Then, there was nothing to do but wait and hope the guards didn't discover them or the spreading stain.

  *****

  Juan Chang sat slumped against the wall of his cell, despondent and despairing.

  I've been a fool, he thought. Not for loving Corina, not for trusting her, but for trusting what she gave me. As seduced as I was by her, I was seduced by the offer of power more. The power to finally win the fight against the Hales, the power to liberate the People from noble rule. It's my own fault, he thought. I should have seen what I've always known: power like she gave my army is only ever given for one reason – to serve Power itself.

  His own fate didn't bother him nearly as much as the fate it had brought his men. They joined the Populists because they'd rather die than live under noble rule, and now they were worse than dead. Every breath they took was to serve the new royalty.

  Hala Zamis was mad if she thought the nobles would accept Stitchlife rule. He wondered if her cupidity for power had blinded her as his had blinded him.

  The nobles would be coming. Juan Chang was sure of it. They'd be coming under a single banner in numbers that would crush his lost army. He should have said 'Yes' to Zamis, he thought. He should have taken her offer and captained his army – even under the Stitchlife's flag. It was the least he could do for men he'd led to become puppets of the new and short-lived Stitchlife Queens.

  When the first spot appeared on the wall opposite him, he thought perhaps he wasn't just suffering a failure of leadership, but of clear sight, too. It was so dark that he thought his eyes had a great blind-spot. As it spread outwards to a blackened, inky blemish across the wall, he recognized it as Corina's mark and smiled.

  Five minutes later, when the wall fell and he saw the blood and the bodies outside his cell, his smile was gone, and there was only only grave resolve on his hard-held face.

  *****

  Molly, the fur-belly, and Juan Chang streaked through the door of Corina's lab and surrounded Hala Zamis. Their blades and claws were blood-wet, but Hala Zamis's face didn't express any surprise or fear. Corina smiled at Juan Chang, but he avoided her eyes. He held a bloody saber under the Stitchlife Queen's throat, and as his hands shook with rage and sorrow at having to cut down his own men to reach her, his blade smeared their color on her neck.

  Kitty Hawk said, “You must be Juan Chang.” He was so used to seeing her encased in crystal, that at first, to see her stand, breathe, and speak left him at a loss for words. “I've heard much about you from Corina,” she said. “She's right: you do look good in red.” Juan Chang looked from her back to Hala Zamis and pushed the edge of the blade hard enough against the Stitchlife Queen's neck to feed it a fresh trickle.

  “Release my men from your witchery,” he said. He was surprised to hear Hala Zamis laugh.

  “I can't,” she said. “Once they're bound, it can't be undone. Their loyalty to the Stitchlife Queens is stone-writ in their minds like breathing and the beating of their hearts.”

  “Even if you're killed?” Juan Chang asked.

  “If I die, their loyalty passes to my successor. Not even the deaths of all the Stitchlifes will release them. They'll live and die to avenge us.” Seconds later, Baba Yaga's corridors and the lab were thick with witched men. “See how they rally to their Queen's aid,” Hala Zamis said. At her command, they took the saber from Juan Chang's hands. With another glance from their Queen, they surrounded Molly and Teddy Da. They took her knife, and kept the points of their blades in the bear's fur.

  Hala Zamis turned back to Juan Chang. “There really is no way to release them from Corina's programming. I'm very disappointed in you, Molly. And I thought Kitty Hawk's creature would have better sense. And how did you free your General Chang, Molly? Was it with Corina's help?”

  “It was my idea,” Kitty Hawk said behind her. Hala Zamis turned slowly. “I made a variant of Corina's infectious automata and gave it to the girl to rub into the wall of his cell. I told them you would be here, too, and that this was the best chance to trap you.”

  “You?” Hala Zamis exclaimed. “But why? Why would you turn on us – on your daughters?”

  “Because you don't wish to serve the world, you wish only to rule it.”

  “We seek to serve the world with our wisdom. The only way to do that is by controlling it,” Hala Zamis said. That made Kitty Hawk cackle.

  “I've heard those words before. I spoke them. I said those very words when I decided my power would set the world on its proper course. My Gargantuans destroyed it instead. Even if I could give you the creature you need to win the coming battle, I wouldn't.”

  “But the Stitchlifes will be no more. It won't be just us who die; the unified nobles will sail to the Coral Castle for revenge. They'll kill the sisters we left there to make sure we never rise against them again. Everything you've made will be lost. Your Stitchlifes, your castle, your craft. Everything.”

  “And without my legacy, without the Stitchlifes, in time, the long-lived nobles will age. Without us to speed them, the next of them will be as slow as common men, and when that happens, a future generation of common men will overthrow them.”

  “But the world needs us to guide it,” Hala Zamis said. “To fix it.”

  “My greatest mistake was using my power to fix the world when I saw it was broken. My next greatest mistake was thinking that if I gave the nobles the benefits of my craft that they'd use them to lift man from the mud and that through them I could repair and remake what I'd destroyed.”

  “The errors the nobles have made can be corrected if we take the reins from them.”

  “The same words I spoke once.” She laughed. “I'm the great Kitty Hawk, I said to myself. I mastered the old science and rediscovered the lost secrets. Who better to take charge than me? I was wrong – as wrong then as you are now.”

  “You would see your daughters destroyed?”

  “If the Stitchlifes perish and everything I've made is gone, then eventually the world will rise again the way it did long before I was born.”

  “But it'll be a world unguided. Without a hand to lead i-”

  “Whatever happens will happen by the world's own hand, not mine. That's the way it should be, the way it must be. That is serving mankind.” Kitty Hawk brought ten fingertips to her wreath, looked up, and spoke to the air in a loud voice, calling out, “Baba Yaga! Turn your back to these witches and your front to me!” The floor shuddered under them. Then, Kitty Hawk cackled, clapped her thin, bone-fingered hands together three times, and the world fell away from their feet.

  *****

  The floor of the lab tilted left and right, forward and back. Just before everyone and everything floated in free-fall, Molly saw the witched men filling Baba Yaga's hallways fall into the disintegrating floor. Then, everything above them turned to an avalanche of sand that wiped them from her view.

  As Baba Yaga's witchy sands lost cohesion, her walls fell, her towers fell, and the bone-walled, eight legged lab at its heart fell, too. While the sands rained down, the lab fell with them to land on the copper-blooded legs that Corina had grown. Their bones broke on impact and burst through the skin to wet the sands with blue blood, but as they compressed and fractured under the combined weight of the lab and Baba Yaga's sands, they slowed the lab's fall until Baba Yaga rested unevenly on crushed and mangled legs.

  The beating of the pump-house heart continued for a few more moments, but then Baba Yaga bled out and was silent. The only sounds were the groans of the half-conscious on the floor. Molly was surprised to see Corina up and moving with a purloined saber in her hand. She looked around frantically, and when she found Hala Zamis dazed against the base of a workbench on the other side of the room from her guards, she rushed at her.

  The Stitchlife Queen saw her coming and rose in time to catch Corina's arm as the blow fell. The legs under the lab broke again, and as the room shifted, Corina and Hala Zamis both spun and fell. Hala Zamis ended up on top of Corina, and underneath the young Stitchlife's head was the pearl-coated box. Corina saw the danger and struggled to keep the flesh of her face from its poisonous lid, but Hala Zamis took one hand from the struggle for the saber, put it to Corina's head, and pushed her face down towards the poison. “Kill her!” Corina cried out. “All the other witches are buried alive! The army's loyalty will pass to me!”

  Molly saw her knife on the floor. She sped herself, snatched it from where it lay, and jumped onto Hala Zamis's back. The wreath on Molly's head prevented the Stitchlife Guard from sticking her with their sabers, and as the stunned Stitchlife Guard struggled to pull her off without hurting her, Molly sawed and pulled and came away with the Queen's head.

  *****

  As he came conscious again, Juan Chang saw Corina an inch from her death. He sped himself to reach her, but Hala Zamis's headless body pressed Corina's face into the pearl-topped lid of the box before he could reach her. It only took a fraction of a second for the box to know that the flesh pressed against it wasn't Hala Zamis's, and then the coiled, poison-tipped nematocysts under its shiny surface fired their barbs into Corina's cheek. Her face went white and her body went rigid even before Hala Zamis collapsed on top her. Juan Chang lifted the headless witch off Corina and threw her body yards across the lab. As he leaned over Corina, he saw the veins of her face blacken with the spreading poison.

  Daylight cut the lab's dim as the surviving Stitchlife Guard dug their way in through the dead sands blocking the door of the lab. “Save the Stitchlife Queen,” they cried, “Save Queen Corina!” As they approached, Corina spoke to them in a raspy voice.

  “Follow my red-cloaked General into battle,” she told them. “Follow Juan Chang until death. Your Queen commands it.” Juan Chang tried to speak to her, but no sound would escape his mouth. Corina shook, and spasms wracked her body as he held her. Then she was still, and her eyes met his.

  Corina's tongue circled the roof of her mouth three times, and her last words to her lover were a single, intoxicating breath. Juan Chang inhaled it deeply and wept.

  “The Queen is dead,” one of the witched musketeers cried. Then, he turned to the only living Stitchlife he saw and said, “Long live the Queen! Long live Queen Molly!”

  Chapter Nine

  Damn All the Witches

  A massive dune of Baba Yaga's fallen sands rested in front of Vargas Hale's manor. Corina's lab was buried under it, save for a bit of the witch-bone dome on one side where Juan Chang's men had dug to reach their trapped Queen. Only half of those who'd been in Baba Yaga when she collapsed managed to dig themselves free. The rest died. Now the survivors dug looking for their sabers and the bodies of their dead witch-queens.

  Molly sat at the bottom of the spreading dune. Juan Chang sat nearby with Corina's black-veined body, along with Teddy Da who sat over the unconscious Kitty Hawk.

  As he watched more bodies being lifted from the sands, Juan Chang said, “Damn Kitty Hawk for killing so many of them. Damn all the witches. Nearly half my men are dead.”

  “But they'll follow you now,” Molly said. “I told them to, just like Corina did.”

  “They still follow the commands of a Stitchlife Queen,” he said bitterly. “There's no breaking this witchery.”

  “Are those vultures?” Teddy Da asked. He pointed up to wide-spread wings riding thermals high above in lazy circles. “They look like vultures.”

  “Those,” Juan Chang said, “are scouts from the approaching nobles' army.” He didn't bother to look up. “What they see, the nobles see.” He sighed. “Our number, the bodies, everything. And tell me what the General and the wasps have shown you, Molly. I saw your eyes a few minutes ago, staring ahead, seeing somewhere else. Tell me what you saw there.”

  “The nobles have split their forces to prevent our escape. Outside the enclave's West gate are nearly a thousand of their combined Guard waiting with their rifles.”

  “A thousand?” he asked in disbelief. Molly nodded gravely. “Go on, what else?”

  “Most of the nobles are approaching the nearby East gate. Seven hundred or so. And another thousand of their Guard.”

  “They'll camp and rest before they attack,” Juan Chang said. “Now that they've trapped us inside the walls.”

  “My Queen,” a lieutenant said as he approached. Molly pointed to Juan Chang, and the soldier turned to address him instead. “General Chang, we've found plenty of lost sabers. Not much else of use. There's no sign of the Haunted City's seeds. It's as if they were turned to sand, too. And we found the last of the witch-queens' bodies. Except for Queen Molly and Kitty Hawk, they all suffocated under the sands. Shall we bury them now?” he asked. Juan Chang nodded. The lieutenant bent to pick up Corina's body, but Juan Chang knocked his hands away.

  “I'll carry her,” he said.

  “Long live the Queen,” the lieutenant said before he walked away.

  Juan Chang knelt, lifted Corina's body from where it lay, walked down the edge of the dune to the grass, and followed him. “I'm going to bury Corina,” he said. Before he walked off, he called back to Teddy Da, “Let me know when your mother wakes, fur-belly. I have words for her.”

  Molly and Teddy Da sat on the edge of the dune for the last hours of the day. Molly left to fetch some food and water for the bear since he wouldn't leave Kitty Hawk's side. She returned as the late afternoon sun cast the world in gold – just in time to see Kitty Hawk's eyes open. “Dammit,” The Witch said, “I'm alive.”

  “You are,” the fur-belly said with a smile.

  “I was supposed to be dead.” She sat up slowly and held her skull with both of her bony hands. “We were all supposed to be dead. Those were good last words I had, and now they've gone to waste.”

  “Many are dead,” Molly said.

  “The Stitchlifes?” she asked. Molly nodded.

  “And many of the Populists,” Teddy Da said. “I mean the Stitchlife Guard.”

  “I imagine Juan Chang might want to kill me, then. I suppose that would work, but now that I find I'm not dead, I want to die in a different way. Although,” she cackled, “dying on the end of a vengeful Populist's blade would be a fitting way to end.”

  “Is dying all you can think about?” Molly asked.

  “Is there much else to think about at this point? The sun's nearly set. I imagine the nobles are here by now, camped outside the gates. They'll feast and drink tonight and then probably attack in the hour after dawn tomorrow. How many did you say?”

  “Six times our number of witch-sped blades. Thousands of Guard,” Molly said. “What did you do to Baba Yaga?”

  “The automata that you rubbed into the wall of Juan Chang's cell was based on what Corina made, but different – stronger. A few grains of what I made was enough to start a reaction that converted all of Baba Yaga's automata.”

  “Then, you controlled it?” the bear asked.

  “Only enough to kill it. Does that count as control?” Kitty Hawk laughed. “I know what you're going to ask. I can't remake Baba Yaga or use the grains I made to convert your automata city into a Gargantuan.”

  “Couldn't you have found another way?” Molly asked. “Other than destroying Baba Yaga? Other than killing everyone? Is that all you know how to do?”

  After Kitty Hawk watched the birds circling above for a few moments, she asked, “Are those vultures?”

  “Those are the nobles' scouts,” Teddy Da said.

  “Tell me where the Hales keep their own birds,” Kitty Hawk said. “No, better yet, show me.”

  *****

  Molly and Teddy Da walked the limping Witch down the enclave's roads, past the cracked, witch-bone manors, past the house where she remembered the pretty dress still lay, to the gigantic, domed bird cage, now filled with evensong. “An aviary,” Kitty Hawk said when she saw it.

  “That's where the Stitchlifes got their messenger birds from,” Molly said. “There might be more.”

  “They're a bit small for what I had in mind.”

  Next to the cage was the building that looked like a stable. Inside it was mostly empty, but one of the larger stalls in the rear was still occupied. They could hear something there scraping at the floor. As they approached, the sound stopped, and they knew whatever was there was now listening to them. Chains rattled, and as they stepped into sight of the enormous copper-blood, it showed them the tongue inside its curved beak and nearly deafened them with a piercing cry.

  It was five yards tall where it stood, and its head shifted left and right on its neck as it looked at them. “Vargas Hale's Thunderbird,” Molly said. “It must have flown back here before him.” A shackle was bound around its leathery leg and the chain through it kept the bird in its stall. The creature's curving beak had been chipped at the edges like a serrated blade. Probably, she thought, from trying to bite through the shackle and the chain to free itself.

  “That's another pretty Stitch – a fine piece of work,” Kitty Hawk said.

  “It looks like it wants to eat us.”

  “I imagine they keep food around somewhere,” The Witch said. “Look out back.”

  Out the rear of the building was a covered hog pen, but Juan Chang's men had already slaughtered and eaten them all. Close to it, Teddy Da's nose found a door set in the earth and under it were stairs leading to a smooth-walled cellar. It smelled like meat, the bear said, and when Molly walked down the stairs and looked around in the dim light that spilled down from above, she found all kinds of small animals hung on hooks. She grabbed as many of them as she could carry. The fur-belly carried out a ribbed side of something large – cow or horse, she couldn't tell which. The Thunderbird smelled them coming and shrieked.