They skimmed another turn, and Lottie saw in their reflection that Fife was giving her a good sidelong stare. At last he said, “You came back for us.”
“Astutely deducted.”
“Ollie said you would.” Fife hesitated. Then, “Lottie, about what happened back in the wood: you need to know the rest, about what Mr. Wilfer told us beforehand.”
“Why?” said Lottie. “What did Mr. Wilfer tell you?”
Before Fife could answer, something cold slapped against Lottie’s neck.
It was the flat of a sword, and it was in the hand of a red-cloaked sprite whose assessing eyes were all too familiar.
“Please continue,” said Grissom. “What did Mr. Wilfer say?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Missing Ingredient
FIFE DROPPED Lottie’s hand, and immediately the weightlessness left her body. She fell to the floor and out of reach of Grissom’s sword.
“Run!” yelled Fife, but Lottie could see from where she lay that it was no use. There were two red guards closing in from the other end of the hall, their maces raised. Grissom had them surrounded.
“Worthy effort,” Grissom said with an unkind smile, “but surely it crossed your mind that the king’s Guard includes sprites with the most acute hearing.”
“Not the one at your back door,” Lottie said, struggling to her feet.
Grissom’s smile faltered.
“So . . . ,” said Fife, slowly licking his lips, “aren’t you tired of hunting down a handful of obnoxious children? Much better to let us go, don’t you think?”
Lottie eyed Fife. He was trying to use his keen on Grissom, all stops out. Lottie wondered if it could possibly work.
Grissom’s smile returned. “I can smell the manipulation on your skin. You can stop trying.”
No. No, it could not possibly work.
Grissom continued, “You, halfling boy, will be taken back to your cell and—now that you’ve so flagrantly displayed your keen—placed there with a guard who won’t be susceptible to your trickery.”
Grissom motioned to the two red guards behind them, who clamped their hands on Fife’s arms.
“Hey!” Fife cried. “Easy on the limbs, you oafs.” He smiled weakly at Lottie as the guards dragged him off. “Chin up, Lottie Fiske. It might not all end in tears and fifthing!”
“That boy is more of a fool than his mother ever was,” said Grissom, who had meantime caught Lottie by the wrist. “And so are you, Lottie Fiske.”
Lottie glared unflinchingly at Grissom. “My mother wasn’t a fool. She had a marvelous heart. Which is more than you can say for yourself.”
“I,” said Grissom, digging his nails into Lottie’s veins, “am soon to be the king’s most trusted right-hand sprite.”
“Because that worked out so well for the others?”
Fife’s flippancy must have worn off on Lottie, because the taunt had rolled like butter off of her tongue in spite of the knot in her stomach. The ugly look that appeared on Grissom’s face in response gave Lottie a proud thrill.
“You,” Grissom said, “have an appointment with the king.”
He jerked Lottie down a new hallway. At the end of this hall, unlike in all the others, was a spiraling staircase. Lottie and Fife had been only seconds away from an exit when they were caught. She felt like crying.
Lottie stumbled up the stairs under Grissom’s hard grip until they reached a door that opened into a new hallway. This place was nothing like the silver dungeons. Its ceilings were higher even than those of Iris Gate, and it was bordered on both sides by nothing but long, glossy black panels. The only light came from the ground, where two rows of stumpy black candles edged a velvet runner. Their flames flickered wildly as Grissom pulled Lottie to the very end of the hall. There, he swept aside a golden tapestry and knocked on the door hidden behind it.
“Enter,” said a voice beyond the door.
Grissom pushed Lottie inside.
“I have her, Your Majesty,” Grissom said.
They were standing before the same silver throne that Lottie had seen on the steps of the palace, and the Southerly King sat there just as he had that afternoon. He smiled so benevolently at Lottie that she nearly forgot why her heart had been thum-thrumping so unbearably just moments before. Then she remembered the chants of “Fifthing!” from the crowd. She remembered the crushed genga in the king’s bare, sunspotted hand.
“Here she is!” the king said merrily. “The Heir of Fiske, come to pay a long overdue visit.”
He smiled tenderly at Lottie, as though she were a lost kitten. “Grissom, fetch the girl a chair.”
Grissom scraped a chair behind Lottie, but she did not move.
He is bad, Lottie reminded herself. He has done wicked things.
It was difficult, she found, to remember these warnings when she looked at the king’s gentle face.
“Sit,” said the king.
Lottie wiped at her eyes and took a seat. She could hear Grissom’s ragged breaths behind her, and even though it was uncomfortable knowing a bad man was standing just behind her, she decided it would’ve been less comfortable still to be left alone with the Southerly King.
“My throne room must seem terribly overpowering to a slip of a halfling like you,” the king said. He set aside a crystal goblet of wine he had been holding.
Lottie glanced around. Tall candles burned on tall candlesticks. There was a shelf lining one end of the room, and on it sat a row of various glass jars. The one nearest to Lottie was filled with a pale blue powder. Royal Piskie Dust, read its label.
“It’s very . . . large,” Lottie said.
King Starkling noticed Lottie staring at the jar of Royal Piskie Dust. He gave a pleased smile.
“That,” he said, motioning toward the shelf of jars, “is my collection of the most prized concoctions in all of Albion Isle. Piskie Dust is just one of those coveted items. A mere handful, and swoop!—you’re transported to wherever your heart desires. Excellent substance, Piskie Dust. Go on, ask me for some.”
Lottie understood. He wanted her to give him a command.
“You think that I’m a threat,” said Lottie. “I’m a Fiske, and some people think that Fiskes will rule the Isle again. You’re scared that I’m after your job. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it?”
The king folded his hands on his knees. They were more gruesome on closer inspection than they had looked from the palace steps—blackened and browned and unthinkably wrinkled.
“Oh, dear heart,” he said. “It’s not nearly so simple as that. Though yes, of course, it was rather inconvenient when I found out that the Plague I brought to the Isle hadn’t killed all the Fiskes, as I had intended. Life does keep you on your toes.”
Lottie went cold. “That’s not possible,” she said. “You couldn’t have made the Plague. It’s a sickness. Sicknesses just happen.”
“Of course I didn’t make the Plague,” the king said indulgently. “No, that disease is very old. Ancient. I said brought because I brought the Plague up from my world.”
Lottie’s throat turned papery. With difficulty, she asked, “You came here from Earth?”
The king tsk-tsked. “No, not from Earth. The other place.”
“You’re not a sprite,” Lottie whispered. “That’s what’s wrong with you. You’re not from here at all.”
The king slid back the silken sleeves of his robe to reveal arms as foul and wrinkled as his hands. These were not just old arms. They were not the arms of a human or a sprite. They were scaled like a fish’s, and bones poked out of them at all the wrong junctures.
“See what’s become of me?” the king sighed. “Each day my magic weakens, and I revert to my natural form. The moment I realized the toll that living in Limn was taking on my health, I of course put the court’s best healer to work. But how could I have suspected that this healer would also be harboring the final ingredient to my cure?”
He approached Lottie’s chair with a smooth g
ait, knelt at her side, and took her hand. His fingers felt like damp, shriveled turnip greens. Lottie could not stop a shudder from rattling down her spine. “Moritasgus didn’t tell you about the final ingredient, did he? Your friends may have been quick enough to snatch their father’s medicine from me, but what about his notebook? How very silly of him to have filed the final ingredient away in his papers and not told you.”
Lottie’s heart fell. Grissom had gotten his hands on Mr. Wilfer’s scrapbook for the Otherwise Incurable.
“Would you like to know what that ingredient is?” the king asked. “A sliver of skin from a living human halfling. Very convenient, for look what’s sitting before us: the only known human halfling to exist! I’m sure you’ll rest easier knowing that your otherwise good-for-nothing parentage is good for something.”
The king produced something from the folds of his robe. It was a square vial filled with bloodred liquid. He unstoppered the vial. He looked as serene as ever.
“No,” whispered Lottie. “No, that can’t be right.”
“The whole business is regrettable, isn’t it?” the king said sympathetically. “But have no fear, last of the Fiskes. It will all be over soon.
“Now,” the king said, nodding toward Grissom.
Lottie did not have time to think before Grissom’s meaty hand had braced her back against her chair. Something sharp and unyielding scraped across her right arm. Lottie did not cry or scream, but only looked in bewilderment at the thin scalpel that Grissom held aloft. On its tip rested a perfectly rectangular, tissue-thin slice of Lottie’s freckled skin. The graze had not been deep enough to even draw blood.
Grissom released Lottie from his grip. He walked the scalpel over to the king, who stood waiting with the open vial of Otherwise Incurable. Grissom took the vial, tilting its lip and maneuvering his scalpel with practiced precision. The skin folded and fit into the vial’s mouth. Then, with a single push from the scalpel’s tip, it dropped into the red liquid below. The skin shriveled instantly and disappeared. There was an awful silence.
Slowly, the Otherwise Incurable began to swirl and froth. Then, just as slowly, the potion stilled, and its anxious red gave way to a deep, serene blue. The king’s face shone with a radiant smile.
“So,” he said. “You were right, Grissom.”
Lottie looked on in confusion. Why wouldn’t Mr. Wilfer have asked her for a little skin days ago, when she’d first arrived? She could have given it to him. She could have saved Eliot.
The king turned to Lottie. He raised the vial in her direction. “To what shall I drink?” he asked. “Perhaps to the memory of Fiskes past, hm?
“To Fiskes!” the king cried, and he raised the vial to his lips.
Lottie would never know what force it had been that then moved in her, launching her from her chair. She only knew that the king held in his hand the only, the last chance of curing Eliot. Lottie leapt across the room at a startling speed.
“Get your hands off it!” she shouted, and she made a grab for the Otherwise Incurable.
This was not one of those moments when the whole world goes still and everything seems to happen in painful slow motion. In fact, for a full confused moment, Lottie did not even realize that she had knocked the vial from the king’s hand or that it had fallen and shattered on the floor, or that its contents had fizzed away. She did not realize what had occurred until she felt a blow across her face.
“You wretch!” shrieked the Southerly King.
His face had become a hideous thing. It had transformed as though it were a boiling stew of thick tar. Beneath bubbling skin, Lottie saw the raw jaw and reddened teeth of a creature entirely unlike the beautiful visage of the young sprite king. This was the creature that the Southerly King was slowly turning back into.
Strong fingers clamped onto Lottie. A half dozen red-cloaked guards had burst into the room, and two of them now dragged her out by her hands and hair.
“Take her to the dungeons!” the king screamed. “She’ll be executed with the lot of them! She’ll be executed first and worst!”
Lottie only stared in quiet horror at the broken shards of Otherwise Incurable. She had destroyed Mr. Wilfer’s life’s work. Her only hope for Eliot lay shattered on the throne room floor, and she had been the one to shatter it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Royal Piskie Dust
THE SOUTHERLY GUARD dragged Lottie down the palace hall. She did not kick or scream; she did not fight. She had lost Eliot’s cure. She had lost everything. The shock had left her limbs numb and useless, and the guards had to drag her to her feet and march her down the spiraling staircase, down once more into the silver dungeons.
As they walked the dungeon halls, one of Lottie’s guards flinched and dropped his mace. He appeared to be in some sort of pain.
“It’s the king’s blasted shouting,” he explained to the other guard as he retrieved his fallen weapon. “Loud enough to raise the dead.”
The second guard shook his head. “The king never loses his temper.”
The first guard fixed Lottie with an appraising stare. His complexion was ruddy, and three metal rings pierced his nose.
“What did you do?” he asked.
Lottie just stared back at her guards with lifeless eyes.
“Think the rumors are true, Dorian?” said the other guard. “Think she’s a Fiske?”
“’Course not. The Fiskes are all dead.”
They pushed Lottie deeper into the dungeons’ winding halls, but as they did so, Lottie felt a finger at her right wrist. The guard named Dorian was pulling up the sleeve of her coat. He was looking at the topside of her arm—where the mark of her court allegiance ought to have been and where instead was only bare skin.
Lottie glanced up. Dorian had been staring at her, but he abruptly averted his eyes. He gave Lottie a strong jab in the shoulder blade with his mace.
“Walk faster,” he ordered.
They approached two other red-cloaked guards who appeared to be doing nothing more than loitering in the hallway. But as Lottie’s guards ground her to a halt, she saw that a door was cut into the wall here. Its edges were no thicker than the ridge of a dime, and they formed a thinly sliced square of silver wall. It was no wonder that she and Fife had not seen any cells while floating through these halls; the doors to the cells were as good as invisible.
The sprites guarding the cell nodded to Lottie’s guards and then parted to grant them access to the door.
“Has the wisp halfling given you any more trouble?” Dorian asked them.
“None, Guard Ingle,” said one of the guards. “We’ve been listening and tasting with due attentiveness.”
“Very good,” said Dorian. “You’re both relieved of your posts. Tavish and I have been sent to replace you.”
Tavish looked up in surprise. “Have we? I hadn’t heard—”
“Because it was an order given directly to me,” Dorian interrupted with a commanding glare.
Tavish, the decidedly younger and meeker of Lottie’s guards, went quiet. The other guards looked only too happy to be off duty.
“The king sounds none too pleased up there,” one of them remarked.
“I’d suggest taking the side hall up to Guard quarters,” said Dorian. “In fact, I’d avoid the king’s wing of the palace this entire evening if you can help it.”
Dorian clapped the guards on their backs in a gesture of familiar camaraderie. They grinned and sent back mock salutes as they left. Then Dorian turned to Tavish.
“Stand watch,” he said, “while I confine the prisoner.”
Dorian clenched his fingers into Lottie’s back. “You’ll be held here,” he said, sweeping his hand over the dungeon cell door in a strange but fluid pattern, “until your trial tomorrow.”
Then he leaned in close to Lottie and whispered into the cover of her hair, “I’ll be listening.”
The door gave way, and Dorian threw Lottie inside. The first thing she saw was a flash of chestnut br
own hair. Then arms wrapped around her neck. The door heaved shut behind her, and Lottie heard Adelaide’s voice in her ear.
“Thank Titania. We thought you were dead!”
From over Adelaide’s shoulder, Lottie saw that this “we” included Oliver, Fife, and Mr. Wilfer himself. Shame flooded through her.
“I ruined it!” Lottie cried, yanking herself out of Adelaide’s embrace. “Don’t hug me. I’ve broken the vial, and I’ve lost the medicine. The Otherwise Incurable is gone.” She turned to Mr. Wilfer. “It’s all my fault!”
“We know,” Adelaide said softly. “I heard all of it.”
“Lottie, do calm yourself,” said Mr. Wilfer, taking Lottie by the shoulders. “You think I care about that medicine more than your well-being?”
“It was your life’s work,” wailed Lottie. “It could have saved you from execution!”
“But it didn’t,” Mr. Wilfer said calmly. “Did it? Believe me, Lottie, Starkling has been waiting to kill me for some time now. The only thing preventing him was the simple fact that I was the finest healer of my age. None of my colleagues could boast a recipe for Otherwise Incurable. Not, that is, until Grissom grew greedy. Then, as you see, I became expendable.”
“You became expendable because of me,” Lottie insisted. “You were kidnapped for rescuing me.”
“Lottie,” said Mr. Wilfer. “I want you to listen to me closely. I’ve chosen this path. The day that King Starkling told me he’d heard rumors of the existence of a living Fiske, that he meant to find and kill the child of Eloise and Bertram Fiske, a girl to whom I’d sent birthday gifts all her life, I knew the time had come for me to do something that I hadn’t had the courage to do before: rebel.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Fife, clapping loudly.
Oliver was staring at Lottie with warm amber eyes. “You,” he said, “have done a braver thing than all the Worthies did.”
Adelaide sighed. “What Oliver means—”
“It’s okay,” Lottie said, smiling sadly at Oliver. “I think I know what he means.”
The Water and the Wild Page 24