“Dad?” she ventured.
“Yeah, Sara-love. It’s me,” he rasped.
His voice sifted, but it was his, like they were talking over a bad phone line and she could only hear him through static. Sara-love. He’d called her that all the time when she was little, almost unconsciously, just the way he’d done now.
A hitching breath came from her and she held a hand to her chest. Hope, she found, could be far more painful than grief.
“How can it be? What are…what was that?”
“A monster, sweetie. I was wrong, all those nights I told you they didn’t exist. But we’ve got it under control, now. Locked it up in here and threw away the key.”
All those nights, as a girl, when he’d come home late, Ted Halliwell had told his daughter he’d been catching bad guys. And when little Sara had asked if he had caught them, his answer had always been the same. Locked them up and threw away the key.
Sara took a step toward him, then hesitated, fear lancing through her. The image of that monster, of those lemon eyes and finger knives, lingered.
“What are you now, Dad?”
His face—sculpted from sand—contorted with sadness and loss. He reached out toward her, though she was still too far for him to touch her.
“I was away. Far away, Sara-love. All I wanted was to come back so I could tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t understand when you needed me to. The life you have…I had dreamed it so differently for you. A wedding. A little girl of your own. It took me a long time to realize my dreams for you had to give way to yours. Hard for me. I figured it out, though, sweetie. Eventually, I got it. All that mattered was that you were happy. That you could be adored the way you deserved. But by then, I couldn’t find the words to say it. If I’d seen you…but that never worked out. And then I was gone.”
Sara stared at him. Her hand flew to her mouth and a small sound escaped her lips. Her eyes blurred with tears and she wiped them away.
“Maybe you don’t remember, Sara, but that question…I asked you the same thing, once. The worst thing I ever did, asking you what you were. The stupidest, most heartless thing. And what did you tell me, do you remember?”
Sara did. “I’m me.”
Her father, this odd figure in his hat and coat, this Sandman, took a step toward her. “I don’t know what else I am, but I’m me. I’m what I had to be to get back to you, to be here to say I’m sorry, and that I love you.”
Sara stared at him, her fear still fresh.
“Never was much good at saying any of the important things. But all I wanted was this chance to say it to you. I can…I don’t want you to be afraid. I’ll go now. But—”
“No!” Sara rushed to him, danger forgotten. The idea of losing him again made her cry out. She threw her arms around him. His coat—whatever he was—felt rough to the touch, but she held on tight, afraid he would slip through her fingers.
Whatever part of him this was, it had his voice and his heart. She could not lose those, now that she had them back.
“Please don’t go.”
Even if they had stayed that way for a year, it wouldn’t have been enough for Sara. All of her hesitations and resentments were long forgotten. She had another chance with him, a chance for him to know her and know how she felt, and for him to understand.
In time, he stepped back.
Sara gaped. The silly mustache and hat were gone. The face belonged, now, only to her father. Even his eyes seemed more his own.
“Dad, you look—”
He reached up to trace his fingers along his features.
“How many of you are in there?” she asked.
He blinked and then looked at her in surprise.
“You’re a pretty smart young woman, you know that?”
Sara smiled. “My father’s a detective.”
Ted lowered his gaze, then raised his eyes again. Sara knew that look. She had seen it hundreds, maybe thousands of times growing up. The words had not even begun to come from his mouth, but she could hear them. There was something he had to do. He couldn’t be home with her right now, because there were some bad guys out there, and Detective Ted Halliwell was on the case. He had to stop them before they hurt somebody.
Her father saw her eyes, and he knew.
“I’ll come back. I swear. I can do it, now. And I’ll be here with you. But the Dustman and I have business to handle. Debts to pay.”
“And you have to stop the bad guys,” Sara said, her voice small.
As he nodded, the sand of his flesh and his clothing sifted again, and the hat and mustache returned. The Dustman. That’s what he had called it; what he was, now.
“Yeah.”
“Detective Ted Halliwell’s on the case.”
He smiled. “I promise I’ll be back.”
“You always promise.”
“And haven’t I always come back?”
Sara thought a moment, then reached out and touched his face in wonder. “Yeah. You have.”
He kissed her forehead. His lips were rough as sandpaper.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
She did. The sound came again, that scritching, skittering noise, along with a little breeze that made her shiver.
When she opened her eyes, he was gone.
But Sara found herself smiling.
Battle raged.
Ovid Tsing crouched, nocked an arrow into his bow, and fired. The arrow took an Atlantean soldier through the eye, the tip punching out through the back of his skull. The impact threw his head back but momentum carried him forward and he hit the ground, rolling, dead before he came to rest on the rocky shore where the Kingdom of Euphrasia met the Isthmus of the Conquistadors.
The eastern flank of Hunyadi’s army had broken. The Atlantean attack was vicious, supplemented by Yucatazcan warriors. Air sharks darted across the morning sky, but they were far away, as were the giants, who fought Borderkind and northern legends at the center of the battle lines. Sorcerers of Atlantis hovered just over the heads of the troops—swords clanging, screams rising, blood soaking the earth—but a dozen Mazikeen hung in the air above the Euphrasian troops, fighting back. The magical combat seemed a war all its own, each side’s sorcerers keeping the others from interfering in the ground war.
Still, the eastern flank had broken.
“To me!” Ovid screamed to his archers.
They knelt around him in a line.
Atlantean soldiers ran toward them, their armor gleaming, some of them in helmets that shone like the glass ships at anchor far off the coast. Their swords were raised high but they attacked in savage silence, unnerving Ovid, but only for a moment. He waited until they had reached the first soldier to break through, until they were trampling him under their boots.
“Fire!” he cried.
The archers let fly with their arrows. Men and women of Atlantis went down. Even at a distance, Ovid could smell their blood. It stank like low tide.
He stood, shouldering his bow and drawing his sword.
Ovid Tsing raised his sword.
“Attack!” he thundered.
The Stonecoats marched around Ovid and his archers, the first wave to move in. The Atlanteans attacked them with sword and dagger, but blades broke upon the rock-skin of the Jokao. The Stonecoats marched right through them, crushing heads and breaking bones, and kept going.
Sorcerers and giants might be able to kill them, but not ordinary Atlanteans. And the Jokao held a seething hatred for the Atlanteans. The time had come for them to take vengeance upon the culture that had once held them as slaves.
“Ovid!” Trina shouted, running up beside him.
She pointed to the sky.
Dozens of octopuses were sweeping toward them, tentacles dangling. They floated like balloons, but even as he watched, an octopus snatched up a Stonecoat in its tentacles effortlessly, as if the Jokao were weightless. It could not kill the Stonecoat, so instead it hurled him out to sea.
“Archers!” Ovid cried. “F
ire!”
His archers followed the command, taking aim at the floating creatures. Two were felled with that first attack. Ovid turned his attention back to the Atlanteans, many of whom were slipping past the Jokao. There simply weren’t enough Stonecoats to kill them all.
“King’s Volunteers!” he shouted. “Attack!”
He pointed his sword forward and the soldiers—men and women he had brought from Twillig’s Gorge, or who had joined him along the way—rushed into war with their weapons at the ready.
For the first few moments, Ovid only stood amongst them as they rushed around him and watched. Blades and cudgels fell. Atlanteans and Euphrasians and Yucatazcans died, their blood mingling together on the shore. The ground drank it greedily, and equally. To Death, all blood was the same.
Ovid roared and charged, racing into battle. He caught a glimpse of LeBeau, but then he could focus only on the enemy. He slashed and stabbed and used his elbows and knees—whatever it took to stop them; whatever it took to kill them; whatever it took to stay alive.
The King’s Volunteers tore into the forces of deceitful Atlantis with courage and determination and hope. Ovid’s mother had understood that it was hope that they all needed the most. He had begun his militia for his own purposes, but now he fought for his mother, and for hope.
An axe swept toward his skull.
Ovid dodged, but not in time.
A sword stopped the axe’s descent. A tall figure in armor stepped in, grabbed the axe-wielding Yucatazcan by the head, and snapped his neck, dropping the corpse to the ground.
Ovid stared. His rescuer stood a foot or more taller than he. She wore her dark hair in long braids and wielded an enormous, heavy sword. Her armor glistened with blood not her own. She gazed at him with lavender eyes, and Ovid knew that he stood face-to-face with a goddess.
She wore a wild grin, as though the war and bloodshed made her giddy, and then she rushed away from him, felling Atlanteans with crimson abandon.
Not far away, a massive wolf made of tangled vines and leaves lunged into the Atlantean ranks, tearing at them with its jaws, crunching a skull in its teeth.
Hope had arrived.
CHAPTER 19
In the shade of trees whose limbs were strung with moss, amidst the buzzing of insects driven into a frenzy by the blood and sweat of dying soldiers, Oliver gathered the small force he would take with him to Atlantis. They were on the other side of the ridge from the battlefield, out of sight of the slaughter, but even here, more than a mile away, the sounds of death echoed across the sky.
Oliver stood furthest from the crest of the ridge. Perhaps twenty feet away, Li sat cross-legged on the ground, the grass burning all around him, blackening the soil.
Not far from Li—it seemed this small group of Borderkind never strayed far from one another these days—Cheval Bayard lay on her side upon the grassy hill. The sun shone upon her diaphanous gown and silver hair, while Grin crouched nearby and watched the sky and the ridgeline for potential threats.
Furthest from Oliver, beneath another stand of trees at the top of the ridge, stood the winter man. The ice that comprised Frost’s body had become almost transparent. The colors of the landscape passed through him, bending and gleaming, casting a small rainbow from the prism of his torso.
Frost stood completely still, the icicles of his hair frozen in place. A light mist steamed off of him. Oliver thought he must be watching the battle, gauging the efforts of Hunyadi’s army against the invading hordes. Maybe the winter man longed to join the battle, thinking he could be of more use to the soldiers than to the mission the king and Oliver had concocted.
Good thing I don’t give a fuck what he thinks.
Oliver needed Frost with him. He’d witnessed firsthand how devastating the winter man could be in a fight. And as bitter as he felt toward Frost, they had been companions before. They’d fought side by side. Frost wasn’t going to cut and run.
A shape streaked across the blue sky, high enough above the battlefield that they could see it, even on this side of the ridge. Oliver tensed at the sight of the green-feathered wings and the rack of antlers on the Peryton’s head. He remembered Collette’s tales of her captivity in the sandcastle and the eerie presence of the Perytons then.
He gripped his sword, prepared to unsheathe it.
Even as he did, a dark wind twisted into a funnel, reached up into the sky, and dragged the Peryton from the air. The Atlantean Hunter hurtled toward the ground, driven by the wind. It landed beyond their line of sight, but Oliver thought that the force of that wind and the impact must have broken every bone in the Peryton’s body. A grim satisfaction gripped him.
He glanced around to discover that none of the others had moved, or even seemed to have noticed.
This is what I chose? Oliver thought. The broken ones? That’s my team, the scarred and haunted and mad. Way to go, Bascombe.
But he’d chosen them each for a reason. He knew them—understood them—and felt confident that not one of them had any illusions about the task that had been set before them. They could very easily be killed. Oliver did not think any of these Borderkind wanted to die, but he figured none of them was all that troubled by the idea. Not anymore.
Other than Oliver, only Blue Jay had a reason to come back.
As if summoned by the thought, the trickster crested the ridge at that moment.
“All right, here we go!” Oliver called to the others.
Cheval sat up and looked toward the top of the hill. Grin reached down to help her up, and together they watched Blue Jay join Frost under the trees for a moment. Then the trickster and the winter man started down the hill toward them, followed by five Nagas. The serpent-men slithered along the ground, bows and quivers slung across their backs, daggers held in sheaths strapped to their bodies.
“Well done, Jay. I thought Damia only had two Nagas left from her Borderkind platoon.”
The trickster nodded. “She did. The others had come earlier and were fighting with a different battalion. When they heard it was for you, they all wanted to come. More as well. I had to turn some away.”
Oliver clapped hands with Blue Jay. He had done the right thing. Even this number had begun to grow too large to sneak into Atlantis. They certainly didn’t need an army. Still, the Nagas would be welcome and probably prove indispensable.
“Hello, brother,” said the first of the serpent-men. “It lifts our hearts to see that you still live.”
“Mine too.” Oliver smiled. He thought he recognized this Naga from Twillig’s Gorge, but couldn’t be sure. If he’d spent more time with them, it might become easier to tell them apart.
But before he could say any more, he saw another figure trailing behind the Nagas, coming down the hill toward him. A frown creased his brow.
“Why’d you bring her?” he asked Blue Jay.
The trickster turned and studied Julianna. Her long hair flew around her face in the wind and she brushed it away. For a moment Oliver was taken back to that moment in their childhood—not the first time he had seen her, but the first time he had really noticed her in the way that boys notice girls. She had looked so regal, then. Imperious. Fearless.
Once again, the sight of her took his breath away.
But he could not let that cloud his judgment or weaken his resolve. He excused himself and strode up the hill to meet her. Just her presence did something to him. As he walked to her, without even touching her he felt the comfort of her strength. Oliver knew Julianna had been angry with him. Now she looked at him with those eyes—the way only lovers who’d had their whole lives to learn every facet of each other could share a look—and he knew she had put her anger aside.
“What is it, Jules?”
She gave him a sweet, sad smile. “You’re leaving soon?”
“As soon as Smith is ready.”
Julianna nodded. “I need a minute.”
Oliver took a breath. He ran a hand over the beard that had become thick with the months he ha
d spent beyond the Veil.
“I have to do this.”
“I know. That’s not what this is about.”
“Okay. And not just a minute. You know I want to spend all my minutes with you.”
“When destiny no longer decides for us,” Julianna said.
Oliver wanted to laugh, to make a joke out of her words. Destiny. It sounded so foolish when spoken aloud like that. But Julianna was deadly serious, and he found that there was nothing funny about any of it.
He reached out and took her hands in his. The temptation to kiss her was powerful, but she’d come to say something, and he did not want to diminish that.
“What is it, Jules?”
“I want you to take Kitsune with you.”
Of all the things she might have said, this must have been the most improbable. He stared at her.
“Why would you say that?”
“She’s still here. She hasn’t gone down to fight, yet. Neither has Coyote. The two of them are talking, not far from King Hunyadi’s tent. Kitsune seems lost, to tell the truth. She talked gods up from their old temples and the Harvest spirits out of the fields, but she doesn’t know what to do with herself, now. I think she did all of that to prove something to herself, Oliver. I think maybe she was trying to find a way to forgive herself.”
He took a breath and glanced away. “All Kit ever wanted was to stop the Hunters from killing her kin, but she put all that aside to help keep me alive. I owe her for that, Jules. But I can’t just forget what she did to us. What she did to you.”
Oliver lifted his gaze, looking into the eyes that knew him so well. The eyes he knew so well. Julianna had always been the more logical of the two of them, the more reasonable.
“I want you to take her with you, Oliver.”
He studied her. “Are you sure?”
“I can’t blame her for loving you. How could I? And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve seen her, I realize I can’t blame you for being enchanted by her. She’s magic, isn’t she? That’s what enchantment is all about.”
Oliver pulled her closer. “I won’t say she isn’t fascinating. She is. But you’re the only magic I’ve ever needed.”
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