“No, Leah. It’s I who commands you. I’m the promised prince. I think you know that.”
“Not the prince of this world,” Falada said, and now I could hear the clicks and mumbles in Leah’s throat. Her polite speech was of necessity rather than desire. If she hadn’t been forced—and with great effort—to speak through the mare, she would have torn me a new one. There was no amusement in her eyes now, just fury. This woman who fed the geese from her apron was used to being obeyed without question.
“No,” I agreed. “Not the prince of this world, and not a prince in mine, but I have spent long days in a dungeon, I’ve been forced to kill, and I’ve seen my companions die. Do you understand me, Princess? Do you understand my right to command you?”
Falada said nothing. One tear fell from Leah’s left eye and made a slow path down her smooth cheek.
“Walk with me a little way, please.”
She shook her head violently enough to make her hair fly around her face. Again she tried to pull her hands away and again I held them.
“There’s time, at least an hour before first light, and your whole world may depend on what we say one to the other. Even mine may be at risk. So please.”
I let go of her hands. I took one of the remaining sulphur matches from my sock. I pushed some of the ivy aside, struck the match on the rough stone, and held it in front of my face as I’d done with Iota. She stood on tiptoe to peer at me, close enough that I could have kissed her upturned brow.
“Blue,” Falada said.
“It does talk,” Eris murmured.
“Nah, nah, it’s her,” Iota said in the same low voice. They were awestruck. I was, too, and why not? There was magic here, and now I was part of it. That terrified me, because I was no longer entirely myself, but it also exalted me.
“Come, lady. We need to talk. Please come.”
She did.
7
We went a little way down the path from the others, the ivy-covered city wall on our left, the rubble of the destroyed suburb on our right, the dark sky above us.
“We need to stop him,” I said. “Before he brings some terrible cataclysm.”
Radar was walking between us with the Snab perched on her neck, and it was the Snab who answered. This voice was much clearer than the one Leah used when she was speaking through Falada. “It is not my brother. Flight Killer is not Elden. He would never do such terrible things. He was gentle and loving.”
People change, I thought. My father did, and I did when I was with Bertie. I remember wondering why a good person like me was doing such shitty things.
“If he lives,” the Snab said, “he’s a prisoner. But I don’t believe that. I believe he’s dead, like so many of my family.”
“I believe that, too,” I said. It was no lie, because surely the Elden she had known—the one who held her hand as they explored the secret ways of the palace, the one who listened to the songs the mermaid sang—that Elden was dead. All that remained was Gogmagog’s puppet.
We stopped. Her throat worked and the Snab spoke. So much ventriloquism had to be hurting her, even though the Snab was her most ideal conduit, but she had to say what she’d held in her heart for so long.
“If he’s a prisoner, I’ll set him free. If he’s dead, I will avenge him, that the curse on this sad land might be lifted. This is my job and not yours, you son of Adrian Bowditch.”
I wasn’t his son, only his heir, but this didn’t seem to be the time to tell her that.
“Flight Killer has almost certainly gone to the Dark Well, Princess. There he’ll wait until the moons kiss and the way is opened. Can you find it?”
She nodded but looked uncertain.
“Will you lead us there? Because there’s no way we can find it by ourselves. Would you, if I promise to leave Flight Killer’s fate to you when we face him?”
For a long time there was no answer. She wasn’t sure I’d keep my promise, and she was right to be unsure. If she recognized Elden and couldn’t bring herself to kill him—even the way he was now—would I honor her wish and let him live? I thought of Dora’s ruined face and honest heart. I thought of Pursey’s bravery, for which he had most likely already paid a high price. I thought of the gray refugees I’d seen making their way from Seafront to some place of refuge that probably didn’t exist. Put those wounded and becursed people on one side of a scale and a princess’s tender heart on the other, and there was no way they would balance.