack and Olive knew the town well enough, but weren’t accustomed to running through its alleys and hopping their neighbors’ fences in darkness. Jack banged his shin hard against the base of a sundial and let out a yelp of pain.

“Someone there?” a voice barked. “Hold where you are!” A light approached from nearby.

Olive looked to Jack, who shook his head and put a finger across her lips. He didn’t doubt that Prudence could handle the Protectorate soldiers. If they called out for help it would start a fight that Prudence would probably win, and then they’d be in real trouble. Besides, despite all rational instincts, he was curious about what the witch had in store for them.

“Stay perfectly still and don’t make a sound,” Prudence whispered. I’ve got this.” She began to hum a trilling, lilting little tune, somewhat like the cry of the whippoorwill. Three soldiers approached, one of them carrying a lantern. Prudence, Jack, and Olive were all clearly illuminated in its flickering light. Jack mentally rehearsed the kidnapping story as he crouched behind the sundial. It was far too small to hide him, but maybe it would stop a bullet if the soldiers opened fire. Olive put her hands up.

“Do you see anything?” one of the soldiers asked.

“No,” said another. “I knew I heard someone moving around over here.”

“So did I,” said the third. “Sounded like someone stubbing his toe.” The soldiers commenced to search the area for trespassers, totally ignoring the three people standing directly in front of them.

“See any tracks?” the one with the lantern asked.

“Nah. It’s paved here, anyway.”

The one with the lantern was a matter of inches from Prudence. She was forced to duck to keep the lantern from banging into her head. The soldier looked about and shrugged. “Oh well. If anyone was here, they’re gone now. Nothing to be done about it.” With that, they departed, leaving Prudence, Jack, and Olive in darkness once again. Prudence stopped making the noise.

What was that?” Jack whispered very quietly.

“I told them not to pay any attention to us. Now shaddap. We’ve still got a ways to go.”

Prudence led Jack and Olive through Muddy Hollow to the house of Peter Gumbeldon, the town fool. Gumbeldon had proven his reputation correct eight years ago when he had taken his fishing boat out on the stillest, most overcast, most ominous morning the town had seen in years, and been lost in a massive storm that afternoon. His house had sat silent and empty ever since. It had an evil, unlucky reputation. Prudence slipped into the house through a side door that appeared to be boarded up but was actually open and unlocked. The interior of the house was mostly dusty and choked with cobwebs. Peter’s crummy belongings still lay inside, waiting a lonely vigil for their owner. However, the bed had clean, fresh linens, and bread, cheese, and a bottle of wine were on the table. A well-made but worn travelling pack sat on the floor.

“There’s a rumor this place is haunted,” Olive said.

“Of course there is,” Prudence said. “I started it. You never know when you’re going to need a good safe house. Now c’mere. I want to show you why I dragged you out of bed.” She retrieved a large parcel from underneath a loose floorboard, laid it on the table, and carefully unwrapped it.

Inside the parcel was a box made of dark green metal. It had no obvious hinge or opening mechanism, but its top was riddled with small openings like those of a honeycomb. A network of fine wires stretched over the holes in a spider web pattern, taut as the strings of a harp. Olive reached out for one of the wires but Prudence slapped her hand away. “Haven’t you ever seen a murder box before?” the witch snarled. “You’ll kill yourself that way.”

“What?”

Prudence plinked on one of the wires, causing a three-inch needle to shoot up out of a nearby hole faster than the eye could follow. If Prudence hadn’t been holding her hand at precisely the right angle, she would have been stuck. A sharp, pungent odor suddenly filled the room. “Those needles are full of heartsbane spider venom,” Prudence said. “Let’s say you get scratched by one. A second later, you’ll find your heart’s beating twice as fast as usual. Two seconds later, it’ll be beating four times as fast. Three seconds later, it’ll be beating eight times as fast. Get the picture?” Olive and Jack nodded. “The longest I ever saw anyone hold out under the influence of heartsbane venom was a tautho warchief. He lasted a whole nine seconds. I counted. By the end I guess his heart was pumping at…what…” Prudence did some quick math on her fingers.

“Five hundred twelve times its normal speed,” Jack said.

“Yeah. It sounded like a hummingbird’s wings, right up until his heart tore itself apart. So anyway, keep your hands away and be quiet. I’ve got to concentrate here.” Prudence cracked her knuckles, rolled her head back on her shoulders, and then started playing the box like a deadly musical instrument, plucking at its strings to create a strange melody. Each time she played a note, a needle shot out at her. If she did not keep her hands in exactly the right positions and play the song with perfect timing, she would be jabbed.

The plinking of the wires and the clicking of the needles made a harsh, disconcerting music of a sort that Jack and Olive had never heard before. It was incredibly complex, with a cold and eerie rhythm. Prudence’s gnarled fingers pulled the strings and dodged the needles like nine finely tuned clockwork instruments designed exactly for this purpose. The device clicked sharply the moment the song ended and its top popped open like the lid of a jack-in-the-box.

There were two things inside. The first object was a short saber. Its hilt and scabbard were wrapped in strips of red leather, and its hand guard was decorated with silver filigree. “That’s Cauttaraxus,” Prudence said. “Go on, take it. It’s yours.”

Olive picked it up and unsheathed it. Its curved blade was made of a mottled black substance like obsidian. It was pitted with holes and its surface was uneven. “That’s not a proper sword,” she said. “Is it even made of metal?”

“Don’t let its appearance fool you. That there is a weapon of the gods.”

Olive took a practice swing. Despite the sword’s crummy appearance, its weight and balance were excellent. She tested its edge on her finger and cut herself nearly to the bone. Olive cried out and stuck her bleeding digit in her mouth.

“You’ve got to learn to stop putting your fingers places they oughtn’t be,” Prudence muttered. “Cauttaraxus will cut through steel.”

The second object in the box was a crude circlet made from the same strange stuff as the sword. It lacked any decorations at all, and was warped and uneven. Jack picked it up and made to try it on.

“Careful,” warned Prudence. “That’s Iarex. It’s got some bite to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go ahead. Put it on. You’ll see.”

When Jack put the circlet on his head he could suddenly see the fatal flaws in everything around him. There was a little weed growing in the corner of the house’s cellar. Jack saw the best way to kill it was to dig up its roots, then salt the earth so nothing could grow there again. He saw the whole house could be pulled down by smashing out one of the support columns, or sparking a little flame in the northwest corner, where it would spread uncontrollably into the crawlspaces and devour the entire building.

Looking at Prudence, Jack saw she was not expecting danger. If he wanted, he could grab the sword away from Olive and kill the witch before she could react. Alternately, he could brain her with the bottle of wine as soon as she turned her back on him. Even if he did nothing at all to her, he somehow understood she had a bad liver. A few years from now it would clog up with fat and stop working, and she would drop dead.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” Olive asked. “You look weird.”

Jack shut his eyes tight to avoid looking at his sister. He didn’t want to know what Iarex would tell him about her. He pulled the circlet off of his head and fell to his knees, retching.

“Told you,” said Prudence. “Iarex is demanding. It takes some getting used to. Cauttaraxus is demanding, too, but in a different way. You’ll find out.”

“What are these things?” Olive asked.

“They’re your birthright. Keep them safe. They’ve been waiting for you for almost three hundred years. And don’t tell anybody about them, not even your parents. Especially not your parents, now that I think about it. It’s not safe for anyone but you to know about them.”

“Why are you giving them to us now?” Jack asked. “Does this have anything to do with the Protectorate troops in town?”

Prudence said nothing. Instead, she chirped out a strange high note at a frequency that was almost too high for Jack and Olive to hear. A moment later, they found themselves back at home. Prudence was gone. Jack and Olive buried the circlet and the sword underneath an oak tree outside their home, and then went back to bed. Neither of them slept well.

CHAPTER FIVE

As they headed to the town meeting that the witchfinder had called, the Merriwethers were amazed at just how many troops had come to Muddy Hollow. The town had virtually become an armed camp overnight. It was especially strange to see the church surrounded by soldiers, as if it were a fortress under siege. The soldiers had put a stack of lumber in the town square and were hammering some kind of scaffolding together.

Jack felt strangely calm despite his midnight encounter with the witch. In a way, he even felt flattered to be at the heart of such a tumult. He had frequently felt that life in Muddy Hollow was too calm and predictable. Here, at last, was some real excitement, and he intended to enjoy it.

Olive, however, was a wreck. All night long she had been tormented by the knowledge that she had probably committed a capital crime, and that the evidence was buried under a tree right outside her home. Olive couldn’t stop thinking about it, and the more that she thought about it the more it threatened to overwhelm her. She was trying to keep herself from trembling, but the more effort she expended the more frightened and nervous she became.

The church was packed. At capacity it could seat all the townspeople, but today it had to hold a small army as well. Armed men stood by the doors and along the walls. Magistrate Ogglesvy and his family were seated in the front row. The magistrate’s eyes were downcast and a deep frown had settled into his face. Tom Fisk stood in front of the altar, his musket propped up against it.

Jack and Olive hadn’t been able to get a particularly good look at Fisk before. Now they could see he was very good-looking, with a broad smile and dazzlingly white teeth. He seemed tired but happy. The word around town was that he had barely slept two hours in the two days he had been in Muddy Hollow. His boots were caked with fresh mud, which he had tracked all over the church floor.

“Good day, everyone,” Fisk said once the pews had filled up. “As you all know, my name is Tom Fisk, I’m a witchfinder in the service of the Ecclesiastical Courts, and Prudence Kingfisher is the witch I’ve come here to find. I regret to inform you that your neighbor is one of the most dangerous criminals in the entire Protectorate. In fact, I believe that in addition to practicing witchcraft, she holds the title of a Shattergrave Knight.”

Olive gasped, along with many of the other townsfolk. Suddenly the huge influx of soldiers made perfect sense. Witches were bad enough, but Shattergrave Knights were true monsters. They had had stood at Maxander’s right hand and killed tens of thousands of innocents during the Unification War. Olive looked at Jack with panic in her eyes. He motioned for her to stay calm.

Fisk let the whispers die down, then continued. “Obviously, Kingfisher is an extremely dangerous woman. Any information you can give me about her whereabouts will save innocent lives. We’re all in this together, folks. Every man, woman, and child in Muddy Hollow has a duty as a citizen to help out however you can. And I don’t think I have to tell you this, but giving Kingfisher any sort of aid or succor is a very serious crime.”

Olive wondered for a split-second if she should tell Fisk about her encounter with Prudence. She immediately dismissed the idea. Her father would kill her, for one. Also, Prudence might kill her. And there was a chance Fisk might think her to be a willing servant of Prudence’s and have her executed for treason. Doing her duty as a citizen was not worth getting murdered three times.

“Also, although Kingfisher is the witch who brought me here, witches rarely work alone. They’re like rats. If you see one, it means there’s plenty more hidden under the floorboards. My men and I will be conducting sweeps of the town to root out her supporters. I urge you, if you see or remember any suspicious behavior on the part of your neighbors—anything at all—please report it at once. The only way I can protect you is if you give me your full cooperation.

“Of course, I will have to take certain measures to keep Kingfisher or her followers from escaping. Until further notice, all travel into or out of Muddy Hollow is forbidden. The harbor is closed, I have set up checkpoints on the road out of town, and my men are patrolling the forests. Anyone trying to leave will be arrested. I know this is a serious inconvenience, but it’s absolutely necessary for my investigation.”

A buzz went through the crowd. Alan Bayely, the old carter who carried the mail to Alesbury, raised his hand. Fisk nodded at him. “Sir, will any exceptions be granted? How can I get the mail out?”

“The mails are suspended. I can’t run the risk that the witches will try to send coded messages to their comrades out of town. Muddy Hollow has got to be sealed off until I finish my work.”

Vincent Tuck raised his hand. “Mr. Fisk, how long do you think this will last? The cod season’s going to start before much longer. If we can’t go out on our boats, we can’t put food on the table.”

“There’s no way to know. Digging out witches can take time. It may be weeks before the investigation is complete, or even longer. All I can tell you is the more assistance you provide me, the sooner you can get back to your lives. Are there any more questions?” The crowd remained silent. Every question was being answered with more bad news.

“Thanks to all of you good people for coming out today, and for your cooperation and hospitality. Please don’t take this as an insult against your town, but I hope to leave Muddy Hollow before long.”

On their way out of church Jack and Olive saw Goody Allsop sitting in her pew, weeping quietly.

~~~

“What are we going to do?” Olive asked Jack later that day, as they walked together by the seaside. She had wanted to have this conversation all day, but this was the first time they had had a measure of privacy. They were all alone except for the noisy gulls and the warships patrolling the bay.

“We’re not going to do anything. We’ll be fine as long as we mind our own business and keep our mouths shut.”

“But what if they find out?”

“How are they going to find out? The only people who know we met Prudence last night are you, me, and Prudence. I’m not telling. You’re not telling. I don’t think Prudence is going to tell anyone.”

“She might if they catch her. Jack, they’ll think we’re witches too! By Patheon’s scales, she’s a Shattergrave Knight!” Olive suddenly remembered the love charm in her jacket pocket. She frantically hurled it into the sea.

“I don’t think we have to worry about Prudence telling anyone. She’s a tough old bird. They’re not going to catch her. You remember what she did to those soldiers last night? She’s probably not even in town anymore. I’ll bet she walked right out this morning while the witchfinder was holding that meeting. It’s not like they could stop her.”

“So why did she stick around until last night, if she could have skipped town whenever she wanted?”

“To give us those…things…I guess.”

“But why did she give them to us? Why not pick on someone else?”

“I don’t know. I brought her a cake on Saint Hugo’s day. Maybe this was her way of saying thanks?”

“Making us look like witches is a lousy way of saying thanks. Besides, why would she give me anything? Why not just you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to recruit us as witches. They’ve got to do some recruiting. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any witches left by now.”

Olive scoffed. “Well she’s wasting her time, then. I don’t want anything to do with her, with Maxander, with any of it.”

~~~

As soon as he saw Prudence Kingfisher’s house, Tom Fisk understood why the boy who volunteered to lead him to the house had had such a hard time finding the place again. An arcane sigil had been painted on the doorpost to addle the wits of any who saw it. Fisk had honed his mind to ignore this form of black magic, but it had taken years of training and practice. Kingfisher wasn’t home, of course. Fisk would have been seriously disappointed with her if she had been.

The fireplace was so full of ashes it was close to overflowing, which was unusual in an otherwise tidy home. Poking through the ashes, Fisk noted scraps of charred parchment, likely the witch’s most incriminating papers. Even the papers that were not incriminating enough for the fire could have earned her a life sentence. Kingfisher’s bookshelves were full of illegal literature, mostly tomes on forbidden magic but also a number of banned novels and histories.

The basement contained dozens of bottles of liquor and wine. Fisk made a mental note to only let his most trusted men come down here. The last thing he needed was an outbreak of drunkenness amongst the troops. Near the alcohol, Kingfisher had stowed enough poison to dose an entire town. In addition to all of the assassin’s standards such as cyanide, nightshade, and hemlock, she had also amassed a collection of rare and exotic toxins. Many of the bottles seemed to be of skulkling manufacture. One tiny vial was labeled “Heartsbane Spider.” There was only a drop or two left, but that was enough to kill just about anything.

A chamber behind a false wall at the rear of the house held the greatest store of contraband. Here, Fisk found a hoard of what could only be considered Maxander memorabilia, including a set of thumbscrews emblazoned with the personal symbol of Maxander’s chief torturer, the distinctive plumed helmet of a skulking wind-rider, and what appeared to be the battle standard of the dreaded Thousand-Leg Cavalry. Fisk pocketed the thumbscrews. They were nicer than his own, and he appreciated the irony of using them in the Protectorate’s service. He also noted a perfectly square spot in the carpeting that was a little bit darker than the area surrounding it, as if something had been sitting there for a very long time.

Searching the house for evidence took the entire day. The building was small but had more hidden compartments than a puzzle box. Fortunately for him, Fisk thoroughly enjoyed puzzles. He went through the house methodically, well aware that even the tiniest detail could prove critical to the case. A note in the margins of one of Kingfisher’s books or a bauble at the back of a hidden drawer might be the clue that doomed her. The witchfinder took the little house apart and emptied it with remarkable rigor, and once he was satisfied he had learned all he could from it, he burned it to the ground.

The heat thrown off by the crackling flames felt wonderful in the evening chill. Fisk stood much closer to the inferno than any of his men could stand. His men saw only a fire, but for him, the sharp smell of the smoke was a rich perfume and the screaming of the collapsing timbers was grand music. He closed his eyes and basked in the warmth. This would be his greatest case yet. He was sure of it. No, this would be his greatest case ever. After this he would retire. There would be no way to top this hunt, and Tom Fisk refused to spend years of his life in decline.

“Sir?” one of his lieutenants asked, standing a ways back.

“Yes?”

“We’ve arrested all the people named in the papers we got from the Thirteenth Division. I’ve also got the day’s citizen reports for you. We’ve already made one arrest based on those, and there are additional persons under suspicion. It’s all ready for you to review once you’re finished here.”

“Delightful. The one who was arrested—has he or she been questioned by anyone yet?”

“No, sir. We figured you’d want first crack at her.”

“Yes, I do.” Fisk fingered his new set of thumbscrews.

~~~

Zanzibar Ataxerxes peered through his spyglass and watched the soldiers approaching through the swamp. It looked like a scouting party. They weren’t heading directly for his camp but they were definitely searching for something, and that was bad enough. He had a terrible suspicion they weren’t after him.

“What’s the news, boss?” Galgubbin asked nervously, peering off in the soldiers’ general direction as he wiped snot from his nose. “Where are they at? They comin’ this way?”

“Take a look,” said Zanzibar. He handed his spyglass to the goblin. “They’re not headed directly towards us, but they’re going to pass close enough that we need to be somewhere else.”

The goblins were already busily packing up the camp. They had been dwelling at this spot for more a week, but they obliterated every sign of their presence in minutes. Goblins were more hopeless than elderly pacifists in a fair fight, hygiene was a completely alien concept to them, and they were not especially gifted conversationalists, but they were virtuosos when it came to matters of running and hiding. Some took this as cowardice, but Zanzibar had spent enough time on the run from the law to appreciate all of the skill and talent that went into making a clean getaway. He considered courage a virtue for the short-lived.

Galgubbin tried to tuck the spyglass away in his hat. “Hey!” Zanzibar said, holding out his hand. Galgubbin sheepishly passed the glass back to him.

“You gonna take off, boss?” Galgubbin asked. “We’ve got to stick around a little longer for the sprouting, but there’s no reason fer you t’stay. Meetcha back in Wyrmsreach?”

Zanzibar shook his head. “I’m going to stay a while longer. My friend might need me.” Galgubbin shook his head disapprovingly.

There was a commotion up ahead. The soldiers had found something. They ran through the swamp as best they could, sinking up to their knees in the muck with each step. Zanzibar looked around to make sure everyone was in camp and suddenly felt a sinking feeling in his chest. “Has anyone seen Togglesvy, Voggoveddit, or Tugo?” he asked.

“Togglesvy’s out fishin’ in the stream,” said Galgubbin. “Voggoveddit went to get ‘im. Ehn’t seen Tugo in a while.”

“I think the soldiers found him,” Zanzibar said. He was having a hard time seeing through the swamp, but the soldiers definitely seemed to be chasing something.

“Hurm,” said Galgubbin. “Bad luck for Tugo.“

Zanzibar wasn’t listening. His attention was fixed on the chase. A flash of green running through the bushes confirmed it. That was Tugo, all right. The goblin was doing his best to lose his pursuers, zigging and zagging through the swamp’s stinking undergrowth, but they were awfully close on his heels.

Tugo led the soldiers on a good chase, but in the end it wasn’t quite good enough and he was cornered in a grove of trees. The goblin climbed one of the trees as nimbly as a squirrel, but once he was up in its branches he had nowhere to go. The soldiers circled round and began the laborious process of loading their muskets. Zanzibar put his spyglass away. He didn’t want to see what would happen next.

A faint cry echoed through the swamp. “You stupid, stinking, half-blind humans ain’t so much! You think you’re so great and mighty, but let me tell you, you are less than nothing to me! The only reason you run anything’s ‘cause you’re tall! But if you were just a couple’ve feet shorter, lemme tell you, goblins would be ruling the worl---” There was a volley of musket shots, then silence. A dense cloud of blue gun smoke rose out of the grove.

“All right, boys,” Galgubbin said quietly. “That’s it for Tugo. The rest of ya know the drill. No more harvesting from the humans ‘till things die down. We meet back up for the sprouting on the night of the full moon, and then we get out of here faster’n a rat with a candle tied to its tail.”

The goblins soundlessly scattered into the brush. Galgubbin turned to Zanzibar and doffed his tattered hat. “Sure you going to be okay out here, boss?” he asked. “Heading straight out to Wyrmsreach’d be the safest thing for you. No money in sticking around.”

“I’ll be all right,” Zanzibar said. “I’ve been in bigger jams than this before.”

Galgubbin returned his hat to his head and vanished into the vegetation. Zanzibar took one last look back at the soldiers. Poor Tugo. Dying alone in a swamp with nobody but his fence to mourn him. Off in the distance, Zanzibar saw a fat plume of black smoke rising up out of the trees. The smuggler double-checked his weapons and trudged still deeper into the swamp.

~~~

The next day, Jack’s mother sent him into town to pick up some butter and flour at the market. When he passed through the town square, he saw the soldiers had finished what they’d been hammering together the previous day. It was a gallows. Goody Allsop was hanging on it.

CHAPTER SIX

The town’s new set of gallows saw a lot of use that week. Goody Allsop had been an easy nut to crack. Not only did she confess to committing many shocking crimes in Maxander’s name, but she named a number of townspeople as her colleagues in witchcraft and treason. Those suspects were arrested and interrogated, and they gave up others in short order.

Muddy Hollow became a town of hermits almost overnight. If your neighbor turned out to be a witch, and you were seen talking to him, well, what would Tom Fisk think about that? And of course, with the docks closed, there was little enough reason to leave the house. People stayed in all day, dreading the knock on the door. The only ones out on the streets were soldiers and Don Teodor, who visited his parishioners to offer what reassurance he could.

Some of the town’s more ruthless inhabitants soon realized they could turn the situation to their advantage. For many years, Bert Guyre and Dennis Aylesford had been at odds over a boat that Bert had sold to Dennis. Bert had been getting too old to fish back when Dennis was thinking he might like a boat of his own, so Bert sold Dennis his trawler, the Muddy Hollow Queen, for the price of forty ducats a year for the rest of Bert’s life.

This might not have been a bad trade, except for two things. First, the Muddy Hollow Queen sank to the bottom of the sea just two weeks after Dennis took possession of it. Dennis claimed its hull had rotted out and it was completely unseaworthy, whereas Bert claimed Dennis had gotten drunk and torn out the bottom on a sandbar (in truth, both men were correct). Second, Bert Guyre turned out to be possessed of remarkable longevity. He was by far the oldest man in Muddy Hollow and still in excellent health. On the first day of every year he showed up at Dennis’s doorstep to claim his forty ducats for a sunken ship. Other than this annual exchange, the two men only interacted by swearing at each other. The fact they lived right next door to each other only inflamed their mutual hatred.

One day, Dennis went down to the soldiers’ camp and said he wanted to make a report. He alleged that on several occasions he had heard strange chanting coming from Bert’s house, and said that although it was probably nothing, what with all of the commotion going around town he thought it was his duty as a citizen to come forward.

Dennis didn’t have the nerve to watch Bert’s execution, but he came by to say his goodbyes when the old man was dangling from the gallows. He wondered if there was anything left of the Muddy Hollow Queen on the bottom of the sea or if it had all rotted away by now, and thought about how he might spend forty ducats.

~~~

Meanwhile, everyone in the Merriwether family was cracking in their own individual way. Jeanne cleaned obsessively. The house was completely spotless but she continued to mop the floors and polish the family’s few pieces of silverware. While she worked she hummed a droning, repetitive little tune that seemed to soothe her but stressed everyone else.

Edwin worked on his inventions. He was spending a lot of time and effort on his latest one, but wasn’t making any progress. Partly this was because he was badly distracted, and partly it was because he would periodically fly into brief rages and smash whatever he was working on. He would apologize profusely each time, but that somehow made it even more upsetting.

Jack tried to read a history about the Unification War and the hideous war crimes of the Shattergrave Knights. It was a heck of a book, but he found he couldn’t keep focused on it. He would go over a single sentence again and again, unable to make it stick in his mind.

Olive split her day between looking out the windows and pacing back and forth like a caged animal. She spent a lot of time staring at the dug-up little patch of earth near the tree where she and Jack had buried the sword and the circlet.

~~~

Tom Fisk thoughtfully stroked his chin and wondered whether or not he should torture the town magistrate. On one hand, the little man seemed quite eager to cooperate. He hadn’t been named in any of the confessions Fisk had extracted to date, and there was nothing in his bearing, demeanor, or personal history to suggest Maxander worship. On the other hand, it appeared that Ogglesvy had somehow managed to overlook a massive, well-organized coven of witches operating right under his mustache. Furthermore, every time the magistrate was interrogated he gave up new information that he hadn’t remembered the last time. The witchfinder was still under the impression the magistrate was just forgetful and incompetent rather than malicious, but thought that even if he was innocent, a couple twists of the thumbscrews might sharpen up his memory. Fisk disliked torturing innocent people, but on occasion the job called for it. The witchfinder decided to give the magistrate one last chance. “Once again,” he asked. “Can you remember any more people who have had dealings with Prudence Kingfisher?”

Ogglesvy scratched his head and pulled on his mustache. He took an anxious sideways glance at Lieutenant Vance, who was twirling a truncheon in the corner of the room. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking…” he groaned. “It’s hard for me to know whom she was meeting. I never went out to see her, and nobody ever talked about her to me…oh yes!” The magistrate’s face suddenly brightened. “Ed Merriwether’s boy! Jack! He went out to see Kingfisher not long ago!”

“Explain.”

“It was Saint Hugo’s day and I was giving out the Protectorate’s gifts. Kingfisher didn’t show up at church to claim one, of course, so Jack took it to her! I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now…”

“Did he volunteer, or did you make him bring her the gift?”

“He volunteered! I was just going to give it away. ”

“Interesting. Tell me more about the Merriwethers.”

“Well, Edwin Merriwether’s the harbormaster. He took over back in ’91. He’s good enough at it, I suppose. I’ve heard no more complaints about him than I’d expect. He’s married to Jeanne, and she’s Frank Carson’s daughter. They’ve got two children, Jack and Olive.”

“How old are the children?”

“Oh—I’m not sure exactly. They’re twins, I know that much. I think they’re around thirteen or fourteen.”

“Do they have any history of subversive activities?”

The magistrate tugged on his mustache so hard he seemed to be at risk of tearing it right off. “I can’t think of anything like that for Edwin or Jeanne. They’ve always been fine citizens and good neighbors.” The magistrate screwed up his brow in thought, then brightened again. “But you know, now that you mention it, I did hear some complaints about Jack from his teacher! She said he nearly drove her mad asking questions about what life was like without the Protectorate!”

“Sounds like we’ve got some new suspects,” Fisk said. “Come on, Lieutenant Vance. Magistrate, we’re done with you for now.” Ogglesvy sighed with relief.

When Fisk and Vance exited the front door of Ogglesvy’s house, they found the town priest waiting for them. He seemed to have been waiting for a while. “Mr. Fisk,” Don Teodor said insistently. “I need to speak with you.”

“Good day, Don Teodor. I’m sorry to be rude, but can this wait? We’re on our way to make some arrests.” The priest reached out and grabbed Fisk’s arm. Ordinarily being grabbed triggered Fisk’s throat-cutting reflex. This time he suppressed it.

“No, this cannot wait!” Don Teodor said. “I need you to listen to me!”

“Very well, Don.” Fisk gently removed the priest’s hand. “Lieutenant, can you please get a squad together and go arrest the Merriwethers?” Vance saluted and marched off. Don Teodor’s face blanched on the news the Merriwethers were due for arrest, and Fisk made a mental note of that.

“Now that that’s finished with, how can I help you?”

“You can stop murdering innocent people and do your job! By Patheon’s scales, how many people are going to have to swing from those gallows before you’ll be satisfied? I know the law cannot always be kind, but it must be humane and just! You’ve been on a reign of terror that would do Maxander proud!”

Fisk bristled at the mention of Maxander. “Don Teodor, everyone on that gallows has confessed to capital crimes.”

“Oh, I know all about your confessions,” the priest snarled. “Everyone in town can hear the screams when you’re questioning a suspect. If you twist a man hard enough he’ll confess to anything! It doesn’t mean he’s actually done anything!”

“So what would you have me do? Give the witches nice warm glasses of milk and tell them I’ll be very cross with them if they don’t confess? I know it’s not pretty, but everything I do here is necessary for the safety of the Protectorate. You seem to have forgotten, but a Shattergrave Knight’s been living amongst your flock.”

The priest got down to his knees. “Begging doesn’t come easily to me, but I’m begging you now. Leave my people alone. Kingfisher can’t be in Muddy Hollow anymore. You’re killing good people for nothing.”

Fisk shook his head. Even the priest of this town was an enemy of the Protectorate. How deep did the rot go in Muddy Hollow?

~~~

Lieutenant Vance looked around carefully before entering Peter Gumbeldon’s abandoned house. He was committing high treason, and it wouldn’t do to be spotted by his own men. He said a silent prayer to Patheon, asking the god of justice to forgive him in advance for the crime he was about to commit. He fervently hoped the gods would consider him to be only a weak man, and not a bad one.

The witch had come to Lieutenant Vance just two days after the military had arrived in Muddy Hollow. He had been on a search party going through the forest when he had somehow gotten separated from his men. She came at him out of the trees. Her eyes glowed with an unnatural green light and her fingers were twisted into vicious talons. Prudence Kingfisher was a monster. If she had ever been human, she certainly wasn’t anymore. Vance had tried to raise his musket, but it slipped out of his grasp. When he tried to call for help, he could only get out a feeble wheeze. He had thought she would kill him right then and there, but she did something much worse than that.

The witch had uttered a strange, unrepeatable incantation that set Vance’s teeth on edge and caused him to experience a wrenching pain worse than any he had ever felt before. It was not physical pain. It was more unbearable than that. The pain he felt was a complete and utter hopelessness, a total conviction that the world was broken and empty and would never be whole again. He had fallen to his knees and passed out.

When he woke, the witch was squatting on his chest and holding a little glass jar that glowed with a pure white light. Kingfisher leered at it, smacking her lips like a monstrously obese child looking into a candy store window. Her sharp teeth were jet black. “I’ve got your soul in this jar,” she said, her mouth not moving in synch with the words. “I’ll eat it unless you do exactly as I say. Be at Peter Gumbeldon’s house tomorrow at twilight for instructions.” Then she disappeared.

Ever since that awful day, Lieutenant Vance had been Prudence Kingfisher’s personal spy. He reported to her every night to give her a full report on Tom Fisk’s doings, giving her full accounts of where and when patrols were setting out, who was being brought in for interrogation and what they confessed to, and what moves Fisk planned next. Vance was terrified of being caught, but was even more terrified at the prospect of losing his soul. Everything that was most precious and eternal about him was being held for ransom.

When Vance first entered the Gumbeldon house, he saw a normal, albeit dusty, shack. An old woman sat by herself drinking a cup of tea. For a split second the lieutenant thought he was at the wrong address. Then the old woman whispered something, and the illusion of normality fell away. The witch hunched in the corner of the room gnawing on a half-alive rat. The green glow of her eyes lit the entire house. The shutters banged and rattled as if a massive storm was raging, and looking out the windows, Vance saw nothing but swirling mists and chaos. Kingfisher held out his soul, taunting him.

“Come to barter, Lieutenant Vance? Well what have you brought me this time? It had better be good. I’m starving, and little souls like this don’t fill me up.” A white spark flew out of the dying rat. Prudence hungrily gulped it down, and then tossed the corpse over her shoulder.

“Fisk has ordered the Merriwether family arrested.”

“What?” she howled, loud enough to rattle the windows. “Edwin Merriwether and his family? Why?”

“It’s the son’s fault. Fisk got suspicious when he heard the kid brought you a cake on Saint Hugo’s day.”

“Where are they now?”

“Home, I imagine. They haven’t been arrested yet. Fisk gave me the order to bring them in. He would have done it himself, but he was delayed.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Lieutenant Vance realized he had just said the worst possible thing under the circumstances.

“Well then,” the witch said. “There’s still time to do something about it.”

Vance tried to run, but Kingfisher spat out another one of her vile curses. This one felt like an iron band wrapping around his head. He tumbled to the ground, and the world went black.

When he awoke the next morning, Kingfisher was gone. The Gumbeldon house, which had seemed like such an awful, sinister place while she was here, now seemed like nothing more than an abandoned house. The glowing jar was on the kitchen table. Vance unscrewed its lid and found it full of fireflies.

~~~

Once the false priest was safely locked away, Fisk grabbed a bite to eat (he never questioned prisoners on an empty stomach if he could avoid it) and went to check on the Merriwethers. Don Teodor would have to be interrogated at some point, but at the moment the Merriwether clan represented his prime suspects. The witchfinder was shocked to learn they weren’t already locked up. In fact, nobody had even been out to arrest them. Lieutenant Vance was nowhere to be found.

Fisk wondered what could be going on. Vance was one of his most reliable men, although in retrospect, the lieutenant had seemed drawn out and ill at ease ever since they had gotten to Muddy Hollow. Fisk decided to look into it later. He already had today’s work cut out for him. The witchfinder buttonholed the first six soldiers he came across and headed off to make the arrests personally, wishing just once he could delegate responsibility without having everything get fouled up.

Jack was winning a game of chess with his sister when Prudence Kingfisher barged into their home. She had a flintlock pistol in hand and her traveling pack strapped to her back. Olive screamed.

“The witchfinder’s coming to arrest you,” Prudence said. “All of you. We have to get out of Muddy Hollow now.”

“What?” Edwin asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Did I stutter? Go on, start packing. Kids, where did you put the things I gave you?”

“Wait just a minute!” Edwin demanded. “You gave them the circlet and the sword? I told you to leave them alone! How many times did I tell you to leave them alone? Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Get mad at me later. It’s not doing anyone any good right now.”

“How did they even find out?”

“Find out what?” Jack asked.

“That’s not important now!” Prudence said. “We have to leave! They could be here any moment.”

Jeanne emptied a sack of potatoes and began filling it up with clothing and blankets. Edwin looked at his children. “Do what she says,” he said. We’ve got to go away.”

“What’s going on?” Olive asked. “Do you and Mom know Prudence? Why do we have to leave? Where are we going?”

Their father sighed. “Prudence is family,” he said. “She’s my father’s sister. Your great-aunt. Now come on. We don’t have any more time.” Olive was about to protest, but her father shot her a look that quieted her right down.

“Where did you hide Iarex and Cauttaraxus?” Prudence asked.

“They’re buried by the old tree out back,” Jack said.

“How deep?”

“Deep. We didn’t think we’d ever dig them up again so we—”

“Damn. All right, Eddy, Jeanne, pack what you need to travel. Bring the bare minimum. Some food, clothes, candles, and any money you’ve got. If you’re not willing to lug it a few hundred miles, leave it here. Jack and Olive, both of you come with me and we’ll dig up the gifts.”

Even with three people, pulling the sword and circlet out of the ground was a difficult task. The Muddy Hollow soil was dense and rocky, and it was only getting harder as winter approached. To make matters worse, the saber’s hand guard had gotten wedged under a root. Olive tried to force the shovelhead in as a wedge and pry the sword out, without much success.

“Hold on,” Prudence said. She reached into the hole and removed the circlet, which she passed to Jack. “Take this,” she said. “And be careful with it. It’s not as flashy as Cauttaraxus, but this too is a weapon of the gods.”

“Which gods?” Jack asked, feeling somewhat sick to his stomach. He vividly remembered how horrible wearing the circlet had been.

“If you can name it, it ain’t a god,” Prudence said. “Back up, kids. This is dangerous.” She knelt by the hole and said something else in that strange, lilting, unintelligible language of hers. The sword yanked itself out of its position and flew up at Prudence. For a split second it seemed like it was about to run her through, but then she had it by the hilt and the weapon came under her control. She passed it, hilt first, to Olive. “I believe this is yours,” she said, and Olive reluctantly accepted it.

~~~

Fisk was a little surprised at how small and poor the Merriwether home was. Edwin Merriwether was the harbormaster, a person of some importance in a fishing village, and it looked like even he was barely making ends meet. If these people truly were witches, it hadn’t brought them much. Fisk reflected that there really were no rewards to be had from a life of crime. Then he saw something that brought him out of his reverie. An old woman wearing travelling clothes and a heavy pack was digging something up, along with two children. The witchfinder had never seen his suspect, and had received only vague and contradictory reports as to her appearance, but he was immediately sure this was the infamous Prudence Kingfisher. “We’ve found her,” he said. “Fire at will.”

~~~

Jack turned and started back to the house to pack his things. He noticed a group of men approaching, squinted hard to try to make out who they were, then saw one of the men was pointing something at them. “Hey, I think that—”

A shot rang out. The bullet flew by Prudence’s ear and embedded itself in the tree, showering Prudence and Olive with bits of bark.

“Get down!” Prudence yelled as she dove for cover behind the tree. Jack and Olive fell down into the grass, covering their heads with their hands. Prudence’s warning had come just in time. The rest of the soldiers fired a volley, peppering the Merriwether house with lead and shattering the windows. Jack could hear their bullets whizzing by overhead, passing through space where he had just been standing. Prudence rose to one knee, took aim with her pistol, and fired. One of the soldiers dropped.

“Get to the forest!” Prudence cried. “Edwin! Jeanne! Get out of the house! The witchfinder’s here!” Jack sprinted towards the trees as fast as his legs could carry him, but Olive was frozen in place.

Fisk dropped his empty musket and charged straight for Prudence. He drew the huge hunting knife on his belt with the practiced grace of a gambler playing a hidden card and was on his enemy in no time at all. Had Prudence been just a tiny bit slower, he would have slashed her throat open. Instead, he opened a nasty cut on the right side of her forehead, just over her good eye. Prudence tried to pistol-whip him, but he effortlessly dodged the blow and planted his boot in her side, sending her sprawling.

The saber in Olive’s hands seemed to move of its own accord. Without even meaning to, she swung it at the witchfinder. He barely managed to dodge it, and the blade passed so close to his head that it sliced off a few white hairs. Fisk backhanded Olive across her face. Little pinpoints of brilliant purple light exploded across her field of vision as she fell near Prudence. Olive felt a tooth jerk up out of its socket and tasted her own hot blood, but she did not let go of the sword.

Fisk took an instant to think about priorities. The boy was running. He could be caught later. Kingfisher was coughing and groaning, blinded from blood streaming into her eye. He thought he had felt a rib breaking when he kicked her. The girl was still conscious, still in the fight, and still had a weapon. He decided she would have to die first.

Olive looked up and saw his knife coming down for her.

Then Fisk remembered the children’s parents were still unaccounted for.

Edwin Merriwether tackled the witchfinder from behind, knocking the larger man down. He pulled the hunting knife out of Fisk’s hand and tossed it away, then grabbed the man by his hair and began savagely smashing his head against the trunk of the tree. The witchfinder wrenched himself free of Edwin’s grip, and Edwin slammed him in the face with a punch that nearly shattered his own knuckles.

Olive and Prudence helped each other to their feet. Olive looked to her father helplessly. “RUN!” he bellowed, just before Fisk caught him with a kick that knocked him off his feet.

Olive and Prudence ran for the forest as quickly as they could. Prudence didn’t look back, but Olive did. She saw one of the soldiers clubbing her dad across the back of his head with a musket butt as another dragged her mom out of the house. Olive’s eyes welled up with stinging, blinding tears. They ran down her cheeks, drawing streaks in the dirt and blood, the droplets were filthy by the time they fell off of her face.

Jack had taken refuge behind some brush at the edge of the forest. Between the thick undergrowth and his own near-sightedness he couldn’t see what was going on very well, but he knew it had to be terrible. Then he saw Prudence and Olive running towards him, with soldiers close behind.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jack couldn’t see his pursuers, but he could tell from the death threats that they were getting closer. The soldiers yelled terrible things about what they were going to do to the Merriwethers when they caught them, and the yells were getting louder and louder. It would be impossible to stay ahead of them for much longer. Olive was dazed and mute; equal parts punch-drunk and sick with fear. Prudence was wheezing, and the cut on her face bled heavily. She staggered through the forest like an asthmatic drunk, leaving vivid crimson droplets behind her.

“I’ve got to do something,” Jack thought. “They’re going to kill us.” He ruled out hiding. Even if he could find a hiding place, Prudence’s blood would lead their pursuers right to it. Jack remembered a story his mother had once told him about two lost children leaving a trail of breadcrumbs through the woods, and he let out an anxious chuckle. He looked at the sword Olive still clutched and wondered if he could take it, try to fight them off…No, there were three or four of them, and they had muskets. Even with the sword he didn’t stand a chance.

Then Jack remembered the power of the circlet that he carried. When he had tried it on in Peter Gumbeldon’s house, it had shown him ways to destroy everything he saw. He tried to come up with a better idea and cursed himself when he couldn’t think of any. Jack tensed himself and put the circlet on.

Just as before, he could sense the vulnerabilities of everything around him. By glancing at a tree, he could tell the best way to chop it down, burn it down, infest it with disease, or poison it. He looked at a bird crouching in its nest, and knew exactly what call would lure it into the open. Jack looked back in the general direction of the soldiers and immediately knew exactly what he had to do to stop them. It was going to be okay.

“Follow me!” Jack yelled to Prudence and Olive. “Follow me and run as fast as you can!” He grabbed Prudence by the arm and pulled her along. Olive followed close behind but was constantly glancing back over her shoulder. She could see the soldiers now.

Jack led their pursuers towards the swamp. The ground was soft and marshy here, and the muck constantly threatened to pull Jack’s and Olive’s shoes from their feet. The soldiers added “sturdy combat boots” to their already-lengthy list of advantages. Jack suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked around. He grabbed Olive by the arm to keep her from running past him. “Stop,” he said. “We have to turn here.” He pointed to their left at a huge felled tree lying across a patch of muddy ground. A cave lay off beyond it. “We have to get over there, near the cave,” Jack ordered. “Move across the log. Carefully.”

“Jack, are you crazy?” Olive yelled. “They’ll catch up to us!”

“Do it,” he hissed.

Prudence wiped the blood out of her face, and her good eye focused on Iarex. She nodded. “Do it. Explanations later.”

Jack helped Prudence up onto the log. She held her arms out for balance and began to walk across it. It was slow going. The log was wide enough, but it had been dead for a long time and its wood was rotten and uneven. More than once, Prudence’s foot threatened to cave it right in. Jack and Olive followed close behind her.

“Why do we have to stay on the log?” Olive cried. She looked over her shoulder again. The soldiers were in plain sight now. They’d reach the dead tree before the Merriwethers were halfway across. “They’ll run up the sides and catch us!”

“Exactly,” Jack said, barely suppressing a crazed laugh. Olive began to worry, not for the first or last time, that her brother might have lost his mind.

True to Olive’s prediction, the soldiers ran around the sides of the log rather than walk across it. However, the mud around the log was much deeper and softer than it appeared at first glance. The soldiers sank to their shins, the mud rising as they mucked their way forward until they were nearly buried to their hips.

“Are they…are they sinking?” Olive asked.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “The muddy ground won’t support armored men like that. But that’s only going to slow them down. It’s not deep enough for them to drown. We’ve got to keep moving.”

The Merriwethers reached the other side of the log and began to run again. One of the soldiers tried to load his musket and fire, but only managed to get his powder wet in the mud hole. A sickly little fizzle of smoke came out of his gun when he pulled the trigger. Olive headed towards the cave, but Jack grabbed her arm again, hard enough to bruise her, and yanked her back. “No! We can’t go in there.”

Jack paused by the cave’s mouth while Prudence and Olive ran onwards. He found a fist-sized stone and hurled it into the darkness with all of his might. It hit something soft. A tremendous, echoing roar boomed out from the darkness. Jack sprinted away as quickly as his weary legs could take him. “Run! Run!” he screamed.

The bear bounded out of its cave in a bad humor. It had been having a marvelous dream about a land where fresh, delicious meat grew in the earth like tubers. You didn’t have to go to the trouble of hunting at all; just dig it right up and enjoy. The bear was resentful about being rudely awoken from such a fine dream, but then it saw three full-grown humans flailing in the mud hole near its lair, struggling to get back to dry land but barely able to move. The bear felt a surge of excitement: Its dream had come true!

~~~

Once they were reasonably sure they had gotten away from their pursuers, the Merriwethers stopped to catch their breath. Jack took the circlet off. “I don’t feel good,” he mumbled. He told himself the soldiers were three full-grown men, perfectly capable of driving off one mangy old bear. A bear might kill one person, maybe, but not three at once. Yet the more Jack thought about it, the more he feared he had just done something terrible. He tried to drive such thoughts from his head and focus on the present.

Olive’s initial shock had given way to nervous agitation. She paced back and forth rapidly despite her tired legs and sore feet, picking off leaves as she walked, tearing them to shreds.

Prudence sat slowly, wincing with pain. She carefully bandaged the cut on her face using a kit from her travelling pack, then felt her side to assess the damage done. “Definitely got a rib loose in there,” she groaned. “Think I’ve busted that one before, actually. Hurts like a devil, but I don’t think it speared a lung.”

“Are you going to be all right to travel?” Jack asked.

“I’ve made harder journeys with worse injuries. We should be able to get out of Muddy Hollow.” The old woman touched her side gingerly and groaned again. “Of course, I used to be a lot younger.”

“Where are we going?” Olive asked.

“Wyrmsreach.”

“Wyrmsreach? What’s that?”

“It’s Wyrmsreach. You know, the kingdom of Paashalezub? The city of refuge?”

Olive looked to Jack, but he just shrugged.

“You kids never heard of Wyrmsreach?” Prudence grunted. “Figures. I bet your teachers told you all the dragons were dead.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “They died in the Unification War. Maxander recruited the evil dragons to his side, and Saint Hugo recruited the good dragons to his, and they all wound up killing each other.”

“Nope. Not true. Well, not wholly true. Most of the dragons got killed off in the war. But there was one dragon, a canny old wyrm named Paashalezub, who didn’t trust Hugo or Maxander. Paashalezub refused to take sides. He said he was declaring his mountain an independent kingdom and anyone coming in to bother him would be considered a hostile invader. His mountain’s called Wyrmsreach. We’ll be safe from the Protectorate there.”

“But you just said there’s a dragon there, and he views anyone coming into his mountain as an invader.”

“He considers anyone who bothers him an invader. There’s a big difference. Visitors are welcome as long as they don’t make a nuisance of themselves or dispute the dragon’s sovereignty. Of course, you’ve still got to mind yourself. Bothering a dragon turns out to be surprisingly easy. They’re twitchier than you might imagine.”

“How far away is it?” Olive asked.

“It’s a trek from here. Just to the north of the Tauth Plains.”

“That’s halfway across the world!”

“Yep. I’d like a shorter trip myself, but that’s how far the Protectorate’s arm extends.”

“How are we supposed to get there?”

“Same way we get anywhere. We walk. Speaking of which, we’ve got to get moving again. There’ll be more soldiers coming soon. Help me up.”

~~~

Tom Fisk grunted as one of his lieutenants stitched up the gash Edwin Merriwether had left across the bridge of his nose. That wretched harbormaster had done a number on him. Both his eyes were swollen nearly shut, and his face was a tapestry of richly colored red and purple bruises.

“Sorry about that, sir,” the lieutenant said. “It’s a ragged cut, and those are hard to close.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Fisk replied. “Hazards of the job.”

He was trying to put a casual face on it for his men, but in truth the witchfinder was furious with himself. His prey had been within arm’s reach, and he’d allowed its escape through simple carelessness. Fisk knew if he’d been a little more cautious and methodical, he surely would have had Prudence Kingfisher in chains. Here at last was a black mark on his otherwise perfect career. The witchfinder didn’t relish the idea of writing his report on this incident. However, he recognized both that despair and embarrassment helped nothing, and that the hunt’s momentum still favored him. Kingfisher had been flushed out of hiding and wounded and was traveling with mere youths who could only slow her down. Her cult had been disrupted and two of her most loyal servants had been apprehended for interrogation. Fisk had tracked witches all over the world under some of the most adverse conditions imaginable. Surely a hurt old woman hiding in the forest couldn’t best him. He watched his troops marching into the woods where Kingfisher lurked, and wished them good hunting.

~~~

Night fell quickly. The forest was a dim, cool place even at midday, and once the sun had set it was blacker than ink and as chill as the grave. There was a full moon out, but it was barely visible through the trees. Prudence, Jack, and Olive were forced to hold hands to avoid being separated. Even in the depths of the woods on a pitch-black night, Prudence seemed to know where she was going and moved ahead at a brisk, methodical pace.

“Look!” Olive gasped. “Lights!”

Behind them, pinpricks of yellow light danced through the forest.

“Do you think it’s a will o’ the wisp?” she asked. For years her parents had terrorized her with bedtime stories about the horrible spirits and monsters that came out at night in the woods, and now they appeared to be rising up before her.

Prudence snorted. “That’d be nice. Will o’ the wisps are pushovers. No, those are the witchfinder’s men. We’ve got to move faster.” With that, she doubled a pace that Jack and Olive had already been having problems keeping. They ran through stinging briar patches and mud holes that sucked at their feet. Jack lost a shoe somewhere, and the skin of his foot was quickly torn apart by the sharp detritus of the forest floor. A part of him wanted to just lie down, go to sleep, and let the soldiers find him. Then he remembered Prudence was keeping up with an injured rib and felt ashamed of his frailty.

As the pinpricks of torchlight behind them gradually receded into the distance, they saw a dull orange glow and heard muffled music coming from ahead. The forest seemed to be crowded that night. “What’s that glow up ahead?” Jack asked Prudence. “More soldiers?”

“Not likely. Hear that rhythm? That’s a goblin song.”

“Goblins?”

“Yeah. I thought they’d have cleared out by now. Come on, I’ve got an idea.” She kept advancing towards the light.

“Wait, why are we going towards them?”

“Because I’d rather truck with them than that witchfinder. Don’t tell me you’re still nursing a grudge over that time they tried to eat you. Water under the bridge, Jack. Let it go.”

Jack grumbled. This seemed like a situation where one should be permitted to carry a grudge.

“Wait, when did goblins try to eat you?” Olive asked, befuddled.

“It’s a long stor—uh—HEY!” Jack felt something tighten around his right ankle. There was a tremendous jerk, and he was pulled into the air by his foot. He dangled upside down helplessly, too disoriented and uncomfortable to be scared. Then he noticed five red eyes glowing in the darkness ahead.

“Caught one! Caught one!” a gravelly voice cried. “Surrender now! We gotcher little friend!”

“Ehn’t no human sneaks up on goblins!” another one yelled. “Especially not tonight!” They let out a staccato trill that Olive figured to be a goblin war cry. She held her sword up at the ready. In the darkness she was nearly blind, but at least those glowing red eyes gave her a target to aim for.

“Let him down,” Prudence said. “I’m Prudence Kingfisher. Do you know a man called Zanzibar?”

The cheer stopped abruptly, and one of the goblins sparked a torch. Three of the little monsters scuttled out into the open, one of them wearing an eye patch. One of them climbed the tree that held Jack suspended from one of its branches and gnawed at the rope attached to his leg. “Kingfisher, huh?” the one-eyed goblin grunted. “Thought you ehn’t wanna buy what the boss was selling.”

“I don’t. But I need him for something else. Do you know where he is?”

“Sure. He’s back with the others. I’ll take you to him.”

“Hey, Jack,” Prudence said. “Put your hands up to catch yourself. Otherwise this is going to hurt.”

The words were barely out of Prudence’s mouth when the rope snapped. Jack plummeted to the ground. He managed to catch himself so his head didn’t take the full brunt of impact, but it was still a hard landing. As he picked himself up off the ground, he decided he was perfectly within his rights to carry a grudge against these trap-laying, foul-smelling, cowardly savages. Olive, on the other hand, thought they were actually kind of cute, although in all fairness she had never seen a goblin up close and personal before. Unlike her brother, she had never been wounded by goblin slingshots, menaced by goblin daggers, or caught in a goblin snare.

The one-eyed goblin led the Merriwethers into a clearing. The goblins had built a small bonfire and were dancing around it. The fire put a welcome dent in the night’s cold. A couple of the creatures pounded away on small drums, and one sawed furiously on a battered fiddle. A portly, older man with an elaborately braided beard sat on a traveling pack nearly as large as himself, smoking a pipe and sipping from a wineskin. When he saw Prudence, he smiled broadly and got up to greet her. Jack hung back, having had enough of goblin hospitality, but Olive came in close to warm up by the bonfire. The goblins danced right around her.

“Prudy!” the bearded man cried, yelling to be heard over the music. “Came to your senses, did you?”

“Heya, Zanzibar. Let’s just say I had some sense knocked into me.” Prudence stepped close enough for the man to see her injuries.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ll live. Nothing a few stitches and a taste of your whiskey won’t fix.”

“Madam, I don’t keep whiskey in stock. As you well know, alcoholic beverages are unhealthful, immoral, and unlawful. If, however, you are referring to Doctor Ataxerxes’ Miracle Tonic, I believe I still have a few doses—”

“Aw, cut it out. I’m in no mood.”

Zanzibar produced a small bottle of amber liquid from an inner pocket of his coat and tossed it to Prudence. She caught it, popped the cork out with her thumb, and took a deep pull, then screwed up her face and shuddered.

“Z, if I go blind on account of your miracle tonic —”

“Kindly note the bottle’s labeling. It clearly states blindness is a known possible side effect. Here, sit by the fire and let me see to that cut.”

Prudence took a seat at the edge of the bonfire. Zanzibar took a doctor’s kit out of his pack and tenderly stitched her cut. Jack moved in a little closer, although he was careful to keep some distance from the fuzzy green dancers.

“We can’t stay here long,” Prudence said. “The woods are full of soldiers. They’ll see the fire and hear the drums. Things have gotten…out of hand.”

“The ritual’s almost over,” Zanzibar said reassuringly. “And I’ve got a cave nearby to sleep in. Cozy and secure as you please.” He looked up from his work and noticed Jack and Olive staring at him. His expression fell a little. “Who, might I ask, are your young companions?”

“My grand-niece and nephew. Jack and Olive Merriwether, meet Zanzibar Ataxerxes, prince of the merchants and king of the goblins.”

“Very nice to meet you,” Zanzibar said.

“And you,” Olive replied, doing the best curtsy she could pull off under the circumstances.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked. “What are the goblins doing?”

“They’re waking up the sprouts. Haven’t you ever wondered why they come back to Muddy Hollow each year? It’s not for the fall foliage.”

Jack moved in a little closer. Scattered around the clearing were half a dozen circles of green and red mushrooms. As the music and dance reached a fever pitch, a clawed green hand burst out of the ground at the center of one of the fungal rings and a full-grown goblin climbed out of the earth. Some of the dancers paused their revels to help pull him out. This was repeated five more times. The dance ended as the last of the sprouts got to his feet and brushed off the dirt, and the goblins gathered around to greet them.

“Welcome to the clump, boys,” Galgubbin said, passing a wineskin to the confused newborns. “Welcome to the world.”

“You should be honored,” Zanzibar said to Jack and Olive. “Very few humans have ever seen this.” The older goblins began busily picking their noses like they were searching for gold. Olive turned her head away in disgust, but Jack was transfixed by the sheer strangeness of it all. With an audible pop, Galgubbin pulled a seed the size of a walnut out of his nostril. He held it up to the bonfire’s light to examine it, then got to his knees and buried it in the soil. The others all followed suit.

“Well, isn’t that something,” Jack mused. “Goblins are plants?”

“Smart fellow,” said Zanzibar. “They’re like thieving, dishonest tulips. Their noses are flowers, believe it or not. Muddy Hollow is one of the only places they can grow.”

Prudence killed the medicinal tonic, belched, and tossed the bottle away. “We should get a move on soon,” she said. “They can’t be far behind us now.” The goblins were already slipping away into the darkness.

“Let’s get going, then,” Zanzibar agreed as he doused the fire, throwing the woods back into utter blackness. “Fortune favors the swift.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

For a single blessed moment after awakening but before opening her eyes, Olive did not know where she was or what was happening. She knew only that she was not in her own bed. Perhaps she was at a friend’s house. Then she opened her eyes and it all came back immediately. She was on a bed of pine needles in a dank, cramped cave, where she had spent the night with a witch, a smuggler, some goblins, and her brother. Her parents had been arrested and possibly even executed by a witchfinder. A gleaming black saber, a relic of an evil supposedly long gone, lay on the ground near her makeshift bed. Olive’s jaw ached badly where the witchfinder had hit her. She thought that some days it does not pay to wake up in the morning. Jack slowly opened his eyes, then shut them tight again and moaned softly.

Olive looked over at Prudence, Zanzibar, and the leader of the goblins. They were talking quietly amongst themselves and did not seem to be paying any attention to her or her brother. She reached over and nudged Jack. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“I hate this. I want to go home.”

“So do I.”

“Do you…if we give ourselves up, do you think they’d let us go home? They’re after Prudence, right? I mean, if we give her up…that’ll prove we’re not witches. Right? Right?”

Jack thought back to Goody Allsop’s limp body swaying in the breeze. “I don’t think they’ll listen to us. We have to keep running.”

“You kids up?” Prudence asked, drawing a little gasp from Olive. “We’ve got to get moving soon.”

“We’re up,” Olive said unhappily.

“Good. Because I can assure you, the people who are tracking us do not sleep in.” Prudence tossed two apples to the kids.

Zanzibar was bent over a worn, heavily annotated map. “The Protectorate’s got search parties going all throughout the forest and checkpoints on the main road out of Muddy Hollow,” the smuggler said. “And now that the sun’s coming up, they’ll have an easier time following the tracks you left last night.”

“So how are we going to get away?” Jack asked.

“We go where they aren’t. There’s an old logging road through the woods that I don’t think they know about.”

“Old logging road?” Jack had lived in Muddy Hollow for his entire life and he had never heard of such a thing.

“I’ve traveled it before. Frank Bocco uses it to move his moonshine. It’s a little overgrown, but it can get us out of the forest and onto the road out of Muddy Hollow. Once we’re on the thoroughfare towards Alesbury, we’ll be surrounded by enough fellow travelers to blend into the crowd. We’ll be four faces amongst hundreds, and I’ve got the seals and paper to forge any travel documents we need.”

“That’s fine,” said Prudence. “But what do we do about the checkpoints on the road from Muddy Hollow?”

“Well, that’s the interesting part. There’s only one checkpoint in our path, but I’m not sure how we want to get around it.”

“I thought she could make us invisible,” Olive said, pointing a finger at Prudence. “Like she did with the guards the night she kidnapped us.”

Zanzibar barely suppressed a chuckle. Prudence shot him a hard look. “I can tell the guards not to notice us,” she said. “But it’s trickier than it looks, and it might backfire.”

“Didn’t seem so tricky to me,” Olive said.

“Yeah? When was the last time you manipulated the inner narrative of the universe to relax the rules of causality? Was it recently?”

“Um…”

“Uh huh. Well, you should try it out sometime. Then tell me how tricky it is. I’ll give it a shot if it’s our best chance, but I don’t want you to get the idea that it’s easy just because I’m so blasted good at it.”

“Fair enough,” Zanzibar said cheerfully. “Our dear Prudence will use the evil powers granted to her by Maxander to see us through any and all obstacles we might face. There are many benefits to traveling with a bona fide witch.” Prudence started packing up her traveling gear, muttering darkly about turning Zanzibar into a toad. The smuggler turned to Galgubbin. “What are you and the lads going to do?”

“We’ll head out as far as the thoroughfare with you, boss,” the goblin said. “After that, we’re heading to Alesbury. Been a long time since we harvested Alesbury’s pockets. After that…dunno. Ehn’t planned that far ahead yet.”

Zanzibar shook the goblin’s hand. “Alesbury will never see you coming, my friend. Pay me a visit if you ever pass through Wyrmsreach. I’ll be living in the expensive part of town.” He began to don his wearable arsenal.

Olive still couldn’t quite believe how casually her new companions could discuss black magic and banditry. She reflected that if she must be a fugitive from justice, at least she seemed to be accompanied by experienced and professional outlaws.

~~~

Zanzibar had understated things a little when he said the logging road was overgrown. It was, in fact, choked with weeds and brambles. The only evidence it was ever used by anyone were a few old wagon wheel furrows drawn in the dirt, but at least it was straight and broad. The goblins traveled in the heavy brush at the sides of the path; Zanzibar explained they considered the use of manmade roads unlucky. Despite their close proximity, they were very nearly silent and invisible. The only signs of their continued presence were a few rustling branches and the occasional glimmer of glowing red eyes.

Jack had torn a strip of cloth from his shirt and wrapped it around his foot as a temporary substitute for his missing shoe. The morning chill was biting through his thin jacket, and he didn’t have so much as a penny on him. He was unprepared for a trip to the general store, let alone a journey halfway around the world, and was surrounded by creatures that not long ago had tried to kill and eat him. Despite all these worries, the foremost thought occupying his mind was that he was in the presence of, as Zanzibar had stated, a “bona fide witch.” The Protectorate was already coming after his head. How could he possibly get into any more trouble?

“So, Prudence,” he said casually, siding up to his great-aunt. He paused for a moment, not entirely sure how to start this conversation. “You know black magic, huh?” He knew he’d chosen his words poorly even before Prudence glared at him, but there was no backing out now. “How do you do it? What’s the trick?”

Prudence regarded her grandnephew skeptically. “There’s no trick to it,” she said. “Not unless you consider hard work and study and commitment to be tricks, which some folks do.”

“I’m just curious. At your house you mentioned something called the Inner Alphabet. What is that?”

“You know, your dad would lose his mind if he heard us having this conversation. He doesn’t approve of the occult.”

“If you don’t want to talk to me about it you don’t have to. But Olive and I are in a lot of trouble here. I just thought if I knew how to do some of those things, it might, you know, come in handy for us.”

“Fair enough. But even studying these things is dangerous. If you make a mistake you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. I don’t want to see you erase yourself from existence. Eddie would really get mad at me, then. Jeanne too, probably.” She paused for a moment to take in Jack’s earnest, pleading expression, and Jack could tell that she was pushing back a smile. “I understand your curiosity. I was the same way when I was your age. And those who know ought to be willing to teach. Ask me again when get to Wyrmsreach.”

“Can’t we cover just the basics on the way?” Jack begged. “I won’t do any experiments, I promise. It’s killing me.”

“Jack—”

“You can tell me now or you can have me annoying you all the way to Wyrmsreach. Your choice.”

Prudence was now unable to keep a smile from her face. “Persistent little brat,” she mock-growled. “Must run in your stupid family. All right, if this is the cost for a moment’s peace I’ll pay up. You like reading about history, right?”

“Sure.”

“All right. That’s a good habit, by the way. I want you to imagine the history book of the gods, a book that writes itself continually as time goes in and describes everything that’s ever happened since the creation of the world. It’s got the entire life story of me and you and your sister and Zanzibar and the goblins and Magistrate Ogglesvy and everyone else who’s ever lived.”

“Okay…”

“The trick is, the book’s written in a very complex, very subtle language called the Inner Alphabet. It takes years to learn even the basics. But once you know how to speak it or write it, you can dictate directly into the book and rewrite reality. Do you remember that noise I was making?”

“Sure. It was catchy! Got stuck in my head, like a nursery rhyme.”

“I was speaking in the Inner Alphabet, saying ‘they do not notice us.’”

“Neat. So what other—”

Prudence cut him off. “That’s it for today’s lesson,” she said. “You asked for the basics, and that’s what I gave you. Any more will have to wait for Wyrmsreach.” Jack nodded. He’d try her again in another day or so.

~~~

The main road was within sight now. Zanzibar raised his hand for silence. He and Prudence crept towards it together, keeping low and staying behind cover. Jack and Olive did their best to imitate their motions until all four of them were concealed behind a thick bush. The goblins were nowhere in sight.

The checkpoint was not far ahead. The soldiers had chopped down an old tree and laid it across the road to prevent carts or horses from passing, and nailed up the Protectorate’s golden banner as a sign of their authority. “There’s not that many of them,” Olive whispered hopefully. “If we catch them by surprise we might be able to take them.”

“There don’t have to be a lot of them,” Zanzibar replied. “These woods are still full of soldiers. If one of those boys fires his musket, his comrades will all come running. No, we want to do this quiet. Prudy? You ready?”

“Ready enough.” With that, she stepped through the bushes and into the sight of the soldiers. Zanzibar followed close behind her, his musket at the ready. The soldiers at the checkpoint scrambled behind their barricade and took aim with their weapons, as if an enemy brigade stood before them rather than two elderly travelers.

“Hold where you are!” one of them ordered. “Get down on the ground! Make a move and we’ll open fire!”

“Get out of there!” Prudence hissed at Jack and Olive. “This won’t work unless we’re all together!” Jack screwed up his courage and stepped out into the line of fire, although his curiosity about magic was receding as his fear of gunplay grew. There seemed to be many more soldiers now. Olive came out with her brother, squeezing his hand for comfort.

Prudence puckered up and produced a strange whistling noise. It was almost identical to the sound she had made before, but there was something a little bit off about it. Jack couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was definitely wrong.

Up ahead, the checkpoint vanished from sight. Even the barricade and the banner disappeared. Prudence cursed.

“What just happened?” Olive asked hopefully. “Did you destroy them?”

“Get down on the ground!” a voice barked from the empty air. “I’m not joking!”

Prudence raised her hands and got down on her knees. “I told you it was tricky,” she growled. “I mucked up the subjective and objective tenses. We should get down.” Zanzibar dropped his musket.

“She made it so we can’t see them,” Jack said. Not seeing the muskets pointed at him was much, much worse than seeing them. He heard approaching footsteps and jangling armor.

“They don’t seem like so much,” a nervous voice said.

“Be careful,” another voice chimed in. “It might be a trick.”

An invisible hand grabbed up Zanzibar’s musket. Jack tried to run back into the brush, but invisible arms seized him. Olive drew her sword and began swinging it about in wild circles. “Watch her!” someone cried. Jack heard the click of a musket being cocked.

Suddenly, a horde of trilling goblins broke out from their hiding places along the sides of the road. They leapt on the invisible men, biting and clubbing and kicking in a most unusual melee. One of the goblins who had sprouted the previous night appeared to be bobbing up and down in midair, chewing on a screaming mouthful of air. It was hard to tell, only seeing one side of the battle, but the goblins appeared to be winning.

The universe soon began to undo the effects of Prudence’s meddling. One by one the soldiers reappeared, hazy and flickering at first, but gradually taking on a reassuring solidity. They were battered and bloodied now, and the goblins trussed them up like pigs. As soon as a man was tied securely they would empty his pack and fight for the spoils.

“Nice work, Galgubbin,” Zanzibar said appreciatively, reclaiming his musket. “You boys did us a real service there.”

Galgubbin didn’t look up from his work as he sorted the contents of the captain’s knapsack. “Good service ehn’t free, y’know.”

Zanzibar tossed a heavy brass coin to the goblin, who gurgled disapprovingly. “Barely even worth it at these rates.”

Zanzibar gave him a couple more coins. “Don’t push it.”

“Fisk’s going to catch you,” the captain spat. “He’s going to catch you, and I’m going to volunteer to hang you myself.”

“Good hunting,” Galgubbin said. “Saving this fella’s hide ehn’t pay much, but he makes up fer it wit’ volume.”

~~~

The cut across the bridge of Tom Fisk’s nose was itching badly. He resisted the urge to scratch it. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We have flushed our prey out of hiding. Now our job is to ride them down.”

The assembled cavalrymen shifted impatiently in their saddles. They had been riding the prey down for hours, searching the woods for any sign of Prudence Kingfisher and the Merriwether children. All they had found were the dismembered, partially eaten corpses of three of their comrades and the ashes of a small bonfire.

“We have to assume that Kingfisher and her accomplices have left or will try to leave Muddy Hollow,” Fisk said. “They could be heading almost anywhere. I’ve been working to learn their destination from our prisoners, but they’ve been surprisingly difficult to break. So I’m splitting you into five squads of ten men each. Each squad will head out tonight, ride as hard and fast as you can, and try to overtake Kingfisher on the road.

“I know you know this already, but it bears repeating. Kingfisher is crafty, vicious, and more dangerous than anything you’ve ever faced before. You’ve all seen what she did to those poor bastards last night. Don’t give these scum any room for error and don’t let anything stand in your way. If your horses get tired, seize fresh ones. If you encounter obstacles, sweep them off the road. As long as you’re working for me, it’s as if you’ve all got the rights of a witchfinder. Any questions?”

“No, sir!” went up the cry.

“Good men.”

The cavalrymen split into their groups and set off on a gallop down the road out of Muddy Hollow. Fisk watched them go until they were swallowed up in a cloud of road dust. Kingfisher couldn’t have gotten far in so little time, but Fisk had no hard information as to where she was or where she was going. Investigations were like sharks. They had to keep moving ahead or else they died. Since the previous evening, this investigation had actually been going backwards.

Still, moping was counterproductive, and Fisk found the best cure for this sort of melancholy was always to throw himself back into his work. Even if he didn’t have Kingfisher he did have her accomplices, and they would have to give her up eventually. He walked back through town towards the magistrate’s house, which he had been using as a prison.

Fisk kicked a fat crow out of his path. A murder of ravens had set up shop in the town square, attracted by the sumptuous banquet of witches that the Protectorate had laid out for them. The cobblestones were slick and filthy with the carrion birds’ droppings. The town’s new gallows were already burdened to capacity, forcing Fisk’s executioners to make use of the lampposts as well. The familiar, sickly-sweet smell of rotting flesh hung in the air. Fisk mused he should probably order the bodies cut down and burned soon in order to avoid an outbreak of disease. If there were any Maxander cultists remaining in town, they had probably gotten the point by now.

The soldiers stationed at the doors of the magistrate’s house saluted Fisk as he walked in. “Back already, sir?” one of them asked.

Fisk returned the salute. “Just checking to see if our guests have remembered anything since the last time I talked to them. Witches sometimes have memory problems.” The guards laughed.

On his way to the basement, Fisk noticed the magistrate sitting at his desk with a paper and quill. He took a quick look over the man’s shoulder.

The words, “Muddy Hollow Weekly Report: October 1, 313” were written at the top of the page in small, neat handwriting. The rest was blank. Ogglesvy moved the quill towards the paper as if he were about to write something, then stopped. Then again. And again. His hand kept moving towards the paper, but he could not make his mark. He looked up at Fisk with pleading eyes.

“I just can’t remember how these are supposed to go,” he said quietly.

Fisk patted the magistrate on the shoulder. He had come to the conclusion that Ogglesvy was deeply incompetent, but not actually associated with the witches who had infiltrated his town. A quiet discharge and a modest pension were in order. Edwin Merriwether was being held in the basement of the magistrate’s house; his wife, Jeanne, was upstairs in a room that had once been the magistrate’s library. Fisk decided to see Edwin first.

The basement stank of mildew and human waste. The walls were lined with shelves of Mrs. Ogglesvy’s canned vegetables. Fisk, suddenly remembering he had not eaten since yesterday, cracked open a jar of pickled beets and began to snack on them. They were actually quite tasty.

“Remember anything else since the last time we talked?” Fisk asked. “You can make things a lot easier for yourself and your family, you know.”

Edwin Merriwether was shackled hand and foot to a heavy wooden chair. His face was grotesquely swollen. The soldiers had really done a number on him during his capture and his first rounds of interrogation. He shook his head.

“Suit yourself. But sooner or later you’re going to either talk or die. And I don’t want to kill you, Edwin.”

“You want to kill Jack and Olive.”

“I want to kill Prudence Kingfisher. She’s an evil, dangerous woman. Jack and Olive still have a chance. You and your wife still have a chance, for that matter. Assaulting a witchfinder is a serious offense, but maybe I can overlook it if you help me capture the Protectorate’s most wanted criminal. This can all go away.”

Edwin looked up at his tormentor. “Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Swear by Saint Hugo.”

“I swear in the name of Saint Hugo and Patheon that you and your family will be spared if you tell me where Kingfisher is going.”

Edwin coughed a ragged staccato. “She’s heading for the ruins of Godor,” he said, when he regained his breath. “She’s got a safe house there. It’s an abandoned cottage with a red roof.”

Fisk examined his captive carefully. His head was covered with bruises and contusions, but even with his face too badly swollen to show emotion he was not a good liar. “You’re trying to fool me,” Fisk said.

“So are you. The Protectorate doesn’t spare anybody.”

CHAPTER NINE

A trained falcon bearing Tom Fisk’s report flew into Saint Mandelbrot’s monastery. Barely half an hour later, a great predatory flock flew forth from the monastery’s aviary, bearing a message to every corner of the Protectorate. It was copied, re-copied, and disseminated far and wide. In short order, it was nailed up to a crossroads sign that Jack, Olive, Prudence, and Zanzibar passed. Jack pulled it down and read aloud.

“Wanted for witchcraft, treason, murder, and Maxander worship. Jack and Olive Merriwether. Prudence Kingfisher. They are considered armed and extremely dangerous.” Jack’s stomach sank. He had never even been in trouble at school before.

“Kids nowadays are completely out of control,” Zanzibar said cheerfully. “Why, I didn’t commit treason and murder until I was well into my twenties.”

Jack read on. “Jack Merriwether is a youth of fourteen years from Muddy Hollow, Alesbury Province. He is short and of slight build, with a shock of dirty blonde hair and a mottled complexion. Hey! Mottled complexion!”

Olive was pale and haggard, but forced a smile. “Everyone in the Protectorate’s going to see that, Jack. Even Melissa Ashworth.”

“Damn it,” Jack growled. “Here, let’s see what it says about you. Olive Merriwether is a girl of fourteen years from Muddy Hollow, Alesbury Province. She has shoulder-length brown hair and a mannish build and disposition. A little light reading material for Henry. He can read, right?”

“What’s it say about me?”Prudence asked.

“Prudence Kingfisher is a woman, approximately sixty to sixty-eight years of age, from parts unknown. She is blind in one eye and bears a fresh wound on her forehead. She can also be recognized by her disposition, which is exceedingly cruel, uncouth, abusive, and impudent. Despite her seeming age and feebleness, she is extremely dangerous.”

“Yeah, that’s about right,” Prudence said.

“They are traveling with a pack of goblins and an unknown man in his late fifties or early sixties. The Protectorate offers a reward of…wow…the Protectorate offers a reward of five thousand ducats for Jack or Olive Merriwether, and twenty thousand ducats for Prudence Kingfisher. Dead or alive.”

Zanzibar whistled. “Escorting you lot is the wrong racket entirely. Hey Prudy, do you still have that collection of your old wanted posters?”

“No,” Prudence said. “I didn’t pack it up when I left. I guess the Protectorate has it now.”

“You used to collect your wanted posters?” Olive asked. “How many did you have?”

Prudence shrugged. “Thirty. Forty, maybe. Some of them were more impressive than others. I always liked it when they offered big rewards. This is the biggest yet, though. I guess prices’ve gone up.”

“Remember that one where they had a sketch?” Zanzibar asked.

Prudence laughed. “They made my ears huge. I looked like a bat. Or a skulkling.”

Jack passed the poster to Prudence. “Do you want it?” he asked.

“Don’t bother,” she said, tearing it up and tossing its pieces to the wind. “I don’t want to start a new collection.”

“So what’s the plan?” Jack asked. “How are we going to get to Wyrmsreach if we’re wanted criminals?”

“It’s not so hard,” Zanzibar said. “Most of the people living in Wyrmsreach now are wanted criminals, so it can be done. And your descriptions are pretty vague. If the Protectorate’s going to stop and question every shaggy-haired teenager with bad skin, they’ve got an awful lot of work to do.”

“How far is it to Wyrmsreach?” asked Olive.

“Well, that’s an interesting question,” Zanzibar replied. “If you’re talking about as the crow flies, it’s only about nine hundred miles. But we don’t have the privilege of being crows, so we’ve got to take all sorts of detours around rivers and mountains and government patrols and suchlike.”

Olive had never been farther away from home than visiting the provincial fair in Alesbury, just a day’s travel, and even that little journey had felt like an adventure. She was having trouble even comprehending what nine hundred miles meant.

“So what do we do if we meet one of these government patrols?” Jack asked.

“I don’t think we should use magic again,” Olive said. “It didn’t seem to work so well.”

“I told you it might backfire,” Prudence said defensively. “But noooo, everyone wanted Prudence to take care of it because they thought that’d be easiest.” She scoffed. “Doing things the easy way is how you get into trouble.”

“How do you figure?” Jack asked.

“Well, let’s say you’ve got a tree to chop down. You’ve got two options. You can take an axe and chop it down, like a normal person would, or you can pile up great heaps of gunpowder around its roots and throw a match. What do you do, smart guy?”

“I chop it down with an axe.”

“Right. Why do you do that?”

“Because if I use gunpowder I could blow myself up.”

“That’s right! Magic’s the exact same way. When it works it works real good, but when it doesn’t work…ka-boom.”

Olive was getting impatient with the magic lesson. “This still doesn’t answer my question,” she said. “The whole army’s out looking for us. What are we supposed to do if they find us? Run?”

“No dice,” Zanzibar said. “Running’s the quickest way to attract suspicion, and suspicious people attract gunfire. You can’t outrun a bullet.”

“So we fight them?”

Zanzibar laughed. “I like your nerve, but no. We’re not going to run from them, and we’re not going to fight them. We’re going to charm them. We’re going to greet them, answer their questions, soothe their fears, and send them on their way with a wave and a smile. I’ll try to handle all the talking, but you kids need to be conversant with the details.”

“Okay. What are the details?”

“Well, that depends on what our cover story’s going to be. There’s a bunch that we could use. Prudence? Do you have any favorites?”

“I’ve always liked the Prying Pilgrim. It’s easy to tell, it’s easy to believe. Wouldn’t be hard to work the kids into the act, either.”

“Prying Pilgrim it is, then. Kids, until we reach Wyrmsreach my name is…”

~~~

“Don Baldus Haverveck!” said the beaming holy man, extending his hairy hand to shake. “And who might you be, sir?”

“Private Teo Larris,” the soldier said, accepting the handshake. “Nice to meet you. We don’t get many preachers out here. Mostly we’ve just got to shake up the undesirables passing through.”

“Well, you work in Saint Hugo’s name, my son, and Patheon sees and remembers all that you do.”

The soldier flipped through the priest’s papers, doing his best to feign literacy, and eyed over the old man’s traveling companions. There was a pimply boy with short black hair, a meek girl in a ratty old red coat, and a cheerful old woman, not far from the priest’s age, with her hair hanging down in her eyes. The kids seemed a little young to be the priest’s. “Are these your children, Don Baldus?” the soldier asked.

“No, sir. These are my grandchildren. Their mother perished of the ague fever some years ago, and their father was drafted into the army three months back. They’re staying with their grandmother and me until he’s discharged.”

“Yeah? What division is your dad in, boy?”

“Ninth Division, stationed at Port Skjel in the Lokkis Islands,” the boy said quickly.

“That’s a tough neighborhood. I’ve heard they’ve had a lot of problems with pirates recently. Where are you going, Don Baldus?”

“Fort Hoening. I had a dream—no, a vision—in which Patheon told me to go and minister to the soldiers doing his work there. My family and I are going to build a temple to Saint Hugo.”

“Isn’t that nice. I’m sure it’ll be good for morale. Are you kids excited about helping your grand-dad?”

“Sure,” the boy said. “I’m going to help lay the bricks, and Sarah’s going to carve the icons. And if dad gets transferred, we might get to see him sooner.”

“That’s very nice,” the soldier said, although the odds of a marine division being transferred to Fort Hoening were slim to none. No sense in ruining the kids’ hopes. “You’re free to go, Don Baldus. Have a safe journey.”

“Please, before I leave, tell me something,” Don Baldus said. “Are the roads around here safe? Be honest. You hear stories about bandits doing such terrible things.”

The soldier shrugged. “Those are mostly made up. Every once in a while someone gets tied to a tree and their horse gets stolen, or goblins will run off with someone’s pack, but for the most part it’s pretty dull around here. Just be careful when you get further west.”

“Is this road patrolled?”

“Oh, sure. We keep a pretty tight grip on things. We’ve got a cavalry patrol that goes up and down the road every day, and checkpoints every ten miles. You’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, friend!” Don Baldus said. “Come and see my temple if you ever get assigned to Fort Hoening!” The soldier smiled politely, but he hoped he would never get anywhere near Fort Hoening. His tour of duty was finished in just a few more months, and he was perfectly happy to spend that time shaking down travelers and playing cards.

“Have a safe trip!” the soldier said, waving goodbye. He was a little concerned to see them go, especially the kids. If that old preacher was scared of the pig-stealing halfwits who called themselves bandits around here, how did he expect to travel through the tautho territory further east? He would be eaten alive. Perhaps literally.

~~~

Zanzibar crouched behind a haystack, watching through his spyglass as the cavalry patrol passed by. “All right, we’re good,” he said. “The patrol just passed us by. We can follow right behind them until we get to the next checkpoint. The Prying Pilgrim comes through again.”

Jack ran his fingers through his newly cropped hair, and his fingertips emerged pitch black. “Zanzibar, this hair dye is terrible,” he said.

“If you have any better dye, feel free to use it. But right now there’s a five thousand ducat reward for a pimply-faced kid with shaggy blonde hair, so I only want to be travelling with pimply-faced, short-haired brunettes.”

“Prudence, the witchfinder said you were a Shattergrave Knight,” Olive said. “Is that—is that true?”

“Technically, I guess it is,” Prudence replied. “Your father never told you, but we’ve got a very famous ancestor on his side of the family.”

“Who is it?” Olive asked.

“Have you kids ever heard of Gorgyaz?”

Gorgyaz was one of Maxander’s Shattergrave Knights. During the Unification War, he and a small band of skulkling marauders had routed the defenders of Godor, kicking off a month-long orgy of looting and slaughter. He had tortured bishops to death and made robes of their skin. He had used black magic to turn innocent children into slavering killers and fed his enemies to them. Apart from Maxander himself, he was the most feared and hated man in all of history. The twins’ blood ran cold. “The Bane of Godor?” Jack asked.

“That’s the one.”

“You’re lying!” Olive spat. “We’re not—we can’t be related to him!”

“Sorry, but it’s the truth. He was the only one of the Shattergrave Knights to survive the Unification War and Maxander’s death. He settled down in Muddy Hollow, changed his name to Paul Merriwether, and you know the rest of the story. Iarex and Cauttaraxus originally belonged to him. They were his symbols of rank.”

Olive pulled the sword off her belt and made to throw it away. Prudence seized her wrist. “Don’t,” she said.

“I don’t want it!” Olive protested. “I don’t want anything to do with Maxander or Gorgyaz or Shattergrave Knights or you or any of it! I want to go home!”

“These things have been carried down through many generations of Merriwethers, and most of them felt exactly the same way you do, but there’s nothing to be done about it. You are who you are. But more than that, you’re what you make of yourself. ”

“It’s not fair. I never asked to be related to Gorgyaz.”

“Nope. But you are related to him, and that’s all the witchfinders care about. Which is why I recommend you don’t throw that sword away.”

Olive grudgingly returned the sword to her belt, although she wiped her hands off on her pants afterwards.

“Does this mean we’re Shattergrave Knights as well?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. It was a title that passed down through the blood.”

“Wow,” Jack said. He had always thought of himself as a basically normal person, but apparently he was one of the world’s greatest monsters. It was sickening and thrilling.

~~~

Magistrate Roger Crane squinted to read the Merriwethers’ wanted poster as he sat down in the barber’s chair, his eyes straining behind underpowered spectacles. He was a stout, barrel-chested fellow of about sixty, with skin the color of whiskey and large gray eyes lined with crows’ feet. Norris the barber carefully draped a smock over the magistrate’s new blue suit. The last man who had gotten a stain on one of Crane’s garments had wound up thumbless.

“Why, isn’t that peculiar,” Magistrate Crane declared. “Five thousand ducats apiece for two kids not even old enough to be taxed, and twenty thousand for some elderly, carved-up broad. I believe that’s a new record.”

“Muddy Hollow’s not far away,” Norris said as he lathered up the Magistrate’s face with foamy soap. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they pass through Micawber. No sir, not surprised at all.”

“Sergeant Farchor?”

The young soldier who had been standing at the back of the barbershop snapped to attention. “Yes, sir?”

“Tell your boys I need to know immediately if any Protectorate troops come into town looking for these three. And tell them to stall any incoming troops until I get there.”

“Yessir,” Sergeant Farchor said. “We going after the bounty for ourselves?”

“None of your concern,” the magistrate said. “Sergeant, your duties do not include speculating about your superior’s motivations.”

“Yessir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Can you stop apologizing for a moment and carry out my damn instructions, or do I have to get up in the middle of my shave and do it for myself?!”

“No, sir! Sorry, sir!” The terrified sergeant ran out of the magistrate’s office as though a musket were aimed at his head.

“That boy lacks sense,” Norris said, as he stropped his razor. “Always did. His father was the same way.”

“He’s greedy, is what it is,” Crane said. “I give him a little taste, and suddenly he thinks he’s a senior partner and everything’s being split three ways. It’s a sign of poor character. He’s not willing to work his way up, like you and I did.”

Norris grunted his agreement as he shaved the magistrate. He had hands like a sausage platter, but they were steady as a sculptor’s.

“Now, a little bit of greed in one’s underlings is unavoidable. Desirable, even. It’s a sign of initiative. But when a man gets to overestimating his station in life so quickly…well, that’s troubling.”

“You want me to do something about it?” Norris asked. His razor slid smoothly over the magistrate’s throat, scraping away soap and hair and leaving smooth, wet, pink skin in its path.

“It doesn’t call for that yet. But I’m keeping an eye on it.”

“So…are we going after the bounty?”

“Norris, you disappoint me. This bounty is an insult.”

“How do you figure? That’s thirty thousand ducats! We can live like generals on a stake like that.”

“Have you ever known the Protectorate to offer a fair price for anything? Think of our salaries, Norris! Think of all the hard work we do on their behalf, and the meager pay we get for that work. If the Protectorate’s offering thirty, they’re worth fifty at a minimum. A bare minimum.”

“Even if we catch them, how are we going to move them? We can’t sell hostages that hot around here. We’d have to take them all the way to Wyrmsreach.”

“It can be done.”

“You’re the boss,” Norris said, wiping the magistrate’s face clean with a hot towel. He held up a mirror. “I didn’t trim your sideburns down too much, did I?”

“No, they’re fine.” The Magistrate’s huge, bushy sideburns were his pride and joy. They were streaked with white now, but that only added to the effect. Norris pulled away his barber’s smock, and the magistrate got to his feet.

“Norris, put the word out. In addition to the official bounty, I’m offering a two thousand ducat sweetener for each of the kids, and four for grandma. But I need them alive and mostly unhurt.”

“That kind of money makes noise.”

“As a loyal servant and citizen of the Protectorate, I consider it my sacred duty to assist in the search for wanted outlaws.”

“All right. Like I said, you’re the boss.”

“Good to see you’ve retained your grip of the obvious. Cigar.”

Norris cut, lit, and handed over a cigar with military precision. Crane accepted it, and puffed away contentedly. “Tell your boys to keep an eye out for the Protectorate as well,” he said. “I have to know as soon as those morons barge into Micawber if we’re to avoid a bloodbath.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Ever seen Protectorate soldiers on a really big manhunt? With a really big reward? They have a tendency to get over-enthusiastic. Unless someone’s keeping an eye on them, they’re going to gun down every old woman and teenager they run across. It’s bad for business to have idiot conscripts using my jurisdiction as a shooting range.”

~~~

Jack lay in a patch of high grass at the roadside, listening to a group of cavalrymen pass by. Judging by the sounds they made there were at least twenty or thirty of them. Jack felt awfully glad of Zanzibar’s habit of obsessively scanning the road ahead and behind with his spyglass. All of his residual resentment against his parents for their paranoid fears had long since dissipated. He was getting used to paranoia himself.

“All right. They’ve passed,” Zanzibar said, getting to his feet with a little groan. “Back at it.”

“Can’t we stop and rest for a few more minutes?” Jack asked. He had taken a new pair of boots from a soldier at the checkpoint, but they didn’t fit particularly well. His feet felt like they had been rubbed raw with a cheese grater.

“I suppose that can’t hurt,” Zanzibar said. “We’ll let those riders get a little more of a head start on us.” He rooted around in his pack and pulled out hard tack biscuits for everyone. They had the taste and texture of heavily salted wood, but Jack and Olive wolfed them down.

“How much farther is it?” Olive asked through a mouthful of petrified bread.

“Don’t you ever get tired of asking me that? It’s hard to say. There’s still a lot of road in front of us.”

Jack’s feet twinged at the news.

“Can’t we get horses?” Olive asked. “I thought anyone going on a long journey would ride horses.”

“Do you two know how to ride?” Zanzibar asked.

Virtually nobody in Muddy Hollow had horses. It was a small enough town that you could get anywhere you needed on the power of your own two feet. The only horses in town were an elderly mare owned by Magistrate Ogglesvy and a bay horse that Alan Bayely used to bring in the mail from Alesbury.

“Not really,” Jack said.

“We can learn!” Olive chirped.

“Sorry, kids,” Prudence said. “I can teach you when we get to Wyrmsreach, but right now we have to keep moving.”

“What if we get two horses and double up?” Olive asked. “We’re not too big for that.”

“The horses’ll get tired out pretty fast.”

“Right now we’re getting tired out pretty fast!”

“We’ll still make better time than we’re doing now,” Jack added.

Prudence groaned and rubbed her side. Her rib was still smarting from where the witchfinder had kicked her, and her knees were aching badly. She had injured them years ago when she was caught in a mantrap and they had been giving her trouble ever since. Olive’s proposal was making a lot of sense. Still, it sounded suspiciously like the easy way out.

“Z? What do you think?”

Zanzibar shrugged. “It’s fine with me. But I’m a little impecunious at the moment.”

“Like hell. You just don’t want to part with the stash you’ve got hidden away on you somewhere, and you think you can talk me into ponying up. But that’s fine. I can pay for them. Next town we pass by, we’ll stop in real quick to buy two horses and stock back up on food.”

Olive clapped with excitement when she heard she would finally get a chance to ride a horse. She saw herself galloping on a beautiful white charger, leaving her enemies behind in the dust, and was thrilled when she saw a road marker stating that the town of Micawber was just twelve miles ahead.

CHAPTER TEN

The relaxing, enjoyable meal Jack had been anticipating turned to ashes in his mouth, and his stomach roiled with acid. In theory, he knew the bowl of stew in front of him was probably delicious, but he felt like everyone in the inn was staring directly at him and it was sorely interfering with his dinner. From her untouched plate and sour expression, Olive plainly felt the same way. Zanzibar, however, was attacking a grease-sodden turkey leg and draining a bottle of ale, and Prudence was on her second potpie.

“You two really ought to eat,” she said through a full mouth. “Can’t be sure when you’ll get a meal like this again. Or a meal at all, for that matter.”

“That guy in the corner’s looking at us funny,” Jack said. “The one with the scar across his cheek.”

“They probably don’t get a lot of holy men around here,” Zanzibar said, tugging on his collar. “Perhaps he wants to confess his sins. Pay it no heed.”

“But…”

“Don’t let it crack you up. We’ll enjoy our meal and then we’ll be off on our way. Remember what I said about running.”

Just then an old man with enormous sideburns stepped in the door. The whole inn went silent, and everyone who had been staring at the Merriwethers turned their attention to the newcomer. The whiskered man grinned broadly and winked at Zanzibar. Zanzibar’s mouth gaped open. His fingers closed tightly around his steak knife.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the old man said happily. “Zanzibar Ataxerxes, is that you? And in a cleric’s robes, no less. I never thought that you, of all people, would turn to religion.”

“Hi, Roger,” Zanzibar replied. “Don’t let the clothes fool you. I won them in a card game. Back in Alesbury there’s a naked priest who’s learned the hard way about drawing to an inside straight.”

“It’s Magistrate Crane now, actually. How’s life?”

“It continues. You’re a magistrate now? How did that happen?”

Crane laughed. “It was expensive, but it’s paid for itself and plenty more besides. I could probably set you up yourself, if you wanted.”

“Thanks for the offer, but it’s not my style.”

“A man must be faithful to his style. So, are you going to introduce me to your friends here?”

“Roger, this is my wife June, and her two grandkids, Dennis and Elise.”

Crane smirked and arched his eyebrow. “So you’re married now? Well, isn’t that nice. It’s a wonderful institution, marriage. Frankly, Zanzibar, I never thought of you as the type to settle down. No offense, Mrs. Ataxerxes.”

“I’m just an incurable romantic at heart, I guess,” said Zanzibar.

Crane strolled over and inspected Jack and Olive. “Hey, kid,” he said to Jack. “You’ve got the most interesting hair I’ve ever seen. Black with blondish streaks and roots—you’re not dying your hair, are you? Why would you do that?”

Jack was silent. The magistrate turned his attention to Olive.

“And what a charming little princess this is. What’s in the bundle on your hip, darling?”

Olive had been keeping Cauttaraxus in a rolled-up piece of cloth tied in her belt. She unrolled it on the table, revealing the blade. Crane whistled softly. “That’s an interesting thing for a little girl to be carrying around,” he said.

“I’m not a little girl,” Olive said defiantly. “Want a closer look at it?”

The smile dropped from the magistrate’s face. He turned back to Zanzibar. “Putting aside family for a moment, you and I’ve got business to discuss. Meet me at the Steel Pine Inn in fifteen minutes. Come alone.”

“Thanks, Roger, but I’m in the middle of my dinner here. Besides, I’ve already got all the business I can handle at the moment. I’m not looking for anything new.”

“Fifteen minutes. Don’t make me come and find you.”

“Who was that jackass?” Olive asked as soon as Crane had left the room. She quickly rolled her sword back up in the cloth.

“That jackass is Roger Crane. I’ve done business with him before.”

“So he’s a friend of yours?”

“No. Let’s just say it got ugly. We’re in a lot of trouble.” Zanzibar tossed some money onto the table and stormed out of the inn, with Prudence and the Merriwethers following close behind.

The streets of Micawber were an unpaved morass of mud and slime. Micawber’s main industry was a huge tannery, and the stink of curing leather enshrouded the whole town. Even this late in the year, the air was thick with buzzing flies. A gang of ragged soldiers loitered by the entrance to the inn, one of them making water into the thoroughfare. They followed Zanzibar as he walked to the inn.

“What are we going to do?” Olive asked, trying to keep her voice low enough not to be overheard.

“These boys won’t let us leave without a fight. And if I know Roger, he’ll have other precautions against our leaving, as well. He’s a thorough bastard.”

“Apparently you know Roger pretty well,” Prudence said. “Don’t look now, but there’s two gunmen on the roof of the tannery.” Jack and Olive, of course, immediately craned their necks to look. Prudence sighed.

“Prudence, I know you said the Inner Alphabet’s only for emergencies, but this seems like an emergency,” Jack said. “Isn’t there anything you could do to this Crane guy to make him leave us alone?”

“I’ve got some tricks I could play. Let’s see if it comes to that.”

Olive frowned. The last time Prudence had played one of her tricks it had almost been the end of them. She didn’t see what her brother found so appealing about that creepy Inner Alphabet business. “Only as a last resort,” she said firmly.

~~~

Before long, Zanzibar, Prudence, and the Merriwethers stood in front of the Steel Pines Inn. Their military escort stood not far behind them. The soldiers had been inching closer and closer, to the point where now they were almost at arm’s reach. They whispered eagerly amongst themselves about what they were going to do with their pay.

“Are you going to be all right in there?” Prudence asked.

“I can watch out for myself,” Zanzibar replied. “It’s not Crane’s style to start cutting throats right away.”

“But eventually?” Jack asked.

“Eventually. If it’ll get him more coin than leaving his business partners alive.” Zanzibar looked sourly at the soldiers who’d been following him. “You know your boss is a backstabbing, murderous swine, right?”

“It’s common knowledge,” one of them said insolently.

Zanzibar scowled. “I’ll be back momentarily,” he said, and then he stepped through the doors.

The crowded interior of the Steel Pines Inn stank of stale smoke, weak beer and curing leather. He tried to pick out which of the bar’s soused and scruffy patrons were most likely to be in Crane’s employ, but quickly gave it up as a mug’s game. A beefy man with a face like a grisly accident stood at the door with an axe. At his feet was a crate containing a small arsenal of pistols, muskets, saps, hatchets, daggers, swords, and clubs. He tapped his axe on a wooden, hand-lettered sign stating, “No wepons alowed.” Zanzibar deposited his visible armaments into the box.

“That all you got?” the bouncer asked.

“It’s all I’m giving up,” Zanzibar replied, and that answer seemed to be good enough.

Crane sat by himself at a table towards the rear of the inn, tearing into a roasted chicken and taking deep pulls from a bottle of wine. He noticed Zanzibar and waved the bottle in his direction. Zanzibar pulled up a chair. It groaned under his not-inconsiderable weight.

“So what’s this all about, Roger?”

“Sorry I interrupted your meal, but this couldn’t wait. What with my official duties, I have a very full schedule these days. Can I get you something?” He called one of the barmaids over.

“Just some wine.”

Roger nodded. “A glass of your finest vintage.” The barmaid scurried back to the kitchen.

“All right, as I was saying…what do you want?”

“You’re traveling with three infamous outlaws.”

“Indeed I am. No sense in telling you lies.”

“They’re worth a lot of money to the Protectorate.”

“Thirty thousand ducats, last time I checked.”

“If they’re worth that much to the Protectorate, they’re probably worth that much or more to someone else. “

“A reasonable deduction.”

“I want to take them to Wyrmsreach and auction them off to the highest bidder. We’ll let the free market decide the price of these people. If you want a part of the take as a sort of finder’s fee, that’s fine. You did bring them to me, after all. But I’m not accepting ‘no’ as an answer.”

“So, to sum up, my choice is between getting paid and dying where I sit?”

“Well put, friend.”

“In that case, I choose to get paid.”

“A sound decision. Can you get them to come along quietly?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. Let’s talk details.”

“Reasonable, straight to the point and detail-oriented. You’re always a pleasure to work with, except when you aren’t. I’ve got a wagon out behind the building with three of my men. You can go along with them to Wyrmsreach, but you do what they say.”

“And what do I get after auction?”

“Twenty points.”

“Fair enough.”

“Fair isn’t part of the equation.”

The barmaid put a glass of wine in front of Zanzibar. He sniffed at it suspiciously. Magistrate Crane laughed, took the glass from Zanzibar’s hand, and took a drink. “Satisfied?” he asked, handing the wine back. “Here, let’s drink to our new venture.”

They clinked their glasses. “To Prudence and the Merriwethers,” Zanzibar said.

“Indeed,” Crane said, then drained his glass. “So tell me, Zanzibar. This Kingfisher woman…she’s the one you used to talk about all the time, right?”

“I might have mentioned her once or twice.”

“Once or twice. That’s good, I like that. Every time you got sloshed I knew I was in for an earful about the many charms of Prudence Kingfisher.” Crane chuckled. “But even still, I never figured she had twenty thousand ducats worth of charm.”

Zanzibar looked away. The wine had left a sour taste in his mouth.

“Oh, come off it!” Crane protested. “You’ll find someone new. That’s the wonderful thing about life. You always have the capacity to reinvent yourself, especially if you’ve got money. How else could the two of us be sitting here sharing a drink, you as a priest and me as a magistrate?”

~~~

Not long after that, the players were all assembled in a filthy little bone yard between the back of the Steel Pines Inn and the rear wall of the tannery. Cattle bones lay around them in heaps. Legions of fat black rats nestled inside the skeletons, angrily eyeing the human intruders. A battered old covered wagon sat at the center of the bone yard. Three men loaded it with boxes of provisions. One was a stout middle-aged man with a distinct resemblance to a hairless boar. The other two were younger fellows wearing the armor and uniforms of Protectorate soldiers. It was getting dark out, but a lantern on the front of the wagon illuminated the scene.

“Are these our famous outlaws?” the older man asked.

“Indeed they are,” Crane replied. “Gents, these are Prudence Kingfisher, Jack Merriwether, and Olive Merriwether, wanted for witchcraft, treason, Maxander worship, and murder. You think you’ll be able to escort these dangerous criminals to Wyrmsreach?”

The man laughed in a way that set Olive’s teeth on edge. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I believe introductions are in order,” Crane said. “These fine gentlemen are masters Norris, Parmet, and Egels. They’ll get you where you need to go.”

Prudence eyed the three men coldly. “Mr. Crane,” she said. “I need to talk to you in private before I’ll go anywhere with your associates.”

Crane gestured towards the wagon. “Step inside my office,” he replied. “Although if you want to get me alone for romantic purposes, I have to warn you that you’re not really my type. You’re much too pretty for me.” He climbed up into the wagon, and Prudence followed.

“Crane told me you had a sword on you, little girl,” Parmet said to Olive. “Let me get a look at it.”

“No. It’s a family heirloom.”

“Heirloom or not, little girls shouldn’t be carrying around things like that. You might hurt yourself. Give it here. Nice and slow.”

Olive looked to Zanzibar and Jack, and then over to the wagon. She very slowly and carefully removed the sword from its wrapping and held it outwards. Parmet extended his hand.

There was a heart-wrenching scream from the wagon. Magistrate Crane leapt out, landing badly in a pile of ribcages. He scrambled up to his feet and sprinted away from the cart as if a devil was inside it.

“Kill her!” he shrieked. “She’s not human!”

Parmet turned his head to see what his boss was screaming about. He suddenly felt a powerful jolt in his wrist and turned back to his captive. Olive’s sword was out of its scabbard, and his hand was on the ground. Olive stared at the bleeding stump with wide-open, terrified eyes.

The old woman stuck her head out the back of the wagon. Flashes and bangs erupted from the tannery rooftop as Crane’s snipers opened up, punching gaping holes through the wagon’s canvas roof, and Prudence dropped.

Zanzibar took aim and fired at one of the flashes, and a gunman fell screaming. Zanzibar tossed his empty gun away and ducked behind a bone pile, but Norris was on top of him before he could get a weapon out and dragged him to the ground. The two men wrestled with each other through a pile of skeletal remains, dispersing hordes of screaming rats. Norris grabbed up a femur and brought it down hard and fast across Zanzibar’s forehead. Then he flicked his razor open and pressed its gleaming blade across the smuggler’s throat.

Jack stood helplessly where he was, holding his hands outstretched as if they could stop a bullet. The twitchy little vulture the magistrate had called Egels was circling in with a sap. Not knowing what else to do, Jack picked up a bone club and swung it from side to side as the soldier approached. Egels effortlessly snatched the weapon out of his grasp. The soldier’s sap came down on his head, and a shower of sparks exploded in his field of vision as the world went away.

Egels turned to see what the girl was up to, and saw her charging him with her saber. She slashed at him wildly, very nearly catching him through the neck. The girl drove him back against the wagon, and although she was screaming like a Hvasik berserker her sword moved with the grace of a trained fencer. Olive’s squeamishness about accidentally cutting off a man’s hand had evaporated the moment she saw her brother fall. She was so focused on taking Egels’ hide that she didn’t see Crane coming at her from behind with a donkey’s jawbone.

A crushing blow fell between Olive’s shoulder blades. She dropped to her knees and Cauttaraxus tumbled amongst the bones. Crane swung again, this time aiming for the young girl’s head.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Olive awoke in a dark place, bound hand and foot and suffering from an unbearable, brain-bursting headache. She wanted to throw up, but knew that was a bad idea.

“Hello?” she rasped, surprised by the feebleness of her own voice. Her mouth and throat were parched, adding to her already-intense misery. “Jack, are you there? Prudence? Zanzibar? Anyone?”

Jack’s voice sounded in the darkness. “Olive! I’m right over here! Are you okay? You’ve been sleeping a long time. I was worried you wouldn’t wake up.”

“Urgh. No such luck. If I ever catch up to the pig that hit me, he’s going to be sorry for it. Feels like someone dropped an anchor on my head. What’s going on? Where are we?” Olive tried to stretch out, but her arms and legs banged against solid wood. Wherever she was, she didn’t have a lot of space.

“I think we’re in the wagon. I guess they’re taking us to Wyrmsreach.” In fact, their compartment was rattling and shaking, as if it was moving over a bad stretch of road.

“What happened to Prudence and Zanzibar?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see what happened to them, and they’re not in here with us. Last thing I saw was that Egels guy cracking me in the head.”

“I’m scared, Jack.”

“So am I.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll figure out something. As soon as our brains don’t hurt this bad.”

~~~

The Merriwethers had no real understanding of how much time was passing in their dark little tomb. They could feel the wagon starting and stopping and rumbling over cobblestones and uneven roads. They could feel their bellies becoming emptier and their bladders filling up. But they had no idea if it was day or night, and bellies and bladders are not exact timepieces. Jack figured they had been awake for about two or three hours; Olive figured it had to have been at least twelve or fourteen.

Eventually the wagon came to a stop. The wooden plank covering up the wagon’s secret compartment was pulled away and light came flooding in. The Merriwethers blinked furiously, their darkness-addled pupils struggling to adjust. When they could see again, they saw Norris and Egels standing over them. Egels had Cauttaraxus on his belt.

“Get up, you brats,” Norris said. “Time to eat.”

Jack and Olive sat up. Norris untied their hands and roughly pulled them up out of the smuggling compartment. Jack took a quick survey of the surroundings. The wagon was well provisioned, with barrels of food, whale oil, and animal feed neatly stacked inside. Their captors were prepared for a long trip. They had hung Iarex up on a nail.

A third man, whom Jack and Olive had not seen before, came into the wagon carrying tin pannikins piled with beans and sausage. He was a good-looking younger man in an Alliance uniform, with a mean expression on his face. He threw the food down on the wagon’s floor, splattering Jack with bean juice. Despite the rudeness of the chef, the food was very welcome. Jack and Olive ate in silence, trying to avoid the hard stares of their captors. In particular, Jack didn’t like the way they were looking at Olive.

“What happened to Prudence and Zanzibar?” Jack asked.

“They’re dead,” Norris grunted casually.

“I don’t believe you!” Olive said.

“Believe or don’t believe whatever you want. Doesn’t make any difference to me. When you’re finished eating you can take turns getting out to crap,” Norris said. “Then it’s back in the hole until tomorrow.”

Jack’s legs exploded with pins and needles as he walked outside the wagon. He rubbed his sore legs, trying to restore the circulation, and looked around to try to figure out where he was. To his left, there was a long stretch of road running through a seemingly infinite cornfield. To his right, there was the same. He looked up at the night sky, trying to remember his constellations. At least the stars were the same here as at home.

“You going to go, or not?” Egels yelled.

“I can’t with you watching,” Jack said. “I’m going to go off in the corn, all right?”

“Go right ahead, but remember we’ve got your pretty little sister in here with us.”

Jack headed a few yards into the thick rows of corn and squatted. He flirted with the thought of just running away and losing his captors in the fields. But what then? He had no food, or money, or idea of where he was going. The whole Protectorate was out to get him. And the men from Micawber had his sister. Jack fertilized the field and headed back to the wagon. Escape would come later.

~~~

“Jack?” Olive asked in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think’s going to happen to Mom and Dad?”

“They’ll probably be sent to jail.”

“You don’t think they’re—“

“No.”

“Jack, Fisk was hanging everyone he even suspected was involved with---—”

“Shut up!” Jack’s face flushed as he remembered how he had led the witchfinder right to his family’s home, and he was glad of the darkness. “Look, he…uh, look…the Protectorate doesn’t know where we’re going, right?”

“I guess not.”

“They’re going to think Mom and Dad know where we are. They’ll keep them alive so they can talk.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. They won’t hurt them. They’ll take them off to prison.”

“But what if we get away?”

“What?”

“What if we get away to Wyrmsreach and we get away from the Protectorate?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…if we’re where the Protectorate can’t get us, then the Protectorate won’t need Mom and Dad anymore.“

“I…I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re going to do.” Hot tears ran down his cheeks.

“Do you think we could free them?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know how we’d do it. We don’t even know where they are.”

“Maybe someone will help us.”

“Yeah, maybe. But…you know…would Mom and Dad want us to come back for them?”

“What are you saying?!”

“You know them. They went insane when we did anything risky. They wouldn’t want us coming back and maybe getting captured ourselves.”

“So…what? You’re saying we should just leave them to rot?!”

“I didn’t say that!”

“It’s what you meant.”

“Look, right now we can’t do anything! We’ll get free, and we’ll get to Wyrmsreach, and then we’ll figure out what to do next. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They did not speak for a while after that. The only sounds to be heard in their little cell were the rumbling of the wagon’s wheels and muffled conversations overhead.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Prudence and Zanzibar are really dead?”

“I didn’t see what happened to them. They probably got away.”

“But they could be dead. We could be the last ones left.”

“Yeah. We could.”

That night, Olive dreamt she was trapped on a little boat without any sails or oars, and a great storm was carrying her far out to sea. Jack dreamt he was a little fish, so deep underwater no light could penetrate. He knew there were vast predators swimming all around him, and could feel the currents they gave off as they swam, but he could not see them or be certain where they were.

~~~

General Krauzhelm sat with his legs crossed, reading Fisk’s latest report. His face was a blank gray mask, almost as unreadable as the literal masks of his mute bodyguards. He had barely spoken three words since arriving in Muddy Hollow, and the tension was getting unbearable. Fisk swallowed hard. He knew the general only by reputation, and Krauzhelm’s reputation was an evil one.

The general put the report down and crossed his arms. “Interesting reading, Mr. Fisk,” he said. “But all of this is about Prudence Kingfisher’s past deeds. You left out her current location. I’m not a student of history.”

Fisk looked down at the ground. “We’re following up on a number of leads,” he said. “I’ve dispatched riders to all of her likely destinations, and all of the garrisons in the province are on high alert. We’re also starting to see some information come back from the bounty.”

“Mm-hmm. And her accomplices? Edwin and Jeanne Merriwether?”

“They don’t know anything. We’ve been pushing them hard, but they haven’t given us much other than misinformation. The only thing we’ve learned from them is that they’re Kingfisher’s kin.”

The general’s ears pricked up at this news. “You don’t say. The Merriwethers are descended from the Bane of Godor?”

“Yes, they share in his taint. I’ve scheduled their executions for this evening.”

“I’m overriding that order, Mr. Fisk. The Thirteenth Division will be taking custody of the Merriwethers. They’re to be brought to Stonesneck Prison without suffering any further harms.”

“Stonesneck Prison? But I thought that was for the most dangerous criminals. Their blood aside, the Merriwethers are nothing more than Kingfisher’s accomplices. I can assure you of that, sir. I interrogated them fully.”

The general examined his fingernails. His fingers were long and slender, and somehow reminded Fisk of spiders’ legs. “Oh, Mr. Fisk. So proud of your work and ability, and rightly so. I have no doubt you interrogated them as best you could. But the Thirteenth Division has certain other…techniques…that you are so far unfamiliar with. And in any case, we’ll need to see to their rehabilitation.”

“Rehabilitation? They’re Shattergrave Knights. They’re guilty of Maxander worship, aiding and abetting known outlaws, and assaulting a witchfinder! Those are all capital offenses, sir.”

The general smiled icily. “Even the worst of us have their uses, Mr. Fisk. Mustn’t be wasteful. Speaking of which, we must discuss these bounty posters of yours.” The general looked over a copy of the poster and frowned.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“These say dead or alive. But it’s vital that we capture Kingfisher. That was made perfectly clear when you received this assignment. I don’t want any terminal harm to come to her or her little relations.”

“Capturing Kingfisher alive may be difficult. As you know, she’s extremely dangerous.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Trying to take her alive will get people killed.”

“And?”

Fisk tried to mask his anger, with limited success. “With all due respect, sir, as a witchfinder I am under the authority of the Ecclesiastical Courts, not the Thirteenth Division. You have no right to give me orders.”

“It hasn’t arrived yet? You’re to receive a letter from the archbishop of Thayre placing you under my direct supervision, and as your direct supervisor, I order you to take Kingfisher alive.”

“Why? At least tell me that!”

“I don’t expect you to understand. Your mission is to punish the guilty. Mine is to gather intelligence. As you said, Kingfisher is an extraordinarily capable, extraordinarily dangerous woman. We believe she knows the location of many of Maxander’s lost treasures. If she’s dead, she can’t lead us to them.”

“I see.”

“There’ll be no more answers coming from me today. Go do your job.”

Fisk got up from his chair and stormed out of the room, more convinced than ever that under no circumstances could Prudence Kingfisher be taken alive.

A messenger was waiting for him outside the room. “Are you Tom Fisk?” the man asked. “I’ve got a sealed letter for you from the archbishop.”

~~~

“How long do you think we’ve been down here?” Olive asked in the stifling darkness.

“I don’t know anymore,” Jack said. He had tried to keep track of the passage of time by counting the meals, but their feeding times were irregular at best and inside their coffin-like hole the days and nights all ran together into one. Now that they were in a sparsely-settled area their guards had been letting them spend more time up above, but the majority of their hours were still spent trapped in a pitch-black box. The initial fear and dread provoked by their capture had long since given way to a profound, pulverizing boredom.

“Do you think our birthday has passed yet?”

“Huh. Yeah, probably it has.” Jack had completely forgotten he and Olive had a birthday coming up. “Might as well celebrate it now. Happy birthday, sis.”

“Happy birthday, Jack.”

“I never figured I’d spend my fifteenth birthday locked up in a smugglers’ wagon. Life is strange, isn’t it?”

“Very. If you want, we can ask our escorts for a cake.”

Jack laughed. “And candles! Don’t forget the candles.”

“Maybe they’ve just been waiting to throw us a surprise party. They’ll stop the wagon in a nice meadow somewhere and let us out, and there’ll be cake and mulled wine and we’ll all play pin the tail on the donkey.”

“Yeah. And all our friends will be there. Maybe this whole thing has just been leading up to the most surprising surprise party of all time.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s actually what’s going on here. We’ve figured it out. Any minute now they’ll stop the cart and yell, ‘happy birthday,’ but we won’t be surprised at all because now we see it coming.”

“All their hard work was for nothing.”

There was a long pause.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Jack. Right now. I can’t take this anymore.”

“Where would we go? We don’t even know where we are.”

“I don’t care anymore. I’ve got to get out. Anything’s better than this. Even if we get caught by the Protectorate, even if we starve to death in the woods or get eaten by bears, it’s better.”

“I’ll get us out of here, Olive. I’ll get us out of here and I’ll make these guys sorry they ever grabbed us in the first place. That’ll be my birthday gift to you.”

There was another long pause in the darkness.

“And to think,” Olive said, “I was just going to get you a sweater.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I was wondering if I might ask a favor,” Jack asked in his most beseeching tone of voice. “It’s just a little thing, but it would mean a lot to me.”

Norris lifted his left haunch and befouled the air. In the enclosed space of the wagon, their bean-heavy diet had proven to be its own form of torture. “What is it?” he grunted, as he fanned his stink away.

Jack pointed at Iarex, which had been hanging unnoticed on a nail for the entire journey. “My lucky crown,” he said. “My dad got it for me a long time ago, on a trip to the fair, and I don’t like to be without it. Can I have it back?”

Norris almost choked on his food laughing, making Jack’s ears and cheeks burn. “A lucky crown?” Norris guffawed. “Grow up.”

“It’s ugly, isn’t it?” Egels asked, lifting the circlet up and holding it to the light. “Hope your dad didn’t pay a lot for it.” He slipped it on his own head, causing Jack a moment of panic. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to work for him. His bulging eyes stayed as dim as ever. “Hey, look at me!” he laughed shrilly. “I’m a king!”

“It was part of my pageant costume…” Jack mumbled, drawing further howls of laughter from his captors. Norris stuck one of his sausage fingers in Jack’s chest.

“You want to play with kids’ stuff for the rest of your life? Be a man.”

“Your sister’s turning into a real woman,” Egels giggled, stroking Olive’s hair. “Heck, she even cut poor Parmet’s hand off. You’re still playing with pageant costumes.”

Jack’s cheeks and ears burned hotter still. He could barely repress the urge to leap up and strangle Egels. The soldier’s bobbing Adam’s apple would make the perfect handhold.

“Aw, c’mon,” Egels said. “Don’t cry. Let’s be friends. Here, I’ll give you your lucky crown.” He pulled Iarex off his own head and placed it on Jack’s.

In that instant, Jack hatched a plan to kill all three of his captors. It was so simple he was angry with himself for not thinking of it earlier. “Thank you,” he said, with genuine gratitude. He winked at Olive, and for the first time in a long time he felt things might be all right.

~~~

After eating lunch, Jack got Farchor, the youngest of their three captors, to take him outside to relieve himself. The wagon was passing through a desolate stretch of plains. Prickly, waist-high red grasses covered the earth in all directions for as far as Jack could see, along with the occasional shrub or sickly little tree. It was midday and the sun was bright, but it was terribly cold. Jack did his best to keep his teeth from chattering and squatted down behind one of the shrubs.

“So what are you going to do with the money?” he asked his escort.

“I don’t know. Buy a cottage maybe. Move out of the damn barracks.”

“You can do better than that. The reward for Olive and me is ten thousand ducats. There’s three of you, so you’re getting what—thirty three hundred ducats and change? That’s an awful lot of money.”

The soldier didn’t say anything.

“No, wait. That magistrate guy’s getting a share too, huh? So you’ve got to split it four ways? That’s twenty five hundred. Still not too shabby. Is the magistrate getting a full share? That doesn’t seem fair. You three are the ones doing all the work.”

“Shut up. Just finish up.”

“It’s a big reward. I’m actually kind of flattered. Just a shame you have to split it up.”

“Shut up!” Farchor barked. From his seat behind the scrub brush, Jack smiled maliciously.

That night, there was a shriek from above. Even muffled by the thick wood of the cart, it was loud enough to raise the Merriwethers from their sleep. Jack felt something hot and sticky dripping down on his arm.

There were sounds of a struggle. Jack and Olive heard yelling and cursing, and felt bodies rolling around above them in mortal struggle. Something or somebody was hammered against the floor of the cart ten or twelve times, hard enough to force the thick oaken planks to give a little. There was a brief pause, and then a weak, strangled cry. More blood dripped down from the roof of the little smuggling cabin, filling the space up with a coppery reek.

“Jack?” Olive asked.

“Yeah?”

“What if they all killed each other?”

A sick jolt hit Jack’s stomach. He hadn’t thought of that. The compartment could only be opened from outside. The circlet had showed him how to get rid of his captors, and maybe it had done that too efficiently.

“I guess we’ll probably die of thirst.”

“Great.”

Jack and Olive were palpably relived when they heard what sounded to be bodies being dragged around above them. Jack wondered if in the entire history of the human race, anyone else had ever been cheered and encouraged by the sound of corpses being thrown from the back of a cart.

~~~

Norris was the only one of their three captors remaining when Jack and Olive were let up for dinner the next day, and it was not at all clear that he was much longer for this world. He had torn up his shirt to make a crude bandage for a wound in his midsection. The bandage was black with dried blood, and from the smell of things the cut wanted to turn septic. His face was a swollen mass of welts and bruises, and his knuckles were cracked and red. He had his razor ready in his right hand.

Egels and Farchor were gone, but there were fresh bloodstains on the floor of the cart indicating the spots where their lives had ended. One section of the floor was badly cracked and splintered from repeated impact, and there were clumps of hair and little fragments of teeth lying there like grisly confetti.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Norris groaned. “Just eat and get back in the hole.” He motioned at an overturned sack of jerky.

Jack bent over to pick up some jerky. As he did so, he made a little motion towards the corner of the wagon, where Cauttaraxus lay unattended. The siblings nodded in unison.

Jack picked up the sack and swung it at Norris’ head like a meat club. It was enough to knock the wounded man onto his back. By the time he had staggered back to his feet, Olive had her sword up and pointed at his throat.

Norris raised his razor, but his hand was unsteady. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said in a desperate tone. “We’re in tautho country. You’ll die if you run.”

“You’ll die if you try to stop us,” Olive replied. “Drop the blade.”

Norris’ razor clattered to the floor. Jack picked it up and tossed it out the back of the cart.

“Down in the hole,” Olive snarled. “That’s fair, isn’t it?” Norris grudgingly got inside, although it was barely big enough to contain his considerable girth.

“We’re not going to lock the door and starve you to death,” Olive yelled. “But if you come up from there while we’re here, or if you try to come after us, then I will cut you in half. “ She turned to her brother. “What do we do now?”

It was a good question.

~~~

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation of Edwin and Jeanne Merriwether was beginning.

They sat side by side in a little room with clean white walls. There were no windows but plenty of lamps. In fact, it was oppressively bright. They were shackled tightly to wooden chairs, with painful restraints holding their heads straight forward.

“Jeanne?” Edwin asked.

“I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry, baby. This is all my fault.”

“Hush now. No, it isn’t. None of this is your fault. I knew about your family when I accepted your ring. I made my choice, and I’m happy I did.”

“I love you so much, honey.”

The door to the Merriwethers’ cell creaked open, and a man in a physician’s gown walked in. He was very short and very fat, and his skin and clothing were the same blinding white as the walls of the cell. His full, blood red lips were curled up into a chilling smile. There was a steaming bowl of soup in his cupped hands.

“Good afternoon, Edwin and Jeanne,” he said in a gurgling little singsong, interspersing whistles and coos between his words as he spoke. “I’m the warden of this place. I’ve brought you a nice lunch.” He dipped a wooden spoon into the broth and held it up to Edwin’s face. Edwin could barely remember the last time he had eaten, and the soup smelled so good. It had an odd chemical aftertaste to it, but he barely cared anymore. If they wanted to poison him, so be it. The fat man fed Edwin and Jeanne, then proclaimed something in a strange language that hurt their ears. The empty bowl vanished from his hands.

Edwin realized he was getting very dizzy. He knew he was held tightly in place, but it seemed he was spinning and whirling around the room like a top. It was cold, but he was sweating very badly. The warden, who had seemed so short just a moment ago, now towered like an ogre. A song like heavenly music played in Edwin’s head, and he wondered if he would be allowed to die at last.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” the man said, and for no convincing reason Edwin believed this to be true. “There’s no more whips, no more thumbscrews. This is not about punishing you. This is about making you into something better than what you are right now. Be happy. Your redemption is at hand.”

At this, weeks of painful, bloody resistance broke down into rubble. Edwin and Jeanne both began weeping helplessly, like little children being forgiven for something that had made them ashamed. The fat man tenderly wiped off their cheeks and continued. “I know it may be a little scary, but you’ll be better off in the end. Embrace what you are becoming. Here, I’ll show you the gate.”

The man took out a piece of charcoal and drew something on the clean white walls of the cell. When he was done, he stepped aside to let the Merriwethers contemplate his handiwork.

The whole world spun uncontrollably. Edwin heard someone screaming, and thought it might have been him. His mind started to drain away, and he fell into a helpless, senseless state far worse than simple unconsciousness.

The warden turned to leave. “This is the first stage of initiation,” he said. “Once you’ve passed it, I’ll be back to assist you with the second.”

~~~

The dim light of an overcast winter day nearly blinded Jack and Olive as they emerged from the cart. The sun was very bright, even though it was terribly cold. After their long, stifling confinement, even fresh air and wind felt alien. Once their eyes had readjusted to natural light, they saw they were on a vast plain covered in tall red grass. The topsoil was blowing away despite the grass, and huge clouds of thick yellow dust moved over the surface of the earth. There was no road in sight. Indeed, other than the cart, there was no sign of civilization in sight. The Merriwethers were wrapped in thick fur blankets they had taken from the wagon, but they still shivered.

Olive picked up a clod of yellow dirt and crumbled it in her fingers. “So these are the Tauth Plains, huh? Can you tell which way it is to Wyrmsreach?”

Jack took out a map and compass he had scavenged from the wagon. He fiddled with the unfamiliar things, never having traveled beyond his hometown before, and then pointed in the direction he thought was northeast.

~~~

The most awful thing about the Tauth Plains was that they seemed to go on forever. However, there was fierce competition for that particular honor. Other challengers for the position included the life-stealing cold, the bloodthirsty midges, the sour-smelling dust that caked to the insides of your mouth and nostrils, and the brutal winds. Even the sky was unsettling. It was a weak shade of yellow and its clouds spun like dancers. At night, one could not see the stars.

Jack and Olive soon regretted their decision to leave the wagon behind. Although being confined inside it had been horrible, it turned out that being outside and exposed to the elements was even worse. After quite a lot of trial and error, during which time they nearly froze to death, Jack and Olive learned to build a fire in the wind by building a little shelter of stones. They got a flame going out of dead grass and shrubs and huddled around it wrapped in their furs. Jack sighed with relief as soon as he was off his feet. “My legs are killing me,” he groaned.

“Mine too. What do you expect? We’ve been cooped up in that wagon for gods-know how long. Barely even got a chance to stretch.”

“Well, we stretched plenty today.” After a vigorous session of leg rubbing, he pulled off his boots. “Urgh. I haven’t seen this many blisters since the smallpox broke out. At least we haven’t run into any tautho.”

Olive’s mother had told her that the tautho came for bad little children and carried them away. There was an entire series of stories with this theme, including the boy who told lies (whose tongue was cut out and nailed to a stump by the tautho) and the little girl who played with matches (who was tied to a long pole and set ablaze to illuminate a tautho tea party). The one that got to Olive the worst was the tale of the girl who fell asleep in church. The tautho tied her hair in pigtails and used them to play tug-of-war until they ripped her head apart. It had been a great relief when Olive’s mother stopped telling her bedtime stories. Every noise in the distance made Olive start, and between the strong winds and the cries of far-off animals the plains were a noisy place. “Jack, what do you know about the tautho?” she asked.

“I know that ‘tautho warlord’ is a lousy role to have in the Veneration Day pageant.”

“Be serious. You’ve read a book about them, right?”

“Yes…”

“Was there anything useful in it?”

Jack thought about this for a moment. There had been a very long chapter about the tautho’s various methods for executing prisoners, which were governed by elaborate codes of custom and protocol. There had been some good information about the gods of the tautho, cruel beings with martinet codes of honor and a healthy appetite for sacrifice. And of course there was ample information about their collaboration with Maxander during the war, and about the atrocities they committed under his banner.

“It was mostly just stuff about history. Not all that interesting.”

“You never read anything practical,” Olive grumbled. “Always have your head up in the clouds.”

~~~

That night, Jack and Olive were awoken by some of the most dreadful screams they had ever heard. They tried to convince themselves and each other it was just the wind again, or perhaps the call of some plains animal that wouldn’t come near a fire, but deep down they both recognized Norris’s voice in the bawling.

The next day, both the Merriwethers found themselves looking over their shoulders compulsively. It was particularly frustrating for Jack. Past a certain point the landscape turned into a red and yellow blur. Even on a nice day he couldn’t see very far, and today his eyes were stung by sun and dust.

“Is there anyone following us?” he asked.

Olive looked behind her for the hundredth time that day. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “Why?”

“I just feel weird.”

Olive looked up in the sky. “A couple of buzzards are circling around. Is that what’s doing it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Huh.” Olive turned around again. “No, I don’t see anything.”

“Weird.”

Still, Jack couldn’t get rid of the tension in his gut or ease the twitch in his neck. He kept looking behind him, and kept getting frustrated by his nearsightedness. It was like being chased by an invisible man. He recalled the incident on the road out of Muddy Hollow, when Prudence had accidentally made their enemies invisible. Even after all this time the sounds of her incantations were still clear and crisp in his head. Jack wondered if he could recreate them for himself.

“Olive, can you hold on for a minute? There’s something I want to try.”

~~~

Hezekih ran his finger across his oath-scars as he contemplated the invaders. “They are very small,” he said quietly. “Ye think they are striplings?”

“Perhaps,” Izzakin replied. “They are a long way from home.”

“They may have come from that wagon we found last night,” Yasael said. The fresh, smooth scalp of its driver hung from his belt, and the man’s shiny steel razor was in his pack.

The three hunters stalked onwards, running on all fours through the long grass. Covered from horns to hooves by their red straw cloaks, they were perfectly camouflaged.

“How shall we send them off?” Hezekih asked.

Izzakin knew the traditions the best. “It is not honorable to wield weapons against unarmed grass-eaters,” he said. “We may offer them up to the earth giant, imprison their wind, trepan them, or fit them with the cloak of ant stings. Or we may fill their bellies with pitch.”

“We have not made an offering to the earth giant in many suns,” Hezekih said. “We must not neglect his hunger.”

“Nay,” Izzakin said. “Remember, the earth giant hungers for spirits, not meat. Striplings would be an insult to him. I think we should imprison their wind until their lungs burst.” He unfurled a length of thin hemp rope from around his belt.

“As you wish,” Hezekih agreed. As expected, the hunt was coming to a rapid close. The striplings had sat down to rest. The grass-eaters were so lazy. They could never stand a good trek across the plains. As they advanced, Hezekih noticed something was making a little whistling noise. It was probably just a bird. Nothing important.

~~~

Olive was sitting by a shrub trying to rub some warmth back into her legs when the monsters burst out of the grass and seized her. They had rams’ heads, except their teeth were as long and sharp as those of lions. Their heavily scarred bodies were decorated with pieces of men. Strings of ears and scalps and fingers and teeth hung off of them. One of the tautho wore the flayed face of a man stretched across his chest, like a leather breastplate. The face seemed to be silently screaming, and Olive screamed along with it. Jack stood wide-eyed and motionless nearby, still making that stupid whistling sound.

The tautho had haunted Olive’s nightmares for as long as she could remember. Now here they were in real life, and her mother’s stories seemed terribly plausible. Olive tried to draw her sword, but one of them pried it out of her hands and tossed it away.

“There were two of ye trekking the plains!” one of the tautho barked into Olive’s face. His hot, reeking breath washed over her and she was spattered by gobbets of his spittle. “Where has the other gone?” Jack stood just a few feet away from him, but the tautho didn’t seem to notice.

“Jack, help me!” she yelled. Jack did not move. He was still as motionless as a statue, and still singing that maddening song. He slipped on his circlet.

“Herein is the sentence of Izzakin, son of Raez, warrior of the Tiresian warband and the Haeleth clan!” the face-wearer bellowed, his mouth and tongue struggling with the language of the humans. “I claim ye for the crime of crossing my father’s lands without leave, and in scar-oath against the grass-eaters.” He wrapped a cord around Olive’s throat.

“You bastard!” Olive screamed. “Let me go! Help! Jack!”

The tautho suddenly released the cord. He coughed, and blood came flowing freely from his muzzle. Olive backed away and saw that Jack was standing behind him. Her brother had planted Cauttaraxus into the brute’s back. The tautho gurgled something in his own language and collapsed.

The other two drew war-clubs studded with nails and teeth. Jack pulled Cauttaraxus out of the dead tautho’s body, and in the same motion stuck it through a living tautho’s heart. He looked absolutely terrified.

The last of the bandits took a vicious swing. Jack narrowly dodged the blow, but his legs got tangled up underneath him and he lost his balance and fell. The tautho swung down at him for a killing blow, but as he did, Jack raised Cauttaraxus in defense. The tautho’s crude hands fell apart, and his club dropped to the ground in a shower of blood and stubby fingers. The tautho took a few steps back, and Jack clambered to his feet. He pointed Cauttaraxus at his wounded enemy.

“W-walk away,” Jack stammered. “Don’t make me do this. Please just go away.”

The tautho growled something in its own guttural tongue and took a few more steps back. It dropped to all fours, lowered his horns and pawed at the earth, smearing its blood on the ground. It was going to charge. Even if Jack killed it, there was no way he could stop its momentum.

Olive was no longer afraid for herself. She picked up the war-club of one of the fallen tautho. It was much, much heavier than her saber, but her fear and anger gave her strength. She stepped behind the tautho and swung at his flank. There was a hideous schlorping sound and a sickening impact as a dozen sharp objects stuck in the wood sank into the tautho’s flesh. To Olive’s great surprise, the barbarian did not cry out and did not fall, but his leg was too badly hurt for him to charge. He kicked at Olive with his injured leg, nearly catching her with one of his hooves. Then Jack was on him, and there was another schlorp. The tautho’s head fell from his shoulders, and a beat later his body fell to the ground.

Jack was covered in blood, and his eyes were full of horror. Cauttaraxus dropped from his trembling hands, and he tore off the circlet and threw it into the dirt. Olive approached him. He held out his hand to stop her, turned his head away, and coughed up his meager lunch.

Olive tore a strip from one of the tautho’s cloaks and began wiping her brother’s face. “It’s okay, Jack,” she murmured. “It’s okay. They’re dead. You did what you had to do.”

Jack wiped his mouth off across the back of his sleeve and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s… they would have—“”

“I know. You did the right thing. You saved us.”

“Yeah.”

“You did really good, Jack. Everyone back home would have been amazed. You killed three tautho barbarians!”

“It wasn’t me. It was Iarex and Cauttaraxus. They were telling me what to do. I was just their puppet.”

“Whatever it was, it worked.”

Olive looked around the battlefield, feeling strangely exhilarated. The monsters of her nightmares lay dead at her feet. “Jack, look at that!” She pointed at the head of the tautho Jack had decapitated. Its eyes were still open and its mouth was moving, although no sound was coming out.

“I’ll be damned,” Jack said. “I saw that happen with a chicken once.”

“What do you think he’s trying to say?”

“He’s probably cursing us. Saying his gods and his clansmen will strike us down. Something like that.”

“Yeah,” Olive said. “Well if his gods and clansmen want to strike us down, they’ll have to get at the back of a long line.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Merriwethers had been making slow enough progress before the fight, and their pace steadily declined as they walked on. They hadn’t seen any fresh water except the occasional mud hole since the time they left the wagon, and the dust was filling up their throats and parching them. Their hearts rose when they spotted a fort in the distance. A few dozen crumbling red brick huts surrounded a log palisade. A watchtower was positioned inside the palisade, along with a couple of two-story buildings and a little church. Saint Hugo’s symbol shone in the golden afternoon light.

“We’ve got to stop here, Olive. We’re out of water, and we’re lost.”

“But they’re Protectorate. They’ll arrest us if we come close.”

“It’s just like when we on the road with Zanzibar. We need a good cover story.” He slapped at a midge on the back of his neck. “We can even stick with the story we had then. We’ll say we were travelling with our parents to start a shrine, and we were attacked by tautho. Dad got us lost.”

“Okay.”

“It was the middle of the night when we were attacked. You and I were asleep, but the sound of the fighting woke us up. We managed to hide from them, and we’ve been walking ever since. Got it?”

Olive nodded.

“All right, let’s get a drink.”

As they approached the palisades, a tautho emerged from one of the little brick houses carrying a sledgehammer. Jack and Olive recoiled, and Olive’s hand went to her sword.

The tautho avoided the Merriwethers’ gaze. Unlike the others they had met, with their red cloaks and brutal decorations, this one wore a coarse brown shirt and pants. His shoulders were hunched and gnarled.

There was a commotion up at the watchtower. The palisade gates burst open, and four Protectorate soldiers ran out. The tautho deftly stepped out of their path, its eyes cast downward.

~~~

Olive stretched out on her bed like a cat, yawning pleasurably. “Oh man,” she chuckled. “This is nice. This is very, very nice. I had no idea how wonderful beds were until I was forced to go without for a while. Soft beds with clean sheets are the best invention in the history of the world.”

“This is nice,” Jack concurred. “But I think getting to take a bath again was even better.”

“I’m not badmouthing the bath. Or the hot meal. I just think beds are the best.” They had been set up in an unused supply room in the barracks, but it felt like a luxurious inn in light of their recent travels.

Jack got up and took another look at himself in the mirror. He hadn’t seen his own reflection since he was back in Muddy Hollow, and he found that he had virtually become a stranger to himself. The blemishes he had cursed so fervently for the past few years had mostly gone away, although many had left little pockmarks as reminders of their tenure. More amazingly, itchy yellow stubble was starting to emerge on his jaw. His blonde hair had already regrown into its usual shaggy mane, although, incredibly enough, it was still streaked with a few black stains from Zanzibar’s vile dye.

“You don’t think they’re just trying to get us comfortable?” Olive asked in a hushed voice.

Jack shook his head. “I saw the wanted posters up on the wall when they were bringing us here. We weren’t up there. It was mostly tautho bandits. I actually think there was a five hundred ducat reward on the three we killed. Not that we can claim it without a drawing a lot of questions.”

“Figures. So what’s the plan?”

Jack grumbled, scratched his chin, and turned over. “The plan is to sleep in. Talk to me in the morning.”

Olive was awakened by the deep, throaty roar of Jack’s snoring. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. She thought about waking Jack up to discuss their plans, but decided against it. He’d earned a good sleep. Besides, waking Jack up when he was resolved to sleep in was like waking up a hibernating bear. It was difficult to accomplish, and there was no reward in it.

Olive decided to do a little exploring. She washed her face, got dressed, and headed out to get acquainted with her surroundings. The Merriwethers hadn’t been able to get a good look at the camp when they first arrived. As soon as she and Jack had shown up, the soldiers had bustled them into the barracks. Now she could see the palisade had been erected around a mine. There was a huge pit at the center of the fort. Tautho streamed in and out in two orderly columns, the ones coming in pushing empty carts and the ones coming out pushing carts full of ore. A few tautho with red bandannas wrapped around their necks marched alongside the columns brandishing thick wooden staves and hammering laggards on the back or across the forehead with great force. The operation was remarkably quiet. Other than the squeaking of the mine carts’ wheels and the occasional dull thuds of the supervisor’s cudgels, the camp was completely silent.

Beyond the tautho, bored-looking Protectorate troops stood watch with muskets. The soldiers wore cloth masks over their mouths and noses to keep the dust out, which Olive supposed was a pretty good idea. She had only been outside for a moment and there was already a choking layer of silt lining her nostrils and the inside of her mouth. She had no idea how the tautho could stand it inside the mine.

A young soldier standing guard waved to Olive as she emerged from the barracks. “Morning, miss! Are you doing all right? Need anything?”

“Morning. I wouldn’t mind breakfast, but I’ll wait until my brother gets up.”

“Sure, sure. Just let us know when. We’ve sent word to the magistrate to come see you, but he’s not here yet. You’ve got your run of the camp until then, except for the mine. I wouldn’t go down into the mine if I were you.”

“Why not? Would the tautho attack me?”

“Oh, no. Nothing to fear from this lot, they’re tame. It’s just that the mine’s pretty dangerous. We had a tunnel collapse just last week.”

“How awful. Was anyone hurt?”

The soldier shrugged. “We lost a few muttonheads and their gear. Nothing we can’t replace.”

A bell pealed. The workers stopped in their tracks, then wheeled their carts out of the path of the mine.

“What’s going on?” Olive asked.

“The night shift’s getting off now, and the day shift’s starting work. Here, look.” A great number of dirt-caked workers streamed out of the mine and were met by an equally great number streaming in from outside the palisade. Olive had once seen a drawing of a snake swallowing its own tail and was suddenly reminded of it. A number of soldiers wheeled a small cannon out of a supply shack, pointing it at the mouth of the pit opening.

“What’s the cannon for?”

“Oh, you haven’t seen Mose yet. You’re in for a treat. Don’t worry, he’s harmless. The cannon is just a formality.”

An enormous, hulking tautho, caked with dirt and striped with scars, came out of the earth. Mose was easily fifteen feet tall, and would have stood yet taller if he stood up straight. His horns had been shattered, and many of his teeth were gone. He wiped dirt from his eyes and looked up into the sun, blinking. The soldiers kept the cannon trained on him as he passed by.

“That ugly brute once bore arms against Saint Hugo, believe it or not. Not personally, mind you, but he was in Maxander’s army.”

“I don’t believe you. That would make him more than three hundred years old.”

“Long as they take care of themselves—and thank Patheon most of them don’t—they can live as long as they please. And they don’t stop growing when they become adults. They just keep getting bigger their whole lives.”

“Wow.” As the giant walked off, passing through the stream of workers like a whale passing through a school of fish, Olive thought she had never seen such an unhappy-looking creature.

~~~

After rapidly exhausting the sights of interest within the palisades and returning to her room in the barracks to discover her brother still asleep, Olive decided to take a look around outside the walls.

The cramped brick houses the tautho lived in were barely big enough to contain them. They had to crouch and turn their heads just to get their horns through the doorways. Olive saw one barn-sized structure that was likely Mose’s residence. The narrow streets were full of busy tautho, many of them still dirty from the mines. They minded their own business relentlessly. A few of them looked at Olive with hate, but none of them did anything more intimidating than mutter angrily in a foreign tongue. The overseers were on patrol, and the others gave them a very wide berth.

Olive heard a commotion from a nearby alley. She looked down it and a tautho came tumbling out, nearly knocking her down as he collapsed into the mud. Another, much larger, tautho strode out of the alley after him. There were red bandannas around the larger tautho’s arms, and red blood spattered on his knuckles and horns. The overseer yanked the smaller tautho to his feet and barked at him furiously.

“What’s going on?” Olive asked. “What did he do?”

The two combatants dropped to all fours and circled each other. Then the overseer charged, and there was a sound like a thunderclap as their horns collided. The smaller one staggered back, shaking from the force of the impact. The overseer bowed his head to Olive, smiled, and said in unsteady speech, “Ye need not fear. Head on now.” His eyes were fixed down by her ankles.

“I want to know what he did.”

“He mocked my authority.”

The smaller one barked something back. His head was waving unsteadily on his shoulders and he had obviously been beaten badly, but he was not out of the fight yet. He charged with his horns and there was another thunderclap collision, actually knocking the overseer back a few inches despite his larger size. “Liar!” the accused bellowed with surprising strength.

The overseer stood upright again. He grabbed the smaller tautho by the throat and tossed him up against a nearby wall, then picked up a stray brick lying on the ground.

“Get away now, girl,” he said. “He has to learn his place. I’ll tell the soldiers if ye interfere.”

Olive might have been able to walk away before, but once the overseer told her the beating’s cause she was spoiling for a fight. “Typical Protectorate bullcrap,” she said. “You guys just like pushing people around.”

The accused tried to say something, but he couldn’t get the air. The overseer raised his brick. “Stop,” Olive ordered.

The overseer dropped the brick and muttered something that Olive figured was a tautho obscenity. Its meaning was obscure to her, but the tone was plain enough. He met Olive’s gaze for the first time, and now she could see his eyes were furious. He bowed to her contemptuously and walked away.

The smaller tautho was having a coughing fit. He leaned up against the side of one of the little brick huts, trying to get his breath back and wipe the mud and blood out of his eyes. Although he was solidly built, he wasn’t much taller than Olive.

“So what was all that about?” Olive asked. “What did you say that got him so mad at you?”

“It is of no matter,” the tautho said.

“Heck of a beating to catch over something of no matter.”

“I will speak plainer. It is of no matter to ye.”

“I did just help you get away from that guy.”

The tautho shook his head. “That overseer is my neighbor. I see him every day before I go into the mine and before I go to sleep. I see him at the mess hall and the well. If he wants my blood, he can get it.”

“Oh. I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you into even more trouble. I was just trying to help.”

The tautho cast a skeptical eye at Olive as he brushed himself off. “A grass-eater trying to help a tautho? If ye trade in wonders, do ye also have an egg laid by a rooster? Or the horn of a unicorn? I would like to see things never seen before.” He laughed, and his laugh was actually not dissimilar from Jack’s.

“My apologies,” Olive said. “Next time I see you getting beaten in the streets I’ll walk on, if that’s what you’d prefer.” She turned and began heading back towards the palisade gate.

“Hold!” the tautho cried. Olive stopped and looked back.

“I am sorry. Ye asked a fair question. He was eating rations he was supposed to be giving out, and I called him a thief.”

“I see. Oh, but where are my manners?” Olive curtsied. “My name’s Olive,” she said, momentarily oblivious of her own cover story. “What’s yours?”

“They call me Daniel.”

“Well, Daniel, it was very nice meeting you. I’ve never actually talked to a tautho before.”

“Aye, I thought so. The whole camp has been talking of ye and your brother. Ye are the girl whose parents were slain by raiders?”

“Yes.”

Daniel smiled. “No, ye are not. For thine own sake, I hope ye lie to the guards better than ye lie to me.”

~~~

When Olive got back to the barracks, Jack was shoveling home fries and grits into his face with the rapacity of a starved grizzly. “Thanks for waiting for me,” she remarked.

“See anything interesting?” he asked during one of his brief intervals between mouthfuls.

“It’s pretty depressing,” Olive said. “They treat the tautho like slaves.”

“Yeah, well, after that last bunch we ran into, I’m not planning on losing any sleep over the mistreatment of the poor tautho.”

“I’ve seen how long you stay in bed, you lazy tub of guts. You wouldn’t lose any sleep over the end of the world.”

“Ha, ha. If you’re done making fun of me, we’ve got to figure out what we’re doing here. Close the door.”

Olive shut the door to their room, sat at the table, and leaned in close. She began helping herself to Jack’s breakfast as he talked.

“They said last night we’re only one hundred miles from Fort Hoening,” Jack whispered. “And according to our map, Fort Hoening’s not far from Wyrmsreach at all. Let’s ask for transit to Fort Hoening. Then, as soon as we get close to the fort, we’ll slip away in the night and head north to Wyrmsreach. If Prudence and Zanzibar are still alive, we’ll probably meet up with them there. And if they’re not, well, we can figure out what to do next. We’ll be safe from the Protectorate, at least.”

“Can you find Wyrmsreach?”

“I’ve got a map and a compass. Besides, it’s a mountain. I don’t think it’ll be that hard to find.”

“It’s a big gamble. We could get caught by tautho raiders again. Or the Protectorate could track us when we try to slip off. If we run away in the middle of the night we’ll blow our cover for sure.”

“I know. Look, gambles are the best I’ve got. If you have any surefire ideas I’d love to hear them. It’s just that if we stay here much longer, they might figure out who we are. Remember, we’re famous.”

“Stupid fame.”

~~~

The magistrate stopped by for a visit later that afternoon. He was a fairly young man, but his face was as worn and weather-beaten as his district’s terrain. The magistrate made his best attempt to be friendly and accommodating to two poor, orphaned teenagers, but his best attempt wasn’t much good. He was stiff, formal, and very distracted. It was all too easy for Jack and Olive to talk their way onto the next supply train to Fort Hoening and out of his jurisdiction. However, the next supply train to Fort Hoening didn’t leave until the end of the week.

Jack spent his down time eating, drinking, and reading every pulp adventure novel he could get his hands on. The soldiers at the fort had a good collection of them, entertainment being scarce this far in the wastes. Olive, on the other hand, still couldn’t bear to be cooped up after her long confinement. She took long walks outside the palisades every day, despite the bitter cold and the stinging dust storms. The soldiers warned her that to go so far out wasn’t safe, but she didn’t pay it any heed. She walked until she couldn’t take the cold anymore.

One day, coming back through the tautho settlement, Olive saw Daniel cooking a piece of withered beef over a smoky brazier. His face was somewhat swollen, but he didn’t look nearly as hurt as she feared he might. He waved her over when he saw her passing by.

“You’re not looking so bad,” Olive said. “I was afraid you might have your head caved in the next time I saw you.”

Daniel tapped on his forehead. “I have a thick skull.”

“Good for you.”

“I hear ye are departing soon. I hope ye have a safe journey.” The tautho sniffed the evil-looking piece of meat he was cooking. “I wish I could escape this pit.”

“You shouldn’t be so eager to leave your home. I had to leave mine a while ago, and it’s not a lot of fun.”

Daniel scoffed. “This is not my home. I have been here less than a year.”

“Oh? Where are you from?”

He shrugged. “Someplace in the Tauth Plains. More than that I cannot say. They divide us up and move us from place to place.”

“Why?”

“To break the clans and prevent us from rising up. We cannot plan rebellion when we do not know our neighbors, or the lay of the land where we live.”

“Don’t you ever get to see your family?”

“Not since I was very small. They split my family to separate corners of the Plains when I was three years of age.”

“How old are you now?”

“Nineteen.”

“And you haven’t seen your family in all that time?”

“Aye, that is right. I would not know them if I saw them, and they would not know me.” Daniel tore out a hunk of beef and started chewing. Even with his sharp teeth and strong jaws, it obviously took some effort. “Would ye take a bite?” he asked.

Olive helped herself to a mouthful. It was like chewing hardened tar. “Thanks!” she said. “It’s good.”

Daniel shook his head. “Ye are still a poor liar.”

Olive glanced around. A number of tautho were glaring at them disapprovingly, but there were no guards or overseers nearby. “I’m going to Wyrmsreach with my brother,” she said. “I want you to come with us.”

“Wyrmsreach? The City of Refuge?” Daniel’s countenance brightened.

“Aye…er, yes. Can you get onto the next supply train?”

“I will volunteer for it. But I must warn ye the route to Wyrmsreach is heavily guarded. The Protectorate has fenced it off to keep the tautho from fleeing there. How will ye get past them?”

“We’ve got a plan,” Olive said.

Daniel seemed to pick up that she was lying to him once again, but if he noticed, he didn’t say anything about it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jack was once again amazed and dismayed by the vast, impersonal emptiness of the plains. He tried to keep the outpost in sight as an anchor, but it shrank to the size of a dot on the horizon and eventually was gone, leaving him feeling as though he were floating in space. Jack tried to concentrate on his destination, but Wyrmsreach was no more than an abstraction for him. The trail and the dust and the cold and the gnats and the blisters were all punishingly real.

The soldiers who escorted them suffered from no such malaise. They passed around a strong-smelling clay jug and told men’s stories. There was much talk of how they intended to spend their back pay when they got to Fort Hoening, and of which brothels were the best. Jack was tempted to talk with his sister to distract her from the crude banter, but she didn’t seem to be paying any attention to it. Her attention was, strangely enough, fixed on the tautho who were leading the wagons. There was one of them, in particular, that she talked to quite a lot despite the angry looks these conversations drew from the overseers.

Jack thought back to some tin tautho he had owned when he was small. They had been ugly things, crudely carved and with blood-red paint splashed across their hands and muzzles. Jack had spent many happy hours staging their massacres. Sometimes the Protectorate soldiers would catch them in an ambush, or sometimes they would rout them in open combat, but the toy tautho always wound up facedown on the floor. When he was eleven or twelve he had traded them to Bill Tuck for some black powder. Jack thought when he returned to Muddy Hollow, he might like to buy those tin tautho back. Then he remembered the witchfinder had hanged Bill Tuck’s mother and father, and Bill had been sent away to a work farm for delinquents. The odds that Jack would ever see Muddy Hollow again were slim to none. He’d have to content himself with real tautho and real soldiers. Jack looked up resentfully at the sun, wiped the grime from his face, and scanned the horizon for any sign of a mountain.

~~~

Abraxus the Elder couldn’t see the enemy yet, but he could smell them very well. While his old eyes had started to go cloudy a century ago, his nostrils seemed to get keener with each passing year. He breathed in the sweat of the enemy’s oxen, the oil on their armor, and the powder in their guns.

“I see them coming,” Haukan said, pointing to a spot on the horizon. “Just as our captive brothers reported.”

“Then we shall wait for them,” Abraxus said. “And we shall teach them the folly of tearing at the earth giant’s guts and keeping our people as slaves. There is a spot not far from here that would be prime ground for an ambush. The ground is soft and good for digging in.”

“Have ye fought on this land before?”

“Aye. Long ago, when I was a mere stripling. One of Maxander’s knights led us in a slaughter of enemy pilgrims. It was all easier then. There were so many more of us, and the enemy lacked muskets and cannon.”

Haukan spat in disgust. “Maxander. May his ghost know every torture the furies can devise. May his seed wither and perish. If only—”

“There is no changing the past. We can do nothing but seek vengeance for it. Tell the men to ready their weapons and call on their ancestral ghosts. We shall render our judgment on the enemy very soon.”

~~~

“So what’s up with that tautho you’ve been talking to?” Jack asked during a rest break. “You’re making a new friend?”

“His name is Daniel. He’s a good guy.”

“By the gods!” Jack laughed. “You have a boyfriend!”

Olive slugged Jack in the shoulder hard enough to make his whole arm go numb for a moment. It didn’t stop his laughter.

“Shut up!” Olive hissed. “That’s gross. It would be bestiality. He’s just a friend.”

“I’m just messing with you. We’ve already palled around with witches, smugglers and goblins, right? Why not a tautho? It’s good you’ve got someone to talk to.”

Olive looked around to make sure all the guards were a safe distance away. “He knows we’re not who we say we are,” she whispered.

Jack stopped smiling abruptly. “What?”

“And I told him he could come with us to Wyrmsreach.”

“What? Olive, are you insane?!”

“He’s my friend! I couldn’t just leave him!”

“You put us both in danger without even talking to me about it.”

“Because I knew you’d say no.”

“Damn right. By Patheon’s scales, Olive! What were you thinking?”

“That this is all too much for us to do by ourselves. And that I can’t just leave him to spend the rest of his life as a slave without hating myself forever. I’d rather die than hate myself forever.”

The soldiers were motioning that the rest break was over. Jack painfully got up to his feet. “If he gets us in trouble…” he said threateningly.

“How could he get us in any more trouble than we’re already in?”

Jack had to admit that was a good point.

~~~

The raiders struck with little warning, and their attack was terrible and swift. Jack and Olive heard a delicate, fluttering little sound, like the breeze going through reeds, and then a dozen soldiers fell screaming with arrows in them. Tautho burst out of hidden foxholes, howling a terrifying doglike war cry. Between their red cloaks and the red dust caked on their bodies, it was as if the plain itself had grown sick of the little convoy and was vomiting up golems to destroy it.

There were a few pops of gunfire, very nearly drowned out by barking tautho, and then the raiders were on top of the convoy, beating its guards to death with spiked clubs. The overseers tried to flee, but they were overtaken and torn apart alive by the tautho they’d been beating just moments ago. Olive drew Cauttaraxus, but was at a loss for what to do with it when confronted by so many.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Jack screamed, trying to make his voice heard over the massacre’s din. He grabbed Olive’s hand and ran.

A tautho wearing a garland of human ears lunged towards Jack with a club. There was a pop, and the raider fell backwards with a neat hole between his eyes. Jack got one look at his savior, a soldier who looked barely older than himself, before two more tautho got hold of the poor man and beat him to death.

Then there was another great roar, louder than anything Jack or Olive had ever heard before. It shook their bones and hurt their ears. Jack turned, wondering if perhaps a lion had arrived on the scene, and saw an enormous tautho, easily thirty feet tall, pulling itself out of the dirt. Its entire body, from its head to its hooves, was criss-crossed with an elaborate lattice of scars. It roared again, shaking the air, then picked up one of the screaming soldiers and bit him in half.

Daniel pulled up the tarp on one of the wagons. “In here!” he said.

Jack was awestruck by the giant, but Olive still had a death grip on his hand and pulled him over to safety. They huddled under the filthy tarp on top of a pile of silver bars, listening to the screams of their protectors and the raiders’ triumphant barking. Eventually the screams died away to nothing, and a tautho pulled the tarp that covered them away.

~~~

“This was a good day,” Haukan said as he watched the invaders’ wagons burn. “Five of us dead to thirty-two of them, and all their goods captured. Our ancestors must be pleased with us.”

“Aye,” Abraxus the Elder agreed as he picked scraps of armor from between his teeth. “But remember I knew your ancestors while they lived, and many of them were fools. They also would have thought five of our warriors were a fair exchange for thirty-two grass-eaters. But tomorrow another thirty-two will come, and then another, and then another.” The giant looked over to where the liberated captives were burying the enemy’s silver. “Whatever else we might say about the grass-eaters, they do not stop fighting.”

“What would have us do? Accept defeat?”

“Nay. But do not pretend this war ends with anything except our people’s extinction. The gods have turned their back on us, Haukan. It is not so bad for ye because of your youth. Ye never saw the things we lost. Sometimes I think the gods gave us long life so we would have more opportunities for despair.”

“If death is our fate, at least we can share it with our enemies. Elder, we have two captives. Striplings. What rite shall we use for them?”

“How were they captured?”

Haukan laughed. “They were cowering in one of the wagons. As if we could not smell their terror.”

“They hid from honorable battle? I think it would be appropriate to send them to the next world naked. Then we should be on our way.”

Haukan took his pack off and searched for his flensing knives.

~~~

Olive struggled against the ropes that bound her. Despite their crude, three-fingered hands, the tautho had done a good job with the knots. The harder she struggled, the harder they bit into her skin. She kept on with it anyway. She looked around for Daniel but couldn’t see him in the crowd. A couple of the overseers had survived the attack, and the tautho had trussed them alive over the burning wagons. Olive could smell their cooking flesh and realized she would never again have an appetite for mutton or beef. Assuming she lived to ever eat another dinner.

“This is bad,” Jack said. He had put Iarex on while he was under the tarp, but under these circumstances even it was ineffective. There were many ways to kill these tautho, but none of them was practical right now. Even the world’s greatest strategist could scarcely be expected to do much when tied up and surrounded by dozens of enemies. However, Jack saw something sad and stoic in the giant’s bearing, and thought he might be able to do something with that.

One of the tautho made an announcement in their savage tongue. The warriors assembled into a group, and the group surrounded the Merriwethers. The one who had called the warband to order held a flint knife. The giant followed behind him, arms crossed across its chest. It seemed disinterested.

“You’ve got to get out of here, Jack,” Olive whispered. “Go invisible and get out of here.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You’ve got to go now! Come on Jack! I don’t want you to die because of me!”

“I don’t want to be alive because I abandoned you. Remember what you said about not wanting to hate yourself forever?”

“Herein is the sentence of Haukan, son of Gavek, warrior of the Khartur warband and the Ghadeck clan!” the knife-wielding Tautho announced. “I claim ye for the crime of cowardice, and in blood-oath against the grass-eaters!”

Jack looked down at the ropes around his hands and feet. Iarex showed him how he could make quick work of them. He untied his bonds with two quick tugs, then shrugged the ropes away and stood.

“Kill us and you’re an oath breaker.”

“What?!” Haukan paused in confusion.

“You’re all sworn to follow Maxander, right? Well, my sister and I are the last of the Shattergrave Knights.”

Haukan dropped to all fours and charged forward, howling with rage. His horns caught Jack squarely across the chest, and Jack went flying. The cruel flint knife descended.

Then the giant spoke and Haukan froze, his blade inches from Jack’s cheek. A murmur went through the gathered warriors. The giant came forward, his huge hooves kicking up great clouds of dust with each step. He stooped over and took a careful accounting of his prisoners. “What did ye say?” he asked.

“My sister and I are the last of the Shattergrave Knights,” Jack repeated, trying to sound as authoritative as he could with a knife in his face and a giant hovering over him. “You swore an oath to fight for us.”

“How do I know ye do not speak falsely?”

“Look at my circlet. This belonged to my ancestor, Gorgyaz. His sword is over there, on the ground near my sister.”

The giant bent over and picked up Cauttaraxus. He laid it in his palm and stared at it for a moment before letting it fall back to the ground. “I recognize it,” he said gravely. “I did not know Gorgyaz, but I knew his comrades. These are the sword and the crown of a Shattergrave Knight.”

“So you recognize that we have authority over you?”

“Maxander led us into defeat and disgrace. His war destroyed us. We follow him no longer.”

“So what? You don’t like your oath, so you’re not going to follow it anymore? Oaths don’t work like that.”

The giant snorted. “Let him up,” he ordered.

Haukan sneered and snapped in Jack’s face, but he withdrew his knife. Jack got to his feet and dusted himself off. He pointed to Olive. “Her, too.”

Haukan cut her free, muttering something vile under his breath. He clearly hated this misuse of his flensing knife. As soon as Olive was free of the ropes she had Cauttaraxus up.

“The Shattergrave Knights were the greatest enemy we ever had,” the giant said. “We were a strong people before they came along with false friendship and reckless plans. We were sacrificed to their ambition in legions.”

“I know.”

“Do ye know what it is like to see your entire clan head out to a battle from which there can be no return? To take some wretched grass-eaters’ city for a foreigner’s banner?”

“I do not.”

“But ye still think we will follow ye.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

Jack met the giant’s stare. “Because you don’t want to hate yourself forever. Your honor’s the last thing you’ve got left. If you break your oath to us then you’ll have nothing left at all. But if you help us, I’ll take the oath away.”

“Explain your words, son of Gorgyaz.”

“Bring my sister and me to Wyrmsreach—alive—and we’ll release you from your oath. All of you. The entire tautho race. We’ll declare your service to be done.”

The giant chortled. “Ye truly are Shattergrave Knights. Ye know how to sound honorable and speak fine words while ye lead us to our doom.”

“So you will take us to Wyrmsreach?”

Another discontented rumble ran through the warriors.

“Aye. We will lead ye to Wyrmsreach as our last act in Maxander’s service. But if there is any hint of further treachery on your part, we will issue judgment on the spot and ye will both be skinned alive.”

“Well that’s only fair.”

The discontented rumblings turned into a riot. The tautho warriors screamed with a homicidal rage that Jack and Olive had seen in action just minutes ago, drawing their clubs and their knives. But the giant yelled something unpronounceable by humans, easily drowning out the cries of his men, and the riot ended before it had a change to begin. The tautho reluctantly put their weapons away.

“On to Wyrmsreach,” Jack ordered.

~~~

From its inauspicious beginning, neither Jack nor Olive expected their journey with the tautho to be pleasant. Their expectations of hardship were met and exceeded.

First, there was the spectacularly unwelcoming landscape. Jack and Olive were well familiar with the plains’ harshness by now, but that hardly made it easier to bear. The Merriwethers cursed the dust and the wind and the unforgiving cold, and wondered why the Protectorate ever sought to conquer and hold such a place. Better, surely, to build a wall around it, scrawl “Here there be tautho” on the maps, and deny it was ever a part of the world.

Second, there was the simple matter of keeping up. The tautho had long legs and nearly endless endurance. If anything, they seemed to increase their speed as the journey progressed. Every time the Merriwethers called for a rest break, a hundred unfriendly eyes regarded them as weaklings.

Then, there were the taunts. Other than Abraxus, none of them would deign to speak in the language of the humans, but they always made their meaning plain. When they growled out a few syllables and spit in the Merriwethers’ paths, or when they made water by the Merriwethers’ bedrolls at night, or when they pointed out the Merriwethers and doubled over with cackling, hideous laughter, their intentions were always clear enough. Through immersion, Jack began to involuntarily pick up a little of their language. He figured out that the most popular joke going around somehow involved his sister, himself, a jackal, and a heaping pile of excrement. The more he understood, the less he wanted to know.

Next, there was the food. It consisted primarily of strange meats cooked until they were close to charcoal with a hot, bitter seasoning that made the Merriwethers’ tongues tingle and their teeth go numb. Jack walked over by the fire one night and saw the cook grinding peppers and live scorpions in a mortar and sprinkling the mash over the food. From that night onwards, Jack and Olive ate hardtack and jerky scavenged from the Protectorate convoy. Their mother’s cooking seemed very distant indeed, like a half-remembered dream.

The nights were the last but not the least of the Merriwethers’ travails. Sleeping outside in the winter, under the foreign sky of a foreign land, is a hard enough matter under even the best conditions. It is much harder when one is surrounded by dozens of inhuman bandits who hate you and want to butcher you and could tear you to shreds in a moment if they got their hands on you. Jack kept one of the soldiers’ muskets with him at all times and would not go to sleep without it clutched in his arms.

~~~

Olive had not seen more than a few fleeting glimpses of Daniel in the first few days since the supply convoy was attacked, so it was somewhat of a surprise when he reappeared at her side. He had traded in his faded work clothes for a raider’s red straw cloak, and he carried a flint axe instead of an ox’s reigns, but Olive recognized him immediately. It was very good to see a friend other than her brother, but there was something distant and sorrowful in his face that gave her pause.

“Daniel! It’s good to see you again.”

He grunted noncommittally.

“I…I guess you’re not coming to Wyrmsreach with us now that you’re back with your own people.”

“Aye.”

“At least you’re away from the Protectorate now, right?”

“Aye.”

“Oh, come on, Daniel. Talk to me. Is this about my brother and me being Shattergrave Knights?”

“Ye should have told me. It was not fair for ye to pretend.”

“I wasn’t pretending about anything. I didn’t even know about it myself until a little while ago. It doesn’t change who I am.”

“It does.”

“I didn’t do anything to the tautho! And neither did Jack. I’m not going to take responsibility for Gorgyaz’s crimes.”

“Nay, you will not take responsibility for his crimes, but ye will wield his sword and wear his crown, and take his authority as your own.”

“They would have killed us! Maybe you didn’t notice, but that Haukan guy was about to skin us alive!”

Daniel’s eyes were downcast. “I noticed,” he said quietly.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

One afternoon Jack raised his eyes to the horizon and saw a little bump arising out the vast flatness of the plains. At first he took it for a trick of his dust-clogged eyes and ignored it, but it persisted. It even seemed to be getting slightly bigger.

Jack approached Abraxus. The giant had been quiet throughout the trip, but would at least answer questions when they were posed to him directly. “Is that Wyrmsreach, off in the distance?” Jack asked.

“Aye, master,” said the giant, dragging out the second word like it was dung he was scraping off his hooves. He kept his pace, forcing Jack to nearly sprint to keep up. “We are still some distance from its foothills. We must be more cautious in our advance. The enemy has the mountain surrounded by pickets and barricades.”

“I thought it was protected by a great dragon.”

“Aye, it surely is. Old Paashalezub. The stories tell us he had the worst temper of all the great dragons, and they were full of evil. In the time of my ancestors this was a green and pleasant land, before he burnt up the forests and drank up the rivers. But he does not leave his mountain anymore.”

“What happened to him?”

Abraxus shrugged, throwing off a dense cloud of silt. “I suppose he got bored. Ye can only burn up forests and drink up rivers for so long.”

“So what are we going to do when we get closer to the pickets?”

“That is your decision. Ye are our master.”

Jack considered this for a moment. “Abraxus, the Protectorate killed my ancestors as well as yours.”

“Aye.”

“So has it ever occurred to you that I don’t want to follow in their footsteps? They were a bunch of arrogant, greedy bastards who got themselves killed. And I’m going to be killed myself—for the mistakes they made—unless I do better.”

Abraxus slowed his pace, allowing Jack to catch up. He looked down and considered the little human’s words. “Go on.”

“You and your men know this land better than I ever will. I need your expertise. I’m going to listen to what you say.”

“How do I know this is not another betrayal?”

“You don’t. But if you and your men die out here, I don’t know how I’m going to get to Wyrmsreach with my sister. So it’s in my best interest to keep you alive.”

Abraxus shielded his eyes from the sun and peered at the barely-visible mountain. “We are still a way from the enemy,” he said. “But I can smell them. We will talk when we make camp for the night.”

That night, Jack finally got a good sleep. The world slipped away almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

~~~

The world rudely reintroduced itself to Jack not long after midnight. He was awoken by a tautho war cry and the dull sound of knuckles thudding into meat. He started up and saw two tautho rolling in the dirt. One of them held a gleaming knife, but it was too dark to make out any other details. Jack, still half-asleep, reached for his musket. His hands grabbed nothing but dirt, and an electric shiver ran up his spine, shocking him back into full consciousness. He groped around blindly. “Olive!” he screamed. “Where are you?”

“I’m here!”

“Where’s my gun? Where’s my damn gun?” His fingers suddenly closed around the barrel. He pulled the musket up to his shoulder and aimed it at the fighting tautho. His hands were shaking, but he managed to cock the hammer. His finger tightened around the trigger.

“No!” Olive cried, leaping in front of the musket. “No, you’ll hit them both!” She grabbed the gun and tried to pull it away.

“Get out of the way!” Jack yelled. He used the musket to push his sister away, then raised it and tried to fire before she could get in the way again.

“Daniel, get down!” Olive screamed.

The tautho on top rolled over, bringing his enemy on top of him just as Jack’s musket reported. The tautho on top dropped his knife. He stopped struggling and got up to his feet. He was moving slowly and unsteadily, as if his whole body was made of palsied lead.

More tautho were coming in now to investigate the commotion, some of them holding torches. In the flickering light, Jack and Olive could see that Haukan was the one on his feet. There was a little hole in his side, and his lifeblood gushed out of it. He looked up into the night sky, then dropped.

Daniel was the other combatant. He lay on the ground breathing deeply. He wore a few shallow cuts on his muzzle and his hands, but nothing that looked serious. Olive rushed forward and began hugging him. “Thank you!” she sobbed. “Thank you so much!”

At that moment Jack resented her deeply for jumping in front of his gun. He might have hit her by accident, and where would he have been then? Risking her own life for the sake of one of these damn tautho was going too far. Jack felt very tired. He tossed the smoking musket away and sat back down on his bedroll. He had been ready and waiting for something like this to happen ever since he had begun traveling with the tautho and thought that he would feel relieved when it actually happened. It was no relief at all. He felt sick to his stomach again, like when he’d killed the three tautho raiders with Cauttaraxus.

Abraxus lumbered over and looked at the dead Haukan. “What has happened here?” he asked.

“Haukan sought to kill the grass-eaters in their sleep,” Daniel said. “We fought, and he died.”

Many of the other tautho began calling out in their own language. Jack couldn’t make out all the details, but he could tell they were praising Haukan and calling for Daniel to be punished.

“Haukan sought to break his oath and defy your orders,” Olive said. “Daniel was only doing his duty. He saved us!”

“This is a matter for the tautho to settle,” Abraxus said. “Little knights, your authority does not extend this far.” He proclaimed his judgment in the tautho tongue. There was another wave of grumbling, but nothing more. Some of the warriors hauled Haukan’s body away for a cremation. Others began going back to sleep. Daniel sat down, breathing very hard. Olive wiped some of the sweat off his forehead.

“What did he say?” she asked.

Daniel shook his head. “Ye need not concern yourself with it.”

“Jack, come over here and thank Daniel!” Olive insisted.

Jack muttered something insincere from the spot where he sat. His sister stormed over and roughly yanked him up by his collar. “He risked his life for us!” she hissed into his ear. “If he hadn’t been watching out for us, Haukan would have killed us both in our sleep. He saved us, and now his own people are furious at him for it. I don’t know what your problem is, but you owe him some thanks. And if you don’t give it to him, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Jack’s resentment towards Olive and Daniel immediately doubled back in on himself. He’d been so concerned with his own well being that he hadn’t realized what a huge sacrifice Daniel had just made for them. He and his sister had been saved by an act of complete selflessness, and he had reacted by sulking like a child.

Jack walked over to where Daniel was sitting and extended his hand. “You did us a great service, Daniel. I don’t know how we can ever repay this, but somehow we will.” Reluctantly, the tautho extended his own huge, three-fingered hand for an awkward shake.

~~~

The next morning, one of the tautho noticed a plume of dust rising out of the southern horizon. Abraxus tried to point it out to Jack, but all he could see was a blur. “Protectorate cavalry,” Abraxus said. “We will see them again soon, and much closer. They must have come out after us when the convoy failed to arrive.”

“How many?” Jack asked.

“It is impossible to tell at this distance, but it is most likely a large force. I have never known the enemy to be miserly with its vengeance.”

“But we’ve still got the pickets to our north to get past.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Can we break through the pickets and get into Wyrmsreach’s borders before the riders catch up with us?”

“We can try.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It is not impossible. If we double our pace now, and if we break through the enemy lines quickly, we may be able to reach Wyrmsreach before they catch us.”

“But if it takes us longer to break through, then the riders will catch up to us while we’re fighting and we’ll be trapped.”

“That is right.”

“And if they’ve been tracking us this far north, they’ve probably sent word ahead to the pickets to be on the lookout for us.”

“That is likely.”

“Could you burrow into the ground and set up an ambush for the riders? Like you did with the convoy?”

“The convoy was not prepared for war, and not expecting raiders. These men are riding with the purpose of destroying us. I do not think we can take them by surprise. If we burrow into the ground they will surround us.”

“And if we take losses fighting the riders, we might not be able to get through the pickets.”

“Very good. Little knight, ye are learning our trade quickly.”

“Like you said, I’m a Shattergrave Knight. I’ve read the histories. Under their leadership the tautho sacked six heavily defended city states and held off four Protectorate counter-attacks.”

“Aye. And what did those great victories get us?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Aye.”

~~~

For his entire life Daniel had dreamed of striding the plains with a warband and fighting the human invaders in a glorious battle. He had listened with rapt attention to the fireside stories about great tautho victories, and had been sick with envy for the heroes of those tales. They had lived such glorious, purposeful lives, especially compared to his own lonely, servile existence. Now his wish had been granted at last, and he was as unhappy as he’d ever been.

Unlike the warriors around him, Daniel did not know how to sharpen his axe with a whetstone, or how to tie it to his forearm so he could run on all fours, or even how to say the battle-prayers to his ancestors’ ghosts. Even his red straw cloak was itchy and uncomfortable. The unfriendly eyes of the tautho glared at him from all around, picking up his every mistake. Nobody stepped forward to offer advice or encouragement, and he felt too ashamed to ask any.

“Can ye believe that one slew Haukan?” somebody asked.

“Nay,” was the response. “The whole world must be coming undone for a milk-fed calf like that one to slay a warrior like Haukan. And on behalf of grass-eaters, no less.”

“He lived with the grass-eaters so long,” said yet another of the warriors. “He must have learned their treachery.”

Daniel couldn’t even talk to the fellow caravan slaves whom he’d been liberated with. They walked away when he tried to come near them, muttering that he was a traitor and a disgrace to his race. In his unguarded moments he felt homesick for the mining camps, where at least he’d been able to share his sorrows. He looked off to the mountain in the distance. He’d heard that Wyrmsreach was a place where anything was possible and where there was no law at all.

~~~

By the next day’s afternoon, Jack could plainly see how the contours of the battle were mapping out. To his south, a large force of cavalry was keeping pace with the tautho, staying just about two miles behind. Dust billowed up behind their advance like the smoke of a forest fire.

To the north was an earthwork flying the Protectorate’s banner. Bayonet-clad muskets bristled from behind it, and a stubby cannon was mounted on top. Trenches extended out from both sides. There was no easy approach. The earthwork was too steep for anyone but Abraxus to climb quickly, and the edges of the trenches had been fortified with hundreds of sharp wooden stakes. The soldiers had cleared away the tall grass in front of their fortifications to deny the enemy concealment.

Pigeons would occasionally fly between the earthworks and the cavalry, bearing messages strapped to their legs. One of the birds let its droppings loose over the warband, and this was widely considered to be a ruinous omen.

The tautho spent much of the day chanting atonally in their strange tongue. Each warrior’s chant was entirely different than those of his comrades, but somehow the overall result was more harmonious than chaotic. Olive sought out Daniel to ask him what was going on.

“They are beseeching their ancestors,” Daniel said. “They ask to be accepted and welcomed as they pass into the spirit world.”

“So they’re getting ready to die?”

“Aye. If your people have any similar rituals, now would be the time.”

“You’re not chanting. Are you feeling better about the battle than they are?”

“I cannot join in. I do not know my father’s name, or the name of my clan.”

Jack approached the two, looking preoccupied. “Olive,” he said. “I need to borrow Cauttaraxus.”

“What for?”

“What do you mean, what for? For fighting.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?”

“Stay behind the tautho. Run for it if it looks like we’re going to lose.”

“No way! Jack, they’re fighting for us! We can’t ask them to risk their lives unless we’re willing to as well.”

“For Patheon’s sake, Olive, will you please just give me the sword?”

“You want it, you’ll have to take it from me.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I’m going to fight.”

Jack groaned. In his mind, Olive had been becoming steadily more unreasonable since all of their recent troubles had started. He blamed the demonic sword. Still, he had neither the time nor the energy to argue the point. He borrowed a long steel knife from a grudging tautho, instead.

Jack called the warriors to a halt just outside the reach of the earthwork’s guns. He sat cross-legged on the ground and put on Iarex. First he looked over to the earthwork and trenches in front of them, then he looked over to the cavalry approaching from their rear, and then he smiled coldly. He called Abraxus over and began furiously scratching patterns in the dust with his knife, drawing a map of the carnage soon to come.

~~~

Olive and Daniel crawled through the tall grass side by side on their hands and knees. All of the tautho were down on all fours, and their red cloaks hid them well. Even Olive could barely see them and she was directly in their midst. But she could hear their breathing and feel their impatient rustling all around her. She couldn’t see the enemies’ guns from her vantage point, either, but she knew they were out there.

Olive drew Cauttaraxus from her belt. As much as she hated the sword it made her feel safer at times like these, and times like these were becoming distressingly commonplace. She thought a prayer would be appropriate, but Don Teodor had not even allowed her to stage fight in the pageant, let alone taught her an appropriate prayer for going into battle. She’d have to improvise.

“Oh most holy Patheon,” she intoned silently. “Please watch out for my brother and parents and Daniel and me and tell your servants to leave us alone…er, I mean, um…please forgive us for our sins and remember we never asked to be related to Gorgyaz.

“I mean, it’s not our fault we’re related to him. You were the one who chose that for us. We never asked for that. We never worshipped Maxander. I mean, it’s not like we were perfect, but we never did anything to deserve this. Come on, what was the worst thing I ever did? Fighting at school? Buying that stupid love charm from Goody Allsop? You’re the god of justice. You know we don’t deserve all this suffering.

“I thought the Protectorate was supposed to be your representative on Ayerth. I thought they were supposed to be carrying out your justice. Is this your justice? To kill all those people in Muddy Hollow? To lock up my parents? To chase me and my brother halfway around the world? Are you the god of justice or just an all-powerful maniac in the sky?

“Listen up, Patheon. I don’t like you and apparently you don’t like me. Well, fine! If that’s how you want to play it, that’s how it’ll be played. If you’ve got any sense of justice at all you’ll let us get through this without anyone else getting hurt. Otherwise, you can go to hell!”

She hadn’t meant to curse out the god of justice when she started, and it wasn’t a prayer Don Teodor would have approved of, but it made Olive feel better nonetheless. She shifted her grip on her unholy sword and waited for her god to relent or for the bloodshed to start, whichever came first.

~~~

Jack stood before his army, looking apprehensively at the Protectorate earthwork. Although he knew this wasn’t the case, every musket seemed to be aimed directly at his heart. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what getting shot felt like. He had his musket on his back and a knife on his belt, but these seemed like, and were indeed, pitifully thin weapons against an entire battalion. His real weapons were a burning bundle of grass in his left hand, the circlet on his head, and whatever ingenuity he could bring to bear.

Jack wiped the sweat and dirt from his forehead, closed his eyes, and tried his hardest to concentrate on getting the magic right. He had only done this once before, and not for nearly as long. He mimicked the incantation to the best of his ability. It sounded right to him, but there was no real way to tell if it was having its intended effect.

Well, there was one way. Jack began slowly walking away from the tautho and towards the Protectorate. The enemy guns did not sound, even when he stepped out of the tall grass and into no-man’s-land. He was doing it right after all.

Before long, Jack could hear the hushed chatter of the soldiers. He climbed the earthwork, heading straight for the cannon mounted at the top. Its crew stood ready, their attention fixed on Abraxus. The giant could not blend into the grass and stood out in a shifting sea of red. He paced in a circle constantly to keep the cannon crew from getting a clear shot, but they weren’t even bothering to take aim.

“That’s got to be the biggest muttonhead I’ve ever seen,” one of them mused.

“Gives us a nice big target, at least. And I heard the sergeant saying the cavalry’s got giant-killers. He’s about to be the deadest muttonhead you’ve ever seen.”

The soldiers chuckled. At this point Jack was close enough to reach out and touch them. He ignored them and crawled past. Time was running short. The burning bundle of grass in his hands was perilously close to burning out, and if its tiny flame were extinguished the battle would be lost.

Jack saw his goal ahead, right where Iarex had told him it would be. The enemy’s weak point was directly in front of him. Jack went past neatly piled stacks of cannonballs and grapeshot canisters towards the unit’s store of gunpowder. They only had three fat little casks, but he knew it would be enough. He took one last look back at the massed tautho warriors trapped between the cavalry’s hammer and the earthwork’s anvil.

Suddenly, Jack heard a trumpet’s shrill music. A cheer rose up from the soldiers, and musket fire began pouring out of their ranks. The stench of gunsmoke filled the air, stinging Jack’s nose and eyes. The tautho were too still far away for the volley to have its full effect, but some of the warriors dropped. Despite their losses, they held their ground bravely.

“Fire at will!” the gunnery captain shouted. There was a tremendous boom as the cannon sounded, and the top of the earthwork was enshrouded in a thick cloud of caustic black smoke. Jack was rendered helpless with coughing and dropped his smoldering grass fuse. It scattered in the wind and was gone. He was deaf, dumb, exposed, and unarmed.

When the smoke cleared enough to see again, the gunnery crew was already loading another cannonball. The captain’s eyes widened when he saw Jack. He yelled something—impossible for Jack to know what, it just came out as a dull buzz—and drew his cutlass.

Jack looked around desperately. He scrambled away from the gunnery sergeant and leapt down into a trench, where he was surrounded by a half-dozen surprised Protectorate troops reloading their guns. He pulled the musket from his back and took aim at the gunpowder stores. The soldiers piled on him, pulling him down. One of them got his hands around Jack’s throat and squeezed.

~~~

Olive gasped as the enemy fortifications exploded. She wondered how her brother could possibly have survived such a blast. The tautho seemed to have no such reservations. They roared in one voice and charged on all fours. To keep from being trampled Olive was forced to run as quickly as she ever had, but she felt less like a warrior in the midst of a battle than a cow in the midst of a stampede.

Shots rang out from ahead and behind and a tall, broad-shouldered tautho in front of Olive fell. His horns shattered and his brains fell out of his head as Olive ducked aside to avoid colliding with his corpse. She turned her head and saw the cavalry was in pursuit. She fixed her gaze straight ahead and sprinted as fast as she could.

The giant was the first one to reach the shattered fortifications. He strode into the smoke and moments later the screams started. The tautho poured through after him, making their way through the hole Jack had blasted in the earthen wall and then coming down into the trenches. As Olive approached she stepped over the Protectorate cannon, now lying on the ground on its side, and the broken bodies of its crew.

Ms. Macklesford had taught that battle was a noble, glorious thing, but the scene behind the Protectorate lines looked like nothing more than an awful riot. The few Protectorate soldiers who had managed to reload their muskets after the first volley were now frantically unloading them into the tautho swarming into their trenches. The others were trying to fend off the attackers with bayonets and musket butts and cutlasses and daggers. They were badly outmatched. Abraxus stomped through their camp, destroying men as if they were toys. Olive saw him pick up an older man in a gaudy uniform, whom she supposed to be the unit’s commander, and hurl him towards the advancing cavalry. Olive ran through the chaotic melee searching for her brother.

A nearby soldier raised his bayonet up to skewer her. Cauttaraxus cut him down almost before Olive knew she was being attacked.

A man in an officer’s uniform leveled a pistol at her. For a split second Olive thought her life was over and was very sorry she had insulted Patheon just moments ago. She hoped Jack would be able to reach Wyrmsreach without her. Then Daniel charged into the officer horns-first, knocking him off his feet and trampling him into the dirt. A burly soldier tackled Daniel and made ready to cut his throat, but Olive slashed at him and the man’s knife arm popped neatly away from his shoulder.

“Jack!” Olive screamed, although her voice was immediately lost. “Jack, where are you?!”

When she found her brother he was on his back, entirely covered with soot. A crazed-looking soldier, similarly blackened, was drowning him in a mud hole. Olive cleaved the soldier from his collarbone to his navel, then kicked him aside and pulled Jack up to a sitting position. He coughed violently, filthy water spurting from his nose and mouth.

“Jack! Jack!”

~~~

Jack cleared the last of the water from his lungs and looked up at his sister. She was yelling something. His name, maybe? It looked like his name. His ears were still useless. He embraced her, wondering what in the name of all the gods was going on. He couldn’t remember anything since the blast. He saw Abraxus towering over the shattered earthwork, stomping into a foxhole.

“Abraxus!” he yelled, doing his best to speak without hearing. “Get down! Get down!” The giant appeared not to hear, or if he did hear, did not take the counsel.

Jack peered up over the edge of the trench to see what the enemy was doing. The cavalry rode along the trenches firing at the tautho, but on their horses they could not get close enough for a good shot without impaling themselves on the wooden stakes their comrades had erected. As they spent their ammunition, they circled back around to reload.

A few of the cavalrymen bore shorter, heavier muskets, with flared barrels like bells. Two of these strange guns were pointed at Abraxus.

“Get down, damn it!”

The giant-killers spoke. One of their shells shattered Abraxus’ left horn, and another embedded itself deep in his right shoulder. He went down hard onto the earthwork.

The cavalry fell back to regroup. The soldiers in the trenches were all dead, dying, or in flight at this point, so the tautho put away their clubs and knives and took out their bows.

Jack’s hearing was gradually coming back to him. He could make out Abraxus muttering something in the tautho tongue. Jack was getting adept enough with the language to know it was one of the nastier profanities. “That better hurt,” Jack said. “I told you they’d be shooting at you unless you got down behind cover.”

Abraxus shot off another few swears in his mother tongue.

“Can you still fight? We can’t win without you.”

“If I die today, I will die fighting.”

The cavalry was almost finished reloading. Jack peered at them, taking in the information he was getting from Iarex. “They’re going to circle around the trenches and shoot us down,” he said.

“How do ye know?” Abraxus asked.

“It’s what I’d do if I were them. They’ll gun us down like animals in a cage. But I know something that their commander doesn’t. See that rider towards the center? The one I’m pointing at?”

“They all look the same to me.”

“He’s got a giant-killer.”

“I see him.”

“He didn’t load his gun properly. When they ride around, you charge him. We’ll cut their advance in two.”

The giant grunted in affirmation. His blood was turning the dirt into a thick, clotty mud, and some of his men were wrapping a filthy bandage the size of a quilt around his injured shoulder. The cavalry started circling back around. The tautho’s bowstrings creaked as they took aim at their enemies.

Jack stood to get a better view. A cavalryman took a shot at him, and a bullet whizzed over his head. He barely noticed. “Now!” he screamed. “Now!”

Abraxus pushed himself to his feet with his good hand, then leapt over the earthworks and charged.

The rider Jack had pointed out had just enough time to raise his heavy musket, cock its hammer, and pull the trigger. His gun exploded in his hands, and then the giant was quite literally on top of him. Abraxus broke through the Protectorate line without breaking stride.

The riders before him continued their advance around the tautho trenches, whooping and firing, and were met with a hail of arrows. Some were driven back by the arrows, some retreated as soon as they saw their comrades had been halted, and some were simply felled. The spearhead of the charge melted away.

The rest of the battalion massed around Abraxus, blasting away at the giant with their muskets. Another giant-killer sounded, and Abraxus dropped to one knee, clutching his side.

In the preparation for the battle, Jack had made sure to learn a few carefully selected tautho words. It was time to use one of them. “Bahkta!” he screamed, emptying his lungs and tearing up his already-hoarse throat. It was the word for “charge.”

“Bahkta!” the tautho bellowed in response. They flew out from the trenches they had taken only minutes ago, heading straight towards the disorganized Protectorate cavalry. Bowstrings twanged again and again, and more of the enemy dropped. Riders were pulled from their horses and stomped into the ground. Jack stood in the trenches panting, watching the fray.

A trumpet sounded again, and the Protectorate forces took to flight.

Jack sat down on the earthworks, sinking a little into the dark, bloody mud. He took Iarex off and put it back on his belt. He was shaking so badly from adrenaline that he could barely work the buckle. Olive sat beside him and held his hand.

~~~

Olive found Daniel in one of the trenches. He had been clouted in the head with the butt of a musket and his right eye was swollen shut, but he was otherwise unhurt. He was chewing a cud of medicinal herbs into a poultice and packing it in a comrade’s bayonet wound. Olive patted Daniel on the shoulder. “How are you doing?” she asked.

“The spirits have seen fit to grant us victory,” he said, greenish spittle running down his chin as he talked.

“Bully for the spirits, but that’s not what I asked. How are you doing?”

Daniel shrugged. “I used to love the stories about the great battles fought against the grass-eaters. Now I see they leave out many of the details.” The wounded tautho had fouled itself. There were little splotches of pink foam all over its muzzle, and its eyes were blank.

“I guess they do.”

Daniel sighed. “I spent my whole life dreaming of being free and fighting the enemy. Now I have done it, and it is awful. The gods truly have forsaken us. We live in slavery or we die in war.”

“Well…maybe this isn’t your fate.”

“What else can I do, except fight beside my brothers? The spirits would never forgive me if I deserted them.”

“I’ve been living in open defiance of my peoples’ gods for a while now. You get used to it. I don’t think the gods respect anyone who doesn’t defy them occasionally.”

“I did not know ye were a heretic.”

“Yeah, well, what do you expect from the last of the Shattergrave Knights? I’m apparently pledged to Maxander and the gods of darkness and whatnot…and let me tell you, it’s all a load of hooey. You can’t let the gods push you around.”

“Ye are a strange one, Olive.”

Olive noticed some of the tautho were moving all of the Protectorate wounded into a certain stretch of the trench. They ranged the gauntlet from men who would surely die within moments to those who had simply been knocked unconscious during the fray. The tautho were binding those who were still capable of movement and throwing them all together into a writhing, crying, begging pile. A big tautho was standing above the captives, chanting a strange prayer and swinging around a bone censer filled with smoky incense. A few warriors stood at his side with spades.

“What are you doing?” Olive demanded.

“We are making an offering to the earth giant,” one of the warriors said as he tossed an arrow-studded cavalryman onto the heap. “When the earth giant is fed he is likely to stir, and when he stirs, the castles and houses of our enemies fall down. It is an honorable way to render judgment on one’s foes.”

“You’re going to bury them alive?!”

“Aye, as soon as we have attracted the giant’s attention to the feast we have laid out for him. Be quiet, Knight. Even Maxander did not stop us from making offerings to our gods in the tradition of our fathers.”

“Yeah, well I’m not Maxander, and I am going to stop you. No offense, but that’s a sick tradition.”

The officiate stopped his prayer. The pendulum swings of his censer slowly came to a halt. The warriors at his sides bristled.

“Ye have no right to stop us from offering this sacrifice,” the officiate said. “Ye cannot prevent us from honoring our gods.”

“I can and I do,” Olive said sharply. “If your gods demand this sort of thing, they don’t deserve to be worshipped. These men are under my protection, and if your gods feel strongly about it they can talk to me.”

Some of the warriors’ hands went to their weapons, although none of them drew. The officiate regarded Olive sourly for a moment, then barked out some command. He dumped out the contents of his censer over the wounded soldiers. “As ye command, Shattergrave Knight,” he said. “But remember we shall not be bound to your service much longer. Ye may be meeting the earth giant soon yourself.”

~~~

Abraxus lay sprawled on the battlefield, staring up into the sky and breathing heavily. One of his warriors was using a cutlass to dig the giant-killer shell from his side. Other warriors were using their daggers to remove the dozens of bullets embedded in the giant’s leathery skin like stingers from lead insects.

Jack looked little better, covered head to toe as he was with an unsavory mixture of soot, mud, and blood. The curdled, bitter taste of it was thick in his mouth. There was still a bit of buzzing in his ears, and he had built up a pounding headache.

“Quite a battle,” the giant said softly. “I would not have thought ye such a great warchief. Gorgyaz would be proud of ye. Or maybe he would not. I do not know.”

“I don’t want you to die in Maxander’s service.”

“Nor do I. This would have been a good death, but I have survived worse than this and I shall not die today. I have another scar-story to tell around the fire.” The giant fingered his shattered wreck of a horn and winced. “I cannot believe they broke my horn.”

Jack was still shaking badly. He looked out over the ravaged, corpse-strewn battlefield, and it was all he could do to keep himself from crying. He tried to force himself to think of happier days, but those thoughts wouldn’t come. The Protectorate’s golden banner still flapped forlornly over the trenches. Jack pulled it down and threw it away.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The mountain on the horizon grew much larger. Soon it towered above the warband, occupying the very sky. At night its peak burned with a fierce red light. The tall grass and dust clouds of the plains gradually gave way to pine forests and blue skies.

The borderlands of Wyrmsreach were a popular destination for tautho warbands seeking sanctuary, and fighters from other encampments came down to meet Abraxus and his men as they passed through. The news of the Merriwethers’ presence, and of their victory on the border, had spread quickly, and the force Jack and Olive led more than quadrupled in size. Some of the newcomers were starving and ragged. Others were fat with plunder and rich in gruesome trophies. A few rode sleek red bears that snapped and hissed like cats. Two of the newcomers were almost Abraxus’s size, and the elders greeted each other with great ceremony and formality.

Many of the newcomers openly sneered at the young knights. Jack heard a wealth of words and phrases he recognized as anti-human slurs. Others seemed motivated primarily by simple curiosity and gaped at the Merriwethers as men might gape at a pair of caged apes.

As the day dwindled into afternoon, the party reached an obelisk of red stone, perhaps twelve feet high, standing a lonely vigil in the woods. “This is Wyrmsreach,” Abraxus said. “As soon as ye step beyond that borderstone, we will have done what ye asked of us.”

“Thank you, Abraxus,” Jack said nervously. “It’s been a privilege knowing you.” He bowed his head solemnly, and Abraxus did the same. Jack looked to his sister. “You ready for this, Olive?”

“Ready as I’m ever going to be.” She stepped past the boundary stone, and Jack followed. There was absolute silence apart from the footfalls. Jack turned to address the gathered army and was gripped by an intense tension, in some ways even worse than what he had felt before the battle. The largest crowd he had previously addressed was the class at the Muddy Hollow schoolhouse, on the subject of what Saint Hugo’s life meant to him.

“Abraxus, can you translate for me?” Jack asked.

“It is not necessary. We understand what ye are saying.”

“I know. But I want to address you in your own tongue.”

“Very well.” Jack cleared his throat and recited the words he’d spent two stressful days and a sleepless night composing. “I am Jack Merriwether, son of Edwin Merriwether, descendant of Gorgyaz. My sister and I are the last of the Shattergrave Knights, and as the last Shattergrave Knights we speak on behalf of the dread lord Maxander.”

Abraxus translated. A few of the gathered tautho hissed. Jack let it pass, and continued. “You’ve done my sister and me a great service,” he said. “You’ve fought for us, shed your blood. If not for you, we definitely would have died or been captured by our enemies.”

There was more hissing and booing. “We should not have spent a drop of our blood for ye!” a heckler called out. “We should have killed ye long ago and had vengeance for our race!” His cry for blood was met with raucous cheers and applause.

“I know exactly how you feel!” Jack yelled back. “My ancestor’s war led your people into ruin. If I was a tautho, and if some snot-nosed human kids showed up claiming to be Shattergrave Knights, I’d want to tear their heads off and stick them up on pikes.”

Olive went pale and her hand went to the hilt of her sword. But the raucous crowd suddenly became silent and still. Abraxus looked at Jack quizzically, and Jack nodded to him. The giant translated Jack’s words into the tautho language, even though they had clearly been understood.

“Maxander and the Shattergrave Knights misused you,” Jack said. “I’m not going to lie to you like they did. They robbed you and cheated you and led you off to die for a bunch of evil nonsense. We all know it. When you guys found me, I thought you were going to kill me on the spot because that’s what I would have done in your place. The fact you didn’t kill me is proof you’re better than I am. Even after everything you’ve been through, you’ve still got your sense of honor.

“Sad to say, honor and loyalty don’t mean much to most humans nowadays. But they still mean a lot to the tautho. Whatever Maxander or the Protectorate did to you, they can’t ever take that away. I don’t have much to offer you in the way of thanks, but there’s one thing I can do that I think you’ll appreciate. As the last of the Shattergrave Knights, I release you from your oath of service. You’re a free people again.”

The gathered tautho remained silent and still for a moment. Wordlessly, the various warbands that made up the army began to disperse. Even those who had scoffed and swore during the journey seemed satisfied to leave. At last, Abraxus’s band was the only one left. The giant raised his hand towards Jack and Olive, then turned without another word to begin the long journey home. Before long, only one tautho remained.

“Hi, Daniel,” Olive said. “What did you think of Jack’s speech?”

“It was fine. This was a great moment for the tautho.”

“The warband’s going home to the plains. You don’t want to go back with them?”
“I do not belong with them, and the Tauth Plains are not my home.”

“No, you belong with your friends. Come on, let’s get moving.”

~~~

The foothills of Wyrmsreach were very green and pleasant, especially compared to the harshness of the plains. Jack, Olive and Daniel strolled through dense pine forests and past brooks of cold, clear water. Enormous deer watched the party carefully from a distance, and squirrels and birds chattered noisily overhead.

At one point they passed a large farm where herds of cattle munched at troughs. Tending the cows were two teenage girls wearing the finest crimson robes the Merriwethers had ever seen and thick gold chains around their necks. Their heads were shaved, their bare scalps covered by elaborate tattoos. For a long time now, Jack’s company had been limited to outlaws, goblins, kidnappers, soldiers, tautho, and his sister. The sight of females who were not related to him—even strange, tattooed females like these—was a delightful novelty. He strolled over to the fence, leaned against it, and grinned.

“How are you ladies doing?” he asked. “I’m Jack Merriwether, who are you?”

They laughed in precisely the way he had hoped they would not. “We are wyrmslaves,” one of them said. “And you are not supposed to be bothering us.”

“Ah.” Jack’s face fell, as Olive tried to keep herself from cracking up. “We were…ah…sorry to be bothering you, but we heard there was some sort of settlement or city or something around here?”

“Keep walking towards the mountain. You’ll see it shortly.” With that, the girls returned to their work, and the Merriwethers returned to their journey.

“I’m Jack Merriwether, who are you?” Olive asked mockingly once they were a safe distance away. “Aw, Jack, what are you doing? We just got here and already you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Shut up,” Jack muttered.

“Look at yourself, man!”

Jack knelt by a brook and looked at his reflection. He was indeed a horror. His body, clothes, and hair were caked with many different kinds of filth, and he was openly carrying a musket and a knife. “Well, that explains what that was all about,” he said hopefully. “Maybe I’ll come by and say hi to them again once I’ve gotten cleaned up a bit.”

They soon passed the edge of the forest and came in sight of the so-called free city. It was a huge expanse of cabins and shanties surrounding the base of the mountain, simultaneously dense and sprawling, like an army of scrap-wood soldiers waging a bizarre siege. The only proper city Jack and Olive had ever seen was Alesbury, and the entirety of Alesbury could have fit into one of Wyrmsreach’s many slums.

The magnificence of the dragon’s mountain stood in sharp contrast to the wretched shacks surrounding it. Although it was not obvious from a distance, the surface of the mountain was as finely finished as any castle or cathedral’s walls. Huge, elaborate sculptures of dragons and stranger beasts were carved directly into its face, along with massive ledges and perches.

As if on cue, Paashalezub flew directly overhead, clutching two screaming cows in his talons. The wyrm was a massive, reptilian beast who blotted out the sun as he passed. He had six leathery, bat-like wings that flapped independently of each other, causing his flight to take on a dizzying corkscrew pattern. Gouts of fire poured incessantly from his jaws, leaving a column of black smoke in his passing. He circled around his mountain three times, then landed on a huge ledge and began to eat.

~~~

Neither Jack, nor Olive, nor Daniel had any good idea of what to expect when they arrived in Wyrmsreach. Jack and Olive had only heard of the place through Prudence and Zanzibar, and Daniel only knew of it from the implausible stories his fellows told during work breaks. But even with no firm preconceived notions, they were still taken aback by the bustle and the chaos and the smells.

Rough-looking humans shared the narrow, offal-strewn thoroughfares with tautho and goblins and odder things yet. Strange men wearing billowing black cloaks, broad flat hats, and ceramic masks flitted about in small groups, keeping to themselves. The streets were clogged with merchants, stalls, and touts, giving the entire city the appearance of a huge, unplanned marketplace. Jack was distracted by the sight of a misshapen beggar covered in brilliant green scales, and walked face-first into a fly-enshrouded slab of some unknown meat. “Watch where you’re going!” screeched the butcher stall’s owner, a human of indeterminate gender mottled with more sores and blotches than its rotting wares.

The three young travelers wandered through a maze-like warren, hemmed in by structures of every description. Some of the city’s buildings were nothing more than hide tents hastily erected on stretches of vacant land, whereas others were solidly constructed structures of brick or stone. There had been no formal attempt to lay out streets, and the only road signs were advertisements erected by local merchants pointing out the routes to their establishments. “This way to MacMurray’s Saloon” or “Authentic Freak and Medicine Show, Fifty Yards Ahead” or the like.

In one alleyway, Olive saw an emaciated dog corner something with the body of a rooster, the head of a serpent, and the tails of both animals. The strange bird hissed and struck at the dog’s front leg with its fangs. The canine jumped back, yelping and whimpering. Its foreleg was as stiff as a board where it had been bitten, and Olive could see its limb was turning into bone. The poor dog got off two more pitiable barks before its lungs ossified. Its head was frozen mercifully quickly, and then it was just a statue. The bird-thing hopped on top of the figure and crowed.

“So what now?” Olive asked.

“That’s…a good question,” Jack said. “We never really thought this far ahead, did we?”

“It’s almost dark. We should probably get a room for the night.”

“Right. But I don’t have any money.”

“Me neither. Daniel?”

The tautho rummaged around in a small pouch on his belt. He retrieved three battered pennies and a silver coin that had been bitten in half.

“I’m going to guess that won’t get us a room,” Jack said. “Do we have anything we could sell?”

“Not really,” Olive said. “Just your gun. I’m sure you can find a buyer for it here.”

Jack took the musket from his back and inspected it. His sister was right it would be easy to sell, but he hated to give his weapon up in a lawless place like this. If only there was some way to get money for it without selling it.

Lightning struck. “All right, I’ve got it,” Jack said. “Follow me.”

~~~

As he smoked a fat black cigar and counted the chips in front of him, Hieronymus Legg thought he might finally have escaped his bad luck.

He had first encountered his misfortune in Hyasset, where his carting business had failed. His competitors had spread vicious rumors that his cart always wound up at its destination lighter than when it had left. Sure he had pilfered a little, but everyone did.

His bad luck caught up with him again in Fort Hoening, where he was falsely accused of bootlegging and whipped in the streets. While it was true he had been carrying bottles of whiskey into town, most of them had been intended for personal drinking.

Unable to find honest work in Fort Hoening, Legg tried to flee his bad luck by running into the wilderness, where he spent two lonely, hungry years as a road agent. But even living like an animal he hadn’t been able to escape the awful specter of his misfortune. It caught up with him yet again on some nameless back road when he cropped the ears of a back-talking traveler who turned out to be the military governor’s brother. With a hefty bounty on his head, Legg was forced to run all the way to Wyrmsreach.

Now Legg was in a comfortable saloon with food in his belly, good ale in his cup, and good cards in his hand. Since he had sat at this table…how long ago was it now? A day ago? In any case, since he’d sat at the table he’d tripled a stake it had taken him his entire life to earn. In this place, so far away from the laws and people who had oppressed him, he felt he might at last make a clean break with his past.

A dirty, scrawny street urchin walked into the bar and looked around, accompanied by a girl of about equal age and filthiness and a muttonhead. The kid approached Legg’s table.

“Get out of here,” Legg growled, waving the urchin away. “You want to beg, you can do it in the streets.”

“I’m not here to beg,” the kid said. “I’m here to play cards.”

“We ain’t playing for peanut shells, kid.”

The kid had a musket strapped to his back. He unlatched it and set it down on the table. It was one of the new Protectorate large-bore guns. They were nearly impossible to find, especially ones in such good condition. One of the players at the table whistled.

“Where’d you get a piece like this?” Legg asked.

“I don’t ask where you got your money. Can I put this up for a stake?”

“Here you go,” Legg said, sliding four ducats in chips towards the kid. “Deal him in.” The urchin pulled up a chair and sat down. His two companions hovered at the bar, watching him anxiously.

Legg inwardly rejoiced. This had to be a sign that the long stretch of cosmic injustice he had endured was finally coming to an end. The gun was worth at least twelve ducats, and might even be worth keeping for personal use. As soon as he finished fleecing this dumb kid he’d collect his winnings and walk out of the room and start enjoying his new life.

Legg anted in, checked his cards, and then took a closer look at the new player. The kid was an odd one. He had a black metal band on his head, and there was a strange intensity in his eyes. He chuckled nervously. Probably just some crazy street kid who’d swiped a deserter’s gun.

Shortly thereafter, Hieronymus Legg’s bad luck caught up with him.

The kid seemed to know who had the best hand at the table as soon as the cards were dealt. He didn’t win every hand, but he never lost more than his ante and when he won he won big. As Legg lost more money he started betting bolder and bolder, but that only made him lose his money faster and faster.

The kid tried to cash out of the game at several points, but Legg objected violently each time. He believed no ragged little street brat could be skilled enough to beat him at cards. This streak had to represent nothing more than beginner’s luck, and by definition beginner’s luck cannot last forever. As long as the kid wasn’t allowed to back out, sooner or later his streak would have to end, and then Legg could get his hard-earned money back. So the kid kept playing, and the kid kept winning.

The girl and the muttonhead sat at the bar the whole time. At first they watched the game with great interest, but sometime after midnight they seemed to become exhausted with it and stopped paying attention. Legg’s eye occasionally flitted to the girl. Under the dirt she wasn’t too bad. It had been too long since he’d had a woman, especially a willing one. He thought maybe if he bankrupted the kid he’d be able to buy the girl from him, and that would be a fine day’s work. Then he contemplated the small and ever-shrinking pile of chips in front of him, and the fast-growing stacks the kid was accumulating, and his mood became even darker.

The other players drifted away over time. By some bleary point in the early morning, only three were left…Legg, the kid, and a half-asleep drunkard. Legg was down to his last few chips but would not relent.

“You’ve really got the favor of the gods, don’t you?” Legg hissed. “They’ve been showering you with their blessings ever since you sat down, and showering me with something else entirely. Pack of bastards.” He cast a baleful glance up towards the tavern’s smoke-stained rafters as if to stinkeye the heavens themselves.

“The gods don’t have anything to do with it,” the kid said. “Raise you by five.”

“Too rich for me,” the drunkard said, tossing his hand into the hole.

Legg tossed his last chips into the pot, and the kid flipped over the pair of queens that had been kneeling in front of him. A weak hand, but it was enough. Legg jumped to his feet, leaned into the kid’s face, and let loose a loud, blustery burst of wildly inventive obscenity. The kid looked to his musket, which was still on the table.

The bartender, a big man with a waddle like a turkey’s, produced an axe handle from behind the bar. “You get out of my joint, Hieronymus,” he barked, setting the skin on his neck to flapping.

“Shut up, you tub of guts. Get back to watering down your gin. You come at me with that axe handle and I’ll open your floppy throat up.” Legg had a big hunting knife on his belt, and another in his boot. Maybe this little cheater could beat him at cards, but let’s see how well he’d do in a knife fight.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” the kid stammered, gathering up his winnings. “I know when I’m not welcome.”

“Cheating bastards like you aren’t welcome anywhere. I saw you looking at that piece of yours. You going to shoot me? You going to bushwhack me with your big stupid gun just like you bushwhacked me at the table now?! You think you can get away with doing that to me?” Legg kicked the table over, sending chips spraying across the barroom. The musket clattered into a corner.

“Aw, look, you dropped your gun,” Legg said, filling his voice with insincere sympathy. “Go pick it up.” His hand was at his knife. If the kid so much as twitched, he’d wind up with his guts flapping in the breeze.

The girl stood and drew an old saber blackened by rust. “You leave my brother alone,” she said. The muttonhead smashed a bottle against the bar.

“Aw, isn’t that cute? Your sister’s standing up for you. Is she your bodyguard?”

The kid looked Legg straight in the eye. There was no fear in his expression, and Legg found that more infuriating than even the cheating had been. “Maybe. Come at me and she’ll chop your head off.”

“By the time she’s on me I’ll have you killed and dressed. Go pick up your gun.”

“It’s just a card game,” the kid said. “No need for anyone to get hurt over this.”

“No need for anyone to get hurt, huh? Real nice to see you looking out for me.” He cast a sideways glance at the girl. “Tell you what,” he said. “As long as you’re being so reasonable, and seeing that you’re so concerned that nobody gets hurt, I’ll offer you a deal. You can get out of here with your chips, or your sister. You can’t have them both. What do you think?”

“Talk to her with respect, or I will cave your skull in,” the muttonhead said.

“Quiet your pet down, people are talking.”

Wordlessly, the kid got down on his hands and knees and began picking up his chips.

“Jack!” the girl yelled. “What are you doing?”

Legg cackled. “It’s all right, girl,” he said. “I may be poor and down on my luck, but I know how to treat a little sweetie like you.” He looked down at the kid. “So Jack’s your name, is it? Hey, Jack, you missed a chip over there.” The kid’s ears and cheeks turned a bright shade of red, but he kept to the ground.

“You come any closer to me and I swear I’ll kill you,” the girl said.

“A deal’s a deal, little sweetie. Or are you just another liar and cheat like your brother?”

“You know what your problem is?” Jack asked, still down on his hands and knees.

“No, let’s hear it.”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of problems, so I’ll go through them in order. You blame everyone but yourself for your own mistakes. You gamble like a moron, which I guess is unsurprising, because that is what you are. You rely on your knife to get you out of problems that there’s better ways of dealing with.”

Legg’s limited stock of patience had now been exhausted. He drew his knife. Nobody had the right to talk to him like that. For that insult the kid was going to die slow, and maybe the girl would, too.

“But your worst problem…the problem that actually got you killed…is that you talk too much.”

The tavern doors creaked. A big paunchy guy with a braided beard and a red coat was coming in.

“Shoot him!” Jack yelled.

Without the slightest hesitation, the redcoat pulled a pistol from up his sleeve and put a bullet through Hieronymus Legg’s right eye. The gambler toppled into a heap, his bad luck having come to its ultimate conclusion.

~~~

When Protectorate reinforcements arrived on the battlefield outside Wyrmsreach, they were startled to find some of their comrades still alive. This was almost unprecedented, as mercy was not a quality associated with victorious tautho. The wounded had even been left with food and water.

Things became even stranger when the survivors told their stories. They said they had seen two human teenagers, a boy and a girl, giving orders to the enemy warband. The boy had led the tautho to victory over a larger, better-armed, and well-entrenched force. The girl had kept the tautho from slaughtering the prisoners in their customary fashion.

Since the time of the Unification War the tautho had never willingly accepted human leadership. An occasional tautho road agent might join up with a gang of lawless humans, but this had been a full warband accompanied by an elder. The fact that the traitors were barely more than children only deepened the mystery.

The captain leading the troop was glad that his job did not entail solving mysteries. He sent word on to the military governor at Fort Hoening, who sent word on to the Thirteenth Division at Saint Mandelbrot’s. Falcons were soon on their way to Wyrmsreach, with notes strapped to their legs advising certain parties to be on the lookout for two dangerous pilgrims.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Zanzibar roared with laugher, hugging the Merriwethers tightly despite their ragged appearance and strong odor. “It’s so good to see you again!” he said. “Prudence is going to be thrilled to see you. We were afraid you wouldn’t make it!”

“What are you doing in Wyrmsreach?” Jack asked.

“Looking for you two, obviously. We knew Crane was taking you to Wyrmsreach, but we didn’t know what route his men would take. So we decided to come along ahead and free you when you arrived. You were so late getting in we were starting to worry the Protectorate had nabbed you. What happened? How’d you get away from Crane’s thugs?”

“It’s a long story. We’ll tell you later.”

“Anyway, one of the goblins saw you in here and came back to get me. Sorry it took me so long to arrive.” He looked over to the corner, where the proprietor was scrubbing at the bloodstain with a horsehair brush.

“It all worked out. It’s good to see you, Zanzibar. I knew I should keep him talking, and I shouldn’t stand between him and the door, but I didn’t know you’d be the one showing up to save us.”

“Well, here I am. I know Prudence will be happy to see you again, too. We’re staying at a joint on the east side. Come on, it looks like the two of you can use baths and a good rest.”

“The three of us,” Olive said. “Zanzibar, I’d like you to meet Daniel. Daniel, this is Zanzibar.”

“Good to meet you,” Zanzibar said. “Any friend of these two urchins is a friend of mine.”

“Baths and clean clothes all around sound real good to me,” Jack said. “Let me just cash out my winnings here and we’ll be on our way.”

Zanzibar looked at the great stacks of chips in Jack’s hands, and then at the dead man. The gambler’s corpse had been propped up in the corner. A thin tendril of smoke rose up from its ruined eye.

“Remind me never to play cards with you,” Zanzibar said.

~~~

Prudence and Zanzibar had been staying in a dilapidated flophouse on the eastern edge of the city. With Jack’s poker winnings they upgraded to a nicer hotel, one catering mainly to the better class of merchant. Jack and Olive were able to wash away the dust and sweat and dried blood they had been accumulating, and the angry blisters on their feet were given time to heal. Wyrmsreach had tailors of considerable skill, and the Merriwethers traded their rags in for stylish new clothes. Even Daniel was outfitted with a smart linen suit, although he found it a touch confining and was always pulling at the collar.

Every night the company assembled for a prodigious dinner at the hotel’s dining room. The cook brought forth great steaming platters of fish, baskets of little round cheeses, stews, pastries, mulled wine, and every other delicacy Jack and Olive had missed so sorely on the trail. As they feasted they all told the stories of their adventures; Jack and Olive now had stories to rival Prudence and Zanzibar.

One night, after Jack had finished recounting the story of the battle at the Wyrmsreach borders, the conversation hit a lull. Olive sloshed around the wine in her cup and looked up at the ceiling. “So what are we going to do now?” she asked.

Jack shrugged. “Game of chess?”

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. How are we going to get our parents out of jail?”

Prudence stiffened a little. “There’s nothing we can do for Edwin and Jeanne,” she said. “We don’t even know if they’re still alive. My guess would be they’re probably not. Kids, I know this is hard for you, but you’ve got to start new lives here. Your parents wouldn’t want you coming after them. They gave themselves up so you could be safe and free.”

Tears welled up in Olive’s eyes. “So what? Just forget about them? How am I going to look at myself in the mirror if we do that?”

“You’ll find a way. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Olive drained her cup, slammed it down on the table, and stormed off. Jack watched as she went. He thought she had raised a good question. When he looked himself in the mirror that night before going to bed and thought about the possibility of abandoning his parents, he had trouble meeting his own gaze.

~~~

The next morning, Zanzibar took Jack and Olive to one of Wyrmsreach’s many bazaars, ostensibly to see about finding work for them. The price of food and lodging were quite high, and Jack’s card money was rapidly disappearing. Jack reflected that Wyrmsreach was a place where life was cheap but living was expensive. Olive was in an especially low mood and jostled through the crowds, knocking passersby out of her path.

“Prudence is just trying to watch out for you two,” Zanzibar said. “You know that, right? You shouldn’t be angry with her.”

“I’m not angry with her,” Olive said. “I’m angry with myself.”

“Yeah, well…I can’t make any promises, but I might know a man who could help you out. And he wants to meet you.”

Olive perked up. “Help us out? With finding our parents?”

“Maybe. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but if anybody could do it, he can.”

“Who is he? A mercenary? A spy?”

“He’s a scholar. His name’s Phineas Copperpot.”

“How’s a scholar going to help us?”

“Scholars trade in information, and information’s what you need more than anything. Copperpot’s well connected. He sits here in Wyrmsreach, and people like me bring him secrets from all over the world. If anyone can figure out what happened to your parents, it’s him. And he’s loaded, incidentally.”

“What’s the catch?” Jack asked.

“Good question. Copperpot’s not trustworthy. And he’s powerful. One of the most powerful people in Wyrmsreach. Untrustworthy and powerful is a tricky combination.”

“But you’d still do business with him?”

Zanzibar laughed. “If I only did business with trustworthy men I’d starve to death. You just have to keep your wits about you and remember he is not your friend.”

Jack looked at Olive. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I can’t see any harm in talking to him. But there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why does he want to meet us?”

“You’re the last of the Shattergrave Knights. He thinks he can use you to usurp Maxander’s power, wage war on the Protectorate, and put his yoke across the whole world’s neck.”

“Can he?” Jack asked.

Zanzibar shrugged. “Time will tell.”

Just then, the dense and boisterous crowd fell silent and parted down the middle. A middle-aged man walked calmly through the path that had been made for him. Like the girls Jack and Olive had encountered in the woods, he had a shaved head covered in tattoos, a gold chain around his neck, and a robe of crimson silk. Nobody spoke in his presence. Even the breeze seemed to die down. As soon as he turned the corner, the path was swallowed up again and the crowd returned to its raucous business.

“Who was that?” Jack asked.

“That was a wyrmslave. He’s one of Paashalezub’s servants.”

“He’s a slave? So why did everyone get out of his way?”

“Let’s put it this way. He’s the dragon’s property, and he sees to the dragon’s business. What do you think happens if someone gets in the way of his business? What do you think happens if someone interferes with Paashalezub’s property?”

“Oh.” The prospect of going back to the forest to flirt with the girls again suddenly seemed much less appealing.

~~~

Phineas Copperpot’s house was at the heart of the city, very close to the base of the dragon’s mountain. As Zanzibar, Jack, and Olive approached, they could see the great red wyrm lounging on a perch, sunning itself. Copperpot’s house was an unassuming brick cottage surrounded by lush gardens and a neatly manicured front lawn. A young sheep dined peacefully on the grass, taking in the measure of Copperpot’s visitors with its stupid brown eyes as Zanzibar rapped on the door.

The man who answered was very short, barely clearing five feet. He had a round, smiling face with apple cheeks, a curly little goatee like a pig’s tail, and was bald above great shocks of white hair on the back and sides of his head. A thick, leather-bound book was tucked under one of his arms. He wore a dapper tweed suit and gold-rimmed pince-nez spectacles, which he adjusted to get a better look at his visitors.

“Good day, Zanzibar, good day!” he said cheerily. “I trust your young companions here are Jack and Olive Merriwether?”

“That they are.”

“Welcome, welcome!” the little man declared. “I’m Phineas Copperpot. It’s so nice to meet you after all this time. What an honor this is!” He kissed Olive’s hand with an audible smack and eagerly shook hands with Jack. “To think that two Shattergrave Knights have come to my humble home.”

“Nice to meet you, as well,” Jack said. while Olive curtsied.

“Please, come in! Have a seat anywhere, and we can get acquainted.”

The inside of Copperpot’s house was not nearly as homey as its outside. The corpse of a man was nailed to a wall, its arms and legs outstretched as if it were doing jumping jacks. All the skin had been stripped from it, revealing the musculature and organs, but some strange taxidermic process had been employed to keep its flesh from rotting. A tapestry on the opposite wall depicted the sack of the city of Godor in nightmarish detail. A figure wearing a black circlet and wielding a black sword, whom Jack and Olive took to represent their infamous ancestor, was shown in the foreground eating the king’s heart like an apple. He bore an unmistakable resemblance to Jack.

Books and scrolls and papers occupied every flat surface and bulged out from the room’s many bookcases. One set of shelves housed biological curiosities in jars. The fetus of a three-headed dog sat hunched in a bottle of cloudy liquid. In another was a baby with a single blue eye in the middle of its face, a nose protruding from its forehead like a horn, and a head of bright red hair. A paunchy black-and-white cat napped in an empty space between these horrors.

Copperpot scuttled off to the kitchen. “I’m so sorry about the mess!” he called. “Please clear off a space anywhere. Does anyone want refreshments? I just brewed a fresh pot of peppermint tea.”

“I’ll have some tea,” Olive stammered, as Jack cleared stacks of papers from an overstuffed sofa.

Copperpot returned with a tray bearing two cups of steaming tea, a plate of cookies, and a silver bowl of sugar cubes. He looked around in vain for a clear place to set them down, eventually settling on a pile of books tall enough to serve as a makeshift coffee table. “Do you take sugar or milk?” he asked.

“No…no thanks,” Olive said. She couldn’t take her eyes off Copperpot’s gruesome collection. She felt as though all the pieces with eyes were staring at her.

Copperpot handed her a cup. “I grow the peppermint in my own garden,” he said proudly. “I dare say you won’t find any better in Wyrmsreach.” Olive took a sip of the strong, sweet tea. Copperpot was right. It was damn good peppermint.

“Shall we get down to business?” Zanzibar asked.

“Certainly. You said you had a map to the Tomb of the Archon?”

“I do. I procured it myself from the Crawling Library of Ashmoreaz.”

Copperpot raised an eyebrow. “Yet you’re not blind, or insane, or bloated with the librarian’s eggs.”

“I’m made of stern stuff. And the librarian can be driven off with a splash of sulfuric acid to its ovipositor.”

“Very impressive. Can I see it?”

“Once I’ve shown it to you, you won’t need it anymore.”

“How much are you asking?”

“Fifty thousand ducats.”

Olive sprayed out a little geyser of peppermint tea. She had barely been aware that much money existed in the world. Zanzibar was sorely chagrined, though he tried not to show it. Spitting with astonishment was not one of his preferred negotiation techniques.

Copperpot tittered and blotted up the spilt tea with his handkerchief. “Fifty thousand? Why, that’s quite a bit of money.”

“I went to quite a lot of danger and expense obtaining this map. If you’re not interested, I’m sure I can find another buyer.”

“Don’t be so touchy, Mr. Ataxerxes. I haven’t said no. I just want to be sure I know what it is I’m buying. Does that fifty thousand include the services of our young knights here?”

Zanzibar glanced at the surprised Merriwethers. “No,” he said. “They’re free agents, not in my employ. If you want their services, you’ll have to bargain separately with them.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said. “What services are you talking about?”

“Sir Merriwether, what do you know about the Archon?” Copperpot asked.

“Nothing. I’ve never heard of it.”

“Nothing? Why, it’s your destiny!” Copperpot began rummaging through his crowded bookshelves. “The Archon was Maxander’s mightiest weapon. If it had ever been unleashed, he would have won the war in a fortnight.”

“But what is it?” Olive demanded.

“There is a considerable difference of opinion on that point. As you might expect, it’s a matter shrouded in much secrecy. Some people believe it is a war engine capable of re-making reality. Others think it is a god or a powerful demon—I don’t consider that distinction terribly important—that Maxander summoned into our plane of existence and bound into service.”

“I don’t understand,” Jack said. “If Maxander had such a powerful weapon, how did he lose the war?”

Copperpot laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, Sir Merriwether. I don’t mean to laugh at you. But you really don’t know? Kingfisher never told you about your illustrious forefather?”

“She doesn’t like talking about family history.”

“Maxander was betrayed by his most powerful, most trusted servant,” Copperpot said. “Gorgyaz stole the Archon right after its completion and buried it someplace even Maxander couldn’t find. Why did you think he was the only Shattergrave Knight to survive the Unification War? He was in hiding from his own master.”

“And now you want Olive and me to help you find the Archon’s Tomb and open it up?”

“Precisely.”

“But we don’t know how. This is the first we’ve heard about any of this.”

Copperpot laughed. “I’m sure you can determine the tomb’s weak points and crack them open when you find them. You do possess Gorgyaz’s sword and circlet, correct? Cauttaraxus and Iarex?”

“We do.”

“May I see them?”

Jack removed the circlet from his satchel and held it up to the light. Olive drew her sword. “Oh, my,” Copperpot said. Behind his spectacles, his eyes were big and bright. “I thought I might never look upon them. How wonderful. How absolutely wonderful it is to see something lost found again.”

“I don’t like this,” Olive said. “What will the Archon do if someone wakes it up? I mean, there’s no way to control a thing like that. We don’t even know what it really is.”

“There are precautions we can take. Let me worry about them.”

“You want us to help you wake up a god,” Jack said. “What are you going to do for us?”

“Why, whatever you want, my dear Sir Merriwether. It’s a seller’s market for treasures like these. For example, I understand your parents are guests of the Protectorate. I can uncover the details of their captivity. If it’s money you want, I’ve a considerable fortune. If there’s something else, well…everything’s negotiable. The only thing I absolutely won’t trade is little Tristan over there.” Copperpot pointed at his cat, who was taking in the proceedings with a bored and insolent expression on his feline face.

“It’s a very interesting offer,” Jack said. “We’ll have to think about it.”

On their way out, Jack happened to look closely at one of the papers Copperpot had scattered about. It was covered in strange symbols Jack had never seen before, but somehow it still seemed to make sense. It had something to do with philosophy, or maybe magic. Or perhaps both. It was about something true. He carefully picked up the ancient parchment and tried to decipher it.

“Be careful!” Copperpot cried. “That’s dangerous! It’s written in Inner Alphabet!”

“Inner Alphabet?”

“Yes. It’s… let’s just say it’s not something to play about with lightly.”

“Jack knows how to do that stuff,” Olive said. “He can turn himself invisible.”

“You know about the Inner Alphabet?” Copperpot asked, thoughtfully tugging on his corkscrew goatee. “Who taught you?”

“I taught myself, kind of. I don’t really know that much about it.”

“Show me.”

Jack looked at Olive and Zanzibar. Olive was shaking her head, but Zanzibar nodded. Jack concentrated, closed his eyes, and began intoning the strange, piping whistle he had learned from Prudence. This time he didn’t have the sound quite right. He faded from sight but did not wholly disappear. Despite this, Copperpot clapped appreciatively.

“Very, very, very impressive!” he said. “Excellent pronunciation! And to think you taught yourself. That’s unheard of. Do you know any of the other sigils? Or the meta-grammar?”

“No. You just saw all I know how to do. Well, you didn’t see it, but that’s the whole point.”

“Well, that’s something we can remedy. Come back any time, Sir Merriwether.”

~~~

“What do you think?” Zanzibar asked on the walk home.

“I don’t know about this,” Olive said. “That guy’s creepy. I’m all for finding our parents, but waking up an all-powerful demon seems a little extreme.”

“You’ve got to take old Phineas with a grain of salt,” Zanzibar said. “He tends to oversell things. This isn’t the first Maxander super-weapon he’s collected. It isn’t even the first I’ve sold him. If Maxander’s weapons were so powerful, Saint Hugo wouldn’t have won the war, would he?”

“It just looks like something that might get out of hand,” Olive said. “If even Gorgyaz thought the Archon should be hidden away forever, maybe we shouldn’t second-guess him.”

“What do you think, Jack?” Zanzibar asked.

“I don’t know. It does sound risky. But if it gets our parents back, maybe it’s worth the gamble. And the Protectorate wouldn’t dare come after us again if we had the Archon on our side!”

“That’s assuming it’ll be on our side,” Olive said, “And assuming Copperpot doesn’t betray us. It doesn’t do us much good to get our parents back if we wake up a dark god and it eats the whole planet.”

“Hmmmm,” Jack said. “When you put it that way it does sound like a bad idea. But maybe we’ve got another option here. Maybe we can get Copperpot’s help even if we don’t help him release the Archon.”

“Yeah?” Zanzibar asked. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking Copperpot might want an apprentice.”

~~~

Even in an outlaw’s haven like Wyrmsreach, the arrival of genuine Shattergrave Knights caused something of a stir. When the Merriwethers first arrived in town, they had enjoyed a comfortable anonymity in the crowds. However, as time went by, they began to stand out. Whispers ran through the streets every time they came out in public, and heads turned as they passed by. The strange men in black cloaks and masks seemed especially interested. Jack swore they were following him around, although he could never actually catch any of them in the act.

One afternoon, a half-naked madman with a red beard that reached down to his knees and crude tattoos covering every square inch of his flesh flung himself face-down on the ground in front of Olive and swore his undying faith in Maxander. He wept uncontrollably when Olive thanked him for his loyalty and said she would call on him one day when his services were needed. When she was a girl in Muddy Hollow Olive had often dreamed about being famous, but she had never thought celebrity would be like this. Jack was also disappointed with their notoriety. He found it hard to make a good first impression on any of the camp’s females when he was well known as a war criminal’s descendant.

Unbeknownst to the Merriwethers, news of their presence had even spread outside the camp. Every night, falcons alighted from Wyrmsreach to Saint Mandelbrot’s monastery bearing reports and observations. The birds returned to Wyrmsreach bearing orders.

One day, a traveler who was especially interested in the Merriwethers came to town. He rubbed the scar across his nose, took a long look at the dragon circling about overhead, and then set off to find his contact. Tom Fisk had arrived.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The warden led Citizens 472 and 473 out of the tower for the first time since their arrival. “Be careful,” he cautioned. “The sun is very bright today. Your eyes will have to readjust to its light.” They shielded their eyes even though the sun had set several hours ago. The warden smiled to see his charges pass their final test. As always, his hard work and dedication had been rewarded.

Citizen 472 shut his eyes tight against the blinding glare, grabbing on to the warden’s shoulder for guidance. The warden would lead him wherever he needed to go. Being outside the tower for the first time in his life was just as frightening as he’d been told, but as long as the warden was telling him what to do he knew he was safe.

“Everything you need is waiting for you at your new home,” the warden said as he walked the newest citizens down a neatly kept cobblestone path. “All your things are there. We’ve taken care of everything.”

“What about our children?” Citizen 473 asked. “Are they waiting for us?”

The warden was displeased but not surprised by the question. Memory eradication was still an inexact science, and he knew his techniques required further refinement. He was confident whatever stray memories Citizen 473 held of her previous life would eventually fall away as she integrated into the community.

“Your children aren’t here yet,” the warden said. “But we’ll bring them to you very soon.”

~~~

When Jack’s card money finally gave out, the Merriwethers were forced to move from the merchant hotel to cheaper lodgings, renting a small house on the outskirts of town. Jack hired on as Phineas Copperpot’s apprentice. He tended the scholar’s garden, organized his papers, and dusted his taxidermy in exchange for lessons and a modest allowance. When Copperpot saw Jack squinting to read fine print, he also gave his apprentice an old pair of spectacles with a little crack in one lens. Jack was astonished by how clear and bright the world could be. He had always thought it was inherently hazy and ill-defined.

Olive found work at a curio seller’s shop. In theory, her job was to show potential customers the amulets and trinkets and bitter potions offered for sale. In fact, her job was to be who she was. Having a Shattergrave Knight as a saleslady gave the shop’s trinkets and potions and mass-manufactured rarities an air of authenticity. People would come to gawk a bit and leave with a love draught of colored rainwater or a bit of scrap metal passed off as a fragment of Maxander’s armor. Daniel found work at the same stall unloading carts, sweeping the floor, and roughing up the occasional shoplifter. He bought spicy stews for lunch every day from a nearby vendor and Olive started to develop a taste for tautho food, although she always asked the cook to hold the scorpion powder.

Zanzibar finally did sell his map to Copperpot, albeit for somewhat less than fifty thousand ducats. He bought a well-appointed manor house in the part of Wyrmsreach where the richest outlaws lived, and spent his days doing not much of anything in the midst of considerable luxury. His goblins were decked out in velvet suits and glittering jewelry for about two or three weeks. Then their new clothes disintegrated into rags, their jewelry was lost at gambling, and they returned to their former squalor. They did not seem to miss their finery once it was gone, “easy come, easy go” being one of the primary tenets of goblin philosophy.

Prudence was a frequent guest at Zanzibar’s house, but she never consented to live there despite his entreaties. She enjoyed a life of quiet domesticity, keeping the house she shared with Jack, Olive, and Daniel clean and cooking the meals. A handful of her old friends that were still alive would occasionally visit to reminisce over the wild days. In her unguarded moments, Prudence admitted Wyrmsreach was not a bad place to retire after all.

Although life was outwardly quite comfortable, Jack and Olive had business to attend to. They met in the kitchen to discuss their parents’ rescue almost every night after Prudence had gone to bed, reviewing maps, hashing out appropriate alibis and disguises, and making lists of necessary supplies. They squirreled away travelling money in secret, and eventually accumulated a purse of twenty ducats. However, one major piece of the puzzle continued to evade them: They did not know where their parents were.

Caught up as they were in their own lives and routines, none of the Merriwethers noticed a fur trader with a long beard and a scar across his nose following them through the streets. To the extent that anyone saw him lurking in the crowds, Tom Fisk seemed to be just one more of Wyrmsreach’s many peculiar residents.

~~~

One evening as Prudence sat reading in the living room, Olive came downstairs with Cauttaraxus in her hands. She laid it on the coffee table.

“I need to ask you a favor,” Olive said.

“Oh no,” Prudence groaned.

“I need you to teach me to fight.”

“We’ve been over this,” the old woman said wearily, not looking up from her book. “I don’t want you kids going out and mixing it up with the Protectorate. You’re safe here, even if you don’t appreciate it as well as you should. Haven’t you ever heard the expression, those who live by the sword die by the sword?”

“At least they get to go down fighting,” Olive said defensively. “What if the Protectorate chases us here? Shouldn’t I be able to protect myself?”

“If the Protectorate chases us here then it’ll have a dragon to deal with. Don’t worry about it.”

“Besides, it’s not like Wyrmsreach is all that safe. Almost every night I hear fights and even gunshots outside.”

“So stay inside at night. Problem solved.”

“You’re telling me Jack gets to go out to creepy old Copperpot’s house every day and study dark magic, and you won’t even teach me how to defend myself?”

“Yep.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Nope.”

“I’m not going to stop asking just because you say keep saying no. You realize that, right? I’m going to keep bothering you about this until you either say yes or go completely insane.”

Prudence looked up to the heavens beseechingly. “What did I do to deserve such pig-headed relations?” she asked.

“So you’ll teach me to fight?”

“I’m going to teach you the most important lesson of all,” Prudence said spitefully. “Be very careful what you ask for.”

The next afternoon they went out into the forests surrounding Wyrmsreach. Prudence took Cauttaraxus from Olive, wrapped its blade in a layer of thick cloth, sheathed the blade in its scabbard, and then wrapped the scabbard in another layer of cloth.

“What are you doing?” Olive asked.

“You’re here for sword training, not to murder your auntie,” Prudence said. “This isn’t a normal sword. If we don’t take proper precautions the blade’s liable to bite through the scabbard as soon as you get a good hit. Here, catch.” Prudence tossed the saber to her grand-niece and picked up a hefty stick. “Before we start you should tie your bootlace so you don’t trip over it.”

Olive looked down at her foot. Her laces were fine. She glanced up and saw Prudence’s stick coming straight at her head.

Before she even knew what was happening, Cauttaraxus was up in front of her face. The sword harmlessly deflected Prudence’s blow.

“What did do you that for?!” Olive asked. “I wasn’t ready!”

“Knowing how to take cheap shots is half of knowing how to fight. And I wanted to show you something about your sword. Maybe you weren’t ready for that attack, but Cauttaraxus was. Now I’m going to attack again. Try to block it. Really focus.”

Olive held up the sword, keeping a nervous eye on Prudence’s cudgel. Cauttaraxus seemed to twist and turn in her grasp, but she kept it straight and in place. Then the old woman stepped in faster than Olive’s eyes could track and rapped her on the back of the head with a painful blow.

“Ouch!” Olive yelled, rubbing her aching skull.

“Cauttaraxus ain’t like any other sword,” Prudence said. “Don’t try to control it; you’ll only get yourself in trouble that way. Let the sword take over. It knows more about fighting than you do. Here, let’s try that again. This time let your arms stay loose and limber. Go with the flow and let Cauttaraxus do what it wants to do.”

Prudence took a few steps backwards and raised her stick into a fighting stance. Olive tried to follow her instructions but it was hard to give up control to an inanimate piece of metal. Prudence feinted and Olive fell for it. She forced the sword into a position in which it could block a blow that never came. Before she could get back into a neutral position, Prudence caught her right in the ribs with a brutal thwack. Olive sank to her knees in pain.

“You want to take a break for the day?” Prudence asked.

“Absolutely not,” Olive said, as soon as she could breathe again. “Keep at it.”

Prudence took a powerful overhand swing at Olive before she was even on her feet again, as if Olive’s head were a post she was trying to drive into the ground, but this time Cauttaraxus flew up and blocked the strike.

“Very good,” Prudence said. She spat in the dirt and unleashed a brutal flurry of blows, and Cauttaraxus swung up to meet each one in turn. The rhythmic clacking of the weapons colliding sounded like a frenzied berserker trying to hack down a tree. “You can’t master the weapon. You have to let the weapon master you. Let yourself go.”

Prudence overcommitted to one of her swings, leaving herself open for just a moment. Before she realized what she was doing, Olive swung Cauttaraxus into the side of the old woman’s neck. Prudence tumbled to the ground clutching her throat and coughing.

“Oh gods!” Olive cried, dropping Cauttaraxus. “Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods! Prudence, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you!”

“It’s all right,” Prudence grunted. “That’s why I padded it. Otherwise you could fit me in a hatbox right now. Nice swing, by the way. You’ve got a good arm.”

“I wasn’t even trying to hit you!” Olive said, helping Prudence back to her feet. “I was just trying to defend myself.”

“That’s the tricky thing about having a sword with a will of its own. Cauttaraxus wants to be ruthless, even if you don’t. Let’s go home. We’ve practiced killing enough for one day.”

~~~

Jack sat in Copperpot’s study, hunched over a well-worn copybook and cursing the cramps in his hands. So far his training in the mysteries of the Inner Alphabet had been limited to painstaking handwriting drills, lengthy exercises in speech and breathing, and other such mundane and uninteresting pursuits. His progress felt glacial, but Copperpot assured him he was mastering the material at an unprecedented rate. Jack could not be sure if the praise was genuine or just an attempt to butter him up. The old sorcerer had kept on with his campaign to recruit Jack and Olive into the Archon expedition ever since they’d met, and sometimes his wheedling was hard to resist.

“When are we going to get to the good stuff?” Jack asked, swatting at a fly that had been buzzing around his head all morning. “I’m sick of drawing spirals.”

Copperpot glanced over his pupil’s shoulder. “You’re doing very well, but you’re still not drawing them with quite the precision you need. Spirals are a vital element of many of the Inner Alphabet’s sigils.”

“It’s not like I’m a complete beginner. I’ve spoken in the Inner Alphabet before.”

“You know precisely one sentence in the Inner Alphabet, and that you learned through simple mimicry. It’s an impressive feat, and it speaks highly of your potential, but right now you’re merely a parrot. I want to make you an orator. When you’re a master of this language, when you can speak it and read it and write it and understand it, why, you can do some marvelous things.” He carefully intoned a long incantation and suddenly there was a red ripe apple in his cupped palms. He tossed it to Jack, who fumbled the catch. “I just said, ‘I am holding an apple.’”

Jack was not impressed. He had seen jugglers and street performers perform similar feats, and their tricks made even real magic seem counterfeit. Copperpot’s brow furrowed. “Here, watch this,” he said. He pointed at one of the books on his shelf and cast a spell. The tome hurled itself into Copperpot’s hands. “I said, ‘That moves to me.’” Copperpot pointed at the bothersome fly and pronounced another one of his arcane sentences. The insect popped in a little burst of flame that resembled a match head’s ignition. “I told it, ‘You are on fire,’” Copperpot said smugly.

Now Jack was showing suitable awe and amazement. Copperpot smiled as he put the book back in its place. To his mind, the best part of having power was seeing how others feared and envied it.

“Is there any way to defend yourself from it?” Jack asked. “I mean, if you said that to me, would there be any way to keep myself from lighting up?”

“An excellent and necessary question, Sir Merriwether. Since you’re so eager to learn, I’ll teach you the most powerful sigil in the entire Inner Alphabet. Are you ready for it?”

Jack nodded eagerly.

“D’ogen,” Copperpot said slowly and deliberately, somehow drawing the little word out to four full syllables. “Say it with me. D’ogen. D’ogen. D’ohg’ehen.”

Jack followed along, trying to exactly match Copperpot’s pronunciation of the nonsense word.

“Good. Be sure not to close up your throat, and curl your mouth into a perfect circle on the second syllable. D’ohg’ehen. D’ohg’ehen.”

“What does it mean?” Jack looked about the room. Nothing was flying through the air or bursting into flame.

“It means ‘no.’ Say it if you ever fear the universe is being commanded to rise up against you. Concentrate on it. Let it fill up every pore of your being and every crevasse of your brain. If you’ve been issued a command that would do you harm, respond with D’ohg’ehen. Respond with no.”

Jack kept repeating the word again and again. He tried his best to let its sound occupy his entire consciousness, pushing out his teacher and his surroundings and the pain in his wrist.

“Very nice. You do have a good ear, Sir Merriwether. Here, since you seem to be tired of foundational exercises, I’ll give you a more challenging problem.” He took out a blank piece of parchment, wrote something on it, and folded it in half. “I have written that you are hungry,” he said. “I want you to disagree.”

Jack unfolded the paper to look at the sigil and his stomach immediately contracted in on itself. He had never in his life known such terrible hunger, even when he was in the wilderness. He tried to reach for the apple that Copperpot had created, but his hands were too weak to grasp it.

“Sir Merriwether…” Copperpot said disapprovingly. “What’s written on that paper is real. It is the truth. If you don’t refute it you’ll be dead of starvation in less than a minute.”

“D’ohg’ehen. D’ohg’ehen.” Jack’s hunger pangs faded a little. He found the strength to lift his head.

“Good. Say it forcefully. Mind your breathing, like I taught you.”

“D’ohg’ehen.” He was still ravenously hungry, but his insides no longer burned with emptiness. The apple looked sweeter and delicious than any he’d ever seen, but he had the strength of will to keep his hand from reaching for it again.

“State it with all your heart and all your strength.”

D’ohg’ehen!” Jack cried, refusing the command that he wither and die of hunger. He suddenly felt perfectly sated. The page in front of him was just a sheet of paper with some harmless scribbling on it. Jack tore it up into little pieces.

“Congratulations,” Copperpot said, although he felt he as the teacher was the one truly deserving of praise. “Paradoxically, ‘no’ is the gate through which all students of the Inner Alphabet must pass before they can progress to deeper mysteries. The ability to say ‘no’ is what separates masters from servants. If you do as I say and keep at your studies, you’ll be ordering the laws of physics around as though they were a wretched charwoman come to empty your chamber pot.”

~~~

Tom Fisk loitered near Alchizedek’s Curiosities, pretending to warm himself by a brazier full of flaming manure. He glanced over at the setting sun. He knew Olive would be leaving the store any minute now. The dragon was nowhere to be seen. It was probably inside its mountainous palace. The dragon was the one factor that could not be effectively controlled. The Merriwethers had all become predictable by now, but you could never tell where Paashalezub would be and there would be terrible consequences if his interest were aroused.

Fisk hated Wyrmsreach. He had no authority in this lawless place and even had to suffer the indignity of going about in disguise. The witchfinder had grown a thick beard, colored his white hair black, and swapped out his usual clothes for the rough, lice-ridden costume of a fur trader, and still he felt as exposed and vulnerable as if he were walking the streets pantsless. As he saw it, the only good thing about life in Wyrmsreach was that it gave him some insight into the sordid lives and diseased minds of the Protectorate’s outcasts.

Right on schedule, Olive Merriwether and her tautho companion left the shop. The shop was a good cover. It gave Merriwether a central location at which she could conspire with her followers without attracting the dragon’s attention. Paashalezub was no friend of the Protectorate, but he would not allow Maxander’s cultists to openly organize on his land. The tautho did not look like much, but in this case looks were probably deceiving. Fisk figured him for a bodyguard, and the bodyguard of a Shattergrave Knight had to be formidable, indeed.

One of Fisk’s Thirteenth Division contacts, a hunchback shrouded in a leper’s bandages, approached. He sidled up to the brazier and rubbed his hands over the stinking flames. Neither man looked directly at the other.

“Everything in order?” Fisk asked quietly.

“You know it,” the leper muttered.

“Your men have their instructions? And their equipment?”

“All we’re waiting for is your word.”

“And they’re good men?”

“I’m trusting them with my life, aren’t I?”

“All right. Tomorrow is the day.”

Merriwether and her tautho turned a corner and were gone. Without another word, Fisk headed towards Phineas Copperpot’s house. Jack Merriwether typically headed home about an hour after his sister left the curio store.

It was harder to blend in near Copperpot’s house. This was a residential street—and a nice one, at that—and there was no obvious reason for a simple fur trader to be hanging around. Fortunately, one of the nearby houses was vacant. Its owner, a spice merchant, had left Wyrmsreach on business, and Fisk had ordered him arrested and imprisoned. The witchfinder entered the house through the servant’s entrance in the rear.

Another of the Thirteenth Month’s assassins, this one stinking of cologne and dressed like a depraved aristocrat, watched the Copperpot residence through a knothole in the shutters. “Merriwether’s still inside?” Fisk asked.

“Yes, just as always,” the dandy replied. “When are we going to move?”

“Tomorrow,” Fisk said. “Don’t be so impatient. And remember, wait until he’s well away from Copperpot’s place before you move in. We’ll get Copperpot someday, but he’s not our target now.”

The dandy smiled. His slimy yellow teeth had been filed down to points, like the teeth of a shark. Fisk wondered where the Thirteenth Division found these people. “I know how to follow orders, sirrah,” he said.

“Good. We’re only going to get the one chance at this. I made the mistake of underestimating the Merriwethers before. Remember, these are Shattergrave Knights we’re dealing with.”

Finally, Fisk headed by the Merriwether home. It was getting dark now. He looked through a window and saw Prudence’s silhouette in the kitchen. She seemed to be cooking something. He had carefully memorized the layout of their house to the point where he could map it blindfolded. He probably knew the house better than she did. Kingfisher belonged to him and him alone. He would take her himself, and then he would ensure her young relations died in custody before they could be handed over to Krauzhelm, orders be damned.

Tom Fisk slept soundly at the safe house that night. He dreamt of the day he captured the Bubonic Lady. It was a sweetly familiar dream, and he would have considered it a good omen if he believed in omens or luck.

~~~

“What’s this?” Jack asked with horror, as Prudence laid dinner across the table. Tonight’s entrée was a dragonfly the size of a greyhound. Prudence had chopped off its head and wings, but it was otherwise whole and smelled strongly of swamp water.

“It’s a birdcatcher,” Prudence said as she laid out finger bowls of melted butter. “It’s a delicacy…hard to get this time of year. Here, I’ll show you how to eat it.” She used her fingers to crack off a piece of the creature’s carapace, revealing steaming blue meat underneath, then tore off a morsel with her fork, dipped it in the butter, and ate it with great relish.

“Mmmmmm. That’s good. I lived off of these for three months when I was hiding out in the Lythian bogs, on the run from an assassins’ guild,” Prudence said. “I’ve had a hankering for them ever since. Couldn’t get them in Muddy Hollow, obviously enough.”

The upside and downside of Prudence doing the cooking was that she had a taste for the exotic, a fearless heart, and an iron stomach. This gave dinnertime a certain wild card quality. You could never be sure if you were going to get a delicious meal the likes of which you’d never tasted before, or an enormous steamed dragonfly.

Olive tried a bite. It was a lot like lobster, except more savory and a little bit chewier. With the butter it was actually quite good, and she tucked into it with gusto until its blue juices were running down her chin. Daniel enjoyed it as well, although it was a touch bland for his tastes. Jack had always been a pickier eater than his sister. He took a single bite for the sake of politeness, and was very glad there were also bread and spinach salad.

“Prudence,” Jack asked halfway through the meal. “How come you never told us Gorgyaz betrayed Maxander?”

“This is about the Archon, isn’t it?”

Jack nodded, and Prudence cursed. “I thought that fool Copperpot might fill up your heads with that nonsense.”

“Is that why the Protectorate was chasing us?” Jack asked. “To get its hands on one of Maxander’s weapons?”

“They haven’t told me their intentions. I don’t even know if they know about the Archon. Maybe they’re after the Archon, and maybe they’re just trying to cut off the last loose end of the Unification War.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Jack said. “Why didn’t you tell us about it?”

“Because I didn’t think it mattered. It doesn’t make any difference for you. Regardless of what Gorgyaz did or didn’t do, the Protectorate still wants to get us for being his descendants. And regardless of whatever lies Copperpot’s been telling you, you ought to leave the Archon in its tomb. The game ain’t worth the candle.”

Jack thought the last time he had been left in the dark for his own good, he and his sister had been forced to flee their home with barely any notice and with the Protectorate in hot pursuit. He didn’t say anything, but Prudence and Olive both picked up on his discontent.

“You think I lied to you,” Prudence said.

“You didn’t tell us the whole truth.”

“So what is the whole truth? I can’t teach you everything you’re interested in, or everything you might want to know. Old Prudence has been around, but I’m not omniscient. The best I can do is teach you the things I think you need to know, and let you learn the rest for yourselves. Is that fair enough?”

“I suppose.”

“For what it’s worth, I couldn’t imagine better pupils. When I was your age, I was just a rotten little delinquent. You kids are already full-fledged Shattergrave Knights. Before long, I won’t even have anything left to teach you. Now you two clear the table, and I’ll get dessert.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Jack’s latest handwriting exercises were literally excruciating. He had mastered the sigils for fire, cold, hunger, and motion, and was now trying to learn zovig, the sigil of pain. Just looking at it on the page made his eyes sting enough to water, and when he actually pronounced it he suffered blinding headaches. He was becoming steadily more proficient in warding off the Inner Alphabet’s effects, but from the discomfort he was in he could tell he still had a lot to learn. Besides, as Copperpot had told him many times, the only way to truly learn the language was to experience and endure its effects. Worse subjects yet still awaited him. Once, while organizing Copperpot’s papers, Jack had stumbled across auggoth, the sigil of horror. It was several days before he had the courage to even look at a book again. Still, he kept at it. Each setback and hurdle only added to his determination, and the setbacks and hurdles came one after the other.

Jack’s current problem was that his eyes stung too badly for him to practice his penmanship. He couldn’t draw out the complex, twisty sigil unless he could see, and with his eyes full of tears he was forced to squint hard.

“Jack!” cried Copperpot from his study, bringing a welcome respite. “Jack, I need you!”

Jack put his exercises away and came into the study. Copperpot had on a leather apron and gloves and was midway through the vivisection of a bizarre snail the size of a man’s head. Its shell had been cracked open and it had been tacked to the table, but its innards were flailing about and trying to pry Copperpot’s tools from his hands. Jack shuddered.

“Jack, do we have any of the injectable embalming fluid left around?”

“No, there’s just formaldehyde and desiccating powders. Do you need me to run down to the apothecary?”

“Yes. And make it quick! My little friend here has the most unusual egg sac I’ve ever seen, but it’s drying out quickly.”

Jack threw on his jacket, grabbed a few coins from a jar on his master’s desk, and ran out the door. The apothecary’s shop wasn’t far, but there was always a line and the apothecary himself was a sleepy, slow-moving man. Copperpot hated it when his anatomical curiosities were spoiled, and if the egg sac dried out Jack knew he’d be hearing about it for at least another week.

~~~

The assassin cursed under his breath as he saw Merriwether emerge from Copperpot’s gate. The little bastard wasn’t due out for at least another hour. He was under strict instructions to abort the plan if there were any deviations from the usual schedule. And yet…Merriwether was right there, and he was in waiting, and all of his men were armed and in position. What good could be had from losing yet another day? If anything, moving forward would prove his initative and guile to General Krauzhelm. It would show the general he had been wrong to put that self-righteous witchfinder in charge of the operation. To hell with Fisk, he’d catch Merriwether now.

~~~

As Jack turned the corner, he saw a strange figure beckoning to him from the mouth of an alley, atonally singing a nonsense song through rouged lips. The man wore a long green velvet coat, a frilly shirt, and obscenely tight leggings and had a rapier on his belt. His long hair was tied back into a ponytail, and his wrists, fingers, and throat all glittered with jewels. Despite his peculiar appearance, he seemed a trustworthy and upright sort of fellow. Perhaps he was a friend of Prudence or Zanzibar. In any case, best to see what he wanted.

“Can I help you, sir?” Jack asked.

“All conceivable good tidings and blessings upon you, young sirrah,” the man said. His teeth were sharp little triangles. “My friend here is overcome with drink, and I’ve not the strength to move him home myself. Might I beg your assistance?”

Jack looked in the dead-end alleyway. There was indeed a man lying there, clutching an empty bottle to his chest like a child with a treasured doll. It seemed a little strange a gentleman like the one in front of him would associate with a tosspot like the man in the alley, but Wyrmsreach was full of strange things. Jack could certainly do a quick favor for his new friend. “No worries, I’ll help you get him home.”

As he approached the gently snoring drunk, Jack suddenly remembered the embalming fluid, and wondered why he was so concerned with these oddballs. He stopped in his tracks, took a deep breath, and focused on d’ogen, the sigil of no. Whatever he was being commanded, [no.] Jack heard a footstep behind him. He turned and found an enemy upon him.

A beefy man came at Jack clutching a rag that stank of ether. He grabbed Jack by the collar and thrust the reeking cloth into his face. Its smell made Jack nauseous and his eyelids drooped. He tried to pull away, but the thug shoved him up against a wall. Jack tried to yell for help but the rag muffled his mouth, and besides, he could barely think. It felt like there was a thick, gauzy layer between his senses and the world. Everything was moving slowly. Everything was slipping away.

With the last of his strength, he managed to push the rag out of his face and intone the Inner Alphabet phrase meaning, “[You are on fire].” The big man burst into flame as though he’d been made of dry paper. He shrieked at a tenor pitch Jack wouldn’t have thought he could reach and rolled around in a mud hole to extinguish the flames.

The dandy had his rapier out in a fencing stance. There were two toughs behind him blocking the entrance to the alley with cudgels in hand, and the supposed drunkard was on his feet brandishing a hand axe. “Yield,” the dandy hissed, the air whistling through his sharpened teeth. “Yield or die.”

Jack told the dandy, “[You are on fire],” but the dandy replied “[No].” There was not so much as a spark.

“Your tricks won’t work on me,” he said, flashing his mutilated smile. “Give up now. You’re trapped.” The dandy darted forward, his rapier aimed at Jack’s breast. Jack was forced back and stumbled over the prone, smoldering form of the man who had tried to drug him. He fell hard onto his backside, and the dandy laughed.

Jack noticed a little brown bottle that had fallen from the prone man’s pocket. It was half-filled with a clear liquid, and its stopper was ajar. Jack hurled it at the dandy, hitting him squarely in the chest. It did not shatter, but its stopper came undone and its contents splashed on the dandy’s frilled shirt. He doubled over, coughing and retching.

The man with the axe advanced. Jack, still on the ground, told him he was starving, and the axe-wielder collapsed from weakness. He crawled over to a nearby pile of garbage and began pulling out and devouring moldy pieces of discarded bread. Jack picked up the man’s weapon and got to his feet. “I haven’t done a damn thing to harm you,” he told the dandy. “Stand aside or that’ll change.”

The dandy came forward with his rapier, but his steps were sluggish and unsteady. Jack buried his axe in the man’s shoulder. The dandy cried out and tried to steady himself against a wall.

The men with cudgels remained at the mouth of the alley, although they did not seem to have much appetite for fighting. Jack told them they didn’t see him and walked on past. He started back towards Copperpot’s house when he remembered his sister. Jack sprinted towards the marketplace as quickly as he could, his lungs afire with effort and the ether’s lingering sting.

~~~

Alchizedek’s Curiosities had done a slow trade that day. Perhaps the novelty of Olive’s presence was wearing off or perhaps the market for counterfeit curiosities was simply glutted at the moment, but in any case few customers had shown up. Alchizedek (real name Franklin Dubbs) had spent most of the day playing solitaire while Olive and Daniel amused themselves with one of the shop’s few genuine items, an albino cave beetle in a wicker cage. The beetle was the size of a man’s hand, bristled with venomous stingers and mandibles, and could suck down a fat nightcrawler in just a couple of furious bites, but its greatest attraction was its subtle, lovely song. The creature trilled softly after it ate, and the effect was nearly hypnotic. Daniel, who had never even heard a songbird before coming to Wyrmsreach, was especially entranced. Despite the lack of paying business, the hours slipped by quickly.

“I wonder what price Franklin would ask for that beetle,” Daniel mused as he and Olive left the shop at the end of the day.

“I think it goes for forty ducats,” Olive said. “They’re pretty rare. You can only get them up in the Howling Mountains. Maybe you could talk Frank into giving you some sort of employee discount.”

“Perhaps it is not worth it at forty. It is hard to catch the nightcrawlers.” Keeping the shop’s exotic pets fed was one of Daniel’s job duties, and the albino cave beetle was especially difficult to keep sated.

“I can’t believe you’ve never heard music before! Don’t the tautho sing or anything?”

“We chant to our ancestors,” Daniel said. “To sing is unlucky. Music attracts the attention of baleful spirits.”

“You’re in for a real treat. We’ll find a tavern with a good bard, and if any spirits show up they can…they can…say, what’s over there?”

A crowd had gathered in the narrow thoroughfare. Although it was always busy here, ordinarily the people moved through the street like water moving through a swiftly flowing stream. Now they were all circling around some mysterious attraction. Olive found her curiosity intensely piqued and muscled in at the outskirts of the crowd, trying to get a look.

Standing on the tips of her toes, Olive could barely make out a hunchbacked leper juggling an assortment of colored balls. Despite his twin infirmities, the leper was extraordinarily agile. As he juggled he would pass the balls between his legs, hop on one foot, hold one hand behind his back, and perform plenty other tricks besides, varying his show every few seconds. The balls moved almost too quickly to be seen, filling the space around the juggler with a blur of color. It was easily one of the most captivating spectacles Olive had ever observed. She pressed against the unyielding crowd, craning her neck and darting her head about to get a better look.

~~~

Jack’s sprint had slowed to a jog and cold sweat streamed down his face and chest. He wished Olive’s workplace weren’t so far away. Jack had slipped Iarex onto his head, and as he ran through the city he learned the best ways to murder, destroy, or undermine every last thing he passed. It was a vile sensation, and he did his best to ignore it.

Jack turned a corner and saw Olive and Daniel ahead at the edges of a crowd. They were watching something, although he couldn’t tell what. The circlet told him their distraction was their greatest vulnerability; anyone could sneak up on them and take them defenseless. Sure enough, two men were coming up on them from behind. The man nearest Olive was small and angular with a face like a rodent’s, and he held a rag.

Jack did his best to sprint again, though now the muscles in his legs were complaining. He lowered his head and headed straight towards Olive’s assailant, aiming to ram his legs at top speed, and bellowed his sister’s name.

A shot rang out and Jack was hit in the side by an agonizing impact, but nobody else seemed to notice the gunplay. Jack tumbled but kept his forward momentum going, falling between the ratman’s legs. The man tripped and then fell facedown in the mud, but he didn’t drop his rag. Jack smelled ether again. He looked down at his side, expecting to see a mortal wound, and was pleasantly surprised to find he was still whole. A little ball of hard rubber lay on the ground nearby. “OLIVE!” he yelled again.

Olive did not turn, but Daniel did and saw the other man coming at him with a glittering silver needle. Daniel managed to catch his attacker just as the man was about to jab him in the neck. The two wrestled back and forth, the man trying to stick the tautho and the tautho trying to push the man away. Still the crowd did not notice. Jack thought he could hear someone speaking in Inner Alphabet, but couldn’t make out what was being said.

The ratman was small and skinny, but he was a quick, ruthless fighter. He rammed his sharp knees into Jack’s stomach and sides with relentless precision, carefully placing his blows where they would cause the most pain. One of his strikes found the spot where the rubber bullet had hit, and Jack screamed. He tried to intone the Inner Alphabet, but yet another man was on him from behind, putting his hand in his mouth. Jack bit down as hard as he could, tasting blood. The ratman pulled away and turned his attention back to the still-oblivious Olive.

Daniel headbutted his opponent hard across the forehead. The man’s eyes rolled up horribly in opposite directions and he crumpled. The ratman came at Olive with his ether again and was intercepted again, except this time he was hit in the chest by a tautho’s charge rather than in the legs by a stumbling teenager. He was launched through the air and landed in a garbage pile. Daniel threw a hard elbow into Olive’s back. The juggler’s spell finally broken, she turned and saw the battle unfolding behind her.

“Oh,” she said, as she drew Cauttaraxus. “It’s one of those days.”

Olive cleaved through the man who was gagging her brother, showering Jack with blood. “Thanks!” he panted, as he got to his feet. “Careful! There are more around!” A man lay on his belly on top of a nearby shack, reloading a musket.

“So what do we do?”

Jack took a moment to catch his breath and contemplate his surroundings. The circlet was feeding him all sorts of useful information, but his brain was having trouble processing any of it quickly enough.

There was a rattle of explosions and the stink of gunpowder filled the air. Jack, Olive, and Daniel all jumped, each thinking they’d been riddled with bullets, but it was only the leprous juggler setting off firecrackers. Jack peered at the gunman and wondered how many of them he didn’t see.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re trying to capture us, not kill us. On my mark, charge that shack and slash at its corners. That’s where the support beams are. I’m going to chase off the crowd. As soon as people start running, try to blend into the crowd and get out of here as fast as you can.”

“Got it,” Olive said.

Jack jumped as the leper tossed off more firecrackers. He gritted his teeth and screamed, “GO!” and then charged into the crowd as hard as he could.

A couple of muskets popped, and one of the audience members cried out as a rubber bullet slammed into the back of his head. Olive and Daniel dashed towards the shack that Jack had pointed out. Cauttaraxus flashed twice, cutting through the thick wood beams holding up the shack as if they were only stalks of grass. The building collapsed in on itself and the gunman on the roof yelled as he was buried in wreckage.

Meanwhile, Jack literally fought his way through the crowd. Barely any of the gathered audience could be motivated to move aside without a stern shove or kick, and even those who were not completely transfixed did not have room to clear a path. With fists flailing, Jack made his way to the front.

The leper’s juggling was very impressive, indeed. It felt important somehow, and Jack was tempted to stand and watch for just a moment. Then he remembered where he was and centered himself. The importance was a lie, a trap. Whatever the leper was saying, Jack’s answer was, “[No.]”

The leper stopped his show as soon as Jack came forward. His gaily-colored balls were out of the air before anyone could see where they’d gone. He cocked his head and regarded Jack. “You won’t get out of here alive if you fight me,” he gurgled. “The only way your sister and you will survive is if you both surrender now.”

“Big talk from a guy who can’t even keep his skin on.”

The crowd was starting to back away. Then more shots rang out, and the crowd became a fleeing mob. The leper transformed himself into a living nightmare, and the fleeing mob turned into a stampede.

To Jack, the leper now appeared as a writhing mass of tentacles, each one capped with the horrible gaping face of a moray eel. Each of its mouths sang a different song about the tortures that awaited Jack and his family, and thick trails of venomous slime dripped from each open mouth. Jack had seen this thing before, in a nightmare when he was six, and encountering it again brought back all of the helplessness and terror he’d known as a small child. The abomination was coming towards him.

~~~

Olive crouched at the corner of a tobacco shop, grasping the corner of the stall with her free hand to keep from being swept away in the rush. She knew there was an enemy hiding behind a nearby fish stand. She had seen the flash of his muzzle, and a blue gunsmoke cloud lingered over the stinking fish. Olive charged forward, hacking the stall into two neat pieces with a single flick of her blade. The gunman tried to scramble away, only to catch Daniel’s fist with his mouth as Olive scrambled for cover behind the next building. More shots were going off. Between the gunplay and the stampede, she had no idea where Jack could be, and despite his orders she was resolved not to leave without him. There were men approaching in the distance. Their leader wore a gaudy green waistcoat, and he seemed to have a hurt arm.

~~~

Despite all the chaos around him, Jack felt as if he were completely and utterly alone with the monster. It advanced slowly and deliberately, its grisly songs becoming louder with every step. Jack desperately wanted to retreat, but he knew if he showed it his back he would be finished. Instead, he took a step towards it.

“I am not afraid of you,” he lied. “You’re telling me you’re a horror but I don’t believe you. D’ogen.”

The monster came towards him slowly, its many awful faces snapping and biting. Jack took another step towards it in turn. He was almost within arms’ reach of it now. Its poison spattered on him, raising angry red welts on his skin.

“You’re a liar,” Jack told the monster. “You’re nothing at all. D’ogen!”

The monster halted. It song began to fail, as if it could not remember the words.

“You want to talk to me in Inner Alphabet? That’s all right. I can carry on the conversation. You are not a horror. [You are on fire.]” The Inner Alphabet flowed through Jack more easily than it ever had before, and the monster’s song turned into screeching as it was enveloped in blue flames. Bitter-smelling smoke billowed up from it as it burned. Once the light and smoke had cleared, the hunchbacked leper was before Jack again. He was down on one knee, breathing with great difficulty, his bandages blackened.

“Well done,” the leper gasped.

“Remember, I’m Gorgyaz’s blood. I know you thought resisting the Inner Alphabet’s effects was the hardest part of your training. I know you’re not good at it.”

“Then I shall have to break your neck the old-fashioned way,” the leper replied. He said, “[I am mighty],” and his filthy rags swelled up with muscles. He leapt forward with his surprising dexterity, catching Jack in the chest with a knee that hit like a battering ram. Jack flew backwards, rolling head over heels until he came to rest in a heap. The leper was coming at him to tear his head off, but Jack’s circlet told him there was something nearby that would kill the man. He rooted frantically for it in the mud. A flash of steel caught Jack’s attention. He looked up and saw that the dandy was running straight for him with his rapier out, backed by a dozen armed men.

~~~

Olive charged out from behind her cover, driving the dandy back. One of his lackeys came in at Olive with a nail-studded board, but Olive lashed out with a backhanded slash that sliced the makeshift weapon in two. Another man came at her with a war hammer, but Daniel charged him and they went flying through a store window together. The other goons circled around Olive, trying to fence her in. The dandy advanced on her, too, his sword flickering back and forth like a silver snake’s tongue. Olive glanced back towards her brother. He seemed to have his hands full with the leper. She’d have to take care of everyone else by herself. The prospect didn’t bother her.

A few of the thugs were laughing and joking, and somehow this made Olive even angrier than the attack itself. Rage surged through her body as the men came towards her. It was the same feeling she had felt when other children would pick on her or pull her hair, but more concentrated, more focused. Cauttaraxus twitched expectantly in Olive’s hands, pulling itself up into a defensive stance. She relaxed her arms like Prudence had taught her and let the sword do its work. She trusted that it knew its business.

Not long ago, the idea of single-handedly fighting ten armed men would have seemed ridiculous. Now Olive felt like she could have taken on twenty. “Fair warning,” she snarled. “If you come a single step closer you’ll all be walking into hell.”

~~~

Jack’s fingers closed around the thing he had been searching for. It was the little silver needle Daniel’s assailant had dropped. The leper yanked him up into the air one-handed by the scruff of his neck, but Jack pricked his arm as he did so. “Oh,” the leper said. “Oh, no.” White foam spurted from the bandages covering his face and he collapsed, twitching.

Jack picked himself off the ground and looked over to Olive just as the dandy’s men made their attack. They closed the circle and moved in as one, dying as soon as they came within Cauttaraxus’ reach. They didn’t even have time to realize their attack had failed before they were all cut down.

The dandy halted, his eyes darting back and forth between Jack and Olive. “A thousand more like me will come,” he declared. “It doesn’t matter where you run. You can dig a hole down to the center of the earth and hide there, and we will still find you.” With that, he charged. Olive stepped aside, dodging his thrust as Cauttaraxus flew. The dandy ran past her, clear to the other side of the thoroughfare, then turned and smiled with blood dripping from his mouth.

“Glory to the Protectorate!” he cried through a mouthful of gore. “Glory to the Thirteenth Division!” He bowed grandly to his enemies, and the top half of his body fell off.

Daniel leapt out of the building he had crashed into with a loud shout, wielding the war hammer of the man he’d been fighting. His eyes bulged from his head when he saw the fight was already done.

Olive was breathing very hard and drenched with perspiration. She patted herself down to make sure none of the blood spattered on her clothing was her own. Jack looked around in shock at the pack of men his sister had killed and at the stiffening body of the leper. He picked up a slop bucket that had tumbled from one of the stands Olive had overturned and coughed his lunch up into it.

“Get it together, Jack,” Olive said, clapping him on the back. “What about Prudence and Zanzibar?”

“We’d better split up,” Jack said, wiping his mouth. “Daniel, go warn Zanzibar about what’s going on. Olive, you and I will see to Prudence. Let’s go!”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Prudence Kingfisher was making herself a cup of coffee when the witchfinder arrived. She heard a little creak as his boot trod on the loose floorboard at the entrance to the kitchen. Prudence glanced over her shoulder, and then returned her attention to the kettle.

“Took you a while,” she said.

“You didn’t make it simple for us.”

“There’s no fun in it when it’s simple. For either of us.”

“I suppose there isn’t.” Fisk slid his trusty knife from its sheath. “I trust you won’t come easily?”

“No, I will not. But there’s no reason we can’t be civilized about things. I’m making coffee. Can I fix you a cup before we get down to it?”

“No trickery, Kingfisher.”

“No trickery here. What, you think I’m going to poison you or something?”

“You had enough poison to assassinate all of Thayre at your lair back in Muddy Hollow.”

“You can watch while I make it and select the cup you want. Why shouldn’t the fox and the hound have a nice leisurely drink together before they tear each other’s guts out? Who else do they have that they can really talk to?”

Fisk smiled. “Very well.”

Soon the two adversaries were seated across the kitchen table from each other, steaming cups of coffee in hand. Fisk took a cautious sip. It was perhaps the best coffee he’d ever tasted. His knife was out on the table, never more than an inch from his right hand.

“So why did you do it?” he asked. “Why spend your entire life fighting the Protectorate? We never would have found you if you’d lived as quietly as the rest of your family.”

Prudence shrugged. “Why did you spend your entire life fighting for the gods-damned Ecclesiastical Courts?”

“I asked first.”

“I guess it’s just not in my nature to live quietly. Can’t deny my nature any more than a fish can stop swimming. Your turn now. Why do you hunt witches?”

“Perhaps it’s in my nature. Besides, someone has to do it. If not for people like me, people like you would take over the world. You came close once already.”

“You probably won’t believe this, but I don’t give a fig for Maxander. Never have. He had his chance and he mucked it up bad.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe that.”

“You’re paid to be suspicious.”

“So you’re out to take over the world for yourself?”

Prudence laughed, causing hot coffee to come up her nose. “Ow, dammit!” she said, still half-laughing, as she dabbed her nose and mouth with a napkin. “Don’t do that again. No, I wouldn’t know what to do with the world if I had it.”

“If you don’t think the Protectorate should be in charge, and you don’t think Maxander should be in charge, and you don’t want to be in charge…well, who do you want to be in charge?”

“I just want folks to mind their own damn business.”

“And all the people you killed?”

“Again…you’re probably not going to believe this, but I never did harm to anyone who wasn’t trying to do harm to me. That’s the golden rule, do unto others as they do unto you, right?”

“I’m not sure that’s how it goes.”

“Well, that’s how I always heard it.”

Fisk drained his cup to the dregs and set it down. His hand moved almost imperceptibly towards his hunting knife. “Thank you for the coffee, Prudence. It was delicious.”

“You’re welcome, Tom. I don’t often get to entertain honored guests from the Protectorate. Shall we start, then?”

Tom grabbed his knife and kicked the table over as Prudence drew a stiletto from her boot, and then they were at each other’s throats.

~~~

“We’re almost there!” Olive cried. “Come on Jack, keep up!”

Jack was breathing hard and stumbling. His glasses were fogged up, and the spot where he’d been shot throbbed and ached. From the corner of his eye he saw one of the dragon’s crimson-robed servants following him and his sister, but there was no time to worry about the wyrmslave. The house was only about a hundred yards ahead.

Prudence came sailing through the kitchen window in a brilliant shower of glass and landed hard on the ground, bleeding from a dozen cuts. A rough-looking man with a long black beard and a white scar across the bridge of his nose leapt out after her, blade in hand.

“Prudence!!” Olive shrieked. The man looked up, apparently startled, which gave Prudence enough of an opening to stick a shard of glass in his leg. Olive closed the ground between them and drove him back, swinging Cauttaraxus furiously.

The assassin was a big man, but even with a piece of glass in his leg he was quick as mercury. He ducked and weaved almost too quickly for the eye to follow, keeping mere inches out of the sword’s reach. His knife flashed once when Olive overdid a thrust, opening a painful cut across her cheek. She had come to the fight already tired, and he had not yet broken a sweat.

Jack kept at the outskirts of the fray. He knew a number of incantations that might end the fight but was scared to try them with the combatants so close together, whirling in and out. The young sorcerer was painfully aware if he tried to set the enemy aflame he might incinerate his sister, instead.

Olive slashed at the assassin but he ducked underneath her blade. The lamppost behind him toppled like a felled tree. As he rose up Olive got a better look at his face, and suddenly realized she had seen this man before. “You’re that damned witchfinder!” she screamed. “What did you do with my parents? You tell me where they are!” She tried to impale him, but he sidestepped the thrust and tripped her, then drew a pistol from his belt and leveled it at the back of Olive’s head.

Jack opened his mouth to cast a spell, but the words wouldn’t come. There was a loud click as the witchfinder cocked his gun’s hammer, and then a bang, and all Jack could do was watch, his mouth agape.

~~~

Olive lay absolutely still on the ground, her eyes shut, wondering what would happen next now that she’d been shot dead. Then she realized she was still breathing and in no pain. She opened her eyes and turned over, wondering if the gun had misfired or if the assassin had somehow missed her, and saw Prudence lying crumpled nearby, her eyes wide open but sightless. She had thrown herself into the bullet’s path. Blue smoke poured from the witchfinder’s pistol.

Grief turned straightaway to rage. Olive leapt back to her feet and tried to thrust Cauttaraxus into the witchfinder’s heart. “You wretched bastard!” she shrieked. “You filthy, murdering pig! Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

Fisk tossed his empty gun aside. He observed Olive coolly, taking in her stance and her demeanor and the distance between them, and decided the girl would probably come in for another lunge. It would be easy enough to sidestep, and he could open up her neck as she passed. This was working out well. He adjusted his grip on the knife and the positioning of his feet accordingly.

“Stop this immediately!” a voice commanded.

Olive and Fisk suddenly realized they were encircled by wyrmslaves. Their faces were absolutely blank and their posture unnaturally stiff and straight, as if they were clockwork men and women come out to announce the strike of noon. Olive froze in place, looking back and forth between the wyrmslaves and the witchfinder. Fisk adjusted his grasp on the knife again.

“Our great master Paashalezub demands an audience with his guests,” one of the wyrmslaves announced. “He requires an account of today’s disturbances in his kingdom. Follow me.”

Olive looked over to Jack, who was flanked by two of the wyrmslaves but did not seem to notice or care. Tears streamed freely down his cheeks. “Our great-aunt just died,” he said. “We can’t leave her lying in the mud.”

“We can carry her with us,” the lead wyrmslave said. “But you must sheath your weapons and come with us now.”

Jack nodded. “That’s fine. Let’s go. Olive?”

Olive hesitated. Prudence’s corpse lay at her feet, and her murderer was literally within reach. Cutting him down would be a simple matter, and whatever the consequences might be she was sure she could accept them. Her fingers went white as they tightened around Cauttaraxus’ hilt.

“Olive,” Jack pleaded. “Please don’t make things worse. I can’t lose Prudence and you both in one day.”

Olive reluctantly lowered Cauttaraxus, but Fisk’s knife stayed out. Though his face remained immobile as a rock, his eyes betrayed his panic.

“Put your blade away,” the lead wyrmslave said. “Consider that an order from Paashalezub himself.” On some invisible cue the wyrmslaves surrounding Fisk and Olive all took a simultaneous step inwards, tightening up the circle.

Fisk turned and sprinted away. One of the wyrmslaves tried to lay hands on him and went down in a flash of steel and a spray of crimson. Half of the gathered slaves gave pursuit, their long red robes flapping behind them as they chased the witchfinder down an alleyway and out of sight.

The leader knelt beside the fallen slave, using his robe to wipe the blood from her face. “Rest now,” he said softly. “You’ve done well.” She smiled warmly, took a final look at the dragon’s mountain, and closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “We…we didn’t think they’d come after us here. We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”

The leader straightened up. “She achieved her purpose. Follow me.”

Two of the wyrmslaves picked up Prudence’s body with great care and dignity, and two picked up their fallen sister’s body in like manner, and the funeral procession made off for the dragon’s mountain. Jack and Olive followed at the rear, holding hands.

~~~

The wyrmslaves led Jack and Olive up a great winding staircase, starting at the base of Wyrmsreach and going all the way up to its peak. Even half-blinded by tears, Jack couldn’t help but notice the countless intricate decorations carved into the rock. He wondered how many thousands of years it had taken to scrimshaw an entire mountain. They climbed for the entire evening, until their legs burned and their lungs ached. The air became steadily thinner and colder the higher they climbed, making their heads swim and turning their ordeal into agony. However, their stone-faced escorts showed no sign of discomfort.

Paashalezub, last of the great dragons, sat in an enormous aerie on the mountain’s peak, his long, serpentine body curled into a tight ball and his bat-like wings folded around him like a blanket. Fierce winds howled through the open walls, but the air was brutally hot despite them. The dragon seemed to have an inferno burning inside of him. The tiny spaces between his scales glowed white, and thick gouts of burning jelly dripped from his muzzle as he breathed. The sun had set, but Paashalezub produced more than enough light to see by. He had a long, almost needle-like head, with eight pairs of eyes arranged horizontally. Each pair of eyes was completely different from the others, with some resembling cats’ eyes, or men’s eyes, or hawks’ eyes, or the eyes of other creatures yet. The dragon did not stir when the party entered its chambers, but his many eyes lit up.

“These are the ones who brought Maxander’s war to my doorstep?” Paashalezub asked, his voice nearly rupturing Jack and Olive’s eardrums and his breath baking their skin.

“Yes, master,” the lead wyrmslave said. “These are the Shattergrave Knights, Jack and Olive Merriwether. There was a third, Prudence Kingfisher, but she is dead. We have her body here.”

“And the Protectorate’s men?”

“We know of only one who still lives, but he aims to defy you. He killed Sarah and ran. We are hunting him now.” Paashalezub growled deep in his throat, and his growl seemed to shake the mountain.

Jack was terrified, but he tried to push it aside. He knew fear would make him stupid. He had put on Iarex before entering the aerie, but even it was hard-pressed to find any weaknesses in this monster. Paashalezub’s scales were harder than tempered steel. Not even Cauttaraxus could cut through them. However, there was a potential opening in one of its eyes…a thrusting blow placed with pinprick accuracy to the second eye from the top on the left side of the skull just might be able to penetrate through to the brain, where…

“I see what you’re doing,” Paashalezub said. “Stop trying to think of ways you can kill me. You can’t.”

Jack’s concentration was broken, shattered, ground into powder. “Sir, I, uh, I’m sorry, I was just…ah…I meant, obviously, no disrespect .” He hastily took off the circlet.

“I observe a great deal, you know. I see the neurons lighting up in your head as you try to think. I can count the hairs on your head, and the atoms in each hair. I can see each individual capillary filling up in your face when you blush. Lying to me is a very bad idea.”

“D-duly noted, sir,” Jack stammered. He had no idea what neurons or atoms or capillaries were, but agreement seemed the best course of action.

“My slaves urged me to destroy you as soon as you came to Wyrmsreach. It seems I should have listened to them. They told me,” and suddenly the dragon’s voice became a perfect mimic of the lead slave’s, “Master, you have kept your neutrality for so long. If you allow the Shattergrave Knights to stay here they will abuse your hospitality and bring the Unification War back to you.” The dragon snorted, and gave up the imitation. “And I said the war was over and there was nothing left to fear. My slaves give good counsel. I rarely disregard them, and now that I have I find myself regretting it. Do you know what the Unification War did to me?”

“No, sir.”

“The world used to belong to the dragons. When the oldest of us were born, the continents weren’t in their present shape and you men were barely more than rats. Sometimes we’d burn down your cities and devour you by the thousands for a laugh. Sometimes we’d teach you art or philosophy. You were an idle distraction…a much-needed source of amusement in our long lives. I always remembered you as bipedal rat-things that crawled out of the forest and became too ambitious for their own good, but my brothers and sisters came to care about you. They got caught up in your ugly little civilization.”

Jack listened intently. Even without the circlet, he was starting to get a sense of where Paashalezub’s weak point might be. He had been looking in the wrong place entirely.

“Then the Unification War came. The detestable Maxander convinced some of my brothers and sisters it would be great fun to tear the humans down and see what grew in their place. The detestable Hugo convinced all of the rest the humans should be nurtured and protected. And so they killed each other. My species destroyed itself fighting over a favorite toy.”

“And you were left all alone,” Jack said.

“And I was left all alone,” Paashalezub agreed. “Now you are trying to drag me back into that self-inflicted genocide. You understand why you have to die.”

“We’re not trying to drag you into anything!” Olive protested. “We were just trying to get away from the Protectorate! We didn’t think they’d follow us here!”

“What you thought or didn’t think is immaterial. This has to end.”

Jack suddenly noticed the wyrmslaves were all standing far away from him and his sister. They must have edged away during the conversation. Paashalezub reared back, his scales rasping as he moved, and the dragon took in a deep breath.

“Stop!” Jack cried. “You’re not alone!”

The dragon halted. Liquid fire poured out of his nose and mouth, gushing down onto the scorched floor in a shrieking, incandescent shower. Jack and Olive winced from the sudden burst of light and heat.

Paashalezub regarded Jack quizzically. “I’m not, am I? Go on.”

“You’re the last dragon, that’s true,” Jack said. He was forced to take a second to catch his breath. Between the merciless heat and the thin air, he was afraid he was close to blacking out. Sweat stung his eyes badly, and he wiped off his brow and his glasses. “But you’re not alone. I think Olive and I know how you feel.”

The dragon seemed to smile, although his long reptilian face was hard to read. “How could humans possibly know what’s in a dragon’s heart?”

“We know what it’s like to be alone. You’re the last dragon? Well, we’re the last Shattergrave Knights. It’s not as bad for us as it is for you, because at least we’ve got each other, but we know what it means to live at the end of the line.”

“Perhaps.”

“Now, we don’t want you to fight our battles, and we don’t want to recruit you to our cause. We don’t even have a cause, really. All we want—all we ever wanted—was to live peacefully. We came to Wyrmsreach because we thought it was a place where we could do that. Apparently it isn’t, so we’ll be on our way.”

“Where can you go?”

“I guess we’ll just have to carve out someplace for ourselves. Again, I think you understand that.”

“No matter where you go, you’re dangerous. The safest thing for me to do is immolate you right now.”

“Yes. Yes, it is. But it’s not what you’re going to do.”

The dragon smiled broadly. This time it was unmistakable. “No. It’s not. I’ve never seen one like you before, boy. There have been many humans in your place before. Maybe thousands. Some of them groveled and some of them tried to flee and some of them were even defiant, but none of them ever looked me in the eyes and tried to find common ground. You can’t have my hospitality, but I’ll give you your lives in tribute to your gall and audacity.”

Jack bowed, and Olive curtsied. “Thank you, sir,” Jack said. “I’m very sorry for your servant. We never dreamed the Protectorate would hurt any of your people trying to get at us. Is there anything my sister and I can do to offer restitution?”

The furnace inside the dragon blazed hotter for a moment. “There’s no need,” Paashalezub said. “Her blood is on the Protectorate’s hands, not yours, and I’ll pour hellfire from the sky in tribute to their gall and audacity.”

Jack and Olive backed out of the dragon’s presence and headed back down the mountain. They sighed with relief almost simultaneously upon trading the hot, stifling air of Paashalezub’s chamber for the mountaintop’s chilly winds. For a long time they were silent. Then Jack spoke up. “Olive,” he asked. “What do you want to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You heard the dragon. We can’t stay here any longer. Do you want to find a new place to hide from the Protectorate? Or do you want to hit them back?”

“You know what I want.”

“Go on and say it.”

“I want to hit them back.”

“I do, too. I say we bust out Mom and Dad.”

“More than that. We’ve got to do that, but that’s not enough. I want to tear the Protectorate down, and clap its generals in chains, and trample its banner into the mud! And I want to see that damn witchfinder dead at my feet!”

“Agreed on all counts. Let’s remind the Protectorate why they were afraid of the Shattergrave Knights.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A big crowd showed up at the house for Prudence’s funeral, many more than Jack and Olive had been expecting. Word of the killings spread around camp quite quickly. A solid majority of those who came were simple curiosity-seekers looking for an evening’s entertainment, but there were a surprising number of actual mourners as well. Few of Prudence’s friends had survived her, but many of those who did had ended up in Wyrmsreach.

Zanzibar packed back and forth at the edge of the crowd. No assassins had come for him, and somehow that made him terribly guilty. He occasionally glanced up at the house, but never for more than a few seconds. His goblins stood by him, orderly and subdued for once.

A group of wyrmslaves stood watch. Their silent, unsmiling presences lent the occasion a proper funereal quiet. With Paashalezub’s servants standing vigil, gawkers who might otherwise be tempted to talk and joke amongst themselves didn’t dare to open their mouths.

Jack peered out the shattered window and looked at the gathered masses. “I think it’s time,” he said. “Olive, is she ready?”

“I just need to finish brushing her hair,” Olive said. Prudence was freshly washed in a clean white gown with a bunch of wildflowers clasped in her hands, but her hair was still a mess. Olive delicately brushed it, trying to recreate the way Prudence had worn it in life. Once she was satisfied she had done as well as she could, Olive laid a wreath of flowers on her great-aunt’s brow, being careful to cover up the bullet hole with a tulip. “All right. She’s ready.”

“Okay. Come on, Daniel.” Daniel took up one end of Prudence’s bier, and Jack took up the other. They walked her out of the house and through the tangled, crooked streets of Wyrmsreach with the crowd following close behind in a torch-lit procession. Eventually they wound up at a peaceful spot outside the city near a little stream, where they set her down. Jack turned around and looked out over the crowd. “I…Olive and I didn’t know Prudence all that long. Certainly not as long as we would have liked. We didn’t think she’d want a traditional service with a priest and all, but if you have any memories of her you’d like to share, please come up to the front.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, then a wizened greybeard with an ear trumpet and a long pipe shuffled out of the crowd. In a thin, piercing voice he told the story of how he used to smuggle banned books with her, and how on one occasion she talked her way out of arrest by faking the symptoms of plague.

When he was done, a young woman came to the front of the crowd. She told about a time when Prudence had saved her father by ambushing a wagon train carrying him and a dozen other political prisoners to the gallows. The ambush had happened years before the speaker was born, but she said her father wouldn’t rest easy if she didn’t share the story.

Then a massive, one-legged tautho hobbled forward, using an oak beam as a crutch. He recounted the tale of how his warband had captured Prudence after her musket had exploded in her hands, and of how she bested the warband’s leader in honorable single combat by pricking him once with a sewing needle. The warrior said he had seen many duels in his life, but none had ever been so spectacular.

One by one the mourners came to the front to share their memories. Even Phineas Copperpot stepped up to praise Prudence’s occult learning and superb command of the Inner Alphabet. He said the world’s second-best scholar of the eldritch had died. However, Zanzibar did not come forward. Finally, Jack took his turn. For once in his life he found himself at a complete loss for words. Staring into the eyes of the mourners, the only thing he could think about was how he had set this whole affair in motion by taking a honey cake to Prudence on Saint Hugo’s Day. It seemed like something that had happened to a different person, and yet it crushed him with guilt. He tried to stammer something out, but his throat thickened up and refused to move. He melted back into the crowd, muttering half-heard apologies.

Then Olive stepped up. “I used to hate Prudence,” she said in a loud, clear voice. “The first time I met her I thought she was just a crazy old lady living out in a swamp. When I learned who she really was, I blamed her for getting my family into trouble. I was wrong about her then. I didn’t see her for who she really was.

“Prudence never let anyone or anything push her around. Not many people can say that. I certainly can’t. She fought a one-woman battle against a cruel and vicious world, and it was always an even match. But through it all, she never let her sense of humor or her basic decency slip away from her. Those were the things that made her who she was, and she was always true to herself. I’m awfully proud to call her blood.”

Olive walked over to her great-aunt’s bier and stroked the dead woman’s hair. “I love you, Prudence,” she said. “Thank you so much. Goodbye.”

Daniel had brought a jar of oil. He began to unscrew its lid. Suddenly there was an enormous rush of wind from above, nearly extinguishing the funeral procession’s torches. The mourners looked up and saw Paashalezub descending. He circled around once, barely giving the crowd time to scatter, then landed on the stretch of grass where they had stood. The dragon took a long, calculating look at Prudence with his array of glittering eyes, and said, “I came to pay my respects.” Then he reared back and exhaled. A gusher of white flame erupted from Paashalezub’s jaws, immolating the bier. The trees nearby exploded and huge clouds of steam billowed from the little creek. When the flames died down, there was nothing left of Prudence’s body but a blackened patch of earth and a few wisps of smoke. The dragon took to the air again without another word.

~~~

Phineas Copperpot caught up with Jack and Olive as they walked away from the funeral, his face screwed up in an approximation of grief. He held a large parcel. “What a terrible tragedy,” he said. “The Protectorate never dared to act so openly in Wyrmsreach before.”

“I’m going to have to take a leave of absence,” Jack said. “We’ve been exiled from Wyrmsreach.”

“My dear Sir Merriwether, you don’t have to remain in Wyrmsreach to stay in my employ. Can I ask you and your sister to reconsider the offer I made when you first arrived?”

“We’ll do what you want,” Olive said firmly. “But there’s a cost, and you’ve got to pay it up front. We’ve got some personal business we need to take care of before we can look for the Archon.”

“Go on.”

“We need to know where our parents are.”

“I thought you might ask for that,” Copperpot said. “And you have a deal.” He reached into one of the pockets of his vest and produced a sealed envelope. “My operatives tell me your parents have been sent to Stonesneck Prison. It’s an island fortress where the Thirteenth Division sends its most important prisoners, just off the southwestern coast of Thayre. There’s a map inside. It will lead you right where you want to go. I’m sorry, but even I don’t know more than that. The Thirteenth Division holds its secrets tightly.”

“That’s fine,” Olive said, accepting the envelope. “If we come back, we’ll find the Archon for you.”

“I expect I’ll see you soon, then,” Copperpot replied. “I have something else for you as well.” He handed his parcel to Jack. It contained a large, ancient, leather-bound book. Jack recognized it from Copperpot’s library, but had never been allowed to touch it before.

“It would be a shame to let your studies come to an end as a result of this affair,” Copperpot said.

“And the more of the Inner Alphabet I know, the more valuable I am to you,” Jack replied.

“Precisely right. You do learn quickly.”

“Thank you for the book. I’ll study it as much as I can.”

“You’re very welcome. I look forward to seeing you valiant knights again.”

~~~

Jack and Olive arrived at Zanzibar’s home a short time later. He sat slumped in an overstuffed easy chair, clutching a goblet of whiskey in an unsteady hand, his fine silk nightshirt splashed with the liquor. Zanzibar’s eyes were red and his cheeks wet. The goblins sat silently, passing a bottle of port around.

“How are you doing, Zanzibar?” Jack asked.

“I’ve been better.”

“Olive and I can’t stay in Wyrmsreach any longer, you know.”

“Why not?”

Jack motioned back with his thumb. Three wyrmslaves were waiting outside the house.

“Oh. Well…goodbye. It was nice knowing you.”

“We’re going to Thayre to break our parents out of prison,” Olive said. “And to see to the witchfinder that’s been after us.”

“Following in Prudy’s footsteps, huh? She didn’t want you to do that, you know.”

“We know.”

“Anything you want from me before you go?”

“We want you to come with us,” Jack said.

“Out of the question. I’m retired.”

“So you don’t have anything else to do. Zanzibar, we’ve got a plan for getting where we need to go, but I don’t know if it’s a good plan or not. We’ve got to smuggle ourselves all the way to Thayre, and to be honest, we don’t really know what we’re doing. Neither one of us knows the roads a tenth as well as you do. We probably can’t pull this off without your help.”

“But you’ll do it with or without me, right?”

“Absolutely.”

Zanzibar grumbled something about blackmail.

“What else are you going to do? Sit around in your big old house and get sloppy drunk all day? You’re not cut out for boredom.”

The old merchant sighed and shrugged. He feebly gestured around at the grandly appointed room. “I spent my whole life working for this.”

“And it’s not enough, is it?”

“I suppose not.”

“Come with us, Zanzibar,” Olive said, tugging on the big man’s sleeve. “Come with us and we’ll pay the bastards back.”

Zanzibar lurched up from his chair and hurled his drink into the fireplace, where it exploded with a bright flame. Without a word, he lumbered up the stairs and slammed the door behind him.

“That’s too bad,” Jack said. “Can’t blame him for wanting to stay, I guess.”

“It’s okay. Heck, it’s a suicide mission with or without him. Come on, let’s get out of here. Take care of him, guys. Maybe we’ll see you back in Muddy Hollow sometime when you come to plant your seeds.”

Galgubbin, still wearing the tattered old bowler he’d been wearing when he first met Jack and Olive, leapt in front of the door to block Jack’s exit. “Justasec,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere yet. Pour y’selves a drink or something.”

Jack peered out the window. The wyrmslaves were right at Zanzibar’s doorstep. “We can’t stay long,” he said. “The dragon said we have to leave.”

“Trust me on this one,” Galgubbin said, still blocking the doorway with his little body.

Olive put her hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We can stick around a little while,” she said.

Shortly thereafter, Zanzibar came downstairs wearing his battered old red fox coat. His pistol and saber were strapped across his belt, and his musket hung on his back. His eyes were clear. “Watch over the house, lads,” he said. “I’m leaving town for a while.”

~~~

Tom Fisk crouched in a fortified Protectorate dugout, holding his fingers in his ears to block out the sounds of Paashalezub’s fury. Even underground, the dragon’s grating, metallic cries were loud enough to wreck a man’s hearing. Wounded troops lay groaning in their bunks as their overburdened comrades tried to bandage their burns. Frantic soldiers covered in ash ran in and out. Fisk thought back to his boyhood days when he’d amuse himself by setting anthills on fire.

Fisk’s heart jumped and his spine stiffened as General Krauzhelm strode into the dugout, surrounded by his ghostly entourage. Despite the chaos of the dragon’s attack, the general’s uniform was clean and pressed. Krauzhelm stepped over a dying man and looked Fisk directly in the eyes. “I hear that Prudence Kingfisher is dead,” the general said, his harsh, quiet voice somehow perfectly audible above the dragon’s roars and the cries of the wounded and dying. “I hear that you killed her.”

“It was unintentional. She stepped in front of a bullet that was meant for another.”

“You’re no green conscript or half-bright magistrate, Mr. Fisk. You’re a man who knows how to control your environment. If Prudence Kingfisher is dead, it is because you permitted it to happen.”

“Your men let Jack and Olive Merriwether escape. If they hadn’t arrived on the scene I would have been able to capture Kingfisher without incident.”

“How convenient for you that my agents are all dead and unable to rebut your report.”

“It’s the truth.”

The general laughed mirthlessly. “I don’t care about the truth. I care about results. Whatever happened, your mission—perhaps the most important mission since Maxander’s death—has resulted in complete and absolute failure.”

“I wouldn’t call it a complete failure. The Protectorate’s foremost enemy has been exterminated under color of law.”

“Along with all of her secrets. And the Merriwether twins are still in the wind.”

The dragon bellowed again up above, shaking the fort and causing chunks of dirt to shower down from the ceilings. Fisk clapped his hands to his ears, but the general did not flinch.

“So what now?” Fisk asked as soon as he could hear again.

The general produced a sealed envelope. “This is from the Archbishop of Thayre,” he said. “It relieves you from my command and appoints you to an opening on the Ecclesiastical Courts. Your days of fieldwork are over. Congratulations.”

Fisk was too stunned to move or speak. He had been expecting execution or imprisonment, not a promotion.

“The letter, Judge Fisk.”

Fisk accepted the letter and tucked it into a pocket without reading it. He trusted the general’s summary.

“Is that all, then?” Fisk asked. “I’m relieved from your command?”

“That’s it for now,” the general said. “You may go in peace.” Krauzhelm turned and walked away, although Fisk had no idea how he’d be able to get out of the fort during a dragon attack or, for that matter, how he had gotten in. Just as he reached the doorway, the general halted and looked back at Fisk.

“A new day is coming to the Protectorate,” Krauzhelm said. “We are building a new society in which men with your talents will no longer be needed. The rabbits will offer themselves up to the hawks, and the rats will lay their necks out onto the traps. Once that society has been built, men who purposefully disobeyed their orders will have much to answer for.” Then he was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“So there’s Stonesneck Prison at long last,” Jack said, peering at the island fortress through Zanzibar’s spyglass from a beach at the edge of the mainland. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Olive replied, elbowing her brother in his ribs. “It just looks like a speck to me. Come on, Jack, pass it over.” Jack grudgingly gave the spyglass to his sister, and then rummaged through his satchel for Iarex. “Yeah, it’s nothing special,” she agreed. “Once you’ve seen one enemy fortress, I guess you’ve seen them all.”

The central building of Stonesneck Prison, a tall, windowless tower of white stone, stuck out of the island like an extended middle finger, a black and gold banner bearing the Thirteenth Division’s symbol fluttering at its top. A high wall surrounded the prison on all sides, but it was the least of Stonesneck’s defenses. A forest of sharp black shoals was exposed every time the waves roiled around Stonesneck, and the waves at this stretch of coastline were powerful and fast. The water had pounded away the sides of the island, shaping it into a plateau with steep cliff faces of exposed, coal-colored rock.

“Nasty currents out here,” Zanzibar said. “I don’t know how you’d get on that rock without a shipwreck.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Jack said. “Even prisoners have to eat. The Thirteenth Division’s got to be bringing supplies in somehow.” Now equipped with the circlet, he took the spyglass back from Olive. “The outer defenses are a joke,” he proclaimed. “They don’t even have any watch towers.”

“Why would they need any?” Zanzibar asked. “Even if a prisoner gets off the island, he’s got no place to go but hell. There’s no swimming those currents, and they don’t need watch towers to see a ship approaching.”

“If we can get onto the island, it shouldn’t be a problem getting into the prison. That outer wall’s pretty sturdy, but it’s got gratings to let waste pour out. Some of them have gotten rusty. All you’d need is a crowbar to pop one open.”

“Mom and Dad are probably in that tower,” Olive said. “Can you see a way into it?”

“I can’t see any weak points from here, but I can’t see its base. I’m sure I could find an opening if I could get in close for a better look.”

“That’s going to be dangerous,” Zanzibar cautioned.

“Don’t worry. They won’t even notice that I’m there. Speaking of which, let’s get off the beach before someone sees us.”

The party headed back to the camp they had set up in the forest, just far enough from civilization that the smoke from their cooking fires wouldn’t be seen. Despite its isolation, the camp was reasonably comfortable, a nice contrast from the hardships and deprivations of the road. It was the end of summer now, and the forest was rich with wild fruit and game.

Daniel was plucking a wild turkey he had shot. His three-fingered hands couldn’t work a musket, but Zanzibar had been teaching him archery and he was turning into a good hunter. He joked it was a sad day for his people when humans had to teach tautho to stalk wild game.

“Anything happen while we were away?” Olive asked.

“It has been quiet.”

“Quiet is good,” Zanzibar said. “We like quiet. Gods know we get little enough of it.”

~~~

Judge Fisk drummed his fingers on his desk rapidly, trying to break up the constant, oppressive silence of the High Ecclesiastical Courthouse. He adjusted his itchy, hateful wig for perhaps the twentieth time that day, and tried to pay attention to the two fat sheaves of paper in front of him. On the left-hand side were briefs detailing the accusations against the criminals in his courtroom. On the right-hand side were instructions from the archbishop telling Fisk how to rule in the sensitive cases.

The first suspect to be dealt with today was Sir Theophilus Iarrin, a nobleman from Craye descended from one of Saint Hugo’s knights. Despite his illustrious ancestry, he had been accused of crimes including hoarding blasphemous books and impressing young servant girls into rites of incredible brutality and sacrilege. He had confessed to every crime he had been accused of without the slightest recourse to torture. Fisk was acquainted with the witchfinder who had brought Iarrin in and considered the man a cool-headed professional.

The archbishop’s letter read simply that, “Sir Iarrin has been a faithful and generous patron of Patheon’s Cathedral in Craye. Men of quality deserve the Church’s mercy for their missteps.” The servant girls’ cases were also before Fisk. The archbishop had not urged clemency for them. As Fisk wrote out release papers for Sir Iarrin and death warrants for the girls, he thought back to the letters from the archbishop that General Krauzhelm had produced and wondered how many of the letters on his desk now had actually been dictated by the general. It was possible all of them had been. He thought about Krauzhelm often.

There had been no news of the Merriwether twins, and that loose end bothered Fisk very badly. If they were still alive and free, it meant he was a failure. Even worse, if they had been caught and were in the Thirteenth Division’s custody, there was no telling what uses General Krauzhelm might be bending them towards. The Merriwethers’ deaths were the only acceptable option, and although he hated to rely on gut instincts, his gut told him they were still alive.

The bounty for the Merriwethers had been doubled, then tripled, to no avail. Fisk had sought to put additional witchfinders on their trail, but had been briskly informed by the archbishop that the Merriwether investigation was now the exclusive province of the Thirteenth Division and not a matter of concern for the Ecclesiastical Courts. He sent one of his best men out, anyway.

The air in the courthouse was hot and still. Judge Fisk put his death warrants aside for a moment and tried to open one of the windows in his office. It wouldn’t budge. He stared out glumly through the thick, cloudy panes. A songbird sat on a tree branch outside, though he couldn’t hear its music. He had underestimated Krauzhelm’s anger at the events in Wyrmsreach. The general had ordered him imprisoned, after all.

~~~

Stonesneck Prison was more self-sufficient than Jack would have guessed. It actually seemed to be a net exporter. Other than the well-guarded prison galleys that occasionally visited the island to drop off their human cargo, the only supply vessel serving the island was a fat little scow called the Sea Sprite. It departed every day from the nearest town, sailed a winding course through the coastline’s shoals, docked at a pier on the base of the island, and returned home a few hours later, usually carrying more cargo than it had brought. Other than the prison galleys and the occasional messenger falcon, it was the only visitor to the island who was permitted to leave.

Once he was sure he knew the shipping routines, Jack borrowed a pistol from Zanzibar. He laid it out on a blanket and methodically dismantled the weapon so he could clean and oil it. “Are you sure you want to bring a gun with you?” Olive asked. “If you fire that thing every guard on the island’s going to hear.”

“It’s a last resort. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”

“Okay. Just remember Cauttaraxus is a lot quieter.”

“I’m not taking Cauttaraxus. I want you to hold onto it.”

“Of course I’m going to hold onto it. I’m coming with you.”

“What? No. No, I’m going alone. At least this time. I’ve got to get a closer look at the tower. We don’t really know the layout, not with that wall in our way. You can come when it’s time to bust Mom and Dad out for real.”

“Jack, I can’t let you go in there alone. What if you get caught?”

“I’ll be careful. Come on, Olive, I won’t be able to make the guards ignore us if we’re both together. Pronouncing the Inner Alphabet is tricky enough in the singular. The plural forms are a real pain in the ass.”

“That’s an excuse and you know it. I’ve seen you practicing out of Copperpot’s book the whole time we’ve been on the trail. You’re practically as good as he is by now. If you wanted to make the both of us invisible you could do it.”

“It’s a lot harder than it looks. It’s not just saying magic words, there’s a lot of really careful intonation and breathing that—”

“Spare me. I’ve heard your ‘this is harder than it looks’ speech a hundred times before. You just don’t think I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can take care of yourself. You can take care of yourself so well it scares the hell out of me. I just don’t want you to take any risks you don’t have to. That’s all.”

“Well, it’s not all about you! They’re my parents too, y’know!”

Jack sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I can talk you out of this?”

“Nope,” Olive said, drawing the word out to a full three syllables.

“All right. Get yourself together. We’ll have to be up early to smuggle ourselves onto the supply boat.”

“I’ve had my gear stowed for hours. I’ve been waiting on you.”

~~~

When he first joined the Protectorate Navy, Llewellyn Todd had thought he was signing up for a life of adventure and daring deeds. He imagined himself in the Lokkis Islands doing battle with the vile Hvasik pirates, or serving on one of the great leviathan-class warships that fought the kraken of the southern seas. He had not imagined he would spend three years of his life running crates of lamp oil and farming implements to an eerie Thirteenth Division jail. As Stonesneck Prison grew closer and closer, Llewellyn sighed and wondered who exactly he needed to bribe in order to get a transfer.

The channel was even choppier than usual today, and on a few occasions the scow came close to smashing its hull on the shoals. It didn’t phase Llewellyn. The Sea Sprite had made this perilous journey thousands of times and although its hull was a patchwork horror of poorly done repairs, the wretched old girl was still floating. Captain Parker suckled contentedly on his pipe while maneuvering the ship around a particularly treacherous sandbar. “Penny for your thoughts, Lou,” he said. “Why you looking so glum today?”

“Just the usual,” Llewellyn replied. “Don’t you ever get bored doing the same thing over and over again?”

“I have come to accept the contours my life has developed,” Parker mused. “And if it be my duty to perform the same task again and again and again, I shall at least make it a point of pride to become the world’s greatest expert at that task. I find no small satisfaction at being the world’s greatest expert in traversing this channel, and am probably a happier man than any admiral.”

Llewellyn squinted at the pier. As always, the work crew was standing ready to receive today’s shipment. Something about their stillness put him on edge. “It’s funny,” he said. “I always heard Stonesneck Prison was for the most dangerous inmates. Witches and Maxander cultists and suchlike, you know? It’s strange to see how well-behaved they are.”

The captain continued to puff on his pipe, his craggy face impassive.

“They never talk back, they never slack off, they just follow orders and unload the ship. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were model citizens.”

“Lou…”

“Do you ever wonder what they do to make them that way?”

“No,” the captain said with surprising and unusual firmness. “No I do not. It’s not healthy to think about things like that. If you wonder about what happens inside Stonesneck Prison, there’s a good chance you’ll find out. Just do your job and don’t worry about matters that don’t concern you. And by Patheon’s scales, don’t ever, ever talk about matters that don’t concern you.”

“But it does concern us. I mean, our whole duty is to bring supplies to the island. Aren’t you a little bit curious about what goes on there?”

“Not in the slightest. Whatever goes on in Stonesneck Prison has to happen, and that’s all there is to it. Have you ever talked to any soldiers coming off a tour of duty from Stonesneck?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. Nobody who goes there ever comes home, and that includes the guards. Have you ever seen the Stonesneck warden?” Llewellyn nodded. He had encountered that horrid dwarf once before, and once was enough.

“So you see my point. I’m done with this conversation, and if you’ve got sense you’ll never bring it up again, either. We’re almost there. Go get ready to dock.”

The inmates stood on the pier in two ramrod-straight columns, hands clasped behind their back and heads held high. Their uniforms were so clean and white they practically glowed. Their hair was closely cropped, and their baggy uniforms made it difficult to determine which of them were male and which female. Indeed, it would have been nearly impossible to distinguish one inmate from another but for the numbered brands on their foreheads. Two guards stood at the end of the pier, seemingly paying no attention to their charges. The inmates marched onto the Sea Sprite in perfect unison the moment the gangplank came down. They hoisted the heavy supply crates without complaint or hesitation and began ferrying them up the steep path to the prison complex. Llewellyn leaned up against the mast and watched them at work. He had worked on a civilian freighter for two years before he joined the Protectorate’s navy, and he had never seen any work crews as efficient or professional as the Stonesneck prisoners.

Just then, Llewellyn noticed a low, shrill whistling coming from the Sea Sprite’s aft. He walked over to check it out, but saw nothing aside from a few crates of candles. The old boards of the deck creaked, and Llewellyn entertained the thought a prisoner might have stowed himself away. “Hello?” he asked. “Is anybody back there?” He grabbed a belaying pin as a cudgel and leapt atop the boxes with a whoop, then gave a little sigh when he saw nothing behind them. The peculiar noise began to fade. The sailor shook his head and trudged back to the pier.

If he had had trained ears, Llewellyn might have noticed a command in the whistling. Someone was saying, “[You do not see us],” in a language that he could obey but not understand.

~~~

Jack hadn’t counted on the black rocks of the cliff face being so sharp. His hands and knees were sore and bloody, and his eyes stung with sweat. He looked up, scraping his chin on an outcropping, and saw the soles of his sister’s shoes. Olive was the faster climber by far, but she’d wait for him to catch up whenever she developed too much of a lead. Jack grunted as he pulled himself up beside her.

“Not much farther,” she panted. “We’re almost to the wall.”

“Peachy,” Jack gasped.

Olive scrambled up over the top with a great burst of effort, then yanked Jack up by his shirt collar when he got within arm’s reach. There was a stretch of land about ten feet wide between the cliff’s edge and the gray stone wall surrounding Stonesneck. Both the Merriwethers sprawled out to rest. They couldn’t see any guards walking the parapets, and the crashing waves and piercing winds had drowned out the sounds of their ascent.

Olive took a brief pause to catch her breath and then sat up. “Well, we made it,” she said. “Now how do we get inside?”

“Give me a second here,” Jack gasped, his chest still heaving. Olive took hold of his shirt collar again and playfully pulled him up to a sitting position.

“C’mon, don’t be so lazy.”

Jack groaned softly and pointed at a spot up ahead where a thin stream of wastewater poured out of a grating and over the side of the cliff, creating a meager, filthy waterfall. Olive scampered up ahead to look through the opening. No free person had ever glimpsed the inside of Stonesneck Prison before. Olive clasped a hand over her gaping mouth when she saw it. “It’s beautiful,” she sighed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The windowless white tower at the center of the island was surrounded by dozens of cozy, freshly painted cottages, and the cottages were surrounded by the most verdant fields Jack and Olive had ever seen. Inmates in immaculate white uniforms tended gardens of beans, carrots, squash, and potatoes. The rusted grating in the outer wall was the terminal point of an irrigation canal.

“Huh,” Jack whispered. “Isn’t that just the damndest thing.” He took out the spyglass Zanzibar had lent him to get a closer look.

“Do you see any guards?” Olive whispered back. “Anywhere?”

Jack stuck the spyglass lens through the grating and methodically scanned over the prison grounds. “I can’t see everything from here,” he finally said. “But no. Not even on the walls. Maybe there are guards inside the cottages?”

“I thought Stonesneck Prison was supposed to be…y’know, a prison. How can you have a prison without any guards? This is too weird. It has to be a trap or something.”

“Check this out. The cottages have thatched roofs. The wind blowing the way that it is, all we’d have to do is torch a few and the whole village’ll go up like a match. Or there’s a well that would be easy to poison. And I think…yeah, there are definitely some structural faults in the central tower. I can take that bastard down. Wouldn’t leave two bricks standing on top of each other.”

“Jack! We want to break Mom and Dad out of here, not murder them!”

Jack shut his eyes tight. He hadn’t even realized he was wearing Iarex. The circlet had been sneaking onto his head more and more these days. He pulled it off and stashed it at the bottom of his satchel. “Sorry about that. Force of habit.”

“Do you want to go in? Get a closer look?”

“I don’t know. We’d be exposed until we got to the cottages.”

“Why can’t you make us invisible?”

“They’d have to hear me speaking in the Inner Alphabet for it to have an effect. Any guards out of earshot would be able to see us just fine.”

“You said there weren’t any guards.”

“I said I couldn’t see any. It’s not the same thing.”

“We could wait here until nightfall and then sneak in.”

“We’d miss the boat going back.”

“It’s coming again tomorrow. It won’t be fun, but I can spend a night out on this ledge if you can. Come on, Jack. This is why we’re here! If Mom and Dad are in one of those houses, we might be able to sneak them out easy.”

“Easy’s not the right word for it…but okay. You’re right. This is why we’re here.”

~~~

As soon as the sky was dark, the twins pried the grating open and ran towards the village through a bean field. Jack kept expecting to hit a tripwire or hear a guard trumpeting an alarm, and was pleasantly surprised to reach the cottages without disaster striking. They sidled up to one of the houses, hugging the wall and crouching to make their silhouettes small, then put their heads to a glowing window in unison.

The cottage was tiny but well appointed, with tasteful, solidly made furniture and a coat of fresh paint on the walls and shutters. The prisoners’ possessions were actually quite a bit nicer than those the Merriwether family had owned back in Muddy Hollow. There was no grime or garbage whatsoever. Everything was brilliantly clean and in its proper place. A female inmate with a shaved head and a number on her forehead sat at a table sewing a homespun prison uniform, while a male inmate chopped and canned vegetables. Neither acknowledged the other’s presence in any way. The rhythmic clacking of the man’s knife was the only sound to be heard. Even eavesdropping from outside, the tension in the room was palpable. The eerie silence reminded Jack and Olive of the calm that comes just before a storm, and the branded brows of both inmates were knotted up with quiet worry.

The male scowled and took a piece of slate out of a large pocket in his shirt. He wrote something on it with a piece of chalk, then put the slate and chalk away. A few minutes later, the female did the same thing.

“What are they doing?” Olive asked. “Did they see us?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Let’s try another cottage.”

The scene next door was almost exactly the same. Inside an identical, spotless house were the same neatly arrayed tools and utensils and an anxious man and woman canning and sewing. The twins would have thought they had somehow circled around and hit the same house twice if not for the fact that the inhabitants were conveniently numbered.

There was a surprise when they looked in on a third house. Two children sat on the floor, concentrating intensely on schoolbooks. Neither of them could have been a day older than six, but they wore the same white uniforms as the adults, had the same shaved heads, and had numbers burnt into their foreheads. Two adult inmates sat sewing and canning, not paying the slightest bit of attention to the young ones.

“This is weird,” Olive said.

“Yeah.”

“I was expecting…y’know…chains and torture chambers and suchlike.”

“As was I.”

“This is creepier somehow. Why are they all acting like that?”

“Beats me. Let’s just try to find Mom and Dad. One thing at a time, right?”

Jack and Olive moved from house to house looking for their parents. It was like looking at a series of identical dollhouses containing nearly identical dolls. They had gotten about halfway through the search when suddenly the unearthly silence was broken by the sound of shattering glass and a paroxysm of deranged, uproarious cackling.

Jack and Olive grabbed the wall of a cottage and looked around the corner to see the disturbance’s source. A hunched inmate was loping through the center of the village, gibbering at the top of its lungs, barely even pausing to breathe. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman. It pried a cobblestone out of the ground and hurled it through the window of a nearby house.

The adult inmates of the village swarmed out of their cottages as one and seized the rock-thrower just as it was about to toss another missile. It fought them like a demon, pounding at the villagers with the cobblestone and lashing out with its feet, but eventually their numbers overwhelmed it. The mob bound it hand and foot and dragged it to the tower. It continued to cackle the whole way, although now its laughter came out only as a hoarse, pained coughing, until the tower doors slammed shut behind it. Shortly thereafter the other inmates wordlessly returned from the tower to their houses in silence and resumed their work as if nothing had happened.

The twins were about to pass by another house when Olive experienced a twinge of recognition. Jack was making to leave, but she grabbed him by the arm.

“Jack…are those Mom and Dad?”

Jack looked again. It was hard to recognize them in their Stonesneck uniforms and with numbers branded on their foreheads, but on closer inspection there was no mistaking them. They were as drawn and anxious-looking as all their neighbors, but at least they were alive and seemed healthy. Their dad was number 472. Their mom was number 473.

“It is!” Olive chirped. “It’s Mom and Dad! We’ve got to talk to them!”

“How are we going to get in?”

Olive circled around to the front and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. She rushed in, pulled her surprised parents away from their chores and hugged them with all of her might. She squealed delightedly, and tears of joy ran freely down her face.

“Keep it down, keep it down!” Jack urged, even as he joined in the embrace. “We don’t want anyone else to hear us!”

472 pulled himself out of Jack and Olive’s arms, using no small force to do so. “Who are you?” he asked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“What?” Olive asked. “We’re Olive and Jack. Don’t you recognize us? We’re here to get you out.”

There was a blank look on 472’s face. Then the recognition hit him, and he seemed positively anguished. “Olive? Jack? You’re not supposed to be here.”

473 put her face in her hands and wept. “You can’t be here,” she said. “You’ve got to go.”

“We’re all going to leave together,” Jack said firmly, hugging his mom even tighter. “We’re going to break you out of here, and we’re all going to find a safe place to live together.”

472 gaped as if his son had proposed they all grow wings and fly away. “We can’t leave. It’s not allowed. We have to stay here and do our work.”

“No, it’s all right. We’ve got a plan. We can get you both out of here!”

“You don’t understand. We’re not allowed to leave. It’s against the rules. You should go now so you don’t get caught.” 472 retrieved a slate and a piece of chalk from the special pocket in his uniform and began to scribble something on it.

“What are you writing?” Olive asked, craning her neck to look over his shoulder as he wrote. Their mother took out her own chalk and slate as well.

“We’re not going to get caught,” Jack insisted. “There aren’t even any guards on watch. If you come outside the wall with us we can sneak you down to the supply boat and get you off the island. We’ll be out of here and back on the mainland before they even realize you’re gone.”

Olive’s face went pale when she saw what her father was writing. She wiped the happy tears from her eyes to see more clearly. “Dad, what are you doing?”

“I’m writing my daily log.”

“Jack, you need to look at this.”

The slate read: “Citizen 472. Monday, July 29, Year 314. Awoke on time. Ate morning ration. Worked in the northeastern field pulling weeds for 12 hours. Getting bad blisters on hands. Hate my assigned task. Thought about taking extra break time (x4). Citizen 301 took extra break time. Citizen 240 took extra break time (x2). Citizen 617 told a joke. Came home. Washed. Ate evening ration. Worked canning vegetables for 2 hours. My children came home. They say they will break my wife and me out of Stonesneck and smuggle us home on a boat. I am so happy to see them. I love them and missed them so much. I do not want to write any of this down. Citizen 473 told them to leave before they are caught.”

“Dad?” Jack asked. “What is this?”

“I told you, this is my daily log,” 472 said. His voice was breaking. “I have to record everything I do. I have to record it and give it to the warden.”

“But why can’t you leave this out? You don’t have to tell them everything.” Jack looked at his mother’s slate. It was much the same as his father’s.

“We have to,” 472 said. “We have to, we don’t have a choice. I’m sorry, I have to go back to work.” He took his slate back, wrote, “Took extra break time,” at the very bottom, and returned to his work. 473 did the same. However, they were not single-mindedly fixed on their tasks as they had been before.

“I don’t understand,” Olive said. “You’re going to turn us in to the warden? We’re your kids. We came to help you.”

“I’m sorry,” 473 said. “We’ve got to record all our thoughts and deeds. Those are the rules.”

Jack put his hand on Olive’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said.

“Jack!”

“No, it’s all right. Just know we are going to get you out of here, and you won’t have to follow their rules anymore.”

472’s tears splashed his slate. In an uncharacteristically shaky hand, he wrote, “I am so proud of my children.”

Not long later, a gong sounded. The lamps all over the village began to go out. 473 went to extinguish the light. “We have to go to bed now,” she said. “Good night, kids.”

“Good night,” Jack and Olive said. They hugged and kissed their parents and watched them go to bed. Then Jack spat on the cuff of his shirt and erased the portions of the slates that mentioned him and Olive.

~~~

Olive and Jack spent the rest of the night huddling outside the walls under blankets they had brought. The night was much colder than usual and the waves beneath them roared and crashed like monsters, but neither Jack nor Olive noticed.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“How are we going to get Mom and Dad out of there?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you were the expert on weird stuff like this. Can’t you control their minds or something? Force them to come with us?”

“Maybe. I’d have to go through the book Copperpot gave me, and I didn’t bring it with me.”

“Okay. So we’ll go back to camp on tomorrow’s boat, and you’ll look through your book, and you’ll figure out a way to do it.” She stated this not as a proposal, or even as a demand, but as a statement of fact. She said it the way one might say, “The sun will rise tomorrow.”

“I’ll try,” Jack sighed. “That sort of magic’s really complicated…”

“No. You’re not going to try, you’re going to do it. And after we’ve finished breaking Mom and Dad out of prison and we’ve gotten them somewhere safe, we’re going to start a war.”

~~~

The next morning, Citizens 472 and 473 awoke at the proscribed hour to the ringing of a gong. They rose from their beds and noted the time on their slates, so as to avoid the punishment for oversleeping. “Did our children visit us last night?” 472 asked. He examined every word on his slate, but there was no record of Jack or Olive coming to Stonesneck.

473’s scarred brow furrowed. “That’s very strange,” she said. “I remember them as well, but there’s nothing about it in my log.”

Memory was such a volatile thing. Sometimes they would learn a citizen whom they thought they had known had never existed at all, or a rule they thought they had committed to memory had, in truth, always been the opposite. Past and future were concepts more troublesome than they were worth, which was why they lived only in the present. “Nothing to be done about it,” 472 said. “Come on, we have to turn these in to the warden and get to work.”

“Just a second,” 473 replied. “I have to write down that I miss our kids.”

That observation committed to the slate, Citizens 472 and 473 went to the tower and waited to deliver their confessions. Two guards stood at the end of a long, silent line, accepting the citizens’ slates and exchanging them for fresh, blank ones. In a matter of minutes the Stonesneck community had deposited all of its thoughts and fears and transgressions to be brought inside the windowless tower for processing and judgment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“I don’t like this,” Zanzibar said darkly as he drew on his pipe. “The Protectorate’s still hunting you kids. You need to think like prey. Have you ever seen a fox sit down to read a book? That’d be a great treat for the hounds. Do you even know how much longer this is going to take?”

“It takes as long as it takes,” Olive replied sternly.

Jack sat cross-legged under a tree, his attention buried in the primer Copperpot had given him. He had been lost in the book ever since he and Olive returned from Stonesneck. Having completely covered its margins with notations, he had come to jotting his notes on scraps of tree bark or carving them into the dirt, like a scholar gone feral.

“Look, you two took me along because I’m the expert on running and hiding. Well, I’m telling you now, sitting on your ass reading a book is not how to run and hide. If anyone’s been tracking us, they’ll be on top of us soon if they’re not already. We should at least try to find a comfortable safe house until he’s done doing whatever it is he’s doing. I’m too old and too dignified for this camping out nonsense.”

“It won’t be that much longer.”

“We can see after ourselves,” Daniel said, taking a practice swing with his sword.

“Typical tautho way of thinking. You muttonheads always think you’ll win the next battle, and that’s why you always lose. A hefty dose of pessimism would do your people a world of good.”

“Jack and I can’t ask you to stick around if you don’t feel safe,” Olive said. “You’ve done us a great favor already just by getting us here. If you want to go, we wouldn’t hold it against you. We can take it from here. But we’re not leaving until we’ve got our parents back.”

Zanzibar exhaled sharply, shooting a little mushroom-shaped cloud out of each nostril, and tapped out the ashes in his bowl. “Safety was never my watchword. You’re being a couple of fools, but I’ll stick around and see where your foolishness takes you. I just hope it’s not a shallow grave. Or worse.” He pointed his thumb at the island prison on the horizon.

~~~

Witchfinder Edward Maersk crouched in a blind on a stout tree branch and tried to make out what the enemy was saying. He could see them fairly well from his current vantage point, but was just on the verge of earshot. Getting closer would have been too risky. Even aside from their infamous pedigree, the Merriwethers were known to be extremely dangerous. The evil youths had evaded the Thirteenth Division and the Protectorate’s best witchfinder, led a tautho warband into battle, and even recruited the vile wyrm Paashalezub into their service. All of this information was strictly classified, of course, but word got around. Maersk had sent his report back to headquarters; hopefully reinforcements would arrive soon. He crept down from his tree as soon as night fell to hide him. Sneaking through the woods soundlessly, clad from head to toe in a suit of moss and reeds, he would easily appear to a casual observer to be a forest spirit rather than a government agent.

As he approached his own camp, Maersk noticed a cloaked figure with a long musket hiding behind a log. The witchfinder halted and knelt. He cocked the string of his hand crossbow, then drew an envenomed bolt from his bandolier and slid it into place in its groove on the stock. The intruder raised one finger. “Patheon weighs the just and the wicked alike,” he said.

“The just should hurl the wicked onto his scales,” Maersk answered. He returned the bolt to his bandolier. The intruder stood, approached, and greeted the witchfinder with a firm handshake.

“I’m Judge Fisk,” he said. “Where are the Merriwethers?”

“They were on the move for a long time, but they’ve gone to ground at a camp near the seashore, about two miles from here as the crow flies. Do you want me to show you?”

“In the morning, before daybreak. You did good work finding them, Maersk. Those two are slippery as eels, but we’ve got them trapped now.”

“Where are our reinforcements?”

“You’re looking at them. We take them alone.”

“Alone? But sir…”

“Against this sort, two trained witchfinders are better than a hundred regular troops, and if I call for reinforcements the Thirteenth Division will get involved. That’s the last thing I want.”

“If that’s what you say, sir, that’s what we’ll do.”

“That’s the right attitude. I say by nightfall tomorrow, the last two Shattergrave Knights will be dead by our hands.”

~~~

“I think I’ve almost got it,” Jack said as he warmed himself by the campfire. “It’s all a matter of manipulating egoterat—that’s the sigil for the self—and atmoraile, which roughly translates as motion.”

“I see,” Olive lied.

“Do you really?”

“No.”

“What’s Mom and Dad’s problem right now?”

“The Protectorate scrambled their brains.”

“Be more specific.”

“They won’t leave the prison even if we show them the way out.”

“Right. They’re stuck in place. What I need to do is make them into people who can move. If I can just get the meta-grammar combining those two concepts right, we’ll be set. The problem is there isn’t much room for error.” Jack looked down at his book, which lay open on the ground by his side. “If I intone atmoraile in the wrong pitch it’ll wind up with the wrong meaning, and that would be a catastrophe.”

“How so?”

“One word can mean a bunch of different things depending on how you say it. If I get it right, Mom and Dad will get the courage to move on from Stonesneck. If I get it wrong, they might…they might move on into the next world.”

“Wow. Better not get the pitch wrong. That’s a lousy worst-case scenario.”

“Actually, it’s not even the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that I accidentally intone atmoraile as meaning ‘fly.’ If I do that, Mom and Dad go shooting off through the air like birds.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Not exactly like birds. Birds can land. And steer. Mom and Dad would keep flying upwards until the spell wore off, then fall to their deaths, or maybe just crash into the Stonesneck wall.”

“Jack!”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think I could do that even if I tried. You’ve got to be a real master before you can make mistakes that advanced. A duckling might fall on his ass, but he’s not going to soar into the sun.” He tried to return his attention to his book.

“That’s not what I want to hear right now,” Olive said. “The Thirteenth Division has had Mom and Dad in that damn prison for almost a year now. You’re only going to have a few minutes to undo whatever they did. If we pull it off and get them out of there, we’re going to have the Protectorate back on our trail, hunting us harder and meaner than ever. And here you are, telling me you’re no better than a baby duckling.”

Zanzibar and Daniel chortled in synch as Jack’s face got red. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“No more kid’s stuff, Jack. We can’t afford it anymore. When we bust back into Stonesneck, I need you to be a hard-as-nails, magic-slinging, vicious, scary, murderous, Shattergrave Knight. Can you do that?”

Jack grinned. “It’s in my blood, isn’t it?”

~~~

The next morning, Jack rose with the sun. He fixed himself some turkey bacon and a cup of thick, bitter coffee while the rest of his companions slumbered, then headed back out to his usual spot to continue his work. Studying the Inner Alphabet was far more taxing than Olive or Zanzibar dreamed. Even with all his training and experience, Jack became filled with a terrible longing to jump to his feet and start running as quickly as possible and never, ever stop every time he merely looked at the sigil for motion. On a few instances, he found his body was inching away on its own accord, as if he were sitting on an invisible carpet being pulled by an invisible man. Merely keeping himself from being swept away was a big challenge; mastering the material was yet another.

Jack did not hear Fisk’s whisper-silent footsteps or see the judge advancing on him from behind. His attention remained fixed on the difficult lessons in front of him—until a blackjack hit him squarely behind his ear.

~~~

Daniel knew something was terribly wrong as soon as he woke up in his tent. There was a sick, nauseous feeling in his gut and a slight tremor in his limbs. It was a familiar sensation. He had felt it before while preparing himself for battle on the borders of Wyrmsreach. The young tautho took a few deep breaths to center himself, then noticed the smell of unfamiliar humans. He took up his sword and cautiously pushed aside the canvas flap that served as the door of his tent. Daniel saw no visible signs of trouble, but knew better than to trust his eyes. From traveling with Jack, he knew how easy it was for certain people to fool them.

Daniel darted to Olive’s tent, half-expecting a gunshot to ring out and drop him before he was halfway there. He felt as though he were being watched from a dozen vantage points. “Olive!” he said. “Our enemies have found us.”

Olive was up and alert in a moment, with Cauttaraxus at the ready. “Where’s Jack?” she asked.

“Do ye not know? I do not see him.”

“Look, his book’s over there by his tree. Something’s wrong.”

Daniel glanced over at Zanzibar’s tent. It was open, and the merchant wasn’t inside. Fresh tracks led out from the tent towards the seashore. “Zanzibar’s gone, too.”

“Damn. You go after him. I’ll see what happened to Jack.”

“Are ye sure dividing ourselves is wise?”

“No!” she said as she sprinted off towards Jack’s tree.

As Daniel arrived on the beach, he saw Zanzibar lying in the surf, blood pouring freely from a wound on the back of his head and turning the sea foam pink. A man in a mossy suit stood over the fallen smuggler, making ready to slit his throat with a serrated hunting knife. Daniel tried to imitate the war cries he had heard his wild cousins scream and charged. The green man dodged the charge nimbly and drove his boot into Daniel’s side. There was a bang from the forest. A gunshot?

Daniel switched his grip on the sword, wound up, and swung with enough force to chop a man in half. It hit nothing but sea air. The green man sliced at Daniel, cutting a horizontal red stripe into the flesh of his breastbone. The wound was deep and painful. If the knife had gone an inch or two higher, it would have cut open his throat. Daniel kicked the green man away, but his foe rolled with the blow and flipped backwards into the surf. He crouched on one knee and held his right hand forward. Daniel saw the green man had a small crossbow strapped to his wrist. The tautho had enough time to wonder if being dead would hurt, and to be ashamed that he had let down his friends.

Zanzibar tackled the green man just as he fired and the bolt thudded harmlessly into the sand. There was a brief, vicious struggle in the water, and then Zanzibar rose to his feet. The green man laid facedown, the smuggler’s stiletto embedded all the way to its hilt at the spot where the witchfinder’s neck met his shoulders.

“Takes more than that to keep me down,” Zanzibar said as he staggered towards Daniel. The strength in his legs gave out just as a wave hit, and he collapsed. His old fox fur coat didn’t show blood, but the green seawater around him was turning a dull red. Daniel ran to his side and lifted his head. Zanzibar’s eyes were unfocused and there was a scary, bloodless look to his face, but he was smiling regardless. “Not a bad way to go,” he said. “It’s a nice day, at least. Did I get the scoundrel who did me in?”

“Ye did.”

“And I got the kids where I told them I would. Didn’t leave any business unfinished.”

“Do not talk like that!” Daniel pulled Zanzibar out of the surf, laying him down on a part of the sand the waves didn’t touch. The old smuggler closed his eyes, still smiling, as if he were only taking a nap on the beach. Then Daniel heard bows creaking behind him, and realized they were not alone.

~~~

It was not hard for Olive to catch up with Jack’s assailant. The would-be assassin had dragged him to a quiet little spot in the woods, just far enough away from the Merriwethers’ camp that nobody would hear him if he cried out. He knelt next to the unconscious Jack and drew a knife.

“Stop where you are,” Olive ordered. The man paused and looked up at her. Olive recognized Tom Fisk immediately. “You again,” she said. “Good of you to come to us. I was worried it might be a while yet before I could murder you.”

Cauttaraxus urged her on to violence. Olive jumped at Fisk, swinging her sword overhand, and felt an impact run up her arms as the blade made contact. But Fisk had dodged the attack. There was a creaking noise, and Olive realized she had felled the tree he’d been beside. It hit the forest floor with a loud crack, sending up a great cloud of dust and leaves.

“Very impressive,” Fisk said, flashing an infuriating smirk. “But witchcraft and trickery are no match for righteousness and skill.”

Olive was after him at once, Cauttaraxus screaming like a fury as it cut through the morning air. As during their fight in Wyrmsreach, the witchfinder’s tactic was to stay out of reach by inches. There was a great economy to his movement. The witchfinder never dodged any further than he had to, or moved any more quickly than he had to. He wore an expression of beatific calm and confidence that drove Olive to new extremes of rage.

“I have to admit you’re an excellent offensive fighter, Olive,” Fisk commented. He was breathing hard, but just a little. “One of the best I’ve ever seen, in fact.” He narrowly ducked a swing that chopped a pine tree in two. The fight was rapidly carving out a clearing. “But nobody ever taught you defense, did they? There are holes in your technique big enough to drive a knife through, and your footwork’s atrocious.” To prove his point he kicked at Olive’s ankle, knocking her foot out from under her. She fell backwards hard, and the back of her head collided with a knotted root. Fisk was on top of her in an instant, pinning her sword hand down and holding his blade to her throat.

“I’ll make it quick,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” a harsh, unfamiliar voice replied.

Fisk looked up, his features darkening. He returned his knife to its sheath and slowly got to his feet. Standing in the newly cut clearing was a hairless, very tall man in a garish general’s uniform. A rainbow of decorations glittered on his chest, and his gray eyes flashed with some fierce, unrecognizable emotion. He was accompanied by a squat, alarmingly pale little man in physicians’ robes and four masked, black-cloaked archers wielding ebony bows.

“General Krauzhelm,” Fisk growled, his voice thick with contempt. “How did you find me?”

“My dear Judge Fisk,” the general replied. “You’ve never been out of my sight for a second. Some of the best and most trustworthy servants are those who don’t know that they serve.”

Another band of masked warriors approached from the direction of the beach, dragging Daniel in chains. The tautho was trailing blood and seemed much the worse for wear. “They got Zanzibar,” Daniel groaned. “I am so sorry, Olive.”

“Where’s my man?” Fisk asked, One of the masked warriors shook its head.

Another of the general’s bodyguards came forward to retrieve Cauttaraxus and Iarex. As she was disarmed, Olive got a closer look at the mask the warrior wore. It was made of a gleaming chitinous material, like the back of a beetle’s wing, and had an elaborate decorative pattern of spirals and curlicues carved into it. The mask had no eyeholes.

“Who are you people?” Olive asked. “What’s going on here?”

“You are now in the custody of the Thirteenth Division,” the general explained. “My name is General Krauzhelm. I understand you are Olive Merriwether, daughter of Edwin and Jeanne Merriwether, descendant of the Shattergrave Knight Sir Gorgyaz?”

“Yeah, that’s me!” Olive snarled, curtseying. She spit a wad of phlegm at the general, aiming for his face but splattering the decorations on his chest instead.

“Despite your ill manners, it’s a pleasure to meet you after so long.”

“What are you going to do to us?”

The general smiled coldly. “I thought you might like to be reunited with your parents.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

When Jack came to, he was in a white stone room with no windows and an iron door. Whale-oil lamps mounted on the walls filled the room with unbearably bright light, worsening his already ferocious headache. The only furniture in the room consisted of two wooden chairs. Jack was chained to one, Olive to the other.

“Well then,” Jack said.

“Yep.”

“We had a good run of it, didn’t we?”

“It’s not over yet.”

“Maybe not.”

“It’s over when we’re dead.”

“Olive, I think we’re dead.”

“Don’t talk like that, Jack. We can’t give up now.”

“Give up? There’s nothing left for us to give up. They’ve got us. We did the best we could, we gave them a good chase, but—ow, that really hurts—but they got us.”

“They got us, and we’re going to make them throw us back.”

“Okay. Sounds good to me. Got any ideas how?”

“We’ll think of something.”

“I suppose we’d better.”

~~~

“What is this place?” Judge Fisk asked as he toured the fields of Stonesneck. “There are no guards or manacles for those inmates.”

“This is the future,” General Krauzhelm said. “You are looking at a new society in its fetal stage.”

“We don’t like to call them inmates,” the strange little warden said, his voice slippery as oil. “We call them citizens. And there are no guards or manacles because we don’t need any.”

“The pris—I mean, the citizens don’t ever break the rules?”

“Oh, quite the contrary. They break the rules all the time. But they’re very conscientious of their duties to the super-organism, and of their own limited role therein, so they report all of their own infractions.”

“So they still break the rules, but they always confess?”

“Exactly. And since they know punishment for transgressing is inevitable, they learn not to transgress very quickly. That part of things is basic conditioning. Any dog trainer knows how to do it. The techniques we use to break down the egoterat…those are the really difficult and exciting aspects of the project.”

“A prison that runs on the honor system,” said Fisk. It seemed perverse somehow.

“I’ve created an entire society without crime or violence or disorder,” said General Krauzhelm, luxuriating on the words as if he were reciting the names of fallen enemies. “When everything is known, nothing need be permitted. I warned you back at Wyrmsreach. Men like you will soon be obsolete.”

A citizen in the field began shrieking some of the most perverse and unforgivable obscenities Fisk had ever heard. He swung his hoe into the head of the man who was working beside him and continued to beat his victim even after he fell. The closest citizens took a moment to record the event on their slates, then mobbed the attacker and dragged him off to the tower.

“Looks like you still have some disorder,” Fisk said.

“Regrettably, yes,” the warden said through gritted teeth. “The incidence of psychosis is still unfortunately high. We are working on it. Any new technique—and be assured, we are using the very latest—must be refined.”

“Does anyone else in the Protectorate know about this place? The Archbishop of Thayre? The Generals’ Council?”

“This is solely a project of the Thirteenth Division,” General Krauzhelm replied. “Other departments of the Protectorate will be informed in due course.”

“So in other words, you’re not going to let me leave.”

“Precisely right.”

Fisk took a long look at the citizens of Stonesneck as they toiled in the fields. Their blank, gaping faces were somehow more horrible than anything he had seen in his career as a witchfinder. He thought about making a run for it, but quickly calculated the possibility of a successful flight as nil. Better to keep his dignity. He tried to keep a poker face.

“General, in respect of my years of loyal service to the Protectorate, I’d like to request a swift execution. Hanging would be fine.”

“No, Judge Fisk, your years of loyal service to the Protectorate shall continue. Don’t worry, you won’t be hoeing bean fields for the rest of your life. I have better uses for you than that.”

“Executions will soon be a thing of the past,” the warden said cheerfully. “They’re so wasteful. We never destroy that which we can turn into ourselves. It’s like the finest alchemy. We transform manure into gold. Trust me, it’s not so bad. I’ve been a part of the super-organism for years now. Since it was first formed. Do you have any idea what it’s like?”

“No.”

The warden looked up into Fisk’s eyes. His own eyes were as dead and lifeless as those of a snail. The creature’s lips peeled back into a mirthless grin. “Bliss. It’s constant, uninterrupted bliss.”

Fisk pulled his hunting knife off his belt. He almost managed to plunge it into his own heart, but the general’s bodyguards were too swift. They seized his arms and pinned him down to the ground. The warden removed a small black bottle from inside his coat pocket and wetted a handkerchief with its contents. He pressed it over Fisk’s nose and mouth. Fisk’s throat burned, his eyes watered, and his sight began to blur and dim.

“Initiation begins now,” the warden said, still smiling.

The warden looked up at Krauzhelm as the general’s bodyguards carried the unconscious Fisk to the tower. “This will be an interesting test of our techniques,” he said. “He has more training in resisting the Inner Alphabet’s effects than any citizen we’ve ever initiated before. If we can succeed with him, we can succeed with anyone.”

“He’s an interesting man,” General Krauzhelm mused. “Be careful with him. I think he’ll make one of the Thirteenth Division’s better agents.”

“I’ll be as gentle as his mother was when she delivered him into the world. That’s as gentle as I can be, using our current techniques.”

“Fine.”

“What of the Merriwether children?”

“The same. Do not erase their memories. We need to find out if they know anything about the Archon.”

“Certainly. And their companions?”

“Get rid of the animal. I will see to the disposal of the outlaw Fisk’s man killed.”

“Of course, sir.” The warden saluted and waddled off to his tower. General Krauzhelm continued to tour the island, taking deep breaths of the good sea air and admiring the healthy crops.

~~~

The door to the Merriwethers’ cell creaked open, and the horrible little man Olive had seen with General Krauzhelm walked in with a steaming bowl of soup. “Good afternoon, Jack and Olive,” he said in a gurgling little singsong. “I am the warden here at Stonesneck. I’ve brought you a nice lunch.” He dipped a wooden spoon into the broth and held it up to Jack’s face.

“Release us right now or we’ll kill you,” Jack said.

The spoon didn’t budge. “Let’s not be like that,” the warden said. “There’s no reason for threats or anger anymore. They just make everything more difficult.”

“Last warning.”

The spoon didn’t budge.

Jack intoned the Inner Alphabet command, “[You are on fire,]” and in spite of the pain in his head he intoned it loud and clear. A fireball enveloped the warden, filling the whole room with searing heat and light. The brightness of the flames forced Olive to shut her eyes.

When the fire cleared, the immolated man was untouched. The bowl he held was charred and blackened, but he wasn’t so much as singed. He smiled condescendingly.

“Your command of the Inner Alphabet is superb, master Merriwether,” he said. “It’s rare for today’s young people to have the diligence and mental fortitude required to learn that particular language. But, as you must know, there are countermeasures.”

“Crap.”

“I want you to be comfortable and at ease,” the warden said. “Your initiation will be that much more traumatic if you’re not. Are you sure you won’t have any soup? I can have another bowl brought up.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Olive?”

“When we get out of here—and that’s when, not if—I’m going to hack you to pieces, you toad. Then I’m going to hack the pieces into smaller pieces.”

“Very well.” The warden shrugged. “If that’s how you want it, that’s how it’ll have to be.” He set down the scorched bowl, then took out a piece of charcoal and began to draw something on the cell door.

Jack mentally steeled himself against the Inner Alphabet’s effects. “[No,]” he thought. “[No,] you cannot have what you want from me.” The warden talked as he drew, sprinkling Inner Alphabet phrases into his speech.

“We’re not going to hurt you. [Trust me.] There’s no whips, no thumbscrews. This is not about punishing you. This is about making you into something better than what you are right now. This is about redeeming you. [You are shameful.] And although it may be a little scary [You are helpless.] you’ll be better off in the end. Embrace what you are becoming. [You have no choice.]”

The man contemplated what he had drawn on the door, then stepped aside to expose it. He had drawn an Inner Alphabet sigil. It said, “[You are nothing].”

Even with his techniques for resisting the Inner Alphabet, Jack felt a deep despair and emptiness, like he was falling into an infinite void. Olive began to wail.

“Don’t look at it, Olive! It’s a trick!”

“[Observe it,]” the warden commanded.

“You’re not getting away with this!” Jack yelled. “We’ll tear this whole prison down if we have to! [You are afraid of me!]”

The warden simpered. “[No, I am not.] Resistance will only make your lives more painful and difficult.”

Olive’s sobs were getting louder and more insistent. His sister’s tears made it very hard for Jack to concentrate.

The warden turned to leave. “This is the first stage of initiation,” he said. “Once you’ve passed it, I’ll be back to assist you with the second.” The door slammed shut behind him. Jack tried to shut his eyes, but was having trouble resisting the command to observe.

“Olive!” he said. “Olive, this is very important. You have to listen to me, okay? Are you listening?”

Olive made a muffled little sob that sounded somewhat like a yes.

“[You do not see it.]” Jack had commanded many people to ignore him in the past, but never to ignore something else. He hoped he knew the meta-grammar as well as he thought he did.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

~~~

Daniel strained against the manacles that held him in place. It did nothing other than reopen the cut across his chest. He was chained to a chair made of very stout wood, and the best that he could do was make it creak. The tautho had thought that he was finished with chains. Even worse, these manacles had been sized for humans and cut into his wrists painfully even when he was at rest. The door to his cell was ajar by a crack, and he heard snippets of conversation coming from the hallway.

“Might be better just to shoot him in his cell.”

“He’s a big one. You want to carry him all the way to the pit?”

“He’s just a muttonhead. Doesn’t make sense to waste a perfectly good bullet.”

“How big is he?”

The door creaked open. Three guards stood outside, discussing Daniel’s execution as they might the weather. One of them carried a musket, and the other two had stout wooden clubs. The man with the gun looked Daniel up and down. “You’re right, I don’t want to carry that all the way to the pit,” he said. “Come on, you. It’s time to go.”

One of the guards released Daniel from his chair, and then shackled his hands behind his back with a new pair of chains as soon as he was on his feet. They led him out of the cell, onto a broad spiral staircase, and began taking him downwards.

“You’re a long way from home, muttonhead,” one of them said.

Another slapped him on one of his wounds. “You from the eastern plains? I lost my brother on the eastern plains.”

“If ye let my hands free, I will help ye find him.”

The soldier smacked Daniel between the shoulder blades with a cudgel. Daniel, having endured beatings from some virtuosos of flogging since the age of six, was not impressed.

At last they came to their destination. Daniel had no idea what floor he’d started out on, but from the distance they’d gone he figured this one must be close to the ground or even subterranean. One of the soldiers swung open a door. Behind it was a gallows. A dozen dead prisoners in various states of decomposition lay in a shallow pit nearby, powdered with a thin layer of quicklime. The stench was unbelievable. “Far as you go, muttonhead,” one of the guards remarked.

~~~

Jack was sweating badly and starting to hyperventilate. His concentration was slipping up more and more, and it was getting harder to recover from the slips. Olive had passed out, mercifully enough. He couldn’t turn his head to look at her, but he could hear her breathing. She occasionally muttered something fearful or cried out in her sleep.

The warden came back into the room to admire his handiwork. Noticing that Olive was asleep, he took out a little silver bell and jangled it until she startled back into consciousness. Despite Jack’s loathing for the man, it was a relief to see him. At least when he was standing in the doorway, he blocked out the sigil from view.

“The first truth has been revealed to you,” he said. “It is time for you to experience the second.” He took out his charcoal and began sketching another sigil on the door.

“[You’re on fire,]” Jack spat. His pronunciation was very poor now. The fat man’s shoulders burst into flame, but he didn’t seem to notice. The fire sputtered into nothingness almost immediately.

“I’m impressed you still have the presence of mind to resist [Stop it.] but we’ve already been over this,” the warden sighed. “I’ve been studying the Inner Alphabet for longer than you’ve been alive. There’s no way you can breach my defenses. [Don’t try.]”

“Okay,” Jack said. “But maybe I don’t have to.” He closed his eyes, paused a few seconds to diagram some complicated meta-grammar in his head and do a quick breathing exercise, and then said, “[Cauttaraxus, come to me.]”

The warden turned around, and there was a frown of puzzlement on his round, white, grub-like face. “What did you just say?” he asked.

“You’re the one who’s been studying the Inner Alphabet longer than I’ve been alive. You figure it out.”

“You’ll repent and suffer for every word of abuse you throw at me. Even now you don’t understand the situation you’re in. There are fates far worse than death for those who refuse to join the super-organism.“

There was a sudden crash as Cauttaraxus sliced through the door. The warden looked down. The sword’s blade had pierced the door he was standing in front of, and its tip stuck out from the center of his chest. A crimson circle expanded rapidly across the front of his white physicians’ robes. He pulled himself off of his skewer and fell facedown onto the floor.

Cauttaraxus was stuck in the door, still trying to move towards Jack. Its blade had cut effortlessly through the iron, but the handguard couldn’t fit through the hole. He had commanded it to come to him, and now he was getting what he had asked for. The door’s hinges creaked as the weapon rattled and slammed up against it. If the sword broke all the way through…and it would not stop until it did so…it would impale Jack just as neatly as it had impaled the warden. He tried to think of the right way to command the sword to halt, a subject he had never studied in detail before.

~~~

The guards marched Daniel up the scaffolding. One of them tried to widen the noose to the point where it would fit around his horns. Daniel kicked backwards as hard as he could, catching the soldier solidly in the thigh. The man’s leg broke with a crack like a musket shot. The soldier with the gun fumbled to cock the hammer. Daniel dived horns-first off the scaffolding, his hands still secured behind his back, and smashed the man up against the nearest wall hard enough to leave a spider web of cracks in the stone. The third soldier frantically hammered on the tautho’s back and shoulders, but he was the one with the weak arm. Daniel shrugged off the blows and pulled at his manacles. The cuffs were too small for tautho wrists, but the chain was also too thin for tautho muscles. It snapped in two with a tinny click. The last remaining soldier hollered for help, but Daniel took his cudgel away from him and beat him until he was silent. He looked around the room at the beaten troops, stunned by how well the fight had gone. He had fully expected to be dead by now.

Daniel stepped out of the gallows chamber, not knowing where his friends were or even which floor of the tower he was on. Even if he got out somehow, he certainly had no idea how to escape the island. He decided to climb the stairs upwards. A bell pealed from somewhere nearby, and he heard a splintery crash that might have been soldiers kicking in a door. Olive’s black saber suddenly shot up the spiral staircase, propelled at the speed of an arrow by some invisible force. Daniel leapt up against the nearest wall and narrowly dodged impalement.

The tautho sprinted after the flying sword, following it up and up and up. The tower seemed to extend to the heavens. At one point he encountered a soldier who was coming down the stairs. The man dove to his knees as the sword came at him, giving Daniel a nice opportunity to clout him on the back of the head without even breaking stride. The soldier groaned, toppled, and rolled down the stairs. The alarm bell still echoed through the tower, and now it was joined by the yells and clamor of many men coming from down below.

Cauttaraxus took a sharp left turn at a landing and embedded itself in the nearest door, slicing through the iron as if it were paper. The sword was trying to get into the room but was stuck on its handguard. It began to wriggle back and forth in its hole, sawing away to make a larger opening for itself. Daniel unlatched the door, being careful to avoid the thrashing blade, and opened it a crack. Jack and Olive were inside, chained in their seats and looking very much the worse for wear. A dead man lay on the floor with a deep gash in his back. Olive had a sick, vacant, glassy look on her face, and Jack seemed near frantic. He was yelling some of his arcane gibberish. Cauttaraxus jerked back out of the door with a start.

“Grab it, Daniel!” Jack screamed.

Daniel seized the sword by its hilt and nearly had his arm jerked out of its socket for his trouble. Even with both hands he could barely prevent the saber’s advance, and it was advancing directly for Jack. Daniel strained, but his hooves couldn’t find traction on the smooth, blood-slick floor as Cauttaraxus inched steadily forward. Jack was still yelling nonsense. The tip of the blade was between his eyes. It drew a tiny droplet of blood.

Without any warning, the force that Daniel had been fighting with all his might surrendered. He tumbled backwards, stumbling over the dead man and collapsing to the floor. Cauttaraxus flew out of his hands and stuck in the wall.

“Hi, Daniel,” Jack sighed, smiling sheepishly. “You just saved my life, pal. Again.”

“What has happened here? What did they do to ye?”

“It’s a long story, and time’s short. I take it that bell’s an alarm?”

“Aye.”

“Then we’ve got to move quick. Did they catch Zanzibar too?”

“I…I am sorry, Jack. He is dead. Fisk’s man killed him.”

“Aw damn. Damn it all.” Tears welled up in Jack’s eyes, but he knew tears were useless now. This situation called for steel and blood. He’d have to wake up his sister. Steel and blood were her department.

~~~

Olive came back out of the void with a start. Her eyes stung and watered from the shock of having vision again. She jerked up out of her chair, clumsily shaking off her severed chains. Her arms and legs were floppy, benumbed things that wouldn’t respond to her mind’s commands. She stumbled over a corpse and would have gone head first into the stone floor if Daniel hadn’t caught her. Good old Daniel. Always there for her.

Jack stood by the wrecked door calling out for something in that damned Inner Alphabet, with his hands outstretched as if to catch a ball. His circlet flew into his hands, and he slipped it onto his head.

“Olive!” he said. “Are you all right? They were trying to—”

“I know what they were trying to do,” Olive said. She wasn’t an expert in unnatural things like her brother, but she had a good enough idea of what had happened. She was used to people seeking her life and barely even took murder attempts personally any more, but this violation was so much worse. She held out her hand. “Sword.” Daniel handed her Cauttaraxus, and as her fingers closed around the hilt she felt as if a lost limb had been regrown. Olive flicked the blade with her finger and felt the impact as vividly as if she’d tapped on her own forearm.

“We’ve got to get moving,” Jack said. “The guards are going to be here soon.”

“Too bad for the guards,” Olive said. She took a couple of practice swings, and Cauttaraxus whistled gleefully as it sliced the air.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A phalanx of murder-minded soldiers advanced up the tower stairs, cutlasses and bayonets glinting in the tower’s harsh light. They were met by a Shattergrave Knight. In the past, Olive had never been able to give herself fully to the sword. She had been too scared of Cauttaraxus to allow it truly free reign. When it leaned towards an enemy’s throat she had hesitated, if only for a split second. When it subtly urged her to thrust it into an enemy’s vitals she hadn’t been able to commit her full force to the blow. That fear was gone now, replaced by anger as cold and unyielding as the sword itself. Olive came at the soldiers like a demon, which perhaps she was now, and hacked their formation to shreds. Broken cutlasses and bayonets and bodies soon littered the stairway in piles almost too thick to walk over; Olive leapt over them to engage the reinforcements that were coming up behind.

Jack and Daniel walked behind. Daniel was taken aback by the carnage unfolding in front of them, but Jack barely noticed the violence. He was carefully examining each door he passed.

“What are ye doing?” Daniel asked.

“I’m tearing this whole place to the ground. Smash that for me.” He pointed to a padlocked wooden door. Daniel dropped to all fours and shattered it with a few blows from his horns. Inside were dozens of neatly stacked crates and barrels and boxes. Jack pulled down the stacks of supplies by the farthest wall and examined the stones behind them. He finally found one that appeared satisfactory. “Kick it!” he ordered.

Daniel kicked the stone as hard as he could, sending out a little cloud of cement dust. He kicked again and again, until his hoof felt as though it had been pulverized. The stone cracked, and the mortar around it began to crumble. Daniel cursed in his native language. Whatever Jack was up to, it was taking up more time than they had to spare.

“Olive!” Daniel yelled. “Are ye all right out there?” Her answer came in the form of a soldier’s scream.

Jack found a crowbar in the room and battered away at the wall with it. He scraped at the crumbling masonry until he had made an opening big enough to fit the tool into and laboriously pried the stone out of the wall. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned to Daniel. “We need to get out of here right now.”

“What did ye do?”

“We just knocked this tower down. If we don’t hurry now we’re all dead.” Daniel nodded in agreement, happy enough to escape this awful place. The two began running down the sanguine path that Olive had cut for them.

The tower was composed of thousands of stone blocks. Jack and Daniel had knocked only one of them out of place. Anyone looking at the tower from outside would need the eyes of an eagle to spot the tiny breach. However, as the cracks in the masonry started to spread, the stones surrounding the gap began to shift. Then one of them tumbled to the ground.

~~~

General Krauzhelm was standing alone on the walls of Stonesneck Prison looking out over the sea when he sensed his warden had died. He was not entirely sure how he felt about this development. On one hand, it had taken years to make the warden into what he was. His death significantly complicated the Stonesneck experiment and its expansion into the broader world. On the other hand, the Merriwethers were proving themselves to be strong meat. They would make extraordinarily fine servants once they were properly broken. Perhaps they could even recover the Archon, which would do more to advance his plans than Stonesneck ever could.

One of the general’s bodyguards appeared at his side. “General,” he screeched in an ultrasonic language too high-pitched for the human ear to register. “Cauttaraxus and Iarex have been stolen!” He cowered almost imperceptibly, expecting an imminent blow but too disciplined to flinch. General Krauzhelm did not react. He only got angry in the rare instances when he was taken by surprise, and this did not take him by surprise.

“Tell your troupe to encircle the door to the tower,” he ordered. “If the Merriwethers escape it, you are to subdue them. Feel free to inflict as much physical pain as necessary, but no permanent injuries.” The bodyguard saluted and was gone a blink later. The corners of Krauzhelm’s mouth twisted into a tight little smile. Gorgyaz’s blood hadn’t thinned much, even over three centuries.

~~~

Tom Fisk sat in his cell, seemingly serene as a battle raged outside his door and the floors and ceilings quaked. He was utterly confident in the next few minutes he would be killed by the escaping Merriwethers or the building’s collapse, or simply executed by the guards. It was not the glorious death he envisioned for himself, but it certainly seemed to beat the alternative. Fisk had managed to pick the locks on his chains some time ago but had no reason to stand.

There was a sudden clank as one of the guards threw open the door to Fisk’s cell. The soldier ducked inside the door for cover, and Fisk saw rivulets of blood running down the stairs. The guard loaded his musket, dropping the ramrod twice and spilling black powder all over his uniform, then leaned out of the doorway and took aim. There was a whoosh of flame and the soldier disintegrated into ash. Fisk got to his feet and stood at the side of the doorway. Even over the battle’s din, he could hear the Merriwethers’ footfalls as they came down the stairs, as well as the hoofbeats of the tautho they kept around. Once they were a respectable distance ahead he crept out of his cell and shadowed them down the stairway, thinking perhaps he had been too quick to give up the fight.

~~~

At last the Shattergrave Knights reached the ground floor of the tower. A broad wooden door led to the outdoors, with a sword-sized opening hacked in its center. Natural light and fresh air streamed in from the opening. Daniel threw the door open and the three escapees found themselves outdoors at the center of Stonesneck. The gaping citizens standing nearby pulled out their slates almost in unison to record the incident.

Jack looked up and saw the hole in the side of the tower was spreading like an ulcer. Stone blocks rained down as it expanded. “Check it out,” he said. Olive looked back over her shoulder at the crumbling tower and felt a sense of grim satisfaction. That would teach the Protectorate to think she could be chained, and if it didn’t she’d be happy to teach them the lesson again.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Jack said. “Let’s go find Mom and Dad.” Jack led Olive and Daniel through the prison’s neat rows of cottages. None of the inmates made any attempt to stop them. Most of them stood in place, transcribing their terror onto their slates.

“[You do not see us,]” a hidden speaker said.

“Huh?” Jack muttered. A sudden sense of foreboding washed over him, as if he had forgotten something very important. He tried to think of what it could be.

“[You do not see us.]”

“Hold on!” Jack screamed. “It’s a trap!”

General Krauzhelm’s masked bodyguards emerged from their hiding spot on the sidelines of consciousness. There were six of them, and they had the Merriwethers surrounded. They slowly circled around, their black-cloaked bodies moving as one in perfect rhythm. Each warrior held a long silver rapier, which they twanged like tuning forks to create a strange, eerie music. It reminded Jack of the tune Prudence had played when she opened the murder box. Their movements were sleek and elegant, more like dancers than soldiers.

“They’re trying to keep us contained,” Jack said. “They’re figuring out what our weak points are.” His brow furrowed as he tried to do the same to them. Iarex was telling him these men’s weaknesses, but they were confusing. He knew a dog whistle or a loud noise would stop them in their tracks, but had no idea where he could get a dog whistle or a loud noise right now. His concentration was broken as a sharp jolt ran through his leg. Jack looked down at his thigh and saw spreading blood. One of the warriors had stuck him. He stumbled and clutched Daniel for support.

Olive drove at the masked man who had attacked her brother. The cloaked warrior cartwheeled back away, leaving her cleaving through empty air, then maneuvered back around to remake the circle. Two more of the eerie swordsmen attacked her before she could bring her guard back up. One prodded her painfully in her sword arm’s shoulder, and the other got her in the back. Olive shrieked in pain and surprise, nearly dropping Cauttaraxus. The strength had left her right arm. She was forced to switch to a two-handed grip just to keep her weapon aloft, never mind fighting with it.

“[Drop your weapons.]”

Olive dropped Cauttaraxus and Daniel dropped his cudgel. The masked warriors increased the pace of their circling, their rapiers still humming. Olive bent down and tried to retrieve her sword.

“[You do not have the strength to lift your weapons.]”

Olive struggled with both hands but couldn’t get her saber more than an inch off the ground. Daniel gave up on his weapon and raised his fists. The cloaked men circled around them even faster, to the point where one enemy was not distinct from another. Their rapiers’ music rose to a fevered pitch. It was impossible to follow them with one’s eyes. Jack tried to cast a spell at them, but before he could get the words out a sword point caught him between the shoulder blades and he cried out. He turned reflexively as he was stabbed, only to be pricked again when he turned. His muscles knotted up and burned.

Suddenly there was a thunderclap and an impact that could be felt all the way down to the bone. The tower had fallen. Vast clouds of white dust billowed outwards, blanketing the prison grounds. When Jack had cleared the powder from his eyes, he saw that the masked warriors had stopped their dance. They were clutching their ears and most had dropped their weapons. Jack pointed at one of them. “[Fly away,]” he intoned, and the man went soaring off into the sky, his black cloak flapping furiously behind him.

Olive lifted her sword with her off hand and cut down two of the swordsmen before they could regain their bearings. Daniel grabbed another and twisted his head around 180 degrees. The masked man drove a fist into his stomach and backed away. His head swiveled another 180 degrees and came back around in a full circle. Daniel yelped in surprise and disgust and lashed out with a roundhouse punch that sent his foe flying. The last two of their enemies tried to escape into invisibility, but Jack was in too much pain for mercy. He burned them both to cinders.

Jack bent down and rested his hands on his knees. He didn’t think his puncture wounds were deep, but his joints were swelling up so badly he was almost immobile. “We got lucky,” he panted. “If the tower hadn’t dropped when it did they would have had us.”

“What were those things?” Olive asked as she tried to rub the life back into her hurt arm. Jack limped over to the one Daniel had dropped. The tautho’s knuckles had shattered its mask to tiny pieces. The face underneath was bone white and lined with hideous wrinkles. It had a large, flat nose, a bloody mouth full of viciously sharp teeth, and tiny, rheumy eyes. Whatever it was, it was definitely not human.

“I think it’s a skulkling,” Jack said.

“I thought the Protectorate hated skulklings.”

“So did I. Add another mystery to the pile, I guess. Come on, we’ve got enough to worry about.”

~~~

Jack and Olive found their parents frozen towards the rear of the village. They were standing absolutely still, staring at the dust-shrouded ruin where the center of their world used to be. A few of their fellow citizens were doing the same, but most were rampaging in the streets. The people of Stonesneck clubbed each other down and tore their own houses into rubble. A child came out of its house carrying a glowing lantern and singing a playful song. It hurled the lamp onto the roof, where it set the thatching aflame. The super-organism was dying of madness.

Olive dropped her sword and ran towards her parents, embracing them with all the strength her weary, injured arms could muster. For a few moments, at least, she was a young girl happy and safe at home.

“Save it for the boat,” Jack said, as he watched the riot unfold. The cobblestones ran with blood and the fire was sprinting between the thatched roof cottages. Soon the entire village would be consumed. Nearby, a lunatic had a woman down on the ground and was about to slaughter her with a hand scythe. Daniel grabbed hold of the madman and snapped his arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“We can’t,” 472 said.

“I was afraid of this,” Jack said. “I think I know how to break the enchantment, but…”

“But?” Olive asked.

“Did you see how I threw that skulkling into the sky? The phrase that did that is very similar to the one I need to use now. If I mess this up,…. I could kill them.”

“I thought you’d been practicing!” Olive protested.

“I have been! But the only difference is a little warbling at the back of the throat. There’s so little room for error.” He put his head into his hands. “I’ve only been studying the Inner Alphabet a short time, there are people who devote their entire lives to it and— ”

“You can do it,” Olive insisted. “You know I don’t believe in any of that Inner Alphabet crap. I don’t like it and I don’t trust it. But I believe in you, and I know how hard you’ve been working. I know you can do this. And you know I’d tell you if I thought you were full of crap.”

472 gently took hold of 473’s hand. “Do it, son,” he said. “Do whatever you have to do. We’ll always be proud of both of you.”

Jack shut his eyes tight and focused his willpower. He took a deep breath.

“[Come away from here.]”

“We…we should follow Jack and Olive,” Jeanne said, squeezing her husband’s hand so hard his knuckles went white. “I don’t care about the rules, I just want to go.”

Edwin trembled for a moment. “Let’s go,” he agreed.

~~~

The air was thick with pungent smoke from the burning cottages and cinders floated through the air like fireflies, but the Merriwethers’ spirits were high. The gates of Stonesneck Prison were in sight. It was early enough in the day that Jack still expected the Sea Sprite to be at the pier.

“Hold it right there,” said a hatefully familiar voice. Jack and Olive turned to see Tom Fisk holding a bayonet to their mother’s throat.

Olive was halfway into a swing before she realized she’d kill her mother if she attacked. Cauttaraxus always urged the most direct route to the enemy’s vital organs. In this instance, the most direct route went through her mother’s neck. A finesse attack might have been possible, if only her sword arm hadn’t been as stiff as gnarled wood.

“Make a move and she dies,” Fisk said coolly.

“Make a move and you die,” Olive replied.

“General Krauzhelm is still on the island,” Fisk said. “If he finds us here he’ll turn all of us inside out. We don’t have time to stand around like statues.”

“Fair enough,” said Jack. “So do what you came here to do.”

“I need to know what you’re planning. Speak carefully. I’m practiced at sensing lies, and if I sense one now I’ll slash your mother’s neck open.”

“Leave my children alone!” Jeanne hissed. “Don’t tell him anything!”

For some reason, Jack thought back to the first time he had seen gallows in Muddy Hollow. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind sharing my thoughts with Mr. Fisk. We’re planning on destroying the Protectorate before your eyes. Then we’re going to kill you. Sense any lies in that statement?”

“No.”

“Well then. There you have it, Mr. Fisk. Any more questions, or does that answer satisfy you?”

Fisk sneered. He grabbed Jeanne’s hair and pulled her head back.

“No!” Olive screamed.

There was a soft, wet schlick as metal slid into flesh. Fisk released Jeanne and stepped back from her. His eyes were furious and his face red. He turned, and Jack and Olive saw a pair of scissors sunk into his back. One of the Stonesneck children glared monstrously at him. Its mouth and hands were wet with blood. More Stonesneck inmates loped through the fields, torching the crops.

“The tower is fallen and the warden is silent,” the child groaned in an awful old man’s voice. “Now we hear the Archon’s song.”

Jack grabbed his mother’s arm and pulled her away just as Fisk struck the child across the face, and the Merriwethers made a break for the docks. Jack looked over his shoulder one last time as he passed through the front gate and saw the witchfinder drive his bayonet into an inmate’s eye. Then he was tackled by three of them at once. They dragged him into the burning fields and he was lost from sight.

~~~

A short time later, the reunited Merriwether family was gathered on the decks of the Sea Sprite. They put the crew ashore as soon as they were past the killing shoals outside Stonesneck, and began making their way north, towards the shipping lanes where one stray ship would not be noticed. Jack and Olive were not expert sailors, but they knew enough to pilot a little boat like this one.

“Can we celebrate now?” Olive asked as she watched Stonesneck recede into the distance.

Jack sighed. “If you want. I’m not in the mood.”

“What’s wrong with you? I thought you’d be happy! We won…didn’t we?”

“I guess we did. I just wish we’d managed to bring Zanzibar home.”

Olive rubbed her brother’s shoulder. “At least now he’s in a better place.”

“How do you figure?”

“Now he’s with Prudence again. In spite of all his wandering, I think that’s where he always wanted to be.”

EPILOGUE

It was goblin season again when the Sea Sprite docked in Muddy Hollow, and other than a few stray dogs, goblins were the only living things to be seen. A pack of the little monsters had gathered in the town square and were building a furniture bonfire. One of them was guzzling wine out of a silver chalice from the church. Jack recognized him immediately.

“Galgubbin?” Jack asked.

The imbibing goblin doffed his hat. “Hallo, Olive!” he said.

“I’m Jack.”

“Heya, Jack. Seen Zanzibar recently?”

“I’m sorry, Galgubbin. He’s dead.”

The goblin poured out a libation for his boss’ ghost. “Too bad,” he said. “Zanzibar always gave a square deal. Maybe it’s better this way, though. He ehn’t like to see the shape we left his house in.”

“What’s happened here?” Olive asked. “Where is everybody?”

Galgubbin shrugged. “Don’t know. If humans wanna clear out and leave all their stuff behind, that’s their affair. I ehn’t second-guessing. Might want to ask him.” He pointed to an alley where a half-seen figure skulked.

The man cowering in the alley was filthy and gaunt. He had a shaggy, unkempt mustache and a thick mat of stubble on his cheeks. His stink almost bested that of the goblins. “Magistrate Ogglesvy?” Olive asked, incredulous.

“Just Ogglesvy,” he said sadly. “Not a magistrate anymore. I’m not anything anymore.” He belatedly noticed the numbers burned into Jeanne and Edwin’s foreheads. “What’s happened to you?” he asked.

Edwin started to tell the full story from the very beginning, but Jack interrupted. “It’s complicated,” he said. “Where is everyone?”

“In the cemetery. Or in jail. Or somewhere else. I don’t know. After the witchfinder went away, everyone just sort of…drifted off. None of the folks remaining wanted to be neighbors anymore. I was the only one who wanted to stay.”

“And your family?” Ogglesvy was silent. Jeanne hugged him.

“I only wanted to do my job,” he said. “I wanted to do my job and make Muddy Hollow a nice place to live. What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Olive said. “It’s not your fault.”

Ogglesvy straightened up and stared up into the sun. “We’ll see what Patheon says when I meet him. I don’t think it will be too much longer now. In any case…welcome home.”

~~~

Save for a thick coating of dust and the weeds choking the garden, the Merriwethers’ house was exactly as they had left it a year ago. The mummified remains of a stew sat on the stove, forlorn.

“This is where ye were born?” Daniel asked, hunching and turning his head sideways to get in through the low, narrow doorway. “It is nice.”

“Yeah,” Jack absent-mindedly agreed. He ambled around awkwardly, touching the familiar bits of furniture as if taking an inventory. The house where he had been born and raised and spent a more-or-less happy childhood seemed a horribly strange place now, as alien as the Tauth Plains or Paashalezub’s aerie. He started building a fire in the stove, if only to keep occupied.

Edwin immediately began rummaging through his belongings for paper and ink. When he had them he sat down at the table and began cataloguing his inner life. Jack had thrown his parents’ slates into the sea, but he hadn’t yet been able to break their habit of recording all of their thoughts and deeds. If they were left alone with a writing implement they were sure to write out confessions. Jeanne got out her sewing tools, took a seat in her favorite chair, and started work on a Stonesneck prison uniform.

After a quick tour of the house, Olive headed for her and Jack’s old bedroom. At first glance it seemed exactly as she remembered it. However, when she lay down on her old bed she found her feet stuck out over its edge. Even still, Olive was more comfortable than she had been in a very, very long time. The four-post beds and silk sheets she had enjoyed for a time in Wyrmsreach had nothing on her louse-infested straw mattress and faded quilt. It was only midday, but she was peacefully asleep within a minute.

~~~

That evening, Jack and Olive walked alongside the shore together, looking up at the stars. For a long time they didn’t say anything, but they could read each other well enough without words.

“I don’t want to go,” Olive finally said.

“I know. But we can’t stay here. This place is a ghost town.” He was speaking literally. He had spent much of the day walking the streets of Muddy Hollow. Nobody had seen to the burials of many of Fisk’s victims, and the little cemetery was littered with great heaps of unhallowed skeletal remains. “No matter what we do, we can’t ever make things like they were before.”

“It’s so unfair.”

“I know. Life’s unfair.”

“Sometimes I think Patheon’s just enjoying a good laugh at our expense.” Olive glanced back in the direction of their house. “It feels like we just got them back yesterday. Now we’ve got to say goodbye again.”

“At least this time we get to say goodbye. And we’ll know they’re safe, and they’ll be here when we come back for them.”

“But if the Protectorate comes back—”

“The Protectorate won’t come back. Why would anyone come back to Muddy Hollow? Besides…” and here Jack’s face grew stern, “we’ll be making trouble for them elsewhere.”

“Do you think they’ll be all right? They’re still so…so…” She let her voice trail off, not wanting to put too fine a point on it.

“There’s still a lot of Stonesneck in them. But they’ve been getting better. And I think I can talk Magistrate Ogglesvy into looking after them. I think he’d like someone to look after. He’s a good guy.”

“He is.” Olive sat down and looked out over the sea. Reflected starlight glimmered off the water. Even after traveling halfway across the world and seeing things she’d never dreamt of, she still thought the sea at Muddy Hollow on a bright, clear night was the most wonderful sight she’d ever seen.

~~~

That fall was full of bad news and ill omens for the Protectorate. Doom permeated the air of their castles and cathedrals like fine incense, and the rich and mighty rediscovered the emotion that mere mortals call dread. Meanwhile, a new restlessness was stirring in the taverns and town squares and marketplaces. The Protectorate’s aura of omnipotence was fading, and even timid men started to speak their minds more than they’d ever dared before. The Thirteenth Division found itself buried in reports of seditious dissent. Its messenger falcons were flown until they were exhausted, and the monks of Saint Mandelbrot’s were made blind and arthritic cataloguing countless acts of petty treason.

The first blow fell when the great stone bridge connecting Thayre to the mainland collapsed in the middle of the night, severing the capital province from the body of the Protectorate. Commerce evaporated overnight, and getting a simple message to or from the mainland became a costly, time-consuming ordeal. The bridge had stood since Saint Hugo’s time, withstanding countless storms and heavy traffic, and the Protectorate’s best engineers could not figure out why it had fallen in the middle of a still night when nobody was on it.

Just days later, General Hagen, commander of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Divisions and a revered member of the Generals’ Council, was slain in a gambling den. Witnesses said the general was cut down by a strange young girl who challenged him to duel in the name of the tautho he’d wronged. Worse yet, the day after the killing, someone nailed a truthful account of the general’s personal finances to the door of his house. The account was torn down, of course, but not before it became common knowledge that the general had been bleeding the Tauth Plains like a vampire. For decades, a great river of silver had been streaming from the mines of Tauth to Hagen’s pockets to the gaming tables. The loss of General Hagen was a setback for the Protectorate, but the loss of prestige and respect was a disaster.

Then an arsonist set the High Ecclesiastical Courthouse aflame. The building was made entirely of stone, but somebody shot a flaming arrow through a third-story barred window into the clerk’s chambers. Although nobody was hurt and the building was not badly damaged, all of the records and law books were burned into ash. If the arrow had gone into any other window in the building it would have done little or no damage. As was, it annihilated more than three hundred years of the Protectorate’s arbitrary jurisprudence.

Finally, the Cathedral of Saint Hugo, seat of the Archbishop of Thayre and one of the holiest places in the Protectorate, was attacked. Some unknown vandal broke in through a small window at the back that almost nobody knew about—the only entrance to the building that was not locked and guarded—and shattered the statue of the Protectorate’s glorious founder with a few well-placed hammer blows. Scrawled in red paint on the wall above the altar were the words, “The Shattergrave Knights ride again.”