Wally had flashbacks of the events in the Square. “It … acted like a normal doll.”
Lady Weirdwood nodded grimly. “Well,” she said, slapping her knees, “considering that you refuse to let me keep you locked up and safe, and we don’t currently have the resources to keep you under surveillance, I suppose you can return to your city. The danger should be over now. The Fae-born is caught, and Sekhmet should have the Rift sewn up shortly.”
“I can leave?” Wally said, swallowing the last of his cookie. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Lady Weirdwood said.
Wally stared at his tea and didn’t budge.
“You’re surprised that I’m releasing you even though you tried to steal from us?”
Wally nodded.
Lady Weirdwood breathed deep. “How is it that people have built a system where so many children go hungry, even though there’s plenty of food to go around, and yet they punish those who take desperate measures to eat? If any of Kingsport’s wealthier citizens went a day without bread, they’d throw a brick through the first pastry shop they saw. And yet they’re disgusted when the poor do it. It boggles the mind.”
Wally studied her face. “I’ve never heard an adult say that before.”
Lady Weirdwood smiled. “You should keep better company.”
Wally looked back at his tea.
“What’s on your mind?” Lady Weirdwood asked.
“Um, Sekhmet promised Arthur that we could keep any money we found in the Mirror.” He cleared his throat. “We were looking to get paid, ma’am.”
“Sekhmet promised that, did she?” Lady Weirdwood said, clearly disappointed in her Novitiate. “Well, your friend is in for a rude awakening. Any treasure he finds will transform and explode the moment he touches it. The only thing he’ll bring back are treasures of the mind. And that’s if he makes it out at all.”
“Oh.”
“I might be able to help you in another way,” she said. “But first”—she gathered her wedding dress and stood with a grunt—“I have errands to run.”
Wally tried to keep up as the old woman whisked out of the War Room and through the Manor’s halls, Breeth creaking beneath their footsteps. First, the lady went to the entrance to the Abyssment and spoke to a guard with milky-white eyes.
“Is the Fae-born secure?”
“Yes, Lady,” the guard said in a haunted voice.
“Good. Report back if it exhibits more strange behavior. Other than act like an infectious doll, that is. This one’s different from the others.”
Next, she visited the Manor’s kitchens. “How’s that antidote coming, Pyra?”
The pretty chef with the green hair poured herbs and spices into a bubbling cauldron. Her lips made explosion sounds, as if she were bombing the soup.
Lady Weirdwood nodded as if this were an actual response. “When you’re finished reviving Huamei, distribute it to the rest of Kingsport’s victims.”
From the kitchen, Lady Weirdwood went at a quick clip to the hospital room, which was billowy white and smelled of antiseptic. Amelia was tending to porcelain Huamei.
“Once Pyra administers the antidote,” Lady Weirdwood said, “tell him he’s not allowed outside the Manor. His skin and scales will still be extremely fragile.”
“His highness isn’t going to appreciate being quarantined,” Amelia said.
“Well, he won’t like shattering if something hits him, either.”
Amelia pulled out a scroll and unrolled it in front of Lady Weirdwood. It was a map of Kingsport with a line of X’s drawn along the streets. “I had Ludwig send out his birds to mark the Fae-born’s attacks. It seems that doll was headed somewhere.”
Lady Weirdwood traced a line through the X’s until she reached a building that sat on the coast. She raised her eyebrows at Wally, as if to ask what the building was.
Wally gulped. “That’s Greyridge.”
Lady Weirdwood raised her eyebrows even higher.
“Oh, um,” Wally said. “Kingsport’s mental hospital.”
Lady Weirdwood looked more troubled than ever. As they continued down the hall, her snake made a go at Wally’s jacket, its tongue flicking.
The lady pointed. “What have you got there that has interested Mac so?”
Wally pulled out the pieces of the dead mouse thing. Breeth’s wall stiffened. Seeing the mouse thing felt like staring at her own dead body all over again.
“I see,” Lady Weirdwood said solemnly. “Was this a friend of yours?”
“Not really,” Wally said. “But this mouse saved my life, ma’am. And I’d like to give it a funeral.”
If Breeth could have wiped a tear from the wall, she would have.
Lady Weirdwood gave Wally a kindly smile. “I know just the place.”
She led him to the north wing, through a door carved with a lantern. The hall was pitch-black—so dark it looked as if they were walking across nothing at all. Lady Weirdwood lit a candle, and Breeth seeped into it. The candle was made of fat that sputtered and crackled, making Breeth feel like her hair was on fire and her skin was growing gooey.
“I told you I might be able to help you in a way that did not involve payment,” the lady said quietly. “After your demonstration today, I believe you might just be Novitiate material.”
“Really?” Wally said, catching up to Breeth’s orb of light. “Like Sekhmet and Huamei?”
The lady nodded. “My students undergo years of training before they can take down a Fae-born. And none of them catch one on their first try. You saw what happened to Huamei.”
Wally glanced at Breeth’s melting candle eyes. She crackled with gratitude for his not mentioning that she’d helped.
“But that isn’t the only reason,” Lady Weirdwood continued. “You’ve also got a good heart. You brought an injured Novitiate back to this Manor even after we’d held you prisoner, because you knew it was the right thing to do.” The old woman studied Wally’s face in Breeth’s flickering light. “You could give up your life of thieving, and I could teach you magic. I wonder what your art would be … A painter perhaps? An architect, like me?”
Wally stared at his feet. “Thank you, ma’am. I’m honored. Really.” He considered the nonexistent walls. “This place does seem better than being in the Black Feathers. Universes better.” He sighed. “But I need to take care of my older brother.”
Breeth’s flame jittered with jealousy. Wally had never mentioned his brother. This was particularly insulting since she was dead and couldn’t share his secrets.
“What’s the matter with him?” Lady Weirdwood asked.
“There’s nothing the matter really. He’s just locked in Greyridge Mental Hospital.”
“Right where that infectious doll was headed,” Lady Weirdwood said. “It sounds as if you saved your brother from a terrible fate.”
Wally looked at the ground.
“That must be why you tried to rob us,” Lady Weirdwood continued. “Hospital bills, hm?”
He gave a little nod.
“Changing the minds of the masses,” Lady Weirdwood said. “That’s what will make your brother safe. The only thing, unfortunately. But that sort of magic is difficult. Even for me. You’d have to make an entire city understand that people with mental struggles are just as human as anyone else.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “If you ever change your mind and decide you want to try and learn that kind of magic, you let me know.”
They passed a choked hallway, overgrown like a thicket, and glowing with moonlight. Just seeing the Thorny Passage leached the light from Breeth’s candle. It led to the room where she was sacrificed.
“Wally,” Breeth sputtered from her candle. “Ask her about the hall we just passed.”
He gave her flame a quizzical look.
“I’m starting to trust her,” she said. “If she’s willing to give a funeral to a mouse, how bad can she be?”
“What happened in that tangled hall back there?” Wally as
ked.
The lady didn’t pause in her step. “Why do you want to know about that?”
“It just gave me the creeps, is all.”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “If you become a Novitiate, you can learn all about it…”
Wally’s jaw set, and the old woman relented.
“Ah well, if it will help convince you to join us … That was the Red Wing. The site of a grave tragedy.”
The light of Breeth’s flame flickered over the old woman’s lips as Lady Weirdwood told the story. “Several years ago, one of our Wardens lost his wife in a terrible accident. She was Fae-born but preferred to live a quiet life in the Real, where she was killed by a horse carriage. In despair, the Warden climbed to the Manor’s roof to say his final goodbye to her spirit in the stars. But then he spotted the door that leads to the Court of Sky, and he had an idea. He entered it, broke into the dragons’ Cloud Cemetery, and stole a bone from one of their royal ancestors.”
Breeth remembered that Lady Weirdwood was hoping Huamei would help mend relations between the Manor and the Court of Sky after this incident. Desecrating a dragon’s grave was clearly an insult of the highest order.
“Dragons simultaneously exist in the Real and the Fae,” Lady Weirdwood continued. “This grants them powers even I don’t possess—powers that allow them to defy the ordinary rules of the Veil. This is why the dragon race can swap their human and scaled forms back and forth at will. And so the Fallen Warden, as we’ve come to call him, fashioned the stolen bone into a Quill, hoping to cheat the Veil and write his wife back into existence in the Real.”
“Did it work?” Wally asked.
“It did not. When he tried to capture his wife’s looks and mannerisms in ink, he could only draw from his fading memories. Instead of reviving his wife, he created a creature that merely mimicked her. Like a puppet.”
Breeth’s flame shuddered. She was having a hard time not feeling sympathy for this man, whom she assumed had taken her life.
“I’d rob a dragon’s grave too if I thought it could bring my parents back to life,” Wally said.
Lady Weirdwood gave him a sad smile. “I didn’t blame him for that. I blamed him for what happened next. After his first failed attempt, the Fallen Warden grew more desperate. He knew that his wife, or the idea of his wife, was still alive somewhere on the other side of the Veil. He believed if he could just figure out where she went, then he could tear the Veil in that location and bring her back with little more than a daydream. A fool’s errand if ever there was one. I sensed something was awry and searched his quarters. But I was too late. I found the body of an innocent girl there. It seemed he had already performed his experiment, sacrificing the poor girl so he could follow her ghost into the afterlife.”
Breeth’s candle wax drooped. “That was me.”
She remembered the figure who had loomed over her before taking her life. The strange metal mask with the black glass visor. The ash-smeared hands. The scent of smoke and the voice as gruff as flames.
Lady Weirdwood continued. “I banished him from the Manor. I bound him from being able to speak spells or handle magical implements, and then Weston tossed him into the street. We searched the Fallen Warden’s quarters ten times over, but we never did find that dragon-bone Quill.”
Silence fell in the dark hallway.
“Um,” Wally said, “what was the Fallen Warden’s name?”
Breeth’s flame wavered in anticipation.
Lady Weirdwood cleared her throat. “I think that’s enough of that topic for now.”
Breeth nearly extinguished with disappointment. She’d waited years to find her killer, hoping to part the floorboards beneath his feet, taking her revenge and finally ascending to see her parents. But, oh well. She’d already waited this long …
At the far end of the dark passage, they arrived at the most beautiful room in Weirdwood. It was vast and as dark and sultry as the night. A grass-carpet field stretched beneath a twinkling ceiling. The wallpaper was composed of thousands of swirling blue brushstrokes, occasionally interrupted by the bright burst of a star.
“The Room of Fathers,” Lady Weirdwood said in reverence. “We shall hold the funeral here.”
Breeth seeped into a painted cloud, its beauty nearly consuming her grief.
“We’re burying the mouse inside?” Wally whispered.
“Normally, I wouldn’t recommend it,” Lady Weirdwood said, kneeling in the middle of the grassy carpet. “But while most homes are built from dead trees, my Manor is made of living ones. As the mouse reverts to its original form and decomposes, these walls will grow with its nutrients—just as a forest does.”
Wally glanced toward Breeth, passing in her wallpaper cloud. She nodded, shedding rainy paint tears.
Lady Weirdwood crouched low and pulled up a loose piece of carpet. Then she took a kerchief from her wedding gown and held it out. Wally set the porcelain mouse shards inside, and the old woman held them up to the swirling ceiling. “We return this body back from where it came. May the soil delight in its nutrients just as the mouse delighted in cheese.”
Breeth’s cloud face contorted as she watched the mouse disappear into the floor and Lady Weirdwood fold the grassy carpet over it.
“And now,” the lady said, “a moment of silence.”
She and Wally bowed their heads while the night sky wallpaper swirled around them.
The door burst open. “Lady Weirdwood!”
“Sekhmet,” the lady whispered, flashing her a severe look. “Can’t you see we’re in the middle of a funeral?”
Sekhmet knelt. “I’m sorry, Lady. But it’s an emergency.” She drew back the hood of her cloak, her long hair spilling down her back. Her face was covered in ash and there was a spot of blood on her cheek. “I couldn’t locate the Rift. And that thief Arthur ran off into the Mirror sewers.”
Lady Weirdwood quirked an eyebrow. “And what were you doing with Arthur?”
Sekhmet stared at the floor. “I broke the rules and had him lead me around the city.”
“And promised him treasure you could not provide,” Lady Weirdwood said, standing with a grunt. “Well, I can’t say using a guide was a terrible idea. Hopefully the boy’s ego will keep him alive, despite the Ogre Oakers.” The lines on her face shifted like sands blown by the wind. “No Rift, you say?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Stranger and stranger. How did a Fae-born get into the Real without a Rift?”
From what Breeth knew about the Veil, this was as impossible as a fish escaping its tank by wriggling through the glass.
“Tell Ludwig and Weston to hold off sending resources to the Mercury Mines,” Lady Weirdwood said to Sekhmet. “They need to head into the Mirror to capture that pest Arthur before he accidentally creates any Rifts or permanently damages any of Kingsport’s myths.”
Sekhmet bowed. But before she could depart, the door burst open again.
“Lady Veirdvood!”
It was Ludwig, the large, baby-faced twin.
“What is it, Ludwig?” Lady Weirdwood said.
Ludwig wrung his hands. “Zere’s been anozer attack on Kingsport!”
The lady couldn’t hide the shock on her face. “What is it this time?”
“Corvidians. Dozens are svarming ze skies as ve speak. Zey seem to be attacking Kingsport’s mental hospital.”
Wally leapt to his feet as Lady Weirdwood swept toward the exit.
“We’ll have to divide our ranks,” she said. “Ludwig, tell your brother he’s going to the Mirror alone to capture Arthur. Sekhmet? Gather every last staff member left in the Manor. Now.”
Sekhmet knelt before her. “Lady Weirdwood, please send me to fight the Fae-born.”
Lady Weirdwood paused and gave her a helpless look. “You’re lucky we’re short on Wardens after the stunt you pulled with Arthur. You are to obey Amelia’s every command, do you understand?”
Sekhmet could barely contain her smile. “Yes, Lady.”
“Breeth!” Wally called up to her wallpaper cloud. “My brother’s in that hospital!”
Breeth’s paint cloud thundered. “Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”
Wally looked lost a moment. “I … don’t know. I’ve never told anyone about Graham. Lady Weirdwood just drew it out of me.” He gave his head a quick shake. “Can you keep me safe while I rescue him?”
Breeth’s cloud swirled with thought. If she had any chance of finding her killer, they would have to establish trust with Lady Weirdwood.
“Okay,” she said. “But only because you buried my mouse and I like you.”
13
THE GENTLEMAN THIEF
Arthur sloshed through the Mirror sewer. The stone tunnels stretched dark and endless. Every hundred yards, a slant of moonlight streamed through a drain above, lighting massive arches of ancient stonework, laced with cobwebs. The air was thick with the cold rot of death.
Yes, the sewers were as delightfully creepy as Arthur had imagined whenever he read Alfred Moore’s books. But something was missing. In the stories, the gloom was banished by crackling torches, raucous laughter, and bawdy songs sung by Garnett Lacroix and his Merry Rogues. All Arthur could hear now was the gurgle of water and the shrieks of rats.
He passed a pile of bones and hesitated. If the topside of Mirror Kingsport was filled with scavengers and Ogre Oakers and living embodiments of disease, what would the sewer hold?
He had heard of people flushing their pet baby alligators down the toilet when they became a nuisance. These babies grew to monstrous sizes beneath the city. Their massive tails clogged the drainpipes, and their giant mouths hung open like caves, waiting for children to explore the city’s depths. It was an urban legend, of course. But in the Mirror City, those legends came true.
Arthur hugged himself against the sewer’s cold. What had he been thinking, abandoning the girl with the swords? He had to remind himself that Sekhmet had betrayed him. Conned him, in fact. Good riddance to her. Arthur could take care of himself. He’d been doing it since he was eight.
Thieves of Weirdwood Page 13
