At the front of the crowd, there was a pile of bodies, and it got higher as she watched. Initially, she thought the first few had fallen and the others tripped over them. Then, Molly saw the lines of Hale Guardsmen firing their witch-grown rifles into the crowd as they moved out to encircle the gate from where they'd hidden themselves on either side.

  “Get to the tower,” the General said. “Save yourself and save the seeds.” Fin Singh shouted the same thing. When Molly went the other way, Vora stood in front of Molly and waved her ghostly arms and tried to stop her.

  Molly ran at the still-surging crowd with all her speed, bounded up on their shoulders, and sprinted across them to the front where she leaped with her blade in hand. As Molly hung between sky and earth, the bear's words echoed in her ears. When she came to earth, she was a monster, and her love was a terrible, beautiful, bone-bladed fury.

  She wended her way in and out of the Hale Guard's line, letting their color fly free until the spurts of it were thicker in the air than their thorns. The first fifty fell in heartbeats, but when the Guard on the opposite side of the crowd saw the rust-spray fill the air and the twisting, blood-let bodies fall, they knew a witch-sped blade was among them.

  As she crossed the pile of her city's dead to slice-dice the next fifty Guardsmen in an eye-bending blur, their thorns filled the air in front of her and to the left and the right. She batted at them furiously with her knife and tried to dodge them, but the bodies of the fallen shifted underneath her feet and slowed her down, and by the time she realized she should have gone around the piled bodies instead of over them, it was too late.

  One of the black-tipped thorns found her. When it pricked her side, she was surprised that it didn't hurt more, and as her heart fast-pumped the poison through her, the rest of her went as numb as the wound.

  Her legs fell out from underneath her, and she dropped into the pile of bodies underfoot. From where her head hung she saw the Hale Guard sideways, half upside down. The poison slowed her mind as well as her body. Time no longer trickled. The thorns became zipping streaks, and the Guardsmen moved as fast as she did.

  Then Molly's eye caught a blood-wind blur among them.

  As the fur-belly tore through the Hale Guard with his slashing, vorpal claws, he was almost too fast for her to see at all, but Molly could tell where he was. That was where men turned to fountains and misted the air with their salty color.

  *****

  Antoine and Lula waited for the enemy to approach, and then when they saw Juan Chang's signal, they darted out from where they hid and ran through a group of Hales as fast as they could with only enough time to strike fore and backhanded slashes as they ran. Antoine's blade found flesh, and so did Lula's.

  Then the Hales gave chase.

  The Waltons ran with six enraged Hales close behind them until they saw the first left-hand turn in the city's streets. They lost some speed as they rounded the corner, and the Hales were almost close enough to slash at them when Antoine and Lula threw themselves to the ground. Not more than two yards in front of them, flashing flares of musket fire burned.

  The cloud of spinning balls ripped through the Hales and twisted them grotesquely. Their jerking death-dance was brief, but awful to watch as the musket balls pushed their way in and then ripped through flesh and breaking bones to burst out the other side with a terrible spray. Antoine looked back to the musketeers in time to see the slow-forming grins on their faces.

  First the Hales, he reminded himself. Then he and his sister rose to try the trick again.

  Juan Chang's tactics had reduced the advantages that numbers and speed gave the Hales. Antoine hoped that by the time he and his sister were lucky enough to have a chance for vengeance, there wouldn't be too many Hales left and Vargas Hale would be with a group small enough to attack directly.

  There was still no hope of victory, but vengeance just might be possible.

  *****

  Corina set Baba Yaga in motion. It rocked beneath her gently as she walked it down the hill and across the fields to the wide gap where the walls had fallen. She'd had to wait longer than she'd planned because of the explosions. She'd known the Populists had powder, but not that they had enough to make bombs. Baba Yaga's legs weren't strong enough yet to risk running into one; it might blow enough automata off the legs to make them vulnerable.

  As she approached the breach in the high wall and the dune of darkened automata in the gap, she looked down the avenue and into the city. Smoke was everywhere, and she couldn't see whether it was safe or not, but she kept moving towards her goal.

  She settled Baba Yaga into the gap in the wall, directly over the enormous dune of fallen automata. There was more of it here than she'd gotten from the golem she'd felled, a hundred times as much. It had been rewritten to be entangled and bound to her wreath, but until she joined it all to Baba Yaga, she'd have to control each grain of automata individually. The enormous effort would require every bit of concentration she had, so she lay down first since there was a good chance she might black out.

  *****

  From a side street just off the avenue that led to the West gate, Vargas Hale saw his Stitchlife's spider-legged lab settle into the gap in the city's wall. He wondered if it could use any of its eight legs to stomp and crush the Populists. While he watched it squat over the dune, his eye caught purple, Walton silk beyond it. He had five nobles at his side, including his daughter Phoebe's cunning blade, so he pointed at the enemy, cried, “Ho!” and charged.

  Vargas Hale was smart enough not to chase the Waltons into a hail of musket fire or one of the damned explosions that had already felled many of his blades, so he was pleased when he saw the Waltons didn't run away. In fact, they ran right at him, screaming with their blood-wet blades held high. As the distance between them closed, his Hales let out a merry cry, and they all charged up the sands to meet in the middle of the dune, right beneath the Stitchlife's eight-legged witchery.

  All of them slowed in the sands. His cousin crossed blades with the woman who'd felled Winton and Ebin, and before he could cry out and let his kin know that this Walton sow was his to kill, she parried his cousin's strike in passing, slashed him across the chest, and without missing a running step, came right at Vargas Hale, screaming a banshee war-cry.

  *****

  Lula was a few steps ahead of Antoine climbing the dune. He saw her fell the first of the Hales she met and then he saw Vargas Hale right in front of her. Antoine wanted to help her, but another Hale engaged him. It was the woman who'd nearly bested him back at the tunnel ambush – Phoebe Hale.

  She looked like she was going to slash, but she lunged out at him and stabbed with the point of her saber. Antoine barely avoided her blade. He countered with a turn of his wrist and brought his blade down to strike at her, but she pulled her sword-arm back and blocked his blade. As he guarded himself to ward off the stab or slash he imagined she'd throw at his left, the winds swirled around him and lifted the sands at his feet up into the air. They pelted and stung at his face and blew in his eyes, and Antoine was half-blind. He couldn't feel the wind itself, but somehow, a moment later, it lifted the entire dune into the air around him and then he couldn't see anything at all.

  Antoine felt the impact of Phoebe's sword against his own. He knew he'd been right about her last strike, but now that he was blind and he couldn't read her body or the attitude of her sword for clues, Antoine was lost. He reached out with the point of his blade and found nothing but the feel of Phoebe's saber as she batted his stabbing sword away.

  The air was a skin-stripping storm. There was nothing to see but murky sands swirling around him, and nothing but the whispered murmurs of unbound mind to guide his desperate strike.

  Antoine felt something resist at the end of his stroke.

  A beat of the dance passed without the touch of Phoebe's blade. Then another. Phoebe Hale's strike still didn't come, and Antoine wondered if she'd withdrawn. When he shuffled forwards and probed with his sword, he felt solid ground underneath his feet and doubted his position. Then, the sandstorm began to subside, but the swirling, airborne grains didn't fall to the ground. As the cloud thinned, the few grains that remained all flew upwards, and in a heartbeat, as quickly as the air had filled with the black sands, it was clear.

  The first thing he saw was Phoebe Hale at his feet, and a yard away was her head.

  The second thing he saw was the fallen, saber-stabbed body of his older sister, Lula.

  *****

  From blocks down the avenue, with the last score of his men, Juan Chang saw the swirling, black sandstorm rise. Four Hales fled the maelstrom and then ran out of sight along the wall. When the air below the Stitchlife's spider-legged creation cleared, he saw Antoine Walton standing alone with a headless Hale and fallen purple silk beside him. Even from so far away, he thought his ears would be torn by the anguish he heard in young Antoine's cry.

  Juan Chang looked away from the screaming noble and up at the hundred-foot-tall, walking castle above him. All of the blackened sands that had fallen from the city's wall had risen in the swirling vortex and swelled Baba Yaga's size to unbelievable proportions. Its legs were thick and mighty. The domed, witch-bone structure that was once its body was no longer visible. Now, it was somewhere inside an eight sided castle. Parapets lined the tops of its octagonal walls and its towers. It was a walking castle-keep, a fortress on legs, and as it rose up to its full height, it began to move with earth-quaking steps down the avenue and towards Molly's spiral tower.

  Juan Chang heard a gruff voice shout his name from far behind him and he turned to see the fur-belly running with something slung over his shoulder. Limp arms and legs dangled and bounced as the fur-belly ran. It was Molly he carried. The bear was close to the tower's shelter, but he wasn't there yet.

  The red cloak flapped behind Juan Chang as he and his remaining men began to run to the base of the tower. He turned to look back at the witchy castle stepping over buildings. Underneath it, seven Hale blades emerged from a side street, first staring up at the Stitchlife's creation, then at him and his men.

  Juan Chang shouted to his remaining dozen musketeers to form up and then began to close the distance between himself and the Hales. If he engaged them, then his men would get a chance to fire and the fur-belly and Molly would get inside the tower before the Hales fell on them. Juan Chang stopped in his tracks when he saw Antoine again, blade held high and charging into the Hales.

  The Walton lashed out without pause and one strike led into the next as if there was no boundary between them. When the Hales tried to catch the whirling blood-wind with their laggard blades, his movements put the Hales in arrangements that blocked each other from the fight. It appeared as if he'd calculated ten steps ahead, but Juan Chang knew there was no calculation in it. Antoine's dance was as unchoreographed as a thing can be. Antoine danced with the moment, and the Hales were all a thought's eternity too slow.

  Antoine felled a Hale, stepped through, and spun to wound another. Had the Hales taken their eyes off him for even an instant, then he would have cut them all down with a single, boundless stroke.

  Juan Chang wept with the beauty of it as he shouted, “Fire!”

  The volley of lead ball tore through them all, and Antoine's moment ended.

  *****

  Molly's upside down world tilted and jerked as her head bounced off the running fur-belly's back. She couldn't see where the muskets were firing and what was shake-stomping the earth until he set her down at the base of the tower and her head lolled to the side.

  It was bigger than when they'd seen it sitting on the hilltop. So much bigger. Corina's walking castle-keep was as tall as the city's spiraling tower now. Her spider-legged creation had grown walls and towers of its own.

  “Hurry!” she heard the bear shout. Then, her eye caught Juan Chang and his men running towards them. Juan Chang had tears streaming clean lines down his powder-soot face, but he looked calm as she'd ever seen him. She remembered weeping like that herself.

  “Did they escape?” he asked. “Out the East gate?”

  “Many did,” Teddy Da answered. “The Hale Guard were there. One of their thorn-spitters caught Molly.”

  “Let's hope the Stitchlife can cure her,” he said. “Quickly, press her palm against the wall.” Molly felt Teddy Da's paws grip her wrist. He lifted her hand over her head where she sat, turned it, and pressed it to the tower's wall. She fell backwards when the witch-sand wall behind her opened into a door. She looked up and saw Juan Chang and the bear looking down at her, shaking with the vibrations that bumped up at her back as Corina's castle stepped to the tower.

  “Come... wit...,” Molly managed to say.

  “There's nothing left to do here,” the bear said to Juan Chang. “Come. This hurley-burley's done.”

  Juan Chang bent down, picked Molly up, and carried her to the top of the tower while Teddy Da and the last dozen musketeers raced up the stairs behind him. At the top of the spiral tower, Teddy Da grabbed the satchel packed with the city's three seeds from where they'd stashed it.

  When Juan Chang carried Molly out to the balcony and suddenly stopped, her head fell away from his shoulder, and she saw the parapet-topped walls of Corina's castle only a few yards away from the tower. Then, a piece of it came away and swung down like a lowering drawbridge. When it met the balcony's railing, Molly saw a newly formed bridge to an open doorway. Standing in it, was a young woman wearing a Stitchlife's wreath, a long, buttoned, white coat like Vora's and Pietra's, and a broad smile. “Welcome to Baba Yaga,” she said. “I'm Corina.” When she met Molly's eyes, Molly saw her face darken with concern. “Quickly,” she said, “bring the girl to me.”

  As Juan Chang carried Molly across the bridge, Teddy Da stayed close, and Juan Chang's last dozen men followed cautiously. “What's happened to her?” Corina asked.

  “The Hale Guard,” the fur-belly said, “Their poison thorns.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes, maybe less.”

  “They're lethal within seconds,” she said. “I know; I grew the rifles and their poison in the farm factories myself. I think Vora must have given her some immunities or she'd be dead already. Bring her to my lab and I'll clean her blood.”

  Corina led them inside. Molly's head lolled forward and she watched Corina's feet and the smooth black automata floor until they entered a wide, high-domed, flesh-walled room that thumped with a pump-house heart. “Here. Put her here,” Corina's voice said. Where Juan Chang lay Molly down it was soft and fleshy and warm. Something she couldn't see crept around her arms and her feet and held her still. Then, whatever it was was inside her arms and the veins there throbbed. The Stitchlife's upside down face looked down at her from above and said, “Shhhh, Molly. Nothing to be scared of.” The Stitchlife was pretty, but when she was upside-down, her smile looked queer and menacing. “You'll be right as rain soon,” she said.

  The last thing Molly remembered hearing before everything went warm and dark and she floated on a wave, was Corina's voice naming them. “Dashing Juan Chang and his Populist Musketeers,” she said. “I like you in red. And behold – Kitty Hawk's talking bear, the vorpal-clawed legend. I never expected to meet you.” She laughed. “And Molly, the witch-sped blade of the Haunted City. Vora Mbuntu's chosen champion. Welcome, all of you. Welcome to Baba Yaga. This fateful meeting within her walls is where the end of the nobles' reign begins for true. Now,” she said, “if you'll excuse me, I must guide Baba Yaga out of the city.”

  *****

  Corina ascended a set of spiral stairs on the other side of her witchy lab.

  Juan Chang took the satchel of seeds from Teddy Da, set them among his remaining, nervous-eyed men, and ordered the musketeers to guard both the seeds and Molly with their lives. Their powder-burned faces were covered in unease as they took in the fantastic weirdness of the room around them, but they all met Juan Chang's eyes long enough to nod their understanding of his orders.

  Then Juan Chang followed Corina up the spiral stairs, and Teddy Da went with him. The walls of the witch-bone stairwell were covered in thick, throbbing vines that grew up and out to the circular balcony at the top of the stairs. A few feet away, another set of spiral stairs reached down from above. These were made of Baba Yaga's witchy sands, and Teddy Da and Juan Chang found Corina at the very top. When they exited, they saw they were atop a tower set in the center of her creation, and it overlooked not only the walking castle's courtyards, walls, and towers, but the Haunted City and the aftermath of the battle.

  Corina turned her head and smiled at them as the sea-breeze played in the black hair beneath her Stitchlife's wreath. Then, she turned her attention back to the path in front of her without saying a word.

  They set their hands and paws on the edge of the parapets, and held themselves steady as Baba Yaga began to move. It rocked gently at first, then settled into an barely perceptible sway as it walked on its eight, enormous legs over the buildings below. The city's walls shielded its streets from the bay's breezes, and a bluish powder-smoke haze still hung everywhere. Through it, they saw the leather-clad bodies of fallen musketeers lying in groups where the nobles overran them and cut them down. Bright, purple marked where the Waltons had fallen. Huge, bronze-skinned Hales lay still and stained the streets, too, but not enough of them. Not nearly enough.

  Kitty Hawk's creature pointed to a small group of still-standing Hales below. One of them screamed with impotent, helpless rage and shook his saber at them. Juan Chang heard Corina's springtime laugh at the sound of it. “Don't be so upset, Vargas,” the young Stitchlife said. “You'll see us again. And then, you'll wish you hadn't.” Vargas Hale's cries faded away as Baba Yaga stepped over the South market and delicately lifted one colossal leg after the other over the walls until it was clear of the Haunted City.