“Up,” she croaked. Her voice was almost gone, but I thought that was from overuse, and would come back in time. The idea that her vocal cords had been permanently ruptured was too horrible even to consider.
They rose. With Leah supporting me on one side and Eris on the other, we left the overcrowded storage room. I made it most of the way to the first staircase, then my legs gave out. I was carried, maybe by my friends from Deep Maleen, maybe by grayfolk, maybe both. I can’t remember. I do remember being carried through the reception hall and seeing at least three dozen grayfaced men and women cleaning the mess that had been left there by those of King Jan’s court who had elected to give their allegiance to the Flight Killer. It seemed to me that one of the cleaners was Dora, wearing a red cloth wrapped around her hair and her splendidly yellow canvas shoes on her feet. She raised her hands to her mouth and blew me a kiss with fingers that were beginning to look like fingers again, rather than flippers.
She isn’t there, I thought. You’re delirious, Prince Charlie. And even if she is, her fingers can’t be regenerating. Stuff like that only happens in—
In what? Well… in stories like this.
I craned my neck for another look at her as I was carried out into the next room, some kind of antechamber, and saw the bright head-rag and the brighter sneakers, but I couldn’t be sure it was Dora. She was back to me and on her knees, scrubbing away filth.
We passed through more rooms, and down a long hallway, but by then I was fading toward unconsciousness, and would be glad to go if it took me to a place where my head didn’t feel like it was bursting and my arm didn’t feel like a blazing Yule log. But I held on. If I was dying—and it certainly felt like I was—I wanted to do it outside, breathing free air.
Bright light struck me. It made my headache worse but it was still wonderful because it wasn’t the sick light of the underground world beneath Lilimar. It wasn’t even the far friendlier glow of the fireflies. This was daylight, but it was more.
It was sunlight.
I was carried into it, half-sitting, half-lying down. The clouds were unraveling and I could see blue sky above the great plaza in front of the palace. Not just enough blue to make a pair of overalls, but acres of blue. No, miles of it. And my God, what sunshine! I looked down and saw my shadow. Seeing it made me feel like Peter Pan, that Prince of the Lost Boys.
A vast cheer went up. The city gate was open and the plaza was filled with the grayfolk of Empis. They saw Leah and went to their knees with a great rustle that gave me gooseflesh.
She was looking at me. I think that look said I could use a little help here.
“Put me down,” I said.
My bearers did, and I found I could stand. All the pain was still there, but something else was there, as well. It had been there when I cried Gogmagog’s name in a voice that wasn’t my own and it was here now. I raised my arms, the good right and the left that was still dripping blood, turning to scarlet the new bandage Jaya had at some point put on. Like the poppies on the hill behind Dora’s trim little house.
The people below were silent, waiting, on their knees. And in spite of the power I felt rushing through me just then, I remembered they were not kneeling for me. This wasn’t my world. My world was the other, but I had one more job to do here.
“Listen to me, people of Empis! The Flight Killer is dead!”
They roared approval and thanks.
“The Dark Well is shut and the creature that lives there is pent inside!”
Another roar greeted this.
Now I felt that power, that otherness, leaving me, taking the strength I had borrowed with it. Soon I’d be plain old Charlie Reade again… if Petra’s bite didn’t kill me, that was.
“Hail Leah, people of Empis! Hail Leah of the Gallien! HAIL YOUR QUEEN!”
I think it was a boffo line to go out on, as my dad might have said, but I’ll never know for sure, because that’s when the hinges fell out of my knees and I lost consciousness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Visitors. The Queen in White. Mercy. Woody and Claudia. Leaving Empis.
1
I spent a long time in a beautiful room with billowing white curtains. The windows behind them were open, letting in not just a breeze but a reservoir of fresh air. Did I spend three weeks in that room? Four? I don’t know, because they didn’t keep weeks in Empis. Not our weeks, anyway. The sun came up and went down. Sometimes at night those curtains were illuminated by the light of the shattered moons. The remains of Bella and Arabella had formed a kind of necklace in the sky. I never saw it then, just the shifting light through billowing curtains of finest gauze. There were times when one of my nurses （Dora was the best, Our Lady of the Shoes） would want to close the windows behind the curtains lest “night vapors” make my already parlous condition worse, but I wouldn’t allow it because the air was so sweet. They obeyed because I was the prince, and my word was law. I didn’t tell any of them that I was reverting back to plain old Charlie Reade. They wouldn’t have believed me anyway.