“And bring the remaining Waltons, too,” Fin Singh said, “They still covet the city, but now that there's only two of them, the balance of power is in your favor, and they're far less of a threat to you. And they'll provide an additional distraction for the Hales.”

  “Which one of them died?”

  “The wasp saw the death of Obin Walton and it was a dance of the truest beauty,” the General said. “I wish I had died so well.”

  “His siblings survive at the edge of the woods,” Fin Singh said, “to the West of Vargas Hale's camp.”

  “We will guide you to them,” Vora's ghost said.

  Juan Chang took a shiny piece of metal from a string around his neck, polished it on his pant-leg, and angled it to reflect the sun's light at the city.

  “What are you doing?” Molly asked.

  “I'm seeing if my friends from the Hidden Gorge arrived before the Hales did.” After less than a minute, a spot in the center of the Haunted City flashed bright and caught Molly's eye. It blinked in a pattern that Juan Chang must have understood because after it stopped, he grinned and said, “Yes, I have many friends in your city. Which gate will we use to enter?”

  The General whispered, “The West Gate,” in Molly's ear.

  When she told Juan Chang, he nodded and flashed the sun at the city again.

  *****

  As she watched them on the hillside, Lula tried to set the Hales on fire with her eyes. “First the Hales, then the city,” she said.

  “We can't kill them all,” Antoine said. “There's too many of them.”

  Wild-eyed Lula's hand fell to the hilt of her cutlass, and her thumb pushed it out of its sheath an inch only to let it sink and rest again. She did this over and over. Then, as she took the first steps out of the wood line, towards the Hale camp, a queer, faint hum-buzzing beat filled the air. An enormous rainbow-skinned wasp flew down, floated in front of his sister's face, and blocked her path. “Molly's creature,” Antoine said.

  When Lula moved to the side, the wasp blocked her path again. Then, as they watched, it flew to light head-high on a birch tree nearby where its jaws gnawed out a one word message in the bark – 'WAIT'.

  “That ugly, little, witch-sped girl ran away before the Hales fell on us,” Lula said. “With the bear and the Populist. It's like she knew it would happen. And it was her plan that got Obin killed.”

  “Are you saying she planned to abandon us to the Hales? Planned to get us killed? That's ridiculous.”

  “Why is it ridiculous? We'd kill her to take back what was stolen from us wouldn't we?” Lula took her brother's silence for agreement.

  *****

  Baba Yaga's eight legs carried her swiftly down the cracked, blackstone paths, across the river, and through the wilds to follow Vargas Hale's trail. In the darkness, the city's moonlit, automata walls shone moth-white.

  The fire-glow and the tents of Vargas Hale's camp were still a few hilltops away, but Baba Yaga was fast, and as she got closer, Mei Corina saw the sound of her castle's earth-beating feet stirring the Hale Guard like war-drums. They rushed into squared formations while the nobles stood outside their tents and watched.

  The smell of their roasting meats blew to her on the wind, and she imagined she'd interrupted their feasting. Corina knew her arrival would be a surprise, but she hoped that even with the newly added legs, Vargas Hale and his nobles would still recognize their own Stitchlife's laboratory and that they wouldn't send the golems to attack it. That, she thought, would make things more complicated.

  Vargas Hale would be watching through a spyglass, so she waved.

  On the side of the hill where the Hales had camped, in a line drawn from the edge of the woods to the hilltop, the steady shine of the glowsies' lights blinked out one by one. As the darkness spread, Corina guessed that someone was running from the woods towards the Hales' camp. Someone witch-sped fast.

  *****

  Molly ran down one hillside and up the next, and before they went dark, the nearest glowsies turned to streaks in the darkness. At the crest of the hill, their running formation met the Hales, and the nobles' fire-lit, bronze faces were wide-eyed with surprise.

  Lula was the arrowhead's point, and her swift and graceful blade sliced at the Hales in front of her with all the hate in her heart. Antoine and Juan Chang followed her in close echelon, and the nobles that were able to dive and dodge the edge of Lula's sword were thrown so off balance that they had little hope of avoiding Antoine's slashes and the edge of Juan Chang's bush knife. Molly saw his flintlocks fill the air with smoke and slow-spinning balls, and the nobles twisted and dove to dodge them.

  Molly and Teddy Da were the trailing edge of the driving wedge, and they had to leap over the bodies that had fallen to the blades in front of them. Any that hadn't, they slashed and tore at with bone-blade and vorpal claws.

  When the arrowhead formation was suddenly through the body of the Hale camp, Molly felt the hill's downward slope beneath her feet, and they ran flat out for the city's West gate.

  She risked turning her head back to look and saw a dozen nobles had already managed to find their blades and give chase. She hoped the Hales wouldn't be able to catch up before they reached the gate.

  As the ground flattened out beneath them, Molly surged ahead to the front. At the West gate, she pressed her palm against the living stone, and the two massive doors began to open. To the witch-sped, their pace was agonizingly slow. She glanced back to see impatient eyes and the fast-growing figures of the sprinting Hales that chased them. Another few seconds and they would be upon them.

  “Down,” Juan Chang shouted, “Everybody down!” He hurled himself at the ground. Molly and everyone else did the same. The gates were open enough to enter, but Juan Chang's voice rang out and said, “Wait for it... Wait for it...”

  Molly looked up through the gates and saw a hundred men with gunpowder-lit faces. Half of them knelt and half of them stood, and all of them held burning muskets. Sparks and powder-flash leaped for yards out of each and every one, and at the very end of each musket's flame, thrust forward from the brief, fiery blossom, was a silhouetted ball.

  Even before the flames dissolved into smoke, the dense cloud of lead ball passed over Molly where she lay flat against the ground. They spun and tumbled and tore at the air. They left wakes behind them like boats in the water, and there was no sound when they passed. Then, just behind them, came ear-clapping, crashing concussions stolen from a hundred angry summer storms. As the hammering wall of sound passed over them, billows of thick smoke pushed out from the ends of the muskets, expanded, roiled, and reached out.

  Juan Chang's voice was thin and far away behind the ringing in Molly's ears. It shouted, “Go, Go, Go!” Before she could rise, she felt a hand pulling her to her feet by the back of her dress. After she scrambled inside, Molly pushed on the inside of the gates with both her palms, and they began to close. The doors were slow enough that Molly had a chance to peek out and see all but one of the pursuing Hales pinned and flattened against the ground as the swarm of spinning musket-balls flew over their heads. A single Hale had been too slow to recognize the musket's fiery portent and the approaching threat. He twisted and jerked as the balls tore through him and made him a flesh-puppet to the force of their flight. After the swarm of spinning balls passed, he hung in the air like a twisted, agonized scarecrow. The gates closed before Molly saw him fall.

  A hundred musketeer's mouths fell open as their eyes took in the eight-foot-tall Waltons, the bipedal bear, and Molly, all of them blood-spattered from the skirmish. Many of the Populists reached to draw their sabers, but when they saw Juan Chang's smiling face, they cheered instead.

  Chapter Nine

  Beware the Dawn

  The Populists moved their camp to the base of Molly's spiral tower, and after Juan Chang had met with his men, he joined Molly, Teddy Da, Antoine, and Lula on the balcony near the spire's point. He brought leather-wrapped bundles of lardy pemmican and full water-skins. As they chewed, they looked out over the walls, into the hills where the lights of the Hale camp still burned bright and the eight-legged oddity stood strange on the next hill over.

  “Two,” Lula said. “I killed two. And I gave a third a nasty slice.”

  “I finished the one you started,” Antoine said, “and killed one more.”

  “One. I killed one,” Juan Chang said. “And one fell to the muskets. That makes six. Molly?”

  “One, I think. I felt the blade cut through his bones,” she said, “so he must be dead.”

  “And you, fur-belly?” Juan Chang asked. “Did you fell any Hales on the way here?” His ursine mouth had trouble chewing the pemmican, and he couldn't speak, only growl with frustration as it stuck to his mouth. Molly poured water from the skin so he could drink, and a moment later, he said, “I tore one with my claws.”

  “Eight,” Juan Chang said. “That's a damn good count.”

  “There's still at least fifty more out there,” Antoine said.

  “And Vargas Hale,” Lula added.

  Vora's ghost spoke through Molly. “Even if we'd killed him, the Hales wouldn't go home. Not now that they're here. And Vargas Hale wouldn't have come without a plan to get inside the walls somehow. His Stitchlife will find a way if she hasn't already. That's her, there.” Molly pointed to the long-legged spider perched on the hilltop next to the Hales' camp.

  “What witchery is that?” Juan Chang asked.

  “Mei Corina has grown legs on her laboratory and brought all of her tools here,” Molly said. “I don't know why, but you can be sure that the Stitchlife Corina isn't just here to witness the coming battle.”

  *****

  “I'm here to witness the coming battle, Lord Hale,” the young Stitchlife called down to Vargas Hale and the handful of nobles below. Baba Yaga bent her legs and sank down nearer the ground, but not low enough that Vargas Hale or any of his kin might leap up and climb aboard. The automata she'd commandeered from the golem in the enclave had sealed over the doors, but there was no need to invite them to clamber up the sides of the dome. Corina wasn't witch-sped herself, and if even one of them got inside her lab it would be difficult to kill him.

  “Is that why you came?” Vargas Hale asked. “You foresee no problems with the golems, then?”

  “I foresee no problems,” she said with a broad smile. “As far as I know, everything is going according to plan. If events do not unfold as they should, then I'm here to provide other options.” Vargas Hale's daughter Phoebe leaned to his ear and whispered.

  “This creature you've made of your lab...” he asked, “can it climb the walls as do the spiders you modeled it after?”

  “Sadly, no, Lord Hale. It can't. But, if you're in a hurry to get inside the city's walls, then you'll be happy to know that I've conducted some further tests, and I think you can expect the results you wanted only five, perhaps six hours after you set your golems in motion.” She smiled. “My eye wasn't fast enough to take in what happened after I arrived, but through my spyglass I thought I saw a flash of purple silk. Are there Waltons here?” Vargas Hale's face darkened.

  “They've trapped themselves in the city along with the witch-sped abominations made by your less loyal predecessors. If what you tell me about the automata you made is true, then five, perhaps six hours after dawn, we'll have the city and we'll have their heads, too.”

  *****

  Molly could hear the bear snoring in the chamber just inside the tower, so she spoke softly. “There's too many of them.”

  “That's correct,” the General said.

  “Then what can I do?”

  “Inside the bulge-belly stone womb, the seeds of the next three cities grow,” Vora said. “Tomorrow, you must take them and flee. Go North with Juan Chang and the bear.”

  “And the city? All the people inside?”

  “The city will be lost to the Hales,” the General said. “And the people will die.”

  “But I can open a gate. They could run.”

  “You saw the bodies on the pebbled beach, Molly. The Hales will cut them down. Or the Guard will. You could use the people of the city as a distraction perhaps, but they're going to die,” he said. Molly's shoulders slumped.

  “Your only concern now is escaping with the seeds,” Fin Singh said. “But there's another danger.”

  “Antoine and Lula?”

  “If they know of the seeds, then they'll try to take them from you.”

  “Is the city really stolen from them?” she asked.

  “Does it matter?” he asked. “Would you give them the seeds if it was?” Molly shook her head.

  “Should I kill them? Now, before they try to take the seeds?”

  “Not yet; they're still useful to you,” Fin Singh said. “They want two things. One is the city. The other is Vargas Hale's head. When he enters the city, they'll try and take it from him. Along with the Populists, they'll cover your escape.”

  “The Populists are going to die, too?” Molly asked. “All of them?” The General nodded.

  Molly turned her eyes away from the constructs to the glowing canopy of the helio trees and then to the tents at the base of the tower. Moments later, her ears heard a faint feather-fuffle, but when she looked, her eyes saw nothing in the air.

  “I feel the sparks,” Vora's ghost said. “Something's close...”

  The bird lighted a few yards away on the balcony's railing. It was smaller than a crow and blacker, too, a bird-shaped hole in the night with domed and turgid fishes' eyes.

  “Beware, Molly,” Vora said. “This is Mei Corina's creation – her night-bird.”

  It walked towards Molly on spindle-legs and fine-taloned claws. As it got yard-close, its black beak opened and a tiny, pink, human tongue flicked wet in the moonlight. Then, it spoke. It wasn't the rasping, forced voice Molly had heard the living Fin Singh force from the throat of a Thunderbird; this voice sounded angelic. It laughed with a beckoning melody and said, “What a place to find a little Stitchlife.”

  “I'm not a Stitchlife,” Molly replied.

  “Are you sure? Aren't you wearing a wreath?” The bird laughed again, and Molly heard a young woman behind it. “I speak through this creature, Molly, but know that I am the Stitchlife Corina.”

  “Vora says I shouldn't trust you.”

  “I no longer serve the merry Hales. I seek to fulfill Kitty Hawk's long-forgotten oath and serve all mankind. Like Vora Mbuntu.”

  “You knew Vora?” Molly asked.

  “I was her apprentice once, just as you, Molly, will be mine.”

  “Vora says you're lying.”

  “Vora is dead,” the bird said.

  “Her ghost isn't.”

  “The construct that she stole,” the bird said, “along with all this.” It spread it wings wide and Molly saw it meant the whole city around them. “Listen carefully, Molly. This battle is lost, and it's time to go. The city's walls are going to fall. Soon. Look for the spreading stain. Five hours after you see it, six at the most, where the walls are stained, they'll turn to sand. When the walls fall down, be here. Bring the Populists and Juan Chang. Bring the bear, too. I'll come for you in Baba Yaga, in my walking Stitchlife's lab. The Hales will win this battle, but come with me, and the nobles' reign will end.”

  *****

  Vargas Hale sent his three golems to do their work at dawn.

  As they walked down the hill and across the field, rabbits scattered from the thunder rumble of their feet on the earth, and the living city sensed their approach. It mustered to meet force with force. Vargas Hale saw it with his naked eye first, then used his spyglass to better take it in.

  The witchy sands freed themselves from their cohesive, neighborly bonds all along the top of the high walls. From the hilltop it looked like they were eroded by a purposeful, guiding wind that drove them, grain by grain, to flow down the wall and along the ground to a spot just outside the city where they piled themselves up again.

  The great, stomping feet formed first. Oh, the things you could crush with those feet, Vargas Hale thought as he marveled at their size. Each of them was nearly twenty-feet-long. By the time the ankles, calves, and knees formed, the Sugar Music golem already dwarfed the trio he'd sent marching towards the city. It was like watching a monument to destruction birth itself from wind-blown sand. In less than a minute, it stood a towering hundred-feet-tall. More.

  As the colossus stepped away from the wall to meet the three pigmy golems he'd sent towards the city, Vargas Hale felt its footfalls in the ground beneath him. He wasn't worried about the fantastic disparity in size. His golems would fight this battle with witchery, and if the Stitchlife Corina was right, neither the colossus nor the city would have any defense against their attack.

  The three, black automata creatures broke into a trot and then a run, and they spread out to make themselves harder to catch.

  With a single, giant step, the colossus closed the distance to the knee-high midgets. Its titanic leg rose up and fell with astonishing swiftness, and its stone foot crushed the first of Vargas Hale's golems into the earth. The force of the blow came up through Vargas Hale's feet.

  As the colossus knelt and stretched out its arm to swat another golem, it lifted its foot, and Vargas Hale saw that the black sands of the first golem had stained it. The arch of the foot was already blackened, and the ink-blot stain was working its way up the ankle.

  The colossus’s open hand came swiftly swatting down to crush the second golem flat. When the city's stony champion raised its palm, Vargas Hale saw that the giant's hand was blackened there, too. It moments, its whole hand grew dark.

  The third golem managed to surprise the colossus. The midget spun and dodged the giant's next swatting attack, ran through its legs, and before it could be stopped, it hurled itself at the city's West gates with its arms outstretched. Vargas Hale smiled as he watched it quickly sink into the living stone and leave behind a twenty-foot-tall, man-shaped, blackened bruise.