“What does your brother do?”
“Spins, sir.”
Dash pulled a twenty-naut piece out of his pocket and gave it to Singer, who was dazzled. “Take the day off,” said Dash, and when Singer looked fearfully at Neats, Dash placed a hand on his small shoulder. “Your job is safe,” he said. “I know your name. Go.”
Singer bolted from the unlocked room.
“How many employees do you have here?” Dash asked as he strode out of the boiling room and back toward the entry corridor. The weavers watched from under hooded eyes as he passed.
“Close to six hundred, sir.”
“How many under fourteen?”
“Oh, sir, I don’t know exactly, sir —”
They left the looms, and Neats locked the door behind them. His hand shook; his keys jangled. Dash knew that the man was deciding whether to tell the truth.
Nettie’s pen moved fast, giving him more courage.
“Don’t lie,” said Dash in the silence. “I’ll go in every room. I’ll see them for myself.”
“Two — ah — two hundred,” said Neats. “Roughly two hundred.”
“How young is the youngest?”
Neats swallowed. “I can’t say for certain.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re on the top floor, sir — doing simple stuff, I promise you. Once the cocoons are boiled, the little ones unroll them —”
“With their little fingers.” Dash turned to Nettie, who was now the only scribe left with him. He didn’t know when the others had gone, and he didn’t care. If they couldn’t see that this was a story, then they wouldn’t know how to write about it anyway. “I’d like to see them, Nettie. Wouldn’t you?” He strode to the stairs and climbed to the fifth floor, the stairs creaking beneath his weight as he went.
SHE took another cocoon from the table; this one she unrolled smoothly and put aside the fiber when it was done. Her fingers, now older and less practiced, were slow. Her fingertips tingled by the fourth strand, and she knew that if she pressed on, her old calluses would throb. She pulled a fifth cocoon from the pile, then turned her head at the sound of the lock and bolt being moved on the other side of the chamber door.
“You’ll see them here, sir,” came Neats’s voice. But it was now a servile whine.
Prince Dash of the Blue Kingdom stepped into the doorway, glittering in the gloom. He all but filled the narrow frame, and he was too tall for the door; he had to duck to enter, with guards behind him, as well as a scribe. All of them turned toward the children, their faces grim.
He had come. He’d told her he would try. But he had really done it — he was here, he was seeing this. Relief flooded her so intensely that she almost lost her head and called out to him, but she caught herself just in time. If he saw her and spoke to her, if he made them notice her, then Lariat Jacquard would know she had been here and she’d take it out on Practical Elegance. Sharlyn was going to kill her, kill her, kill her. …
On the other side of the room, people stumbled from their spinning mats to their feet and bowed to their prince. Ella prodded the children on either side of her. “The prince,” she whispered. They gasped and sprang from their chairs to bow, all except the littlest ones, who were held in place with rope. Ella stood and ducked her face, now grateful for the cap that covered her hair. She clasped her hands in front of her to stop their trembling.
Dash’s heavy footfalls approached the children’s tables, and Ella curtsied very low to hide behind the boy beside her. A short silence, and then — “I’m not sure this work is simple,” he said in a voice more commanding than Ella could remember hearing it. “Here, Nettie. Try it.”
Ella looked up from under her lashes and saw Dash toss a Prism cocoon to the scribe who was with him. Both of them attempted to unroll the silk, both without success. Dash fumbled with the fiber, his fingers too large and inexperienced to manage it. He pocketed his ruined cocoon, knelt beside the smallest girl, and tugged on the rope that bound her. “Does this hurt?” he asked.
The girl flicked her eyes to Neats. She shook her head.
Dash untied it anyway and threw the length of rope at Neats, who barely caught it.
“I want the children’s names,” said Dash, and Nettie obeyed at once, moving slowly along the tables as she collected personal information. Ella tensed when she drew near.
“Name?” Nettie asked her.
“Kit.” She stared at the floor.
“Surname?”
“Don’t know. Orphaned.”
Nettie leaned closer. “There’s plenty you could tell me, isn’t there?” she whispered. “Meet me at the Hook and Eye when your shift is over? I won’t put your name in the Criers.”
Ella nodded to get rid of her, and Nettie moved on.
“Untie the rest,” Dash said to Neats. “Now.”
“If you please, sir, I’ll be fired if I do, sir. My employer —”
“I’ll speak with Lady Jacquard,” said Dash furiously. “Tonight.” He strode farther into the room, coming closer to Ella until he was level with her. She ducked her face completely, breathing hard.
“Open this,” said Dash, nudging a locked door with his booted foot. Ella hadn’t noticed this door at all, and she was surprised to see, when Neats got it open, that inside it was another workroom just as long and dull as the one she was in, full of more spinners on mats. She heard the crack of a Ubiquitous acorn as someone within took a lozenge. She expected Dash to enter and continue his inspection.
But he didn’t. And when he suddenly turned back, she wasn’t expecting it.
He caught her eyes and drew a sharp breath. She bowed her head, making the slightest No motion with her hand. He came closer anyway. She saw the toes of his boots in front of her.
“Why — are you here?” His voice was hoarse. “You’re older than these children.”
“Kit’s new, sir,” said Neats. “Just started today.”
“I see,” Dash said. Ella wondered what he thought she was doing. She’d probably never be able to tell him. From the adjoining workroom came the sound of another acorn cracking, as Neats shut the door between the rooms and locked it once more.
A moment later the prince was gone, with his followers behind him, and the door to the stairway was bolted shut again as well. When he left, no one sat. They looked at one another in wonder.
Then they began to murmur. For the first time since arriving, Ella felt something in the air that was not hopelessness or decay.
“What was that about?” asked an older girl who had a spinning mat across from the children’s tables. She jerked her tanned chin at Ella, smiling. “He’s lovely, hey?” she whispered. “Just like in the Criers. And he paid you attention, lucky.”
Ella was hardly fit for speech. She drew a deep breath to control herself, but the stale air did nothing to help her. It smelled of sweat and spit and smoke.
Smoke.
Ella was not the only one who smelled it; several people in the room put their noses suddenly into the air like dogs.
Then the first scream came from behind the locked door.
THEY were on the fourth-floor landing. Neats was looking for the right key. Dash stood staring at the hinges of the door, his heart galloping. He had never expected to see Ella there. He had to invent an excuse to go back.
Then screams filled the stairwell. They were sudden and many; he started violently and looked above him, where the terror was coming from, and then the desperate thuds began. People were beating on the door of the locked workroom. Crying out for help.
“Fire,” said one of his guards. “I smell it.”
Dash ran up the shaking steps two at a time toward the door behind which Ella was trapped. He grabbed the padlock that held the bolt in place and turned to demand the keys from Neats.
Neats was gone. Only the guards were behind him — and Nettie, who looked frightened to death.
The screams in the locked room redoubled suddenly, now full of pain as well a
s fear. Frantic, Dash smashed the bottom of his boot against the padlock.
MOST of the workers ran for the door to the stairs. They crushed against it, banging and screaming, smothering one another. Only a few went to the door of the adjoining workroom and tried to smash the lock to let out those who were on the other side.
They had no heavy tools. Ella tried the lock with her fists and her feet, but she didn’t have the strength to break metal. A man pushed her out of the way, a thick wooden pipe ripped from a spinning wheel in his hand. He smashed it frenziedly against the padlock, and others joined him, tearing pieces from their own wheels and beating on the lock until it began to give.
When it fell, the man lifted the bolt; the door slammed open and he was flattened by a stampede of terrified spinners from the other room. They stepped on one another, leaving bodies beneath their feet as they surged to the far door. Ella leapt onto the nearest table to avoid being caught in the undertow, and over the tops of their heads, beyond the door, she saw the fire.
It had consumed most of the wooden floor in the next room, cracked and devoured the spinning wheels, ignited the piles of silk upon the mats. People were crowded at the windows, trapped by the flames.
People on fire.
Jumping to the street.
Ella got her wits back. She ran atop the tables, kicking baskets of cocoons out of the way, until she came to the chairs at the end, where the smallest children were wriggling, crying, trying to untie their ropes. She dropped beside the first one, fumbling, clumsy — she couldn’t do it fast enough — they would all die like this —
She grabbed her necklace. The call burst from her in a scream.
SERGE, SERGE, SERGE!
He gasped, shot through with cold terror, and leapt to his feet in Gossamer’s bell tower, where some fifty fairies had gathered to discuss the Lariat Jacquard situation.
“Ella,” he and Jasper said together.
“Everyone, come!” ordered Jasper, hurtling to the window.
Serge soared from the bell tower, following the pull of Ella’s fear upon his heart. She was near. He only hoped she was near enough. He veered steeply downward toward the rooftops of the workshops below. The other fairies followed at once, and they sped, all of them, over the top of Knot Street and across Cobbler’s Alley to Ragg Row, where Serge dove lower still, and turned.
They saw the fire from the end of the street.
“GO!” cried Serge, and the fairies rushed in as though they were themselves on fire.
FLAMES leapt in the adjoining doorway now. Tongues of it lashed into the workroom, reaching for the spinning mats. Smoke rolled in, acrid and black, and coughing fits joined the cacophony of screams. Scores of people pushed against the locked door to the stairwell, clawing and crying, while Ella’s fingers moved, slick with sweat, on the knots that bound the children in their chairs. She could not fail. No shaking, no mistakes. Every knot she had ever untied had been for this. All around her, the freed children begged her for help; they needed comfort; someone had to tell them what to do next, but the only thing to do was run, and the door would not give.
HE smashed his boot against the lock again, cursing. Among the chorus of screams on the other side of the door, children were crying, their terrified keening unbearable to him.
“Stand back,” said one of his guards, sword out. Dash stepped aside, and she bashed the lock twice with the hilt. It gave. The door slammed open, and a sea of screaming laborers crashed through it — the guard was buried underfoot on the stairs and Dash was shoved to the railing, Nettie beside him. It creaked against his waist, threatening to break and send him plummeting into the stairwell.
He struggled to get his left hand to the door. His fingers found the wooden bolt, which he seized in a grip like stone. The stairway filled rapidly, everyone pushing downward, everyone pounding together on the stairs. Wooden steps cracked and fell through; ankles were trapped by broken boards. Dash heard the railing split behind him — felt Nettie fall back. Before she could fall to her death, he grabbed her forearm in his right hand.
With a groaning heave like a ship at sea, the stairs collapsed.
THUNDER cracked that was not thunder; from the stairs came fresh screams. Ella’s head snapped toward the door just in time to see people falling through the open entryway into the empty stairwell where stairs no longer stood.
No stairs. No stairs.
Only jumping from the windows was left.
Panic finally gripped her. She tugged in vain on the knot that trapped the very last child, blinded by the sweat that filled her eyes.
“Jasper Jasper Jasper,” she sobbed. “Serge Serge Serge —”
Smoke darkened the room, even as the fire in the doorway flamed brighter, catching the first row of spinning mats in her room.
BLACK smoke billowed from the rooftop of the Jacquard building. Some mortals lay crumpled on the street like laundry; the few who had survived were moaning, broken. Two girls stepped together onto the sill of a fifth-floor window. They looked down in terror at the street — then, licked by flame, they screamed and leapt.
Serge shot toward one falling body, Gossamer toward the other — they caught the girls but had not enough wing strength to do anything but break the fall. Both fairies spiraled toward the street, barely holding on to those they hoped to save. The girls toppled from their arms and onto the cobblestones, screaming in terror — but alive.
HE dangled in the empty stairwell, gripping the bolt of the door with his left hand. His arms burned as though his muscles were tearing apart. Nettie had him by the right wrist, dangling lower than he. Her fingers were sliding. She wept. He tried to lift his arm with Nettie on it, but she was too heavy. His shoulder popped out of its socket at the strain, and he shouted.
Nettie cried out as one of her hands slid from his wrist, her nails tearing at him as she lost her grip. She screamed and dug into his wrist with her other fingers, catching hold again, but barely. And soon it would not matter. His left arm was trembling. Out of his control. His hand began to slip from the wooden bolt.
MORE jumpers plummeted; more fairies went to them. Serge flew to the top-floor windows, blew them open with an outward thrust of his palms, and burst into the room. Smoke hung like a haze; he ducked low to get under it. In half of the room, flames leapt high. Spinning wheels cracked. Silk hissed.
“SERGE!”
Ella. She was crouched in the corner with a group of children who could not run away. In the open doorway near her, where there should have been a stairwell, there remained only a few broken boards, leading nowhere.
A hand gripped the bolt of the open door, but the fingers were sliding. In seconds, whoever was dangling there would fall.
Serge hurtled toward Ella, Jasper toward the slipping hand.
SERGE’S face was the most beautiful sight of her life. Beside him, a fairy with dark blue skin held out her hand to the children.
“Hold on to me,” she cried, and several grubby hands flailed to get into hers. She gripped the ones she could and snapped the fingers of her other hand. She and the children vanished.
Serge reached out his hand, and Ella pushed more children toward it. “Grab on to him!” she shouted. “Fast, fast —”
Three little hands touched Serge’s, and he was gone.
THE fingers that caught his wrist were white and slim, but inhumanly strong. Jasper — the same fairy who had carried him to the rooftop on Sharp Street. Jasper seized hold of Nettie with his other hand, and he beat his great crimson wings, rising high enough to bring both Dash and Nettie parallel with the workroom door. Smoke came through it, burning Dash’s eyes and throat, but Jasper swung him by his arm straight into the workroom.
He dropped to the floor. His shoulder exploded with anguish as the heels of his hands struck the boards. Orange light flickered, making hazy shadows everywhere; he squinted to see a cluster of children pressing toward the only window that had not been consumed by fire. Their small hands were grabbed by blue ones f
illed with sparkling dust. Fairy fingers snapped. Children disappeared. One of the fairies grabbed Nettie’s arm, and she too vanished.
Jasper flew past Dash toward a girl in a cap who held a limp child in her arms. He pinned the limp child under one arm, used the other to grab a boy around the waist, and soared out the window as the older girl turned back to grab the last few hands that reached for her.
Ella.
“DASH!” she cried, and then she choked, coughing, and pointed beyond him toward the flaming mats. Dash looked behind him and saw an unconscious child buried under fallen chairs and nearly obscured by smoke. The boy appeared peacefully asleep, insensible of the piles of silk that burned ever closer around him.
Light flared suddenly, making the room a sun, and Dash looked up at the source. Above him, the wooden frame that supported the rooftop was aflame. A beam cracked from its place and fell. Children screamed. Dash rolled hard toward the unconscious boy, pain ripping through his shoulder as the burning beam crashed to the floor alongside him.
SHE pushed the last two children toward the wall to avoid being smashed by the beam, but she could not spare them pain — the fire was too close now. Visible waves of heat undulated in the air. The little ones screamed, and so did Ella — her eyes burned and blurred —
And then blue wings appeared. Blue hands were upon them. The children were gone. Ella pressed herself to the wall in terror as the flames from the fallen beam roared up and trapped her. Just feet away on the other side of the beam knelt Dash, dragging the unconscious boy out from under a pile of chairs. Using one arm, he pulled the boy’s body close to him. Chunks of rooftop fell into the room, igniting the few mats that hadn’t already burned. Dash curled himself over the boy as embers rained down on his head, and he moaned. Ella could not get to him, she could only get to the window, and she climbed onto the sill. It was burning now, the sill itself was burning — the bottom of her skirt was burning. She looked down at the street, and it did not look so far away, and the air outside was cold. The fire singed her legs. She leapt from the window of the Jacquard workshop.
Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella Page 31
