I brought her back to Woody, Claudia, and Leah.
“CLOSE IN THE NAME OF LEAH OF THE GALLIEN!” Claudia bellowed.
The gate began to trundle slowly shut, its machinery groaning like a thing in pain. As it did, I saw an enormous figure loping in long strides down the central thoroughfare. Clouds of monarchs swirled above and around it, some even lit on the broad shoulders and blocky head, but this was no night soldier and the figure simply ignored them. As the gate passed the halfway mark on its hidden track, she gave a wail of grief so loud and so awful that everyone except Claudia covered their ears.
“MOLLY!” Hana screamed. “OH MY MOLLY! OH MY DEAR, HOW CAN YOU LIE SO STILL?”
She bent over her dead daughter, then stood. There were many of us gathered before the closing gate, but it was me she was looking at.
“COME BACK!” She raised fists like boulders and shook them. “COME BACK, YOU COWARD, SO I CAN KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO MY DEAR ONE!”
Then the gate crashed closed, cutting off the sight of Red Molly’s bereft mother.
7
I looked up at Leah. No blue dress this night. No white apron. She was dressed in dark pants tucked into high leather boots and a quilted blue vest with a monarch butterfly, the royal crest of the Gallien, on the left side, above her heart. Around her waist was a wide belt. Hanging from one hip was a dagger. On the other was a scabbard holding a short sword with a golden hilt.
“Hello, Leah,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “I’m very glad to see you.”
She turned away from me with no sign that she’d heard—she might have been as deaf as Claudia. Her mouthless face was a stone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN A Conference. The Snab. No Disney Prince. Prince and Princess. The Pact.
1
I remember two things with great clarity about our conference. No one mentioned the name Gogmagog, and Leah never looked at me. Not once.
2
There were six people and two animals in the storage shed later that night—the shed where Radar and I had sheltered before entering Lilimar. Woody, Claudia, and I sat together on the floor. Radar lay beside me with her muzzle firmly planted on my leg, as if wanting to be sure I would not escape her again. Leah sat apart from us, on the steps at the front of the Seafront trolley. In the far corner was Franna, the gray woman who had whispered help her to me just before I left the farm of the “googir.” Franna was stroking Falada’s head, which was deep in a sack of grain Iota was holding for her. Outside were the rest of the Deep Maleen escapees, and a growing number of grayfolk. There was no howling; wolfies apparently didn’t care for crowds.
Mr. Bowditch’s .45 was once more on my hip. Claudia might be deaf, but her eyes were keen. She had seen the gleam of the blue stones in the concho belt as it lay deep in the weeds growing hard by the outside wall near the gate. The gun needed to be oiled and cleaned before I could be sure it worked, and I’d have to take care of that later. I thought I might be able to find what I needed on one of the littered worktables at the back of the shed. This had pretty clearly been a repair shop, once upon a better time.
Woody said, “The snake has been wounded, but still lives. We have to cut off its head before it can renew its poison. And you must lead, Charlie.”
He took a pad and a fancy nib pen from the pocket of his coat and wrote on it, as quickly and surely as any sighted person, as he spoke. He held it up to Claudia. She read and nodded vigorously. “YOU MUST LEAD, SHARLIE! YOU ARE THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED! ADRIAN’S HEIR FROM THE MAGIC WORLD!”
Leah briefly looked up at Claudia, then down again, a sheaf of hair screening her face. Her fingers played along the knurled grip of her sword.
I certainly hadn’t promised anything to anyone. I was tired and afraid, but there was something more important than those things. “Let’s say you’re right, Woody. Let’s say allowing Flight Killer to renew his poison is dangerous for us and all of Empis.”
“It would be,” he said quietly. “It is.”
“Even so, I won’t lead a crowd of mostly unarmed people into the city, if that’s what you’re thinking. Half of the night soldiers might be dead, there weren’t all that many to begin with—”
“No,” Woody agreed. “Most died the true death rather than go on half-alive, in the service of a monster.”
I was looking at Leah—in truth I could hardly take my eyes from her—and I saw her flinch, as if Woody had struck at her.
“We killed seven and the monarchs killed even more. But that leaves the rest.”