by Dave Butler
What deeds? Charlie wondered.
“Have you witnesses?” Elisabel demanded.
“I slew the Hound of Annwn,” Gnat said, “a fell beast, part machine, that stalked the slopes of Cader Idris. I slew that beast with my spear, in single combat.”
“I saw it,” Charlie said. His words felt a little plain, after Gnat’s.
Elisabel snorted.
“I dove, alone, into the waters of creation in a monsoon,” Gnat continued, “to board the Pushpaka vimāna, flying city-ship of the demon lord Ravana. There I slew a shaitan murderer alone in a closed room.”
Charlie tried to be more eloquent this time. “I was witness.”
“So was I,” Thomas said.
Elisabel scoffed, but she seemed less certain of herself.
“And I defeated not one, but two hulders, atop St. Paul’s Cathedral this very day,” Gnat cried. “Armed only with my bare hands and my mother’s cunning, I rendered one unconscious and the other helpless.”
“I was witness,” Charlie repeated. Technically, he’d been there to help, but he wasn’t going to undercut Natalie now.
“Sneak! Fraud!” Elisabel yelled at the hapless troll. “You tricked me here!”
The hulder shrugged, a bewildered expression on his face.
“I will not permit you to address the warrior throng,” Elisabel said to Gnat through gritted teeth.
“You must,” said Juliet, the Undergravine of Hesse, and there was iron in her voice.
Elisabel only stared, her mouth falling slightly open.
Had someone sent this troll to bring the two pixie noblewomen here to give Gnat a chance to issue her challenge?
“Now really,” Heinrich Zahnkrieger spluttered, fidgeting with the buttons of his jacket. For a moment, caught off guard, he looked like the old Henry Clockswain whom Charlie had known in his father’s shop, a fussy, obsessive kobold who was rude to Charlie but friends with his bap. “We have no time for this pixie nonsense!”
“We always have time for honor!” Juliet snapped. She fixed her eyes on Elisabel, but her words seemed to be addressed to Zahnkrieger. “If you wish us to be part of your league, you must respect our customs.”
“I think this can be settled quickly,” Charlie said. “Speeches to the warriors and then single combat. Am I right?”
Elisabel’s glare was icy. “Follow me,” she said. “We’re not far from Underthames.”
She turned and led the way, Juliet at her side. Everyone else followed. The hulder gaoler looked confused and dismayed. Heinrich Zahnkrieger looked thoughtful.
Charlie pressed himself to Gnat’s side.
“Will your deeds count?” Charlie whispered. “I mean, defeating Grim and Egil—is that a mighty enough feat?”
“Only the warrior throng can decide.” Gnat held her head high. “I hope they’re impressed by the trophies.”
They followed Elisabel into Underthames. They left the sewers after several minutes of fast walking, moved along a natural passageway a short, gloom-moss-lit distance, and came to a gate.
The four pixies at the gate shocked Charlie: they wore padded vests and brass helmets with smoked-glass visors covering their faces, and they carried short rifles. Stranger still, the gate was also guarded by four rats. The rats were armored and armed too, with leather flaps hanging from their bodies and sharpened sticks in their paws.
At the first sight of them, Charlie stumbled and nearly fell. Elisabel fluttered her wings and passed unbothered, but eight sets of guards’ eyes fixed on Gnat as she walked through on foot. Natalie de Minimis held her head high and looked forward, ignoring the guards.
The pixie realm looked mostly as Charlie recalled it from his first visit, the very day his father had been kidnapped and he had turned to Grim and Gnat for help. Underthames was still a series of linked caverns with high ceilings. It was still lit by glittering gems, full of birdlike nests and streams of flowing water. But rats now slouched where the fairies scampered and flew, some of the streams looked gray and fouled, and the corners of some caverns were heaped high with refuse. The stench of rotting meat washed over Charlie in a wave.
Elisabel de Minimis brought Charlie and the others to a place Charlie remembered, a low mound with a circle of broken-topped white pillars around it. At one end sat a stone chair, pixie-sized, and all the paths of Underthames flowed together and converged on this plaza and its throne.
The two kobolds stood together, apart from the others. Jan Wijmoor watched his old student with sad eyes, and Heinrich Zahnkrieger stared resolutely away.
The hulder gaoler stood at the far edge of the crowd, shifting from foot to foot and snorting.
As Elisabel approached, pixies who had been lounging suddenly stood. Those included Hezekiah and Seamus, Natalie’s love, and several warriors in blue tortoiseshells—the only pixies who seemed to retain their traditional spears, rather than use the new rifles. Lloyd Shankin stood up with them, still dressed in blue and carrying a white rod; his eyes were fixed on Gnat.
Lloyd began to sing, and Charlie understood the words through the Babel Card. “O cuckoo, O cuckoo, where have you been?” the dewin sang. He smiled at Charlie, though only faintly.
Elisabel flew to the height of the cavern and then alighted atop one of the pillars, spinning down gently like a pirouetting dancer. When she came to a stop, she sneered at Gnat. It was an insult, Charlie realized—he remembered how embarrassed Gnat had been at the loss of her wings.
But Gnat showed no shame or hesitation now. She sprang to the lowest of the broken columns, and then up to a second, and with a third leap she came to perch at the height of one of the tallest pillars.
“Dear little Natalie,” Elisabel clucked. “My poor cousin, come home with her uplander friends. Will you tell us your cause yourself, or have you a herald?”
Gnat stood, straight-backed, to face the crowd—
“She has a herald!” Lloyd Shankin cried. “A herald and a bard and a dewin!”
Juliet Edelstein raised a single eyebrow but showed no other sign of surprise.
Elisabel frowned.
“Hear the three songs of Natalie de Minimis!” Lloyd called. Then he raised his hands over his head and began to sing:
I sing you a warrior princess, brave as has ever been found
On the slopes of the giant’s mountain, she slew death’s only hound
Charlie found his own mouth forced open, but what came out were not words. A melody rushed from his lips, and borne on the melody like autumn leaves upon a stream came images. Above Lloyd’s head, the green and gray slopes of Cader Idris arose, and out of Charlie’s soul somehow came the image of the Hound chasing him and his friends down the slope. The pixies saw and emitted a collective shudder. Then the image showed them a shattered Aunt Big Money, and they wept, and finally as Gnat single-handedly—and without wings—killed the Hound, the pixies of Underthames sent up a cheer.
The blue-clad fairies looked to their undergravine, whose eyes narrowed.
Gnat raised the Hound’s tooth over her head. “My first token!” she cried.
Elisabel stared fury at her cousin, but the other fairies of Underthames cheered louder.
Lloyd continued:
I sing you the baroness’s daughter, in the palace of the demon lord
She slew the fiercest hunter, and now claims her reward
More melody and further images flowed out of Charlie. Startled, he realized that Lloyd’s magic had picked him up off the ground and was holding him in midair as it pulled this story out of him. It raised Thomas, too, and from the two of them together came the second story of Gnat’s heroism.
This time, Charlie saw above Lloyd’s head the image of the Pushpaka vimāna, a glowing circular pyramid lying at the bottom of a dark sea. The hideous nāgas circled it, and suddenly the shaitan
plunged past them, holding a boulder to ensure its swift descent. Gnat followed, unnoticed, until she assaulted the nāga and the shaitan, and then ordered the mechanical boys to shut her in. The vision showed the pixie and the shaitan as white outlines only against featureless black, and when the shaitan pounced for the fairy, she deftly stepped and stabbed it with the Hound’s tooth. Then she took the scarf from its neck and wrapped herself in it.
Gnat raised the scarf above her head. “My second!”
This time the undergravine smiled, and the pixies of Hesse joined the English pixies in roaring their applause.
Lloyd sang a third couplet:
I sing you a lethal dancer, fearless, in control
I sing you a pint-sized warrior who can dominate a troll
Charlie continued to hang in the air, but Thomas fell to earth, looking shaken but delighted.
From Charlie burst the images of himself and Natalie de Minimis running through St. Paul’s Cathedral, followed by Egil and Grim. The pixies stared, and Charlie watched them closely. Would it be enough for them? The church grew and shrank as the running figures raced up within it. As they watched Gnat single-handedly stun Egil One-Arm, the gathered pixies sucked in a collective breath—and as she leaped over Grim, yanking him off-balance so Charlie could drop him to the stairs, they cheered.
The rats, Charlie noticed for the first time, hissed among themselves and slunk to the edges of the crowd.
Before it could show the staircase breaking under Grim’s weight, the vision faded into white light. “And have you a token, Natalie?” Elisabel asked. Her tone was sarcastic, but Charlie thought the sarcasm hid fear.
“I am Natalie de Minimis’s third token!”
“Grim!” Charlie nearly fell over in surprise.
The voice was his troll friend’s, and the hulder lawspeaker barged into the circle of pixies. When he reached the broken columns he stopped and drew himself up to his full height. “Natalie de Minimis defeated me in hand-to-hand combat. You saw it yourself, and I’m here as her defeated foe and trophy!”
An awed murmur passed through the assembled pixies.
Lloyd sang a final couplet:
I sing you her mother’s daughter, de Minimis in green
I sing you a warrior leader, champion and queen
The undergravine applauded and the pixies shrieked with joy. Elisabel stared sourly, and slowly, slowly, the applause died down.
“The rats,” Charlie whispered to Thomas. “The pixies aren’t watching them.”
Thomas grinned. “I’m not afraid of any old rat. What shall we do?”
Without drawing attention to themselves, the two boys drifted to the back of the crowd, past the two kobolds, beyond the rats, and onto a low stone knob.
“Be ready,” Charlie whispered to his brother.
“Very well,” Elisabel cried, her voice piercing. She pointed at Hezekiah. “Herald!”
Hezekiah, flying much lower than the baroness, met her gaze. Slowly, deliberately, he dropped his rod on the cavern floor, then shrugged out of his tabard and cap and dropped those as well.
“No,” he said simply.
“Well, I have accomplishments too!” Elisabel shrieked, pounding her fist against the air. “I led Underthames against the rats!”
“Those rats?” Gnat asked, pointing with the Hound’s tooth at the huddled knot of chittering fur beneath Charlie.
“And I made peace with the rats, when the time came!” Elisabel bellowed. “And I found us new weapons, for our war against the humans!”
“You’ve been deceived!” Gnat cried to the rest of the pixies. “The Anti-Human League is a trick, and my cousin, who murdered my mother and stole her throne, is their puppet!”
“Challenge! Challenge! Challenge!” pixies all around the hall shouted.
With a noise that sounded like ten cats being thrown into the freezing Thames, Elisabel swooped down at her cousin, her spear raised high—
the crowd fell silent and held its breath—
Gnat leaped into the air as if she had wings, seized her cousin’s spear, and flung the other pixie down upon the top of the broken column.
Elisabel struck the rock, bounced once, fell to the stone floor in the center of the worn pillars, and lay still.
Gnat turned in the air and pirouetted as Elisabel had, only without wings and therefore faster. She landed with grace, holding the spear in one hand and the Hound’s tooth in the other, both above her head.
Across the cavern, every pixie made a joyous noise. Some banged spears on shields—the rifles had all disappeared. Others fluttered their wings, stamped their feet, clapped their hands, and yelled.
The troll gaoler turned and ran.
“The barony passes!” Lloyd Shankin cried.
“The barony passes!” Hezekiah shouted.
A gray rat, taller than the others and with scars streaking down its face, rose from the mass before Charlie and Thomas. Charlie had seen the rat before—it was Scabies!
“Kill them now, my brothers!” Scabies roared.
Charlie didn’t wait. He charged the rats from behind. When he grabbed Scabies by the hind legs and yanked him off his feet, the rat’s face splashed into one of the cavern’s streams, and he began to shriek.
The other rats hesitated, and Thomas charged them. A few rats poked Charlie and Thomas with their sticks, but it barely hurt, and then Grim was wading into the rodents from behind, and the undergravine’s warriors made short work of any rat that didn’t flee.
The clamor of acclamation didn’t stop.
Gnat leaped atop a pillar again and faced the crowd. “My mother’s people!” she cried. “I must leave you, for a time. I shall return! I would leave you in the care of a lady of great worth, Juliet Edelstein, the Undergravine of Hesse. Undergravine, may I ask you to watch my mother’s throne?”
The undergravine nodded solemnly. “Well done, Lady de Minimis.”
Seamus smiled at Gnat.
Gnat’s facial expression in return was surprisingly cold.
She turned to Grim. “We were released for the challenge,” she said. “I’ll not do you wrong, Grumblesson. Let us return to the cell.”
Seamus’s mouth fell open.
Grim looked at Heinrich Zahnkrieger, who stared in turn at the troll and at all the pixie hubbub with a look of astonishment on his face, buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket. “Back to gaol it is!” the hulder bellowed.
The kobold looked to Juliet the undergravine. She arched one eyebrow back at him and said nothing.
The pixies, other than Gnat, stayed behind, but Lloyd and Hezekiah followed Charlie and his friends to the exit of Underthames.
The rat sentries at the gate were gone, except one that lay dead, impaled on a pixie spear. The pixies stood guard alone now, armed again with spears.
“I’ll lead,” Grim rumbled, and headed out without waiting for anyone to respond. Charlie and Gnat quickly followed.
“Gnat,” Charlie whispered. “What do I call you now?”
Gnat, whose walk had become a high-skipping step, laughed. “Being a young lad made of clockwork, Charlie, and not a pixie at all? You call me Gnat. Though if I’m wearing a nice dress and don’t have a spear in my hand, perhaps you can call me Natalie.”
“But you’re the baroness now,” Charlie said.
“Aye.” She smiled. “Aye, I am.”
“Grim, what did you do?” Charlie whispered.
“Only what I had to!” Grim shot back. “Parliament started investigating the Anti-Human League, and I was afraid it might take to locking up innocent hulders and dwarfs, so I volunteered for the committee. And then I found myself locking up hulders and dwarfs, because in fact there is an Anti-Human League!”
“I know,” Charlie said. “The Undergravine of Hesse—that was
her, Juliet, in blue—came here to join it, after Prussia attacked the city where she lived. Only I think Prussia is being manipulated by the Cog.”
Grim shook his head. “Ingrid left me.”
“I think the Cog invented the Anti-Human League and then invited people to join it,” Charlie continued. “As a way to make the elder folk rebel, so they could— What did you say?”
“Ingrid left me,” Grim said. “Again. She’s a good person, and she can’t stand to see me involved in this. I try, you know. I lose prisoners from time to time…when I think they’re innocent. I delay committee action. I took the job to help, Charlie, and I’m trying my best.”
A soft tear trickled down each of the hulder’s cheeks.
Charlie took Grim’s enormous hand and held it in his own. “It was you who arranged for Gnat and Elisabel to meet, wasn’t it?”
Grim sniffed, an enormous sound. “Egil’s thugs are idiots. I mentioned to the gaoler that I thought our new pixie prisoner was one of the baroness’s warriors from Underthames and a ferocious league soldier, so we’d better not tell anyone we had her prisoner. Naturally, thinking he was doing a favor for the Anti-Human League—or the Iron Cog, or whoever he believes he serves—the moron promptly invited Elisabel to come in and collect her warrior.”
Charlie chuckled.
“Egil himself never would have fallen for it, but he makes a point of hiring people stupider than himself. About your powder, Charlie,” Grim said. “What if it was dissolved in water and then sprayed on a fire? There’s this new pumping station—”
Crack!
“Ouch!” Grim roared. “You hit my head!”
“Go down, you great stinking brute! Down! Down!”
Charlie heard two more loud cracks as a tall, muscular man sprang out of the shadows and hit Grim on the head with a club.
Finally Grim spun in a slow circle, then sank to his knees. Charlie gasped at the sight of his friend’s stunned expression and his eyes rolling back into his head, and then Grim collapsed.
“Anti-Human League!” the big man yelled, and raced forward, swinging his club. As he came into the yellow-green light, Charlie saw that he wore a burlap sack over his head, with ragged holes torn in it for eyes. “This is a raid!”
