“Oh,” Evanne breathed. “Oh, no.”

  “I think it gets worse,” Hitch said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because they’re all still alive at this point.”

  Wolrif hurt. The inside of him, that hurt a lot, but also the outside, where he had a lot of the blood that should have been on the inside. There was a damnable secretaire that attacked him. He’d lost his way in the twisty turns of the city beneath a city. He’d stopped wondering at marvels and started running, because no matter how shiny, everything here wanted his life.

  It was bad enough when he’d entered through the magic gate. It hadn’t responded at first, and he wondered if all was for naught, but then it’d opened, giant air bubbles escaping, and he’d been sucked in with the inrush of water.

  The diving bell was lost. He didn’t know how he’d get back out.

  He didn’t know how he’d survive this pit of horrors.

  There wasn’t any gold, aside from the golden rod. He’d found it after entering the dark tower where the secretaire wouldn’t follow. A platform took him up, and there it was. All light left the place as he’d removed the rod from its plinth, and a loud noise like a harpy sounded, so he’d run.

  Back down, and out the door, and that’s when the secretaire bit him. He’d lost his knife. Then kept running. Climbed, rod under his arm, lantern flickering more than he was comfortable with, back into the corridors and traps above.

  He hurt, but he could make it out. Last door, and he was free. He put his hand on the apparatus that opened it and pushed.

  “We were there,” Evanne said. “But the door didn’t work right. The water came in.”

  “Hush. There’s more.”

  Yvette stood on the little boat she’d stolen. The diving bell was old, shitty, but it was all she could wheedle from a drunken boatswain by the docks.

  She saw another skiff on the lake. Slower, piloted by a hunched figure with animated arms. Her mother, no doubt come to destroy another dream.

  Yvette entered the lake, the cold taking her breath away. She huff-huffed as the bell sank. Yvette didn’t know how a diving bell worked. In hindsight, she should’ve brought a light. It was so dark down here.

  No, there: a light. A sliver of gold amid turbulence. Three’s Mercy, but it was Wolrif! Her feet touched the bottom, and she tried to shuffle the bell closer. It fought her, the turbulence a churning, torrid flurry of mud-streaked water.

  Behind Wolrif, his eyes wide with panic, a hole in the lakebed floor. Light glimmered within. He held out a shaft of gold to her, and for a moment her fingers touched it. She felt a jolt, then he was sucked away, down into the hole. A clang, and all light left.

  Silence, except for a trickle of water. A creak, a crack. Yvette sobbed, because it was dark, and Wolrif was gone. Another creak.

  And then the lake flowed over her.

  “Khiton’s balls.” Evanne clutched herself, music dying for a moment. “I can feel the water. The cold.”

  “One to go,” Hitch said. “Play.”

  Gallile stood atop her skiff. She had no diving bell, nothing but her voice, and she screeched at the placid lake surface. There, the boat Wolrif had been in, and a little way off, Yvette’s.

  Her Yvette’s.

  The water trembled, and a huge bubble broke the surface. It brought with it muck and slime. And a scrap of colour.

  Gallile paddled her skiff closer. Her old bones ached, her heart thundering in her wizened chest. She made the cloth, almost lost it as the undertow threatened to steal it back to the deeps. She snatched it and saw it for what it was: a scrap of the scarf Yvette wore.

  This was the Feybrind’s fault. Gallile was supposed to die for the cursed rod, not Yvette. But her daughter was down there. Gallile wailed, because her daughter was below, her stupid, wonderful daughter, and she couldn’t save her.

  No: Wolrif’s boat. She paddled, made it over, and almost capsized it in her frantic hurry. An anchor and line was coiled in the bow. She grabbed the anchor, held it close, and dived.

  Down, into the deep. To get her wayward, headstrong child.

  Her beautiful girl.

  Evanne sat on the floor of the ancient room, clutching her guitar. Holding the three ghosts’ grief. Trying not to be too sad, or too angry, because she needed to get back to Tarragon.

  Except… She held up the golden rod. “I’m carrying a cursed ancient relic that kills anyone who touches it?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “It’s called the Century Charm.” Yasmine seemed sad. “They didn’t build it to kill. Not at first.”

  “Vhemin build everything to kill.” Tarragon frowned. She wanted to lean forward, to peer at Yasmine, but the bars of the cage made the effort futile. She let her eyes wander. The room was as she remembered. Shitty Vhemin construction, trash architecture, bogus lines. It all made sense now. There. A haze. She thought maybe she could see a part of the air where the edges didn’t line up right. Was the Feybrind here?

  “The real problem we’ve got is Dancing Stars wants us to fix it. Where she dropped Evanne… no one comes back from there. But I think that’s where our home is. What’s left of it.” Yasmine didn’t seem certain. “We’d have a better shot at fixing Dancing in the Storm than this hulk.”

  Dancing in the Storm. That’s the name we gave our home! Tarragon straightened. “I’d forgotten her name.” Play for the crowd. She fluttered her wings to a specific timing, sparkle dripping about her like warm rain. An old pattern, because Handspeak wasn’t very secret with one of the People here. A vibration so subtle you’d need to be a fairy to see it. This is what she said: ... .... . / .-.. .. ... - . -. ...

  She listens

  Yasmine paused, then her own wings thrummed just enough for Tarragon to hear. .. / ... . . / .... . .-. — I see her. “Huh.”

  “Don’t ‘huh’ me.” Tarragon put on a good glower for their audience. “It’s been eight hundred years, and most of that time I was a prisoner of the Vhemin. I wasn’t … here for very long.”

  “Your heart’s always been here.”

  “I’m not sure,” Tarragon admitted. “I didn’t pass my exams. I didn’t know the things I should have. Helio, now he was at home on Dancing in the Storm. He loved everything about it. He could’ve fixed it.”

  “Maybe no one can fix it.” Yasmine didn’t seem sad about it, just resigned. Was that what she thought, or what she wanted Dancing Stars to think? “The Century Charm came from near orbit. Floated above the air, undetected, a thing you lost sight of like a dream you can’t quite remember. They dropped on us.”

  “Like a dragon.” Tarragon shivered. “They learned how to do that from us.”

  “Suicide mission,” Yasmine said. “We never did those. They didn’t think they’d survive. The Vhemin aboard were forced to fight. Or maybe they wanted to? I don’t know. We hurt them so often, so badly, they probably thought it was good to go out with a bang. Take our flagship with them.”

  “We have to get out of here.” Tarragon straightened. “That crazy cat is going to want us to fix this stupid Vhemin ship. We can’t even fix our own ship. And she, uh.” Her eyes went to the sad, forlorn shapes in the cages around her. “She doesn’t seem the type to take no for an answer.”

  “There’s a way.” Yasmine shrugged. “It’s a long shot. Just the kind of play a spy would make.”

  “I’m not a very good spy.”

  “But you’re the best one we’ve got.” Yasmine’s voice turned urgent. “The walls of this Vhemin hulk aren’t made by fairies. Do you know what that means?”

  Tarragon thought that through. The Feybrind, watching them, invisible. The fairies who died here, perhaps thinking it was their home, afraid to touch the bars because it hurt, and eventually dying because it kept hurting. Thinking their cages were made by Itikari and built so strong. All of them Builders, with knowledge of stress tolerances and the melting point of steel, and how to make the purest coke from coal. How they could fix a reactor, make a perfect weld, or build a Skyforge.

  Tarragon didn’t know any of that. And for once, the not-knowing gave her an edge. I need to unbalance this cat. I need to not be the bait in the trap. I need to free us all. She didn’t know if this cage was as tough as the one they’d locked her up in for eight hundred years. But she was willing to gamble this diamond-eyed git didn’t know how hot Tarragon could burn, unlike her old Vhemin gaolers.

  She thought hard about how much it would hurt to hit the walls of her cage, but also how it wouldn’t hurt for very long. She turned to Yasmine. “Why haven’t you escaped?”

  “Because I’m where I want to be. Here, to give you a little nudge.” The other fairy beamed. “My part in this story is already done. Yours? It’s just beginning.”

  “I’ll be exhausted for a few moments.”

  “Do you want a hug?” Yasmine’s smile snapped off.

  “Kind of. Yes.”

  “Well, you’ll have to wait.” Yasmine scowled. “Go on. Get on with it.”

  Tarragon took a few deep breaths, like she was about to dive into deep water, then she glimmered. The glimmer grew, hotter by the moment, her wings shining incandescent, her body radiating heat. Because the walls of this ship were made by Vehement Systems, who had no fairies, and didn’t forge metals in the hottest fires. A fairy, burning everbright, might melt through such substandard material.

  And be free.

  She backed up, almost touching the door of her cage as she faced the wall behind it. Ducked her head. Closed her eyes, huff-huffing with imagined pain at the cage, then she shot forward. She hit the cage, and oh my but it hurt. But not, as she thought, for very long. A brilliant point of agony all about her, then it was gone, and she hit the wall of the Century Charm. Steel old when she was born parted before her, metal spraying, boiling in white-hot rivulets as she flew.

  Behind her, the Feybrind shouting—odd, that a Feybrind makes noise at all, “Stop!” but then Tarragon was through. A tiny fairy-sized hole in the metal wall behind her, and she plopped into a strange room. She panted, flat-out tired, cooling on the decking as the glimmer left her and she was left drained.

  I’ve only got a few moments. The Feybrind wasn’t stupid—none of them were—and would be here in moments. Tarragon clawed her way along the floor toward a sagging shelf. The room was filled with them near as she could tell from the small beam of light coming through the wall. Tarragon wasn’t glowing and couldn’t see in the dark like the Feybrind or Vhemin. She felt like there was vast space around her, an absence of people who would have made it whole and complete before they all died, after killing her home.

  She made the shelf as the door slammed open. Light spilled in, but no shadow or form. The cat still had her cloak of many colours on. Tarragon heard no footsteps, because of course the Feybrind were silent. “Where are you, fairy? You can’t hide from me.”

  That’s exactly what I’m doing. Being small, to be great. Tarragon kept her words to herself, using what strength she had to prop herself up against a strut. It was rusty, the metal sharp, jagged, and uncomfortable against her back. She hugged her knees to her chest.

  “You think you’re stopping anything? I will bring the broken casting of a person you arrived with back here. I will stretch her on a rack and make her scream. And I’ll keep making her scream, because her kind can’t die.”

  You don’t know Evanne well at all. She’s not the screaming type. Tarragon felt a little stronger, enough to stand, albeit wobbly. She faced away from the wall. The cat would start rummaging under the shelves closest to Tarragon’s egress point, and the fairy wanted to be the hell away from here when that happened. The cat could see in the dark, very well as it happened, but she saw light, and Tarragon was fresh out of glimmer. Tarragon darted across the floor, slinking under another cabinet. This one had a few boxes left on the bottom shelves, but nothing looked like a fairy-sized sword. Three’s mercy, did no one think to make a handy weapon in all these years?

  The shelf she’d been under was wrenched aside, a crash making Tarragon’s shoulders almost reach her ears as she cringed. The shelf banged against the wall, and for a moment Tarragon saw a leg as the cloak of many colours shifted aside in Dancing Star’s rage. Tarragon used that moment of sound to dart to another shelf. There. Two more shelves over there was a grating in the floor.

  “I will find you.” The cat’s voice was coming from by the grate now, by all the blasted luck. Like all the People, she moved fast. Still, maybe that was the best place for the cat to be. As a spy, Tarragon learned the tactics that served her best were the unexpected ones.

  Daring her courage, Tarragon crept closer to the voice. Another shelf down, and here she was, the floor between her and the grating just three lousy metres away. She felt her skin prickle with a little warmth. No, no, no! Not yet! But the little fire inside her wouldn’t be banked for long. It was made from a tiny piece of a star, so they said. Stars burned for so very long, never wanting to be banked.

  The shelves were constructed with bolts, so Tarragon bit her lip, shuffled to one, and unscrewed it. It moved surprisingly easily, perhaps a testament to both their manufacture and the lackadaisical manner they’d been ‘tightened’. Don’t think. Evanne wouldn’t. She’d just do it. Evanne would be at the grate already! Tarragon heaved the bolt, a tiny discus thrower releasing her prize into the room. It clattered as it landed under a shelf, and Dancing Stars bounded after it, knocking over another shelf.

  Tarragon rushed for the grating. She heard the cat cry, “Got you!” but the fairy already had her hands on the grating. She heaved, glimmer sparkling, the grate up, but Khiton’s balls it was heavy, but she didn’t have time for heavy, because the Feybrind was coming, she was almost here, Tarragon could hear her breathing, the scrape of boot on decking, the imagined whisper of breath against her neck, so she heaved harder, felt something in her back twinge, and she cried, but kept going, and then plonk she was under, the grate clanging above her.

  She ran. She was in a drain, of course, but nice and dry after eight hundred years. The grate was torn away behind her but she had her glimmer back and could see. She was in a drain that you could get your arm into, but the fairy was already a meter down, and unless Dancing Stars had noodles for arms, Tarragon was free, she was free.

  Dancing Stars called after her. “It’s okay, little one. I’ll get you in the end. And while we play cat and fairy, a game I’m very good at, I will bring your other friends here. The ones out in the wilds, where you left them. Safe, or so you thought. Well, let’s see.”

  Oh shit, Tarragon thought. Morgan. Heser the Cheg. And Pakhet.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  When the ground started to tremble, Amir was inclined to pay it some mind. Deserts were strange places, stories telling of quicksand that could swallow a man whole, suck the meat from his bones, and spit out a bleached corpse a handful of years later.

  Deserts surrounding an ancient spire? Likely worse. The High Justiciar had left him outside in the sun and heat with Amber and Jade, the first of whom had become somewhat of a friend during their weary tread across the dunes, the latter who’d not forgiven him for thwarting her attempted theft of the sky map. She’d tried again, and he’d stopped her again. It felt a novel game to pass the time as the caravan worked its way across the sands. And here they were, sky map in Tresward hands, and Jade thinking murder.

  “Amir, what news, hey?” Faust’s bass voice broke his contemplation of both the trembling sands and the merchant’s sister.

  “Destruction, most like.” Amir visored his eyes, finding Larochette in a moment. She’d decided Amber’s side was a welcome place to be most days and had until moments ago been enjoying cool tea from an icy decanter. Amber claimed it to be an ancient’s device, but Amir knew it could just as easily have been a thaumaturge’s working. “Larochette! Attend!”

  She bounded over as the sands beneath them rumbled again. She stubbed her toe into the ground. “This is no earthquake. It has the semblance of horses, but under the sandy sea.”

  Amir thought about that for four heartbeats, then jogged to Amber’s side. The sand merchant’s sister was under a tent sipping tea not a handful of metres distant. “Friend Amber, are there horses under the ground here?”

  The sand merchant stood like he’d been shocked upright by lightning. “There are worse things. Insects the size of dogs, sometimes larger.”

  “Larger?” Amir blinked. “But only sometimes?”

  “They are terrible creatures. I’d not thought them attracted to dead ruins. Typically, they are about the ones still vibrant with ancient energy. They nest near the ancients’ sources of power.” As one, both men looked at the ancient structure, and its mighty spire, then at the dying-but-not-dead grass at their feet. “A place such as this, if it were not struck dead.”

  “It was killed by the High Justiciar’s daughter mere weeks past.”

  Amber made a moue. “Ah. They would be hungry, and perhaps angry.”

  Amir wanted to roll his eyes, but there wasn’t time. Of course the High Justiciar had gone into a nest of dog-sized insects who were starving and angry. He wasn’t worried about her, but rather himself. While she was the best he’d seen with a blade, Amir was a far shot from there.

  The sand shook more, and Amir saw Faust and Larochette stumble, even with Tresward training, then scramble back. They beat a retreat to the tents, and for once, Jade hadn’t skulked off to Sight of Day’s pack and the star map within. The woman was wide-eyed, and she held a curved dagger. Where she’d kept that in her clinging silks Amir couldn’t begin to guess. A horse wrangler mounted a panicked beast, tossing a, “To the hells with this!” over his shoulder, and kicking the wild-eyed beast into a gallop. He made it perhaps ten seconds out into the sands before the ground erupted beneath him, grains boiling like water in a pot, and creatures of horror scrambled up to take him and horse into the earth.