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Chapter Text

    On what was about to be the worst night of Jowd’s life, the moon was waning almost to nothing.

    It wasn’t quite a new moon, which was lucky, because Jowd was in the Forest when the sun set. He hadn’t wanted to leave his wife Alma at all, nor baby Kamila, who had only been born that morning at the tail end of the Longest Night. But the Matron Midwife had promised to stay and watch over them for him, and Alma hadn’t been recovering as well as expected, so Jowd had gone out into the Forest to find the Physik Woman, Galen, who Alma once trained under.

    The medicinal bundle of herbs from Galen, and the accompanying instructions, was safely tucked in his cloak pocket now. Jowd put on speed as he saw the trees beginning to thin ahead of him. The drawbridge usually shut around sunset, and he wanted to get inside the walls before it was pulled up. If he didn’t, he’d have to wait until it was lowered again in the morning.

    Spending a night in the Forest was ill-advised at best, and a death sentence at worst. In the Castle’s early days, when it was only a humble village, Things and other Darke creatures would get in and wreak ruin, spoiling milk and Magyk or stealing babies (Jowd shuddered). The Castle residents had built the encircling stone Wall for safety inside the wide, deep Moat they dug, and only went into the Forest when absolutely necessary. And they definitely did not stay under the trees overnight. Someone protected against Darke Magyk could still get eaten by wolverines, and the Wendron Witch Coven only needed a moment of opportunity to relieve a traveler of their valuables.

    But Jowd had timed himself well, and he got across the still-lowered drawbridge. The North Gate gatekeeper, Rindge, popped his head out of the winch room as Jowd approached. “You’re not going back out, right?”

    “Right,” Jowd agreed, relieved. He dug in his pockets and found a silver penny for Rindge. Being on friendly terms with the gatekeeper wasn’t a free break from the toll. Jowd wouldn’t have liked to leave Rindge without his means of living, anyway.

    Rindge tossed the coin into the till with a clatter. “You’d better get home. It’s a weird night to be out.”

    “Wyrd?” asked Jowd, who had never left behind his Wizardly knowledge even if he had moved out of the Wizard Tower years ago.

    “No, just weird,” said Rindge, who had never been a Wizard and never intended to be one. He saw a lot more interesting things from the winch room than he would from the Wizard Tower. Such as: “Just now I saw this foreign ship sailing up from the south.”

    “What makes you say foreign?”

    “I don’t think they knew they couldn’t sail this way.” Even if Ridge had raised his drawbridge for a ship, the stone One-Way Bridge that crossed the northern branch of the river would have stymied them. “But once they figured that out, the ship just…turned around.”

    “With some trouble, I’d imagine.” Jowd tried to picture anything big enough to be called a ship trying to execute a turn in the Moat. It was a wide Moat, but not that wide.

    “With some Magyk, more like.” At Jowd’s look, Rindge nodded seriously. He didn’t have to know Magyk to recognize it when he saw it. What else could have raised a three-masted brigantine out of the water, turned it around in midair, and set it back on the Moat with barely a splash?

    Whatever the Yonoa was up to, Rindge was glad he’d seen it for no longer than it took to make out the name on the bow. It had sailed right back down south, hopefully to go be the Port’s problem.

    “Thank you for the warning,” Jowd said. He did want to go home, and not be out tonight, wondering about a mystery ship. Rindge touched the brim of his hat, which was drawn low over his eyes as usual, and Jowd hurried off. Behind him, a noisy rattle of chains started up as Rindge and the Bridge Boy began raising the drawbridge for the night. Jowd made a sharp left turn as soon as he could, and in moments the Ramblings were in view.

    It was impossible to look at the Ramblings and assume it had been built on purpose. The higgledy-piggledy sprawl staggered along the inside of the eastern curve of the Wall like a crescent moon, and very little of it matched the rest. Indeed, there was much debate about whether it counted as one building, or several. But despite its homemade architecture, it was solidly built, and it continued growing.

    The Ramblings had, like the Castle, started small. But for every new resident who moved in, more people were drawn by its reputation as a homey, reasonably nice place to live. Soon it was stuffed full to the brim with not just apartments, but schools and workrooms, tailors and carpenters, distilleries and taverns, and any trade a person could run from their kitchen table.

    Now, at night, most of those trades were quiet. Jowd paused to stamp the snow from his boots inside the main door, then set off down the corridor, the rushlights burning brightly on the walls. The halls of the Ramblings swerved unpredictably, and Jowd’s boots kept slipping into the worn imprints of a thousand other boots that had tread the floor before him.

    It was good to be home.

    The room behind The Big Green Door, at the end of Thataway Street (all the hallways in the Ramblings were named like streets), had been Jowd and Alma’s home ever since he’d brought his new wife to live with him in the Castle. It was nothing like Galen’s Forest treehouse, or the Magykal Wizard Tower apartments, but it cheered Jowd to see the warm green paint.

    Except when the door burst open like it did just then.

    The Matron Midwife who had thrown it open paled at the sight of Jowd. But she was bigger than him, and rushed out with a cry, and Jowd instinctively stepped out of the way.

    Jowd immediately doubted himself. Why instinctively? He’d…seen she was carrying something, something small wrapped in white cloth, and he hadn’t wanted to make her drop it. He was a big man, tall and handsomely fat, and he’d trained himself over the years to be careful of other people who weren’t as sturdy. The Midwife cried out again as she disappeared down the hall, and the word she was saying resolved itself in Jowd’s ears: “Dead!”

    The green door was still standing open, and he could hear crying inside.

    Jowd threw himself through the door. Alma was crying, curled around her belly on the bed, and she only cried harder when Jowd dropped to his knees beside her.

    “She took her,” Alma sobbed, “she took Kamila, Kamila’s dead.”

    That was how Cabanela found them, when he appeared into the darkness of the room. His white robes made him look like a ghost.

    “What’s happened?” he gasped out. Neither mourner noticed that he had arrived at their door pre-alarmed, his hair falling out of his favorite upswept style and into his face.

    Jowd couldn’t speak. Alma was still incoherent with sobs. Cabanela’s gaze went to the empty baby basket, then desperately to Alma on the bed, as if the baby were only hidden behind Jowd’s head, as if she was crying from the pain of nursing. Surely, it had to be that.

    It wasn’t that.

    Cabanela fell to his knees. Or, almost did; his cloak squeaked when he tried.

    Jowd turned only from many, many years of habit. His muscles engaged while his mind was elsewhere, barely coherent, unprepared to see Cabanela ease the door to their room shut and fold his cloak back from the child hiding underneath it.

    She was barely as tall as Cabanela’s hip, and staring at the sobbing Alma with wide, frightened eyes. Her hair had been cut close to her scalp. The rich red of her dress was black in the unlit room.

    “I didn’t know who else to go to,” Cabanela said.

    Jowd had no words to answer him with.

    The girl stayed frozen in one spot until Cabanela put her on one of the chairs at the table. Then Cabanela could kneel at his friend’s side, a shadow of warmth that Jowd truly could not tell if he felt or not. There was a creeping numbness all through his body.

    “Jowd, I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back,” Cabanela said, gripping Jowd’s shoulders tightly. “I have to go—I have to make sure I wasn’t followed. But this girl is yours, do you understand? As far as anyone else must ever know, she was born to you as much as Kamila—was,” he choked out. Alma wailed, long and thin and pained, and barely felt the two different hands that reached for her.

    “I’m so sorry,” Cabanela said, and he kissed Alma’s temple. Then he rose and was gone. The door shut itself firmly behind him and locked itself. It would bear no more bad news and strange guests to come inside; the family had been through enough, tonight.

    It was not until long after Cabanela left that Jowd realized he had been wearing white robes. Not the lapis lazuli blue of an Apprentice’s robes, which Cabanela had spent the last seven years and a day in, but the white ExtraOrdinary Wizard’s garments, complete with the silver-and-platinum belt and the polished lapis lazuli stone of the Akhu Amulet. Jowd had seen it gleam in the scant light, briefly; seen and been too addled to understand.

    Cabanela was now the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. But what had happened to the last one?

    At some point, someone thought to ask the child in Jowd and Alma’s room her name. She said it was Lynne.

    Neither Jowd nor Alma asked—Memry did. Memry was a cheery, nosy young woman who happened to be a friend of Alma’s. Alma did not have many close friends in the Castle, so only Memry showed up in the Ramblings a day later to hear about the new baby.

    Once there, once she heard, Memry had no intention of leaving. She stayed to take up even more space in their single room, sleeping on the floor next to the box bed built into one wall, which Alma hadn’t left since the night Kamila died. She organized a rota of neighbors to bring food which she forced Alma and Jowd to eat. She found the bundle of herbal medicine, and followed the instructions, and made Alma take them. She tiptoed around Lynne uncertainly and put her to bed earlier than Lynne ever fell asleep.

    And she also sent an urgent Long-Distance Message Rat to Alma’s sister in the Port. When Catrina turned up, she bustled enough to make the room seem homey, and not full of unswept floors and unwashed people. Memry, in deep relief, regained her cheer now that she was not the only one sitting up at night to keep watch over the couple.

    It was later, after Catrina put Lynne to bed at a reasonable time one evening, that she sat down with Memry and asked, “Have you heard about the Queen?” It was the first time in a while that the two women had nothing to occupy their minds or their hands with.

    “What about the Queen?” Memry asked. Lynne clutched her pillow over her ears. She had her own privacy curtains now, which Catrina had made for her equally makeshift bed. But they didn’t block noise at all, and neither did the thin pillow. She could still hear Catrina say:

    “Have you heard that she’s dead?”

    “What? No,” Memry gasped. “She can’t be. She’s sick from her pregnancy. I wouldn’t be leaving the Palace, either.”

    “Would you be locking yourself in the Palace with that bunch of brutes calling themselves the Custodian Guard, and letting the Supreme Custodian be your regent?”

    The fire flickered in the thoughtful silence. Memry asked, “Who told you this?”

    “Terry Tarsal.”

    “That tailor who lives off Wizard Way?”

    “Her cousin lives down the row on There-and-Back-Again Lane,” Catrina said. “She came by to ask after Jowd, and she told me something that happened when she made a delivery to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. You know the ExtraOrdinary is supposedly Jowd’s friend?”

    “There’s nothing supposedly about that, they were both competing for the ExtraOrdinary Apprenticeship years ago,” Memry said, smug at knowing something from Alma that Catrina didn’t, and went on: “I guess Alma was wrong when she said there weren’t any hard feelings between them about it.” Cabanela had not turned up, among all the neighbors and relations and friends coming to take care of the couple.

    “Anyway,” Catrina said disapprovingly, whether of Cabanela or Memry it was hard to say, “Terry said she overheard a conversation there. The ExtraOrdinary was talking to some Ordinary Wizard, his deputy maybe, and she said the ExtraOrdinary said the Custodian Guard weren’t protecting the Queen; they were the ones who shot her.”

    “What? Shot?!”

    “The Queen’s consort, too, and the last ExtraOrdinary Wizard.”

    “When?” Memry demanded, alarmed more by the news that the old ExtraOrdinary was dead than by the death of the consort. The Queens and their daughters were all that mattered in the line of succession; the men of the royal family generally wandered off to do whatever they felt like, and nobody in the Castle paid much attention to them. The Queen’s marriage two years before had only attracted attention because it implied there would be an heir forthcoming, which was exactly why nobody had been surprised at the news of her pregnancy.

    “Weeks ago, maybe,” Catrina said. She had now been at the Castle for a week or so herself. “However long the current ExtraOrdinary has been the ExtraOrdinary.”

    “And he said this in front of Terry?” Memry asked, suddenly suspicious. Terry Tarsal was hardly a Wizardly confidante. And Catrina was from the Port, what did she know?

    “He didn’t realize Terry was there at first,” Catrina said. “According to Terry, anyway. She thought he might have tried to do a Forget Spell after, but Terry saw him muttering and got around a corner, and it mostly missed. She was pretty upset about it, actually, she said she couldn’t remember if the ExtraOrdinary had paid her for his clothes or not.”

    After a long silence, Memry said, “I didn’t even know the Queen’s consort was here in the Castle.” Much less, left unsaid, that someone had shot him.

    “He must have just arrived,” Catrina said. “His ship was in the Port a few weeks ago.”

    “Are you sure?”

    “Of course I am,” Catrina said, insulted, and it took Memry a few compliments to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the Castle-Port rivalry (“I would never say I knew boats better than you.” “Ships.”) But Catrina did eventually say, “I didn’t see his ship myself, but folks closer to his mooring say he was bringing home a Princess as a surprise for the Queen.”

    “A Princess??” Memry sat back in her chair. “That really would be a surprise, if the Queen wasn’t involved in making her. But then—where is she? The Princess?”

    “Nobody knows,” Catrina said. “Or at least, Terry said it didn’t seem like the ExtraOrdinary had her.”

    “Hard to imagine that old guy taking care of a baby,” said Memry, failing to picture it.

    “She might have been older.”

    “Poor kid’s probably in Dungeon Number One,” Memry said, very easily picturing the notorious dungeon’s horrors in all their glory. Then what she had said caught up with her, that she was talking about a child in that place, and she and Catrina both fell silent.

    And Lynne, who had been trying hard to fall asleep so she didn’t have to hear any more, squeezed a few silent tears into the thin material of her straw mattress. She wished she was deaf. She wished she was anywhere in the world but here. Here, in this room, she would not be getting any sleep tonight.

    Alma had not been asleep, either. She’d heard the whole conversation.

    Alma was a clever woman. She was also tired, down to her bones, and sadder than she’d ever believed a person could be. But Catrina had heard a rumor about a Princess.

    No adopted Princess had appeared in the Castle, or been heard of in the Palace. But Cabanela, in white robes, had brought them a little girl and told them to say they knew exactly where she came from. And that little girl was curled up in the corner of Alma’s home, where Alma had forgotten she existed.

    Alma’s heart squeezed. It had been doing that in a lot of ways lately, each one subtly different than the last but no less keenly felt.

    Alma got up the next morning. Catrina stared at her in painful hope, and Memry was suddenly afflicted with an inability to make eye contact as she mixed up that morning’s medicine. The herbal stuff had run out after a few days; Memry had found Alma a replacement prescription. The dregs tasted bitter, but Catrina would check her cup when Alma put it down to see that she’d drunk it all.

    Catrina brushed Alma’s hair for her, and put it up the same way she did her own, to keep it from getting tangled again. It made them look like twins, in Memry’s opinion, except for Alma’s green eyes, but she sensed that now was not the time for a lighthearted joke.

    “Lynne,” Alma said, and Lynne jumped. “I have some old clothes in the chest under our bed. Why don’t we see if there’s anything that might fit you?”

    Lynne looked uncertainly at the two women who had been running things so far. To her, even young Memry seemed very adult. Catrina said, “That sounds lovely, Alma, I’ll give Lynne’s things a wash while you do that.”

    Lynne shivered in her underclothes while Catrina heated up water for laundry, Memry was dispatched to bring back more buckets from the pump, and Alma took out folded clothes from what had once been her trousseau chest.

    It was a little silly to have kept old clothes for so long, and not handed them down to neighbors. But she’d come from the Port and then the Forest with so little else, and then she had thought there would be a little girl to give them to which there was, in front of her right now, and Alma fixed her gaze on Lynne until the girl looked frightened at her intensity.

    Alma tried to be gentle. Maybe it helped that she couldn’t speak very loudly after so long of not speaking at all. She helped Lynne try on several dresses that were far too big for her, and an old cloak which suited her very well. Alma told her she could wear hand-me-downs until her hair had grown in enough for its color to be visible. “Then we’ll be able to see what colors suit you best.”

    Lynne, in a pale blue dress Alma hadn’t worn since leaving the Forest, hiked the too-long skirt up around her waist. It was nearly her size, if the bodice could be taken in as much as was necessary. “I like this one.”

    Alma could do this. She could focus on the little girl who needed her, who needed someone to be paying attention to her and taking care of her. Surely she could do this.

    Just…not alone.

    Alma reached a hand over the stretch of mattress she’d left empty when she got up. “Jowd, what do you think?”

    Jowd moved as slowly as a mountain trying to shift its own base. He looked at the two of them. Alma took Lynne’s hand, directing her to pull the skirt up and show Jowd the length of it.

    He leaned forward wordlessly until his head came to rest against Alma’s, where she was kneeling just outside the bed. Alma closed her eyes. She kept her hand fastened around Lynne’s, one little hand pressed against her palm, and she breathed in Jowd, who smelled stale and medicinal. His once-curly beard needed to be washed.

    Jowd said, “She looks lovely.”

    The first morning after Catrina went home, Alma made their morning brew herself. Jowd had not been paying attention to how it was done.

    Alma said, baldly, when they had both swallowed their medicine, “The Chief’s dead. Catrina told me.”

    She didn’t tell Jowd everything she’d overheard, yet. She wasn’t sure if Lynne was still asleep or not, behind her bed curtains, and Jowd might not want to know about more death. But he deserved to know that his old friend—and potential Master—hadn’t retired after all. Alma didn’t know the man’s name; everyone in Jowd’s circle called the former ExtraOrdinary Wizard ‘Chief’.

    Jowd put his mug down. He looked to the door for a second, then back at her ruefully, and then down at the table. The Chief, if he was a ghost, should have come to see them; but there were Rules of Ghosthood that she and Jowd both knew. The Chief had to spend his first year and a day as a ghost in the exact spot he had died before he would be at liberty to visit. Right now, he was still in the Palace, somewhere.

    “He’ll come by,” Jowd said, voice rough from disuse.

    “When he can,” Alma agreed, and they held each other’s hands as tightly as they could.

Chapter Text

    Jowd and Alma told everyone that Lynne was Alma’s daughter from a previous relationship.

    Some people paused and did the math when they were told this—after all, Lynne was getting quite tall, and Alma was still young herself. But the numbers worked out tolerably well for a baby who had been left behind, perhaps, by a young mother who had needed to do some growing up before she was ready to have a daughter.

    Lynne called Alma ‘Mom’. She didn’t call Jowd ‘Dad’, just ‘Jowd’. Lynne wasn’t always sure if Alma was her mom, especially in the beginning. But she kept saying it, even after she outgrew treating Alma like someone who might keel over at any moment.

    Lynne outgrew a lot of clothes, too, over the next ten years, though she didn’t grow as tall as she would have liked. She grew out her brilliantly red hair, which stuck straight up as a permanent exclamation point to her youthful enthusiasm. But no matter how hard she tried, Lynne did not grow up to have green eyes.

    Wizards—and only Wizards—had brilliantly green eyes from using Magyk. Both Jowd and Alma had them, from their respective studies, though Alma’s were a slightly darker green. And they did teach Lynne Magyk at home, since she had no patience for the after-school classes when she could be out digging for bugs by the Moat, or setting fires because outdoor roasted vegetables “tasted better” than making them by the fireplace. But Lynne’s eyes stayed stubbornly brown, and she never got her head around more than a handful of Basyk Charms.

    Jowd never said aloud that that might be for the better, but Lynne knew he thought it. The Supreme Custodian banned those after-school Magyk classes, later on, and the boys at the boatyard where Lynne got her first job peered for a little too long through the sun at her eyes.

    Lynne wrestled all those boy Apprentices into submission, and got most of them in headlocks pretty quick, but she remembered the looks. The boys never grew much friendlier beyond a grudging respect—she wasn’t a proper Apprentice, so she wasn’t a threat to them, but neither did they pay her much mind.

    Jannit Marten, who ran the Castle’s boatyard and oversaw the construction of all the best boats (so there, Port), had offered her an Apprenticeship. But Lynne, who could only maybe afford it, said no. Apprentices lived with their Masters, and she had to stay at home, with Mom and Jowd.

    Not that they needed her to check their cups in the morning or make sure they ate. They didn’t need that, and Lynne didn’t need the security of living at home now that she was making money. Lynne just couldn’t leave them alone with an empty nest. Alma only had her herbalism work, and Jowd only did unsatisfying odd jobs, ever since he’d gone to the Wizard Tower and officially resigned his position as an Ordinary Wizard.

    He didn’t say they were unsatisfying. Lynne just knew he thought that, too.

    Lynne liked that Alma said what she thought (in front of Lynne and Jowd, at least, in private, because you couldn’t trust anyone these days). She was the one Lynne talked to about the Young Army, and how most of the boatyard boys had taken Apprenticeships to avoid conscription, and about the Magyk class ban, which they both worried was going to turn into an outright ban on Magyk itself.

    Jowd said, to the last, that the Supreme Custodian could never take on the ExtraOrdinary Wizard in a fight, when it came down to it.

    Lynne wasn’t sure.

    So Lynne worked at the boatyard, and she liked the muscle it gave her, and she got a dog, which she said was for protection but was really just a ball of fluff she’d impulsively spent all her first pay on because half-drowned puppy looked so sad and in need of saving.

    Missile liked Jowd and Alma, but he always jumped on Lynne as soon as she came home, his barks resounding down the corridor as the door swung itself open to welcome her in. Jowd had to pointedly clear his throat to interrupt Lynne’s welcome-home rolling on the floor with the now grown-up dog (“Whosagoodboy? That’s right! It’s you!”). “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

    “Oh!” Lynne threw one arm over her eyes.

    “Not that.”

    “Your present is still hidden,” Alma said, amused. Lynne got up with her eyes shut and dramatically flailed her arms to navigate blindly around the kitchen table, and heard Alma laugh, under Missile’s barking.

    “What am I forgetting, then?” Lynne asked, opening her eyes. Jowd raised an eyebrow. “Oh! Right.” Lynne went over and hugged him. “Hi, I’m home.”

    “Hello, Lynne, thank you for that polite greeting. How nice to see you after you’ve been away all day.”

    “She's away all day every day,” Alma said, but accepted her own hug and gave Lynne a peck on the cheek. “You could always race Missile to the door; you might get a hello first that way.” Jowd’s mustache twitched tellingly with a smile.

    Lynne went up the ladder after dinner and into the loft. It was not, strictly speaking, an actual loft so much as the space between the roof of the room below and the more slanted roof of the Ramblings itself. When Lynne had gotten too big for all three of them to bear how much space she took up any longer, Jowd had knocked a hole in the ceiling so she could have a bedroom all to herself.

    The loft held a worn mattress, a mess of blankets, a quantity of white and tan dog hair that had gotten stuck on Lynne’s clothes, and a large number of illegal Magyk books. They had been slated for burning after the ban on classes, and Jowd had stolen as many books as he could from the Ramblings schools before they could be taken by the Custodian Guard. Lynne had already searched them for any interesting-looking Charms or pages in need of repair, and these days was using The Compleat Fish-Charmer as a nightstand.

    Missile whined pitifully from below. “Night-night, Missile,” Lynne called down to him, which was his command to go to his basket to sleep. He kept dragging the basket over to the ladder, and Lynne had to keep putting it back by the fireplace, where he’d be warm. The bottom ladder rung was covered in puppy tooth marks; Missile had tried to chew the thing that kept taking Lynne away from him to pieces.

    Lynne heard Missile’s claws pattering across the floor. She couldn’t sleep, either, from childish excitement. Somewhere downstairs was her present for her birthday tomorrow, and she might have to pull the ladder up behind her to keep herself from going back down and looking for it.

    The floorboards creaked, and then Alma said “Shhh,” audibly on the edge of laughter. Oooh, they were setting up for tomorrow, and Lynne couldn’t look! She wasn’t going to be able to sleep at all.

    Lynne went for a walk.

    She wasn’t stupid; she went for a walk on the roofs of the Ramblings, so she wouldn’t get caught outside after curfew, and stayed away from the edge so she wouldn’t be seen. She left tracks in the snow, but nobody could catch her, specifically, from just that.

    A lot of the Ramblings roofs were slanted to let the snow fall off, but from her loft Lynne could squeeze between two heavy wooden beams and some loose insulation out onto one of the flat stretches, where the rain barrels were left out to collect water (and, at this time of year, snow). Lynne remembered helping Alma in rooftop gardens when she was younger, but those were all gone now. Probably because of the Custodian Guard, somehow.

    “Mrrw?”

    Lynne spun around. There was only barely enough moonlight to shine off the snow, and show a tiny flash of reflection behind one of the rain barrels.

    “Hey there.” Lynne crouched down and held out her hand. A pair of small eyes flashed again, and then a cat slid out into the open, black as shadow.

    He sniffed her hand, and his ears and tail suddenly perked up into view. “Mow!”

    Lynne winced at the way his tail bent sharply in the middle. It looked broken. “What happened to you?”

    “Mrraw!” The cat ignored her in favor of ramming his whole body into her, purring so loud she could feel it rumbling through him. He circled her, pressed as close as possible like he was trying to share his fur coat.

    “I have a cloak,” Lynne told him, “I’m warm enough. Aw, you’re just the friendliest little kitty-kitty, aren’t you.” The cat accepted under-the-chin scritches, pawing at Lynne’s arm to keep her hand close. “Are you someone’s rat-catcher?” The Ramblings had a lot of communally-cared-for cats for pest control. This one was friendly enough that he had to have spent a lot of time around nice humans.

    “Ma-a-a-ow.” The cat bit down on a fold of her cloak and tugged. Lynne pulled back, but the cat let go when she tried to play tug-of-war, chirping little squeaky noises. He tried the same thing on the other side of her cloak, and then on the edge of her nightgown peeking out, but he was too small to actually pull her anywhere if that was what he wanted.

    “You’re silly,” Lynne said, standing up. It was cold out, and her warm bed sounded good right now.

    “Miiwww,” the cat said pitifully. Lynne leaned down for one last ear scritch. The cat fastened his teeth around one of Lynne’s fingers and pulled.

    “Ow,” Lynne hissed. “Let go, you little—come on,” as she tried to gently shake him off. “I want to go to bed, let me go.” She was trying so hard not to swear at the top of her lungs and get reported for breaking curfew.

    He would not let go. The cat was biting down just hard enough to hold on but not puncture, his pointy kitty teeth catching on her knuckle as he tried to pull her. Lynne had to yank her hand away, and came free with streaks of red immediately welling up. She stuck her finger in her mouth while the cat stumbled back at the sudden lack of counterbalance. “Rude,” she mumbled around her hurt finger.

    The cat yowled, running after her when Lynne climbed back into the roof. “Nuh-uh-uh,” Lynne said, sticking the wooden planks she’d moved back in place. She pushed one flailing black paw out of the way. “You stay outside.” If the cat followed her home, Missile would go nuts.

    The cat wailed, audibly clawing at the wooden planks. Lynne made sure they were set firmly in place, stuffed a bunch of straw insulation back where it belonged, and shuffled through the under-roof back to bed.

    “My Lord?”

    The Supreme Custodian did not turn.

    The quaking Night Attendant gathered his courage for a second attempt. The Supreme Custodian stood a head and shoulders above anyone else in the Castle, and the strange light coming through the open door of the Throne Room cast his blue skin in an even bluer, unearthly hue. It unsettled the Night Attendant, who had been told that the Throne Room was kept locked and bolted at all times for Palace residents’ safety.

    The Supreme Custodian, however, was holding a key.

    “My Lord?” the Night Attendant managed, and felt that it was, arguably, worse to have the Supreme Custodian turn to look at him. The metal half-mask he wore made his eyes gleam redly from underneath it. “Th-the spy is waiting, that is, she’s come to make a report to you. She says it’s about the Queenling.”

    “Is it,” the Supreme Custodian said.

    “She said that, that she had good news to report.”

    “Does she,” the Supreme Custodian said, with what might have been close to satisfaction. He raised a hand and beckoned the Night Attendant forth.

    Reluctantly, the Night Attendant approached, coming within the glow of the open doors. It was a blue glow. It couldn’t be Magyk; such a thing wouldn’t be happening in the Palace itself, not when the Supreme Custodian was right there. Surely if he looked, there would be nothing unusual within.

    He looked, out of the corner of his eye, and flinched.

    The Night Attendant turned to run.

    He was seized by the collar and dragged, close to sobbing from fear, back to the doors. The Supreme Custodian grabbed the back of his head with one huge hand and made him look. “Tell me what this is,” the Supreme Custodian ordered.

    “I don’t know, my Lord, gods in heaven, I don’t know!” the Night Attendant gibbered. “Please, don’t make me, oh, gods, it’s Darke, it must be some Darke Magyk, please don’t let it have me—!”

    The Night Attendant’s wails were cut off when his head hit the wall, as the Supreme Custodian tossed him bodily aside. “Take him away,” he ordered, and the guard standing at attention hurried to obey, giddy with relief at having a reason to leave the spooky hallway. He hated standing guard outside the Throne Room. He’d seen what was in there, once, and wished he hadn’t.

    In the silence of being left alone, the Supreme Custodian stood for a moment longer in the glow of the Magyk that ended at the Throne Room’s threshold.

    He did not put a hand up to mirror the one hanging, seemingly motionless, just inside the blue field. He was no longer certain that a touch would not risk breaking the barrier that had held since the day of the coup d’etat. The hand was already so close to the threshold that it was the clearest part of the figure lost in the Magykal haze.

    The Supreme Custodian’s Master was not satisfied at all by the situation in the Palace, and had not been for years. A loose Queenling was bad for the business of throwing coups, so he said at every one of the Supreme Custodian’s yearly in-person reports. This year, however, the Supreme Custodian would be able to bring him a satisfactory conclusion. The golden bullet which had been Named for the Princess would finish what had been started ten years ago. Soon, his Master could safely arrive.

    Soon, the tantalizing secret in the Throne Room would be his Master’s to discover the nature of.

    The Supreme Custodian closed the doors, locked the locks, and slid home the bolts which had been hastily added to the outside, after the coup. He tucked the key into the secret pocket of his navy robes, under the red double-crossed sashes of his Master. Then he went to hear from his Master's spy, waiting to tell him about the Queenling, and passed a far less restless night than the Night Attendant, who was in the dungeons not two floors below.

Chapter Text

    Under the pyramid roof of the Wizard Tower, inside the apartments at the very top, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard stopped pretending that he’d be able to go back to sleep and got up.

    The wardrobe heard his feet on the floor and opened itself, revealing the mirror inside the lefthand door and swishing its hangers to put the thick woolen winter robes front and center.

    The arms that were stuck into the wardrobe shoved those robes out of the way and went digging for the long underwear first. These things had to be done in proper order, and the Big Freeze was getting closer every day. The hangers apologetically reshuffled themselves.

    Thus dressed, and robes firmly over his underwear, he turned to the mirror. The mirror showed his robes in perfect, pristine white.

    Cabanela frowned, and tapped the mirror with one graceful gesture in irritation. “Try agaaain.”

    Sulkily, the mirror changed to show what he was really wearing: the long scarf over his robes wasn’t white, but red as a slash of fresh blood. The mirror didn’t see why he kept up the idiosyncratic habit. White robes were what every ExtraOrdinary had worn for hundreds of years without feeling the need to accessorize. And the red scarf wasn’t even filled to the brim with Magykal power, unlike his Charm-filled belt, or the Akhu Amulet. He could have at least done a silver scarf, or a blue one.

    Cabanela, who was very aware that his scarf was rather bloody in appearance, nodded at his reflection and went down to the kitchen for breakfast, where the stove was already busy lighting itself and warming a coffeepot.

    Cabanela looked up from his breakfast at the sudden appearance of a spectral, translucent figure coming through the wall. “Heeey, Chief!” His old master’s ghost was a familiar sight, though Cabanela often felt that he still wasn’t used to the balding man being so see-through. The white robes of office made even a new and fairly solid ghost look as faded as an Ancient, especially in winter, or against a white kitchen wall. “What brings you to—”

    “They know where she is,” the Chief said. “They’re sending another Assassin.”

    Cabanela fled the table. His chair had not fully hit the ground before the front door of his rooms slammed shut behind him.

    It would have been worth his life to be caught running so urgently by the sentry that stood outside the Wizard Tower. Cabanela stood leaning against the inside of the Tower’s double doors for agonizing minutes before he could gather himself, speak the password, and stride outside without letting the trembling in his limbs break into an all-out sprint.

    He was still moving too fast for the Young Army sentry at the base of the stairs, who could not stop in time to avoid hitting him with a snowball that had been meant for the stray cat that kept sniffing around. The sentry quailed as the ExtraOrdinary Wizard spun around with a glare. “Watch it!”

    Cabanela immediately deflated. The sentry was staring up in terror, realizing who the snowball had hit, and the ceremonial sentry uniform of a candy-cane striped tunic with purple ruffles, big floppy yellow hat, and knee-high yellow boots looked so stupid that Cabanela felt automatically sorry for any person forced to wear it in public.

    The person in question looked very small to be a soldier.

    Curse the sentries, or more correctly, curse the Supreme Custodian. The Wizards could guard themselves, but the Supreme Custodian had insisted that the sentries were there “out of concern” for the Wizards’ “safety”. Concern for the tyrant’s ability to watch who left the Tower and when, more like. The comical young soldier would probably trot off at the shift change and tell all about what Cabanela had been doing this morning.

    “Shouldn’t you be in schoool, baby?” Cabanela snapped out, itching to be moving, unable to walk away. Something about the sentry was itching at him, too, and he wanted to figure out what. The floppy hat was too big for the kid and was falling over his face, and the white cotton pants were so small that Cabanela could see a tear bursting open the seam at the knee.

    “N-no,” said the sentry, teeth chattering. “I don’t need school. I’m in the Young Army.” That skinny chest puffed up. “We are the Pride of Today, the Warriors of Tomorrow.”

    The Warriors of Tomorrow could have used some long underwear, by the frozen tint of the sentry’s bare hand, which might have been actually frozen in that grip around the heavy ceremonial pikestaff. The sentry looked like a winter cold had already wrung him out, but Cabanela wasn’t at all surprised that the Young Army would order a child out into the cold without regard for his health. What was the kid, eight years old? Ten?

    “Humph.” Cabanela stormed off. The trembling that wanted him to run all the way to the Ramblings and back won out over the questions. He’d spent a long ten years learning to live with the questions buzzing around his mind that were too dangerous to be asked aloud.

    Cabanela had lived in the Ramblings as a young Hopeful, competing along with all the others for that slim chance of a Wizard Apprenticeship. He hadn’t enjoyed it, not the crowds nor the noise. But it meant he knew his way, now, taking the path along the open-air battlements on top of the Wall until he reached the North Side door. The battlements path was not technically open to the public, but who was going to stop the ExtraOrdinary Wizard?

    Cabanela strode in as the North Side Door flung itself open for him, and balked at the smell. The Ramblings was NOT a dump; its residents took pride in its “home-made” halls and rooms (all however-on-earth many there were by now). But the hallway that greeted him was dank and cold, the few rushlights anyone had bothered to place burned low and guttering. It smelled like mildew, and—thankfully his brain intervened before he could identify every awful smell, and reminded him he was here for a reason.

    Times had changed, indeed. Cabanela gathered his fur-lined white cloak around him, and strode in.

    Morning in the Ramblings were a chaotic time, as everyone piled out of their rooms all at once to go to work or school or, in some cases, back home after being out all night. Cabanela was so focused on his task that he barely noticed the absence of the normal morning traffic—or rather, its absence in a certain radius around the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. The halls were still full of the riptide of elbowing and shouting and struggling people trying to get around their turn or through their front door before the famous crowd carried them far past it. But that tide staggered and quailed at the sight of Cabanela.

    Some people froze like rabbits, or vanished down side passages if they could; a few muttered protective spells furtively to themselves. Gaping stares followed Cabanela. Ramblings folk might have hung around the Wizard Tower on a day off, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ExtraOrdinary, but he didn’t come to them. What was he doing here?

    Cabanela was letting his feet carry him down the well-remembered turnings to the same old door as before.

    Some time ago the Paint Patrol had covered the green door in the regulation black, and stamped the new address on it: Room 16, Corridor 223. Cabanela saw it and mentally substituted the old address; he liked that one better.

    “Open,” he told the door. The door did not open, and in fact firmed up its hinges. It still held a grudge over the last time it had seen Cabanela, and he had not reappeared in the intervening ten years to dislodge that one incident. Cabanela glanced it over, and then applied a One-Second DryClean to the door before he touched it to knock.

    A flurry of barking responded. Immediately after, Cabanela heard brooms and fists banging against neighboring walls and ceilings, and muted shouting that his mind automatically translated to “Quiet that thing down!”

    “Missile, calm down!” a young voice said behind the door. Cabanela’s gut twisted. He wished he wasn’t here for her.

    Jowd opened the door.

    Everything Cabanela had been rehearsing on his way there suddenly vanished out of his head.

    Jowd saw him and didn’t even blink; he cast a quick glance down the hallway in either direction, then got an arm around Cabanela to sweep him inside.

    The room inside was spotless—but only in a small area centered on the kitchen table, which had been scrubbed within an inch of its life and set with what Cabanela recognized as the nicest plates. Lynne was at the head of the table, wrestling with a fluffy dog that was still barking his head off. There was a wrapped present sitting on her plate.

    Alma, sitting next to her, was staring at Cabanela.

    “You can’t stand in the hall and wait until somebody sees you coming in here,” Jowd said, closing the door firmly behind them. “You do have a key.”

    “Jowd, I…” Excuses were piling up on Cabanela’s tongue. How could he begin to explain himself? He couldn’t turn away from Alma to look at Jowd. He knew exactly where his key was: under the false drawer bottom he’d Sealed shut years ago, to remove the temptation.

    “I know,” Jowd said. “What happened?”

    He knew. He knew why Cabanela hadn’t come before now, that Cabanela hadn’t dared draw the scrutiny that followed him every damn day to this family’s door. Jowd knew that something must have happened to make Cabanela come here in person. Relief swept through Cabanela, strong enough to loosen his jaw.

    “The Supreme Custodian knows Lynne’s here,” he said.

    Alma suddenly put her arms around Lynne.

    “He is the Supreme Custodian,” Jowd said. “The Palace has all the tax rolls and the census and so on. Is that all you came here to say?”

    “Jowd.” Cabanela was sure Jowd knew all of it—didn’t he? Cabanela was still looking at Alma, and the terror in her face made him sure that she knew.

    “Lynne hasn’t done anything wrong,” Jowd said stubbornly. He stepped in between Cabanela and the ladies at the table, and oh, Cabanela recognized that look. It was the Jowd versus Reality look, and Reality had better shape up and get out of the way. Jowd had to at least suspect the truth, to be so strictly refusing to look at it even out of the corner of his eyes.

    “It’s never been about her doin’ anything wrong,” Cabanela sighed. “But you caaan’t stay here, baby—any of you.”

    “But this is our home,” Lynne said.

    “I’m afraid it’s true,” the Chief said, making them all jump.

    The Chief, belatedly, Appeared, sitting on one of the empty chairs at the table. Jowd glanced down out of habit to see if he was wearing shoes. For years the Chief had suffered from incurable foot itching brought on by nerves, and rarely wore shoes indoors. Now that he was dead, nothing itched, and he had sorted out his ghostly appearance to avoid any repetition of the many, many complaints he’d received while alive.

    “Sorry,” the Chief said. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” Ghosts could choose when and by whom they could be seen, and the Chief spent so much time lurking in the Palace, trying to overhear anything that might help Cabanela stay one step ahead of the Supreme Custodian, that he often forgot to make himself visible again when visiting friends. He had DisAppeared on his way to the Ramblings out of habit, and though he had arrived before Cabanela, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to disrupt the cheerful birthday celebrations.

    “What’s true?” Jowd asked him.

    “What Cabanela said. And what Lynne said, too,” the Chief said with a rueful nod at Lynne. Lynne was trying hard not to look at the dark gray bloodstain just over his heart, or think about where it had come from, as she always did when he visited. Most days she managed it; not today. “This is your home, and home is precisely where the Supreme Custodian expects to catch you. Their spy told them everything.”

    “What spy?” Alma demanded, holding Lynne even tighter.

    “The one next door.”

    “Beauty? But—she—”

    “They sent her here specifically to watch Lynne, and you two,” the Chief said. “I’m so sorry, Alma. If I’d had any idea before now, I would have warned you.” The Chief had only found out about the spy at all because she’d reported to the Supreme Custodian in a room that he could enter. And he knew very well how they’d gotten it past him before.

    The cavernous Committee Chamber was impossible to heat in the Castle’s cold winters, and the wind had a tendency to whistle straight through it. The Supreme Custodian, at his underlings’ pleading, had moved most of their conferences to the Ladies’ Washroom. It had a wood-burning stove, was comfortably small, and was completely unnecessary for use as a Washroom for Ladies ever since Day One of the Supreme Custodian’s reign, when he had banned women from the Castle government.

    But as the saying went, ‘A ghost may only tread once more where, Living, he hath trod before’. The Chief had simply never been anywhere near the Ladies’ Washroom as a living man, and couldn’t get close enough to overhear anything said there.

    “This Beauty woman doesn’t know anything,” Jowd said. Cabanela closed his eyes in frustration. Even if there was nothing to know, they should be running anyway! The Supreme Custodian didn’t care if what you were accused of was true. All three of them could end up in Dungeon Number One just for being vaguely suspicious—or having green eyes.

    But the accusation was very, very true.

    “She knooows Lynne’s birthday is today,” Cabanela said, “and how old she’s turnin’. What other pieces of the puzzle do they need to figure it out?” He saw how pale Lynne had gone; the dog was whining, trying to lick at the bottom of her chin. When he took a step closer, Lynne flinched.

    “Please don’t take me away again,” Lynne said, her voice very small.

    “No one is taking you away,” Alma said fiercely. “We’re coming with you. We’ll go to—”

    “Me,” Cabanela said, leaping in. “Come with me.” He could protect them, in the Wizard Tower.

    “You?!” Lynne said. “You don’t even like us!”

    Cabanela could not begrudge her the frantic edge to her voice, any more than he could change the way those words settled in his bones. Jowd put a heavy hand on his shoulder, and asked, “How much time do we have?”

    “Until tonight,” the Chief answered. “They’re sending the Assassin at midnight, with a golden bullet.” Lynne shuddered in Alma’s grip. “But you must get away as soon as possible. If they hear word that Cabanela was spotted here, they may suspect something’s up.”

    “Why a golden bullet?” Alma asked, and then, seeing the expressions on Jowd’s and Cabanela’s faces, “Why a golden bullet?!”

    “You have to go,” Cabanela said. “Now, as quickly as possible. Please.”

    The detritus of a lifetime was pushed up against the walls to make room for the spotless birthday breakfast table. Jowd and Alma filled two bags quickly with only a few things from the whole mess; Lynne tied Missile into a sling across her front, trying to shush his excited yapping.

    Alma pinned Lynne’s cloak so tightly closed that she could barely see out of the hood. “Mom,” Lynne protested, struggling to undo and repin it herself, but Alma said,

    “Don’t let them see your hair. People might not think it’s you if they can’t see you well.”

    Lynne went quiet. Even Missile, sensing the mood, whined softly and nuzzled into Lynne’s chest.

    “I’ll stay alert at the Palace,” the Chief promised, already DisAppearing again. “You all stay safe.”

    Cabanela took them via cramped side streets and slipways back to the Wizard Tower. The battlements walkways were quicker, but exposed, and the ExtraOrdinary traveling with a crowd when he’d arrived alone would draw attention. Cabanela muttered an Attention Diversion under his breath as they walked, and paid the price for it when the few people whose paths they crossed walked right into them, not seeing the group coming around a turn. But no one stopped to point at them and shriek, “The Princess! The Princess is escaping!”

    Lynne was clutching Missile to her chest under her cloak, and tried to focus on the fuzzy warmth of him as much as possible. It had started snowing heavily, and the flakes whirled past, turning her vision fuzzy, too. She could feel snow soaking through the loose sole on her left boot, getting her sock wet.

    With her head ducked low, Lynne could only see the snowy cobblestones under her feet, and the swish of Jowd’s cloak ahead of her, Alma’s feet to one side darting out from her own cloak one step at a time. Lynne still used the bright yellow cloak Alma had given her years ago, with its odd creases where the hem had been let out repeatedly to accommodate her height.

    Lynne usually had good birthdays, but this was a pretty bad one. Almost as bad as—as—

    Alma’s steps slowed next to her. Lynne looked up.

    The Great Arch was above them, and beyond it, the Wizard Tower.

    Lynne had seen the Tower once before. She’d gone to look at it once, to see what the big fuss was that meant Mom and Jowd’s old friend never visited.

    It was exactly as she remembered: the tall white tower going up, up, up higher than anything else in the Castle, taller than anything Lynne had ever seen in her life. And the golden Pyramid at its peak shone, so high it was half lost in the low snow clouds. The distant windows flickered purple, glass reflecting light in sudden facets of changeable brightness, and the marble walls and buttresses were nearly iridescent with the powerful Magyk that lived within.

    The usual feeling most people experienced, on seeing it for the first time, was fear.

    Jowd and Cabanela had slowed and dropped back nearly at the same time. They both remembered what it was like; Jowd had warned Lynne, before she went to see it last time. Jowd put an arm around Lynne’s shoulders, half enfolding her in his green cloak and the warmth underneath it. Cabanela took Alma’s hand. “Nearly there,” Jowd murmured. Lynne took a step forward, then another.

    They almost ran into Cabanela, who had stopped dead at the foot of the stairs. “Somethin’ ain’t right,” Cabanela said. Jowd turned, pressing his back against Lynne’s as he looked for whatever threat Cabanela had Felt.

    Cabanela dove for the pile of snow shoveled out of the path to the stairs.

    “Cab—” Alma didn’t get farther than that.

    “Help me!” Cabanela was digging in the snow. “He’s under here.”

    Jowd wheeled around and was at his side in an instant. Three pairs of hands, Alma at his other side, made quick work of uncovering what Cabanela had feared—the sentry from before, who was not supposed to go off-shift for another hour.

    Alma made a strangled noise at the sight of the small body curled up in the snow. Lynne’s grip on Jowd’s cloak went white-knuckled. Cabanela leaned over the sentry, murmuring, even as Jowd was putting two fingers to the child’s pulse point.

    Cabanela looked concerned, and murmured louder, “Quicken, Youngling, Quicken.” He was silent for a second; Lynne thought he looked like he was listening to something. Then he exhaled.

    He kept exhaling, a slow rush of pink cloud that tumbled out of his mouth and covered the sentry with a haze. Almost like the haze around the Wizard Tower. Where was he getting all that air? Lynne gulped in several sympathetic breaths before he finally stopped, and the pink cloud glimmered and sank into the sentry’s body.

    Lynne saw the sentry’s chest rise, shallowly.

    Cabanela was already unpinning his own fur-lined cloak. “We’ve gotta take him inside,” he said. “He’ll neeever survive if we leave him out here.” Jowd pried the sentry up, last night’s snowfall already half frozen underneath the fresh flakes, and helped Cabanela wrap the child in his cloak.

    The sentry looked even smaller in Jowd’s arms, only a pair of small booted feet hanging from one end of Cabanela’s pristine cloak and a shaved head peeking out the other. Jowd pulled the hood over the sentry’s head as they hurried up the steps. Cabanela whispered the password, and ushered them all in as the doors swung open.

    Lynne stopped to gape.

    Walking past to look at the Wizard Tower from the outside was one thing. The inside was another wonder entirely. The interior walls were covered in what looked like hundreds of paintings, but they were moving!

    What she’d taken for paintings faded into new scenes and new people before her eyes, Wizards in white and green and blue robes performing spells of—Lynne realized with a jolt—ages past. The Magykal pictures had to be the history of the Wizard Tower, old ExtraOrdinaries and the things they’d done here.

    Even as she watched, the walls rippled with a wave of new moving images. There, the Tower’s doors were opening to welcome shivering people in ordinary roughspun clothes; on the other wall, a woman in white robes and a gleaming silver-and-lapis amulet was doing something that flashed purple. Close to Lynne, a tall, dark man in white was speaking at the doors of the Tower with a crowned woman in red and gold, who looked up, and seemed to look straight at Lynne with her deep purple eyes.

    “Lynne!” Alma called anxiously. Lynne jolted. The adults were already gathered on the silver spiral staircase in the center of the Tower. As Lynne hurried to join them, the floor under her glittered like sand, letters sweeping across it that spelled out Welcome, Princess, and then, Hurry!

    “No need,” Cabanela said when Lynne tried to climb the stairs. “You can stay where you are, baby. Good? Top floor, quickly!”

    The stairs began to rotate around the central pole at his command, gaining speed with each turn as they whizzed the group up the height of the Tower. Jowd closed his eyes, gripping the railing tightly with his free hand. The stairs alone were enough to give him terrible vertigo. It was a large part of why he had moved out of the Wizard Tower. Any Wizard worth their salt was afraid of heights, but Jowd was unlucky enough to have a particularly bad case, as more powerful Wizards often did.

    The purple door to the ExtraOrdinary apartments at the top of the tower flew open as soon as the stairs deposited them on the landing, and Jowd stumbled through, unable to catch himself with his hands full. Cabanela steadied him, Alma grabbing the back of Jowd’s cloak to help.

    “Put him by the fire,” Cabanela said. He snapped his fingers, and the fire in the hearth sprang to new life from its low embers.

    Jowd knelt to lower the sentry to the floor, as close to the hearth as possible. “I think I’ve got a Clothes-Drying Charm I still remember,” he said.

    “Leave it to me. Wet Clothes Off, Dry Clothes On,” Cabanela commanded. Lynne blinked, and the sentry was wrapped in dry pajamas, the snow-soaked uniform gathered in a dismal pile on the floor. The sentry was wracked with sudden shivers. “You’re Trash,” Cabanela told the pile, and it dripped over to the trash chute and threw itself in.

    Jowd sat back on his heels. “Are those your pajamas?” he asked, because they were pitch black and clearly a matched set made to order. He did not say, Did you just switch the kid’s clothes, summon down your own pajamas as the warmest and most comfortable thing you could think of, shrink them to fit perfectly, and do that all with a single spell?

    “I’m nooot havin’ the ‘conjured matter versus summoned’ debate with you right now, baby,” Cabanela said, following Jowd’s thoughts in entirely the wrong direction. Back by the door, Lynne finally managed to let a wriggling Missile down without dropping him, and he shoved his nose to the floor. There had been SO MANY smells on the way in, and now he was in a room full of things he’d never sniffed before.

    Jowd did his Clothes-Drying Charm anyway, to get the snowy residue off the inside of Cabanela’s cloak, which the shivering sentry was still lying on. He tucked it around the sentry more securely. Between the warmth of the fire and the movement, the sentry stirred, eyes blearily opening. Cabanela leaned down to see what the sentry’s condition was, and abruptly realized what had made him stop earlier on his way out: the sentry had gray eyes.

    Alma used to have gray eyes, too, before she went and learned Magyk, but had no kid to match them. Cabanela turned away, trying to put it out of his mind. He had enough problems right now.

    “You’re all right,” Jowd said to the sentry. “You fell into the snowdrift outside, so we brought you in to warm up. Once you get some rest and something warm to eat you’ll be just fine.”

    The sentry was more alarmed by being spoken to gently than if Jowd had shouted. And those Wizardly green eyes! Looking around only revealed that the situation was worse than she imagined: the whole room was full of shades of purple and white, and the ExtraOrdinary Wizard was standing right there, which meant she had been ‘brought in’ to the Wizard Tower itself. She was consorting with the Enemy.

    No rescue would come, the sentry thought miserably. The Young Army would shoot her as a spy when they caught the Wizards.

    “What’s your name?” Jowd asked, missing the sentry’s growing alarm completely.

    “Boy 412,” the sentry whispered. Rule One of being captured by the Enemy: Recite your designation, and say nothing else. Boy 412 was not, in fact, a boy at all, but she had never ascended past the rank of Expendable, and all Expendables were ‘Boy’s.

    The reassuring smile slipped off Jowd’s face.

    “Sleep It Off,” Cabanela cast, and the sentry’s eyes closed again as she fell asleep.

    Jowd shot Cabanela a look. “That was unnecessary.”

    “You’re the one who said he needed rest. Would you have preferred he catch a glimpse of Lynne and take that information back to the Supreme Custodian?”

    Jowd didn’t want at all to picture sending the tiny slip of a child back to the Young Army, where they issued numbers, apparently, instead of names. He’d heard things about the Young Army, of course, but…

    Missile, sniffing his way around the room to catalogue all the new smells, made it to the fireplace, and the sentry. He sniffed her, sneezed without turning away, and then curled up on a free corner of Cabanela’s cloak. The warm fur lining and warm fireplace felt nice.

    “What next, then?” Jowd said, rising to his feet. “We can’t live in the Wizard Tower forever.”

    Cabanela had, in fact, imagined them living with him in the Wizard Tower for as long as it took for the danger to pass. They had so much to catch up on. Where else was there for them to go? Cabanela couldn’t imagine a Queen—even if she was still a Princess—up and leaving the Castle.

    “You never answered my question,” Alma said, visibly trying not to look at the unconscious sentry. “How much danger are we really in from a golden bullet?”

    Lynne stifled a thin noise. At once Alma went over to her, soothing, bringing her to sit on the sofa together. Jowd, seeing the corresponding tired look on Cabanela’s face, said,

    “Maybe you should start at the beginning, and catch us up on everything you know.”

    Cabanela looked at Lynne. Lynne was staring fixedly at her own knees.

    “It staaarted ten years ago,” Cabanela said.

Chapter Text

    “The Chief and I…just the Chief, reeeally, were called up to the Palace so he could do the Welcome Ceremony for the Princess that the Queen had just made her Heir. He asked me to come along so I could see how it was done, since I might need to do it someday, or at least teach someone else how it went.”

    Really, it had been an excuse to keep working together. Cabanela had passed his final exams the week before, and was poised to officially graduate from his Apprenticeship, but neither Master nor Apprentice was ready to call it quits after seven years and a day.

    Alma said, “There were rumors. That the Queen’s husband had brought someone home, to be a Princess.” She was stroking a hand over Lynne’s back.

    “I didn’t know anythin’ at the time. When we got to the Palace, there was just the Queen and her husband and a little girl in the Throne Room, waitin’ for us. They muuust’ve come straight from sortin’ out all the legal documents, and the diplomatic mess earlier in the day, because the Queen had ink stains on her fingers.” Cabanela remembered they’d all looked tired—but happy.

    “Diplomatic mess?” Jowd questioned.

    “Ambassadors from another country,” Cabanela said. “They were…weeell, they’re where the Supreme Custodian came from.” Jowd frowned. Cabanela continued his story. “I saw the little girl had a shaved head, so you couldn’t see what color her hair was. The Chief was the one who asked about it while he was setting up, and the consort laughed and said pests were a rite of passage for every sailor. I fiiigured that meant he’d picked her up somewhere overseas, what with the traveling he did. The Queen said she was beautiful no matter what, and hair didn’t make one a good Princess.”

    That was the last thing the Queen had said.

    Cabanela swallowed, wishing he could do more than make Lynne hunch in on herself on his sofa. “They both looked so pleased to be doin’ the ceremony,” he offered. “One of the first things the consort told us was that it was their Princess’s birthday, so we could say happy birthday.”

    Lynne didn’t look up.

    “I…wasn’t doin’ anything important, so I was in a corner out of the way when someone burst in. I saw he was wearin’ red and black, that he had blue skin, so I thought it was some fresh nonsense from the Ambassador we’d heard about. But he had a golden pistol.

    “The Chief was faster than me on the uptake. He got halfway through a SafeShield before the Assassin shot him. I ran to help, but…he just pushed the Akhu Amulet into my hand.”

    Cabanela touched the silver amulet that hung around his neck. He remembered the heavy white robes he hadn’t been wearing a second ago tangling around his legs as he’d thrown himself to his knees beside the Chief, a rare Transformation overtaking him as the mantle passed in an instant from Master to Apprentice. The Chief hadn’t even had time to cough on his own blood, or whisper the last few words of the SafeShield. His priority had been giving Cabanela the authority to act.

    The first thing Cabanela had done as ExtraOrdinary Wizard was get blood all over the white.

    Cabanela cleared his throat. “I heard a click, and when I looked up the Assassin had reloaded. We were all so shocked nobody had moved an iiinch. When he aimed, I did the first spell I could think of and tried to Transmute the bullet to something else, but I…”

    What else was there to say? He’d failed. Cabanela had fumbled the spell, the second thing he’d ever done as ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and when the Assassin had fired at the Queen’s consort he’d screamed for help instead of the real last word. He could have turned the bullet into cotton. The consort could have fled with his new daughter. The Queen might have stayed where it was safe…

    “He shot faster,” Cabanela said. “The Queen’s consort took it straight to the chest right as I finished.” He didn’t doubt it was as fast a death as the Chief’s had been. “I tried to change tack, but Magyk can only move so fast.”

    In truth, Cabanela could not remember every one of those seconds clearly. He stuck to what he was sure of. “I finally stopped bein’ stupid and finished the SafeShield that the Chief started, and for a few minutes we were safe. But the Queen had run to her husband when he was shot, and the ooonly person on the same side of the shield as me was the Princess.

    “I could hear the Castle guard fightin’ outside the Throne Room. Someone asked what was goin’ on, and the Assassin shouted back that he’d already loaded the Princess’s bullet and they’d have to get the Queen later.

    “I knew they had to be Named bullets, then. It’s Darke Magyk, the kind that ensures that it finds its target.” Cabanela shook his head at Alma’s gasp. Jowd, who had guessed the Named nature of the bullets when Cabanela said ‘golden’, sank onto the sofa and gripped Lynne’s hand. “They dragged the Queen out, and I saw him hand off the Queen’s bullet to another Assassin, and…I heard a shot out in the hallway.

    “The SafeShield was keepin’ us from gettin’ shot at, but it was also between us and the door. The Assassin must’ve knooown that it wouldn’t last forever, he was just standin’ there waitin’. But I was ExtraOrdinary, now—then—and I had all the Magyk I wanted. I got the Princess under my cloak and held as tight as I could, and Transported us out of the Palace. And then I…”

    There Cabanela faltered.

    “And then I went to you,” he said at last. “You and Alma—knew kids better than me. You wanted kids.”

    Jowd was holding Lynne’s hand very tightly. Alma’s hand had gone still on her back.

    Lynne wished she’d had the courage to run before Cabanela started talking. The memories were unfolding in her head, the ones she’d tried so hard not to remember, but now it was there, as easy as recalling the time Jowd had taken her fishing, or sitting with Alma matching the shapes of fallen leaves to the illustrations in Alma’s plant book.

    She remembered the way the Queen had screamed as she tried to catch her husband.

    Jowd exhaled slowly, and squeezed Lynne’s hand before finally letting her go. “The least we can do is remember that it is your birthday today.” He reached inside his cloak and took out the wrapped present that had been sitting on the kitchen table, what felt like weeks ago.

    Lynne stared at the bow, which was crumpled from being shoved in Jowd’s pocket. She’d forgotten about her present in the frantic rush to pack. “It’s not my birthday,” she said.

    “It’s the same day it was last year,” Alma said, concerned.

    “H-he asked me when my birthday was. When they were writing up the papers. I said I didn’t know and he said maybe my birthday could be that day, because it was like the start of a new life. And I said okay.”

    “The consort?” Jowd asked her gently. Lynne tried to nod. “Do you want to open this now?” She managed a nod the second time.

    The sound of paper crinkling attracted Missile, who came over, tail wagging, and whined until Lynne gave him a strip of paper to play with and shred into the carpet. Cabanela winced.

    “Oh,” Lynne said, staring down at the notebook in her lap. It was a shade of pink so bright that it had to have been Magykally dyed, with a star in gold leaf on the cover next to the little brass lock.

    “There’s a pen,” Alma added. It was slipped into a pink loop inside the band of the lock, where it could be safely stored. “It should write in whatever color you ask for.”

    Lynne said, soggily, “I love it.” Jowd patted her comfortingly, and gave the rest of the wrapping paper to Missile.

    “You know, baby,” Cabanela said with forced brightness, “I’m suuure I’ve got a birthday present for you, too.” Lynne watched him in surprise as he rifled through the room, cabinets popping open at invisible prompting. The few interactions she’d had with the ExtraOrdinary Wizard hadn’t left her with the impression of a man who gave presents to people he barely knew.

    “Ah! Here we are.” Cabanela turned around, showing off what he’d unearthed.

    A golden circlet glinted in his hands.

    Lynne nearly threw herself off the sofa scrambling away from the sight of it. “No! No, that’s not mine—it’s not,” she cried, as Jowd caught her before she could topple backwards and crush the Fragile-Fairy Pots on the bureau that stood behind the sofa.

    “Breathe,” Jowd commanded, getting both arms around Lynne and pulling her back down where Alma could seize her, too. The pink notebook had gone tumbling to the floor. Lynne tried to breathe, she really did, past the sight of the circlet she had last seen in a pair of dark hands, being presented by a smiling face under another crown. The circlet that signified everything about why there was an Assassin, coming for her even now, with a Darke bullet enchanted to make sure it killed her.

    “Lynne,” Cabanela said blankly, astonished at the violence of her reaction, “it’s not a trap. It’s just the Princess’s circlet.”

    “I’m not—I don’t want to be—"

    Cabanela’s heart twisted in sympathy. But: “The last thing the Queen did before her death was name you her Heir. Whateeever’s come of that, you are important to the Castle. The Castle needs a Queen.” Lynne couldn’t escape Reality any more than Jowd could, no matter how long Cabanela had spent trying to hold it back from pouncing on them.

    “Nobody knows about that. Nobody has to know!”

    “It’s not so simple as lettin’ it be forgotten. If I could do anythin’, I would, but you swore an oath; oaths are the real deal, since long before there were ExtraOrdinary Wizards.” Cabanela sighed. “More importantly, at least for today, the Supreme Custodian doooes know.”

    “Can’t it be over?” Lynne begged. “They said I only had to try. The Supreme Custodian probably has those papers somewhere. Can’t we just make him find those and prove that I’m not the Heir anymore?”

    Surprised, Cabanela said, “What do you mean, ‘try’?”

    “Cabanela,” Alma snapped.

    Cabanela put a hand up, placating. “I only mean…Lynne, it might be veeery important. What exactly did the Queen say?”

    Lynne swallowed, getting her breathing a little more under control. “When I agreed to come,” she said. “He said I only had to try. If I didn’t like being—being a—” She skipped the consequential word entirely. “They’d let me leave.”

    Come be a Princess for a year and a day, he’d said. If you can’t stand it, we’ll let you go. We’ll pay for your Apprenticeship in a trade, whatever you want to do. But if you don’t mind staying—and he’d looked so hopeful, even with his weird smoked-black glasses in the way—we have room.

    “For a year and a day,” Cabanela guessed keenly, and Lynne nodded.

    “What does that mean?” Jowd asked. He was turning over the implications in his head: had the year and a day begun and ended before any of them but Lynne knew about it? Or had it never properly begun at all?

    “I don’t knooow.” Cabanela looked troubled.

    “No amount of legalese is going to keep the Supreme Custodian from doing whatever he wants to,” Alma burst out. “Haven’t we learned that by now? We have to do something!”

    Lynne sniffled. Alma gave Jowd a significant look, and he stood, bringing Lynne with him with one arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t we get you something to eat? We never finished breakfast. I know there’s a kitchen around here somewhere, it’s not the first time I’ve been in the ExtraOrdinary’s rooms…”

    Jowd’s inconsequential chatter faded out of hearing as he took Lynne out of the room. Cabanela sighed, and put the circlet down on a side table. He hadn’t meant to scare her like that.

    And he hadn’t missed that Alma let Lynne go upstairs without her. He eyeballed Alma, trying to judge the cause. “What is it?”

    Alma hugged herself. “Beauty befriended me,” she said. “I let her into our home.”

    The spy. “Baby, she would’ve found out somehow,” Cabanela said, easing into the spot Lynne had vacated. “You’re a nice person who’s nice to people. It’s no fair that someone used that to hurt you, but we’re fixin’ it.”

    “Are we?” Alma hid her face in his shoulder. “What are we going to do, Cab? You couldn’t even come visit us.”

    Words caught in Cabanela’s throat. He’d expected Alma to say…something else. Anything else. He’d expected her and Jowd to be angry at him for being gone, and the anger’s absence tricked him into treating them like they were twenty-somethings again, and he barely thirty. But Time travel couldn’t be done; there was no going back.

    “Jowd’s right,” Cabanela said. “Go eeeat somethin’, baby. I’ll make sure this Young Army kid doesn’t wake up and, I don’t know, set anythin’ on fire.”

    Alma’s daughter was a more powerful lure than the opportunity to sit with Cabanela. The same was true for Missile, who, finished sowing Cabanela’s carpet with slobber-soggy paper scraps, followed Alma out.

    Cabanela sighed into the empty room. He Vanished the damp paper scraps. After a moment’s thought, he got off the sofa and transferred the sentry there from the floor. He wanted the kid asleep so nothing incriminating got overheard; discomfort wasn’t a requirement.

    He decided against putting the circlet away. No matter how little Lynne wanted to do with it, it might be needed, soon.

    Breakfast did little to soothe anyone’s anxieties. Jowd fixed Lynne’s loose shoe sole, dried her sock, and then he and Alma and Cabanela sent her downstairs to ‘keep Missile occupied so he doesn’t poo on anything’.

    The three of them in privacy had gone back and forth about what to do with Boy 412, and how to keep Lynne safe, without coming up with any useful, concrete plans. Cabanela didn’t understand why they couldn’t all hole up in the Wizard Tower, which could outlast a siege; Alma grew frustrated enough to throw up her hands and wonder aloud why Cabanela hadn’t just used Magyk to kill the Supreme Custodian years ago.

    She’d apologized, but she’d said it.

    Lynne interrupted then to exclaim that the dishes in the sink were washing themselves. Cabanela (who had spent seventeen years getting used to the Magykal apartment) did not find that particularly worth exclaiming over, but he was unduly relieved for the excuse to end the conversation.

    The sentry was the only one who could sleep that night, though probably not through till morning. The spell Cabanela had used couldn’t put a person in a coma, just enough sleep for them to Sleep It, whatever It was, Off. The rest of them were all too anxious to rest.

    It was technically only ten past eleven, not midnight, when the cat yowled outside.

    Lynne had opened one of the windows and then, obeying proper caution, sat well away from it and still tried to enjoy the winter breeze. The fire for Boy 412’s health had made the room hot and stuffy, but the boy wasn’t shivering, so Lynne had figured it was all right.

    The yowling was loud enough that Boy 412 sat up with a jolt. She was dismayed to see that it was all real. She was still trapped in the Wizards’ hideout, not waking from a nightmare in her narrow, thin cot in the Young Army barracks. Worst of all, there was a ghost sitting right there, staring at her.

    The Chief had shown up hours ago, after haunting the Palace for as long as it took to make sure the Supreme Custodian had not instantly discovered the family’s hiding place. He noticed with some feeling that the poor kid, clutching the blanket Alma had put over her, looked more terrified than reassured to wake up in warmth and safety.

    “What was that noise?” Lynne asked. “Can you look, Chief?”

    The Chief drifted obligingly over to the window to peer out. “I assume it was the cat that was hanging around when I arrived,” he said. “It…” He abruptly fell silent.

    “Chief?” Lynne asked.

    The Chief said, “I thought I saw someone go through the doors who…excuse me, Lynne, I’ll just go downstairs and check.” He sank through the floor.

    That left Lynne with Alma, who had been debating going to Boy 412, but now crossed the room to Lynne. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Alma said. The tight grip she had on Lynne’s shoulder said she was lying.

     “It was probably just some Wizard,” Lynne said. “Only Wizards have the password, right?”

    Alma did not say, Wizards can tell anyone they want what the password is. Jowd had told her what it was, years ago when they were courting.

    Missile finally realized they were upset and started howling to match, which brought both Jowd and Cabanela scrambling into the room to see what was wrong. “The Chief just saw something odd at the doors,” Alma said.

    “I’ll CharmLock them,” Cabanela said at once.

    “Too late!” The Chief gasped, shooting back up through the floor. “He’s already inside! They’ve found out where you are and sent the Assassin!” Boy 412, still on the sofa, went as cold down to her bones as she had been that morning. She was sure this Assassin was meant for her.

    “What?” Several people demanded at once. “He can’t have the password,” Cabanela said, over Jowd saying, “Where did he get the password?”

    “That spy!” Alma said.

    “We’ve got to go, now,” Jowd said. “Cabanela, are there any other doors out of the Tower?!”

    “The trapdoor into the Ice Tunnels,” said Cabanela, startling everyone in the room who didn’t know about the Ice Tunnels’ existence (which was everyone except him). “But that’s down in the Entrance Hall—”

    “It’s better than nothing!”

    “We’ll never make it!”

    “For pity’s sake!” The Chief yelled. “There’s no time to argue! He’s already on the stairs.”

    There was not a single noise in the room after that, except for breathing, and the slight, sibilant noise of the stairs outside rotating around their central pole.

    The Assassin had not commanded the stairs to move at full speed; he knew there were no exits for the prey to leave by except the windows. And if they took that exit, no need for bullets, except to make sure of the Princess’ body.

    Cabanela wouldn’t make the mistake of another SafeShield like the last time. He Locked and Barred the door. The lock slammed home with a heavy kachunk. A long bar jumped out of the doorframe and snapped into place as silver settings folded out of the barring on the door to receive it.

    Jowd rounded on Cabanela. “How many people can you Transport?”

    “Not all of us,” Cabanela said. He’d done the math on that several hours ago. And also several weeks ago, and about a year ago, just in case. It paid to keep checking in; he’d practiced with some volunteer Ordinary Wizards and could still only manage two people alongside him safely. McCaw had gotten stuck halfway through a wall when he tried taking three, and it was a nasty business Disentangling him from the fouled Transport, though McCaw had kept up a good attitude about it once he could talk again.

    “I can take myself—”

    “That still leaves everyone else and the dog,” Cabanela hissed. “Even if we leave the dog—”

    “We are not leaving Missile,” Lynne whisper-shouted in outrage, sounding exactly like Alma at her angriest.

    BANG!

    The bullet bored straight through the purple wood of the door and buried itself in the opposite wall, missing Alma by inches. Jowd cried out, belatedly yanking a frozen Alma behind him.

    Boy 412 was shaking as she got up. Better to turn herself in and get it over with quickly. If she sat here and waited, she would get cold feet and run, and then they’d really draw it out when they killed her.

    Lynne, for a moment, saw her younger self overlaid on the small figure walking towards the door. “No!” She tackled Boy 412 before she could get to the door. “It’s not safe! You have to come with us!”

    Jowd and Cabanela were shouting now about Transports, if they could risk multiple trips when the Midnight Minutes were half an hour away at least, who should be taken first if they did risk it. Lynne looked frantically around the room for another option, something that could take all of them away as quickly as possible, and landed on the square silver door set into the wall.

    Lynne whipped her head around to stare at Jowd, looked back at the trash chute, and decided her math worked out. “We can escape through the trash chute!” She shouted over them.

    “What,” Cabanela yelped in dismay, but Lynne was already yanking open the door of the chute. Boy 412, in her secure grip, had no choice but to go with her. Missile loyally sprang for the opening in the wall, and was as dismayed as Cabanela to find that there was no floor inside. A howl echoed up after him, along with the scrabbling of tiny claws for purchase.

    Alma jumped after Lynne. Cabanela windmilled his limbs as Jowd got an arm around him. “I’ll Transport myself! I can do just myself!”

    “Name where the chute lets out,” Jowd said.

    “It’s—ah—” It was exceedingly hard to think on his feet while wearing all white and being towed threateningly by someone he was supposed to be able to trust towards a very long fall full of very, very dirty trash. “Jowd, don’t you dare—”

    Jowd shoved Cabanela down the chute, ignoring the choked protests, and swung in himself. He got in a quick LockFast and Weld as he pulled the door to the chute closed behind him. He’d pay to see the unMagykal Assassin get through that.

    Then the bottom dropped out of Jowd’s stomach from vertigo, his grip slipped, and he spent the rest of the fall trying not to throw up on everyone ahead of him.

    There were, in fact, Magykal enchantments on the Wizard Tower trash chute; after the first few days of its existence, the first Wizards had very quickly realized that it was no fun for even a small piece of trash to reach terminal velocity when it hit the turn at the bottom of a not-quite-vertical twenty-one-story fall. Those enchantments and the smooth, perfect joins of the panels that made up the square trash chute meant it was near impossible for a person to be injured by (the Master Masons who built the Tower hoped accidentally) falling down the trash chute.

    It was, however, quite easy to get incredibly filthy very quickly.

    The trash chute, when it began to level off under the Wizard Tower, turned and ran under the Palace as well before it finished emptying into the Riverside Amenity Municipal Dump. When the chute finally disgorged its cargo into the wintry night air, there was no one among the piles of trash to see the ragtag group stagger out and to their feet again.

    Except one, who caught the glimpse of movement through the window.

    Memry frowned and squinted out into the darkness. The Chicken Kitchen was as well-lit as possible once the sun went down, and that made it hard to see out through the glass panes, but she was sure she’d just seen people walking around on the Municipal Dump. Maybe the Castle authorities were finally listening to the many complaints she’d put in about how close the Dump was to the restaurant.

    Memry moved to the back of the Chicken Kitchen. The far corner was darkest, and easiest to see out of, on account of being closest to the Dump and therefore the occasional smell that wafted over; nobody wanted to sit there, and there were fewer candles lit.

    The Chicken Kitchen was, other than that corner, usually humming with activity. It was built on pontoons at a prime spot on the Moat, neighboring the Palace Landing Stage. It was the second thing travelers saw as they came up the river, and therefore was where everybody stopped when they arrived. The Chicken Kitchen’s reputation had risen via the mouths of travelers over the years until a visitor to the Castle would be crazy not to go there for the famous chicken and a drink as soon as they disembarked.

    Memry considered it her restaurant, and indeed, hers was the face most people saw and remembered. Nobody had ever gotten the name of the tall man who served the fancy drinks, and the only hints that a chef existed was the chicken itself and the beautiful singing from the kitchen.

    There was barely anyone at the tables so late at night. The Northern Traders who usually made up the bulk of travelers for the season had all gone back to their ships, preparing to sail home before the Big Freeze; the only ones left were a couple ensconced by the fireplace and some guy on his eight millionth black coffee. Memry safely ignored them, squinting harder against the candlelight reflected in the mullioned windowpanes.

    There were definitely people moving around on top of the Municipal Dump. Was that the ExtraOrdinary Wizard dancing around up there? Who else would be wearing all white? Who’d go with him for whatever weird Magyk (or, possibly, personal kink??) he was out there for?

    Now flattened against the window, with her hands cupped around her eyes, Memry could make out more details. Surely that was Lynne’s ponytail, sticking up from her yellow cloak, but why—? Was that Jowd out there? Dear gods in heaven, Jowd was eloping with the ExtraOrdinary Wizard and taking the kid with him.

    Memry was out the door so fast she left skid marks behind her.

    Jowd threw himself in front of the others when he saw her coming, until he realized it was only Memry and relaxed. “You!” Memry yelled, to a chorus of “Shhhhhh!”s and some quickly muffled barking. “I knew it! Ohhh, you thought you were SUBTLE! How dare you?”

    Cabanela didn’t answer. Instead of dancing (or rather, in addition to,) he had been chanting an urgent One-Second DryClean that was turning into a One-Minute DryClean. For good measure he’d been widening its radius, to catch everyone else and make sure there was nothing that could leave a stain if he bumped against them.

    “Memry, what are you talking about,” Alma said.

    Memry deflated abruptly. “Oh, you’re here too, Alma. Wait, why are you all out here?”

Chapter Text

    The basic explanation, as they stumbled out of the dump, was enough to send Memry rushing into motion once again. There was a bunkhouse at the back of the Chicken Kitchen for travelers who needed a rest after their filling meals, which was empty that particular night, where a chest of spare clothes was kept for emergencies. Memry pointed out the chest mostly for Boy 412’s benefit; the sentry was still in pajamas. Cabanela’s spell had washed a good portion of the mess from everyone’s clothes, and Jowd found the water pump to rinse away the remainder.

    “I’ll get my boat, you can take it down the river, meet me at the dock in ten minutes!” Memry rushed back out.

    Boy 412 refused to budge out of the thin, impractical Wizard pajamas. They had already stolen her regulation uniform and put her in these Wizard clothes, but she was not going to get herself in even deeper trouble willingly. Cabanela, impatient to get moving before the Hunter could be sent after them, used a Change of Dress spell to get her into replacement clothes from the chest. Jowd winced and almost said something, but the replacements included a thick sheepskin jacket and a cozy yellow knit cap. He’d prefer the kid upset and warm than indulged and hypothermic (again).

    Boy 412 also refused to walk with them. Jowd got her in a fireman’s carry, and they all went down to the dock just outside the restaurant.

    Memry was late to her own ten-minute deadline, and hurried out of the dark with a big hamper that took both hands to haul into her small sailboat, the Ladybug. The boat bobbed threateningly in the water under the weight. “You’d better get going,” Memry puffed. “And there’s some paddles if the wind gives out on you. And—” Memry abruptly cut off as Alma hugged her tightly.

    “Will you be okay?” was the first thing Alma said when she finally let Memry go. Unsaid was the mutual knowledge that Memry was going to be one of the first people the authorities asked. Everyone knew the Chicken Kitchen’s location. Whoever was sent after them would follow the trash chute to its end sooner rather than later.

    “I’m always fine,” Memry said breezily.

    “Take this,” Cabanela said, his hand at his belt. With a faint click, one of his belt Charms came free, and he held it out to her.

    “Huh? What’s this?”

    “A KeepSafe.”

    Memry’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t you need that?”

    “We’ll have me,” Cabanela said, dryly (and a little smug). Jowd, behind him, closed his mouth on a protest. “You, however, might need a little help.” He kept the offered hand outstretched until Memry took the platinum Charm and tucked it securely down her bodice.

    “All right, thanks,” Memry said. “Now get a move on.”

    Lynne jumped down to take the seat by the tiller with relief. She knew boats; boats made perfect sense and never tried to kill her. She recognized Memry’s sailboat as one of the senior boatyard apprentices’ work, too, which heightened her opinion of its solidity. The Ladybug would get them where they needed to go.

    Cabanela watched to make sure the rest of them got aboard safely, Jowd putting Boy 412 in beside himself, before reluctantly stepping in and immediately wobbling as the boat rocked.

    “Sit down,” Lynne advised, “you’ve got to lower your center of balance.” Cabanela sat down more abruptly than he meant to, and the boat rocked again.

    Memry watched them go, relieved that Lynne at least seemed to know what to do with the sail. The wind was blowing south, and hopefully it could get them down the river as quickly as possible. She hadn’t asked where they were going, for the plausible deniability, so she could honestly say she had only suspicions. But even if the Hunter caught up with her and they threw her in the dungeons until she talked, Memry would never, ever say a word about Catrina at the Port.

    The little sailboat, however, was not going to the Port.

    “We’ll go to Emma’s, then,” Jowd said, and this time there was no argument from Cabanela. He’d argued against leaving the Castle at all, earlier, but they could hardly round the Moat and come in again from the north when there was an Assassin willing to break into the Wizard Tower to get Lynne. “Lynne, do you remember the way?”

    “Sure, if you point out Deppen Ditch for me,” Lynne said, hand steady on the tiller. Missile pattered away from her and up to Alma at the prow, to put his nose into the wind and pant happily.

    Aunt Emma—not Jowd’s sister, but somehow she was called Lynne’s aunt anyway—lived in the Marram Marshes, the broad stretch of uncertain land between the Castle in the north and the Port in the south, just off the wide river. Lynne didn’t remember the old Witch’s cottage where Emma lived being particularly roomy, but Cabanela and Boy 412 weren’t too many extra guests, and Emma would have more people to dramatically read aloud to.

    “I’ll keep an eye out.” Jowd settled back, his eyes indeed on the water. Water did not give him vertigo like heights did, but Jowd preferred it no deeper than the bathtub.

    Then they rounded Raven’s Rock, and the current grew deeper and quicker, and they sailed out of sight of the Castle.

    Memry wished the couple cozied up by the fireplace would get a move on, like the coffee guy who’d finally left. Then she could close, and be anywhere but at the restaurant.

    She’d been pointedly cleaning tables around them for a while now, but hadn’t yet graduated to trying to clean their table. That would be rude, and she’d lose two happy customers.

    A powerful light gleamed through the windows, then swept away. Memry left fresh skid marks on the floor as she plastered herself against the window in the far corner, trying to see what was going on.

    There was a new party on the Dump now, with a steady torch magnified into a Searchlight. No doubt it was the Hunter and his Pack.

    If they saw her watching…well, curiosity was natural…but did she look scared, or was she acting suspiciously…wouldn’t it be more suspicious not to noticeably wonder who was getting arrested out there? That was it, if she hadn’t done anything she’d be wondering who the Pack were after, offering them a place to rest their feet for the evening. And then, of course, seeing them off again before the trail got too cold.

    Memry checked in the back and found that the drinks guy had gone home already. Typical. No need to tell the chef (the real owner of the restaurant) to keep cooking; he did whatever he wanted, hence the Chicken Kitchen’s strange hours of operation. Memry made a mental note not to wake up too early tomorrow; he’d be sleeping in.

    No drinks but water or ale, but chicken was definitely available. Memry went to smile at the couple by the fireplace and offer them more water, but was waved away before she could get too close. Ugh, fine. She hoped they enjoyed staring into each other’s eyes, or whatever.

    The bell over the door rang cheerfully. Memry turned with a smile. “Welcome to the Chicken Kitchen! What can I get you?”

    The one at the head of the Pack didn’t look much like how she’d imagined the Hunter. Ruthlessness and mercilessness did not generally come, to her mind, in the shape of a man too tall for his pants to fit, and who hunched awkwardly as if to make up for his height. The rest of the Pack shuffled in behind him, mangy dogs of boys with their teeth showing at the potential for violence. They had not asked for a way to wash the trash from the Dump off before coming inside.

    And they wouldn’t get violent. This was a nice, clean place of business, too popular to rough up like the Custodian Guard did some of the smaller places inside the Wall. Memry swallowed. The man in front didn’t look sturdy enough to hold the Pack back if they pounced. Why did they even…have a kid with them?

    Memry frowned at the small figure in overlarge robes the same nearly-black navy as the Custodian Guard. The newest Expendable for the Pack, getting dragged along to prove himself or die trying? But there were frills and lace poking out from under that robe, much nicer than the stuff the rest of them were wearing, and only a bit of mud at the hems, not trash. There had been no crawling around on the Dump for this kid. So who…?

    “You can get us information,” the pathetic scarecrow of a man said. His breath was awful, and his tone of voice more pleading than threatening. Definitely not the Hunter. Maybe the second in command?

     “I can tell you all about our chicken special tonight, but I’m afraid the sun has set on drinks specials for—”

    “Not that,” the man, who was indeed the Deputy Hunter, interrupted. “A group of fugitives came through here recently. Where did they go?”

    “Fugitives?” Memry widened her eyes, and tried to look at him admiringly, for his bravery in chasing after…no, that was hopeless, she couldn’t do it. This guy sucked. She tacked towards disingenuous naïveté instead. “I haven’t had any new customers arrive for hours. I don’t think I know anything about who you’re talking about.”

    “Are you sure?” The Deputy Hunter tried for menacing. It didn’t work; he was snapping his fingers irritatingly at the same time.

    “Why am I here?” the little kid in the overlarge cloak suddenly whined. “Just make her tell you what happened so we can go home.”

    “Shut up.”

    “Make me, toady.”

    “Take her outside,” the Deputy Hunter growled at one of the men, but when the Pack member reached for the kid she nearly bit his fingers off. Memry jumped a little at the spark of what looked like Magyk accompanying the chomp. What on Earth…?

    The woman at the table by the fire said, “You let her talk back to you like that?”

    They all looked over at the couple. Memry realized she was the only one who was surprised to hear them interject.

    “You can’t expect everyone to be as good as you, Beauty,” the man sitting there said to her.

    “Sir,” the man said nervously, and Memry went cold all over. ‘Sir’. A position of authority over the substitute leader of the Pack. He’d been sitting there the whole time.

    The Hunter stood up from the table. “I think I can take it from here, my dear,” he said to Memry. “But if you’ll tell me where, exactly, your friends went, I may be able to pull some strings and make things a little more comfortable for you, in what’s to follow. It’s only fair to treat a lady as gently as she deserves, don’t you agree? What do you say?”

    Memry kicked him in the balls and tried to run for the door.

    Stupid! She should’ve jumped out the window. Beauty struck her hard across her face and Memry barely missed their table on the way down. She hit the floor, numb with shock. She’d seen the table corner whistle right past her eyes. If she’d been a centimeter closer—if she’d hit her head hard enough—

    “Pull yourself together,” Beauty said, somewhere over Memry’s head.

    “Y-yes, Beauty,” the Hunter gasped out. “I’ll be there in just a moment…”

    Beauty might as well have ignored him. She started directing the Pack. “Go find some kindling, and get the doors boarded up. And one of you take that brat outside.”

    No. Not the restaurant. Memry tried to push herself to her feet, and dropped again when one of the hurrying Pack aimed a kick at her wrist, rolling out of the way. By the time she staggered to her feet the door was closing behind the last of the Pack, a flash of Beauty’s impassive blue face all she saw before it slammed closed.

    Almost immediately someone started hammering. Did the Pack have a bunch of planks ready at all times, just in case they needed to wall up someone in a building?! “Get this restaurant surrounded!” the Hunter’s voice cried from outside.

    She was surrounded. They were going to set her restaurant on fire.

    Memry got a running start and jumped out a window.

    They were close enough to the Marram Marshes that Jowd had started really looking for Deppen Ditch, which would mark their turning off of the river, when the Searchlight swept across the river behind them.

    Cabanela immediately tried to stand, and nearly unbalanced the Ladybug and tipped them all into the river. Jowd flailed to compensate for the weight, and Cabanela crouched low again in an abashed hurry.

    “What was that?” Lynne asked, gripping the tiller with white knuckles.

    “No doubt the Hunter and the Pack,” Cabanela said grimly. Less than ten minutes down the river, and they were already being pursued.

    “Do you have an UnSeen that can cover the boat, too?” Jowd asked, his mind already running down the list of potential Magykal solutions.

    “We can’t just go UnSeen,” Cabanela said. “They want a chase, and they’ll Hunt after it for as long as it takes to find one. We need them to think we’re somewhere other than where we are.”

    “A Projection?”

    “Decide quickly,” Lynne burst out, trying to keep quiet as she watched the water behind them. “That light’s getting closer fast.”

    Cabanela leaned forward, gripping the mast as he began to mutter. Not just a Projection, but deflection. Projections were always backwards anyway, as though reflected, so take the sight of them and throw it somewhere else, like a ventriloquist throwing his voice. Nothing like it…

    Alma gasped as, suddenly, another ship appeared on the river with them. Painted the exact same cheerful green, her sail billowed to catch the winter wind, she was carrying a crew with a red-haired ponytail at the tiller and a figure in white leaning his forehead against the mast. Alma even saw a woman at the prow, turned to look in the exact mirror image of Alma herself as she stared over at the Projection.

    Alma tried to look back at the real boat, and the real people with her, and couldn’t. The river’s tide washed past her feet and there was no boat under her. Alma squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could, and reassured herself that she could still feel the wooden seat underneath her, and hear the faint squeak of wood on wood and the sail pulling on the ropes—under the sound of Cabanela muttering Magyk. Missile’s fluff brushed against her, and he whined; Alma hastily put a hand out, until she felt the little dog’s face, and put a hand around his muzzle before he could start barking.

    Boy 412 also had her eyes closed. She had seen the boat and everyone else vanish, and braced herself to fall into the river, as she nearly had so many times on the midnight Do-Or-Die Exercises. Being crammed into a boat with the Chief Cadet and sailing through the Forest was nearly as bad as huddling in a wolverine pit all night, waiting to find out whose hole the wolverines would fall into first.

    The cold embrace of the water didn’t come. Boy 412 cracked one eye open. She knew she was huddled in the bottom of the boat, but she couldn’t even see herself, not her hands clutching her knees or the stupid warm clothes the Wizards had forced her into. The Hunter’s Searchlight swept past them, bright and red with firelight, then over them, not even showing their shadows, or the boat’s.

    They were completely invisible. Down the river, Boy 412 could see the other boat as clearly as Alma had, with the mast no longer blocking her line of sight. That boat, some trick of Magyk, was headed the complete opposite direction of them, and the Searchlight had locked onto it with all the baleful glee of the Hunter’s chase.

    The Hunter would never find them, not like this, with the enemy Wizards being so good at hiding.

    But…if Boy 412 helped, then maybe the Young Army would believe her when she said she’d been kidnapped, and wasn’t a conspirator or aiding and abetting enemies of the Supreme Custodian. Maybe she could go back and things would go back to normal, instead of having to worry about being thrown in Dungeon Number One for the rest of her life.

    Boy 412 howled, “THEY’RE OVER HERE!”

    The Hunter, kneeling at the prow, whipped around at the sound of the shout. “Hold!” he commanded the rowers, two neat lines of them on either side of the narrow bullet boat. It was painted a sleek, oily black, perfect for cutting through choppy water, and it had brought them to their quarry in only a few minutes.

    At his command they paused; the Hunter ignored their grateful sighs at the rest. He could see his quarry, still sailing downriver towards the Port, but that shout hadn’t come from the boat. What kind of tricks was he dealing with, here?

    In the red glare of the Searchlight he’d seen a figure at the tiller lunge forward, and now the boat ahead of them was drifting, unguided and slow. But the heavy thumps of fighting in a boat had come from confused directions. He hadn’t heard the noises from quite the same angle as the helpful shout, but had they come from the boat he could see? Even as he thought, he noticed the purple light flickering around the figure in white, seated right where the Hunter had a clear shot…

    His fingers twitched for the golden pistol laid within easy reach, and the tray of bullets. But the Queenling was the priority, and the golden bullet etched with P for Princess. He could take care of the ExtraOrdinary later. Especially when, whatever else was going on with that boat, there was some kind of fight happening…

    Lynne had tackled Boy 412 to the floor with some flailing; it was hard to get a grip on an UnSeen opponent. But she had a hand firmly over the kid’s mouth now, which was a shame, because she didn’t have any hands left to get back to the tiller, and she couldn’t even see where the handle was to try and push it with her foot.

    The Searchlight swept over them. “They’ve stopped,” came Alma’s whisper, “they’re looking for us again.” Lynne’s heart sank; then she had to squeeze tighter as Boy 412 tried to thrash again and get away.

    There was a heavy creak of wood, and then a boot nudged Lynne’s head and stilled. Jowd, trying to move around the invisible boat, had almost tripped over her. “I can’t get to the tiller,” Jowd whispered, trying hard to stay quiet. “Are you lying on the oars, I can’t see them at all.” He had the uncanny feeling, despite knowing they were invisible, that the Hunter was staring straight at him.

    Cabanela drew in a breath, and started chanting under his breath again. The tense line of him, leaning with his forehead against the mast as he gripped it with both hands, was only visible in the Projection. Only the Hunter, looking carefully around the river for any hint, saw the redoubled glimmer of purple Magyk—and frowned.

    “Give it up, my friends!” The Hunter called out loudly. Alma went even more still on the boat, convinced that he’d spotted them. The boat, unsteered, was listing randomly in sort of the direction they’d been going in, but if they were turned any further by the river’s current, they were going to get stuck in the opening of Deppen Ditch. “Why make it harder than it needs to be? This could all have been over hours ago.”

    On the floor of the boat, where she was pinned down by the larger girl, Boy 412 felt Lynne shudder. For a moment she thought it was herself who’d shuddered; a similar feeling had worked its way down her spine, in fear for her life, more than once before. The Do-Or-Die Exercises were named literally, and not everyone was fast enough to Do.

    “Blow,” Cabanela breathed, and the sail billowed full with a snap of cloth.

    The wind gathered itself up and hurled it where Cabanela commanded. A sudden wave caught the bullet boat, rocking it dangerously and forcing the Hunter to crouch. The Projection of the Ladybug lunged forward—completely contrary to the conjured wind—as the real Ladybug was caught before she could turn far enough to run aground, and sailed straight through Deppen Ditch and into the Marram Marshes.

    The hill of the Ditch was tall enough that in the dark they were out of sight. Cabanela let go of the Projection with a gasp for air, and Jowd found himself visible with Alma in front of him, clutching a wriggling Missile.

    “Keep hold of him,” Jowd said at once, recognizing that Missile was desperately trying to bark. He jumped out of the Ladybug, splashing into the shallow water, and hauled her by her prow until she was no longer at risk of drifting. He gave Alma a hand out, since she was occupied with Missile, and went to help Cabanela.

    Cabanela was not shaking from overexertion; he was already scrambling out of the boat with fluid energy, up the side of Deppen Ditch, pausing only to crouch and make sure his white robes weren’t visible behind the low roll of the marsh grass.

    The Searchlight was swinging around again; the Hunter had seen the Projection vanish and not bothered to follow it further. But he hadn’t seen where they really went, and now Cabanela pointed his finger and hissed,

    “Dive!”

    And the Hunter, unconscious of any irregularity, found himself putting his hands together, crouching, and making a perfect ten-point dive into the freezing water of the river.

    Someone stood abruptly at the back of the bullet boat, a tall figure who barked a command even as the rowers were wearily reversing themselves to row back and pull the sodden Hunter from the water. Cabanela grinned, all teeth, and watched their retreat, crawling back against the current towards the Castle. No chance to pursue the chase now, not unless they wanted the Hunter to die of hypothermia. For now, they’d won.

    The robed child had been sitting in the back of the bullet boat, but now that the rowers had turned around to go back, she was in the prow, the chill wind whistling in her face. Beauty was drawn up tight where she sat next to her, keeping her under guard, and watching with eagle eyes as the Hunter shivered and sniffled in his seat.

    “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, but it wasn’t a scolding; merely a statement of fact. Her eyes moved, briefly, past the Hunter to the haze of marshland already gone invisible in the dark.

    The girl looked, too, towards where the other boat had vanished.

    She knew why they’d brought her along for this Hunt. Her Master and his servant the Supreme Custodian hadn’t bothered keeping it a secret, if Commander Sith ever bothered to remember whether his Apprentice was in the room or not. So the Apprentice’s eyes stayed on the spot where the people on that boat had vanished, and she thought, they were escaping to live. A person could freeze to death if they got soaking wet in this weather, but if she made it to shore, and they saw her, they would take her with them to keep her from dying, and then she’d finally meet them, just to see what they were like, at least…

    Beauty said, “Don’t even think about it.”

    The Apprentice could have. But instead, she shrank into her robes. Beauty always knew when she had any kind of idea, and put a stop to it.

    With the Searchlight gone there was now only the faintest light of the moon and the weak glow from the Akhu Amulet that, ever-present, was only visible in such pitch dark. Cabanela slid back down the side of the Ditch some minutes after the Hunter’s bullet boat had vanished from sight. “They’re gone.”

    Jowd said, “Lynne, you can let him go.”

    “And then what?” Lynne demanded. “He tried to get us killed!” She was still pinning down Boy 412. “And after you saved his life in the snow outside!”

    “What’s done is done. You can’t keep him in a headlock forever.”

    Boy 412 made no attempt to get up when Lynne grudgingly stepped away. Her mind was spinning. Saved her life? In the snow? She’d just fallen asleep on guard duty, and the Wizards had taken advantage to trap her inside the Wizard Tower…right?

    She couldn’t remember anything in between dozing off outside and waking up shivering.

    Lynne did take Jowd’s helping hand out of the Ladybug. “Why are we gettin’ out of the boat?” Cabanela demanded as Lynne splashed to shore. Alma finally let Missile go, and he immediately started yipping frantically, dancing around Lynne’s ankles. “We’ve got to keep movin’. Aren’t we hidin’ out with this faaamous wine Witch of the Marram Marshes?”

    “White Witch,” Jowd said severely, but he subsided the next moment. Cabanela had combined a Projection with an UnSeen, on the fly thrown sound across the river along with the sight of the Projection, and on top of all that conjured up a wind in a bare sixty seconds. ExtraOrdinary or no, Cabanela had been carrying an incredible amount of Magyk all at once…even if he didn’t look it. “We need to eat before we try to cross the marshes at night. Memry packed us food.”

    Cabanela’s stomach growled. “Fine,” he said begrudgingly.

    Jowd hauled out the hamper Memry had packed them, and then Boy 412, when she wouldn’t get up from being curled on the floor of the boat. Boy 412 sat as small as she could and noticed Lynne pointedly not looking at her as the older girl unpacked the hamper by the light of a small fire Alma conjured.

    The top layer had some plates, the wooden camping kind, as well as utensils all tied into a bundle with a washrag. Under that was a package sweating condensation with one of the Chicken Kitchen’s best chickens, much more carefully wrapped for its preservation. Lynne sighed happily at the mere smell of it, stress melting away.

    Lynne was the one who liked chicken the most (Jowd only nibbled; Memry had not packed any ketchup), but Cabanela put her to shame with the speed at which he devoured his share. As usual, he’d been hungrier than he realized. Jowd tried to feel a little warmth at Cabanela acting the same as when Jowd had known him before.

    And then under the chicken, with a little can of milk, was a solid square of chocolate that melted over the fire and made the best hot chocolate any of them had ever tasted—especially Boy 412, who was given her own taste as the can was handed around. Lynne gave Missile Jowd’s chicken scraps to distract him from trying to get his own sip of hot chocolate.

    Jowd and Alma had their heads bent together, trying to figure out how to sail the Marram Marshes at night without being drowned (“Wait till morning?” Lynne had suggested, and been roundly condemned with “NO”s—camping out in the Marshes at night was worse than trying to travel through them), so Cabanela saw the glimmer of ghostly light first. He shot to his feet, staggering on the uneven dirt, and then relaxed. “Chief,” he said, “what is it?”

    “I came to see if I could find you,” the Chief said. “This is as far as I can go into the Marshes; I didn’t know if you’d be deeper in already.” He had not made a habit of visiting the Marshes when he was alive, except to occasionally go fishing in the Ditch with Jowd.

    “Find us why?” Jowd asked. “Did something happen with the Hunter?”

    “No,” said the Chief heavily; he hadn’t known the Hunter had tracked them so quickly. At the very least all who had left the Wizard Tower were still present and accounted for, even Missile, snuffling and having chicken-y dreams in Lynne’s lap. “No, I’m afraid it’s worse than that. The Supreme Custodian’s Master is here.”

    “What?”

    “He can’t be,” Cabanela said immediately, before Jowd had finished exclaiming.

    “He is,” the Chief said. “The Supreme Custodian has announced him as the new ExtraOrdinary Wizard.”

    “The new—I’m the ExtraOrdinary!” Cabanela said in a fury. “He doesn’t even have the Akhu Amulet! How could he? McCaw knooows he’s in charge when I’m gone! He’d never allow this.”

    “McCaw’s dead,” the Chief said. Into the terrible silence that followed that pronouncement, he said, “McCaw tried to Barricade the Tower, but he stayed outside the doors to guard them. The Master—the Supreme Custodian calls him Commander Sith—killed him with a ThunderFlash and Removed all the other Wizards. I saw them go shooting off towards Bleak Creek.”

    “His ship,” Jowd murmured, remembering Rindge’s strange sighting of the Yonoa the night that—the night of the coup. Lynne darted a look at him; she had been the one to carry home tales from the boatyard of the infamous harbor at Bleak Creek. It was supposed to be long abandoned, now infested with Things and the remains of the spells that had made it a comfortable home for Darke Wizards to moor their ships.

    “I have to agree,” the Chief said. “Why this Commander Sith should have been waiting ready at Bleak Creek, to arrive so quickly…I don’t know. Their plans tonight must have been in motion for longer than we dared suspect.”

    Lynne shivered. Alma put an arm around her.

    Cabanela said, “I have to go back.”

    “Don’t be a fool!” The Chief said, loudest over the cacophony of objections that followed. “There’s nothing you can do.”

    “I am stiiill the ExtraOrdinary Wizard—”

    “And so was I,” the Chief said. Cabanela’s eyes dropped to the small, bloody hole in the ghost’s chest. “You must not hare off like this. There are no other Wizards to reinforce you, no Magyk left in the Wizard Tower even to keep it functional.”

    Cabanela swallowed his objections. It had been all they could do, some days, to keep the Tower running, with the steady ebb of Magyk and the Supreme Custodian’s reforms—banning classes, harassing Wizards—contributing to a lack of new Apprentices to take up the mantle of retiring Wizards. Now, after all that effort, the Tower was broken down with a Darke sham of a Wizard in Cabanela’s place? How was he supposed to do nothing about this?

    The Chief put a hand on Cabanela’s shoulder. Cabanela felt the faint warmth that was all a ghost could muster. “We will not find a solution to this by running around in a panic in the middle of the night,” he said. “You need to get to safety, first; and who knows if the Keeper of the Cottage may know something helpful?”

    “It’s Keeper’s Cottage,” Cabanela corrected, dying for something to set right.

    “Ah. I misspoke.”

    “Keep us updated, if you can,” Jowd said.

    “You’ll have to come back out to the Ditch to see me, but I’ll try,” the Chief said.

    “And you stay safe,” Alma said. It was a silly thing to say to a ghost, but the Chief smiled.

    “I will try,” he said again. He wafted over to kneel and touch Lynne’s shoulder, trying to offer the same warmth he’d pressed on Cabanela. “Have heart,” he said quietly; but there was little assurance he could offer that they didn’t both know was untrue.

    The clouds scudded away from the moon as the Chief flew off through the night air; flying, the Chief said, was one of the only real benefits of ghosthood. The moon shone down with a strange luminosity which didn’t match its barely-waxed phase. A beam seemed to strike down and, in the distance, illuminate the tiny shape of a house.

    “Ah!” Jowd said in relief. “Emma’s realized we’re here.” He’d hoped that some of her own Magykal instincts would give her a warning. He started moving back to the boat. Moonlight was a reliable guide, especially in Emma’s hands.

    Boy 412, with a belly full of warm food and hot chocolate, climbed back into the Ladybug herself as they reembarked. Alma pried open Cabanela’s tight fist to slip her own hand into his grip. “Let’s go,” she said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

    They’d been talking, Cabanela did not say bitterly, nor It’s already morning. He got back in the boat.

Chapter Text

    Lynne woke to sunlight streaming through the windows.

    The windows seemed oddly low to the floor…right, she was in the attic at Keeper’s Cottage…why had they gone to visit Aunt Emma so close to the Big Freeze?

    Suddenly the whole of last night came flooding back to Lynne, all the way up to staggering into the cottage at an ungodly hour of morning as Emma exclaimed with surprise. Jowd had explained in a low voice what they were doing there, and then Emma made everyone go to bed immediately.

    Lynne sat up. She was on a floor mat, under a pile of comfortable quilt. Next to her, Jowd was snoring on the big guest bed with Alma curled into his chest. On the opposite side of the room, crammed under the eaves, Cabanela was still asleep under his white cloak, Boy 412 on another floor mat by him, pressed against the back wall.

    Boy 412 was…not awake, probably. Lynne eyed the kid, who was nothing more than a yellow hat sticking out from under another quilt. Lynne had slept partly blocking the door on purpose, and she didn’t know whether to believe Boy 412 was actually still asleep or not. She couldn’t see the boy’s face.

    Lynne’s ear caught a recognizable tap-tapping of claws on the floor downstairs.

    Lynne found some rope in the cottage for a makeshift leash, and managed to take Missile into the backyard to do his business without him immediately sprinting off and getting eaten. Missile strained at the end of the rope, trying to get loose so he could sniff everything. The Ramblings wasn’t nearly this spacious!  

    When she brought Missile back inside Emma was up and moving around in the kitchen. “My darling niece!” She enveloped Lynne in a hug, which Lynne was…pretty sure she’d done last night, too. Lynne had been really tired.

    “Hi, Aunt Emma.” Lynne’s cheek was squished against the chunky, skin-warmed jewelry that Emma always wore, which made her voice come out equally squashed.

    “How are you, my princess?”

    Lynne had never felt like squirming away before, when Emma called her that. “You knew,” she realized, pulling back, “the whole time. Didn’t you?”

    Emma had indeed known the circumstances of Lynne’s first adoption. Nothing less could have compelled her to leave Keeper’s Cottage, the handful of times she had made the trip to the Castle instead of letting them visit her; Jowd had told her the full story, one night during a young Lynne’s first summer vacation to the Marshes. Even Emma’s husband, who she had met on one of those trips and who still lived in the Castle, had to send letters or bring himself to her.

    “It doesn’t matter a bit,” Emma declared, which was, unbeknownst to her, the best thing she could have said to Lynne just then. “You’re still my darling niece, and no Castle toady is getting through the Marshes to us. It’s just like having a MidWinter vacation.”

    Nobody vacationed in MidWinter, especially not with the Big Freeze so close. Lynne said, “Mhm.”

    Emma bent to pet Missile, who promptly went wild under the attention. “Shush, now, or no petting!” she admonished, yanking her hand back.

    Missile plunked himself down, staring up at her soulfully. The big lady of the cottage wasn’t like Miss Lynne at all; she meant business. There was No Barking Allowed in the cottage—but sometimes he just couldn’t help himself!

    “What a little angel,” Emma praised. Lynne went to get Missile a treat for good behavior, and remembered they hadn’t packed anything like that.

    Her and Alma’s and Jowd’s bags were still in a heap by the door, where they’d dropped everything last night. Jowd and Alma were still asleep. Maybe she could help and get their things ready.

    “Can you boil some water?” Lynne asked, fetching the right box from Jowd’s bag.

    “What for, my darling princess?”

    Lynne forced herself not to flinch. “It’s kind of late.” Yesterday, Lynne’s birthday, had been the Longest Night; if the sun was already high, they must have really slept in. “I figured I’d make Mom and Jowd their medicine.”

    “Oh! Of course.” Emma knew about their morning dose; they’d brought it with them on previous visits to Keeper’s Cottage. As a potion brewer herself, she was a strong believer in a rigorous schedule for any kind of treatment. She went out to get water from the well. Lynne set the box on the table and opened it.

    When Emma came back in, Lynne was still there, staring frozen at its contents.

    “Lynne?” she asked in concern. Lynne didn’t answer. Emma came to look at the box over her shoulder, and said, “Oh, dear.”

    The black-varnished wooden box was set with thin strips of wood that crisscrossed each other, forming tiny, orderly cubbyholes. In each hole was a single grayish capsule.

    All but the bottom row was completely empty.

    “How many days will this last?” Emma asked.

    “It’s,” Lynne said. For some reason her brain was moving very slowly as she stared at the empty spaces where medicine should have been. “Um. Mom only takes half of one, so it’s, it’s twice as many for her—but you can make more? Right?”

    Emma did the math in her head. If one capsule lasted two days for Alma but only one day for Jowd, then the amount she was looking at was, perhaps, a week or two’s worth. Maybe as long as a month if Alma went down to a fourth and Jowd a half, but Emma wasn’t the one who had prescribed or made this for them; who knew what reducing the dose would do?

    “Right?” Lynne pleaded.

    “What is it for?” Emma asked.

    Lynne stared back, words failing her. What was it for? It was for…all of them. It was so Lynne didn’t have to sit in the corner again and watch Mom and Jowd not get out of bed for days on end, like she had during those first days in the Ramblings with only Memry to help. It was so Mom and Jowd could do things like wash themselves and the dishes and go outside and read Lynne stories when they put her to bed…

    “What is it made from?” Emma tried, seeing that Lynne didn’t know the answer. “Who makes it for them?”

    “The old pigeon man does,” Lynne said.

    “The who?”

    The pigeon man was Memry’s friend, or at least Memry had gone to get him. When Alma’s herbal medicine had run out ten years ago, Memry had left Catrina in charge and vanished, and Lynne had thought she was never coming back. But she did come back, and brought the old man with a pigeon on his head with her, and the old man had brought medicine and a scroll of spidery writing about side effects and overdose risks and how neither Jowd nor Alma should ever, ever skip taking it for even one day.

    And Lynne had realized that the grownups were going to live.

    And when she’d been taking it for a little while, Alma got out of bed and started talking to Lynne.

    The narrow staircase up to the attic creaked. Alma came into the kitchen yawning, and then saw the box. “Oh—thank you, Lynne, I was going to ask if there was water ready for that.”

    “Alma,” Emma said gently, and turned the box so she could see how much of it was empty.

    In a much quieter voice, Alma said, “Oh. ...Right.”

    “But Aunt Emma can make more,” Lynne said desperately. Right behind her was the door to the cupboard labeled Unstable Potions and Partikular Poisons in curlicued writing, to warn people away from the more dangerous of Emma’s brews.

    “I can make quite a lot of things,” Emma said. “Not usually in this manner…” The capsules were too small, fine-grained powder pressed into a solid form, for her to make out any useful hints at what it was made from. “Alma, what do you take this for?” If she knew its purpose, she ought to be able to drum up something that could mimic the effect.

    Alma sat down. She said, “Ever since Kamila…”

    Emma set to work.

    Jowd tried to offer her one of the capsules, to see if she could reverse-engineer it, but Emma said “Certainly not—you will be taking that like you’re told.” When things grew direr, they might discuss taking the couple down to half doses, but there was no need to worry just yet.

    Emma accepted Cabanela’s help; he had the raw Magykal power to offer her, if nothing else, and he could follow instructions if she clobbered him around the head with the reminder that this was for Jowd’s and Alma’s sake.

    Lynne was quite desperate to help, too, but Emma sent her outside with the child who would apparently only admit to being called Boy 412. The barbarians at the Castle, and their Young Army tomfoolery! Lynne would be much more useful helping the boy run around outside, getting some exercise and fun like children were supposed to spend their time doing.

    And as she worked, Emma thought about the Young Army, and her husband.

    She’d never met her husband’s daughter; that was years before they met or married, and little Amelie had been stolen so quickly she was barely even born, after all the man’s hard work having her on his own. The Supreme Custodian hadn’t wanted to bother finding a new Justice Minister when there was already one in Palace employ, and had taken steps to ensure the current one had a louder reason to stay than his morals cried for him to resign. His child being in the Supreme Custodian’s clutches, as a strategy, had worked all too well.

    Emma had tried to help him look. They were both fairly certain that Amelie had been given over to the girls’ equivalent of the Young Army, where “foundlings” were trained up into maids and other Castle workers. But they took the girls’ names away, too.

    Despite all Emma’s Scrying, the moon had never been able to show her Amelie. It worried Emma, that there was some kind of Magykal disturbance between her and wherever her husband’s daughter was. She had entertained the thought, once, that it might be a deliberate barrier to block any Magykal sight trying to perceive her…but no, that couldn’t be. What would any Witch or Wizard want with Amelie, and how could they have gotten her from the anti-Magyk Supreme Custodian?

    But if the Supreme Custodian's Master was a Darke Wizard, and had been this whole time, maybe he wasn't so anti-Magyk after all. Maybe they'd done that to every child they took for their Young Army, to ensure no one could ever come looking.

    These thoughts, naturally, led to a very full glass of wine in the evening after a completely unsuccessful morning and afternoon. Unexpectedly, the ExtraOrdinary came to share the bottle with her. Emma reserved her, well, reservations, and let him pour himself a glass. He had tried to help, even if his idea of ‘help’ was trying to boss her around. As if Emma had not made her mastery of her Witchery off her brewing!

    “You don’t know who this ‘old pigeon man’ is, do you?” she asked him. Alma had flushed and admitted she only knew his name was Gomez; Jowd had shrugged, unable to offer anything more. The man seemed to turn up out of nowhere every three months with their fresh prescription and take away the old box, and no one had asked any further questions? Witchery and Wizardry were different beasts—for one, Witches developed blue eyes, not green—but the ExtraOrdinary ought to have been just as curious, as a Magyk user of his caliber.

    “Afraaaaid I don’t,” Cabanela said, lounging in his chair. His all-white robes were rather at risk, Emma thought, but he handled his glass without fear. “I’ve never met him.”

    “I’m sure you haven’t. Here is to Wizards!” Emma clinked her glass at him. She’d heard plenty about the lack of visits to his friends in the Ramblings.

    “What do Wizards have to do with it?” Cabanela asked, affronted. Wizards had been the ones keeping the Castle running while this White Witch hung well back in her warded cottage.

    “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

    They resumed their work the next morning with some rather pointed looks at each other, and muttering when the other was out of sight.

    Lynne was a little relieved to get out of the house and away from all that. Alma came with her while she took Missile out on long walks, multiple times over the following days, and at Emma’s insistence Boy 412 came with them. It probably was better for the kid to be wandering the Marshes with them than getting into trouble indoors, or into the Potions Cupboard, but Lynne couldn’t look at the boy without remembering the way he’d shouted for the Hunter to find them. The Hunter who was coming after her.

    Missile, with the rope tied into a harness fixed with several sailors’ knots, strained at the end of his leash with his nose to the ground. Scent trails left behind by all sorts of interesting creatures crisscrossed the egg-shaped Draggen Island where Keeper’s Cottage stood, all the way down to the waterline. At least Missile, still shy from several badly executed puppyhood baths, stopped well back from the water when he tried to follow a trail.

    Emma had a number of books on the various Marsh creatures, many of them dangerous. Lynne had made the mistake of skipping the books and going to Emma for a refresher on her usual warnings, which meant everyone was treated to a full performance read-aloud, which then led to her picking up one of her own novels, handwritten and well-thumbed.

    At least the presence of Boy 412, who listened to all the horror stories of Marsh fire and Brownies with wide-eyed fascination, meant Emma got cut off from her own writing before things could go too far between the protagonists. But she kept calling them all together for read-aloud nights ever since.

    Lynne had borrowed some dried meat as a treat for Missile, to reward him for coming back to heel when Lynne called him away from some interesting scent mark or curious rustling bush, just in case he might get eaten one day if he didn’t listen. Mostly Missile seemed to learn that if he did his tricks, whether or not he’d been given a command, he got food.

    Boy 412 flinched and looked ready to bolt the first time Missile insistently tried to offer her his paw. The Young Army commanders kept dogs, too. Much bigger and less yappy, fluffy dogs…but still.

    “Missile, heel,” Lynne scolded, making the little doggie dart back to her side, offering her his paw instead.

    “Sorry,” Alma said to Boy 412, because the poor kid looked petrified even though Missile was so small. “It’s better to reward obedience, even when he’s doing it on his own like that. You can tell him ‘no’ and he’ll go away, usually.” This did not seem to reassure. “Would you like to try giving him a treat?” Alma offered. It was just dried jerky, but Missile would gobble up even a little piece enthusiastically.

    Boy 412 was staring at Alma, forgetting to be scared. No one had ever apologized to her before. She tentatively nodded.

    “Here you are.” Alma broke off a piece of jerky for her. Boy 412 squeezed her eyes shut, and put her hand out with it in her palm, low enough for the dog to reach.

    The ground was too soft and snowy for his claws to make any noise, but she heard the snow crunching a little, then some panting and a wet tongue on her palm. She flinched again, but Missile’s teeth didn’t fasten into the meat of her hand; his nose left a damp smudge, and Boy 412 felt warm puffs of breath as he chomped on his treat, then his tongue again, looking hopefully for more scraps between her fingers. Boy 412 made a tiny noise at the tickling sensation. She realized it was a laugh.

    Alma, who did not realize, said “There, see? He’s harmless, he’s just an attention hog.”

    “Heel, Missile,” said Lynne, and fed him another treat when he raced back to her. She would have preferred Missile to be a little harmful, in case the Hunter came back. Watching him play with Boy 412 made Boy 412 look even smaller and younger to Lynne’s eyes.

    It was too cold for them to stay out all day. They went back to the cottage and Alma wrapped both girls in quilts in front of the roaring fire. Lynne tried not to look at Boy 412, and tried not to wonder if she would have yelled like that, at that age, after growing up in the Young Army.

    The trouble was that Boy 412 didn’t talk, so Lynne had no idea what he was thinking. He wouldn’t even take off the yellow hat Cabanela had forced him into; he had to be cajoled out of the sheepskin jacket when indoors by Jowd or Alma, though it was usually too cold to bother shedding layers. And he watched everyone: watched the kitchen door and the noise of Emma and Cabanela beyond it, watched Jowd steadily reading his way through all of Emma’s books (except the handwritten ones, so far), and watched Alma reorganize the not-very-messy cottage as an excuse to pace around the room.

    The longer they spent at Keeper’s Cottage, the less worried the adults were about Boy 412 spying. Lynne was still unconvinced; she saw Boy 412 doing all that watching.

    Boy 412 didn’t understand these people, no matter how hard she tried. They didn’t seem to know how to follow the rules, if they even knew the rules existed. And they’d run from the Hunter, which you Did Not Do—not if you wanted to stay alive when he’d Hunted to the end of the trail and found you. Even the youngest Boys knew not to run, not even from the Cadet Leaders. The Hunter was an Expendable who’d worked his way all the way up, to the very top of the Pack, and Boy 412 was exhausted sometimes just staying at Boy.

    Maybe Wizards had different rules. Boy 412 wasn’t sure what to think of this. But it did make sense; they were the Enemy, after all, and how could they be Enemies if they were already doing things the correct Young Army way?

    The Wizards didn’t post their rules anywhere in convenient numbered lists. Boy 412’s stomach felt constantly queasy from having to guess. She’d made it this far by knowing the rules and playing the game right. How was she going to survive if nobody told her what the rules were?

    She’d have to figure out the rules some other way. So she watched.

    Boy 412 knew one rule already: Don’t Upset The Princess. If the redhead got upset, at least one of the grownups would descend on her to try to cheer her up. Boy 412 hadn’t realized she was the Princess until the Witch called her that, but it did explain why the Hunter was after them.

    Another rule was Every Meal Is Eaten Together. Boy 412 was included in this, for some reason, but she didn’t mind that; she got to eat bigger portions than they served in the Young Army, and seconds, and the food tasted much better. The first full moon night they spent in the cottage, the Witch made a big feast dinner, and Boy 412 ate so much that she lay down in front of the hearth afterwards, unable to move.

    And no one even tried to make her get up. She woke up the next morning to find that someone had put a blanket over her in the night, so there was clearly not a rule about having to sleep upstairs in their makeshift barracks.

    Boy 412 considered that another rule might be There Are No Rules, but that made no sense whatsoever. There had to be rules. There had to be some reason these crazy Wizards behaved the way they did. Why else would they keep taking her outside like the dog, and having her sit at the table with them?

    She was beginning to suspect the Wizards didn’t care that much about rank, which was almost as crazy as her ‘no rules’ theory. Everyone knew the ExtraOrdinary Wizard outranked all other Wizards, but the big man with the beard was a Wizard too, and he’d thumped the ExtraOrdinary on the back the other night and told him to go to bed “for once”.

    Boy 412 was sure she was about to see the big Wizard get reduced to ash with Magyk, but the ExtraOrdinary whined and complained and let himself be pushed up the stairs to the attic.

    Boy 412 had cautiously checked when she herself was sent to bed (bedtime was another rule), and the ExtraOrdinary was a heap of right angles and limbs under his quilt. He didn’t seem to be worried about the possibility of the lower-ranked Wizard coming up behind him while he slept and getting rid of him to open up the position of ExtraOrdinary.

    Maybe Wizards didn’t scheme as much as the Young Army said they did.

    Upstairs in the attic, as Boy 412 thought downstairs, Alma said, “Do you think it’s all right that…the boy has been sleeping in front of the fireplace every night, now?” She hadn’t seen Boy 412 bring his quilt back upstairs.

    “He’s probably warmer than we are,” Jowd said. There was little difference between the floor in the attic and the floor in front of the hearth, except for proximity to the cottage’s heating system. “Are you worried about him trying to sneak out?”

    “I don’t know,” Alma said. On the floor below her, Lynne was sleeping parallel to their bed, and Alma let her hand fall over the side to stroke Lynne’s hair. Lynne mumbled some sleep talk, and burrowed further under her blanket. “I’m not sure he could get past the CharmLock.” Emma warded the cottage each night to keep the Marsh Brownies from breaking in and pooing on everything. Alma didn’t have enough experience with CharmLocks to know if they kept things already inside from getting out.

    “We could ask him to watch Missile,” Jowd suggested, a rumbly suggestion of voice as he tried to stay quiet and let Lynne sleep. “Missile will bark at any disturbance, and we won’t have to lock the attic door anymore.”

    It was a good idea; Alma mostly liked the part where Missile stayed on the first floor and she could stop worrying about him falling down the stairs. “We’ll have to ask Lynne first.” Lynne had spent the last few nights curled tightly around Missile, to the dog’s delight.

    “I’ll ask her,” Jowd said. Lynne liked Alma more; he could spare Alma from having to be the stern parent and making a dent in that bond between them.

    Lynne said, “But he’s my dog.”

    Jowd said, “I don’t think he’s going to get hurt.”

    Jowd had that uncanny trick of understanding what Lynne was actually upset about. Lynne stared at her feet, which were half buried in the fresh snow that had fallen overnight. “I don’t want to. The boy doesn’t know anything about dogs, anyway, and Missile will learn bad habits.”

    Jowd reached down to pull a bit of driftwood out of the water’s edge—warily, and then faster when it was clear nothing nasty was clinging to the damp end. “You could teach him how to behave around dogs. Alma said he was a little nervous around Missile. And you’ll be able to stop worrying about Missile falling down the stairs on accident.”

    Lynne had been worrying about him and the stairs. Their room in the Ramblings had never presented this problem before. And it was monstrously unfair for her to blame Boy 412 for being in the Young Army when the Young Army probably tortured the kid, and also he was only ten or something, and she was the grownup who knew how to behave.

    She burst out, “He can’t even give Missile a command, he won’t talk.” Jowd raised an eyebrow. Lynne flushed as red as her hair. “Fine,” she mumbled, “that’s not fair. But—all this isn’t fair, either!”

    Jowd put an arm around her shoulders. Even grown up, Lynne still fit under his arm like she had as a child. “There’s a lot that’s not fair. We can only fix the problems in our reach right now.”

    “And he’s a problem?”

    “Missile’s had some teething troubles,” Jowd said, which just made Lynne feel like he was misunderstanding her on purpose. “Literally, ha ha!”

    “I don’t mean Missile, I mean…you know.” It was too weird to call another person a number. “What if he tries to turn us in again?” Lynne asked.

    “Hardly anyone out here to turn us in to.”

    “I’m serious!”

    “I know.” And abruptly, Jowd sobered. “I know, Lynne. All I can think to do is make him not want to get us arrested.”

    “…You’re using Missile to seduce a ten-year-old to the good side?”

    “If it works, then this will be a fun story we can tell around the fire fifty years from now.”

Chapter Text

    Boy 412 shrank back from the look Lynne fixed her with when she and the big Wizard returned from their search for firewood. She made a few mental underlines under Rule One: Don’t Upset The Princess.

    Lynne picked Missile up that night and, instead of going up to the attic with him, said, “Missile shouldn’t go upstairs because he might break a bone if he falls, because he’s so little. …Maybe you could, I dunno, look after him and stop him from coming up after me.”

    What? Why? The Princess definitely didn’t trust her, but she was giving Boy 412 her dog? (Just for the night, but a night was a long time.) Boy 412 stared at her.

    “You don’t have to say yes, you can nod,” said Lynne. Boy 412 slowly nodded. “Okay, he’s going to try to come upstairs after me, so you have to hold him.”

    Missile was very small in Boy 412’s arms, under all his fluff, with a racing heartbeat and a pathetic whine that vibrated his whole body when Lynne walked away. “No, stay,” Lynne said, and backed away a step. “Stay, Missile.” Missile scrabbled at Boy 412’s arms. But Boy 412 was wearing the thick wool sweater she’d been put in, under the sheepskin jacket, and she didn’t feel at all uncomfortable.

    Boy 412 tried to give him a treat for staying in her arms, but it was hard to make Missile notice the bits of jerky on the floor when all his attention was oriented on the stairs. He wouldn’t eat even when she shuffled around to get one hand free and put a treat right up to his nose.

    Boy 412 gave up and wrapped Missile in the corner of her quilt to keep him from running off. She was tired, and not going to stay up all night to care for a tiny dog. Even if the tiny dog was cute and fluffy.

    Missile sighed, and put his head down next to Boy 412’s. He was really small. And he was just lying there, pressed up against her, like how big she was in comparison didn’t even matter. Like she’d never, ever hurt him. Like he didn’t even know being hurt was an option.

    Missile was already starting to snore a little. Boy 412 didn’t sleep much.

    Missile exploded into a whining, licking blur of fur when Lynne came down the next morning, startling Boy 412 awake.

    “Take that racket outside,” Emma said irritably. She had been up late the night before, with a glass of wine but also trying to brew what she thought might be a promising next step, which was still eluding her. Then she said, “Oh, damn, the haar.”

    “Language,” Jowd said, to Boy 412’s confusion. The grown-up Cadet Leaders in the Young Army always cussed at the Boys.

    “The what?” Lynne said, not sure if ‘haar’ had been a swear word too, and intrigued by the concept of one she didn’t know yet.

    “Haar,” Emma said. “The salt fog that comes up from the Port. You’ll need that fog lantern by the door if you go out, my darling niece, and keep your doggie on a very short leash.”

    “Oh, you mean the sea fret,” Lynne said in disappointment. Emma was right; there might have been snow piled up all the way to the roof, because the view when Lynne opened the door was blank white in every direction. Lynne put her arm out into it, and the fog wisped around it, her hand vanishing out of view.

    “Whoa,” Lynne said. She had never felt so secure. Anyone looking for her would have to get so close before they saw her that she could whack them over the head easily.

    Boy 412 slipped out after Lynne, as she left with Missile tied again into his rope harness. For some reason Boy 412 felt unwilling to let Missile go outside without her. What if some Marsh creature like the ones in the Witch’s books tried to eat him? Lynne only glanced back at her and didn’t say anything.

    Missile kept trying to play games with the rope leash, chewing on it and dancing in circles and trying to get Lynne to tug-of-war with him. “You’re supposed to be going to the bathroom,” Lynne told him. Missile ignored her, gnawing on a particularly tasty bit of rope. “Hey! No.”

    Boy 412 didn’t know how it happened. She heard a noise and turned to make sure it wasn’t a Marsh Lynx stalking them, but there was nothing to see, just the haar. When she turned back to Lynne, who was holding the red fog lantern, Lynne and Missile and the lantern were gone.

    Boy 412 was no stranger to fog. Fog had never stopped the Do-Or-Die exercises, and lots of Boys had gotten lost, or caught by Witches, or simply never turned up again. But not her. She was quiet and fast, and she knew how to find her way. She turned around to go back to the cottage.

    When she arrived at the far end of Draggen Island, it was disconcerting. She hadn’t followed Lynne that far from the cottage, and she had walked right back to where it should have been…or at least where the bath hut behind the cottage with the hot springs should have been, if she had listed a little to the south, which she did sometimes.

    The island wasn’t that big, Boy 412 reassured herself. If she kept walking, making sure not to cross her own path, she’d get back eventually.

    The fog did not go away, and Boy 412 did not have the lantern. The longer she walked, the less certain she started to get. Was she walking over a part of the island she’d already covered? Had she seen that bush before? The bush she saw last time had berries on it, green holly that wasn’t yet ready for Midwinter.

    She leaned closer to see if this bush had berries—the fog seemed even higher and thicker—and the marsh ground gave way under her feet.

    Boy 412 opened her mouth to scream, and nothing came out.

    She hurtled soundlessly down and hit the ground below back-first, hard enough to knock the air from her chest. Boy 412 gasped without being able to breathe for several moments in pitch blackness. Wherever she’d fallen, it was so far down that no light came down with her.

    Wheezing, Boy 412 pushed herself up. The ground moved under her hands—it was sand. Her back hurt, but it didn’t make the spiky kind of pain when she tried to move, so she could move if she wanted without making anything worse, probably. The thick knit hat had protected her head from hitting anything, too. Boy 412 tugged it down over her ears.

    The noise of her own breathing was loud. She scooted backwards until she hit a wall, and the air was colder above her head than around her. The opening she’d fallen through had to be above her, then. When she felt around, there were some promising steps like stairs, but when she clambered eagerly up them on her hands and knees she ran straight into a wall, and had to sit nursing her nose for a few self-indulgent moments.

    But this was no time to be sitting around feeling sorry for herself, even if she was somewhere so deep and dark that nobody could ever find her to punish her for it.

    Boy 412 paused at the thought. The Young Army couldn’t find her here. Never, ever.

    …Even so, she didn’t want to stay in the darkness forever. She felt around more carefully, and while she was definitely sitting on something like stairs, they ran into a solid wall of stone and dirt. She tried digging, and only got the sharp spiky kind of pain on one of her fingers for it. Boy 412 stuck her finger in her mouth and tasted blood; she’d torn her fingernail badly on something.

    There had been sand down below; maybe she could dig that way. But scrabbling through the cool, fine sand brought her to an even colder floor in moments, smooth stone that didn’t give even when she pounded on it in desperation. There had to be something. She kept digging, everywhere she could feel sand, and rammed her hurt finger into something even colder.

    Something metallic! The ring pull to a trapdoor, or—but the metal thing came up in her hand, with a fistful of sand, and no creak of hinges sounded. It was small enough to fit in her palm. Boy 412 stared into the blackness, in the vague direction of her hand, trying not to cry.

    She felt at whatever the metal thing was slowly, trying not to drop it. It was a small bumpy circle…a ring, but what kind? People wore rings, and there were ring joins in belts sometimes, or on flagpoles, or big round links in ceremonial necklaces like the Supreme Custodian’s. This one was very small. Boy 412 put it on her finger, and fisted her hand tight so she wouldn’t lose it.

    It was too big, but it was smooth on the inside where it touched her finger. It must be a finger ring, then, for wearing. Boy 412 was pleased at having solved the mystery. The darkness didn’t seem quite so frightening anymore (though she definitely had not been frightened), or as cold as it had been.

    Wait. It really wasn’t as cold at it had been. The ring was warming up on her finger.

    Boy 412 held up her hand, and could see it. The ring was glowing, and it was getting warm. Boy 412 watched wide-eyed as it tightened around her finger until it fit snugly. It was gold—not just glowing a warm yellow, but made of gold. It was a dragon, curled with its tail in its mouth, little taloned feet seeming to clutch at Boy 412’s finger. The tiny emerald eyes glinted at her.

    She had to hide it. The adults would be interested and take it away from her if they saw her wearing this beautiful thing that she’d found, without any of their interference. Boy 412 took it off, and its glow immediately doused, making her panic and shove it back on her finger. The ring lit up again, gemstone eyes sparkling, and Boy 412’s heart calmed down again.

    She would hide it, after she got out of this dark place. Boy 412 used the light to take a proper look around.

    She was far below the surface of Draggen Island, no doubt about that, in a smooth-walled tunnel that curved out of sight just in front of her. There was sand all over the floor, and Boy 412 wondered now that she could see it; it wasn’t like the dirt on the island, or in the marsh, so where had it come from?

    First things first. She stepped forward, hand raised to use as much light as the ring could give, and went down the tunnel. She wasn’t getting out the other way.

    The tunnel curved and doubled back and sloped up and down, dotted with intersecting hallways, until Boy 412 was dizzy, certain it was trying to get her lost and disoriented deliberately—and succeeding. But in the ring’s twinkling light she found her way into a room, not a hallway, with colors gleaming on the walls in strokes of plaster that looked like touches from a paintbrush.

    Boy 412 lingered, fascinated. The picture on the wall was of a ship, drawn large enough to be nearly as long as Boy 412 was tall. It was gold and green, with a dragon’s head for a prow and a curling tail at the back. A dark man in all white was sailing it, dressed kind of like the ExtraOrdinary who was even now waiting in the cottage. There was a bit of silver set into the wall, flashing in the faint light, just like where the ExtraOrdinary had an amulet hung around his neck.

    On the opposite wall were smaller images, running in sequence along the top of one big picture. The dark man in all white was there again, with a figure in red with a crown. That was definitely meant to be a Queen. Everyone in the Young Army was trained on how to recognize a Queen if they saw one. There was metal in the wall here, too, gold for her crown.

    The painted Queen was in the second picture—no, that was a person in red without a crown, so a Princess like Lynne—in bed, with the Wizard in white leaning over her. Then in the next one there was some kind of purple-pinkish stuff coming out of the Wizard’s mouth and falling over the Princess as she sat up from the bed.

    The whole rest of the wall was taken up with a feast scene. Boy 412 recognized the Palace, and the Queen and Princess and Wizard all sitting together. She thought the rest was a sea of red at first, but realized it was hundreds of people, pressed so close together the painter had only done their heads overlapping like scales to show the crowd.

    Boy 412 went back to the boat painting and found the blue background there had people in it, too. The Queen and the Princess and everyone else had blended in with the paint, watching with smiles as the Wizard sailed off, wherever he was going. And there was the Wizard Tower, on the border opposite the Palace on the other side, but still being built, not like it was now when Boy 412 had to stand outside it in the cold.

    Boy 412 shivered, and hastily left the pictures behind to go find the way out.

    To her relief, on the other end of the room in between two other hallways out, there was a small alcove where a wooden ladder was propped up, leading to a trapdoor in the roof. But On The Brink, Stop And Think was what the Young Army had drilled into her, so she climbed slowly despite going wobbly with relief that she was not actually trapped down here forever. She put her ear to the trapdoor and listened first.

    There were murmurings of voices, not loud enough to be too close. Boy 412 risked raising the trapdoor a little to peek out (it wasn’t locked!) and saw a wooden floor, and a closed door mere inches in front of her.

    The voices became clearer now.

    “What’s that goin’ to help with?” the ExtraOrdinary Wizard was saying crossly. The Wizard! How was he here? He was supposed to be in—

    The cottage! With a start Boy 412 realized exactly where she was: inside the Unstable Potions and Partikular Poisons cupboard, in the Witch’s kitchen. There was no light in the room, but there was some coming under the closed door, enough to catch on the curves of glass bottles lined up on shelves.

    The Witch said, from the other side of the door in the kitchen, “It may reveal some previously unknown element.”

    “Unknown element? It’s aaall unknown elements. You’ve been takin’ the lead on this, and you still haven’t got a clue what’s in the stuff.”

    “If that’s your opinion you may take yourself away and fiddle with your Magyk about it somewhere else!” the Witch huffed. Boy 412 heard a scoff, then a threatening clink like the Witch reaching for a bottle, and then a scuffle as the Wizard did hastily take himself away upstairs before she could follow through.

    Boy 412 agreed with his strategy; they’d all seen the Witch, blue eyes gleaming, target an errant Brownie with a wine bottle when it had managed to sneak in the other night before she set the evening CharmLock.

    Boy 412 was prepared to Stop And Think some more, but by sheer luck (was she lucky now?), the Witch’s footsteps stomped out of the kitchen, too, not even into the cupboard. Now was the Time to Act.

    She slid up onto the floor, letting the trapdoor ease shut behind her. Who knew if the cupboard door squeaked, so she only opened it a crack and squeezed out, then flattened herself against the wall to slide into the empty front room.

    When one of the adults came back through, they didn’t even blink at the sight of her sitting quietly in front of the fire under her quilt, her new ring safely hidden in the little pocket on the inside of her hat.

    Lynne crashed through the door of the cottage with Missile barking at her heels, crying, “Guys I lost the boy—”

    She stopped abruptly, and stared fairly accusingly at Boy 412, who was sitting on the hearth with a book and didn’t think the stare was at all called for. But stares like that usually weren’t, all the times they’d been directed at her in the Young Army, so this was pretty par for the course and in fact deeply reassuring compared to the Princess’s and the Wizards’ other, deeply weird behavior, like feeding Boy 412 and giving her warm clothes.

    “How did you get back here so fast?” Lynne demanded. She’d spent hours trying to figure out where the kid had gone when she realized he wasn’t still following her. “Did you use Magyk to find your way?”

    “Who’s using Magyk?” Cabanela asked, pulled downstairs (and away from the attic where he could hardly stand up without hunching) by the commotion.

    “The boy,” said Lynne, which made Boy 412’s eyes fly wide in alarm. She shook her head urgently, nearly making her yellow hat fly off, and had to yank it back down over her ears with both hands. “Or, I guess not. But how’d you make it through the fog so fast?”

    “What’s important is you’re both back here safely,” Alma said firmly. She had been waiting by the door for an hour or more, biting her nails the longer Lynne took. “Come sit by the fire, it’s freezing out there.” Missile had already anticipated this command and trotted over to lie right outside the fire screen, and burrow under Boy 412’s quilt if he could get away with it. Boy 412 sneaked a surreptitious touch to the ends of Missile’s fluff.

    “But how,” Lynne said.

    “Lynne, people are allowed to be lucky.”

    “Nice bit of luck,” Cabanela said, looking consideringly at Boy 412.

    Cabanela spent the whole evening out of Emma’s way, rifling through her stacks of Magykal books. He even commandeered her desk, and gave it a pair of arms to help organize the many papers drifting on its surface, which Emma would have shrieked over if she hadn’t been busy with a complicated Distillation that needed to be exactly right and then sit for a full twelve hours.

    He fell asleep on the desk, which Lynne thought was amusing and Boy 412, who then had to sleep in the same room with him again, found alarming. He woke only belatedly in time for breakfast, and came back in after everyone had eaten to sit on the floor with Lynne and Boy 412. The latter stiffened in renewed alarm.

    “You two oughta have some good Charms on you, just in case,” he said. “I found a looovely beginner Unseen in one of these old Charm books. Why don’t you give it a whirl?”

    Lynne looked at the small Charms he held out to them doubtfully. Boy 412 continued not moving a muscle, in case movement attracted attention, like a predator sighting prey. “I’m no good even with Charms,” Lynne said.

    “C’mon, baby, it’s always worth takin’ another shot. Anyone can do Magyk.” Cabanela kept to himself the old rhyme that sprung to mind: A Queen and a Wizard will never agree—where one says two, the other says three. There was no Queen in the history of the Castle who’d been particularly good at Magyk, and he wondered what kind of sign it was that Lynne was the same way.

    “I dunno,” Lynne said. “Jowd’s tried to teach me an UnSeen before.” She’d managed it eventually, but Jowd would have praised her even if she failed. Then again, that had been back when she was fourteen. Maybe things would be different now? Theoretically fourteen was a lucky, Magykal age, but it hadn’t given her any surprise Magykal talent for the three Charms Jowd had gifted her that birthday.

    “Which one?”

    “Umm…”

    Jowd pitched in, from where he was reading a book on the other side of the room, “Not Seen, Not Heard, Not A Whisper, Not A Word.” He had to be careful and focus on his book as he said it and not the spell, or he might have accidentally turned himself invisible.

    “Yeah! That was it.”

    “See, you’ve had practice already,” Cabanela said encouragingly. “Give this one a try.” He pressed a Charm each into each of the girls’ hands. Boy 412 was not sure how to leave the situation, and not sure what the ExtraOrdinary meant by ‘anyone can do Magyk’. Surely not anyone, right?

    Boy 412 had been rigorously drilled in the dangers of Magyk and the deep suspicion with which she should regard anyone who used it. But the fact that it existed meant that sometimes, sometimes, she’d stayed up very late and whispered into her pillow when she was sure no one else was awake and listening, trying to find the right combination of words that would take her right out of the thin, narrow cot and into a very comfortable bed, in a big warm house far away, where her parents lived, because maybe she did still have parents. Not everyone in the Young Army was an orphan who’d been there from birth. Sometimes the new recruits who came in cried for their parents like wimpy babies.

    And the Magyk had never, ever come for her then, so why would it work for her now?

    “Pop quiz,” Cabanela announced. “Lynne, riddle me thiiis: why do beginners always use Charms when experienced Wizards don’t use ‘em as often?”

    “’Cause it’s always best to start with a Charm,” Lynne said, as if it were obvious. Cabanela raised his eyebrows, and gave the slightest nod to Boy 412, who was looking at her in confusion. “Oh. I guess not everyone knows that. The Charm has the Charm Chant on it, and you need that while you’re still learning, but eventually you memorize it and get good enough that you don’t need the Charm anymore. Without the Charm it’s way harder, and you basically don’t know anything about what you should be doing to make the Magyk work.”

    “Beauuutiful explanation! Full points to you, baby.” Cabanela turned to Boy 412. “You feel like answerin’ a question?” Boy 412 stared at him silently. Unaware of the gears turning in her head, as she reconciled her previous failures with how Magyk apparently worked, Cabanela moved on. “Alriiight then. Take a look at this UnSeen we’ve got here.”

    It took looking through Cabanela’s Magnifying Lens to see the tiny silver words on the Charm, which looked and felt like a chip of onyx (Lynne was relieved it was not one of those Charms that was made out of food, which were very unpleasant after they spoiled). Boy 412 squinted at it only when Cabanela’s attention was no longer focused on her.

    Lynne read, slowly,

“Let me Fade into the Aire,

Let All against me not know Where,

Let Them that Seeke me pass me by,

Let Harme not reach me from their Eye.

    “Boy, this is old,” Lynne said, recognizing the spelling as old-fashioned even if she didn’t know specifically when it was from. She was also uncomfortably certain she knew why Cabanela was so insistent she try to learn it; her old UnSeen didn’t say anything about avoiding Harme.

    “Which means it’s good,” Cabanela said with a grin. “The older a Charm is, the better it’s held up through the years. Not all Charms are as reliable!”

    “But I didn’t vanish.”

    “Try picturin’ it,” Cabanela suggested. “You gotta feel yourself fadin’ into the Aire, et cetera.”

    Boy 412 had pictured a lot of things over the years. Becoming air seemed like a pretty easy ask in comparison. The Charm Chant was glints of silver slashed across the black onyx, and it seemed to take up her whole field of vision when she really focused on it.

    Could it really work if she did it right? The ExtraOrdinary was saying something else encouraging to the Princess as she tried, but Boy 412 let it wash over her without listening, focusing on the tiny words. Nobody would be able to see her. Nobody would be able to hurt her. She could just fade away.

    “Hey!” Lynne said. “Where’d the boy go?”

    Jowd looked up with a jolt and saw only two other people in the room. Cabanela twisted around, still kneeling on the floor, to look at where Boy 412 had been sitting.

    “I didn’t even hear him say anything,” Lynne said, a little impressed despite herself. Some Wizards could do spells silently, but Jowd had to recite all his aloud, at least that he’d done in front of her. Cabanela had, too, so far.

    Boy 412 felt strange. For a second she thought it was because of everyone looking at her. But this was a different kind of strange, one she didn’t recognize.

    Boy 412 got up. The others continued looking at the same spot where she’d been. The ExtraOrdinary tilted his head, like he’d heard a rustle, but he didn’t look up at her. With him kneeling, and her standing, she was a little bit taller than him.

    Now there was a heady buzzing in Boy 412’s chest. They couldn’t see her! And the spell had said—it said—

    They couldn’t hurt her. And…they hadn’t even tried to, this whole time, not even when she’d helped the Hunter find them.

    For the first time since she’d left the other girls behind in the Domestic Service Training Hall, where they’d put her before she snuck into the Young Army, Boy 412 felt guilty.

    “Good job, baby,” Cabanela said quietly, still looking at where she’d been. “Come on back now.”

    The door was right there. Maybe she could just…

    They would have seen her open the door, but she might have gotten away, and gone far enough to find some real trouble, if Boy 412 hadn’t tripped over Missile.

    “YIP!”

    Everyone’s heads whipped around to the sight of Boy 412 on the floor, slowly fading back into visibility as she nursed her ankle. Missile rushed to Lynne to be fussed over, whining more from surprise than actual hurt.

    “Classic first UnSeen,” Cabanela joked, while Jowd got up to help Boy 412 back to her feet. “I can’t teeell you how many Apprentices run off and start sneakin’ around as soon as they think they can get away with it.”

    Boy 412 shied away from Jowd, tried to stand on her own, and immediately collapsed again, mouth open in a soundless cry. Lynne saw that and frowned; Jowd hastily knelt to say,

    “No, don’t try to stand again,” as Boy 412 struggled to rise. “May I see your ankle? You might have twisted it.”

    Boy 412 had not twisted it, but it had still taken a wrench from the awkward angle of her fall, and she was sat firmly in front of the hearth again to lie down with it elevated, and a Frozen sachet of peas applied to numb the ache. She didn’t realize that the ExtraOrdinary hadn’t moved the whole time until he was still sitting there with her, looking at her, when Alma and Jowd had left and Lynne had taken Missile outside to do his business again.

    Cabanela asked, “Is that the first time you’ve used Magyk?”

    Boy 412 stared back at him. She didn’t know why he was asking.

    “Must’ve been,” Cabanela mused aloud. “The Young Army wouldn’t teach you. But you never picked any small Charms up from anywhere else…?” Tentatively, Boy 412 shook her head. “No? Suppose you’re haaardly the only one. No,” he said again, when Boy 412 pushed the Charm back at him. “It’s yours. You made it work; that’s aaall the qualification you need, baby.” He nudged it back into her hand. “You’re a real Wizard now.”

    Wizards were the Enemy. But Boy 412 had known she’d be shot as a collaborator with the Enemy since she woke up in the Wizard Tower. Maybe, if she was an actual Wizard, she could feel that strange warmth of Magyk around her again before they came for her.

Chapter Text

    “I think the boy can’t talk,” Lynne told Alma on their walk, while they waited for Missile to finish turning the snow yellow. “When he fell it looked like he yelled in pain, but he didn’t make any noise.”

    Alma frowned thoughtfully. “He did tell us his name—well, number—when we asked.”

    “Oh, yeah.” Lynne had already forgotten about that brief bit of actual sound from Boy 412; she couldn’t remember what his voice had sounded like at all.

    Emma might have been able to whip up a Ramble Restorer, if she wasn’t so busy with the problem of Alma and Jowd’s medicine. Alma decided not to interrupt her when they got back. She asked Cabanela instead, but Cabanela said,

    “There’s spells to take a person’s voice away…but no one’s cast thaaat kind of thing on the kid while I was payin’ attention. They wouldn’t have sent anyone after us with Magyk, anyhow.”

    “But to try to yell and make no noise…”

    “Maybe he’s out of practice,” Cabanela suggested. “If you think it’ll help, I’ll give it a li’l look-see.”

    “Thanks, Cab.”

    “For you, Alma, my pleasure.”

    Cabanela roped Boy 412 into accompanying him on his daily walk. He crossed the Marshes each day, trying to get to a spot where the Chief’s ghost could find him. So far, the Chief hadn’t reappeared to give them any new information.

    Boy 412 walked as quietly as possible. When she’d tried to fall in behind him, as was proper for an Expendable and the expedition leader, the ExtraOrdinary had pulled her to walk beside him instead, which was weird, and muddied the chain of command. But he didn’t try to command her. If Boy 412 didn’t know better, she’d say he was as nervous as she was.

    “You’ve still got that Charm I gave you?” he asked, then distractedly said “Good, goood,” when she showed it to him. When they reached the spot where Boy 412 had tasted hot chocolate for the first time, he stared fixedly through the mist at where the Castle lay in the distance.

    When Cabanela finally looked down, Boy 412 was gone.

    He paused, and called, “Did you leave, or are you practicin’ your UnSeen?” Slowly, Boy 412 faded back into view. She’d only been testing to see if he was paying attention. “Keepin’ me guessin’, I see. Now stay Seen, if you will, baby. I’ve got another Charm here that I want you to take a liii’l look at.”

    Boy 412 peered at the Charms he held out to her. No—it was only one, in two pieces, two little platinum wings formed with such tiny fletched feathers that she could hardly squint enough to make out all the details.

    “Here, get all your lookin’ in.” Cabanela tilted his hand, letting the silver Charm fall into Boy 412’s palm. She felt suddenly conscious of how grubby she was compared to him. Emma had been trying to convince her to use the hot springs in the bathhouse behind the cottage like everyone else, but she refused to take off her clothes, especially her hat.

    But the Charm was more interesting than thinking about a bath. By bending her head close she could see where the details of the feathers formed tiny letters, as if a breeze were stirring them to lift and reveal secrets hidden underneath each row of pinfeather and down.

    It said, two words to each wing, Fly Free / With Me.

    Free! Boy 412 thought she’d imagined freedom before. But flying! It had never occurred to her that people could fly. Up in the air, with so many directions to go in, anywhere she wanted…she felt tingly all over, again…

    “Yes!” Cabanela whooped. “I knew it!” Boy 412 looked up and realized she was floating, her feet above his head, the Marshes sprawling out in white-frosted green around them.

    A sick feeling swooped in her stomach, and gravity plunged her back down. Cabanela leaped forward to catch her. His arms wrapped around her, and he spun, Boy 412’s momentum carrying them both nearly into a messy fall before Cabanela managed to turn it into putting her down.

    “Phew! Is Emma feedin’ you bricks when we’re not payin’ attention?” Cabanela shook out his arms for dramatic emphasis. He was grinning hard enough to hurt his cheeks. Boy 412 could still feel the ghost of his warm grip around her. “Look at you! Your first try!” Cabanela took a knee, crouching to Boy 412’s level to grin at her properly. “You’re increeedible.”

    Boy 412’s face went very hot and red.

    “That’s a feat of Magyk most adult Wizards can’t pull off,” Cabanela rambled on. “Of cooourse, it’s not a perfect Flyte Charm—The Lost Art Of Flyte was, weeell, Lost thousands of years ago. But you—I—someone with the Charm can get a pretty steady hover goin’ if they can master the Charm Chant. And you did! Without sayin’ a word, the first time you laid hands on it! You’ve got a gift, baby.”

    Cabanela realized he was leaning forward, and sat back on his heels, spotting Boy 412 give a tiny breath of relief. “Sooorry, baby, I didn’t mean to get all in your space from excitement.” He pretended to think over his next words, while Boy 412 recovered and shuffled back a few steps. “I’d like to ask you a seeerious question.”

    Boy 412 waited, tense, then realized he was waiting for permission to ask. She nodded.

    “Would you be my Apprentice?” Seeing the way she stared, Cabanela added, “I don’t have one already, if thaaat’s what you’re wonderin’. I get to pick who I want to teach.”

    Boy 412 mouthed words soundlessly; Cabanela tried to read her lips, but it was all stops and starts, no full thought. “How?” he guessed, saw no agreement, and tried, “Why?” Boy 412 nodded quickly. “I said so already, baby. You’ve got a giiift! What good’ll that do anyone, lyin’ fallow without any opportunity to grow it further?”

    Seeing Boy 412 looked unconvinced, Cabanela sighed. He wished the kid had told them his real name, so he could use it, and make sure Boy 412 knew he was serious. “Listen. When you used those Charms, what did it feeel like?” He didn’t expect a verbal answer, but he waited anyway, letting the kid think about it.

    Boy 412 was thinking. She was thinking about her newly-discovered, incredible Magykal talent…and about the mysterious Magykal ring still hidden in her hat. She had never cast a spell before, but it had, creating light and warmth. She hadn’t even used it to do that; it had done it on its own, without her even trying.

    And the thrill of Magyk through her had felt incredible, but…

    “I don’t want any old somebody for an Apprentice,” Cabanela said, judging she’d had enough time to think. “I want someone who geeets it. The thrill of bein’ up there, doin’ somethin’ nobody’s known how to do since the Wizard Tower was built. There’s no point in takin’ up Magyk from the ExtraOrdinary Wizard unless you’ve got a real chance of livin’ up to the name!”

    And Cabanela did not need any old somebody of an Apprentice. He needed someone who could get the hang of new Charms like that—needed somebody who could stand their ground, who had the will, even untrained, to keep clear of the Darkenesse that was pervading the Castle more and more the longer the Supreme Custodian was in residence.

    Boy 412 hesitated, and shook her head.

    Blindsided, it took Cabanela several moments to say, “No?” Boy 412 shook her head again. “You mean, no, the answer’s yes, or—?” She shook it harder. “All right. I understand ya.” But he didn’t, at all.

    Boy 412 could see that he was disappointed. It was a wrench, but she uncurled her fingers from around the beautiful platinum wings, and held them out to him.

    “…No.” Cabanela folded her hand closed around the Charm, and stood. “The Chief gave those to me when he offered me my Apprenticeship. I caaan’t force you to accept, but I won’t take back my offer. Keep it, and think it over for me.”

    Nothing was going to change if she thought about it. But Boy 412 gladly put the Charm in her hat pocket once the Wizard wasn’t looking, where she could feel the wings occasionally flutter against her skin.

    Jowd woke, and checked the medicine in its box, and did not start boiling water for him and Alma.

    “We can’t keep going like this,” he said when Alma and Emma and Cabanela were in the kitchen with him. There were three capsules left in the box. “Someone’s got to go back to the Castle and pick up our next set.”

    “You mean you’re plannin’ on goin’ back,” Cabanela accused at once. “Just because we haven’t figured it out yeeet—”

    “You’ve been working hard,” Jowd soothed him. It was transparently meant to be soothing, and thus did not succeed at all in being so. “You’ve been working for days on end. And if you haven’t made any progress…” Jowd looked to Emma.

    She pursed her lips. “No,” she said reluctantly, and then sighed with her whole body. “No, I don’t have a clue what it’s made of, much less how to replicate it. I might be able to give you a stopgap…but nothing exactly alike.”

    Alma quietly took Jowd’s hand, and held it so tightly that he felt his bones grind together.

    “The Big Freeze isn’t getting any further away,” Jowd said. “If we wait any longer, we won’t be able to leave even if we want to.”

    “We,” Cabanela echoed, still accusing.

    “Me,” Jowd said.

    “You can’t,” Alma said. “You cannot go back there. They’re looking for us.”

    But Jowd, who remembered lying in bed with Alma and watching her grow sallow when they should have had a baby, said, “I have to.” He couldn’t watch it happen again.

    “I’ll go with you.”

    “No. No. Lynne needs you here.” Jowd needed Alma there, safe behind Emma’s and Cabanela’s protection.

    Alma swallowed her fear. She did want to stay here, stay watching out the window for any sign of someone coming after Lynne. She wasn’t going to lose another daughter—but she didn’t want to lose her husband, either.

    “I do know Magyk,” Jowd reassured her. “I’ll be safe.”

    “By that logic I should be goin’,” Cabanela bit out.

    “You’re not taking that amulet within the reach of a man who’s already claiming to be the ExtraOrdinary Wizard,” Jowd retorted.

    “I can—!”

    “It’s not about whether you can win a fight, Cabanela. It’s a stupid risk to even think about taking when this Sith person will be after you more doggedly than he’d ever worry down me.”

    “Says the father of the Princess,” Cabanela said, with the bitterness of someone who was perfectly aware he was losing an argument through sheer force of facts. Jowd smiled wryly; he had never presumed to be so important to Lynne as to be her father.

    “At least take what’s left with you,” Alma said, reaching for the box.

    Jowd forestalled her, closing its lid. “If I leave, and get our refill, I’ll be fine, and you’ll have more to yourself here.” He’d have over three months’ worth all to himself while Alma slowly faded, if he didn’t return quickly enough. “It’s barely a day’s sail from here to the Castle. I’ll be back before the Big Freeze.” If nothing went wrong.

    Lynne kept up a nervous stream of ship talk, defining terms and giving advice on how to sail through the shallower Marshes versus the deep-running River, as Jowd worked on the Ladybug. There was no point in being foolishly optimistic; he was using Magyk to alter the paintwork, and the color of her sails and hull, to keep her from being recognized as Memry’s boat.

    “What should we call it?” he asked Lynne.

    “Her,” Lynne said.

    “Call her. She can’t still be the Ladybug, after all this effort to disguise her. It ought to be something optimistic,” Jowd said, which was why he was asking Lynne for a name.

    “The KeepSafe,” Lynne said, then, “no!—no, don’t put that on there. A Magykal name like that will just get you caught faster.” She chewed on her thumbnail.

    Boy 412, sitting on the stoop of the cottage to watch, thought it would be really cool to name a boat the Unbeatable Raging Shipsinker of Doom, or something like that, and add a ramming prow to the front so it could sail really fast at other boats and knock holes in them under the waterline. But she didn’t say anything.

    Lynne ran out of thumbnail to chew. “The Missile II,” she said. Missile was their guard dog; if Jowd wouldn’t take Missile with him, then he could at least take some of Missile’s energy, and maybe it would help.

    “Sounds perfect.”

    Jowd promised to have the Chief send messages for him, if anything went awry. But he could sail back to the Castle, fetch their resupply from their room where it was always left, find a place to hide for the night, and be back by the end of the next day. He was planning on it; and so, watching him sail away in the Missile II, was everyone else.

    Emma went inside first; then there was a piercing shriek, and she came storming out to seize Cabanela by the front of his robes. “What in the world have you done to my desk??”

    Emma did not win the battle of the be-armed desk (“It’s for a liii’l somethin’ called organization, baby, if you haven’t heard of it,”) but she did win in the end (“If you’re so invested in my papers, you can read them! Properly, with notes, and tell me what you think of the character development!”). Cabanela sat by the fire late into the night and only surfaced for dinner the next day, blinking, clearly bewildered by how much time he’d willingly spent reading the rough draft of a fictional drama in Emma’s sometimes-unreadable handwriting.

    Cabanela said, “Where’s Jowd?”

    Jowd had sailed north without issue, head full of Lynne’s knowledgeable advice. When he came to the Moat, he’d seen the stately view of the Palace blocked by the looming bulk of a three-masted ship with the name Yonoa glaring down from her bow.

    Jowd hauled the Missile II ashore behind Raven’s Rock, and took the long way around to the North Gate. He hadn’t intended to go to the boatyard for a mooring in the first place; but he didn’t want to get any closer to that ship and its creeping Darkenesse than he absolutely had to.

    Rindge was at the drawbridge as usual, but he barely glanced at Jowd. Jowd had shifted his clothes to a plain blue with Magyk, close enough to the blue of Castle civic employees these days that it wouldn’t be remarked upon. He didn’t have the red slashes at the neckline or over the chest, but knowing what master they belonged to, he didn’t particularly want to. He had his hood drawn low over his face to keep a Disguise in place, rendering his face difficult to see or recall.

    He hadn’t realized how frayed and faded his clothes were until he looked at them anew, with the worn-pale knees and elbows more visible in light blue than they had been in familiar green.

    At least he had a coin for the toll.

    Without looking up at him, Rindge grabbed his hand when Jowd offered his fare, catching him in a tight grip. “Your eyes are still green,” he muttered.

    Jowd’s breath caught—then released. Rindge would have said something if he recognized Jowd, and he hadn’t. He’d noticed the Disguise with the keen eyes he kept hidden behind his hat brim, without being able to see through it, and offered a warning. “Not much to be done about that,” Jowd murmured back.

    Rindge nodded, and let his hand go, taking away the half-penny toll. Jowd ducked his head and hurried deeper into the Castle.

    Hours later, Rindge startled and twisted around to look in the direction Jowd had gone. He’d finally realized who that was—who else had green eyes that Rindge felt he recognized?—but if that was Jowd…where were the others?

    Rindge swallowed, and turned back to watch the drawbridge, and tried not to think of how little news had come of any of them—including Memry, who hadn’t been seen since the restaurant fire. The Supreme Custodian had made an official announcement that he and his government would be rewarding news of the “beloved Castle local’s” safety, so it was a small comfort to know that she wasn’t in one of his dungeons, at least.

    Unless the Supreme Custodian was bluffing.

    Jowd didn’t know he’d been recognized. It was easier to avoid the same risk in the Ramblings, where a decade of steadily increasing tyranny had inculcated most people against trying to meet each other’s eyes. His steady progress through the corridors faltered outside their home, where the reliable once-green door was standing wide open, and a cart was waiting in the hall.

    The cart was half full of their furniture.

    A stocky man ducked out of the door, carrying one of their chairs, in the blue Castle uniform with red slashes. “You’re not Bailey,” he said, setting the chair down with a thump. “What are you doing here?”

    “This is where I was told to be,” Jowd said. That was true, in a roundabout manner of speaking.

    “I’m not paid enough for this,” the man grumbled. His uniform cap was drawn low over his face, but not too low that he couldn’t give Jowd a suspicious side-eye. “And nobody said anything about all the illegal books in the ceiling. I’m not touching that Magyk stuff. Gives me hives. They really changed their minds about this being a one-man job just to send you over?” Sending someone who wasn’t Bailey was clearly the height of unfairness, or a complete overhaul of the status quo.

    “—Yes,” Jowd said. “That is, they do still think it’s a one-man job. I’m supposed to substitute for you. Bailey’s down by the shops in the South End.”

    “Bailey is?”

    Jowd shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you don’t believe me. I’ll take the South End shops myself.”

    “Wait a minute,” the man said hastily as Jowd made to turn and leave. Jowd didn’t smile visibly; but he could tell his gambit had landed. The shops in the South End had been boarded up for years, after the previous tenants were conveniently (for the Supreme Custodian) disappeared. They occupied an enviable spot in the overcrowded Ramblings real estate, and the blue-uniformed staff who cleaned out “vacated” rooms got first claim to anything they wanted from the “missing” people’s leavings—including the rooms themselves.

    “Wait,” the man repeated. “Is Bailey in trouble?”

    Jowd paused. Then he said, “I wasn’t paying attention.” It paid not to pay attention to any trouble someone else was getting into, these days. And to stay inside with the door closed while the neighbors who’d suddenly fled got their rooms and all their earthly possessions confiscated by the Supreme Custodian.

    The stocky man sighed. “What’s he up to now…?” He shoved the chair into the cart. “You take over here. I’m going to go see what this stuff with the shops is about.”

    “Yes, sir.” Jowd had no idea if the shops were actually being reopened or not. Hopefully, he could move fast enough that it wouldn’t be his problem when this man found out that Bailey was not actually waiting for him there.

    The stocky man brushed past him, then turned suddenly and grabbed him by the arm. Jowd bit back the protective spell that jumped to his lips.

    “Don’t break any of the furniture,” the man said, quietly but with unexpected passion. “I don’t care if it’s all going to the Asylum, or about who used to live here. The stuff didn’t do anything to you, and it’s going to people who could use something nice. The job is what it is, but it’s worth doing well.”

    Jowd did not turn to meet the eyes of the man who could find a justification for methodically cleaning out Jowd’s family’s home. In the cart behind him, Jowd could see things already piled under the chairs; Missile’s basket, the emptied-out contents of the chest Alma kept under their bed, a pile of plates and silverware, a handful of figurines from Lynne’s woodworking phase that had been thrown in along with everything else.

    “All right,” said the stocky man, “whatever. Not my business if you don’t feel like it.” He let Jowd go and stomped off.

    Jowd waited until he was out of sight, then dragged the cart inside and shut the door.

    It wasn’t a surprise to him that anything the “cleaning” staff didn’t take for themselves was destined for the Asylum for Distressed Persons. Jowd would continue to not be surprised if people ended up getting their own things back that way. The Asylum held a number of people who were indeed Distressed, usually on account of being political prisoners rather than actual patients who needed treatment. There was only so much room in the dungeons under the Palace; most of those had been sealed up, years ago, by a string of peaceable Queens.

    Jowd hadn’t known how lucky he was to grow up then. He found himself sitting down heavily on the remaining chair.

    “That was neatly managed,” said the Chief, and when Jowd knocked his chair clean across the room leaping to his feet, said, “My apologies,” and Appeared with an embarrassed expression. “I forgot I was hiding from that awful man. I heard they were planning on clearing out your home today, and I was trying to make it harder on him.”

    “I…appreciate it.”

    “But what are you doing here?” the Chief asked, worried.

     “Alma…and I,” Jowd acknowledged, “are almost out of our dosage. That old pigeon man comes here with our refills, usually…you haven’t seen a black wooden box anywhere, have you?” It would be just his luck if it was broken and the capsules scattered in the dust.

    “No,” the Chief said, “I didn’t see anything like your medicine box. There was a note on the table when I got here, though, that wasn’t here when you all left.”

    A note? Jowd had to get up and look for it, but he found it in a corner, knocked around by the brusque activity of the cleaning staff. It was written in the same spindly script as Alma’s—and his—neat list of potential side effects and overdose symptoms.

    Jowd—Too much going on with all this nonsense from the S.C. about a Princess for me to come by. Giving it time to die down. Take half doses for now. If it’s safe and Y. Army guards aren’t everywhere then will be at Moat slipway Freyja’s Day on Outside Path to meet you. —Gomez

    Jowd put the note down on the table.

    “He doesn’t know we’re gone,” Jowd said, then sighed. “Of course he doesn’t.”

    “Who is this Gomez?” the Chief asked. He’d been reading over Jowd’s shoulder. “And where exactly is he, if he doesn’t want to risk coming into the Castle to deal with the Supreme Custodian’s men?”

    “He’s a relative of Memry’s. She’s called him her grandfather a few times, at least. I have no idea where he lives in the Castle.” Jowd shrugged. “He turns up reliably every three months with a refill…”

    “And you’ve never been on the run before.” The Chief shook his head. “Will you be all right?”

    “Oh, I can make it a week.” And Alma would be perfectly fine; she had at least six days’ worth, if Emma didn’t make the decision to take her down to one-fourth doses. “Could you tell Alma about this? I meant to go back tomorrow.”

    “Of course,” the Chief said. He frowned down at the note. “I wonder at this ‘Gomez’ coming by to leave you a note, but not your medicine.”

    “Maybe he didn’t,” Jowd thought aloud. “Memry has Cabanela’s KeepSafe—”

    “She what?

    “—so maybe she brought it for him. But no, Memry knew we left, she would have told him that. He must have sent a Message Rat with a physical note.” Which was very old-fashioned, but cheaper than paying for a Message Rat’s “sit and wait” rates. “I ought to find Memry,” Jowd decided. “At the very least, if I can’t get our medicine, I can bring back the KeepSafe for Cabanela.”

    “I’ll help you look,” the Chief said, looking worried. “For now, come with me. I know a safe place to stay.”

    “What about—” our home, Jowd almost said. He looked at the cart and couldn’t call it worth their lives to try and bring it all with him. But Lynne’s childhood art…Alma’s treasured keepsakes…

    The Chief saw him looking. “Why not put everything up in Lynne’s room?” he suggested. “You could patch the ceiling shut again; it’s not as if anyone is expecting there to be a loft here.”

    “That’s…manageable.” More than manageable, it was a good idea. Jowd hadn’t even begun to think of that. He climbed up the ladder to pile Alma’s mother’s quilt and their spare clothes and a hundred other little things on Lynne’s mattress, used Magyk to squeeze the table and chairs in, and even stripped the curtains from his and Alma’s box bed. He was panting and hot by the time he finished, and the room looked barer than when they’d moved in. The lack of a hole in the ceiling made it look so much smaller.

    “Now please follow me, before you get caught,” said the Chief.

    Jowd was reported before the end of the day, for forging the appearance of a Castle employee and illegally confiscating confiscated goods, including Magykal contraband. But it took the report time to work its way up the ranks to someone able to put together who, exactly, this Disguised fellow was.

    Commander Sith was reading the report, which had been brought to him aboard the Yonoa, when the Supreme Custodian entered his cabin. “Master, you wished to see when our preparations for your Apprentice were complete.”

    “Ah! Perfect timing, my good man.” Sith laid the written report down on his desk. He was in the mood to be pleased. He was also not much taller than the Apprentice, which was only made clearer when the Supreme Custodian shoved her brusquely forward and closer to the Commander.

    Short, bald, and a little overshadowed by his own solid oak desk; this was not a recipe for “imposing”. But Commander Sith was imposing, and every sailor aboard shivered at the sight of him. He managed to look out from beneath hawkish eyebrows in an alarming way, as though examining whoever was closest as a hawk would examine its potential dinner. His robes looked deep navy blue, until the Supreme Custodian stood near him, and then in comparison he was dressed in pitch black, so rich was the dark dye. It made the red sashes of his order blaze across his thin chest.

    In comparison, the Apprentice was gaudy as a firework, light and harmless compared to the Darke power wafting off her Master. He had not bothered teaching her much more Magyk than was needed to turn her eyes a deep green. Her robes were the traditional lapis blue, but that was where the similarities between her and a typical apprentice ended. Her robes frothed with lace, embroidered embellishments worked into the brocade fabric like streaks of gold in lapis lazuli stone, all under her golden Apprentice’s belt. The overall effect, with the final touch of the bow in her hair, was of a doll too fancy to take down off the shelf.

    “I hate it,” the Apprentice said.

    Sith ignored her, casting a look of approval over her before turning his attention back to the Supreme Custodian. “And now that this is done, what of the rest, my man? It’s no use getting one piece ready when the others aren’t in place.”

    “Shall I begin with the closest to completion, sir, or in order of urgency?”

    “I said I HATE it,” the Apprentice said. “The lace is itchy and it’s heavy, and there are too many layers, and it’s hard to take off and I’m hot. I don’t want to wear it. I don’t want to!”

    “Would someone make her be quiet?”

    The Supreme Custodian put his hands around the Apprentice’s head and physically held her mouth shut. The Apprentice started shrieking, muffled only a little by her clamped-shut jaw.

    “Take her out of here,” Sith said dismissively. He snapped his fingers, and the door flew open to Remove the Apprentice out to the deck, where a startled sailor jumped and quickly took hold of her. Commander Sith slammed the door shut again with a soundless gesture. “That’s better. Great Scott, the teakettle sort of noises she makes. One wonders why anyone can stand having children.”

    “Sentiment, sir,” said the Supreme Custodian in the tones of one who had never much understood the emotion himself.

    “Still, I would prefer to be having this meeting in the Wizard Tower, where an ExtraOrdinary with an apprentice belongs,” Sith said, “and not in this same old ship. That is, I’ve made it plenty comfortable over the years, but damn and blast, man, why can’t I be comfortable in the Castle? I was able to get here without the confounded Queen or Queenling keeping me out; that should be enough!”

    “It’s my fault entirely, sir,” said the Supreme Custodian. His face didn’t move into any expression at all. “I hold myself responsible.”

    “As you should! To think this situation could have been well in hand ten years ago…” Sith briefly subsided into inaudible grumbles. “And to top it all off, I can hardly get to the Throne Room for a proper look. How close are you to fixing this?”

    “The Queenling is still at large in the Marshes, sir,” the Supreme Custodian reported, “but we are working on narrowing down her position.”

    “Are we? To where?”

    “There is a Witch who is known to live in the Marshes, sir.”

    Commander Sith’s gaze wandered to the windows of the captain’s cabin. On one side they looked southward down the river, towards the Port—and the Marshes in between the Castle and there. “And she’s sheltering the Queenling?”

    “The Queenling and the other traitors were known to visit the Marshes at least once a year, sir. We suspect that is related to the Witch’s presence, sir.”

    “Once a year—? Great Scott, and we never had them followed?” Sith swiveled back around to lay an astonished look on the Supreme Custodian.

    The Supreme Custodian did not visibly react. “There was no suspicion on them at the time, sir.”

    “That’s all well and good to say, my man, but you knew exactly who that couple was before the Queenling came into the picture,” Commander Sith huffed. “And where have they gone? It’s difficult to see why I keep my Apprentice around when I don’t even know where her parents are.”

    “We believe the mother is still with the Queenling, sir.”

    “Hm. Indeed. What about the father?”

    “Not to worry, sir,” said the Supreme Custodian, and looked down from within his mask at the report on the Commander’s desk. “The father is already within our grasp.”

Chapter Text

    The order was delivered to the Justice Minister before the end of the next day. He read it over silently, not looking up at the tall, impassive lady who had delivered it. He normally saw her with the Hunter, and the Hunter’s absence made him nervously wonder where the man might be hiding nearby.

    He said, still not daring to look up, “This is an indictment for grand treason.”

    “That’s correct,” Beauty said.

    “There’s no charge listed.” Where the crime committed would normally be written, there was simply a gap, as if the scribe had wanted to space out the existing text. There was no such gap where the name of the man charged went; the Justice Minister had seen the name, and recognized it. His wife Emma knew the so-called culprit.

    Treason was traditionally punished with an execution. Nobody had been charged with treason in the Castle for decades.

    “He’s defied the Supreme Custodian,” Beauty said. “Does there need to be a charge?”

    The Justice Minister had held his post since the Queen, ascending to the throne at such a young age, had appointed him to advise her. He had stayed Justice Minister under the Supreme Custodian only because the regime had given him no other choice. The following decade had been filled with at least the appearance of law and order, prisoners filed through mildly rigged court proceedings and judges too afraid to give a verdict the Supreme Custodian disliked. But this had not even the appearance of justice.

    The Justice Minister swallowed and said, “Yes.”

    Beauty slid the vellum out from under his hands, and turned it around. She reached over him to take his pen, dip it into his inkwell, and scribble a few words in the empty space.

    “There,” she said, not bothering to blot it to keep it from smudging, laying the pen aside in the wrong place and pushing the order back at him.

    “I…I can’t read your handwriting.”

    “Do you need to?” Beauty checked her nails for ink smudges.

    Yes, by the gods in heaven, he needed to. He needed to know that this man wasn’t another victim of the Supreme Custodian’s whims like so many others. Like the man who’d died on the Wizard Tower’s steps. Like the children taken away from their parents into the Young Army, rarely to be seen again.

    The Justice Minister’s gaze moved against his will to the young cadet standing guard at the door, who was shivering in the draft that ancient Palace insulation did little to prevent. Where was Amelie? Was she somewhere warm? Was she somewhere in the Palace, waiting to be seized and…worse…if he refused the Supreme Custodian’s order?

    Beauty had been the one who came to him, after Amelie was gone, and told him how it was going to be.

    His hand shook on the pen as he signed.

    Beauty took the order away signed, and thought to herself that the Supreme Custodian was lucky she’d been around to keep the news about the kidnapped Young Army cadet quiet; otherwise the Justice Minister might have found out they had no way of actually using their leverage against him.

    The Chief was ignorant of the order charging Jowd with treason, and had consequently not been able to tell Cabanela about it. Instead he had spent a long time berating Cabanela for giving up his KeepSafe, once he’d passed on Jowd’s news.

    Cabanela heard barely any of the lecture, busy doing the math on how long it would take Jowd to come home, and whether the risk of his being discovered the longer he stayed was increasing exponentially or at standard. He paced the length of the cottage back and forth when he came back, explaining his math out loud and getting more frazzled the longer he went on, and it was Alma’s turn to ignore most of what he said to focus on her husband being nearly a week late.

    A week. They could make it a week. He could still get out of the Castle and back to their safe haven before the Big Freeze.

    Jowd was holed up (ha ha!) with no one to share the joke with. The Chief had taken him to a place called the Hole In The Wall Tavern, which lived up to its name so thoroughly that the only patrons who knew about it and its crumbling brick hole of an entrance were ghosts.

    Jowd couldn’t see most of the patrons present, which made it awkward; a ghost who didn’t want to be seen was hard to avoid Passing Through on accident, and that would be the height of rudeness. Jowd had let the Chief lead him to a seat at a table, and stayed there.

    So it was a surprise, to say the least, when Rindge turned up.

    “The Chief showed me how to get here,” Rindge said, between chattering teeth. He was half-frozen; Jowd stoked the neglected fire in the old tavern’s fireplace, and pressed Rindge close to it.

    “What happened?” Jowd asked.

    “I got fired.”

    “What?! Why?”

    “I tried to send Memry a Message Rat,” Rindge said, sniffling as he warmed up. “Don’t use the Message Rats, by the way, their office is compromised. Some big rough-looking rat, I’ve never seen that kind living in the Castle before, turned me away when I didn’t know what destination to put down, and then the Supreme Custodian’s men turned up when I was closing the bridge last night. I managed to lose the ones following me when I pretended to go out to a tavern, but if the Chief hadn’t found me first, they probably would’ve arrested me.”

    “Thanks for the warning,” Jowd said, relieved he’d already been relying on the Chief to update Cabanela and the others.

    “That was you who came in the other day, right?” Rindge might have glanced over Jowd’s clothes, which were still blue. It was hard to tell with his hat covering his eyes. “Is everyone all right? Nobody seems to know what’s going on, and half the Castle is saying Memry died in the fire—”

    “What? What fire?”

    “The Chicken Kitchen burned down.”

    Speechless, Jowd could only shake his head. “Cabanela gave her his KeepSafe,” he said when he recovered his voice, and Rindge went limp in relief. “I don’t know where Memry is, though. The Chief and I have been looking for her, too, without much luck.”

    “Me too,” Rindge muttered disconsolately. “And—what about the ExtraOrdinary?”

    “I hear there’s a new one,” Jowd said darkly. “No, Cabanela’s fine. We’re all fine. He’s still very much the real ExtraOrdinary Wizard, whatever anyone says. Not that it matters, when someone new has moved into the Wizard Tower.”

    “He hasn’t,” Rindge said. Jowd looked up in surprise. “The new guy tried, I think, but as far as anyone knows he’s living out on his ship.”

    “The Yonoa?” Jowd had seen it himself…but he had to be certain.

    “Yeah,” Rindge said, remembering the same conversation on the drawbridge, ten years ago. “From what I heard he’s running the Castle out of his cabin onboard. Not sure why.”

    “Hm.” Jowd couldn’t begin to guess. “Well, whether he’s on a ship or in the Palace, we’ll have to avoid him; but I’ll help you look for Memry. I’m supposed to meet a—friend—at the end of the week, so I’ll be in the Castle until then.”

    “What are you talking about, ‘until then’?”

    “…What do you mean?”

    “Neither of us is going anywhere,” Rindge said. “The Freeze is coming in.”

    The Big Freeze swept in overnight, covering any last trace of winter-browned grass with a thick carpet of white. It started snowing heavily before anyone woke, in Keeper’s Cottage, and kept going until well after everyone was in bed. By the time Emma could dig a tunnel out of the cottage to test the waters of the Marsh, they were frozen solid too far down to get a clear look at anything underneath.

    Every year the Freeze set in just before MidWinter, locking the Castle inhabitants in their homes with the food they’d squirreled away for the long weeks indoors. No boats could sail through the thick ice on the river, and only the toughest mules could force their way through the snow on the roads. It was too cold to even think of going outdoors without layers upon layers between skin and air.

    And there was no chance at all of travel between the Castle and the Marram Marshes until the Big Thaw came.

    The Chief spent a lot of time flying between Jowd and the Marshes, carrying messages. It didn’t take much time away from his usual spying on the Supreme Custodian; most of the business that had been in the Palace was now being carried out aboard the Yonoa, and he couldn’t follow the living to eavesdrop aboard a ship he’d never touched in life.

    The Chief worried about what he might be missing, in between telling Alma that Jowd sent his love and was she all right, and telling Jowd that Alma was fine and wanted to know if he’d made contact with Gomez.

    Jowd had missed his meeting with Gomez. The Big Freeze had left a huge drift of snow over the hole of the Hole In The Wall Tavern, and Jowd had not been able to batter a way through before a second snowfall was heaped over it and froze the earlier layer solid. Magyk could only do so much against the power of the Big Freeze itself; and Jowd, without the medicine that kept his depression at bay, laughed humorlessly and said it was only fair for the universe to reinforce his uselessness.

    Rindge, who had been warned by the Chief about Jowd’s withdrawal, tried to help. But there was only so much he could do, besides make friends with the ghosts in the Tavern and remind Jowd to Summon some food.

    Emma sent Lynne outside to teach Boy 412 how to ice skate.

    Lynne was stressed about Alma, but Emma and Alma were in agreement that Lynne was not allowed to hover each morning and see what fraction of a dose Alma was taking, trying to make the medicine last. So they gave her babysitting duty, while Missile stayed inside and acted as a lap warmer.

    Boy 412 had assumed the ice skates hanging on the wall were some kind of obscure torture device, because of the sharp blades. Even once Lynne showed her how to put them on, and Emma had obtained an old pair of her own to shrink for Boy 412 to try on (well-padded with extra socks), Boy 412 was still not entirely sure that this wasn’t a Don’t Break Your Ankles Or Else type of Do-Or-Die Exercise.

    It was…fun. Maybe. Boy 412 would never admit it. The best part was sweeping the snow off the ice to skate, and finding the huge Marsh Python trapped under the ice, staring up at them hungrily but frozen in place. She got cold enough some days to be really tempted by the hot springs baths…but not enough to actually go in with the others. The skating warmed her up.

    Emma must have noticed, because she made some loud noises one evening about the hot springs being completely empty while everyone else was definitely busy inside. Boy 412, embarrassed, snuck out to the back anyway and spent three hours getting pruny from not leaving the scaldingly hot water—but she still didn’t take her hat off, with the Magykal ring and the Flyte charm secure in the little inside pocket.

    Every afternoon, Alma and Cabanela would walk across the Marsh to as close to Deppen Ditch as they dared, where the Chief would be able to reach them and tell them that Jowd was all right. Lynne was nervous, but there was no point in worrying that someone might follow their path—the Supreme Custodian and his Master were as frozen in the Castle as Jowd was. Still, Lynne wandered around the Marshes with Boy 412 some days, tramping random paths into the snow to obscure the adults’ well-trod road.

    It would have been useful of her, if Commander Sith were using his Camera Obscura to spy on them; but he had left that far away in his own country, and there was no space for a new one to be installed aboard the Yonoa. He was ignorant of the activity in the marshes, instead spending his Big Freeze in the Palace as much as possible, staring into the Throne Room as he tested the barrier holding fast at the door.

    None of the guards who were ever forced to accompany him could see a difference, but Sith alternately exclaimed with pleasure or cursed a blue streak, depending on the results. The Supreme Custodian, always at his side, never reacted at all.

    “Do you think he’s any closer, now?” Sith remarked one evening.

    “He has been moving at a steady rate over the years, sir,” the Supreme Custodian replied. “It stands to reason he would continue to.”

    “Yes, so you’ve always reported…well, at least your measurements were reliable, as much as they can be without being able to get through the blasted door.” Sith tapped a spot on the barrier just over the closest fingertip within, but felt no skin against his own. A peculiar shudder worked through him, and he involuntarily stepped back. “Damn and blast!” he hissed through his teeth.

    “Perhaps you should return to your ship, sir.” The Supreme Custodian’s voice was nonjudgmental. He was able to recognize the symptoms of the strange rejection that attacked Commander Sith whenever he stayed too long with his feet on Castle ground.

    Commander Sith yanked his glove back on, grumbling, and spun on his heel, his cloak flaring out like a second shadow behind him. The Palace guardsman on duty shivered at the Darkenesse radiating off Sith as the Commander strode past.

    “This is not what I was promised,” Sith complained as the Supreme Custodian accompanied him out of the Palace, back to the ship that was, very technically, not in the Castle but moored just outside it. “I’ve gotten rid of the Queen, and the Queenling and ExtraOrdinary Wizard are gone! What else must a man do to take over around here?”

    “Finish the job, sir.”

    “I intend to, my man. I intend to.” Commander Sith snapped his fingers as he came aboard the Yonoa. “Where is that Nearsighted Jeego?”

    The Chief spent MidWinter in the Hole In The Wall Tavern, trying to cheer Jowd up.

    Rindge had convinced Jowd to do a more elaborate Summon than usual, and the food that appeared seemed to have been whisked from the Wendron Witches’ own preparations; no one else in the Castle had such an enjoyment for the spicy snacks the Northern Traders brought every year.

    “It’s a good time to be chasing the Darke out,” the Chief said, Causing the fire in the tavern’s hearth to burn a little higher. The rituals around MidWinter were many and ancient; some were only fads that had faded into use from people replicating the way Grandmother always did it, but some were far older rituals to summon the sun back from its long absence.

    “At least we don’t live in the Lands of Long Nights,” Rindge said, his thoughts moving along similar paths.

    “Would it make a difference?” Jowd said wryly. “There’s plenty of the Darke here already.” His sense of humor had taken a turn for the gallows.

    “Not forever,” the Chief said firmly. “And not for as long as we fear.” He drifted over to Jowd, his immaterial warmth nearly impossible to feel. “The Castle has been through periods of Darkenesse before, and it’s always come through in one piece. You’ll be home before you know it.”

    “Ha! Home with the rest of the junk waiting to be thrown out.” Jowd raised his mug in salute.

    Rindge winced at his sincerity. “Come on, Jowd…don’t talk like that. We’re not going to fight any Darkenesse like that.”

    “I seem to be very good at leaving the fighting to other people, while I sit around.”

    “Rindge is right,” the Chief said firmly. “Shall I go and tell Alma that you spent MidWinter mocking yourself?” Jowd’s eyes dropped to the floor. “It’s a holiday. We should be enjoying ourselves.”

    “And we will,” Rindge said encouragingly. Both men waited, agonized, for Jowd; Jowd at last gave a small nod, and Rindge relaxed. “I don’t know if you could Summon a Counter-Feet board,” Rindge suggested hopefully.

    Jowd chuckled; there was still a wry note in it. “Who your age is interested in Counter-Feet?”

    The old board game had once been very popular, and the annual tournament the highlight of the year; however, the main draw of Counter-Feet, with its opposing castle towers separated by a river, was in the Enchanted counters used to knock opponents’ counters off the board and infiltrate their towers, and these were hard to keep in numbers high enough to actually play. The counters had varying personalities, often stubborn, and were known to go wandering off. A neglected box of Counter-Feet might be opened to discover all the counters had gone off in a huff, or that a new colony had settled in and was fighting for space.

    “It’s fun,” Rindge defended himself. “I used to have a friend who had the deluxe Magyk edition, with the crocodiles-in-the-river expansion.”

    “Ha! You could get elbow-deep in those rivers. I lost some counters that way.”

    “You used to play?”

    “I’ve got no chance of Summoning one of those deluxe Magykal ones.” Jowd dismissed Rindge’s effort at conversation. “Much less a working set of counters. I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m only an ex-Wizard.”

    “I’d be fine with a regular board.” Still, Rindge sat back. He gestured at the table in between them. “Would an ex-Wizard be up to splitting some of this food with me?”

    “I Summoned it. I may as well.”

    Rindge nudged one of the plates closer to him, and they both tucked in to the still-warm MidWinter festival meal, and the ghosts settled in around them to wait out the night. Out in the Forest, the Wendron Witch coven (who did not believe in half measures) hardly noticed anything missing.

    The Wendron Witches were not the only ones who celebrated MidWinter with gusto. Emma had been laying in preparations since last year, and the cottage was ablaze with candles now to illuminate her hard work. There was no empty chair at the table, either—someone had always eaten on the floor by the fireplace before Jowd left—and even Emma’s special recipe of jellied Marsh eels couldn’t put too much of a wrench in things (Boy 412 had seconds and thirds).

    “What are these?” Alma lifted the colorful twist of paper from the basket in the center of the table.

    “Homemade Crackers,” Emma said with satisfaction. “I think this year’s are some of the best I’ve ever made.” She was right: they broke open with a satisfyingly crisp crackle-pop and burst bright blue and yellow sparks over the table, disgorging thin brass rings of the kind that were given away as party favors and inevitably lost or melted down for something more useful, and tiny furls of paper with terrible jokes that made everyone crack up. Lynne was sure she caught Boy 412 laughing silently, shoulders shaking behind a remarkably unguarded smile.

    And in the Palace, no candles graced its mullioned windows, for Commander Sith was busy on his equally unlit ship welcoming the Darkenesse in.

    Emma took Lynne out for a walk, one night after MidWinter. It had been a rough day; the Chief had told Cabanela earlier that he was sure the Supreme Custodian was planning something, but had no idea what. Lynne didn’t see how going out in the middle of the night to freeze inside her double layer of cloaks would help.

    “Look at that moon, my darling niece!” Emma proclaimed, head tilted back to take in the sky. The moon was waxing enough to glint off the snow, in tiny sparkles to match the swathe of stars twinkling against the purple-black night. “As the moon grows, he draws things in—just like his effect on the tides—up out of the ground, or from far away, across the Marsh.” Emma eyed their surroundings with a piercing blue gaze at the mention of things coming out of the ground. Normally in the middle of the night everyone would be safely CharmLocked in the cottage; but with all the usual Marsh dangers frozen under the snow from yesterday’s blizzard, it had seemed safe enough for a walk.

    “Is this going to be a moral about Jowd being okay,” Lynne said, breath puffing out in white clouds.

    It had been, and Emma was annoyed at being preempted. “Jowd wants to come back to you both as soon as possible,” she said comfortingly. “And as the moon grows, he’ll have more aid to do so than you or he may realize. The moon is an underestimated power!”

    Lynne just nodded, glancing back towards the cottage, which was doing a very good impression of an igloo.

    “Though I didn’t bring you out here just to talk about the moon,” Emma confessed, “It’s a good night for looking at the stars…and your mother the Queen always liked to stargaze. I thought you might like to hear that, about her.”

    Lynne, paralyzed by the reference to the Queen being her mother, said nothing.

    “She used to visit me, you know,” Emma said. “The Queens and the Keepers have always been connected.” Before Lynne could unstick her tongue to ask why, Emma was sweeping on, saying, “It was a shame Queen Sissel had to deal with my predecessor when she came to the throne! And at her age. My teacher was a good Witch, but she left things in a horrendous mess.”

    “At her age?” Lynne asked.

     “She took the throne very young. The last Queen had troubles in childbirth. Here is to her memory, may it be a blessing!” Emma gestured as if to toast her, then sighed. “What an awful, awful thing to happen. She shouldn’t have kept having children—but she was hoping for another girl, and then of course when she died our poor Queen had to wear the crown at only fourteen.” And after all that tragedy, of course no one had been too suspicious when the Supreme Custodian claimed to be standing in for a pregnant Queen too ill to leave her rooms.

    Lynne said, “The Queen had siblings?”

    “All brothers,” Emma said. “Who knows where they are now! It’s lucky for them they weren’t here when the Supreme Custodian came.”

    Lynne shivered, and pulled hers and Alma’s cloaks closer around herself. She didn’t want to talk about what the Supreme Custodian did to royalty. “How did you know her anyway?” she asked, trying to change the subject. “Why would the Queens come here?”

    Emma smiled down at her. “I’ll tell you at MidSummer,” she said. “It’s high time you made the trip, too.”

    “Huh? Why MidSummer?”

    “It’s traditional. I’ll explain everything then; there’s no sense saying anything before then.”

    “Why not??” Lynne demanded. “You mean the Queen came here for MidSummer? What about the consort?”

    Surprised, Emma said, “What about him?” She was vaguely aware that the Queen had been married, and knew that much only because the late Queen had tried to bring her consort with her the first MidSummer after their wedding. Emma had put her foot down, then: MidSummer was for Queens and Princesses, and them alone.

    “What about—?” Lynne grappled for a response that wasn’t cussing or screaming. “He died too!”

    “I didn’t mean…” Emma trailed off as Lynne stormed back to the cottage, and sighed. That had not gone as intended.

    When Emma peeked into the attic to check on Lynne, after shaking the snow off her boots, Alma gave her a narrow look. Lynne was curled up in her bundle of quilts against the wall, with her back to the room.

    Emma shrugged in reply, trying to form an apologetic expression and mostly managing to look haughty. She hadn’t done anything on purpose.

    “His name was Yomiel,” Lynne said abruptly, when the stair creaked as Emma turned to go back downstairs. Emma paused.

    “Whose name?” Alma asked.

    “The consort’s.”

    Alma gave Emma a significant, unreadable look, which Emma returned with an empathetic sigh. Alma slid out of bed, bringing the blanket with her. Cabanela was still awake downstairs, tinkering with something at the borrowed desk, and the room was empty but for the three of them. Lynne curled in on herself when Alma sat by her head, and closed her eyes when Alma stroked a hand over her loose hair.

    “Do you want to tell me about him?” Alma asked quietly. All these years she’d left the Queen and her consort unspoken-of, and Lynne had never volunteered information. She didn’t know where Lynne came from, or how the consort—Yomiel—had found her. What it had been like, to travel to the Castle, or how long the journey had been. All she knew was that he’d given Lynne her birthday.

    Alma hoped he was resting peacefully. It was the least compassion she could offer to the man who had brought her a daughter.

    “He was excited,” Lynne said, muffled by the wad of quilt pressed to her face.

    “He was?”

    “He said—he thought the Queen would really like me.”

    Alma ran her fingers through Lynne’s hair, letting Lynne hide her face in the quilt. “I’m sure she did,” Alma said quietly. “You were always a good kid.” She squeezed Lynne’s shoulder. “Skip the floor for tonight and come share the bed with me. It’s freezing and I’m trying to warm up all those blankets by myself.”

    “Okay.”

    The Chief did not appear in the Hole In The Wall Tavern for several days in a row.

    Jowd made his usual joke in poor taste, but it worried Rindge. They still had not been able to unfreeze enough of the entryway to get out, and he still had no idea where Memry was. The Chief, when he had time, had been asking other ghosts if they’d seen her, and nobody had. Rindge didn’t like his one connection to the rest of the Castle being severed.

    But on the third day the Chief turned up near midnight, so transparent he was nearly invisible. Rindge jumped to his feet, startling Jowd awake; they had been sticking close together for warmth. He also jumped straight through the ghost of a six-hundred-year-old nun, who drifted away with a look of shocked offense that Rindge did not see. “Where’ve you been?” he demanded. What had gone wrong?

    “I’m sorry,” the Chief said haltingly, “it’s just that…I had to know, and I…”

    Jowd got up from the floor. “Do you need to sit down?” He hoped the nearby benches at the tables were actually empty.

    The Chief drifted onto the nearest bench, staring somewhere between Jowd and Rindge. “It doesn’t make any sense…”

    “What doesn’t?”

    “The Throne Room.”

    Jowd stiffened in shock. “You went back?” The Chief had died in that room, and he had never spoken about his death. Jowd had never asked about the place where the Chief had been forced to spend his first year and a day of ghosthood.

    “I was in the Palace,” the Chief said, still transparent with shock, “and I overheard the guards talking about some tests Commander Sith was performing on the Throne Room. I…I had to go look.”

    Rindge frowned. “Tests on what?”

    “I’m not sure how it happened…” The Chief seemed to barely have heard Rindge. “…it must have been after I died, something Cabanela did to try and help…it was like that the whole time I was stuck there.”

    Jowd knelt by the Chief, putting a hand over—through, rather—his immaterial one. The shock of being Passed Through by living flesh and blood jolted the Chief, and he looked at Jowd full in the eye again. “What happened?” Jowd asked.

    “It filled the whole room,” the Chief said. “A strange blue Magyk…it must be Magyk, though I’ve never in my life or death seen it blue like that. It never went past the door, or through the walls, but it’s done something…they never got in to take away his body.”

    “His?” Rindge asked, dread crawling through him.

    “The Queen’s consort,” the Chief said. “He was lying there, my whole year and a day. His body never even started to rot.” The Chief went even more transparent at the memory. “Something,” he said, “is very, very wrong with Time in that room.”

    “And the Supreme Custodian’s Master doesn’t know what it is either,” Jowd murmured, “if he’s running tests.” The mention of unknown, blue-tinted Magyk (unlike the proper purple) had stirred even his exhausted mind with curiosity.

    “Not on that,” the Chief said. Jowd raised his eyebrows. “I saw the Supreme Custodian and his Master coming back from that way, and I heard them say…and they were right,” he said, skipping around the facts as he always had in life when badly rattled. “I don’t know how, but I had to check, and what they said is true. The consort is moving in there. And he’s nearly out the door.”

Chapter Text

    None of them knew what to do with this knowledge. Cabanela had seen the consort be shot with his own eyes, and the Chief confirmed it. Ghosthood had allowed him passage into the room only with difficulty, like moving through molasses, and the blue Magyk had Passed Through him with all the subtlety of glass shards. But he’d seen the bullet hole in the man’s chest.

    “It’s barely bled at all,” the Chief said, as Jowd pried every detail he could think to ask after from his old teacher. “Hardly a few seconds old.” Much like, no one said, the one on the Chief’s ghostly chest.

    “If something’s wrong with Time, could whatever’s happening in there have suspended him in Time?” Rindge asked. As far as he knew, Magyk could do anything.

    “How could he be moving, then?” Jowd had his hands folded together, pressed against his mouth. “Unless he’s somehow forced his way through it…how long would it take to stand and walk to the door of the Throne Room? A minute or two? Spread out over ten years…”

    Rindge winced at the mental image of spending ten years trying to walk to the door. He wasn’t sure how big the Throne Room was, but it couldn’t be that big; the Palace only took up so much of the Castle’s real estate.

    “No Wizard has ever mastered Time to the degree necessary to do something like that,” the Chief said. “Cabanela couldn’t have done it on accident…and if he never said anything about blue Magyk to you, he didn’t do it on purpose.”

    “Is there anything we can do?” Jowd asked, not having much hope for the answer. But he ached when he remembered the way Lynne had cried at the memory of the consort, when he remembered how that man had tried to build a new life for her. The consort was the man who’d brought Lynne to live in the Castle, someone important to her in a way Jowd didn’t understand.

    Maybe he’d asked her to call him Father.

    Not that Jowd had ever, ever held Lynne’s decision to call Jowd by his name against her. She didn’t owe him of all people anything.

    He’d just wanted to be a dad. He understood why the Queen’s consort had sailed across the seas to find someone willing to come home with him.

    Jowd said, when the Chief was silent, “If he’s not dead yet…” Maybe the consort could still go home.

    “I have no idea,” the Chief said. “I must investigate. I’ll be busy…but it won’t take me long, just longer between visits.”

    Cabanela would have heard the warning signs at once. The Chief had a tendency to bury himself in something new that had caught his interest, serious or silly, and not come out for weeks. Jowd, who had never been the Chief’s apprentice, said,

    “Of course. I understand.” With a sardonic tone, he added, “You know where to find us.”

    “Where are you going?” Rindge said. “Who do you ask? With the ExtraOrdinary gone, you’re the next person I’d go to about complicated, strange Magyk stuff.” If he thought to ask a ghost at all. Rindge never had much to do with them, aside from the ghost of a gatekeeper who haunted the Gatehouse, and would occasionally wake up to pester Rindge about the cost of the toll. He was old enough to be Ancient, and had not kept up with currency inflation.

    The Chief said, “I must find a ghost story.” At two blank looks, he sighed. “Even we ghosts have our rumors. This one is supposed to know many things, even when information is hidden from him. He may be very helpful…if he is real.”

    “Who’s ‘he’?”

    “I have always heard rumors of a Spirit-Seer cat living in the Castle,” said the Chief, “ever since becoming a ghost, at least. Spirit-Seers can see all ghosts,” he added, spotting Rindge’s confusion, “regardless of whether we Appear to them. A person—in this case, a cat—could discover a lot that way, hearing what ghosts talk to each other about.”

    “Huh,” Rindge said. Well, why not? After the past month, it wasn’t as unbelievable as it would have been to the Rindge of that autumn. “…Good luck, I guess. There’s a lot of cats running around.”

    “If he can talk to ghosts, he may be easier to spot,” the Chief said. “I hope.”

    When the Chief had gone, Rindge said, “Maybe I should learn some Magyk. It’s starting to seem more and more useful.”

    “I’m only an ex-Wizard,” Jowd said.

    “Sure. What spells would an ex-Wizard start someone like me on?”

    Jowd gave in, and taught Rindge some small Magyk, not having any Charms on him for Rindge to practice with; and the Chief, still badly rattled by his return to the site of his own death, went hurrying off among the other ghosts to chase down a ghost story, and forgot entirely to spare time for the Marshes to tell Cabanela anything at all.

    In the Palace, a pair of yellow eyes peeked around a corner.

    Seeing that the way was clear, the cat purred, creeping down the empty hallway to the locked and bolted doors. He sat and scratched at the wood, mewing.

    The mind of the consort, behind the Throne Room doors, lunged for him.

    Where were you Where are they I’ll kill them They need to pay for what they did

    “Miw!” he managed to say, only half in control over his own muzzle as his ears flattened and his fur bristled.

    Cowards Standing in front of me Trying to provoke me They’ll all die for it Let me at them Let me out GET ME OUT

    Yomiel was angry—like he always was, now. The cat was helpless—like he always was. The emotion overflowed into him and strangled his own feelings, his claws flexing out and digging into the heavy wood that separated him from the unreachable Yomiel.

    Help Find them Bite and claw We’ll show them all

    He let it flow over him with the practice of years, hunching into the unwilling, angry arch of his back. The cat had been the first to realize that Yomiel was still awake inside the Throne Room, the first to come back for Yomiel, and he had never abandoned his man. Just like Queen Sissel would have wanted.

    Queen Sissel had given him to Yomiel as a gift. A Northern Trader at one winter Trader’s Market had been advertising a litter from a Spirit-Seer mother—a trait far more common in cats than it was in humans—and inviting Castle citizens to see if they might find a Spirit-Seer kitten for themselves. Queen Sissel, who had heard of the Northern Trader’s tradition of gifting cats as a wedding present, had taken him when he was the last little runt left in the basket.

    And he was, as the Chief had heard, a Spirit-Seer just like his mother. But he didn’t remember the ghosts of his babyhood. He remembered following Yomiel’s long strides across the deck of a ship, being cradled in warm hands, eating food that was just for him without having to fight for it, and then following his man into some cozy blankets for a nap.

    He wanted Yomiel to come back and do that with him again. But the doors of the Throne Room were locked so tightly that no ghost he recruited could Cause them to open, and he could never get in through any of the windows past the blue haze inside.

    Go Find them for me Get me out I’m trying Help Help me

    He could take Yomiel with him, in a way. Spirit-Seer cats became very closely bound to their owners, and Yomiel had, on occasion, Looked or Listened through his cat, developing a reputation of eyes not just in the back of his head but around corners and across the length of his ship. But his cat could not take Yomiel very far—and definitely not outside of the Palace, where the men who’d done this to Yomiel had gone.

    Yomiel could not move his mouth to speak the words that would let his cat talk to him, and his cat could not get in to help him. All he could do was sit on the other side of the doors and be there with Yomiel as he raged.

    Ever since talking about Yomiel, Lynne had felt full of fire, itchy to do something.

    ‘Do something’ was not a desire that paired well with the Big Freeze. Lynne walked circles around the cottage’s rooms and spent a lot of time staring out the window through the frost, looking for signs of snowmelt.

    “Maybe you could melt the Big Freeze faster,” she said to Cabanela. Then they could go—somewhere. They should be making some kind of plan of attack.

    “Previous ExtraOrdinaries have triiied,” Cabanela said truthfully. “It doesn’t melt so easily.” Not even with a Tower full of other Wizards to help, which Cabanela distinctly did not have. “Wanna come see the Chief with me?” Maybe Lynne could work some of that energy out.

    Walking did nothing to cool her down; Cabanela could sympathize. “I’m going to go crazy if we spend all winter indoors just waiting,” Lynne said, stomping her feet to keep warm as they waited for the Chief. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

    “Not without puttin’ ourselves in danger,” Cabanela said, watching the northern horizon. He could just make out a haze of smoke from the Castle’s chimneys. He wondered where the Chief was. The old ghost had not made an appearance for several days. Cabanela didn’t see any kind of token, either, which the Chief might have left by Causing a rock cairn to stack up or something like, as he’d done on previous days when he came when they weren't there, and couldn’t stay and wait for one of them to turn up.

    “Everyone’s already in danger,” Lynne said impatiently.

    “Mooore danger. You know what I mean, you’re smarter than that.” Cabanela was almost as impatient.

    “What are you even looking at? There’s nothing to see.”

    “There’s the Castle.”

    Lynne didn’t look. She stared the other way, west towards the Port, and wondered what would happen if she sailed down there and never stopped, just kept sailing, until she hit a shore that didn’t hold someone who wanted her dead.

    It wasn’t like the Supreme Custodian would be able to find her if she went far enough. She’d lived in the Castle for ten years before he discovered she’d been in the Ramblings the whole time, and his Assassins were easily dodged—who hired Assassins that dumb? Better question, who assigned ten-year-olds to guard the Wizard Tower and thought it was a good idea to make a whole Army out of them? Lynne already knew the rumors, that most boys were snatched up for the Young Army by age two; but that was stupid, then they’d have to teach the kids to read before they could teach them to be an Army.

    Lynne, who was generally a nice person, did not think of the fact that it was much easier to create unquestioning soldiers out of boys who had never known anything but the Supreme Custodian’s design for their lives.

    “How hard is it to run a Castle?” Lynne said crossly. “It’s like he’s not even trying.”

    “He probably isn’t,” Cabanela said, not asking which ‘he’ she meant, though Lynne’s whole train of thought to that point had been silent inside her head. “Someone would have to care about the people there, to give rulin’ them an honest try, and I hiiighly suspect he does not.” Cabanela glanced down at her. “Thinkin’ of how you’d do it if you were in charge?”

    Lynne almost retorted that he should stop acting like she was Queen, but…was she thinking that? The Princess’s circlet that Cabanela had brought with him on their flight to the Marram Marshes was a reminder of the danger that was after her; but the Queen was gone. If they got rid of the Supreme Custodian, who was going to undo what he’d done? Who did anybody answer to if the throne was empty?

    “Are you?” Lynne asked him back.

    “I already am doin’ it, baby,” Cabanela said. “I’m doin’ everythin’ I can.”

    Boy 412 sat up.

    There was a light in the kitchen, but that wasn’t the metallic clunk that had woken her from a restless attempt to sleep. The light was also moving.

    She crept around the corner of the kitchen door and saw the potions cupboard standing open. Shuffling noises were coming from inside, and a faint “These darn hinges,” in Emma’s voice. Emma’s hand reached out to pick up a lit lantern sitting on the floor, and Boy 412 backed up, realizing as she did that there had already been a light coming from inside the cupboard. A second lantern, then, but who needed two lanterns at once?

    As the noises seemed to descend, so did the light, until it was low enough that it only shone up onto the ceiling, not the floor at all. Boy 412 listened hard, and couldn’t hear anything anymore.

    Boy 412 was excited. The Witch knew about the trapdoor. Boy 412 had definitely uncovered some kind of Witchy scheme going on…though exactly what Emma was doing down there escaped her, as none of the ancient-looking wall paintings or twisting tunnels seemed like her style. And why was she taking two whole lanterns down there?

    Boy 412 waited patiently in perfect stillness. When You Freeze, No One Sees, as the Young Army saying went, and Boy 412 was the best at not being noticed. She didn’t want to get caught for spying, but she also desperately wanted to know what was going below. Did the Witch know about her Magykal ring? Had she made it in the first place? Had Boy 412 stolen it from her?

    This last question made Boy 412 uneasy, and she resolved to stay even stiller and un-seen. It was her ring, now. If the Witch didn’t want it picked up, she shouldn’t have dropped it in a dirty tunnel where anyone could fall through that hole and find it.

    Emma did not come back up for a while. Boy 412 yawned once, caught herself, and was still again when Emma did finally reappear, hauling herself back up the ladder and out of the cupboard. She dusted herself off, putting down her lantern—wait, one lantern?

    Boy 412 steamed in a perfectly still and silent thrill of confused excitement as Emma went into her bedroom without noticing her. She almost went to peek in the cupboard again; but then she heard another step, a creak in the floorboards overhead.

    Cabanela was creeping downstairs on a mission. The Chief had not appeared that day at the edge of the Marshes, nor had he come by or left any sign for the previous three days either. There was trouble brewing somewhere, something the Chief couldn’t risk leaving unwatched, and Jowd was stuck at the Castle where the Supreme Custodian was no doubt hunting him.

    It had taken ages for Emma to stop rustling around downstairs and go to bed; Cabanela had waited for the distinct sound of her bedroom door closing before he’d moved. He’d had to tiptoe carefully past Lynne, who had fallen asleep sprawled over her birthday notebook, now with pages full of intent scribbles—and with every other letter in lurid green, as the pen had turned extremely contrary after being neglected for weeks.

    Boy 412 bolted silently back to her makeshift bed at the sound of his step, and buried herself under the quilt. She moved pretty fast, and was huddled inside it before Cabanela made it to the bottom stair, which was the only step low enough for him to duck his head and see anything in the main room.

    But Cabanela saw the tiniest flutter of quilt, and startled at the pair of eyes watching him from under the blanket. He’d counted on Boy 412 being asleep. Hastily he put a finger over his mouth, but Boy 412 had not made a noise.

    “It’s juuust me,” Cabanela whispered, grinning briefly. In the low firelight, Boy 412 could make out the white of his robes, and not much else. He was fully dressed, in his cloak and everything. “Go on back to sleep.”

    Boy 412 could not help but look skeptical.

    “Yeah, I didn’t think that would work, either,” Cabanela said, still as quiet as possible. “Don’t mind me, anyhow. I’m just makin’ a quiiick trip to the Castle.”

    Boy 412’s eyes went wide, and she shook her head. The Castle was the most dangerous place to be.

    “Don’t go wakin’ everyone up,” Cabanela urged her. “Alma will understand; she needs Jowd back. You can wait till mornin’ to tell them…” he trailed off as Boy 412 stared back silently. “…weeell, I guess you can’t, can you.”

    He hesitated, then crossed to the desk, shushing the arms with a silent Magykal word as they began to stir. Boy 412 watched him scribble something in the margin of the book that was lying open where he’d left it.

    When he stepped back from the desk he looked like he was going for the door, and Boy 412 couldn’t help herself. Her hand shot out from under the quilt and grabbed the hem of his robes.

    Cabanela went still. Then he said, “Hey, baby, it’s all right,” in a softer voice than Boy 412 had ever heard out of him. “I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ve got the Midnight Minutes. For sixty seconds on either side of midnight, I’ll be pretty much uuuntouchable.” He quietly dug inside his robes to take out a brass pocket watch, one of his prized possessions, crouching so she could look at its face. “Give me thirty seconds to waaarm up, and I’ll have a Transport done in no time.”

    His pocket watch was ticking reassuringly forward, the hour hand not quite at twelve. Boy 412 looked around, but there were no other clocks in the cottage; Emma didn’t bother with them. And Boy 412 remembered Cabanela and the big Wizard shouting about the Midnight Minutes before, when they escaped the Wizard Tower, so he was not making something up to justify the risk.

    “Better go now,” Cabanela said, standing, “or I’ll lose the Minutes.” He winked at Boy 412, then wrapped his cloak around himself. The hair on Boy 412’s arms stood on end as purple Magyk began to gather itself around him, flickering off the white of his cloak.

    First he shone with a bright purple; then the Magyk thickened, and his form was lost in the haze. Boy 412 sat up to watch, the quilt sliding off her shoulders. The Magyk was humming, turning the ExtraOrdinary into a featureless purple silhouette; then it was dissipating, and he was gone, leaving only a room that felt much darker now after the lovely shine of the Transport.

    Boy 412 dared to take her ring out of its hiding spot, and lay under the quilt for a while, playing with it as it shone on her finger.

    Everyone was upset when they found Cabanela gone in the morning. “I thought you said the moon waxing was meant to bring people here,” Lynne said crossly to Emma, “not send them away.”

    “The moon works in mysterious ways,” Emma said, privately deeply annoyed with Cabanela for messing with her moon sayings.

    Both of them were only picking at each other to vent their worry about Alma, who had taken Cabanela’s departure the hardest. She was still sitting at the desk after breakfast, reading the note in Cabanela’s best and smallest handwriting over and over.

    Cabanela’s note was short and unhelpful. All it said was Don’t worry about me. Be back soon with Jowd.

    But she did. And he wasn’t.

Chapter Text

    Cabanela had aimed to Transport himself to the Wizard Tower. Despite all the other Wizards’ Removal, it was still his place in the Castle, and he was not going to put up with a fake ExtraOrdinary in his rooms. He had the Akhu Amulet; he belonged in there. The Tower would welcome him back in, and once he’d defenestrated the pretender and Barricaded the doors, he could track down Jowd easily with a quick Find.

    If all went well, maybe more—but no, he had a responsibility to get Jowd back to Alma.

    He really, truly, didn’t expect to be gone for more than a day.

    He also did not expect the Wizard Tower courtyard to have a complement of the Custodian Guard. These were experienced soldiers, not the Young Army boys, but to a man they backed away, raising their weapons and their shields, at the sight of a purple silhouette manifesting out of mist, as if a ghost.

    It was an easy mistake to make; none of the guards had ever seen a ghost before. As Cabanela’s figure solidified in the courtyard, directly in the quiet corner where the guards had arrayed themselves for a good view of the entrances and exits, the displaced air blew past the guards in a Magykal wind, raising goosebumps much as it had for Boy 412 seconds ago.

    The closest guard, in a panic, fell to the first resort that his training had ingrained in him and swung his pikestaff hard at Cabanela’s head.

    And Cabanela, who had neither his KeepSafe nor the protection of the Midnight Minutes, went sprawling to the ground.

    He didn’t know, because had never bothered to ask, that Emma kept no clocks in Keeper’s Cottage because the Disturbances under the ground inevitably made them go wonky. Emma made do with squinting at the position of the sun and a sundial out the kitchen window—and Cabanela had Transported himself to the Castle fifteen minutes to one in the morning. There was nothing stopping the guards from delivering a beating that kept his head ringing, unable to form a spell. Only Sith’s arrival made them pause.

    Commander Sith had heard the Alarm which he’d set around the Wizard Tower cry out, and it was with great pleasure that he saw who awaited him when he finished his own Transport. Before Cabanela could recover, Sith had ripped the Akhu Amulet from his neck.

    Ten minutes later Cabanela was at the bottom of Dungeon Number One. It was inside a huge chimney from the ancient days of the Castle, buried deep in the city’s foundations, and it was a very long way to fall. Sith, who’d personally pushed him in, had with great pleasure sent down a Vortex of Shadows and Shades to keep him company.

    The only thing keeping Cabanela above the surface of the foul water at the bottom was the heaped bones of the dungeon’s previous inmates. He could do nothing but lie helplessly, for even if the Shadows and Shades had not been whirling around him, draining his Magykal powers, he had—like so many ExtraOrdinary Wizards before him—vested most of his Magyk into the Akhu Amulet itself. Now that amulet hung around Sith’s neck, and he was the true ExtraOrdinary Wizard.

    Eventually, an Ancient ghost would take a wrong turn and pass through the walls of Dungeon Number One. Eventually, the Chief would be pulled from his search by urgent summons from another ghost. But it was a long time before anyone but Commander Sith and the Supreme Custodian knew Cabanela’s fate.

    The Wizard Tower, dark and drafty, did indeed welcome in the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. The Apprentice complained the whole way up to the ExtraOrdinary’s apartments on the twenty-first floor; there was not enough Magyk left in the tower to keep the stairs working, and they had to walk.

    Commander Sith promptly found the Apprentice’s quarters on the upstairs floor, and locked her in. He came down to the main room where the Supreme Custodian was waiting with a heaved sigh, the Apprentice’s shrieks rattling the door in the background. “I say, man,” said Sith, “a child tries one’s patience to no end.” He turned briefly to put up a Scream Screen over the stairs, which cut off the Apprentice’s howls. “I had hoped that after so many years she would learn when to take the hint that I’m ignoring her on purpose.”

    “Do you wish to take a different Apprentice, sir?” the Supreme Custodian asked. It wasn’t unheard of, even though the current Apprentice was not graduated. Sith had been taught by a Darke Wizard who had attempted to get rid of Sith in favor of a more manipulable Apprentice by Reducing him to a Shadow, a nasty, drawn-out process that would have only avoided killing him on a technicality. Sith still had the Shadow of his former Master in secure storage, on the off chance he might be useful someday.

    “Now? By no means.” Sith turned the silver key to the Apprentice’s quarters over in his hands. “No, no, man…not when she may finally be of some real use to us.” He glanced around the room. “But let’s get in some proper decorations, shall we? Not this twee…” he flapped his hand in wordless you know at the collection of Fragile-Fairy Pots. “I have far more suitable things for a real ExtraOrdinary Wizard in my cabin. Have them brought here and put up properly.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    Sith went upstairs again as the Supreme Custodian departed, putting up another Scream Screen between himself and the Apprentice. The wardrobe in the ExtraOrdinary’s rooms did its best to resist, but Sith pried it open, and examined himself in the mirror, which petulantly showed him as 18% fatter than he actually was. It was a very outdated mirror; Cabanela had yet to encounter this fact about it.

    “White doesn’t suit me,” Sith mused to himself. Unlike Cabanela all those years ago, he had not Transformed, and was still in his deep navy blue robes—though the silver and platinum belt, still missing its KeepSafe, had transferred itself to his waist. There was no longer any Wardrobe Wizard on the tenth floor to issue him proper robes of office.

    White was an old-fashioned tradition, anyway. Black would suit much better, from here on out.

    Jowd was of the opinion that the Chief was probably never coming back. Why would he bother with Jowd, after all? Jowd slumped in his seat against the wall, and barely heard Rindge still picking at the frozen way out. Rindge thought they might have more luck, now that they were getting closer to the Big Thaw. But he did not know enough Magyk on his own to make a proper go of it, and didn’t dare pester Jowd for more than it took to Summon some food.

    Across the Marshes Alma was in a slump nearly as bad. She had gone out multiple times a day for days on end, trying to catch the Chief coming with news, and was never rewarded with sight of him. Lynne tried to cajole her into participating in the dramatic read-alouds of Emma’s less raunchy books, which had become their entertainment while stuck indoors, but Alma always put her pages down early and went to bed, where she lay awake for hours unable to sleep.

    Boy 412 tried to stay out of Alma’s way. The symptoms were beginning to look familiar in a way that reminded her of the Boys who hadn’t been able to cut it, and Boy 412 knew better than to get attached to the Expendables who were most likely to be Expended soon.

    She ignored the nauseous feeling of worry in her stomach that told her she was already very much attached to these people, and tried to bury herself in Emma’s Magyk books. While Emma made up Easy Sleep brews, Boy 412 sat in the kitchen reading Thaumaturgy and Sortilage: Why Bother? and tried not to go into the attic where Alma was still awake.

    In Dungeon Number One, the Chief had no room for thoughts of anyone waiting for him. It was all he could do to sit by Cabanela and convince him to stay alive. Commander Sith’s Vortex was beyond any ghost’s power to alter, and the Chief could barely Cause a little fresh water to drip into Cabanela’s mouth. The Chief stayed close to let his voice penetrate through the moans and wails from the Vortex, and pretended that he had not seen Cabanela’s mouth move in a distinct, pained “Sorry” when he found his old, only Apprentice alone in the grim Darkenesse.

    They made an image out of a commissioned portrait, the ExtraOrdinary Wizard with gleaming platinum amulet and belt, and the Apprentice in lapis blue and gold. Past Queens in their own portraits and tapestries would have looked down in jealousy at the richness of the fabric, the polish of the metal.

    But the Apprentice was set to grow taller than her Master already, offsetting their balance, and the Master was not wearing white. They stood not in a picturesque part of the Wizard Tower, but in the dank hallway that led to the entrance to Dungeon Number One, watching a limp body be dragged out.

    Cabanela stumbled to his knees, couldn’t make it to his feet, and tried to throw himself forward anyway, hands outstretched. The Apprentice flinched; Commander Sith chuckled as Cabanela hit the end of the Tether fixed to the door of the dungeon and was yanked back. Sith was standing exactly far enough away to be out of Cabanela’s reach.

    “Fa ha ha! Did you think it would be that easy? I’m no fool, my man. I’m not here to give you a chance at regaining the position you so carelessly lost,” Sith chided him as Cabanela choked on the Tether that had snaked around his throat. It only loosened when he sagged back, teetering on the edge of the Dungeon’s precipitous drop. “Pull yourself together. I don’t have all day.”

    Cabanela glared, through the hair hanging in his face. “Then geeet on with it.” The Tether burned happily around his throat, the touch of Darkenesse almost as bad as fire.

    The Tether had been an ordinary leash, before Sith got his hands on it, but now it got to do much more interesting things. It had been sent down to drag Cabanela up out of the dungeon, and with a firm grip on the man’s ankle it had gotten him all the way to the top! Proudly, it had shown off by fixing itself to the least crumbling part of the stonework straight away, and catching the prisoner before he could assault the Tether’s beloved maker. Invisible to Master and Apprentice, the Chief tested its anchor point, wondering if he could Cause the stone to shift—just enough to give Cabanela the reach he needed.

    “By all means! I’d much prefer to have this wrapped up neatly as soon as possible.” Sith smiled. He loved it when a plan came together. “All you need to do is tell me where the Queenling is hiding.”

    “No. Never.”

    “Tsk! That is a shame.” Commander Sith shook his head. “Especially when it’s not you, but Kamila, who will suffer for your stubbornness.”

    Cabanela felt lightheaded. It was not all from the Tether’s grip. “…What?”

    “Egad! Did I forget to make proper introductions?” Sith put a hand on his Apprentice’s shoulder, smiling—and squeezing tight, though there were two Custodian Guards waiting at the top of the moldering stairs if she tried to run. “I understand there was never a chance for you two to meet. Kamila, be polite,” he commanded, “and say hello to…your uncle, was it?”

    The Apprentice, now that the moment had finally come, could not make herself say a word.

    “It’s very simple, my man,” Sith explained. “I have Kamila here quite within my power, except for one thing: you have the power over her safety. All you need to do is tell me where you’re hiding the Queenling, or…well, it would be a shame if her parents never did get to meet her.”

    Cabanela stared at them, his eyes hollow in the confines of his dimly lit face. Behind him, the Chief was frozen with shock. Then he started shaking.

    …Well, he had been in Dungeon Number One, and that was known to send its few and far between survivors straight to the Asylum. But he wasn’t losing it, or even crying. He was, Sith realized with confusion quickly followed by anger, laughing.

    “She,” Cabanela said, “is not Kamila.”

    “Of course she is,” Sith retorted. “How would you know? Great Scott, I paid off the midwife myself to bring her to me!” He had not intended to take any chances with Jowd, the only other real contender for the post of ExtraOrdinary Wizard—just as he hadn’t intended for Cabanela, the actual next in line, to survive the night of the coup. A little bit of leverage was just the right touch, to be deployed if the man ever became a nuisance—which he had.

    “She’s blonde,” Cabanela said.

    “What does that have to do with the price of fish?!” Sith demanded, now getting really annoyed. Blathering on about hair color of all things!

    “You’ve never caaared about the little people,” Cabanela said, wheezing as the Tether tightened at its maker’s displeasure. Sith gestured impatiently for it to loosen again. “You’ve never bothered to get to know anyone no matter how badly you want to rule us. If you had, you’d already know that Alma’s family is gray-eyed, purple haired women aaall the way up the tree.” Cabanela looked at the Apprentice. “I doubt your eyes started out gray.”

    She stared back at him with big, terrified, Magyk-green eyes.

    “Throw him back in,” Sith said, nearly speechless with rage, and the Tether whipped around, dragging Cabanela back over the threshold, where it let him drop. The Chief rushed down to him, calling over the wails of the Vortex. To Cabanela’s ears, all the noise seemed to reach him only from very far away.

    Cabanela had nothing but time, at the bottom of Dungeon Number One, to think about a paid-off midwife, and how viciously triumphant Sith had been when he revealed that Kamila never died.

    The Apprentice stared at the hole Cabanela had vanished into until she was forced away, hauled along in Sith’s wake.

    What did he mean, she wasn’t Kamila?

    “What does he mean, she’s not Kamila?!”

    Commander Sith was in his worst mood yet. He had thrown a sailor overboard for looking at him funny, blown half the roof off the Palace’s summerhouse with a ThunderFlash, and Darkened the sky until barely a peep of sunlight showed through the clouds. Still he felt no better!

    “I couldn’t begin to speculate, sir,” said the Supreme Custodian, in attendance at the Wizard Tower.

    “The nerve!” Sith fumed. “What does this woman even look like, anyway, the mother? Who ever said anything about purple hair?”

    The Supreme Custodian allowed the ranting to go on for as long as he felt reasonable before he could interrupt. “Sir,” he said, “Perhaps I may remind you that your Apprentice is not the only piece of leverage you have at hand to make use of.”

    “What good is a Justice Minister going to do me now, man?! Isn’t he the one with that Expendable brat the Queenling took with her?”

    “I took the liberty of having his rooms searched, sir, to make sure there had been no other mix-ups,” said the Supreme Custodian. “It seems that he is married, sir.”

    Sith snorted dismissively. “And?”

    “His wife is the Keeper of the Marram Marshes, sir.”

    “…He’s married to that Witch?”

    The Supreme Custodian said, “I took the liberty of having him sent to a dungeon where he can be interrogated at your leisure, sir.”

    By the time Sith got down to the dungeons, One Step Ahead Tengo was already waiting there, making plans for how one could go about a long-distance rifle shot on the frozen Marram Marshes. There was no time to waste, after all, and no time to wait for the Big Thaw.

    The Justice Minister did not have as easy a way out as Cabanela.

Chapter Text

    The storm had been brewing all day. Emma, having pronounced that she didn’t like the look of it, forbade anyone from going outside until it stormed itself out, or passed over before unleashing itself.

    “Not more snow,” Lynne said in disgust, eyeing what she suspected to be a last blizzard before the Big Thaw. Boy 412 was ignoring the outdoors completely, halfway through a complicated volume on transmutation theory that Emma had thought she lost years ago in the chaos of preparing for her graduation exams.

    “Perhaps not,” Emma said, watching the storm as well, with a different kind of distaste.

    Half an hour later, Emma raised her head from her writing and said, “Something’s not right.”

    Thirty seconds after that, the front window shattered when a bullet came through it.

    Alma threw herself in front of Lynne as Missile started barking furiously, biting at the splintered floorboards where the bullet had struck. Emma’s book hit the ground, the words of the CharmLock already jumping from her mouth as raindrops pelted in, the wind roaring through the shattered glass with a power far beyond what an ordinary storm should have.

    Emma’s worst suspicions were right; it was a Darke storm, conjured up by Sith, and it had carried the Hunter in his bullet boat speedily down the river, drawing salty ocean water to overflow the banks until with a roar Deppen Ditch had broken its banks and let a flood through. Dirty snow and ice cracked and groaned as the Marshes swelled, sending the Hunter’s bullet boat flying towards its goal.

    Even in the driving rain, One Step Ahead Tengo had accounted for the wind and adjusted his shot from a secure hill some distance from the cottage. The Hunter was visible through his scope, drawing near to the cottage even now.

    “Lynne, run!” Alma cried.

    “I’m not leaving you!” Lynne grabbed the doorframe when Alma tried to push her into the kitchen, away from the front windows. Boy 412, flat on the floor to stay out of any line of sight, didn’t know where Alma thought they were going to run to. The whole cottage could be surrounded by now if the Hunter was close enough to shoot.

    …But only from aboveground.

    “Alma, I need my dictionary from the cupboard under my bed,” Emma shouted, hair standing out in frazzled petals as she tried to See where the shot had come from.

    “Your dictionary is on the desk!” Alma said.

    “My other dictionary! Now!” The front door jumped in its frame as a shot grazed it from the outside, the handle jangling as the bullet ricocheted off the CharmLocked handle. “There you are, you little pest, you think you can shoot at me in my Marshes!”

    Boy 412 charged.

    She scooped up Missile and collided with Lynne, sending her stumbling back into the kitchen. As Alma ran to Emma’s bedroom, Boy 412 threw open the door marked Unstable Potions and Partikular Poisons.

    “What are you doing?” Lynne demanded. “You don’t even know how to use those! What are we supposed to do, invite them in for poisoned food and—what,” she broke off, as Boy 412 threw open the trapdoor. Another window broke in a crash of thunder and glass. Lynne whipped around, and Boy 412 had to grab her ankle to stop her from running back to Emma’s side.

    “Let go!”

    Lynne fought to get free, and Missile was already giving Boy 412 enough trouble, barking his head off, trying to jump out of her grip, and Boy 412 dropped him.

    She twisted to catch him, and both of them fell through the open trapdoor. Boy 412 snagged Missile’s collar and fell for a second time, the little dog crushed against her chest, protected as her back took the brunt of a second fall into the mysterious tunnels below the island.

    “Missile!” Lynne scrambled down the ladder after them. Boy 412 heaved a sigh of relief, even though Lynne was only coming down to grab Missile herself and check him for broken bones. Boy 412 hurried to close the trapdoor behind them, shutting out the noise in the cottage above. Even the crashing thunder subsided to a distant rumble.

    Missile had stopped barking. Boy 412 wondered if he really had broken something, but she’d cushioned his fall, so he shouldn’t have. In Lynne’s arms, he pressed close to her with a whine.

    She could see both of them, Boy 412 realized. She didn’t have the ring on to provide its glow, but there was a light coming from deeper in, a flickering yellow lantern light.

    It was as good an option as any. Boy 412 said, “This way!”

    Lynne swung to her feet, hands raised in defense against the mysterious new person in the tunnels, and came up short when she only saw Boy 412. Incredulous, Lynne said, “Was that you? You talk?”

    Boy 412 hadn’t realized she was going to say anything until the words were out. “That’s not important,” she said. “We have to go.” She wished someone had put the Princess through a few Do-Or-Die exercises to develop her sense of urgency.

    …No, she didn’t, not really. But Lynne seemed to have forgotten they were in any danger.

    “Go where?” Lynne asked. “What is this place?”

    “Tunnels,” Boy 412 said. “They lead out…somewhere.” They had to lead outside again somewhere other than the hole she’d fallen down, right?

    “…Wait, are you a girl?”

    “Yes.”

    “This whole time?!” Lynne looked mortified. “But you said you were called Boy 412!”

    “They don’t call you a girl in the Young Army,” Boy 412 explained. “It’s embarrassing for even one girl to sneak over from the Domestic Service Training Hall. But the Army runs out of Expendables faster than the Training Hall runs out of maids,” she said, self-explanatory, before Lynne could ask why they had let her stay. She was pretty sure all the other Boys and most of the Cadet Leaders had known.

    “But…why would you sneak over like that? You could have died.”

    Not the least because of being caught consorting with a bunch of Wizards, Boy 412 didn’t say. “You can die in the Army,” she said. “But the maids have babies sometimes.” She did not, did not want to have a baby.

    Lynne stared at her. Missile was still quiet, shivering a little.

    Lynne said, “Can I hug you? Only that was the worst, saddest thing I think I’ve ever heard someone say, and now I want to ask instead of taking you by surprise.”

    Flushing with surprise, Boy 412 said, “We gotta run.” She didn’t want to keep talking about it.

    “Oh, right, yeah. But what about Mom?” Lynne suddenly remembered. Boy 412 was already pulling her towards the light as hard as she could. Lynne was bigger than her, but Boy 412 was more determined.

    The light was coming from behind the room with the murals, which Lynne stared at, while Missile tried his best to go completely flat in her arms and burrow under her tunic. When Boy 412 followed the shadows down one of the hallways she’d ignored last time, she found the light coming from a room that was separated from the murals by only a short, sloping passage.

    Boy 412 had to haul Lynne into the room with all her strength; then they both stopped dead, shocked.

    The ceiling was far over their heads, and the light glittered off the sand on the floor, off the decorated walls and the tiny gold stars set on a blue like a night sky, and off the boat floating quietly in the dock.

    For a second the boat had looked like a dragon curled up on her hoard. Green scales gleamed like metal on the prow, with pointed yellow spikes like a spine running along the back of a gently curved neck that led to a bowed head with closed eyes, as though the dragon were sleeping. The dragon’s neck melted into the wide curve of the boat’s painted sides, until the hull narrowed back together at the rear, where a green-scaled, yellow-spiked tail rose into a gentle curl like a fiddlehead fern. There were even folded ‘wings’ nestled along the port and starboard rails.

    Lynne was breathless. She could see the mast laid flat along the length of the deck, wrapped in its sail, and the neatly-folded fabric that could probably be raised into a cabin on the aft deck, while rowers took up positions along either side. Those carved wings probably hid the oar locks. The boat was too small to be a true longship, but someone had made her in that style, a long solo sailor’s boat.

    Unhesitating, Lynne walked toward the gangplank laid at the boat’s side, but stopped when Missile let out a terrified whine. “What? Oh, aw, Missile, that’s not a real dragon,” Lynne comforted him. “Look, it’s not moving, see?” She carried him aboard, and Missile quailed.

    Boy 412 followed Lynne aboard. Something about the boat looked oddly familiar. She didn’t realize why until she looked at the prow and thought that the dragon should have green eyes—just like her ring.

    Her ring!

    Boy 412 cast a wary look at Lynne, who was busy admiring the sail; she’d put Missile down to run her hands along the azure blue rigging ropes while Missile cowered at her heels. Boy 412 slipped a hand under her hat to wiggle the ring out of its pocket. As soon as she put it on, it began to glow, lighting up the little golden dragon that had the exact same head as the boat.

    Emma had obviously brought the lantern down here, to leave it with the boat; did that mean it really was the Witch’s ring?

    Lynne said, “It’s just like the Dragon Boat of Hotep-Ra!”

    “Huh?” Boy 412 said.

    “You know, the first ExtraOrdinary Wizard? The story was on the murals out there,” Lynne said, starry-eyed as she tested the tiller at the back of the boat. It stood upright, unlike the horizontal ones she was used to. “He came to the Castle and saved the Princess’s life, but before that, he escaped peril in…wherever he came from originally. Because he was a Dragon Master, his dragon turned herself into a boat to sail him away to safety.”

    “Couldn’t she have flown away with him on her back?” Boy 412 asked.

    “Boats are cooler,” Lynne said defensively. She knew the answer was no, but couldn’t remember why, and Boy 412’s question was unfairly reasonable. “Hey, where’d you get that light?”

    Boy 412 stuffed her hand into her coat pocket, muffling the ring’s glow. “Nowhere.”

    A noise disturbed the echoing silence of the tunnels, louder than the faint noise of the water moving as the boat floated. Boy 412 flattened herself to the deck, recognizing footsteps on the trapdoor ladder. Lynne crouched behind the curling tail, until,

    “Lynne?” Alma called frantically, and Lynne jumped out of the boat, landing with a skid on the sandy floor, as Alma kept calling. “Lynne! Lynne!”

    “In here!”

    Alma collided with her in the doorway to the dock, seizing Lynne by the shoulders. “Don’t ever disappear like that on me again,” she cried—and then she saw the boat.

    “Good gracious,” Emma panted as she caught up to Alma. Emma was feeling very harried and vexed. She had done for the irritating man shooting at them; a Witch’s mark on the page for “bludgeon” in her Dictionary and a good hard punt of it out the broken window had seen to him, and the Dictionary would bring itself back when it was done.

    But he’d been farther away than she was counting on, and the Darke storm was still battering at her cottage while she waited for the Dictionary to come back and let her check another entry, not to mention the Hunter who had shouted such rude things through the door and demanded she bring the Princess out.

    She, the Keeper of the Cottage—and the Dragon Boat, and a number of secrets besides—had not remotely expected to find said Princess, and the poor Young Army boy, vanished down a trapdoor neither was supposed to know about.

    Lynne stepped back quickly at the sight of what Emma was carrying. “Why do you have that?”

    “I’m certainly not leaving it up there for the Supreme Custodian’s minions to take!” Emma puffed, brandishing the Princess’ circlet. Cabanela had brought it safely with them from the Wizard Tower, but had not taken it on his departure. “It’s far too important and valuable to lose track of.” And too great a loss; the True Crown of the Castle Queens had already been lost centuries ago.

    Curious what they were talking about, the Dragon Boat opened her eyes and turned to look.

    She idly noticed the figures on her deck, a young girl clutching at a small dog, but her attention was on the familiar golden circlet in her Keeper’s hands. But where was the Princess who ought to be wearing it? It had been so long since any Queen or Princess had come to visit.

    “Lynne, take this,” her Keeper was saying to the young woman standing there. “It will help her recognize you.”

    “She’s really the Dragon Boat,” the young woman breathed, ignoring the circlet being pushed at her. “You’ve got Hotep-Ra’s Dragon Boat in your basement.” She raised her hand, and the Dragon Boat nosed at the offered fingers. “Oh…”

    The young woman could be the Princess, the Dragon Boat decided, though she did not look much like the last Queen, and her eyes were brown in the lantern light, not royal purple. But if she wasn’t, she ought to be; she was staring up at the Dragon Boat with delighted awe, as no Queen or Princess had in ten years.

    “She’s so soft,” Lynne said, petting the scales on the Dragon Boat’s broad forehead down to her nose.

    “Are there any other secrets you’re keeping that we should know about?” Alma asked.

    “Of course you shouldn’t know!” Emma said. “They are secrets to be Kept, and I am the Keeper.”

    Suddenly a banging noise came from the direction of the trapdoor, rattling in its hinges under some new assault.

    “The fiends!” Emma gasped. “They’ve gotten into the cottage!” Above them, aboveground, the CharmLock had failed in the face of the driving Darke winds and water that Sith had summoned.

    “We have to go,” Alma said urgently, grabbing Lynne’s hand. “Where do these tunnels lead? Out of the Marshes?”

    Emma said grimly, “Up into the cottage. Nowhere else.”

    Lynne took a step back from the entrance to the room, closer to the Dragon Boat.

    The Dragon Boat did not like a danger Darke enough to have invaded Emma’s cottage.

    Lynne shrieked in surprise as the Dragon Boat ducked her head and, with a firm shove, scooped Lynne up and onto the deck. The Dragon Boat would take them somewhere safe, where the Castle Wall would keep out the danger. But the maybe-Princess did not seem to hear her say so.

    Missile could no longer stand it and threw himself forward, barking at the top of his lungs, to chase off the horrible dragon who was attacking his mistress! Lynne had to catch him before he could try to bite at those green scales; she was afraid he’d break his teeth.

    Then the Dragon Boat began to stretch her wings.

    Alma had rushed aboard after Lynne, but Emma had to jump onto the deck as the gangplank was knocked aside. The Dragon Boat hit the sides of the cavern long before her wings were fully unfolded, scraping at the beautiful gilding.

    “What’s she doing?” Alma yelled to Emma over the leathery creaking of wings as the Dragon Boat reared her head back. Already the press of the Dragon Boat’s wings was revealing ancient weaknesses in the plaster, cracking it to reveal the columns that supported the earthen roof.

    “She’s trying to get out!” Lynne realized. “Boy—girl—kid, grab the tiller! Help her steer!”

    “Wait!” Emma cried, dodging the trickles of water coming down through the loosening masonry. The ceiling was crumbling, clods of earth falling to the deck as every gap let water soak through, turning it to mud that fell even faster. “Wait!” How could she, the current in a long line of Keepers, let the Dragon Boat come to such peril? They didn’t have to run! She could fix this; just let her at that awful Hunter and his Pack!

    But the Dragon Boat was determined. Even Emma’s attentive company over the long years could not make up for the lonely MidSummer nights, and all those lonely nights before and after. She would not be left behind in this safe, dark cavern any longer, waiting for the Time to be Right. The Time was Right now; her Master was aboard.

    The Dragon Boat turned to peer at her Master, nudging Lynne to a safe seat at the base of her neck as she did so. The girl was a very small Master, staring from under a cheerful yellow knit hat that was pulled low over her ears. But the ring was glowing on her finger, and at Lynne’s call she had seized the tiller and was holding it with both hands, under the shadow of the Dragon Boat’s tail.

    The Dragon Boat lashed her tail at the wall, bludgeoning what she could reach, and the walls came toppling down on them.

    Chunks of snow landed in the water of the quay with a splash. The Dragon Boat reared back as rain began to pour in, lifting her higher; there was already a freezing layer of salty stormwater above the topmost piles of snow on the Marshes.

    But it was shallow, scraping her hull as the Dragon Boat fought her way free. Underneath her, the beautiful cavern flooded with rubble as the island collapsed into it, baring the tops of the marble columns in the walls like ribs exposed from a decaying corpse.

    Boy 412 felt the boat shuddering as she clutched the tiller for dear life, convinced the driving rain was about to wash her right off the deck. The Dragon Boat’s wings were stretching wide now, green and billowing as the wind buffeted them. Boy 412 knew what a boat running aground felt like; it had happened to her troop on a night exercise in the Forest once, and trapped them on a sandbar until the morning tide, with the odious Deputy Hunter and his stinky breath in the boat with them. They needed to get free, but how?

    The gold light flashed off of her ring. Boy 412’s heart leaped. The ring was Magyk! She could use its power! But she didn’t know any spells—she’d have to make one up.

    “Snow is water; water, snow…” and then Boy 412 got very distracted, realizing she was copying a Young Army chant for the pattern of the Magyk. She had to force herself past the twisting feeling in her gut and blurt out, “Sail on ice like water’s flow!”

    The Dragon Boat’s keel dipped below the surface of the snow like it was a spring tide, and she settled, pleased at her Master’s quick thinking. This was much better; now she had room to take off. The storm excited her. She had not had a real challenge in ages.

    She beat her wings, and drove herself forward, her crew and Master aboard.

    The Hunter, who had run towards the source of the commotion when the Pack shouted for him, was knocked into the water with a splash for the second time that winter as the Dragon Boat’s tail flicked with excitement and caught him on accident. By pure luck the sharp barbs at the tip missed him, and he sputtered back to his feet soaking wet with only aching ribs from the blow.

    “Catch that boat!” the Hunter shouted furiously. He had the bullet boat; with his Commander guiding the Darke storm, he and the Pack could move faster than a huge lug of a ship, with all that draconic ornamentation weighing them down. But even as the Hunter scrambled back towards his boat, he was watching the shape of his prey grow smaller as they raced along the water, and he saw the Dragon Boat float higher—higher even than the surface of the water—the boat was flying.

    Her mast was on the deck, her sail still furled, but the Dragon Boat needed neither. She was a dragon, and she still had her wings. She had to resist the temptation to roll as she took to the skies again, but she ducked and dodged among the roiling winds for sheer joy, as she had not since she was a dragonet.

    Even without the boat doing a barrel roll, her crew were still being tossed about. The storm fought the Dragon Boat every inch of the way. Emma and Alma were crouched low, grabbing onto anything they could reach to keep from falling. Lynne was curled tightly around Missile, tucked into the tiny overhang of railing at the base of the Dragon Boat’s neck.

    Lynne wanted to get up and watch their flight, but she didn’t dare move and leave Missile hanging free in the freezing rain. She could hear Emma chanting Warm-Up Rhymes, shouting to try and reach Lynne and Alma with it too as they all shivered.

    Only Boy 412 didn’t mind the weather. She’d been out in worse storms than this, even with the lightning flashing and thunder rolling. She knew she could endure it. She hardly noticed the way the cold, which had plagued her ever since falling asleep on guard duty, was distant and easily ignored, the sleeve of her coat closest to the dragon ring drier than any other part of her.

    And it didn’t matter if she stumbled and accidentally yanked the tiller, like when the Dragon Boat dropped to avoid a strike of lightning and made Boy 412’s stomach swoop, because they weren’t in water and the Dragon Boat didn’t need her to steer.

    The Dragon Boat did need Boy 412 to see the Castle over the side, as it appeared out of the fog after what felt like hours of unchanging dark clouds, and realize where they were going.

    “No!” Boy 412 yelled. “Not there!” Her voice sounded barely loud enough to reach her own ears over the bellowing storm. She let go of the tiller to grab the Dragon Boat’s tail, both arms wrapped around it careless of the spikes digging into her, trying to tug something that would get the dragon’s attention. “We have to go somewhere safe! Somewhere hidden!”

    The Dragon Boat could hear every word of her Master’s plea. But the Castle, not safe? She stretched her long neck forward, peering through the rain at the circular isle in the middle of the Moat, striving to make out the danger.

    The Yonoa sat at the Palace landing stage, seething Darkenesse.

    Sith had left it full of the Things he’d Called Up over MidWinter, and the Magogs he’d brought as guards, while he relocated to the Palace. The lure of the Throne Room’s mystery kept him from fully taking up residence in the Wizard Tower—though he often left the Apprentice there alone. For the occasion he was up on the dome of the Palace, screaming “Blow! Blow! Blow!” as the winds boiled up from his raised hands and the saltwater tide washed into the Moat, Reversing the flow of the river.

    The Dragon Boat looked down with horror. She knew the Queen was dead; she knew the Princess had been hidden. But this…this was a disaster. Her Master was right. She had to take them to the safest, most hidden place she knew.

    Alma lost her grip and slid across the deck as the Dragon Boat banked, and hit the hull on the far side, where Emma caught hold of her. Boy 412 stumbled, barely hanging on to the thick tail as it lashed, rebalancing, and the Dragon Boat curved through the sky before the Darke Wizard could spot her.

    Boy 412 blinked furiously as rainwater streamed down her face, trying to keep the ground in sight. They were over the Farmlands now, because the ground was flat and not shaking like leaves in a tree canopy, but the Dragon Boat wasn’t flying away, just giving the Castle a berth. Even as Boy 412 risked leaning over the side to look, trying to calculate their direction, she banked again—back towards the Castle.

    The wave created by the Dragon Boat landing with a splash in the Moat soaked several rats, a flock of unfortunate pigeons sheltering from the weather, and a young man sitting under the overhang of the South Gate who thought he’d found a dry place to watch the storm. The young man sputtered, leaped to his feet as the several rats fled by skittering over his outstretched legs, and barely caught sight of the Dragon Boat, her wings billowing as she caught the headwind to slow herself down.

    The sight of her, preserved in a flash of lightning, was incredible. Against all sense, the young man ran after her, taking the Outside Path along the Castle wall. He could make out very little in the thundercloud darkness—except for the sudden gout of red fire that burst from the prow of the ship.

    Gasping, the young man strained for a better look. But the ship had vanished from the Moat.

    The gods had rewarded him. He’d gone out into the Magykal storm and seen a vision from heaven. The young man hurried off into the Ramblings to tell everyone about what he’d seen. The other denizens of the Ramblings dodged when he tried to speak to them with skill borne from years of practice, assuming he was handing out more leaflets.

    The tunnel was unnervingly still, the echo of the storm bouncing off the walls and lapping water so many times that it turned to a jumble of nonsense noise, more like distant shouting than like wind.

    The Dragon Boat pushed herself forward, wings folded at her sides. She was much calmer now that the Castle had proved it was not all changed; the golden disc had still been there in the wall, mounted above the narrow tunnel of the Underflow, and at the touch of dragon’s Fyre the wall had melted open to allow her in just like it used to. The usual quiet Underflow runoff was much too small for her; her last Master had seen fit to change that.

    Frost cracked as Lynne finally unfolded herself, shivering, and let Missile free. He jumped down to the deck, the boards slick with half-frozen rain, and shook himself, which didn’t do much to restore his fluff, or lessen his resemblance to a drowned rat. Lynne wasn’t much better, with her ponytail plastered over her face.

    Alma said, “Where are we?”

    “Under the Castle,” Emma said. She had been looking, and had seen the wall open up for them. “This must be somewhere very old…at least as old as the Dragon Boat herself.”

    The Dragon Boat came to a halt in the Underflow Quay. The shivering group, lit by Boy 412’s gently glowing ring, fumbled their way over her rail and onto the ancient stone floor.

    As Alma used Jowd’s Clothes-Drying Charm to wring the rainwater into a puddle at their feet, and Lynne did her best to scrub Missile, the Dragon Boat stretched out her head to get a better look at her Master. Boy 412 stood warily still, but When You Freeze, No One Sees did not seem to be working for her here. The Dragon Boat tilted her head back and forth to look at Boy 412 closely with each eye, and then straight on from the front.

    Clearly, her Master had some growing up to do, the Dragon Boat decided, but that was all right. She was out of the buried temple now, and could help guide the girl to become a good Master. When she was ready, they’d go sailing again, far over the seas like in the old days. The Dragon Boat hummed in satisfaction, a deep rumble in her throat, and nudged the hand that bore the ring approvingly.

    Emma followed the Dragon Boat’s attention. “That ring!” she gasped. “Where did you find it?”

    Boy 412 clapped a hand over the glowing ring, cursing herself. She’d let her guard down. Rule One, before all the other rules the weird Wizards had: never let your guard down. She was going to pay for it now. But she couldn’t give up without a fight, she just couldn’t. “It’s mine,” she forced out, voice shaking, “you can’t." Can’t what, she didn’t know. The adults around her for most of her life had seemed very able to Can whatever they wanted.

    “Of course not!” Emma said, startling Boy 412 so badly that she was speechless again. “It isn’t my ring. I am the Keeper—that is the ring of the Master of the Dragon Boat.”

    Master? Boy 412 looked at the Dragon Boat, really seeing her for the first time. The Dragon Boat gazed serenely back down at her.

    “I don’t want to be anyone’s Master,” Boy 412 said. The Dragon Boat was too beautiful. She couldn’t do that to her.

    “Good heavens, it’s not like that. I suppose in the Young Army you don’t have any suitable role models,” Emma said, immediately recognizing the issue. “A Mastery is an accomplishment—no, a responsibility! You have taken up her ring; the Dragon Boat belongs with you now, not to you. I’m sure she would have some strong opinions if you did try to order her around.”

    Lynne, trying to hide her disappointment, said, “A boat needs a captain to make sure she’s being sailed properly.” Jannit Marten called it ‘a steady hand on the tiller’, like a horse needing a confident rider to keep from spooking too much. “But where did you even find that?” Hotep-Ra’s Dragon Boat…no, Lynne was not jealous, she wouldn’t be jealous of some poor Young Army orphan getting a bit of good luck. A lot of good luck.

    “Yes, where was it?” Emma asked. “Under the island? Has it really been down there, all this time?” At Boy 412’s hesitant nod, Emma sighed dreamily. “What a beautiful weaving of fate. Exactly like I should have written in my books. Generations of Witches fail to find it and Keep it, only for a young boy in search of belonging to take it up! It’s simply perfect.”

    “Young girl,” Lynne said.

    “Really?” Emma looked down, and Boy 412 nodded again. “My most profuse apologies, my darling, you said your name was Boy 412.”

    “It is,” Boy 412 said.

    “Ah.” Then: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a different name?” Emma offered. Now that Boy 412 was talking, it was even more upsetting to remember that she only had a number. Emma felt a pang at the thought of Amelie, out there somewhere, not even knowing her own name.

    Boy 412 froze. A name? She’d only ever been ‘412’, even in the Domestic Service Training Hall. Names were for outsiders, Enemies, and the ones who’d started out too old to be a Boy and still secretly called themselves by something other than a number.

    Footsteps echoed.

    All of them turned to look in different directions, but as the footsteps approached, bringing with them a brighter light, it became clear that there was only one exit; there were three archways out of the quay, but two of them were bricked over. Through the open way, carrying a lantern, approached a familiar figure.

    “Holy shit, Alma?” Memry said, seeing their dripping group. “What are you doing here?”

    “Memry! I’m so glad you’re all right,” Alma said, going faint with relief at the sight of Memry in one piece.

    “Physically,” Memry grumbled, adjusting her grip on the strange lantern, a pyramid shape she was clutching from the bottom to support the candle within. The triangular sides made its light refract oddly around the room. “But never mind the rest of that, actually, how did you get here? I thought only Gramps knew about the old Alchemie warrens.”

    “Alchemie?” Alma looked around, unsure what Alchemie had to do with any of this place. “To be honest, I don’t even know where we are. The boat brought us here. Oh, yuck!” She had realized that the puddle of rainwater at their feet had turned black—just like the walls and floor of the stone room they were in, and the tunnel that Memry had come out of. Rather than paint or age, every surface was coated with soot, which had already started to drift down and stick to damp skin and clothes.

    Memry looked at the dragon-headed boat, which was looking back at her like it was alive, and decided that that sounded reasonable and she would interrogate Alma for details in a second. “Ohhhkay…”

    “Alchemie?” Emma gasped, echoing Alma with a delay of pure shock. “But I thought all the old Alchemist’s Ways were frozen over for good after the Great Alchemie Disaster!”

    “No, the Old Way’s still open,” Memry said, “that tunnel was never connected to the network except through the old Doors. But some parts around here were sealed off from the rest so the Emergency Freeze wouldn’t run out and hit the Moat, out here” She gestured to the quay, also gesturing at the Dragon Boat’s direction. The Dragon Boat shook her head, displacing a faint cloud of soot that had settled in the crevices of her scales. “Hard to run a Castle with a permanent, Magykal Big Freeze on its Moat. Anyway, Gramps only has access to the labyrinth and some of the old rooms.”

    “Wait,” Emma said, putting together several pieces of a puzzle in quick succession. Alma had told her that Memry had introduced them to Gomez, and now Memry had referenced ‘Gramps’ again. “Who is Gramps? Your doctor? Is your doctor an Alchemist?” No wonder she hadn’t been able to replicate Alma’s medicine! It was Physik, not Magyk!

    “I can’t go through the whole Alchemie explanation in this damp old hallway where the Freeze is constantly trying to leak in,” Memry said, eyeing the walls. “And you could do with a fire and some drier clothes…though I’m not sure what I can do about the second since we don’t have anything else for you all to wear. But follow me; I’ll take you to the Great Chamber, there’s plenty of space there.”

    “The what?” Alma asked. What Chambers did Memry know that could be called Great?

    “Sorry.” Memry rolled her eyes. “I obviously mean the ‘Great Chamber of Alchemie and Physik’. Not that it’s been doing anything, Great or otherwise, for a long time. Come on, let’s get moving, that storm out there isn’t getting any nicer.” The distant roar of thunder was still echoing, sending tiny waves lapping against the stone of the quay.

    Emma bid the Dragon Boat farewell, since she couldn’t follow, and soothed her with a promise that they would be back soon. Boy 412 saw her settle back into her bowed-head posture as they all followed Memry down the tunnel.

    “We’ll have to go through the Labyrinth,” Memry said, “but don’t worry, I know the way. Just don’t ever go through any side door, or lose sight of me. If you do, shout and I’ll come back for you.”

    Boy 412 had heard about labyrinths, but the twisting of the hallway as they seemed to retrace their own steps after every turn made her dizzy. There were endless blacker holes of open doorways in the blackness, illuminated by Memry’s light, which could have been hiding any number of monsters, ghosts, or Spirits. Strangely, at one point they came to a sudden turn into a hallway whose floor was scrubbed clean of the soot that had been sticking to everyone’s wet shoes, revealing flagstones lined at the edges with red and gold mosaic.

    From there the labyrinth looked much friendlier, and the brackets in the walls (which turned out to be made of gold) more often sported a lit torch. The walls got cleaner, too, the farther they went, and instead of gathering more soot their group started to leave a trail of sooty, smudgy footprints. This relieved Boy 412; at least she would be able to follow her own trail out again. Though now the floors were inexplicably sandy, especially in the corners, and the sand stuck to dampness even worse than the soot did.

    “Behold!” Memry said when they came around a final turn to a short, straight bit of hallway. “The entrance to the Great Chamber.”

    There was a pause as they all dutifully beheld the entrance: a pair of huge golden doors covered in dusty golden repoussage. They looked ancient and beautiful—or they might have, if they were not standing open, broken and bent like something powerful and violent had exploded out from them. The bottom edges of the doors were curling upwards, torn open with rents in the gold like fabric caught on a snag.

    “Yeah, Gramps was never able to fix ‘em,” Memry said. At the first sight of the doors, it was all too easy to remember the legendary Great Alchemie Disaster, and the Fyre that—it was said—had raged unceasingly until it was Frozen Over by the ExtraOrdinary Wizard of the time.

    “At least you have somewhere nice to hide out,” Alma said, after a long moment of trying to figure out what to say. The doors were golden.

    “Ha!” Memry snorted. “Yeah, uh, funny thing about people hiding out down here from the Supreme Custodian and his minions.” She went in around the doors, and the rest followed her.

    Inside was opulent, too, and even worse; another pair of doors at the far end were solid gold as well, equally embellished with Alchemical designs but unbroken, flanked by two golden suits of armor with golden swords. Gold was twinkling everywhere, on the torch brackets and off the numerous bits and bobs and filigrees that decorated the broad counters hugging the curving walls, and the gold leaf on the chairs that attended the central long table; it was all being burnished with a warm glow by the firelight coming from the open door of the large stove just inside the doorway.

    Queen Sissel looked up from her crouch in front of the fire.

Chapter Text

    Lynne froze.

    Boy 412 saw her go still, and slipped in front of her. The Princess didn’t know anything useful about keeping herself safe. Boy 412 wasn’t sure why everyone was staring at the lady by the nice warm stove, but clearly something big was happening.

    The Queen said, quietly, “Hello, Lynne.”

    “Your Majesty,” Emma said in a rather strangled voice. “What—how—you aren’t…”

    “Dead,” Queen Sissel said. “No. I’m not really a queen anymore, either.” She wiped her sooty hands on her sensible coveralls, which were already thoroughly blackened with soot. Boy 412 saw her eyeing the door like she wanted to leave, but they were all standing in the way and there was no room for someone of Queen Sissel’s size to get through.

    “Of course you are still our Queen,” Emma said, squeezing forward past Alma, who had a tight, protective arm over Lynne’s shoulders and was giving the Queen a surprisingly narrow look.

    “Since when?” said Queen Sissel. Emma stopped short. “What have I ever done to help any of you?”

    “Sissel,” Emma said, choking up, “my darling girl, I never thought I would get to see you again.” She fell down to wrap her arms around the Queen, breathing her in. Queen Sissel smelled rather dusty and unwashed, where once she had kept an old bottle of her mother’s perfume, carefully rationed out for special use at MidSummer when she came to see Emma and the Dragon Boat.

    Missile ruined the moment by finally negotiating his way to the ground and trying to wriggle under the stove to warm up. Boy 412 had to dive and grab him before he got burned, but she held him as close as seemed safe to the fire. She was cold, too.

    “How?” Emma asked, drawing Sissel to her feet so they could sit in the dusty chairs at the ancient table. “How did you end up here?”

    “Kaboter.”

    Only Emma recognized the name. Kaboter had been a close friend of the Queen’s since before her Coronation—and another attempted negotiation at MidSummer. “Are they here?” she asked hopefully, her spirits rising.

    “No, they…they got me out and said they were going back for…everyone else. They locked the door so I couldn’t go back with them,” Queen Sissel said dully.

    “So you came here?”

    “Gomez brought me here.” Queen Sissel shrugged. “He didn’t want me to stay in the Ice Tunnels.”

    Emma wondered how Kaboter knew about the Ice Tunnels underneath the Castle. She had heard of the former Alchemie ways, but had assumed they were frozen solid, only surviving in rumor. Now it seemed they were traversable; not only that, but Kaboter had used them to spirit Queen Sissel out of the chaos of the coup…and never come back to finish guiding her wherever they had meant her to go.

    “I wish I had been here to help,” Emma said. “I could have…” But what could she have done without abandoning her position as Keeper of the— “I forgot!” Emma gasped, “I plum forgot! Your Majesty, the Dragon Boat is how we got here. She would be so happy to see you again.”

    Queen Sissel rose to her feet, her hands slipping out of Emma’s grip. Even in the patched and faded coveralls, baggy around her legs and too tight at the chest, when she looked down at Emma, Emma saw only the purple eyes of the Queen.

    “Excuse me,” Queen Sissel said, and fled the room.

    Lynne tore herself away from Alma and took off after her. Memry jumped into the doorway to stop Alma from following. “Let ‘em go,” Memry said. “Lynne’s probably got some things to say to her.” Memry, who didn’t know Lynne was the Princess, had no idea how right she was; she only knew Lynne had had to grow up under the Supreme Custodian’s influence because of the Queen’s absence. Gomez had not let Memry say so much as boo to the Queen.

    “They’re only going to see the Dragon Boat,” Emma said. “It will be good for them both.”

    “Lynne is my daughter,” Alma snapped, “not the Queen’s. There is nothing she has to say that Lynne needs to listen to.”

    Boy 412 quietly gathered up Missile and slipped out of the room. She didn’t think Queen Sissel was going to the Dragon Boat.

    Queen Sissel had not gone to the Dragon Boat. The sight of Lynne had put her back in the Throne Room, ten years ago, and she did not need another reminder of being Queen. The Queen had lived up there somewhere, in the room where a young girl had looked up at her with a tentative smile, and not wavering shock with the reflection of bullets firing in her eyes—

    So she ran. It had worked before.

    Lynne had so many things to say that they were choking her. The sight of the Queen had made her smell blood and gunpowder again, and no matter how fast she ran after the footsteps disappearing into the distance of the labyrinth, she couldn’t run away from the memory. It all kept catching up to her. The Queen had been here the whole time.

    Lynne stumbled into random side rooms, and got turned around, until by sheer luck she found the Queen with her head bowed, hands on a frozen-over wall at a dead end in the labyrinth.

    “You ran,” Lynne panted. Queen Sissel’s fingers curled, digging into the ice. A stonework wall could be made out under the ice, but only faintly; it was thick with hoarfrost. “When they took you out of the Throne Room, you must have run away from them. You got away. And then you just stayed down here? For ten years?!”

    “Gomez won’t let me go up there,” Queen Sissel said. “Because the Supreme Custodian’s people have guns.”

    “Who cares who lets you do what? You’re the Queen! The Castle needs you!”

    “I know.” Queen Sissel still hadn’t turned around. “Some days I want to go up.”

    “You do?” Lynne, thrown off her footing, could only think to ask, “Why?”

    “Because the Supreme Custodian’s people have guns.”

    In the dreadful silence that followed, Lynne tried to convince herself that the Queen meant the Castle citizens were in danger of being shot by the regime. She didn’t succeed.

    “You should leave the Castle and never come back,” Queen Sissel said, her face still to the ice. “Maybe someday I’ll go up there, and I’ll find anything you signed and tear it up. You don’t have to do any of that anymore.”

    “You haven’t left,” Lynne said.

    “I can’t leave Yomiel.”

    Lynne had nothing to say to that.

    Missile came around the corner first, sniffing the floor, then Boy 412. Missile brightened at the sight of Lynne and went bounding up to her, still looking sad and skinny without his fluff.

    “Your mom is nervous,” Boy 412 told Lynne. She wasn’t going to make Lynne go back, but Lynne seemed like she’d like to know that kind of thing.

    “Oh. Okay.”

    “Also someone else came after us, but I don’t know who.” Boy 412 had heard other footsteps in the labyrinth.

    “What? But who else is down here?”

    “Gomez is,” Queen Sissel said, and took her hands away from the wall of ice. They came off with difficulty, as if the ice were unwilling to let her go.

    She didn’t move to show them where Gomez might be, or turn away from the ice wall. Lynne was wondering if Queen Sissel meant to stand at the frozen-over dead end forever, when Gomez came into the hallway.

    Gomez was a very short man, stooped and wearing worn, old-fashioned clothes that could have been black originally, or could have just been very, very sooty. His hair looked like Memry’s, except for where he might have had a bald spot on top—but there was a pigeon sitting comfortably on his head, making it hard to tell.

    “Lynne,” he said in perfunctory greeting, peering up at Lynne through thick and slightly tinted glasses, the chain of the golden pendant he always wore peeking out from under his broad, draping collar. Lovey-Dove peered down at Missile, who through years of training and getting him familiar with the little bird did not jump up and try to play with her. “I thought I saw Alma in the Great Chamber. I’d be interested to hear how you found this place, because I know Memry didn’t tell you the way.”

    “It’s my fault,” Boy 412 blurted out before she could lose her courage. ‘Interested to know’ was definitely code for ‘mad about all these people in his secret place’. Surely he couldn’t be that mad if he was the type to walk around wearing a pigeon? “We didn’t mean to come here, but I asked for somewhere safe, and the Dragon Boat brought us here.”

    “The Dragon Boat is real?”

    “Right?” Lynne said. “Obviously it was real, but she’s been here the whole time! Uh, not ‘here’ here, she was in the Marram Marshes.”

    Something unidentifiable flashed across the old man’s face. “Under Keeper’s Cottage?”

    “Yeah, actually.”

    Gomez’s gaze shifted to just past her. “Let me see your hands,” he said, and Queen Sissel didn’t hold them out to him or stop him from coming up and taking one of her hands in his own. Lynne pretended to be extremely interested in the glass globe of Everlasting Fire which had been mounted in the wall, just in front of the dead end. Somehow, frost was creeping over the glass.

    “I’m allowed to come here,” Queen Sissel said.

    “You’re also allowed to give yourself frostbite, but we’d all prefer you didn’t,” Gomez said. “Including you. Numbness only sounds good until you start losing fingers.” He gestured briskly at Lynne and Boy 412. “Come with me. There’s no wandering the labyrinth alone; there are too many ways to get lost down here if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

    “But wait,” Lynne said as they followed Gomez back to the Great Chamber. Queen Sissel lingered at the back of the group. “These are the old Alchemie ways, and you’re an Alchemist, right?”

    “Yes.”

    “So how could the Dragon Boat know about this place, and that tunnel she used, if you didn’t know she was real?”

    “Damned if I know. The Dragon Boat is older than even I am,” Gomez said. “Maybe she saw these halls before I did.” The idea rankled him. The old Alchemie halls had been his domain for so long that he hated thinking about previous Alchemists, especially the ones who had built the Great Chamber and the labyrinth in the early days of the Castle long before him. “No point worrying about it if you’re here now, unless you want to ask the Dragon Boat.”

    Queen Sissel quietly vanished into a side room. Gomez let her without remark, though Boy 412 saw him turn just a little to watch her do it.

    Back at the Great Chamber Alma leaped out of her seat at the sight of Lynne; she had been badly thrown by the sight of an empty quay with only the Dragon Boat and no Lynne. Lynne submitted to the tight grip with a distant look.

    “Where’s the Queen?” Emma asked.

    “Probably avoiding social interaction,” Gomez said. “We’re all out of practice down here. But there are far more important things to focus on. You are overdue,” Gomez told Alma. “You must have run out months ago.”

    The reminder made Alma wheel on him. Lynne stumbled, pulled off her footing. “Not just me—Jowd! Where is he?”

    “Jowd is in the Castle?” Gomez asked, surprised.

    Alma wilted. “You haven’t seen him?”

    “I wasn’t expecting to see either of you,” Gomez said. “I certainly wasn’t going up into that mess of a Castle, with guards running around pell-mell looking for escapees, and Assassins on the street. I sent a Message Rat with a note, but then Memry turned up and said you’d fled to the Port. I assumed you weren’t planning to return.”

    “Jowd said he’d go back to collect our medicine…” Alma nervously rubbed Lynne’s shoulder, further blackening it—she had put her hand on the wall of one of the tunnels while trying to follow Memry, who had given in and led her. “He sent word with the Chief, and mentioned your note, and said he’d wait until when you suggested. And something about bringing back Cabanela’s KeepSafe. But the Big Freeze came in before he could return. Memry, haven’t you seen him?”

    “No. I’m sorry. I haven’t gone up since I came down here to hide.” Even with the ExtraOrdinary’s KeepSafe, Memry wasn’t risking it.

    “Not Cabanela either?” Alma asked desperately.

    “What, he’s gone, too?”

    “He went to find Jowd.” Alma swallowed. “He never came back.”

    With a sinking feeling, Memry put a hand to the KeepSafe she had tied with twine around her neck as a pendant.

    “Mom, it’s okay,” Lynne said. “If anything, it’s probably the Chief who’s got some kind of problem and can’t come talk to us anymore.”

    “We won’t solve every problem here and now,” Gomez said. “Let’s begin with the basics.” Gomez got out a black wooden box from underneath one of the onyx-topped counters that hugged the walls of the Great Chamber. “There’s water in that tank near the doors, and a kettle on the stove, if one of you would start it boiling.”

    “For?” Emma asked, hardly daring to hope.

    Gomez opened the box to reveal rows upon rows of neat prepared capsules.

    Gomez had no spare bedding or anything comfortable that Memry and Queen Sissel weren’t already using, so Lynne borrowed the Dragon Boat’s sails (with many apologies, though the Dragon Boat didn’t mind) to pad the ground in the Great Chamber for the four of them to sleep on. Emma Conjured a few pillows, and with the large stove fueled, it was comfortably warm, even though they were all in their underthings; Emma had insisted on hanging up a clothesline for their clothes, recently scoured by Emma’s best and oddly specific Soot-Be-Gone spell, to dry.

    Boy 412 had refused to take off her yellow hat, but reluctantly submitted to the rest. She spent the night on the edge of the sails, where it would be easy to get up and leave the warm intertwined pile the other three ended up sleeping in. She only participated to rest a hand on Missile while she fell asleep, where he was curled in Lynne’s arms, and drifted off listening to the crackle of the fire and the infrequent drip of wet clothes.

    Queen Sissel did not reappear until morning, when the water tank leaked unexpectedly when Emma tried to fill the kettle, and Gomez went to find her. She fixed the leak in the supply pipe with surprising aptitude, and slipped neatly out around Emma when Emma tried to talk to her.

    “Where exactly does Her Majesty stay in here?” Emma huffed, after Gomez had to come get her out of the labyrinth when she got lost trying to follow the Queen.

    “One of the old spare rooms,” Gomez said. “I wouldn’t encourage her to retake her throne.” This needed warning was the main reason he had found a way to get Emma alone, instead of stopping her from going into the labyrinth in the first place. “I’ve spent a lot of time convincing her it’s a bad idea to go back there.”

    “’Back there’—? As if ‘there’ is not ‘here’, and she has not stayed ‘here’ in the Castle all this time,” Emma said. “The Castle needs a Queen and—”

    “She tried to kill herself twice in the first week.”

    Emma said nothing.

    “That’s if you don’t count wandering the Ice Tunnels, letting herself freeze to death,” Gomez said. “I give her the same treatment I give Alma, but it’s not a panacea. Her husband’s dead. She doesn’t want to rule without him. It’s not a kindness to pile that responsibility on her shoulders, nor is it going to result in what you want.”

    “But,” Emma said, “to live down here, forever? As what, your assistant plumber?”

    “Helping clean up gives her something to do.” Gomez shrugged. Queen Sissel’s aid had helped, but Memry was the real reason he’d even tried. She’d complained unceasingly about the “sooty dump of a hole” he’d reclaimed from the burned-out halls, and insisted Gomez couldn’t keep living like that. (He didn’t think his little side room was all that bad.) Queen Sissel had removed most of the soot, working steadily from the Great Chamber out; he was fairly sure she had memorized all the routes of the labyrinth. “She’s a good student.”

    “A student?”

    “I’m not teaching her Alchemie, if that’s what’s offending your Witchy sensibilities.” Gomez looked away from Emma at last. “I don’t take Apprentices anymore.”

    Emma said, “You are him, aren’t you? Gomez, the Last Alchemist.”

    “If that’s what people are calling me these days.” Gomez knew that was what people called him.

    “You were married to the Keeper of your era.”

    It was Gomez’s turn to say nothing.

    Emma said, “I am sorry he never told you about the Dragon Boat.” Some Keepers married, but most didn’t—it was a hard thing to be asked to keep secrets from your spouse. Generations of Keepers had suspected that the Last Alchemist had not actually been Kept from very many secrets at all, but by Lynne’s recounting of events, Gomez had never learned the most precious one.

    “We don’t have to keep talking,” Gomez said, and indeed, the conversation ended there.

    Alma greeted the new day with both renewed determination and heightened ambition. It was perfectly reasonable to her, in between checking that Lynne had not collapsed from an improbable heart attack in the last thirty seconds and was not hungry or thirsty or uncomfortable, that by the end of the day they could have the Supreme Custodian’s head on a pike, if only someone would let her be in control of their planning.

    They had no weapons, little Magyk, and most importantly, zero ability to prevent the Supreme Custodian’s Master from interfering with Magyk of his own.

    “Obviously we’ll find Cabanela first,” Alma said.

    “You make it sound so easy,” Memry said, fiddling with her KeepSafe pendant. “How? None of us can be seen in the Castle without getting the Custodian Guard called on us.”

    “Lynne can teach you a basic UnSeen,” said Alma, while at her side Lynne shook her head at Memry, wide-eyed, trying to convey that she could barely make her own UnSeen work on herself.

    “Alma, you know I’d trip over something and give away the whole UnSeen game before I got more than halfway down a street,” Memry said, to Lynne’s relief.

    “We have to do something!”

    “Why don’t I try and See him?” Emma offered. “The moon may be waning, but there’s still a fair bit of him left in the sky. That way we’ll know where to start, and then we can begin making plans about how and when to go up.” Emma waited for Alma’s nod. “Which of them should I look for first?”

    Alma said, “Jowd.”

    While they waited for the moon to rise, Gomez roped most of them into cleaning up the Great Chamber. Boy 412 cunningly avoided this duty by taking Missile to do his business.

    Before Memry came to visit so often, the Great Chamber had still been full of sand from the anti-Fyre safety protocols, trapped behind what had been melted into glass when the Fyre broke the doors’ seal. It had taken years just to clean out that one room. The broken glass was long gone, but the sand had a tendency to hide in corners, and was now being tracked all over the place by Gomez’s horde of unexpected guests.

    Gomez insisted they sweep it up—though he forbade them from going too close to the closed pair of doors on the far side of the room. And when they’d done that, he set them to washing the Physik and Alchemie tools which were stored in the chamber, and had mostly survived the Disaster.

    “This place would be cleaner if Memry wasn’t so adept at dodging anything that smells like a chore,” Gomez said, handing Lynne yet another dusty old jar. Memry was the only reason Alma wasn’t hovering over Lynne’s shoulder. The two ladies were busy with the counter on the other side of the room, as Lynne helped Gomez clean what seemed like miles of thin glass tubing and some strangely shaped beakers. Several large jars were suspiciously sludgy. Lynne didn’t want to know what used to be in them. “For someone who’s so proud to call herself my descendant, you’d think she’d try harder to participate.”

    Lynne wrinkled her nose. “Why do you call Memry your descendant, and not your niece?” Lynne looked again at Gomez’s age spots. “Or, grandniece?” Though Memry called him Gramps, Lynne remembered that Gomez had once said something about not having any children when Alma asked.

    “Because she’s not my grandniece. She’s my descendant.” Gomez set a damp beaker on an ancient drying rack, which they had cleaned first.

    “Okay, but she can’t be your great-grandniece, because that’s like four generations of people. You’re not that old.”

    “I’m five hundred years old.”

    “No you’re not,” Lynne scoffed. “You couldn’t be.”

    “I discovered the secret to eternal youth with Alchemie.”

    Less certain now, Lynne nonetheless pointed out, “You’re not young, though.”

    “It took me a long time to work out the secret.”

    Lynne opened her mouth, closed it, and frowned at Gomez. Maybe he was really deadpan when he joked. Or maybe he was serious. Gomez, who had recently passed his five hundred and seventy-fourth birthday (he didn’t celebrate, but kept track for scientific accuracy), did not offer any further evidence one way or another.

    Staring fixedly down at the ancient jar she was rinsing out, and unlike Memry not eavesdropping on the conversation happening behind them, Alma said, “Do you think he’s all right?”

    “Of course,” Memry said. “Jowd’ll be fine.”

Chapter Text

    Jowd only raised his head when the Chief entered because it was the Chief’s second visit.

    “How is he?” he asked. “Any change?” He drooped when the Chief only shook his head, mouth pressed into a grim line.

    “I can’t stay long,” the Chief said. He had hardly dared leave Cabanela the first time, to tell Jowd what had befallen him, and felt no easier about it now. “Are you well?”

    Jowd gestured to Rindge, who was working still on the ice long frozen over the narrow entrance to the Hole In The Wall.

    “Ah,” the Chief said quietly. Not much had changed here, either.

    “Ha!” Rindge gave a sudden cry of triumph, drowned out by a sound like shattering glass. A pile of ice was at his feet, spilling inwards from the exit, through which a fresh chill wind was blowing in.

    Rindge ran over to Jowd, careless of the ghosts hurrying out of his way. “Let’s get out of here! Oh, Chief, hi. Come on!” Rindge was prepared to haul Jowd over his shoulder, if need be, and Jowd’s knees did creak threateningly when he was pulled to his feet—he hadn’t gotten up in…he hadn’t kept track.

    Lethargy dragged at Jowd as Rindge pulled hard enough for him to take a step. What difference would it make if he just sat here until the wood rotted out from under him?

    “Go,” the Chief urged him, “go! I’ll tell Cabanela you’re all right. Go back and tell Alma what happened.”

    Jowd wanted to see Alma again. He took another step forward.

    The cold, stinging air was so welcome after being stuck inside the musty Castle walls that Rindge risked loosening the hood of his cloak. After the first Custodian Guard they had to duck behind an overflowing trash bin to avoid, he took the plunge and took his hat off, stuffing it into his pocket. The wind immediately sent his hair streaming out behind him.

    Rindge had gone to some pains over the years to grow out his hair, as he felt it was more feminine, and since he hadn’t bothered changing much else about himself—or indeed stopped calling himself ‘he’—he felt he ought to do something noticeable. It was down to his waist on a windless day, and he was prouder of it than nearly anything else in his life. Only work obliged him to keep it up so it wouldn’t get tangled in the drawbridge chains, but he’d been fired from the Gate, hadn’t he?

    “Where’s your boat?” Rindge whispered. Jowd had said he’d sailed back to the Castle.

    “Raven’s Rock,” Jowd said succinctly, not so much whispering as not bothering to raise his voice.

    That would be tricky. Not to mention the Moat and the river would still be full of ice. But first things first: they had to get out of the Castle without being seen.

    Rindge took a step and immediately tripped over a cat.

    “MOW,” said the little black cat in offense, but then said “MOW!” again, insistently, when Rindge had gotten to his feet and dusted himself off, wet snow stains already clinging to his clothes.

    “Sorry,” Rindge said.

    “MOWWWW.” The cat stalked away, turned back to look at him, and then came tapping back over. “Mrroow!”

    “It wants you to follow it,” Jowd said.

    “What? How do you know?”

    Jowd shrugged. “Cats and dogs aren’t that dissimilar.” Only this cat wasn’t dancing back and forth on his paws in excitement and panting, like Missile would have.

    The cat made a hacking hairball noise, eyed Jowd with disdain, and padded away again. He sat down at the corner of the alley and looked back over his shoulder; Rindge could imagine exactly how the cat was saying Well, are you coming?

    “Following a cat,” Jowd said, like it was a grand joke. “What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like we have any better ideas.”

    They didn’t, but that didn’t mean Rindge liked a stupid idea. Still…something about the cat was prickling at his barely tuned (indeed barely used yet) Magykal senses. There was something about him…

    “Okay,” said Rindge. “I trust your judgement.”

    The cat “Prrup!”ed in satisfaction when Rindge started to walk after him, and set a slow pace through the piles of dirty snow slumped against every wall. Woodsmoke was nearly as thick in the air as the scent of frost, and the steady icy crunch underfoot told Rindge that Jowd was following him.

    The cat stopped at random turnings and intersections, huddling to hide, unerringly right before a guardsman rounded the corner. It was enough warning for Rindge and Jowd to get out of sight. Without ever being spotted, even by the busy and more numerous than ever guards, the cat led Rindge and Jowd unerringly to a completely unremarkable stoop halfway down a side street off the Main Way.

    Rindge sighed. The cat threw himself across his feet, purring in satisfaction.

    “And we’re nowhere near the South Gate,” Rindge muttered, worrying at his hat in his pocket, wanting to put it back on. The cat ignored him to drop down and wiggle through a small hole in the snow, large enough to have been dug by a cat, and disappear under the porch. “Thanks for that, cat.” He knew Jowd’s judgement was all out of order right now, and yet he still trusted the man.

    “We can’t stay here,” Rindge muttered, looking around the street. He might as well have been talking to himself; Jowd didn’t answer.

    A pair of Custodian Guards turned the corner, ornamented with double-crossed red sashes.

    “Special Inspection!” One guard shouted down the street. Wide-eyed faces jerked away from windows where they had been watching the new arrivals; curtains slammed shut. The other guard was already striding towards the first house’s door. “In the name of the Supreme Custodian, open up!”

    The door of the stoop they were standing on flew open, and Rindge and Jowd were yanked inside.

    “Were they after you?” panted the youth who had yanked them. They were panting mostly from the effort of having yanked Jowd, who required considerable leverage.

    “They would have been,” Rindge said, before he could think it was a bad idea to be so honest. The stranger was already ducking around him to throw the door shut again. “I—I don’t think they saw us.”

    “Good. Now get out of sight; they’re coming down the street.”

    Rindge found himself and Jowd shoved into a side room, where the curtains were already shut. There was an old man with a blanket over his lap in an armchair that was leaking stuffing, and Rindge flinched at the sight of him, then chastised himself for flinching. The man’s face was half covered in old burn scars.

    “Looks nasty, doesn’t it?” the old man said, a smile tugging at his mouth. “The only way to look nastier would be to dress in navy and red.”

    “Uncle, keep it down,” the youth at the door said. “Remember, you’re alone in there!”

    “Right.” The old man slumped down in his chair as if unable to hold himself up properly. Rindge pressed himself and Jowd against the wall, out of sight of anyone standing at the door.

    The knock of the Special Inspection guard came banging hard against the door. They had barged in on many a house over the years, on any pretense to haul away “contraband” or throw someone who had offended a particular guard in the lock-up for a few nights. The youth faked some soft and then loud stomps on the floorboards, mimicking walking in from another room like they hadn’t been standing there waiting, and then cracked the door open. Rindge heard a chain jangle as the door was caught before the Guard could push it all the way open.

    “Open up,” the guard barked.

    “Oh! But I can’t,” the youth said in a higher pitch, voice quavering. Were they a little muffled? “The doctor said we’re supposed to be under quarantine until my Uncle gets well.” The old man in the chair, who had been breathing loudly, let out a wheeze.

    “That’s no excuse to—gods in heaven.” Apparently the chain was just lax enough to give anyone at the door a view to the old man’s chair.

    “He has a terrible skin condition,” the youth explained, still using that hesitant, overawed voice. “It’s incurable, and the doctor says it’s reached his lungs. There’s not much to be done except make him comfortable. But if you really have to come in, you can have some of these cloths to tie over your mouth, so you don’t breathe in any of the dead skin and get infected. It starts with a rash in, um, delicate places. Did you know,” they said, perking up as if called to share a particular fascination, “most household dust is made up of dirt shed from human skin?”

    “I didn’t,” another voice said, sounding nauseous.

    “Shut up,” hissed the first guard. Through the door again, he ordered, “Show us your papers.”

    Papers were shown, and rifled through hurriedly. They had hardly been shoved back at the young man with a quick “All in order, then,” before the guards were yanking the door shut. Footsteps rushed away from the door.

    The old man stopped wheezing and sat up. “Are they gone, Kay?”

    “Hee hee,” Kay said. A drawer slammed shut with another rustle of papers. “Couldn’t be away fast enough, those two. Bet they’re gonna be checking their butts for rashes for weeks. I love when we get new guards on Special Inspection duty.” Kay came into the side room, untying a cotton cloth from around the lower half of their face.

    “That wasn’t true?” Rindge asked in relief, ceasing to hold his breath.

    “The only skin condition I have is age,” the old man said. “Which is indeed incurable, but I’m afraid you’ve already been infected.”

    “Miw!” The same black cat from before came trotting up the hall, leaving wet pawprints on the carpet.

    “Did you bring them here?” Kay asked, and the cat purred. “Well, if Sissel vouches for you, I guess you two are all right. He doesn’t go out of his way to see us very often.”

    Rindge noted the cat was named after the old Queen with surprise. If the pair were monarchists, that explained why they’d been so ready to foil the Custodian Guard. And if this kind of thing had happened to them before…

    “Have you seen Memry?” Rindge blurted. “The girl who works at the Chicken Kitchen?”

    Kay’s face filled with sympathy. They, like everyone else, had heard about the restaurant burning down just before the Big Freeze. “She hasn’t passed through here,” they said. “Sorry. Do you know her?”

    “I’ve been looking for her,” Rindge said disconsolately. “As much as I can.”

    “Maybe she’ll turn up. The SC’s still looking for her, yeah? People start to move again once the Thaw’s let them come out of their hidey-holes. Like water melting back into motion.”

    Rindge’s heart lifted to imagine Memry simply holed up somewhere, like he had been. “Would she come here?”

    “If she passes the sniff test.” Kay knelt to scratch under the cat Sissel’s chin. “You keep an eye out for our girl, yeah? Let her know she should come here if she needs help. Her friends’ll be waiting.”

    “Miw!”

    Relieved at the indirect invitation to stay and wait for her, Rindge sat down and allowed himself to take his hat back out. He wound his hair up one-handed, with practice, to settle it in place underneath.

    “Oh!” Kay said as Rindge tugged his brim down. “You’re the Gatekeeper! I didn’t recognize you at all.”

    “Most people don’t,” Rindge said, drooping at the reminder of his now former job. He went out with his hat off rarely, and among a select group of people in the Castle. Most people had never seen him without it on.

    “Well, you look great.”

    Rindge flushed at the unexpected compliment, and tugged his brim lower over his eyes, running a hand over the nape of his neck to check for stray hairs. “Thanks.” Gods, he’d missed company, stuck in that ghostly tavern.

    “Probably better to keep that hat on for now, though,” Kay said, and flicked a finger to point under the brim. “Your eyes are starting to go green.”

    Emma had Seen Jowd at a kitchen table with a hot drink, though she hadn’t been able to See the people around him; the spell was focused on Jowd, not his companions. Alma had begged her to try Cabanela next, but Emma had overextended herself trying to See a second person on the same night with the same thin moon, and gotten a splitting migraine for her trouble. Witches’ Sight was not always able to be so purposefully focused; it more often came uncalled-for.

    Emma had retired to bed with an elixir Gomez made up for her, and with little else to do, the rest of them had followed suit.

    Lynne was lying awake, wondering where Jowd was, and who was taking care of him.

    Alma had extinguished their few candles when they went to bed (Gomez allowed them only a few; he had a horror of fire catching and kept buckets full of sand in every corner, where they put what had been swept up that morning). The only other source of light was the odd blue keystone of the arch over the doors Gomez told them not to touch, which glowed in the dark.

    When Lynne saw the flicker of firelight, she sat up, sure that someone else was sneaking around with a candle to go do something that would maybe take her mind off Jowd if she went with them.

    Under the threshold of the unbroken doors at the far end of the Great Chamber, there was the shadow of someone standing, waiting with a light.

    Well, that was something.

    Lynne got up. She meant to get on her stomach and look under the doors, seeing what she could through the gap at the threshold. But when she got within a pace of them, the golden statues unsheathed their golden swords, holding the points so they hovered an inch in front of her throat. She backed away hurriedly, and the swords went back into their sheaths, the golden armor going immobile again.

    Gomez hadn’t said anything about them being Enchanted suits of armor. Lynne rubbed her throat. There wasn’t any chance of getting past the knights to the door.

    What was Gomez doing with a huge pair of doors that he said went nowhere, anyway? They couldn’t be just for showing off if there was something—someone—on the other side. And they were all fancy, with elaborate Alchemical symbols hammered into the gold, even one that was split down the middle by the seam where the doors met, a palm-sized circle with seven stars and…hey, wait a second.

    The metallic slide of the swords into their sheaths had woken Missile, who raised his head, snuffling, to see Lynne walking away. Lynne saw him jump up and hastily said “Missile, shhhh!”

    Missile knew what “shhh” meant, even though everyone thought he didn’t. It wasn’t that he was a bad boy who couldn’t listen; it was just so much more important to say hello to everyone, even when he’d said hello to them before! They had to be welcomed home! Or warned off, if he was finding weird scent trails on the Marshes!

    But it was dark and everyone else was asleep right there next to him. Missile bravely swallowed his urge and did not say Hi!! or Good morning!! He did follow Lynne out, like a good boy who knew his job was to help everyone stay safe.

    “Gomez!”

    Gomez had been alone too long to keep in practice at not being startled. He flinched and nearly dropped the vial he was holding when Lynne barged into the room, accompanied by a flurry of excited barking.

    “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” he demanded. “I could have been holding a vial of acid!”

    Lynne went bug-eyed at the stain now decorating the front of his tunic. “Were you??”

    “No.” He was experimenting with antifreeze; the walls got damper and icier every year as the Freeze from the Ice Tunnels leached through.

    “Oh.” Lynne switched tracks back to her original goal. “It’s important! Missile, shhh. I need your pendant.”

    Gomez’s hand went involuntarily to the lump under his shirt. The round gold Keye hung heavily on its chain. “No, you don’t.”

    “What? Yes, I do! There’s someone stuck on the other side of those doors you said were a dead end. I think they’re trying to get through. Also, your armor tried to stab me.”

    “The armor’s supposed to do that. It keeps people away from the doors.”

    Annoyed at Gomez’s cavalier treatment of her near-death experience (okay, almost near-death, what if she hadn’t stopped in time and walked right into the sword point?), Lynne grew more stubborn. “But I’ve gotta get them open right now.”

    “No,” Gomez said, “you don’t. There is nothing for you on the other side.”

    “Yes, there is,” Lynne said impatiently. “I saw them, there’s a person’s shadow under the doors like someone holding a light and standing there.”

    “I know what you saw. You don’t need to tell me.”

    Lynne scooted around Gomez, getting in between him and the rag he was reaching for to mop up the spill. “You know already? So who is it?”

    “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

    “Tell me,” Lynne persisted. “What if it’s someone who could help? Do you know them? What if it’s Jowd.”

    “It is not Jowd,” Gomez said. He sighed. “It’s me.”

    “What’s you?”

    “On the other side of the doors. I built those to lock away the Great Glass of Time, so no fool could Go Through without me knowing. The only person on the other side is myself, waiting for me to open the Doors of Time for him.”

    Shocked, Lynne said, “But…if it’s you, then why don’t you open them?”

    Gomez said, “He’ll learn why when he grows up to be me.” He reached around Lynne for the rag. “Go back to sleep. It will stop by morning.”

    Lynne stayed up, Missile in her lap, and watched the shadow pace back and forth on the other side of the Doors of Time for hours before the light finally went dark.

Chapter Text

    Brother Moon, as Emma called him, was waning even slimmer the next night, but she upheld her promise to Alma and tried to See Cabanela again.

    Emma grimaced immediately, pressing a hand to her head. “Don’t overdo it,” Alma said impulsively, then wished she hadn’t given Emma an excuse to stop, then felt angry at herself for forcing Emma past her limits just for a glimpse of Cabanela.

    “No—” Emma said, “That is—it’s the same as last night…but something here isn’t right!”

    “What isn’t?” Boy 412 asked, curious about the Witchy Magyk.

    “A mere bit of Sight doesn’t exhaust me like this,” Emma muttered, face still screwed up against the return of that vicious migraine. Her regular sight was wavering with telltale bursts of light, signaling that this was going to be a bad one, but her Second Sight did not rely on that. “This is something…from the other side,” she realized aloud. She was trying to See Cabanela, and something there was stabbing back at her.

    “You mean Cabanela doesn’t want to be Seen?” Alma asked, confused and worried. Cabanela was powerful and talented enough to put up a Block, but why would he have? Emma merely waved at her for silence, and Alma subsided, letting Emma focus.

    Emma, like most Witches, had cultivated her Second Sight from its ordinary source as a gut feeling into a Magykal sense that stretched further than most Wizards’, and she trusted her Sight better than she did the eyes she saw with the rest of the time. The Sight never showed her false. And, muttering an Anti-Darke Chant under her breath, she broke through the haze that clouded it and Saw Cabanela.

    Emma cried out and recoiled.

    The renewed migraine left Emma in too much pain to say much. But between Gomez’s efforts as a trained Physician, and Alma’s expertise in herbalism, she was plied with enough cures from Gomez’s store of ingredients to break the back of the most vicious brain disease.

    “It’s awful,” Emma said, nursing a steaming cup of powerfully scented tisane, “just awful. The Supreme Custodian must have captured him; there’s no other explanation. I Saw him in the midst of Darke spirits, at the bottom of a deep hole.”

    “Dungeon Number One,” Alma breathed, shooting to her feet. “We’ve got to get him out of there. We have to go after him.”

    “What? Alma, how? We don’t even know where it is,” Memry said, getting a preventative grip on Alma’s wrist.

    “How can you say that? We have to do something! They’ve put him in that awful hole, and everyone knows Dungeon Number One is some ancient well or something! He’s probably all the way down in the foundations of the Castle, and we’re underground! We must be able to find him.”

    “Wait,” Gomez said, “Everyone knows that Dungeon Number One is where?”

    “As if no one has ever heard of a normal dungeon,” Gomez fumed, pacing back and forth. “Who cares about things like sanitation? Not Darke wizards! Surely no one will mind if they just fill in the old Alchemie chimney and throw some prisoners down it. It’s not like the Alchemists are using it anymore. Barbarians.” He wasn’t using the Chimney anymore, and hated being reminded of it. Gomez stalked towards the doors.

    “Wait!” Alma blocked him from leaving. “Where is the chimney? How do we get there?”

    “Get there? That whole area is a seething, dangerous mess. Forget it.”

    “Forget it?? My friend is trapped in that ‘dangerous mess’, and I am not leaving him there,” Alma snapped.

    Gomez, feeling the ache of every one of his centuries, and of all the friends who had become ghosts, said, “What’s the point?”

    Lynne saw Alma go pale with rage, and something inside herself that was still thinking of the shadow under the door snapped.

    “You’re a coward,” Lynne said.

    “What?”

    “‘What’s the point’?? The point is to help people! Would you have let Mom and Jowd die if Memry hadn’t forced you to come help them?” Missile started howling in concert as Lynne yelled. “You won’t even be nice to yourself! You’ve been alone down here for so long that you have totally forgotten that other people exist! Cabanela is alive up there, and he might not be any more if we don’t do something!!”

    Alma stifled a noise. But Lynne heard it, and she looked up at Alma with a guilty start.

    “I didn’t mean it,” she said. Boy 412 crouched to shush Missile. “He’s not going to die. I promise. I’ll go with you. We’ll figure it out.” When she looked back down, Gomez seemed very small, and she felt even more wretched. “Sorry for yelling,” Lynne said. “I just—yeah.”

    “Anyway, he’s not alone,” Memry said suddenly. “He has me. Right?”

    Gomez’s voice was very quiet. “Of course I do.”

    Lynne said, “So where’s the chimney?”

    “…I’ll go take a look.” Gomez crossed the room to a closet off to the side, which no one had particularly paid attention to before then.

    “I’m coming with you,” Alma said, as Gomez pulled out of the closet a dusty but surprisingly un-moth-eaten set of black robes.

    He scowled, and shook the robes hard, loosening a quantity of sand from their folds. “No one is coming with me who doesn’t have their own tried and tested protection against the Darke.” He threw the robes on over his head, making the gold embroidery (of Alchemical symbols, naturally) glimmer. They were his old Castle Alchemist’s robes, and they had stood up against Darker things than the Vortex Emma described.

    “I am coming with you.”

    “I am too,” Lynne said. She wasn’t letting Alma go alone. Well, without-Lynne alone.

    “The area around the chimney is not safe to be in,” Gomez said in frustration. He had been observing the steady progression of its ambient Darkenesse for centuries without knowing that the reason was the pile of moldering skeletons stopping it up like a chimney swift’s nest.

    “We’re not sending you off to take a look,” Alma said, “we are getting him out of there.”

    “We’re coming,” Lynne summed up, making a sweeping gesture at everyone else in the room. “So what do we have to do to be safe?”

    Gomez looked at her for a long moment. Then he walked away and stuck his head into the hallway. “Sissel!” Emma’s jaw dropped at the lack of title or honorific.

    The Queen appeared around the edge of one door. “Yes?” She had been walking up and down the tunnels, taking temperature readings from the walls on Gomez’s behalf.

    “You know the room with the Vat?”

    “Yes.” It was a very inefficient bathroom, which was how Queen Sissel sometimes used it.

    “Have as much water as you can heated and ready for us. When we get back, we may have someone who needs a thorough DeContamination.” Gomez rattled off a list of directions that went so fast it sounded like nonsense to Lynne, but Queen Sissel only nodded back. “Can you get that ready?” Another nod.

    “I’ll stay and help with that,” Emma said. She had a thorough knowledge of keeping the Darke out; she used it often on the Marshes, especially during the Dark of the Moon and the longer winter nights. Plus, she doubted she would be able to keep sipping her tisane on a rescue mission.

    “Huh,” Gomez said, but didn’t reject her. Alchemie and Magyk were not incompatible; it had just been a long time since he’d seen it done. “Fine. Lynne, Alma, how are you going to—”

    “And me,” Memry said impulsively. “I’ll come.”

    Gomez heaved an exasperated sigh. “Is anyone else going to insist on this?”

    “I’ll come with you,” Boy 412 said. “I can use Magyk.”

    Gomez gave Boy 412 a skeptical look. “And what Magyk do you know, exactly, to protect yourself from the Darke?”

    Boy 412 pointed inside the closet, where several other sets of ancient robes hung. “I’m your size.”

    Boy 412 was perfectly comfortable inside one of Gomez’s older robes, from when he was younger and not yet so stooped or skinny (Boy 412 had eaten a lot of Emma’s cooking over the winter). However, they were far too small for everyone else.

    Gomez flatly refused to lend the other three any kind of alternate Darke protection, saying his cloaks were all he had. Memry was only further convinced that this meant he did have other options stored away somewhere, and was duly impressed by the Darke dabbling this implied. Alma, however, was relieved; the only true protection against the Darke was if it thought you were a part of it, and she was not looking forward to figuring out how to make that happen. Especially for Lynne.

    “Maybe we could cut up the other cloaks and put them together to make a big one,” Lynne suggested, but Gomez only had three old Alchemie cloaks, and he and Boy 412 were wearing two of them. Alma remembered an Enlarge she sometimes used on herbs if foraging had come up scarce, and between her, Boy 412, and Lynne’s earnest effort, they Enlarged the remaining cloak enough for Alma to divide it between her, Memry, and Lynne—giving Lynne the largest portion of fabric.

    “This smells like there was an explosion in a bathroom,” Memry said. “And the cloak was also in the bathroom.”

    Gomez ignored her (though Lynne, trying to sniff her own cloak discreetly, didn’t disagree.) “I’m putting you all through DeContamination, too, when we get back,” Gomez said, eyeing the Enlarged fabric distrustfully. He was not sure all its protection was still in one piece. But Alma knew perfectly well that making a spell bigger too fast could tear holes in it, and she had led the Enlarging slowly, repeating the spell several times to grow the spare robe by increments.

    “Good,” Alma said. “Now let’s go.”

    Gomez, leaving Lovey-Dove behind in a large and comfortable cage, led them up flight of steps that went directly out of the Great Chamber. There was a door at the top, oddly square, and also completely frozen over. Gomez pressed his Keye to the round depression in the center, and the ice UnSealed, melting with a hiss of frozen air.

    “Cabanela said something before about escaping through the Ice Tunnels,” Alma murmured, her breath puffing out in clouds as they climbed out into a square tunnel, every surface frozen over with a thick layer of slippery ice. “He must have known about these, the whole time.”

    “We’ll ask him when we get him out,” Lynne said, squeezing Alma’s hand. Alma squeezed back. In Lynne’s other hand, she gripped the poker she’d taken from the stove below. It couldn’t hurt.

    Gomez ReSealed the door once Memry had helped him haul out (with many grunts of effort) a large sled. Memry dropped it on the ice with a huff, its runners slamming down. “Where’d you get this thing?”

    “Around,” said Gomez, who had stolen it a few centuries back as soon as it looked plausibly abandoned. He possessed little talent for carpentry and had wanted a decent-sized sled to carry loads if needed.

    It was a short sled ride (Boy 412 hung off the back) to another square door, which Gomez also UnSealed and ReSealed behind them, leaving the sled tied by its thick leading rope to an iron ring just outside the hatch. Then it was down another set of stairs, out of the ice, and into a cavernous hallway, gleaming with mosaics untouched by soot or sand, but absolutely covered in dust. Memry started sneezing until she wrapped her share of cloak around her face.

    “Hey,” Lynne said, staring down the hallway, “That’s the other side of those Doors! You said there wasn’t anything on the other side.” Far in the distance glimmered a very familiar pair of Doors, with an identical set of armored knights guarding it.

    “This isn’t anything,” Gomez said. “It’s the Old Way to the Palace; there’s nothing here but the dust of ages.”

    “That’s not true, your glass fire sphere things are all over the place.”

    Without responding, Gomez set off down the Old Way, lit warmly by the glass globes of Everlasting Flame set into the walls at even intervals. Lynne and the others followed him, Alma nearly treading on his heels.

    There must have been miles of identical, repetitive tiled floor and vaulted ceiling. Maybe they were trapped in an Enchantment, Lynne thought, and treading the same five feet of floor over and over again. Then Gomez suddenly swerved, ducking through a small archway to a thin winding staircase, with walls that squeezed close around them.

    Alma sucked in a breath, clutching Lynne’s hand tighter. There was room on the stairs, but pockets of lingering Darkenesse made it seem foreboding and claustrophobic. Even inside the protective cloak, Alma could feel goosebumps prickling her skin.

    Nothing was there, she told herself firmly, and set off again after Gomez.

    There were odd metal implements driven into the stone of the lefthand wall randomly as they went up, and Gomez kept checking them. It was only after the stairs had curved consistently to the left for several stories that Alma realized that they were climbing in circles. They had to be circling the outside of the Chimney that Gomez had mentioned—the one Cabanela was stuck inside.

    Alma threw herself up the steps separating her and the Alchemist. “Where is he?” she demanded, clutching at Gomez’s own cloak. Gomez made a choking noise. “How far up? How do we get him out?”

    “Let go—”

    “Mom,” Lynne said in alarm, but Gomez wrenched himself free before Lynne could intervene, jerking his robes back in order. He turned his back on them with a flourish and took the stairs two at a time. When the rest of the group caught up to him, he was huffing out strained breaths, consulting a scroll of paper fastened with iron nails to the wall.

    Memry shoved past Alma. “You all right, Gramps?” she asked in concern. She knew that Gomez usually only needed to breathe about once every ten minutes.

    “Fine,” Gomez said shortly, catching his breath as he scanned the rows of numbers inked onto the scroll, in different colors and different legibilities. “Hm…holding steady…” He reached up and freed a small gold box, perforated with dozens of holes that formed different Alchemical symbols, from where it was hanging on a hook. “Match,” he ordered, flipping open the top of the box.

    Memry always carried matches. She lit one for him and dropped it into the box. Gomez fastened the top shut again.

    “What is that?” Boy 412 asked.

    “It’s a Darke Detector,” Alma said, recognizing it from stories as smoke began to drift from the censer’s holes. “I thought they were all gone.”

    “I doubt it,” Gomez said. “They’re too useful. Not that anyone off the street would have one, but the Wizard Tower would never let such a thing go. Hm!” The smoke, pale wisps at first, had started to thicken and turn a watery yellow. “Still yellow.” He pulled a pen from a hidden place in the wall and scribbled a few fresh notes on the scroll.

    “What does that mean?” Boy 412 asked.

    “It would turn a deep red if there was a Darke Wizard standing right in front of you, casting a ThunderFlash; does that answer your question?” Gomez put scroll and pen away. “Yellow is perfectly safe in our current situation. But it’s not what would happen if we were standing outside Dungeon Number One.” He tugged down a rattling length of golden chain, which fastened to the corners of the censer’s square lid.

    “Is everything you own gold?” Alma asked impatiently.

    “The more you ask me questions, the longer this takes.”

    Alma closed her mouth.

    “This way,” Gomez said, and resumed his climb up the stairs, the rest of them following behind. And as they climbed, Gomez’s Darke Detector slowly turned from yellow to orange.

    The smoke was a very, very dark orange when they came to the rockslide blocking the stairs.

    Gomez cursed. “I knew it.”

    “Knew you had a path around it?” Alma demanded. “That better be what you’re about to say.”

    “I knew the rumor about something bad lurking at the bottom of the dungeon would have physical consequences if it was true,” Gomez said. “The chimney’s partly collapsed; no ordinary Magyk could have done that.” He eyed the tumbled blocks of stone grimly. He was lucky nothing had ever shifted further over the years and sent it into further collapse. He had a suspicion that even if they could get through, they should not under any circumstances draw nearer to whatever lay at the bottom of Dungeon Number One—whatever had done this.

    “So what are you going to do about it.”

    Gomez turned to face Alma. “We’ll have to come at it from above,” he said.

    They had to walk all the way back down again. Gomez had done some quick math about the likely thickness separating where someone thrown into Dungeon Number One would land and where the actual bottom was, above the collapse. They could not get at it from another entrance into the Chimney stairs; it happened to be the spot where the chimney was hardest to access due to a cross-section between its edge and the edge of one of the Ice Tunnels. But not, he said, too hard to access from the Ice Tunnels.

    They piled back onto the sled. “High speed,” Gomez ordered, and the sled shot off, twice as fast as before. Boy 412 had fun holding onto the back and skating with her shoes planted on the slippery floor, though the smoke from the Darke Detector kept getting blown into her face. Her ring shone brighter and brighter through the darkening smoke.

    Alma had no complaints about Gomez’s speed. His driving, in fact, made her motion sick; when he skidded around corners, the sled kept tilting onto just one runner. Around her, nearly falling off their respective sides of the sled with every bump, Memry and Lynne held a conference shouted over the biting cold wind of the Tunnels on how to keep Cabanela from freezing. Neither of them believed that the Supreme Custodian would have left him his cloak.

    “We’ll just have to give him ours,” Memry said. “Gramps’ll get us DeContaminated anyway, and better that than letting the guy we went to all this trouble to rescue freeze to death.”

    The smoke streaked through the air past Boy 412 like trails of blood.

    “Stop!” Gomez ordered, and the sled screeched to a halt.

    Gomez was off the sled before it had stopped moving fully, throwing the mooring rope to Memry as he made for a thickly frozen hatch in the wall. When he UnSealed it and threw it open, a gush of filthy water came out, making him jump to the side. It was pouring out of a brickwork grille, set into the wall of the chimney’s solid stonework. When it touched the icy floor it froze, melding into the existing wall and floor of the frozen tunnel.

    Gomez winced at the idea of the grime and water dripping all the way down to the bottom of the chimney, accumulating over the years. Bracing himself, he reached up to dig the Alchemist’s mortar out and remove the grille.

    The grille did not come free.

    “What?” Alchemist’s mortar never set; a disappointing accident, when the recipe was initially made, but still sometimes useful. Gomez cursed. “The damn Darke! It’s stuck.” The mortar had Darkened and curdled, drying out and forming a brittle adhesive. Some of it crumbled under his nails, but it would be seven times as difficult to get the grille loose.

    “Then we’ll do something else,” Lynne said, thinking as fast as she could. Gomez took a small bottle out from under his robes. “Do you know a way to, to melt the mortar with Alchemie?”

    “No,” Gomez said, shaking out some black powder over the sill of the open hatch. “My way is faster than that. Now take five to ten big steps back.”

    “What, why,” Lynne said, but Boy 412 smelled the gunpowder and shoved her back so hard that Lynne tripped into Alma and Memry and they all went skidding back across the ice.

    Gomez laid out the fuse with quick, practiced ease and struck another match at its end only once he was as far back as the rest of the group. There was no need to worry about the ice melting and extinguishing it; the Freeze was too thorough for that. The ice would swallow the fuse below its surface before it ever melted, and the Inspection Hatch was, similarly, tougher than it looked.

    “Pull your cloaks over your faces,” he said, “It’ll filter the dust out of the air.” He stuffed his fingers in his ears and counted slowly to ten. Half a second before the fuse hit the powder, he held his breath.

    It wasn’t the largest explosion he’d ever made.

    The grille came free in a burst of powdery mortar without needing to be pulled loose—because it was being pushed. Water gushed out, freezing again once it hit the floor, and the hole left behind in the wall immediately became clogged with the layers of remains that had sunk centuries ago below the surface of Dungeon Number One.

    Lynne had to look away. Boy 412 stared. She’d never seen so many bones before.

    “I heard him,” Alma said, eyes shining. She’d heard a cry, just after the noise of the powder exploding, when the mess inside the chimney shifted. “He’s in there.”

    “Once more, then,” Gomez said, waiting for the water to finish freezing before he placed the next fuse. The grille was a loss; he’d have to get a new one made, because that one was never coming out of the ice now trapping it half in the floor.

    “Don’t hurt him.”

    “I won’t.” Gomez did not say that he could likely fix any damage that might accidentally be done.

    The second explosion took care of the clog of old bones. A fresh torrent of filthy water poured out as they clattered to the ice—and so did an only slightly less skinny figure.

    And an inky Shadow, howling in an ululating cry, seeped out of the opening in the wall after him, its long fingers reaching.

    “Cabanela!” Alma burst through the smoke, gunpowder black mixed with blood red, throwing herself between him and the Shadow. “Dneirf ym esaeler!”

    The Shadow recoiled; so did Lynne, at Alma of all people using a Reverse incantation. Gomez threw the hatch shut, ice creeping back over it as he pressed his Keye to the Seal.

    But the Shadow who had pursued Cabanela out was the first and oldest of the ones in the Vortex, and it was determined not to disappoint its Summoner. Forced to release its hold on Cabanela, it advanced instead on a new target.

    Lynne saw it coming, and a paralyzing dread rooted her feet to the ice.

    Boy 412 was filled with the sudden conviction that she was about to watch Lynne get torn apart just like the unlucky Boys who had been sitting in a wolverine pit when the wolverines fell in with them. And, just like then, there was nothing she could do.

    Boy 412 clenched her hands so hard that the gold wings on the dragon ring bit into her knuckle. With a start, she looked down at the glowing ring. She was not helpless; she had Magyk. She was never, ever going to be that helpless again.

    “Light the ice!” Boy 412 shouted, and her ring gleamed. The yellow glow reflected off every fragment of ice, every shining surface, until there was no corner for a Shadow to hide in. Separated from its Vortex, the Shadow could only scream, writhing, and vanish into nothing.

    “Quick thinking,” Gomez said. He was already on his knees next to Cabanela.

    Lynne felt a cold burst of air and swung hard before anything else tried to grab her. She recognized the Chief’s astonished face only in time to shout “OH GODS I’M SORRY!” as her poker Passed Through him. Passed Through his feet, at least; in an even more violent gust of wind, the Chief was Returned to the dungeon above them in the same instant, out of the Ice Tunnels where he had never set foot in life. Lynne’s poker hit the ice hard enough to dent the iron.

    “What was that?” Memry said, rising from a crouch. She’d thought Lynne was aiming at her.

    “Some ghost who forgot he’s never been down here before,” Gomez scoffed. “Lend me a hand!” Gomez was cutting Cabanela loose from the ice, where the water had frozen his clothes to the ground.

    Cabanela was trying, with shaking arms, to get up. Alma seized him as soon as he was free above the waist, flinging her cloak around him—inside-out, to keep the Darkenesse on him from spreading. “Don’t move!” she commanded, bundling him in the second cloak Memry handed to her, too. “It’s me, it’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”

    “Al…ma?”

    “Yes! Yes, it’s me, I’m real.” Alma knew the Darke often imitated voices to lure people into its grasp.

    “Where…? ’S cold…”

    “I know, we’re leaving.” Alma wrapped Lynne’s cloak around Cabanela’s freed legs, inside out. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

    “Oh,” Cabanela mumbled, “okay,” and went limp.

Chapter Text

    Cabanela stopped shivering by the time they reached the Great Chamber again. In fact he stopped moving at all. Alma was only sure he was alive because she’d held him close to keep him from falling off the sled, trying to share her warmth, and could hear his faint pulse beating where her ear was pressed to his chilled chest.

    Queen Sissel took Lynne and Memry and Boy 412 away from all the fuss being made and put them in one of the small side rooms off the labyrinth, and put a candle on the floor shaped like a rounded cone.

    “Emma said you have to stay until this burns out,” she said. Emma herself was busy helping with Cabanela’s DeContamination. There was much grumbling at her announcement—the room was very small and felt cramped—but Queen Sissel sat in the doorway, and none of them were frustrated enough to shove her out of the way.

    The candle burned with a pleasant lavender smell, and by degrees, the room started to feel less cramped and more cozy. Lynne only realized she was shivering when the shivers started to go away, but they randomly came back to attack her with the memory of bones on the ice, and the noise the bones had made falling. Suddenly Lynne felt very glad to have warm bodies pressed close on either side of her.

    Memry, who had stopped irritably elbowing Lynne every time she breathed too loudly, said, “Are you two okay?”

    “Yeah,” Lynne said. Then, “I wish the Chief could’ve come with us and not gotten Returned like that. He must have been in the dungeon with Cabanela the whole time, and that’s why he stopped coming to see us.”

    “That makes sense. Too bad he couldn’t come down here too.”

    “Did they try to kill him?” Boy 412 asked. “The wizard?”

    Queen Sissel said, “You don’t get thrown in Dungeon Number One for anything else.” After a pause, she said, “That’s why I never used it.” Lynne was unaccountably relieved that Queen Sissel had never killed someone in such a nasty way.

    Boy 412 said, “I’m glad we got him out.”

    “He’ll be fine,” Lynne said. She was surprised to find that she did feel confident about that. The candle was burned nearly halfway down. “Mom and Aunt Emma are with him.”

    “And Gramps,” Memry said. “He knows his way around Darke stuff.”

    Lynne, remembering the incantation Alma had used, lapsed back into silence.

    The candle was nearly burned out when Memry said, “I didn’t force him.”

    “Huh?”

    “When Gramps first came to see your parents. I didn’t force him to, I just told him my friend was hurt and needed help, and he dropped everything to come. He’s a good Physician.”

    “Oh,” Lynne said.

    “He doesn’t really want to be alone. I come down and bother him a lot…but I’ve been here now longer than I’ve ever stayed with him before. He doesn’t really mind me being around. He acts grumpier than he really is. I know him.” Memry gnawed on a hangnail in a way that did not demonstrate much confidence in her own words.

    “He talks about you a lot when you’re not here,” Queen Sissel said. Memry stopped with her thumb half in her mouth. “You and your family, but mostly you.”

    “…How is it that for ten years I never saw you down here?”

    “You’re loud and I can hear you coming.”

    “That’s fair.”

    As Lynne thought about Queen Sissel hiding every time Memry visited, for ten years, Queen Sissel leaned forward and poked at the candle. It crumbled into the last ashes of its base, the flame going out. “All right, you can go,” she said. “You’d better get your dog.”

    Missile had been shut in a different room behind a locked door before they left, to make absolutely sure he didn’t try to follow and stick his nose in the un-cleaned-away Darkenesse. Small animals often got the worst of even small doses of the Darke, and there were rumors of a feral cat colony in the Forest descended from housecats who got out one night and went wild and cruel.

    But Lynne only smelled strongly of lavender when she opened the door for Missile, and his mind remained free of the desire to do anything but whine and cry and lick every inch of her face, while Lynne sputtered and laid down on the floor to let him reach.

    “Where’s everyone else?” Boy 412 asked.

    “In the Great Chamber,” Queen Sissel said. She even followed when Boy 412 ran off to see, and an excited Missile started running too, which made Lynne pursue him after them.

    The Darke Detector was hanging on the wall in the Great Chamber, letting out thin trails of smoke as if from a blown-out candle, with no sign of the thickening or color it had shown in the Ice Tunnels. The unconscious Cabanela was barely visible under thickly piled folds of azure sail, bundled around him where he lay as close to the stove as possible.

    “What’s wrong with him?” Memry asked.

    “What isn’t,” Gomez said as he cleared away a number of freshly cleaned Physician’s implements. Lovey-Dove was still absent from his head. “Put through below freezing temperatures in wet clothes, near starvation, sleep deprivation, probable torture—”

    “Is that why he’s asleep?” Memry interrupted quickly. She didn’t want Alma to have to hear all that, said in Gomez’s blunt fashion. But Alma, who had helped strip Cabanela to check for frostbite, had already seen the bruises.

    “Can’t he wake up and cast Magyk to feel better?” Lynne demanded.

    Alma said grimly, “They’ve taken the Akhu Amulet.”

    Boy 412 wasn’t sure why Alma looked so grim at that, or why Lynne looked stricken. But she understood that it was bad, and it was a Magykal loss.

    She crouched and took the dragon ring off her finger, dousing its warm glow, and tucked it onto the hand she could just see (frostbite-less) poking out from under the edge of the sail blanket. It would only fit on his pinky. When she looked up, everyone was watching her.

    Boy 412 flushed. “It helped. Me. I thought it would help him. You know, Magykally.”

    “That’s very generous,” Emma said kindly. Alma wiped her face and sat down to wait for him to stir.

    Cabanela had kept trying to tell Alma something, before Gomez made him swallow an elixir that swept him into unconsciousness. Gomez had also insisted on injections of salt water, for some unfathomable reason, but Alma couldn’t argue; salt water was a natural Darke repellent, and it was probably better for Cabanela not to be awake while that was happening. Cabanela had mumbled “Fuck ’s this?” and tried to push her away when she’d applied a hastily-made salve to the Darke burn around his neck.

    Alma was lucky Gomez had a store of ingredients for her to draw from. She had applied more of her salve to the deeper burn around Cabanela’s ankle once he was unconscious, and even though she knew Cabanela was incredibly ticklish, he didn’t stir that time.

    Lynne sat and watched Alma, who had pillowed Cabanela’s head in her lap and was stroking his hair, while everyone else gradually filtered out of the Great Chamber. Lines of worry were still marked clearly on Alma’s face.

    Lynne said, “Why are you doing all this for him? Not that…I don’t mean…”

    Alma let her straggle to a halt. She smoothed another bit of hair out of Cabanela’s face. Without his usual styling, and with the damp, it was almost curly. “You only ask because you didn’t know him before,” she said at last.

    “Before what?”

    “Before being ExtraOrdinary.” Alma sighed. “Before the Supreme Custodian. Maybe it’s my fault for letting it be left unsaid.”

    “You never talked about him,” Lynne agreed slowly. She’d been about to say that first.

    “I missed him too much.” Alma found the pulse point under his jaw, and let her hand rest there, feeling the reassuring beat. Missile snuffled at Lynne’s fingers until she started petting him, and then settled down, muzzle resting on his paws, one eye on Cabanela. He could tell the tall man was very sick; healthy bodies didn’t smell like that.

    “Cabanela and I grew up together in the Port,” Alma said.

    “You did?”

    “I grew up, at least. He was already mostly grown when we met. He’s why I agreed to move to the Castle when Jowd asked where we should live,” Alma said wistfully. “Cabanela had come here years before, to be a Wizard apprentice. I knew it couldn’t be all bad if he liked it here.”

    Lynne knew logically that Alma was from the Port, but she had never confronted the specter of potentially growing up with Alma and Jowd there. What if she’d been trained in a Port boatyard? Ew.

    “And he was friends with Jowd,” Alma said, “so I knew Jowd was a good man to choose, and not just pretty.”

    “But he never even came to visit you,” Lynne said.

    “I knew why.” Alma rubbed her tired face. “I was never angry at Cabanela. I just miss him.”

    Lynne did not miss that Alma used the present tense. She asked, “Do you love him?”

    Alma smiled wanly. “Worried for Jowd?”

    “I don’t…no? But I don’t get it.” Lynne breathed in, and then out, and then had to take in a second bracing breath before she said, “You used Darke Magyk for him. I heard you.”

    “…Oh! Oh, Lynne.” Alma softened. “I promise I’m not secretly a Coven Witch. It’s—well, it is Reverse. It’s a variant of an old Castle spell, from back before the Wall when Things got in more often.”

    Warily, Lynne asked, “Why a variant?”

    “The usual one wouldn’t work on Cabanela,” Alma said. “It’s originally ‘release my child’, if you say it the right way around. A Reverse incantation can be more effective against the Darke. People were very worried about CradleSnatching back then, and it…it never hurts.” Alma chuckled faintly. “I made Jowd memorize it, too, when I was pregnant, until he could do it in his sleep. I must have been an absolute terror to him.” Her voice started to wobble; Alma cleared her throat several times. Lynne scooted closer to her, and leaned on her shoulder.

    Alma smoothed out the dents her grip had left in Cabanela’s hair. “It’s not the only Darke spell I ever learned from Galen,” she said, thinking of her old teacher. Galen had not lived for decades alone in the Forest by being a goody-two-shoes. “But it’s the only one I’ve ever used.”

    “You don’t have to explain yourself,” Lynne said, already reassured. “I trust you.” She wished, for Alma’s sake, that it had been as easy as one little spell to let them keep Kamila.

    Night and day were hard to keep track of, with not much besides Emma’s internal moon-phase-clock to tell whether the moon or the sun was in the sky. But Cabanela slept for a long time, longer than a night. When the others were awake, there was a constant stream of people poking their heads in “just to check” and “oh, he’s still asleep?”. Alma took petty satisfaction in Emma and Gomez showing up at the same time and having to make conversation outside the doors to pretend they were not both coming back to bother her. Gomez had come back with the salt water injections twice already.

    Alma remembered Cabanela as a fidgety, kicking sleeper, but he barely made a noise, much less moved. Boy 412 looked over first and saw that his eyes were open.

    “Oh!”

    Alma was back at Cabanela’s side by the time Boy 412 closed her mouth. “Hey,” Alma said, as Lynne sat bolt upright and Missile whuffed in curiosity, “hi, it’s all right. We’re somewhere safe. We’re all here, except Jowd. Are you hungry?”

    “Nnh?”

    Alma backtracked. “Are you thirsty?” Boy 412 was already bringing over a cup of water.

    Cabanela drank it so fast he started coughing; water had never tasted so good. He knew how bad it was when Alma didn’t pound him on the back to help.

    “I’m fine,” Cabanela croaked, pushing himself to sit up. There was a sticky feeling around his neck like something had dried there, which made him want to crawl out of his skin to escape, and something else pinching his finger. Was there a stickiness on his foot, too? The feeling of blankets was making it hard to tell.

    “Try not to talk,” Alma said. “There’s a nasty burn on your neck and Gomez thinks it may have injured your voice.” It looked like something had squeezed tight. Boy 412 brought the cup back, filled with more water. “And drink slowly.”

    Cabanela did not drink slowly, and coughed up a mouthful of water in consequence when it went down wrong, leaning against Alma to stay upright. Lynne winced. “’M fine,” he insisted. Gods, he needed to get rid of at least one weird feeling. He tried to scratch his finger, and felt something metal.

    Cabanela stared down at his hand. “Alma,” he said hoarsely, “whyyy am I wearin’ the lost dragon ring of Hotep-Ra?”

    “To help your Magyk,” Boy 412 said, startling Cabanela with her unfamiliar voice. “I found it,” she explained, when he still looked confused.

    “You…found it?”

    “In the tunnels under the cottage.”

    “What about my cottage you’re awake!” Emma gasped, nearly dropping the pot she’d just walked in with. Cabanela unconsciously leaned toward her; whatever was in the pot smelled delicious, and his stomach growled. Emma flung it onto the stove (Missile immediately pounced to investigate the spills), and crouched in front of Cabanela. “Are you well? What hurts the most? Count to one hundred by tens for me.”

    “Personal space,” Alma scolded her, not budging out of Cabanela’s space herself.

    “My brain’s fiiine,” Cabanela said. “The dragon ring…why was Hotep-Ra’s ring under your cottage?”

    “He probably left it there when he said goodbye to the Dragon Boat,” Lynne put in.

    “The what?”

    “I suppose it’s no longer much of a secret,” Emma sighed. “But yes, my lineage of Witches have been Keeping the Dragon Boat for centuries.”

    Strangled, Cabanela said, “You’ve known where the Dragon Boat was this entire time?!”

    “Here is to the arrogance of Wizards!” Emma picked up his abandoned cup to toast him, deeply relieved that he was coherent enough to slip back into the ruts of their professional rivalry. “You always think everything important is in your possession. Why shouldn’t I have Kept her safe?”

    “Under your cottage?” The cottage. That was important. Something was swimming to the forefront of Cabanela’s starved brain. Cabanela suddenly seized Alma by the shoulders. “Alma!”

    “I’m right here,” Alma said, startled by the ferocity of his grip.

    “Kamila.”

    “What?”

    Cabanela squeezed his eyes shut. How had it happened? What had Sith said? “The Supreme Custodian’s Master. He wanted to make me tell him”—he had to stop and cough—“and he had this girl, he saaaid she was Kamila, but she wasn’t, but he believed she was. He said the midwife took her on his orders.”

    “...No,” Alma said unsteadily. “No, Kamila was dead. She just stopped breathing. She was all…limp, and…”

    Emma, who had never heard the story in any kind of detail before, breathed, “What?”

    “What?”

    “Alma…when she was born, was it normal? There wasn’t anything wrong?”

    “…What do you mean?” Alma felt cold inside, despite Cabanela’s hands on her and the warmly fueled stove. Kamila had been an easy birth from beginning to end. It had been the worst shock of Alma’s life when everything suddenly went wrong, out of nowhere, just after sunset. “Emma, what do you know?”

    “When they took Amelie,” Emma said, who had heard the story over and over from her husband as they tried desperately to unearth new clues, “they said she was dead, in order to sneak her away from him. She looked like she wasn’t breathing, and she wasn’t moving, and the midwife wrapped her up and rushed out before my darling husband could stop her.”

    “…No. No, no, no, oh, GODS!” Alma howled. “NO!”

    Alma’s screams followed them down the hallway, echoing into ghostly wails.

    Lynne broke into a run. She ran until she almost tripped over the edge of the underground quay, the water lapping gently at the stone, and she stood, panting, under the shadow of the Dragon Boat, throat choked by her own cowardice. She should have stayed there for Alma, but couldn’t bear to see her break down.

    Lynne felt a tug on her sleeve.

    “Lynne?” Boy 412 said. “Who’s Kamila?”

    “Oh,” Boy 412 said when Lynne was done explaining, both of them sitting on the ship’s deck.

    Lynne threw her arms around the Dragon Boat’s head, pressing her forehead to the smooth scales of her nose. The Dragon Boat had looked over her boat-rail shoulder to nuzzle at Lynne’s hair. “It’s not fair,” Lynne said. “What would the Supreme Custodian want Kamila for, anyway? There was no reason to go after her. But there’s nothing I can do to fix it.”

    “Do you want to go back?” Boy 412 asked tentatively. She didn’t want to go back anywhere near the Great Chamber, not with Alma making those noises like the world was ending.

    “What can I do?”

    Boy 412 wasn’t sure she could do anything. Maybe none of them could do anything. If Kamila wasn’t actually in the Supreme Custodian’s clutches, then she was probably in the Domestic Service Training Hall, but maybe she could be anywhere. Boy 412 wished she had her ring.

    “If Kamila’s alive then it’s fixable,” Lynne said. “It has to be. And you know how the Young Army works, you’d know where to ask to find records and stuff. Would you help?”

    “Yes.” Boy 412 wanted to help. Helping might make Alma better, and she couldn’t get enough of the idea of things becoming better. Cabanela was safe now, because Lynne had shouted at Gomez and made everyone help. It had worked.

    Lynne, used to Mom and Jowd and even Aunt Emma, impulsively reached to hug Boy 412. She only stopped when Boy 412 jumped in surprise. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot to ask.” Behind her, the Dragon Boat raised her head; she was getting a crick in her neck from bending down.

    “…You can hug me,” Boy 412 said warily. Maybe it would help Lynne.

    “No, I, um…” Lynne looked around. Dirt and loose chunks of rock lay all over the deck from their escape from underground in the Marshes. As the Dragon Boat watched, she picked up a greenish rock and handed it to Boy 412. “Uhhh, here. You should have this. Maybe you could make it into one of those pet rocks.” Pet rocks were really trendy among the younger Ramblings crowd these days, though it was harder and harder to find one of the real Magyk ones that would eat from your palm and walk around.

    Boy 412 perked up. She liked rocks. She used to collect them, but after having her precious hoard thrown into the Moat two separate times as punishment, she had settled for just looking at rocks on the ground and not picking them up. This one had a satiny sheen to it, and a nice green color, which meant it was probably full of some mineral or another she didn’t know the name of. Boy 412 rubbed it in her hands, tracing the faint whorls of lighter color.

    “Thank you,” she said shyly, clutching the rock with both hands in case Lynne changed her mind.

    “You’re welcome. It is just a regular rock.” Lynne decided to ask Jowd about pet rock Charms as soon as possible.

    “I like it.” It was the second present Boy 412 had ever received, after the silver wing Charm from Cabanela. She tucked it safely into her coat pocket; it was too big to fit in her hat.

    Lynne was sad all over again, seeing how happy Boy 412 looked just from a rock. Somewhere out there, Kamila was probably growing up the same way.

    “Do you think Alma would like a rock?” Boy 412 asked.

    “…It would be nice if it was that easy.” Lynne thought Alma probably wanted her daughter.

    Cabanela held Alma tightly until she finished screaming, to stop her from tearing at her clothes, or at herself.

    “I’ll fix it,” he said when his ears had stopped ringing and he thought she could hear him. Trying to speak made him cough. “I’ll fix this, baby, it wasn’t her. He didn’t have the right girl. Kamila’s out there somewhere.”

    “Where’s Jowd,” Alma gasped into his chest, wrung dry, her voice barely there. “I need him.”

    “I knooow, baby. I know.”

    Missile whined, long and urgent. He had refused to leave Alma’s side, even when his Miss Lynne ran away. He was here to help when people cried. But Alma wouldn’t put herself on the floor for him to reach like Miss Lynne did; he could only circle her and Cabanela urgently, trying to get her attention.

    “Let me Scry for her,” Emma said, smoothing Alma’s hair out of her wet face. “We’ll let the moon finish waning and wax up again, and I’ll use the full moon; he’s never steered me wrong when he’s full. We’ll find Kamila.”

    Cabanela, startled to find out that the moon was waning, said, “How far away is the full moon?”

    “Er—less than a month.”

    “So where iiis Jowd? Can’t we find him sooner than that?”

    “I’ll try,” Emma said. “I’ll find him, Alma, I promise you that. If he’s going to call me Lynne’s aunt, then that good-as-a-brother of mine isn’t going to escape me so easily!”

    Gomez heard the noise, and when he came to the Great Chamber and found out what was going on he issued Alma a double dose of her usual medicine, which Emma made her take only after she’d eaten something. Then Emma fed Cabanela, and made Gomez sit down and eat too, and went and corralled Lynne and Boy 412 and Memry into the impromptu family meal.

    Missile did not leave Alma, and Alma did not leave Cabanela. She stayed with one arm around his, shoulder to shoulder, sometimes drooping so far down that her head rested on his shoulder and didn’t come back up for a while. He wasn’t Jowd’s large, steady warmth (and neither was Missile), but she had him back, like he’d promised.

    Cabanela was half starved, still exhausted, and overstimulated by the smallest touch after so long with only the Chief and the Vortex for (poor) company. He never tried to make Alma let go.

    “Here,” Memry said, when the food was gone and she had dithered at the doors of the Great Chamber for five minutes, shifting back and forth on her feet. Cabanela took the twine-wrapped KeepSafe with some confusion; he had to squint at it to recognize it. The candles and stove didn’t fully illuminate the cavernous room. “Sorry for taking it.”

    “I diiid give it to you.” Cabanela squinted up at Memry instead. “What’s with the long face?”

    Memry hunched in on herself at the lingering hoarseness in his voice. “If I hadn’t taken it, you would’ve still had it on you when—well. You know.”

    “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

    “Obviously.”

    “Then it’s all good, baby. I can say that,” Cabanela said to Alma, who had made a dissatisfied noise. “You got me out as quick as you could. Unleeess this is all a dream,” he joked, unable to conceal the genuine nervousness in his voice.

    “Of course it’s real.” Alma firmed her grip on him. “You’re right here.” She took the KeepSafe from him and hung it around his neck, where the twine scratched painfully just under the burn mark that was still sticky with salve.

    Cabanela winced, pulling the cord away from the back of his neck. “You didn’t happen to rescue my scarf, did you, baby?”

    “It’s over there.” ‘Over there’ was slightly out of Alma’s reach, unless she dragged Cabanela with her. “Lynne, could you…?”

    Lynne brought her the pillow Cabanela had been using while he slept: a bundle of cloak with his red scarf wrapped around it.

    Cabanela drooped at the sight. The fine, even weave of his scarf was stretched out asymmetrically, with occasional holes pried open, and random frayed edges. One short end was coming entirely loose, individual threads sticking out as the weft fell apart.

    “I did my best to wash it carefully,” Alma said. She’d made the scarf for Cabanela as a MidWinter present the first year after the Queen’s (purported) assassination. She had sent it to the Wizard Tower and never gotten a response, except that ever since, he was always seen wearing it. “But we couldn’t risk the Darke sticking to it.”

    Exposure to the Darke was probably what had sent it fraying so oddly in the first place. She’d hardly dared put his clothes back on after he was DeContaminated, but had hoped everything under the robes he’d been wearing would be all right, assuming the outer layer had taken the brunt of the damage. Gomez had taken the formerly-white robes away to incinerate.

    “No, of course not…” Cabanela mustered a smile. “I’m suuure I can fix it right up.” He unwound the scarf from the cloak bundle and laid it flat, pressing his hands to it. “Can’t take more than a li’l Mend and Make Do.” He knew the perfect spell, which he often used for fixing the little snags and stains that were inevitable when one wore white every day and everywhere.

    He was used to the spell coming easily. Now he made the loose ends of the weft twitch, and the holes wiggle, and then it all went still. Cabanela raised his hands, and realized they were shaking from exertion.

    “Don’t push yourself,” Alma said, pulling the scarf away from a second attempt. She looped it around his neck, arranging the twine cord of the KeepSafe so it was on the outside of the still-soft cloth. “You can always fix it later.”

    “Right,” Cabanela said, picking at the choppy ends of his sleeves where Gomez’s knife had cut. “Of course.”

Chapter Text

    Emma started first thing in the morning (once she was sure it was morning) to look for Jowd. But unlike Cabanela, her education had not included the more technical Find spells, relying instead on Sight and Sense. In her home in the Marshes, those Sensings could stretch through the familiar pathways of water and plants, but in the Castle she was brought up short by stone again and again, frustrated in both senses of the word.

    Cabanela had more Magyk than he expected to be able to draw on, with his well-trained reserves away in the Akhu Amulet, but he felt empty and drained after the smallest attempt at what he called a “regular ol’ Find.” His usual range was more than a mile, but he could barely Find a syringe that Gomez had mislaid in the wrong drawer on the other side of the Great Chamber.

    Emma suggested taking the KeepSafe and going up into the Castle to look; she and Gomez were the only two who wouldn’t be recognized and turned in by anyone, and she had the Magyk to keep herself safe. But Alma said, distraught, “And what if you get caught and never come back?”

    There was not any further discussion of anyone risking themselves. It would take going door to door to find Jowd, anyway, Memry pointed out, and that would be more suspicious than Lynne parading down Wizard Way in the Princess’ circlet.

    Alma had slept in, rousing only reluctantly for breakfast and medicine, and went back to bed when their attempts to find Jowd went nowhere, leaving Emma to brainstorm on her own. Lynne became very nervous and wouldn’t leave the Great Chamber while Alma was still lying down.

    Boy 412 whispered an idea to Lynne, which didn’t get her up and out of the room, but did make her tap Alma on the shoulder. “Mom? The boy, uh, girl…anyway, she and I were thinking that the Dragon Boat could use some cleaning up, and I was just wondering if you wanted to come and help, in case you knew some spells for cleaning floorboards that might be useful.”

    Alma shrugged without sitting up. “Only ones for sweeping.”

    “That could still help. Do you want to come?”

    Alma shrugged again.

    Lynne bit her lip. Then she laid down next to Alma, leaning against her mom’s back. She was too tall these days to feel as small and sheltered as she used to, when Alma held her. Now it felt more like she was holding Alma.

    “You should go,” Alma said. “Don’t wait on me.”

    “It’s not urgent. The Dragon Boat will be okay without being cleaned right this second.”

    Cabanela sighed, and sat up. Lynne had not been the only one keeping Alma company, and he was still exhausted. “I neeed the exercise.” He smiled faintly down at Alma. “Baby, d’you think you could show me to this Dragon Boat everyone’s talkin’ about? Meetin’ a legend in the flesh, nothin’ like it.”

    Cabanela did need the exercise. He almost didn’t make it to the Underflow quay, and had to sit down on the stone floor, legs shaking, to stare at the Dragon Boat in awe.

    The Dragon Boat was less impressed with him. She extended her head to nose at Boy 412’s now empty hand; why had she given away the ring?

    “Sorry,” Boy 412 said sheepishly. “He needs it more, right now. He lost his Magyk.”

    The Dragon Boat liked compassion, but she would have liked it better for her Master to wear her ring of office properly. But her opinion of Cabanela improved as he called out suggestions for cleaning spells to try as Lynne led Boy 412 through the proper caretaking of a boat, swabbing her deck free of mud and stones and as many of the marks of age as possible.

    Boy 412 did better at the Magyk, managing to get most of the spells to work rather than giving up after several failed attempts and just doing it by hand like Lynne. Alma, sitting next to Cabanela on the quay, saw the look on his face as he watched Boy 412 gain more confidence with her Magyk.

    “You’ll be all right,” Alma said. “You worked hard to gain that Magyk before, so you can do it again.” When Cabanela only looked downcast at the reminder of the state he was in, she said, “Isn’t there anything to be done, about the Amulet?”

    “There must be,” Cabanela said, “but I haven’t figured out what. Still, it’s nooot over yet. ‘As you have gained it, so you shall lose it.’” He echoed the old Castle saying. Alma had heard it before, back when the Chief died and there were murmurs that there had been something Not Right about the transfer of power. Not everyone in the Castle knew Cabanela like she did. “I was given the Akhu Amulet. It won’t be stolen from me like this.”

    “Good,” Alma said, then again, quieter, “good.”

    On the deck, Lynne said, “Do you think we should introduce ourselves?” Boy 412 looked at her curiously. “To the Dragon Boat. We appeared out of nowhere and took her here without really saying anything.”

    “She brought us here,” Boy 412 said, and then, “Maybe. Okay.” She slid over the railing back onto the quay, to walk over where it was more comfortable for the Dragon Boat to bend her head. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Boy 412. Um, it’s nice to meet you.” She’d heard that people said that to each other, but Boy 412 had never before actually felt that she enjoyed meeting a new person.

    The Dragon Boat allowed Boy 412 to touch her jaw, as if the little girl were holding her head in her hands. She side-eyed Lynne, when Lynne came up. The girl seemed like a Princess, but she clearly couldn’t hear the Dragon Boat when she tried to talk to the girl.

    “I’m Lynne,” Lynne said. “That’s my mom, Alma, and that’s the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Cabanela. Mom, come say hi, you’re always telling me to be polite to people.”

    Cabanela offered Alma his arm; she used it to help pull him to his feet. The Dragon Boat sniffed them, more delicately than either expected from her sharp teeth and the jutting spikes at the corners of her jaw.

    “Underground this whole time,” Cabanela murmured, hesitantly raising his hand. Boy 412 shook her head, tugging at his sleeve, and he retreated instead of trying to touch. “What a cryin’ shame. The things you must have seen, you looovely girl.”

    He was all right, the Dragon Boat decided, though he clearly wasn’t the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. His white under-robes were in a state; and where was her beloved Hotep-Ra’s amulet, which he had left to the Castle for its future?

    “Does she talk?” Cabanela asked, half to the Dragon Boat and half to the others. “There’ve aaalways been stories that Hotep-Ra and his Dragon Boat could communicate with each other like no other dragon could…”

    “Not so far,” Lynne said. “But that might just be someone mythologizing a good sailor and his ship.”

    Cabanela sighed. “It’s a pity there’s no one who knows for certain.” He thought that if the Dragon Boat had spoken to Emma, the Witch would certainly have mentioned it by now.

    “We could ask…um,” Lynne said, realizing that there was one person Cabanela had not yet seen, living with them underground. “Actually, there’s something we should tell you first.”

    It took Cabanela weeks to finally end up in the same room as Queen Sissel.

    With yet another person down there, Gomez said she was probably overwhelmed and avoiding all of them. She was used, like him, to some peace and quiet (this last part said very pointedly). Cabanela didn’t believe him; he knew the Queen was avoiding him, personally.

    “Your Majesty,” he said. He wished his voice didn’t still hurt to use. Queen Sissel had not tried to run from him; she remained very focused on whatever she was measuring on the wall, catching faint drips of moisture and working her way slowly to the right, a few bricks at a time. “I’m sorry.”

    The Queen’s hand paused on the wall.

    “For what,” she said.

    “I couldn’t save your husband,” Cabanela said. “I tried my daaamnedest and it wasn’t enough.” It was his fault. “I’m sorry.”

    “I don’t want to talk about that time.”

    Chastened, Cabanela took a step back. The apology had been meant, with every fiber of his being, but then, wasn’t that desire to apologize still all about him, and not about what Queen Sissel wanted from him? Wanted at all? He caught another ‘sorry’ before it could escape.

     “I’ll clear out,” he said, “if you prefeeer not to see me around.” He didn’t have to stay in the Great Chamber if the Queen preferred to have access without being reminded of the last time she’d seen him.

    “You should stay with them.”

    “…All right.”

    Queen Sissel turned to him. “Did you get Lynne out safely?”

    “I…yes,” Cabanela said. The last time Queen Sissel would have seen him was when he and Lynne were behind the SafeShield. “For a while.”

    “Good,” Queen Sissel said. “Just do that again…and then you can forget about me.”

    Lynne stood up when Cabanela came back into the Great Chamber. “Did she say anything? About Yomiel?” She had no doubts as to what Cabanela had wanted to talk to the Queen about.

    “Not really, baby,” Cabanela said. He couldn’t bring himself to repeat to that earnest face what the Queen had actually said. “I wasn’t tryin’ to pry.” Lynne looked disappointed as she sat down again. Cabanela pulled up a neighboring chair at the table, relieved to get off his feet (and annoyed at how much of a physical relief it was). “He on your miiind?”

    Lynne nodded without looking at him. On her other side, Boy 412 tried to remember who Yomiel was. Was he important? She was supposed to know him, right?

    “Feel like talkin’ about him? I’m a listenin’ ear, if you need one.”

    “…I dunno,” Lynne said. Then, “He would’ve liked the Dragon Boat a lot, I think.”

    “Yeah?”

    “He taught me how ships work.” Lynne picked at the drips of wax sticking to the gold candle-holders lined up on the table. “He cared about them. He said not everyone had Magyk, so ships were important to keep people connected across distances, and stuff like that.”

    “I can’t denyyy he’s got a point.” Trade was the Castle’s lifeblood. Cabanela remembered hearing that it had been the Queen’s consort’s habit to go sailing off to the Far Countries, after long winters spent in the Castle, and bring back all sorts of treasures.

    “Mom’s a lot like him,” Lynne said. Alma’s head rose from the papers she was reading—probably pretending to read, Cabanela hadn’t seen her turn a page in a while. Emma had written up some new draft of her latest book with Gomez’s spare paper and asked Alma to check for errors. “Sometimes I think so, anyway.”

    “How so?”

    “They both care about—stuff.” Lynne had tried not to reminisce, all winter, about her cozy loft in the Ramblings, and dinner at their table at home, Alma quizzing her about what she’d learned in school that day. It had been even longer since she let herself remember meals taken on a tray in the captain’s cabin of Yomiel’s ship, playing with a sextant while he showed her the lines of currents marked on his map. “And you can tell they mean it.”

    “I know what you mean, baby,” Cabanela said, still looking down the table at Alma. “The kind of person who’d get you whatever was best for you, no matter what it took.”

    Boy 412 shrank down behind the table, her gaze on the gold ring that was still stuck above Cabanela’s pinky knuckle. She rubbed the empty spot on her hand, and left to go think somewhere quiet.

    A small throat-clearing made Cabanela jump, hours into the evening. He hadn’t heard Boy 412 reappear, but she was standing just behind him, very close. “Shoot, kid, make some noise when you move,” he said, catching his breath. At the other end of the room Alma was making dinner, but the noise of cooking wasn’t loud enough to drown out an entire tween walking up to him.

    Boy 412 said, “Aunt Emma says that’s the ring of the Master of the Dragon Boat.” Emma had told her to call her ‘Aunt’, too, when she came to help care for the Dragon Boat. Lynne had insisted on finishing their cleanup properly, polishing her scales and wiping the dust out of the corners, and Emma liked to supervise.

    “I’ve heard sooo.” Cabanela spread his hand flat on the table, looking down at the ring. “Amazin’ that it’s in such good condition after all this time.”

    “And it’s good for there to be a Master, like a captain,” Boy 412 said, “because she needs a good partner.” Lynne had told her all about the importance of captains on ships of any kind.

    “Yeees,” Cabanela said, beginning to sense that this conversation was going somewhere specific, and not at all sure where. “Though Hotep-Ra leaves a big ol’ shadow to step into.”

    And Boy 412 was not very big. She took a deep breath. This was what she’d made herself brace for, even if it hurt to say it. “Then it’s okay if you keep the ring,” she blurted out, to Cabanela’s surprise, “because you’ve been a Wizard for a really long time, and I…it would be better for her.”

    “Aw, baby,” Cabanela said gently, “you’ve got this all twisted around.” Boy 412 un-scrunched from her defensive wince, confused. “I cooouldn’t keep this ring, even if I wanted to.”

    Boy 412 looked at him doubtfully. He was just trying to make her feel better (which still made her instinctively suspicious).

    “Just look at it.” Cabanela held his hand out to her. “See? It doesn’t fit me.”

    “You could make it fit with Magyk.”

    “Is that what happened when you put it on?” Boy 412 nodded. “You’re not lookin’, baby. It’s still small.” Cabanela waggled his fingers at her. “It’s still you-sized. The ring picked you, and it’s not changin’ anytime soon, not even for li’l ol’ me.”

    Boy 412 stared. The ring was not only still small, it wasn’t glowing. It had glowed every time she put it on. “It was all me?”

    “All you, baby. I’m not sayin’ the ring’s not Magykal at all—but it’s ooonly a helpin’ hand, not doin’ it all for you.”

    Slowly, Boy 412 put a hand into her coat and pulled out the Flyte Charm. She had been keeping the Charm with her rock present, so no one would see her reach into her hat pocket, which was still her secret. The wings fluttered lightly against her palm. The ring hadn’t been how she used Magyk to fly? She’d done that herself?

    “It was nice of you to lend the ring,” Cabanela said, reassured by the sight of the undamaged, beloved Flyte Charm. “And it’s still aaall yours when you need it back.”

    Her ring. Her Dragon Boat, to clean and rub her smooth green scales and feel rock on the waves under her feet. Her Charm and her Magyk.

    Boy 412 held out the silver wings, gleaming in her grubby palm. “I accept,” she said.

    It took skill to blindside the ex-ExtraOrdinary Wizard twice, and nearly the same way both times. “Really?” Cabanela said, when he had breath to speak with. For the first time, his throat didn’t hurt when he spoke.

    “Yes.”

    “From me? Now?”

    “Yes,” Boy 412 said, and then shyer, as she began to run out of her prepared courage, “Please.”

    Cabanela jolted to his feet. “The Apprentice Supper,” he breathed. “We’ve gooot to have one today, or the contract isn’t bindin’ and it won’t take. Alma! What are you makin’ over there? It needs to be fancier!”

    Cabanela was not talked out of Transforming all the food into something more elaborate so much as simply lacking the Magykal power necessary to pull off such a feat. Everyone else was relieved that something stopped him; Alma was a good cook.

    At his cajoling, Boy 412 admitted that her favorite food was the hot chocolate they’d made on the banks of Deppen Ditch, months ago. There was one little square of chocolate in Gomez’s regular package of groceries that Emma Multiplied to make enough for everyone.

    Cabanela insisted on mixing the melted chocolate into the milk for Boy 412 himself. “It’s all a symbol of the bond formed between Master and Apprentice,” he told her. “The Supper means that we’re in it together, come hell or hiiigh water, for the next seven years and a day. When the Chief took me on,” he said wistfully, “we had ours in the Wizard Tower’s Hall, with all the Ordinary Wizards and their Apprentices—there were a lot more Wizards in those days, and we barely fit. It was looong past midnight before enough people left that it stopped countin’ as a party.”

    “In my day, we just signed an actual contract,” Gomez said, getting out the good tableware. There had never been much cause to host dinners in the Great Chamber, but that didn’t mean he was completely unprepared. Cabanela and the lucky Apprentice, if no one else, could have golden dishes. “It kept things clearer.”

    “Pshhh,” Cabanela said. “There’s no fun in that. Besides,” he said to Boy 412, “you’re not old enough to sign a legal contract.”

    “So what do I do?” Boy 412 asked.

    Cabanela handed her the goblet full of hot chocolate. “Have fuuun, baby!”

    They did not party till midnight, but everyone’s spirits felt lighter at the chance for a genuine celebration, and the same kind of food they’d been eating the whole time tasted better than it had in weeks. Queen Sissel drank hot chocolate at the end of the table, next to Gomez, and watched with the faintest smile. At the head of the table, Lynne was telling funny stories on the other side of Boy 412 from Cabanela, and made Boy 412 snort hot chocolate out of her nose from laughing—which only made Memry, opposite them, laugh harder.

    Everyone slipped Missile scraps under the table until he was so full he had to lie down and snooze in front of the stove, legs in the air, occasionally twitching with some doggy dream. Alma lost enough of her careworn mien to start talking about her Apprenticeship with Galen, which had lasted the more Witchy three years and a day. She and Gomez slipped away into a surprisingly animated discussion about medicinal plants that were toxic at high doses, while Lovey-Dove sat in Memry’s lap and let herself be petted and fed treats.

    It wasn’t midnight, but still late, when Cabanela drew Boy 412’s attention back to him. “Listen, baby,” Cabanela said. The others quieted down their side conversations. “I won’t beat around the bush. I can’t, teeechnically, make you the Apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard—not right now. But you are my Apprentice, and that means you’re owed a gift.” He spread his arms, twirling his hands. “Ask away, baby. Anythin’ you want, and whether or not it’s in my power to give, I’ll do my best.”

    Hesitantly, Boy 412 asked, “Anything?”

    “If you ask me for a pony, it miiight take me a while to make that happen. But any one thing: that’s the idea.”

    Boy 412 looked around, at the chain of people wrapped around the table; Lynne and Missile and Alma and Cabanela and Aunt Emma and the Queen, even extending to include Memry and Gomez and Lovey-Dove. Everyone had stories about times they’d shared, a long pattern of history woven between them back through the years.

    Except her.

    “I want to know where I come from,” Boy 412 said. “I want to know who my family is.”

    Cabanela sobered. Before he could respond, Emma stood, the scrape of her chair loud in the quiet room.

    “The moon isn’t yet full,” she said, “but he’s nearly there. Will you let me help?”