Hoarse vendor calls of “Fresh hummingbeak juice!” and “Boysenberries!” and “Hot flower-bulb soup!” carried through the muggy air. Sprites bustled so thickly around her that Lottie had to grip the Barghest’s fur with all of the strength she had left just to stay upright. At least, she thought, she was so squished out of sight that no one would think her and her muddy tweed coat out of the ordinary.
In fact, blending into this crowd would not have been a hard thing to do. Everyone here looked different. Some of the passersby were ridiculously tall, others no higher than Lottie’s shoulder. Some had blazing shocks of red hair, others startling mohawks, others unkempt braids. Some were dressed in formal business attire, others in tights and miniskirts, still others in loud plaid prints. All of them were in a hurry, and their frantic energy leaked into Lottie’s breath and sped up her heart. When Lottie saw the next deserted alleyway, she pulled the Barghest back by the fur and reeled into it.
“Wait,” she gasped. “Now what do we do? Do you know where we’re going? How do you know where Mr. Wilfer is?”
The Barghest was whining softly, and Lottie realized that she had accidentally managed to pull out a good clump of fur from its mane.
“Oops.” Lottie cringed. “Sorry.”
“I do not know where your friends are,” the Barghest said, “but I do know the way to the Southerly Court Palace. It is to that place that I am taking you.”
“To the Southerly King,” said Lottie, nodding. “And the dungeons, where Mr. Wilfer’s being held—they’re nearby?”
“They lie underneath the palace.”
“All right,” said Lottie. “Then take me there.”
“Do you know what you are going to do once you arrive?”
Despite herself, Lottie found herself laughing. “I haven’t got a clue.”
“Very well,” said the Barghest, who was not affected by this answer one way or the other. “I will lead you to the palace. If I’m not mistaken, this will be the time of day that the king is holding court.”
As they pressed on, the crowd grew thicker, the shouts of the vendors faded away, and Lottie had to shove harder against unmoving bodies. Then the talking around her gave way to murmuring, and the murmuring to whispers, until suddenly a complete and eerie silence enveloped Lottie, and all that she could make out were the angry grunts of the people she was pushing past, and then there were no more people to push past at all. Then Lottie just managed to catch herself from tumbling over a thick red rope that separated the silent crowd from a long flight of wide, marble steps. At the top of the steps were ten majestic columns, curled into contortions that Lottie had never seen back in her world, and higher still towered a sunstruck, silver dome. There could be no mistaking it: this had to be the Southerly Court.
The palace steps were lined on both edges by deep stone trenches, and from those trenches shot fountains of water. A landing cut across the very middle of the steps, and from it rose a towering stone figure fashioned in the form of a winged, regal sprite. He held a scepter in one hand, and the inscription at his feet read KING OBERON I. Positioned just in front of the statue was a throne with legs made of silver, spun like holly and sprigged by ruby berries. On the throne sat a sprite that could be none other than the Southerly King himself.
All this time, Lottie had expected the Southerly King to be gray-haired and wizened by years of rule. But the king’s face was young and smooth. Though not one wrinkle creased his features, dimples cut into his cheeks in what looked like a perpetual, languid smile. His eyes were thickly lashed and a warm brown, like cocoa. Around his flawless face hung long locks of blond hair that Pen Bloomfield’s minions would have killed to possess. This king did not look harsh at all. He also did not look a day past twenty-two.
Then the king raised his hand.
Lottie gasped. His fingers were shriveled and thin, browned with sunspots and bulging with veins; they shook as the king held them aloft. They were the fingers of an inconceivably old man. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong with the king.
On the palace steps, a row of red-cloaked sprites surrounded the king. Each guard held a large, wooden mace, except for the two who were currently dragging a limp figure before the throne. The Southerly King had raised his pruny hand, Lottie now saw, because he was speaking into the eerie silence around her. He was giving some sort of order.
“. . . to be hanged by the feet until unconscious, then dipped into the sulfur baths, drawn, and quartered.”
Lottie stiffened. This wasn’t just an order. This was a sentence. A death sentence.
The king lowered his hand, and the two red-cloaked guards who held the limp figure bowed their heads at the king’s words. The guards turned around, and Lottie’s gasp was drowned in a sudden roar of cheering and applause from the crowd.
The sentenced prisoner in the guards’ arms was a boy not much older than Lottie herself. He did not scream any protestations or wriggle about. His limbs and mouth seemed to have all gone slack. The only sign that he was conscious at all was a look of absolute horror burning in his eyes—eyes set in a perfectly expressionless face.
“Wait,” the king shouted over the roar of the crowd. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”
The guards halted. One of them stooped to take something out of the boy’s pocket. He handed the object to another guard, who approached the king’s throne, knelt, and passed something small and fluttering into the king’s hand. It was the boy’s genga. The swallow’s frantic chirruping bounced off the palace columns until, abruptly, there was a crunch. The chirruping stopped. The king opened his fist, and a brown lump fell from his hand back into the cupped palms of the guard.
“Carry on,” said the Southerly King.
Again, the guards began to pull the paralyzed boy away.
“Oh!” cried the king. “Did I say quartered? I meant fifthed.”
The crowd erupted into another deafening roar of approval. Lottie felt the Barghest shudder against her leg.
“Fifthed!” chanted a group of boys next to Lottie who looked uncomfortably like the boy who had just been sentenced to death. “Fifthed! Fifthed! Fifthed!”
From his throne, the Southerly King daintily crossed his ankles and produced a dazzling smile worthy of an orthodontic ad. Lottie could see, though, that the king’s old hand was impatiently tapping against his armrest, one emaciated finger at a time. After minutes of undiminished cheering from the crowd, the king raised the ugly hand, and silence descended once more.
“Truth be told, my faithful Southerlies,” the king announced in his songbird of a voice, “I’ve grown bored with the petty cases of this month. It’s high time for a trial of real import, wouldn’t you agree?”
The crowd gave its roaring affirmation.
“Then let this serve as an invitation,” the king said, “to a case of particular public fascination: the sentencing of one Moritasgus Wilfer, former Head Healer and now confirmed traitor to the Southerly Court!”
A mixed eruption of boos and cheers.
“I have more to tell!” the king shouted over the din. “Just this morning, there has been a thrilling development in the case. The fugitives of the Wilfer household, who had heretofore evaded capture, have at last been apprehended. They, too, will stand trial before the throne to receive their sentences.”
Lottie felt as though her stomach was melting into wax. They had been caught. Oliver, Adelaide, and Fife could not have made it more than a few feet within the city walls before they had been arrested by the Southerly Guard. The king was not going to hear their petition or make any trade after all; he was going to sentence them.
“The trial shall be held tomorrow, on these very steps, at noon sharp. I would suggest an early arrival for all of those hungry to see justice exacted upon a foul and seditious wretch.”
The crowd burst into a brain-rattling roar of excitement. Then the noise fell off into conversation, murmuring, laughing, and whistling as the sprites dispersed to their daily routi
nes. The Southerly King’s announcement was over. He himself had disappeared from view, and his guards were toting his throne up the steps and into the safety of the palace through its great marble doors.
“Ow!” Lottie swatted at something that had hit her right at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes refocused on the offending object, which was still fluttering in front of her.
It was a finch. A white finch.
“Oliver!” The name passed Lottie’s lips as a reflex.
Dizzying joy and relief swelled in Lottie at the sight of Oliver’s genga, Keats. This had to mean something good, didn’t it? It must mean that Oliver was somehow all right.
By an instinct that Lottie did not recognize as her own, she lifted her forefinger for Keats to perch upon.
“A finch,” barked the Barghest, “from the house of Wilfer. What message has it been sent to deliver?”
“Did Oliver send you to me?” Lottie asked the finch.
Keats bobbed his tiny head and cheeped once. Lottie took this as a yes.
“Are he and the others all right?”
The finch quivered his head back and forth. He cheeped twice, lower than before. This, Lottie realized grimly, meant no.
“Are they locked up?” she asked. “Are they in the dungeons with Mr. Wilfer?”
A bob and a cheep.
“Take us to them!”
Keats twittered excitedly and swooped off Lottie’s finger in a dive. He reappeared a moment later in the near distance, over the heads of the crowd, his wings gleaming in the sun like a beacon.
“Come on, Barghest,” Lottie said, scratching its ear encouragingly. “Let’s go.”
The Barghest obeyed the order. They set out again into the press of the crowd. They had been standing, Lottie now saw, in a great cobblestone pavilion that fronted the Southerly Court Palace. It was an impressive sight: all columns, fountains, marble, and stone. It bespoke wealth and power and was nothing like the surrounding alleys that Lottie now plunged into. These alleys were winding and crowded, billowing with smoke and noise. The streets bent severely, zigzagging in almost impossible ways, as though the sprites who had first laid them out had done so with their eyes closed, and after having been spun around in circles. Balconies hung overhead in steep slants that blocked out the sun. Silver pipes jutted out from under windows, and as Lottie passed by a shop marked ROYAL LANE LAUNDROMAT, one of those pipes poured out blue-colored steam and the fresh scent of cotton. More vendor shouts echoed: “Fresh honeysuckle straws!” and “Hummingbird dung!”
More than once, Lottie lost sight of Keats, and each time she did—even if for only a mere second—hot dread seized her. But just when Lottie’s feet slowed in hesitation, the genga would reemerge, five or even ten heads away, and swoop on.
Then Keats gave a very sudden swerve that would have been inconceivable in a gridded neighborhood like the respectable Thirsby Square. The alleyway yanked back on itself in an acute diagonal, sloping downward so instantly that it threw Lottie off her balance and propelled her down at an alarming speed until she smacked straight into a door.
Lottie backed away, rubbing at her sore shoulder, which had gotten the brunt of the impact. Keats hopped from the door’s silver handle to its lintel.
“This is it?” said Lottie, craning her neck up to see that somehow, indeed, Oliver’s genga had led them to a solid stone wall that belonged to some back portion of the Southerly Court Palace itself.
Keats chirped expectantly at Lottie.
The Barghest pawed at the door’s threshold.
“It is enchanted,” it growled. “Only the king’s Guard can enter such a door.”
“I don’t suppose that ‘Vesper Bells’ would work at a time like this?” Lottie suggested with a nervous laugh.
The Barghest did not laugh. There were no vines here to obey Lottie’s command. She looked around the deserted alley for some other sign of entrance, but there was the door and the door alone.
“Well, this is stupid,” Lottie observed. She gave Keats a cross look. “What good is a door if we can’t go through it?”
And simply because there was nothing else to do, Lottie gave a great yank at the door handle. For one fantastic moment, Lottie really thought that there must have been some enchantment-breaking magic in her touch and she had been the one to open the door. But then the door was flung open farther, much farther than Lottie’s yank warranted, and sent her staggering into the wall. She just managed to swallow a cry of pain as a red-cloaked guard came sauntering out and leaned back against the door hinges. He took out a thin pipe and lit it up. He paid no mind to Lottie or the Barghest crouched at her side. Keats was nowhere to be seen.
The Barghest raised its eyes to Lottie. They were both shielded for now in the crook behind the open door, but Lottie knew the guard’s smoke break would not last forever. She crouched and slipped her mouth into the floppy fold of the Barghest’s ear.
“Distract him,” she whispered.
The Barghest gave a low rumble that sounded surprisingly cheerful. Lottie sucked in one thick, steadying breath. She readied her feet for a swift run. Then she nodded to the Barghest, who grinned and leapt around the door with an inhuman, shrieking howl. The startled shout of the Southerly guard rose to a terrified cry.
As Lottie edged quickly around the door, she glimpsed spattered crimson and a flurry of dark fur. She did not think on these things. She ran past the screaming guard and into a dark hallway. The door slammed behind her, shutting out both the Barghest and the noise. Lottie ran on, her sneakers sliding on slick, silver tiles. In fact, the entire hallway—floor, walls, and ceiling—was made of pure silver. Lottie’s breath hitched when she turned the corner and found herself face-to-face with another sprite—which turned out to be nothing more than her distorted reflection. There was no one else in the hallway, or at the next bend, or the next.
“Come on,” Lottie whispered, keeping on the alert for some sign of where she ought to turn, but more than anything for a sign of white wings. “Where did you go, Keats? Where do I go?”
There was no reply, not so much as a twitter. So Lottie ran on. It was a terrible feeling, to run in those halls alone and with no sense of direction. The space was narrow and the ceilings short, and the twists were more ridiculous than the twists of the city alleyways. Lottie decided that Southerlies must have an affinity for sharp turns.
Lottie ran around another blade-sharp corner, and her breath caught again at the flash of something in the silver. Just your reflection, you loon, she reminded herself, and then she proceeded to collide into what was not just her reflection, but really another sprite. Not just any other sprite, but—
“Fife!”
“Lottie?” Fife’s hair was standing straight on end. He tugged a fallen Lottie back to her feet, and he spoke in a loud whisper. “Lottie! What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you all. Oliver’s genga led me here, and then the Barghest helped me to—”
“What? Whoa, whoa, what? A Barghest is with you?”
Lottie nodded fervently. “But that’s not important right now. What are you doing here? What is this place?”
“The Southerly dungeons,” said Fife. “Or the start of them, anyway. It’s a maze down here.”
“But how come you’re free?”
Fife smirked. “I sweet-talked my guard. It’s incredible how quickly you can flavor a hardened old crust into a sympathetic stew of goo.”
“You used your keen?”
“Astutely deducted,” said Fife, shifting his feet in an antsy, half-hovering bounce.
“And the others?”
“I’ve been trying to find some sign of where they’ve been locked up, but I might as well be looking for a grain of Piskie Dust in a snowstorm. Surprisingly few guards to worry about, though. That’s one perk of the dungeons: they’re so well made that they keep ’em severely underguarded.”
“We can look together,” said Lottie. “Where to?”
Fife pointed to a fork in
the hallway down which neither of them had run. “That way.”
Fife took Lottie’s hand, and as his fingers curled into the gaps of hers, Lottie’s feet left the ground.
“Unless you’d rather run?” Fife said, looking over at her uncertainly.
“No.” Lottie flapped her free arm, balancing herself into an upright hover. “This is faster.”
“You bet it is,” said Fife. “Just hang on.”
They swished down the jagged halls, surrounded at every turn by a company of reflected Fifes and Lotties.
“Have you seen Mr. Wilfer?” Lottie asked.
Fife shook his head. “We didn’t even get past the main gate. The Guard was waiting for us. They took us to make our plea before the king, just like Mr. Ingle said they would. Then King Starkling laughed at us all like a regular bully and threw us down here.”
“Even when you offered him the Otherwise Incurable?”
Fife hesitated. Lottie saw his tongue peeking out from the side of his mouth.
“Don’t use your keen on me! Just tell me.”
“Fine,” said Fife. “Yes, we gave the medicine up. But Lottie, just listen—”
Lottie shook her head. She knew what Fife was doing: he was trying to change her mood, change her mind. So she would change the subject.
“Is Mr. Wilfer safe?”
“As far as we know,” Fife said, still looking uneasy as they swooped down another hallway. “The king’s keeping him somewhere down here. He claims that he’s got Mr. Wilfer working on a new version of the Otherwise Incurable, but everyone knows that’s a sham. He’s through with Mr. Wilfer. He’s going to sentence him tomorrow.”
“I know,” said Lottie. “He said so at the trial today.”
Fife shuddered.
“The king said that all of you were going on trial—Mr. Wilfer and the ‘fugitives,’ too.”
The Water and the Wild Page 23