She reached down and ruffled Nona’s short hair. Nona felt her borrowed heart go thump-pa-thump-pa-thump.
“But you didn’t get me a six-month birthday present,” she whispered pathetically. “I didn’t get the beach party, or a cake, or any dogs.”
“Honey, of course I got you a birthday present,” said Pyrrha instantly. “I bought one the morning of the broadcast. I went and got you a new T-shirt—the expensive kind, not the ones that dissolve when you wash them. I hid it in the sink cabinet.”
Nona sucked in a breath. “Tell me about it,” she whispered. “Describe it exactly.”
“Uh,” said Pyrrha, and flicked her eyes up at Paul. “Okay, so, I hadn’t cleared this with the powers that be, but it was a picture of a moustache—like the facial hair, but a cartoon?—and then there were words below. Look, you had to see it, I’m not sure I can describe it in a way that…”
“Pyrrha, I want to know what it said.”
Now Pyrrha avoided Paul’s gaze.
“It advertised cheap moustache rides,” said Pyrrha. “We’re talking low prices.”
Nona started to cry softly, overwhelmed.
Paul said, “Palamedes wouldn’t have let her wear that outside the house.” Then: “Camilla wouldn’t have let her wear it inside, either.”
“Yeah, but what about you?” said Pyrrha.
“Her choice,” said Paul. “I think moustache rides should be free.”
“It would have been my favourite present except for the handkerchief,” said Nona breathlessly. “I’m going to go back and fetch it. I’ll remember. I’ll make myself remember. And I’ll wear it all the time, inside the house and outside the house, and then you’ll know it’s really me. I’m not going to be gone forever … I’m ready. I’m ready. Let’s go.”
32
AIGLAMENE MET THEM at a little nondescript door out of the oblong. Paul had supported the awful old man—he had demanded his rights as seneschal—and they had met the corpse prince, who was pacing at the doorway. Pyrrha had wrapped Nona in one of the big black cloaks, which were much warmer than they looked but smelled as old as the room—sort of dusty and fusty and mildewy—but she was finding she had to smell quite consciously now, to make her brain understand what she was trying to do. It was like having your feet slip off the pedals of a bicycle. Aiglamene, lantern held high, led them down a long, winding passage. She took endless back-and-forth turns, until, at one last door, she stopped. She turned off the lantern and plunged them into a big black icy darkness.
Pyrrha said, “We going in blind?”
“There is no light of electric or fat in this place,” croaked out the old man. “There is no light but that which was given to us. Not before the rock and the Tomb. This is the place you should not be travelling … none of us but the Daughter, and her cavalier.”
Nona could make out nothing in the darkness, but the corpse prince’s voice was unmistakable.
“The Reverend Daughter has no cavalier living.”
There was a metal sound. The door opened, and Nona was carried over the threshold into a big empty void. The air changed, cold as ice, black and blue as paint. Everyone’s feet suddenly made a big squelch.
A light flicked on—a tall bright lantern with a huge glowing bulb within. They were standing in a huge room, a cathedral cave, with a great roundish cold stone rock placed at what was obviously the mouth of a tunnel leading away—a rock the size and height of a big car and probably the weight of multiple cars. And standing before the rock—a lantern by one booted foot—was Crown.
Nona’s eyes had been tricked by the light. It wasn’t Crown. It was someone exactly Crown’s height, someone with Crown’s face, but like someone had washed her in hot water and soaked the colour out—a Crown who gangled, without any of Crown’s lovely curvy softnesses or bignesses, a wretched white Crown. A Crown with an arm that was all bones—metal-shod bones, real moving bones, with bony gold fingers holding a tiny pinpoint of orange light. Nona realised that it really was her arm; that it really was a cigarette. Pyrrha startled forward—but there was another squelch; they had all stepped into a soft, jammy yellow field of what looked like canolene but more transparent. And Pyrrha was stuck fast. Paul stuck fast, and Crux with them, and Aiglamene stuck fast, and the corpse prince—
“How’d you get here before me?” she demanded.