Only Antoine hadn't blood-wet his sword. “I could have taken her,” he said. “I just needed a few more seconds.”

  “Little brother,” Lula said, “You were lucky to escape. I saw you try the same trick that you used to fell Corin Hale.”

  “She saw through it,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” Lula replied, “The same energy wasn't in your strike as when you used it to win victory before. You repeated yourself. You used the same strike instead of the one inside you at that moment and so you lost the spontaneity of the gesture – the life in it.”

  “But,” young Antoine replied, “I've seen both of you use the same movements, the same strikes and counters in sword fights many times.”

  “You can only make a motion once,” Obin said, “You can only sing a song once, paint a picture once, write a poem, tell a story once. Once. Every time after that it is only a copy.”

  “But I've seen yo-”

  “Once,” Obin repeated. Then, he explained, “If I do something that looks like a strike or a parry that you think you've seen before, then it might be similar, but it is not the same one. Each gesture must be born anew in every moment. Every strike must be new and have a life and energy of its own. If you repeat the same motion twice, then the second time it is only a copy of an action, appropriate only to a moment that has already passed. It can have none of the same primacy, none of the energy, none of the life that you felt in the moment when you first discovered it – what your hand and heart lent it in that moment that made it a living gesture. That can only happen once.”

  “That's why she was able to parry your strike, little brother,” Lula said with a mead-wet smile. “Not because she saw it coming.” Antoine looked puzzled. She handed him the cask and said, “That, and the Hale bitch is a better fencer than you.”

  Obin and Juan laughed to hear Lula profane. Smiling Teddy Da looked at the giantess wonder-eyed, and Molly thought she smelled the musk of the bear's scent increase.

  “Can I beat her?” Antoine asked his sister as he brought the cask to his lips.

  Obin and Lula shared a glance. “Of course you can, dear brother,” she said.

  “But,” Obin cautioned him, “not as long as you're asking that question.”

  They ate salted meats from the Walton's wagon, and Obin said that if Molly had tasted noble blood, then she was old enough to taste noble mead. All of them, even Teddy Da, laughed at the sight of her holding the cask up to her little face to drink, and after three mouthfuls, she lay down and fell asleep while Obin told a surprisingly long, detailed, and flourishing account of his victory over Cobb Hale.

  *****

  Hours later, when the only other sound was the chirp-warbling drone of the summer cicadas' song, Molly awoke with a start. She'd dreamed she heard Vargas Hale's scream. It was the same cry of anguish she'd heard as they fled, and she suddenly realized they'd hurt Vargas Hale in a way not so dissimilar to the way the Red-Cloaked Rider had hurt her when he'd killed her kin. Her half-sleeping mouth blurted out, “The sting has only enraged the bull.”

  “We're keeping watch,” Juan Chang said over her shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

  Molly lay still under her blanket and listened.

  Minutes later, Juan Chang's voice said, “The girl is right. The bull charges as hard as ever now that we've stung it. Harder even.”

  “And where is it charging to, Chang?” Obin's voice asked. “We Waltons were happy to see such a large herd of Hales, but... scores of noble blades, a hundred guard, and a trio of golems is a very large war party, indeed. They can't possibly have sent this party North to hunt you and your musketeers.”

  “No, dear enemy,” Juan Chang said with a sigh, “they're not hunting Populists. They've tried to bait us into open battle before, but without success. Such a thing is best avoided for a force like ours.”

  Molly heard the sound of mead sloshing in a near-empty cask as one of them drank.

  “What then?” Obin asked. “What's their objective?” Silence. The mead cask sloshed again. “Tell me, Chang. Tell me what's so important to the Hales that they muster in such great numbers and march into the wilds.”

  “They march...” The words were slow and difficult in coming, and as Molly listened she wondered why Juan Chang hesitated. “They march on a city to the North,” Juan Chang said. “A city of common men. They mean to take it for their own.”

  “What possible interest could the Hales have in any city built by common men?”

  “It's a commoner's city, but an uncommon place to say the least.”

  “Uncommon how?” Obin asked.

  “It's a piece of Stitchlife witchery,” Juan Chang said. “It's alive.”

  Obin laughed at that. “Have the commoners learned to grow carbon-latticed bone from the Hales' renegade witches? Do they now build palaces the Hales envy?”

  “It's... not made of witch-bone like the nobles' houses. It's made of witchy sands like the golems.”

  Molly couldn't see Obin Walton's face, but she heard dark gravity in his voice when he said, “Tell me more.”

  After Juan Chang told Obin what little he knew of the Haunted City and its origins, the silence buzzed in the air for a long minute. “If the city you speak of is what I think it is,” Obin said, “then it doesn't belong to the Hales. It belongs to the Waltons.”

  Even under her blanket, Molly felt the chill that washed over their little camp with Obin's words.

  Chapter Seven

  Tomorrow

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend until tomorrow.”

  “And tomorrow will be a better day if we decide when it comes.”

  “Could the girl and the bear and the rebel kill all three Walton blades?”

  “Killing Obin would be enough to turn the balance of power in our favor.”

  “The Hales could kill him for us.”

  “Perhaps the General's next battle plan could be just a little less brilliant than Vargas Hale's.”

  “Even Generals make mistakes.”

  *****

  In the morning, Molly saw Teddy Da walking back towards their camp. She didn't know where he'd been, but there was blood in the fur around his mouth from whatever he'd been eating. When he got closer to camp, he nervously sniffed at the air that blew to him from the Waltons upwind. They stood close and spoke in whispers among themselves.

  Molly watched Antoine and Lula roll their chameleon-skin up and tie it off with a string. When they set the rolls of living fabric down in their kneeling wagon, half of them turned sun-bleached bone-white like the wagon bed and the other and half imitated the wooden mead casks next to them. Then, the General appeared in front of the chameleon-skin blinds in his chameleon-skin suit and the sight of so much artifice and chicanery made Molly dizzy. When he told her his plan, it made her want to hide herself, but she presented it to the others as her own.

  “It's a risky plan,” Obin said.

  “Vargas Hale might not do what you think he'll do,” Juan Chang cautioned.

  “You heard the way he cried out as he saw his son was dead.” Obin smiled when Molly said it. “We all did. I think if you show Vargas Hale a chance to take his vengeance today, then he'll take it.”

  “Spoken like a General,” Juan Chang said.

  *****

  The river crossing was the logical place to ambush the Hales' column again. Another crossing that horses and high-stepping wagons could ford couldn't be found for many miles up or down the river. This was where the Hales would cross on their march to the city. It was where Vargas Hale would expect an ambush, but the General said that was part of the plan.

  They laid chameleon skin blinds in the tall grass between the river's northern banks and the woodland that covered the base of the steep ridge beyond. The blinds were well-placed, and they were near-invisible from foot or horseback, but they could be seen from the air. They were meant to be. The blinds appeared to conceal a party waiting in ambush, but the real ambush hid spread out in a line among the rocky outcroppings of fractured and fissured crumble-stone halfway up the wooded ridge.

  Molly watched a smokey cloud emerge from the woods on the southern bank of the river. It floated over the wide, muddy waters, paused ever so slightly over the blinds, and then penetrated the wood-line below them. It was a thick swarm of black flies, and it traveled up and down the edge of the woods while the General's ghost pointed and told Molly it was the scout he was expecting. “But what is it?” she whispered.

  “It's a polymorph avatar,” he said, “an automata creature that takes many forms and is entangled to a noble's helm.” It flew out of the woods, turned to pass over the bait they'd laid in the grass once more time, crossed the river again, and disappeared into the woods of the southern banks.

  “I think Vargas Hale has seen our invitation,” Obin said in a hoarse, shouted whisper.

  It took the Guard and the nobles longer than expected to appear. Finally, they left the cover of the trees on the far bank and began to ford the river on their horses. It didn't look like they were all there, Molly thought. There had been more of them before, at the tunnel.

  Once they'd reached the near bank, they dismounted and formed themselves into a firing line in a shallow curve between the blinds and the river. Molly looked over at Obin and the Waltons ten yards away. They were all grinning. Obin met Molly's gaze and pointed down the hill and to the right where Molly saw that the Hales were already inside the wood-line, creeping quietly into position behind the blinds, surrounding them.

  The nobles were still wet from where they'd swam the more difficult, fast-flowing waters upriver. They took great care to keep themselves hid from the direction of the river and the blinds, but they showed the wooded hill above them the broad of their backs. They crouched in their still-wet breeches and short coats with sabers drawn. Molly noticed the glint of their blades was different now – steel instead of witch-bone. She thought the nobles didn't look as large as they were yesterday either. Their armor was too big, and their clothes hung off them. The backs of their necks looked sun-burned red instead of the deep-bronze color she knew they should be. Molly couldn't tell whether anyone else had noticed. The General had said they might notice and they might not.

  The General had also told Molly that the real Hales would be very close now, behind her and up the hill. His plan said she should run now and take the Populist and the bear with her. That way the Hales couldn't trap them, too. Just the Waltons.

  *****

  The bear's lungs burned, but they were twice as big as any noble's. He knew Kitty Hawk gave him the stamina to run at full witch-sped pace for longer than any of the Hales behind him.

  They were still there, though. He could smell them and even hear them wheezing a hundred yards back on the sideways slope of the mountain. Six of them had given chase, but three had run at a faster pace than they could sustain, and they fell unconscious miles ago. The others had been smarter, but soon, they'd drop.

  Teddy Da worried that the girl and the Populist might not last much longer. As he ran behind Chang, he saw the man's path begin to wander to the left and the right. Then, he stumbled, recovered, and ran three steps more to fall face first on the forest floor and slide in rotting leaves. Molly was twenty yards ahead of Chang, but a heartbeat later, Teddy Da saw her waver and fall into a twirl-curling forest of ferns. She didn't rise.

  Kitty Hawk's creature stopped and saw the last three Hales closing fast. When they saw two of their prey had fallen and the bear had turned to meet them, they slowed and stopped to rest before the fight. Their chests heaved under their short coats while they teetered one way and the next like drunkards.

  Now, he thought, before they get their wind back.

  Teddy Da trotted towards them while he watched them wheeze, and the shifting breeze blew the smell of their fear to him. When he broke into a full, blur-fast run, Teddy Da's claws pushed out from his soft, padded paws and tore at the ground beneath him. “Snicker-Snack.” He claw-trapped the first of the futile sabers swung, jumped and spun, and tore the noble's throat. Before the Hale's pumping heart loosed his color, the blood-claw bear sprung to tear at the next of them. That one tried to pierce the bear in flight, but Teddy Da batted his stabbing blade aside and embraced him. His claws dug into the noble's back, and he ate the man's face with a savaging, toothy kiss. The third Hale lost his courage at the sight of it and tried to run, but Teddy Da claw-hooked his leg and pulled it out from under him. The noble twisted in the air and screamed until the vorpal claws raked his chest so deeply that all his wind escaped out his wounds.

  Teddy Da fed.

  Chapter Eight

  First the Hales, Then the City

  Antoine's eyes burned with the last image of his brother, Obin. He moved so masterfully through the crowd of crude, saber-slashing Hales. In every stroke of his brother's sword and shuffle of his feet, Antoine heard Obin's song.

  It was a terrible and glorious last lesson from his brother on sword play and all things expressive. Obin's movements were a poem, a painting, a story, a true-writ expression of the moment he danced in, verity itself. Antoine wished he knew how many Hales glorious Obin killed and if Vargas Hale had been among the dogs he felled with his hand and his heart before they cut the truth of him down.

  He never actually saw his brother fall.

  Lula lay between two jutting wedges of broken, mountain rock. After she pushed herself too hard, too fast in flight, she'd fallen unconscious. Now, Antoine crouched over her and listened. There was no crashing in the brush behind them, no shouts between hunting Hales, and when he poked his head out of the rocks to look, there was no one charging up the hill after them. There was no longer any sign of pursuit at all, and at first, he didn't understand why.

  His eyes wandered through the trunks and green, out the side of the hill, and over the canopy below. Through the haze, over the tops of two cracked hills to the East something burned white in the sun and caught his eye. A white-walled town. No, bigger. A city. All made of the same stone. Its walls were the same as the manor castle Tam Bataille had grown from the ground for his sister Celia's birthday. That curs-ed, witch-grown castle had gone mad, but these witchy sands looked stable. This was what Obin had told him and Lula about in whispers.

  That's why the Hales stopped chasing us, he thought. We led them away from the city, and if the Hales veered off of their pursuit, then Vargas Hale must have already had vengeance. Antoine's face fell. The vision of the Haunted City over the hills blurred with his tears, and the sun-lit sheen of it became nothing more than a bright, far-away cloud.

  When Lula came around, even in her groggy and grief-stricken state she recognized the Sugar Music city for what it was. Antoine saw the tears fast disappear from her hardening face. She rose and staggered towards it in a straight line.

  “Wait,” Antoine said, “stop,” but she wouldn't.

  “There's nothing here but grief. But there,” she said pointing towards the city, “beyond the hills is what the Hales stole from our family, and what Obin told us we must take back. There is where everything most important to us lies now, little brother – both the stolen city and vengeance on Vargas Hale.”

  Lula was right, so Antoine followed her.

  *****

  From the edge of the woods, atop the tallest hills around the bay, the sight of the city's automata walls gleaming in the afternoon sun was brilliant, but Molly's eyes were fixed on the blue flags flap-snapping in the wind on the low hills to the West of the city.

  The Hales had already arrived.

  Their three golems stood out of scale with stony arms akimbo while the Guard and the Hales moved among them. Smoke already rose from their fires and their bright blue tents already dotted the hills.

  From their lookout, Molly could see the South gates that faced the bay. They were shut tight, but there were tiny, fallen figures on the pebble beach. They were smaller than they should be and misshapen, too. Molly realized with horror that they were halves. “The nobles had some sport when they arrived,” Juan Chang said. “The city is under siege.” He stepped away from the edge of the woods and sat against a tree to rest. “We should wait until dark to make our way to the gates. If they'll open for us.”

  “They'll open,” Molly said. “For me they will.”

  “I forgot,” he said. “It's your city.”

  “It's everybody's city.”

  “Indeed.” Juan Chang laughed. “The Hales think it belongs to them, and the Walton siblings do, too.” Moments later he added, “Or they did. Maybe there's only one noble family here that covets your city now. Maybe that's for the best.”

  “Is there any chance Obin and Antoine and Lula got away?” Molly asked.

  “The only reason we got away is because you spotted the trap before it was sprung. I don't think they were so lucky.”

  “It was a bad plan,” she said.

  “Even a General can have a bad day.” After Juan Chang said it, he kept looking at her, through her, and it made Molly wonder if he knew about the General's real plan and how it had gone exactly like he said it would.

  “You should go, fur-belly,” Molly said. She pointed. “Look how many Hales are down there. This isn't your fight.” The bear retreated to the wooded shade behind her and scratched his back against a tree.

  “I'd go,” he said, “but from the looks of things, there's going to be plenty to eat soon, and I'm always hungry.”

  While she watched the Hales, Molly asked him, “Would you eat us if we died?”

  He closed his eyes and scratched. “The nobles taste better,” he said.

  There were so many Hales. Molly closed her eyes. Even before she opened them, she saw that Vora, the General, and Fin Singh stood next to her. “You can't beat them, Molly,” the General said. “Not today. For now, you must concern yourself with entering the city and retrieving its seeds. They can't be allowed to fall into the Hales' hands.”