(very well. but I’ll need your promise first that you won’t harm Jasper.)
Irritation prickled at Dorotea. “And do I get a promise in return that he won’t harm me? He’s the creature with fangs and claws, remember? And he’s made of stone. Without the collar, I have no hope of hurting him.”
(stop talking about him like that! Gideon was a dragon, but he wasn’t a beast. Ryan’s a siren, but he’s a boy, not a fish! Jasper isn’t a beast, either!)
Dorotea frowned stubbornly. It wasn’t the same. Gideon had been a boy with the ability to change into a dragon because he was the son of a Fire Elemental. It occurred to her that his otherself on her world ought to be the son of a Stone Elemental. She thought of the Artisan boys she knew and wondered if one of them—
Her heart skipped a beat.
“Wait. Are you telling me that he’s my soul mate?” Dorotea demanded. “A gargoyle?” Her incredulity swiftly turned to relief. This explained everything: why Jasper was less brutish than she’d expected, why she’d been drawn to choose him out of all the other gargoyles, and her strange attraction to him. Because he wasn’t all gargoyle; he was half-human.
(yes, that is what I’m telling you. but obviously you’re not ready to hear it.) And Leah broke the connection.
…
Stone World
“We’re out of time to search for a stairway,” Jasper said grimly. “Rose Granite can’t delay her master much longer.”
“Very well. How do we—” Leah broke off and let out a little squeak as Jasper put his hands around her waist and boosted her into the bottom iron bucket.
“Thanks.” Leah fought down a blush. As a gargoyle, he could span her waist with both hands. He made her feel dainty in comparison.
He smiled back at her. “I just hope this works.” He hauled on the down chain. His stone muscles bulged with the effort, and Leah caught her breath in appreciation.
How could Dorotea look at him and see only ugliness? Leah saw strength, and the red jasper stone was strange but beautiful.
Leah shouldn’t be looking at him that way. Guiltily, she turned toward the lake and saw a group of people running along the shore toward them. Unskilled after the bounty promised by the Elect, no doubt.
“Jasper!” The shout hurt her throat. She pointed.
He saw them and hauled harder on the chain.
They would be on him long before he could haul her to the top. Leah started to climb out of the bucket, but the walls were chest-high, and before she could swing her foot over the edge, the bucket swayed wildly and left the ground.
“Jasper, stop! Let me out!”
He ignored her, leaning back with all his body weight. The bucket jerked three feet higher off the ground. Leah’s foot slipped off the rim, and she fell to the gritty bottom of the bucket, making it swing back and forth. A surge of dizziness forced her to close her eyes.
By the time she regained her feet, she was ten feet off the ground and rising. The line of buckets going down balanced the ones going up so the same amount of force was needed to lift each one.
Jerk, grind, rattle. Make that fifteen feet.
Leah bit her lip. She wanted to stand beside Jasper and fight with him, but what could she do really?
Get in Jasper’s way. Hamper him.
It was hard, but she made herself stay in the bucket and watch.
The entire group was running now, strung out into a line. She could just recognize the foremost as Burt. Elect Harmon lagged far behind. Good. She hoped he twisted his ankle or gave himself a heart attack.
The clump of six Unskilled came next in a mob. Another six had given up the chase and were just walking. They must be volunteers for the power station repair party. She squinted. Two more of the Elect engineers brought up the rear. Where was Elect Trudi?
Icy terror shot through Leah. “Jasper, watch out! She has a gun!”
“What’s a gun?” He didn’t glance back, still hauling on the chain. It skreeked and shuddered, the bucket swaying again.
Leah grabbed the rim for balance. Twenty feet up now. She’d break bones if she jumped. “A gun is a weapon,” she said hoarsely. “It shoots bullets—bits of metal—at high speeds.”
“It won’t hurt me.”
“You don’t know that! It might fracture you.”
“Guess I should hurry, then.”
The lowest of the five descending buckets settled to the dried lake floor, taking the place once occupied by her bucket. From the strain on Jasper’s face, it took greater effort to get one of the iron weights into the air than it took to move it up the chain. He pulled and pulled, muscles bunching and cording—
Leah looked beyond him. Burt and Titus were only one hundred feet away now. They were only armed with shovels, but Elect Trudi now ran in third place, gun held at her thigh.
Leah scanned her surroundings for a weapon, but all she could find were three fist-size rocks, sliding around the bottom of the bucket. She picked two up, one in each hand. She had no confidence that she could hit anyone from this distance, but she ought to be able to cause a distraction.
Clank. Jasper lifted the second bucket off the ground. Gargoyles didn’t sweat, but streaks of black showed in the red pattern of jasper, like enlarged veins.
He was starting on a third bucket when Burt reached him.
“Stand back,” Jasper growled.
Burt approached from the front while Titus circled around behind. They held their shovels like clubs.
“Concentrate on Burt,” Leah yelled down, then coughed again. “I’ll warn you if the other one gets too close.” She could at least use her bird’s-eye view to do some good.
Burt swung his shovel at Jasper’s head. Jasper raised his arm and took the blow. Leah winced at the crack of impact, but his arm didn’t break. He suffered another blow to the chest, then grabbed Burt’s shovel.
The two men engaged in a brief tug of war.
Titus charged. “Behind you!” Leah yelled, or tried to. Her voice emerged as more of a croak.
Jasper released Burt’s shovel—the sudden loss of opposing force made Burt fall onto his butt. Jasper spun around, snarling. Titus’s mouth fell open, and his stride faltered.
Jasper wrenched Titus’s shovel away and, still growling, crumpled the metal scoop with his bare hands. A spurt of pride expanded Leah’s rib cage.
Titus retreated, but Burt rolled to his feet again, grim determination etched on his face. His shovel had a heavy triangular point instead of a thin scoop.
Jasper bared his fangs. His wicked claws sprang out like a handful of knives.
Burt hesitated, then addressed the other Unskilled workers. “On the count of three. One—”
Jasper didn’t wait. He lowered his head like a battering ram and charged Burt. He hit the smaller man in the stomach, knocking him down.
After a moment of startlement, the six other Unskilled joined the fight. Jasper grabbed the closest two men and swung them together. Their skulls connected with an audible thunk—but didn’t break open. Jasper wasn’t using his full strength.
Another Unskilled man jumped onto his back; Jasper flung him away. He hit the ground with a cry but got up.
“All together, men,” Burt called. “Pile on.”
Again, they rushed him. Again, Jasper threw them back, but there were too many. They were overwhelming him.
Elect Trudi raised her handgun and aimed through the crowd, undeterred by the risk of injuring the Unskilled volunteers.
“Jasper!” Leah rasped, terrified.
He looked up, and while he was distracted, Burt wrapped a shirt around Jasper’s head, effectively blinding him.
A crack of gunfire rang out. A bullet embedded itself in Jasper’s chest. He staggered backward.
Leah screamed, uncaring of the pain in her throat. No, no, no! This couldn’t be happening. Not again. She couldn’t lose Jasper, too. She threw the stones in her hands. The first landed near Burt’s feet, making him startle but doing absolutely n
o damage. Her second throw was even wilder, but the rock bounced off the bucket below with a horrendous ringing crash.
Elect Trudi fired at the bucket. The bullet whined off and hit Titus in the leg. He cried out, and the other Unskilled scattered in fear and confusion.
Jasper shredded the shirt, flailing wildly.
“Stop!” Burt grabbed the woman’s arm, and the gun went flying.
Free, Jasper advanced on Burt, snarling.
Worried, Leah gnawed on her lip. This was not going to end well. Jasper was growing desperate, and with his strength, he might easily crush a skull by accident. If he killed one of them, it would reinforce all their beliefs that gargoyles deserved to be enslaved.
“You’re not a beast,” Leah rasped. Tears pricked her eyes. “Don’t let what they think of you turn you into a killer!”
Jasper heard her. He roared, then jumped six feet straight up. His powerful hands grasped the downward chain, and he began to swing himself up hand over hand.
Burt caught his ankle. Jasper kicked him off, and Burt sprawled, winded, on the mud below, but the moment of extra weight started the chain loop moving again. Leah’s bucket rose up, nearing the top, and Jasper’s chain began to descend.
Leah watched, heart in her throat, as the next bucket destined for the bottom loomed over Jasper’s head, ready to crush him.
Jasper climbed to the top of the bucket before it set down, but now he was back within reach of the others. They clustered around his feet.
Leah’s bucket reached the top and tipped over. She crawled out and jumped onto a water trough. The metal groaned ominously beneath her weight but didn’t collapse.
Her bucket continued to roll over and began to descend. Leah peered past it and saw Jasper swinging back and forth near the bottom. He kicked an Unskilled in the chest, then, on the next pendulum swing, Jasper grabbed the up chain with his second hand and used both chains to pull himself hand-over-hand up and out of reach.
Elect Trudi had regained her gun. She shot twice, missed both times, and would have fired a third if Elect Harmon hadn’t arrived. “Stop wasting bullets!” he told her. “You, pull!” At his furious gesticulations, the Unskilled all began to pull on the down chain.
Jasper simply switched most of his weight to the up chain.
Elect Harmon ordered the Unskilled to stop. He pointed to a pillar.
Leah’s heart lurched, Dorotea’s memories suddenly bursting over her head: the pillar contained the spiral staircase. “Climb as fast as you can!” she shouted down at Jasper. He was strong, but it was a long climb. She didn’t think he could make it before Burt and his men made it up the stairs.
Stop standing there like a ninny and help him.
Leah climbed down from the trough and immediately spotted a winch mechanism, but it was huge—a turnstile almost as tall as she with six spokes. Perhaps they had used mules to turn it.
Despair corroded her insides. Jasper might be able to turn it, but not a puny girl. Yet doing nothing guaranteed Jasper would be killed or enslaved. She had to try.
Leah put her hands on a bar and began to push. Her feet slipped, but the turnstile didn’t budge. She leaned her back against it, pushing with all the strength of her body. Straining.
“Please,” she begged. And pushed some more. Nothing.
Gasping, she clung to the wheel, sucking in air for another try. This wasn’t working!
Maybe she was pushing the wrong way? She tried the other direction. Puuusshhh! And this time it moved. Just a few inches, but it moved. She attacked it with a renewed ferocity, digging her toes in, and it began to turn, ponderously at first, and then, after half a turn, smoothly.
The next bucket upended its scant contents of grit and sand, then descended again.
Puffing, Leah made two quick circuits. Another empty bucket was followed by a shout from below, “Leah!”
Jasper sounded overjoyed to see her. She glanced down and felt her own lips split with happiness. He was perched on the lip of the next bucket, holding the chain with one hand.
“Hurry. They’re coming up the stairs,” she croaked.
At the top, Jasper leapt onto the trough, landing on his feet much more gracefully than her awkward sprawl.
He started toward her, but a strange expression came over his face. He swayed, then collapsed to his knees.
Alarm blasted through Leah like a trumpet. She abandoned the turnstile and hurried to his side.
“Something’s happening to me,” he gasped.
His grimace reminded Leah of how Gideon had reacted to sunlight once they’d discarded the mirror talisman controlling his dragon nature—it had made him human. Relief mingled with fear. This needed to happen, but what terrible timing! She reached for his hand.
“Stay back,” he warned. “I don’t know what’s going on.” He bared his fangs, but she wasn’t frightened.
Leah knelt and draped her arm over his stone back. “Don’t fight it,” she whispered. “It’s perfectly natural. Your mother was human, and that’s part of you. Let your body change forms. Gargoyle below the earth, boy Above.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Fog—
In Which Audrey Meets the Queen of Thieves
Air World
Audrey kicked her gas-masked captor in the knee and ran downhill into the fog bank.
She made it five steps, and then, on her next breath, she inhaled some of the poisonous marsh gas that clung to the lower slum streets. Acid clawed her throat; she immediately started to cough. Each additional inhale made it worse. She doubled over, unable to continue.
She pressed a fold of her cloak over her mouth, but the material was too thick to breathe through.
She needed Zephyr, but she had no breath to Call.
A meaty hand closed around her upper arm and hauled her to her feet. “I got ’er!” Red Sideburns crowed.
She slapped at his hand, but she had no strength, still coughing, coughing, coughing. What was the poison doing to her lungs? Would she start coughing up blood?
She offered no resistance as he hauled her back uphill and into cleaner air. They rejoined Broken Nose and the wounded boyo.
Piers materialized out of the mists and held a knife to Broken Nose’s throat. “Let her go!”
Broken Nose gave a small nod, a signal. But instead of letting her go, Sideburns laid a knife to her throat. Audrey let out an involuntary squeak at the prick of sharp metal. Her pulse thudded in her neck.
“Well, looks like we ’ave a standoff,” Broken Nose said.
“Let her go, or I’ll kill you,” Piers said fiercely.
“Come on now, Jack,” Broken Nose coaxed. “You don’t want to go crossing the Queen o’ Thieves. It’s unhealthy for a body.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Broken Nose’s expression shifted to calculation. “Is it true then? Are you ’er son?”
A beat of silence. “And if I am?”
“Then you should ’ave no objection to us going to see ’er.”
Audrey stilled. Like the jumbled fragments of glass in a kaleidoscope, things were falling into a pattern. Piers was The Phantom, and his mother was the Queen of Thieves. According to Leah, The Phantom’s mother was the otherself of Qeturah, the woman who’d shattered Fire World. Qeturah had a habit of murdering her otherselves. So the Queen of Thieves might actually be Qeturah masquerading as her Air otherself.
Audrey was not eager to meet her. At all.
“All right,” Piers said after another tense silence. “We’ll all go together, but none of you boyos are to touch her.”
Broken Nose nodded, and Sideburns shoved Audrey into Piers’s arms. Piers sheathed his knife in his boot and put his arm around her. “It’ll be all right,” he murmured in her ear.
He, no doubt, thought he could protect her from his mother. But if Qeturah had murdered and replaced Piers’s mother, she’d be willing to cut Piers’s throat and wouldn’t quibble over Audrey’s for a second.
The Queen
of Thieves lived in a dirigible. The balloon envelope was a faded green and had several large red patches that had to be fake. Audrey squinted at them. Yes, both the thread holding the patches on and the patches themselves were mere paint. In addition, the gondola had an odd shape; it looked like a giant’s boot. With windows and a little roof over the top end. It was also oddly familiar… The sign beside the anchor cleared matters up. It said “Old Mother Hubbard’s Antiques and Collectibles,” and Audrey remembered seeing a similar boot in an illustration in a children’s book.
Audrey eyed the structure dubiously. She supposed the ability to fly to another location in the city would be useful to the Queen of Thieves.
The Tier Five neighborhood it was currently moored in was less than prepossessing: two abandoned houses on either side and, judging from the lurid red-velvet curtains, a brothel across the way.
Audrey stopped praying for rescue and started praying no one would recognize her. If they did, her reputation would be ruined. Hopefully, the early hour would mean all the drunken ne’er-do-wells were still sleeping off the excesses of the previous night’s festivities.
“In, in,” Broken Nose said, glancing around nervously.
Piers squeezed Audrey’s arm in reassurance but urged her up the three steps and into the swaying gondola shop.
The shop was small and crowded. Bins full of trinkets competed for attention with porcelain vases and fancy dishes. Lengths of ribbon curled coyly on bolts of silk. Necklaces dangled from the ceiling, their chiming creating an eerie music. Rows of footwear ranging in size from baby shoes to men’s work boots marched along the floor. Everywhere Audrey’s gaze lit, she saw more junk.
Antiques? She very much doubted it. But perhaps the more expensive items—or stolen merchandise—were hidden from common view.
“Queenie?” Broken Nose called, craning his neck to look in the back corner.
A petite woman emerged from a door in the heel of the boot—her private apartment, perhaps. She had green eyes and long, black hair streaked with gray and wore a black dress with a tight bodice that showcased her voluptuousness. Audrey recognized her at once as Norton’s lover.
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