“But they're surrendering,” Molly pleaded. “They don't want to fight.”

  “Oh, it's far too dangerous to leave them alive,” Ho said. “The fact that they wish to surrender to you does not speak well of their future loyalty to me. We can't go giving you an army, now can we?”

  “But they're surrendering,” she said in a horrified half-whisper.

  Ho rolled his eyes and beckoned a Red Hand runner to the carriage window. “Molly has decided to go back on our bargain. Go to the Rekki Maru and tell the men in the tower to ki-”

  “Alright!” Molly shouted. Then she lowered her voice. “Alright.”

  Ho smiled at Fin Singh, and Fin Singh laughed and nodded.

  “Good girl,” Ho said to Molly, and while she watched him dismiss the runner from the window with a wave of his hand, she imagined killing him and enjoying it. When Ho saw the burning in her eyes, he said, “Now don't look at me like that, Molly. Mine is the path of Power. I don't really have a choice. And neither do you. So go. Go now. Do your little, bone-bladed dance for all the Sons of Samson.”

  Molly opened the door of the carriage and stepped down to the street. Ho's men parted for her as she walked towards the Sons of Samson, and though her heart felt like a block of ice, the tears were already streaming down her face.

  Their leader stepped forward when she was close, knelt, and lay his curved sword down flat on the ground in front of her. Then all the men behind him knelt and lay their swords down, too. He shouted in a booming voice loud enough for all to hear, “The Sons of Samson surrender. We pledge our allegiance to Uncle Ho's Red Hand, each and every man.”

  “Thank you,” Molly said softly. “Thank you for your sacrifice.” The man looked up at her from the ground, and she could see her words confused him. “Thank you from Vora's cities and all the people who will live in them. Thank you for dying. For them.”

  “But we surrender,” he said in a low voice. His eyes showed no fear, only confusion and disappointment.

  “I know,” Molly said. “You can still fight if you want to.”

  He looked into her weeping eyes for a long moment, then took his curved sword from the ground, stood up, held it high above his head, and shouted, “Death! Death to the tyrant Ho!”

  As time trickled and the world grew slow, Molly noticed that the Sons of Samson all rose with their swords in hand. They were near-still statues to Molly, but she could see they were moving as fast as they could. Their leader, however, didn't move from his defiant pose. He stood and waited with his sword held high – waited for Molly to cut him down.

  She did.

  The rest of them tried to fight their way free. Some of them felled a few of Ho's men, but there was no breakout and no escape for the Sons of Samson. Molly burrowed her way into the middle of them, spinning and blurred. Then she worked her way outwards in a spiraling path. She hoped the Sons of Samson would all surge forward and tear Ho from the carriage and dice his fat flesh to mince, but when Molly cut the last of them down, she looked up through her tears to see Ho leaning out the window, applauding.

  Chapter Fourteen

  From Flesh To Sand

  Molly awoke to smell flesh roasting on the deck below the tower.

  “Ho celebrates his victory,” Pietra Fona said. “All of Wrecks' Landing is his.” She lowered herself carefully to sit on the edge of the cot. Her skin was gray, and her dancing, glinting eyes were now dulled and dim.

  “What's happened to you?” Molly asked her, rising to stand close in front of the Stitchlife.

  “What I always wanted,” she said, taking Molly's hand in hers and patting it.

  When the guards came, they brought shackles to bind Molly's wrists and ankles. They took her bone blade from her, bound her, and led her and frail Pietra Fona out of the cell, out of the tower, and out to the Rekki Maru's deck.

  It was lit with torches like a flickering island of orange light in the city's green night-haze. Ho's feasting men filled the deck, and under the canopy Ho, his captains, and grinning Fin Singh sat at a long table and feasted and drank and looked out over it all.

  There were two empty places at the table.

  “Ah!” Ho exclaimed, throwing his hands high in the air. “It's our guests of honor!” he shouted in a merry voice. “Welcome to my victory feast!”

  The guards led them to Ho's table and chained Molly to an iron ring that protruded from the deck. She couldn't move more than a yard in any direction. No matter how fast she was, it wouldn't matter, and Molly despaired.

  The guard handed Molly's witch-bone blade to Ho as Fin Singh leaned out over the table and smiled at her. Molly tried to ignore him as Ho turned her little knife over in his hands and then cut his meat with it. “To think,” Ho said, “this little blade killed so many. Hundreds and hundreds.”

  “Uncle Ho,” she said, “You have what you wanted. Give me Pietra Fona and let me go.”

  “Oh, you will go, dear, little monster. Both of you. After the feast I will give you the witch, and you will both go with Fin Singh in his fine, witchy carriage.”

  Molly looked to her right, to the old Stitchlife, and saw that she was smiling thinly. Molly didn't understand. Surely, Pietra Fona understood what was happening.

  The crone looked closer to death than ever. Molly's chains were just long enough for her to reach out and touch the Stitchlife's arm, and when she did, it broke the delicate balance of the old woman's body. Pietra Fona wavered left and then right and then fell forwards where her head struck the table with a loud thud.

  Ho laughed and pounded the table. When he saw the color drain out of Fin Singh's face, he laughed even harder. “Too bad for you, envoy Singh!” he said. “But now there will be more room in your carriage.” He was still laughing when the table and the deck began to vibrate.

  Molly looked on in horror as the crone's body shook and spasmed in fits. Then she was still again. There was a fearful silence until it was broken by Ho's laughter. Molly reached out to touch Pietra Fona and felt how the witch's flesh was already like stone.

  Then, a fine sand endlessly seeped out of her skin and made her thin frame swell in size. In moments, her clothes burst from her, and Molly saw the witch's body was covered in sand. She was sand, witchy sand like Molly recognized from Vora's little city.

  The weight of Pietra Fona's still-growing body collapsed the table where she lay.

  Then the witch stood up.

  Ho sat paralyzed, open-mouthed and terror-faced.

  Fin Singh tried to rise and escape, but in a single stride the golem witch was to him and wrapped her arm around him in a crushing, inescapable embrace. Her other arm wrapped around Ho where he sat screaming in his chair.

  He stabbed at her with Molly's bone blade, but the knife and his whole hand disappeared inside her and was stuck there.

  As the growing golem Fona clasped the men to her, the sands of her expanding flesh flowed off of her and covered Ho and Singh. The two men screamed until the sand flowed into their mouths and down their throats.

  For a few more moments, the three of them were frozen together like a single, grotesque creature. Then the fine, living sands that covered the two men withdrew. Molly expected to see Ho's and Singh's flesh revealed underneath the ebbing sands, but as it flowed off their bodies and up Pietra Fona's arms to swell the size and power of the automata golem she'd become, there was no flesh underneath. The two men had been entirely transformed into automata, and it all flowed into Pietra Fona until both Ho and Singh were disappeared, and the golem Fona stood alone, now several feet taller than before.

  The sight of what happened under the canopy drove panic into the hundred and fifty men on the top-deck. At the very tip of the bow, Molly saw the Thunderbird straining at its chains, trying to escape.

  The golem Fona reached down, ripped Molly's chains apart, and freed her from her bindings. Then, her stony face molded itself into a smile, and as the sands of the giant's outstretched hand shifted, Molly saw her knife appear in its palm. She took it, and Fona bounded off across the deck into the crowds of fleeing men with heavy steps that echoed in the hollow hull and shook the entire ship.

  “The nets and the ladders, Molly,” the General said, suddenly in front of her, “Cut them all! Quickly! Don't let Ho's men escape!”

  By the time the Red Hand got to their nets and their ladders, witch-sped Molly had cut every single one, and the only escape was over the side, to the street, fifty feet below.

  Ho's men screamed and pleaded for mercy, but the giant Fona showed them none. Man by man, one by one, she wrapped each of them in her embrace and covered them in her witchy sands until their flesh became sand, too. The transformed flesh of each man flowed up into the golem Fona and she became more massive with every man she consumed

  Molly covered her ears against the Red Hand's screams.

  By the time the golem Fona had absorbed all of Ho's men, she was fifty-feet-tall and crushing the deck under her weight. She snapped the Thunderbird's chains, and watched it fly away.

  Then, Fona jumped from the warping deck of the Rekki Maru and disappeared from Molly's view. After the whole ship shook with the weight of her landing, her stony, open palm reappeared just off the side of the ship. Vora's ghost stood near it on the deck, beckoned to Molly with one hand, and pointed to the giant's hand with the other. “Climb into Pietra's hand,” she said. “And we can be gone from this place.”

  The golem giant Fona carried Molly in the palm of her rough, stony hand, and stepped over the awe-struck denizens of Wrecks' Landing and their fragile buildings with as much care as she could. As she walked towards the river, her earth-quaking steps made mortar fall from the brick buildings she passed. A part of Molly that couldn't bear the memory of what she'd done in Wrecks' Landing wanted to see Pietra wade through its buildings and kick them all to the ground until the place was nothing but rubble. She brushed against one or two of them by accident, but those were the only buildings she collapsed.

  She stepped into the river with Molly in the cup of her hand, under the gentle cage of her stony fingers. A few of the toy boats below sloshed up on the banks, and the docks took a beating from the waves the golem's entry made, but Molly could see that Pietra Fona was being as careful as she could.

  Pietra waded upriver, past the walls, past the fruits of the 'Fills the Zabbas had piled high on the riverbanks, finally stepping out of the gray-green river and striding into the rolling-hilled 'Fills. Pietra Fona's giant, golem legs carried them across the 'Fills for hours while Molly peered out from her high-held hand and watched the world pass by at surprising speed. Far-off Zabbas, green lit by their methane torches, looked like flies buzzing around green glowsies as they scurried and panicked and pointed at the giant. Molly was surprised to see Pietra's other hand waving to them.

  The bouncing rhythm of Fona's walk wasn't unpleasant, but the hardness of her golem palm made for a jarring ride through the night as she walked across the 'Fills and into the wilds on the other side.

  She passed glowsie-filled meadows and walked down the cracked blackstone scars through the woods. When dawn's light finally found them and turned Pietra's stony, automata flesh a rosy-cheeked pink, she stood atop a set of low hills that overlooked a sheltered ocean bay and a pebbled beach below.

  Pietra Fona stood still in the rising sun while Molly breathed in the salty breezes blowing off the bay and wondered why they'd stopped there. Minutes later, at the base of the hills that faced the gently lapping waters of the bay, Pietra Fona set Molly down in silvery, dew-wet grass and soft light where the sun's rays hadn't yet reached. Then, the golem Fona molded her face into a wide smile again, walked a few more steps, and lay down in the grass.

  Molly ran after her.

  Before she reached Fona, without any other warning, the fine, sandy automata flowed off the golem witch's prone and still body, spread itself on the ground, and sank through the grass, into the earth. It only took moments, and when all of Pietra Fona's sands had disappeared, Molly was alone. She sat in the grass and wept.

  Then the ground shook, and Pietra's voice was in her head. It said, “This, Molly, is the nature of sacrifice.” Molly grinned wide when she saw the fissures cracking the earth and the steam shooting from them. It was just like what she'd seen on the floor of Vora's shelter, only much, much bigger.

  “Run, Molly,” Vora's ghost said in her ear.

  Molly scrambled to her feet and ran for the hills as the ground shook and rumbled under her. The cracks and the steam were everywhere. It was terrifying and wonderful, and Molly didn't stop running until Vora said she could.

  When she finally looked back, the first houses were lifting themselves from the earth.

  *****

  In just a few minutes, the whole city grew before her eyes. It all gleamed as it lifted itself high from the dirt and shined in the morning sun. It was all there – the walls, the houses, the market squares, the amphitheaters, the wells, the white roads and paths weaving and wending through the city. The great skull-top was there too, right where it was supposed to be. Vora's whole city was there, full-size and glorious in the morning sun. She spotted Vora's favorite part – the bulging, swell-bellied shape where the seeds of the next cities grew. It was the most beautiful thing Molly had ever seen and she jumped up and down and clapped with delight. “Sugar Music!” she shouted with glee. “It's beautiful!”

  “It is,” Vora's ghost said, smiling.

  The General and Fin Singh agreed.

  “But how?” Molly asked. “How did sh-”

  “The Stitchlife Fona grew it inside her,” Vora said. “It took the mysteries of an already living system to make Sugar Music stable, so Pietra Fona became Sugar Music herself.”

  “I wish Vora could see it,” Molly said.

  “Pietra Fona recovered some of Vora's own code from her wreath and stitched it into the Sugar Music seed she grew in her belly. That city below is as much Vora Mbuntu as it is Pietra Fona.”

  Molly streaked witch-sped through the grass to the city's high walls, but she couldn't find the gate. It only appeared when Molly pressed her palm against the living stone. Then, a high, arched gate formed itself in front of her. It opened, and the morning sunlight streamed through it.

  Epilogue

  Vargas Hale's Thunderbird flew home to the enclave with memories in its head, and his single, remaining Stitchlife, the apprentice Mei Corina, showed them to him.

  He saw the battles in Wrecks' Landing and Uncle Ho's queer, little, witch-sped champion. He saw the deaths of the Red Hand and Ho and his own man, Fin Singh. When Lord Hale saw the transformation of Pietra Fona from crone witch to golem giant and then saw the rise of the automata city to the North, he knew exactly where Sugar Music had gone.

  Vargas Hale took the witch-bone helm from his head, climbed to the roof of his manor castle, and screamed until the air shook with his rage. When his kin heard his cry, all across the half-wrecked enclave, witch-sped Hale blades traded their gilded goblets for sabers and prepared to make war.

  The Fall of the Haunted City

  By A.D. Bloom

  Stitch: Book Two

  Chapter One

  The Noble Hunters Walton

  Antoine held himself still in front of the four-legged carriage and the Hale guardsmen so that even natural-born eyes could see his witch-sped form clearly in the woods' dimming light. He met their gaze with a pointy-toothed smile and watched their fear grow at the sight of his eight-foot frame, dark skin, bone-white hair, and black-on-black eyes. His high-held cutlass was razor-edged bone, wet with the Hale Guard's color.

  The carriage brought its legs to rest underneath it, and he shouted, “Do the Hales let their Guard do the fighting for them? Or do they have the honor to accept a challenge from a noble Walton blade?” The carriage knelt slowly, and the voice that answered from inside was deep and rich and merry.

  “Has your Stitchlife made your pointy-toothed, Walton noblewomen so ugly that you came to kidnap a bronzed Hale beauty for a bride?”

  “I am Antoine Walton,” he said, “and I seek revenge for the murder of my sister Celia. Do you accept my challenge?” For a full five heartbeats, the silence and the deer flies buzzed around them all. Then Antoine sped himself again. As the fountain-corpses filled the air with color and fell to earth, he held himself still again and asked, “Will you let all your servants die before you raise a hand to stop me?” Then he slice-diced the last of the Guard.

  The voice from within the carriage called out, “Ho! You Waltons are an impatient lot!”

  “Face me!” Antoine shouted.

  The door of the carriage finally swung open and the Hale showed himself. He was bronzed, golden-eyed, and grinning, and as he stepped down from the carriage in his breeches, bright-buckled shoes, and tight-buttoned coat, he smiled. “I already killed all the boars around the Cape. How nice there's one more to kill on the way home.” He paused before he drew his saber and tested it on the humid air. He announced, “I am Corin Hale, cousin to Vargas, and the merry Hales will enjoy the tale of your death.”

  Antoine walked up the blackstone path, and Corin Hale followed him until the guardsmen were no longer underfoot.

  As they circled each other, Antoine sized up his opponent. Corin Hale was larger than he was and his reach was greater. The young Walton was pleased that he'd managed to engage a big one. Calling out a runt of a Hale for his first duel would only lead his siblings to mock him.

  The Hale stepped forward and tested him with saber slashes from one side and the other. Antoine gave ground and let him slash at the empty air. When the bronze-skinned Hale came at him a second time, Antoine parried the blows with the flat and back of his blade.

  Antoine let this happen twice more until he felt he knew the Hale well enough to kill him.

  The next time he came, Antoine moved to parry as he had before, but this time, he stepped to the side and let his opponent's singing blade pass close. Then, he knocked his sword into the back of the Hale's saber after it passed. The extra energy imparted by the blow over-extended Corin Hale's swing, and the infinitesimal, extra fraction of a second it took the Hale to bring his saber back to play gave Antoine his opening. The young Walton stepped through to his side, spun a half-turn, and took the Hale's head with a neat, back-handed stroke.