I closed my eyes briefly, breath caught in my throat. Again. How amused Theodora had been when she’d named the children. When she’d caught me a second time with the same trick.
“Do you take this for a joke, Edenfield?” the king demanded angrily. “A demon disguised as a woman! Children as weapons! Literary references! We have been lenient with you, in gratitude to your good intentions, but this is too far!”
I shook my head, trying to explain, not understanding how I had offended him so badly. “She likes to play tricks, Your Majesty. She likes . . . jokes. I’ve come across her before.”
“We’re sure you have,” the king said, and laughed abruptly. “Good thing we have a sense of humor, or we’d have you shot on the spot for lying to us. As it is, we would see these children for ourselves.”
“Sire—” Torben began.
“Fear not,” said King Emil. “We are confident in your ability to protect us from children. But just to be safe”—he nodded snidely to me, then turned to the kingsman who’d spoken up—“tell me, Souza, are these Christmas children meant to be dangerous?”
“No, sire,” said the kingsman. “I don’t think so. Or only in the metaphorical sense—you know, how poverty and ignorance are dangerous, both for the oppressed and for the oppressors; and how they’re caused by immorality and lack of Christian love.”
“But these aren’t actually the ones from the book,” I said. “She just named them after the characters to trick us. She—”
I might as well have been invisible and mute. The king was talking again, making plans and giving orders, and the knights responded and the other prefects turned pointedly away from me. Only Avior bothered to glance in my direction, briefly, his lips flat and his eyes empty.
Chapter 35:
Cannibalism
We all went. That was part of the king’s showmanship: it wasn’t enough for him to stop the prefects; he had to grind them into the dirt. He had to show them and the country and our neighbors that not only was any attempt to move against the king a failure, but it had never had any chance of succeeding.
I understood the mentality. I did. Under other circumstances, I’d have endorsed it wholeheartedly. Putting down a rebellion is only a temporary victory, and possibly the first step in defeat, unless you put it down in such a way as will prevent further attempts.
A clump of kingsmen surrounded the king, scouting ahead, interposing their bodies, and keeping wary eyes on the prefects. Torben hung close to Avior, his restless, leaning energy compressed and focused. Not that Avior was likely to do anything rash while he was getting his way.
I hoped his knee hurt him.
Sweat glistened on Hemmel’s forehead, and he glanced repeatedly at Lindo, who ignored him. Tey jittered with nerves, Batata trudged along glumly, and Canopus seemed fiercely angry about something. Such as me.
“Whose spy are you really?” Silvertip whispered to me, and a kingsman prodded him away to join the other prefects.
Although no explicit orders on the subject had been given by the king, the kingsmen had lost interest in me. Maybe Torben had told them to let me go—I’d been enough of a thorn in his foot that he must want me gone. I don’t know for sure. I do know that as we walked, I fell back, and they let me. I could have ambled away right then, taken the Silvertip van I’d come in, and driven home. No one would have stopped me. Heck, no one would have even noticed.
I trailed after the others with a creeping, horrible curiosity.
Gunfire had gouged holes, gashes, and slits in the wallpaper, splintered doors and frames, dug crevasses in carpets. The sitting room in which I’d first eavesdropped on the prefects—in which Sr. Nordfeld had been waiting with the children—was empty of everything but destruction: its chairs upturned, the king’s portrait lying broken before the barren fireplace.
Further back in the manor were signs of explosives, and thick yellow insulation slithered from broken walls and scorched ceiling. A crossbeam lay lengthwise along the hallway, and two more leaned at precarious angles, their ends ragged, their sides splintered. Slivers of shattered light bulbs littered the carpet, dimly twinkling in indirect sunlight and the flashlights of kingsmen.
In short, everywhere the king went, he found every indication of battle except the ultimate one: humanity. The place was completely and utterly deserted. There weren’t even bloodstains. That was only the ground floor, though. The second floor and attic remained untouched, except for disturbed dust where knights had hidden before being drawn out. But not a single one of them was left.
“What is going on here?” asked King Emil. “Where have they gone? Is there a secret room?”
“Not one that could hold three hundred people,” Torben volunteered grimly. “Or one any knight would have known about.”
“There’s a basement,” said Avior.
If you ask me, when the bad guy offers up suggestions, the last thing you should do is follow them. Evacuating the building is a much better plan, preferably followed by a spot of arson. Torben was of a similar mind, and aired his opinion immediately.
“Obviously, he means it as a trap,” King Emil said complacently, “which is why he’ll be going first.”
“I highly advise against entering the basement at all, Your Majesty,” Torben repeated emphatically. “At least not until we’ve had a chance to clear it. There could be a toxic gas down there. That would explain how so many knights went missing without making a sound. Let’s bring in experts with the proper equipment—or, better yet, send in an aerial bomb squad.”
“If there is gas, and it’s not lethal, then bombing the building would kill my knights,” the king observed.
“Then let me get a gas mask and scout—”
“I’m not going to abandon my knights,” King Emil interrupted. He seemed to grow as he spoke, and I saw a hint of the naval commander he must once have been. “Stop babying me, Nass. I’m not a coward, and I won’t be treated as one. I’m going down there, and you can accompany me or you can be shot.”
No fallen autumn leaf was ever as unreadable as Torben made himself then, as he bowed and said, “My life is at your disposal, Your Majesty.” He did not add, As I am, no doubt, shortly going to prove, and the king did not add, As it should be, but I heard both anyway.
“There isn’t any gas down there,” said Avior, practically skipping with anticipation, “and I’d be happy to prove it. By your leave?” He opened the basement door. The light over the stairs had been broken, but a few of the ones below had survived, and their faint luminescence gave him enough visibility to proceed down. Like sand through loose fingers, the others slipped after him. The only one who paid me any attention was Torben, who pressed the multi-tool knife into my hand as he passed. Forgiveness? It seemed useless, considering what was happening.
Three hundred: that was the number Torben had given for the knights who had disappeared into this basement. I had absolutely no doubt they were either dead, or in such a state of forgetfulness that death would be an improvement. Three hundred. That was the cost of my moment of selfishness. A split-second decision at the door of a freezer.
How superior I had been toward Luc, who prized his softer feelings above that which must be done. What a hypocrite I had been. It was no good pretending I hadn’t known what would happen, and this was my reward. My reward, their reward. Sr. Nordfeld’s reward. All dead.
I did not want to go into that basement. I much preferred Torben’s suggestion of bombing the place, only I’d have locked the doors first, to make sure no one could escape.
What did it matter if there were still living men and women in that basement? They wouldn’t be alive long. The basement had already swallowed three hundred knights, the Gulbransens, and Jon Nordfeld. A few more weren’t going to give it indigestion. And if I followed them down, it’d only swallow me as well, without a hiccup. Then there’d be no one left to tell the tale. No one left to warn Gjerde before the manor turned inside out and disgorged the children. Would it ever st
op?
Maybe. Maybe if I went down there, there would be no reason for Ignorance to continue outward. The deal had only been that no one know the prefects were responsible for the king’s death. And if I was the last—
But I wasn’t the last. There were Olaf, Roald, Francis, and anyone they’d told in the capital who hadn’t come with the king. And not just them: for everyone who witnessed the children destroying those who already knew would know and would have to be destroyed themselves, and on and on and—
I might not be able to save those who had gone before, but there were those whom I could save, if I stopped the children now, made sure they were gone for good. I didn’t know how, but if there was a possibility, then I had a duty toward them.
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate basements? Because I hate basements. And I was afraid.
“Prefect?”
I jumped and whipped round. There, his fair hair frizzing and tangled, mud on his boots and streaked along his neck, was Edenfield’s youngest knight. “Olaf!” I cried. “But I thought you went to the capital!”
Olaf shook his head. “Roald and Francis went. I hid in the woods, in case they didn’t make it; I have a backup of the recording. I heard when the king arrived, but there was gunfire, and I wasn’t sure . . .”
My heart thudded and my breath roared. I parted dry lips. Here it was, the opportunity I’d been looking for. The one that stole my final excuse.
I drew on my lying face, serious and unafraid. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I told my knight. “I have a job for you, Olaf. It will be difficult, but I order you to carry it out for your prefect, your king, and your nation.”
“I—” Olaf blinked. I don’t know what he saw in my face then, but he didn’t argue. He said, “Yes, prefect.”
“In this basement,” I said, “is a weapon of massive power. It has destroyed every single knight who has gone up against it—three hundred men and women. Look around you, Olaf, and see its destruction. It cannot be stopped by ordinary means, and if it is permitted to escape, it will spread like a virus until there is nothing left of Argo Navis.
“I’m going down after it. I might be able to defeat it—I understand about it more than they did, you see. And I . . . have an idea. But the weapon works quickly, and I might fail. If I’m not out in fifteen minutes, it’s because I—and everyone else down there—am dead.”
“It would be an honor to accompany you,” Olaf said, although he trembled.
“You’d only get in the way,” I said harshly. “I have a far more important task for you. The moment I go through that door, I need you to find an accelerant—gasoline, maybe, or gunpowder. Dump it outside the basement door. If I’m not knocking and calling for you within fifteen minutes exactly, you must lock the door and burn this manor down.”
Olaf swayed slightly, dead white, but there was a hardness and steadiness in his shoulders, and he lifted his chin. “Yes, prefect,” he said firmly, and I knew I could trust him in this. He checked his watch. “It’s two-seventeen now.”
“Then start the fire at two thirty-two,” I said. “The biggest blaze you can. Don’t hold back and don’t be late. Go, go! Get ready!”
Olaf bowed and dashed off without another word. As soon as he turned the corner, I stepped through into the damp and the dark of the first stair, and I closed the door behind me.
The king’s party had a brief head start, but it hadn’t gotten as far ahead of me as I had expected. The kingsmen were taking their time, being cautious—and it had only been two or three minutes, though it felt like much longer. Since absolutely the last thing I wanted to do was traverse the twilit basement alone, I hustled to catch up.
My heels splashed the fetid water, and my footsteps echoed dully, lost in the percussion of tapping feet. How the kingsmen expected to hear a thing through the racket they made was anyone’s guess.
I caught flashes of kingsmen past massive, mold-stained pillars as I ran, and thought they must have fanned out to search the area. Too many of the soft lights had died, and the remaining ones didn’t stretch far. It must’ve been fear and claustrophobia talking, but it seemed to me that the basement had grown in my absence and twisted upon itself.
I caught up with the king’s group just as it arrived in the far corner: the highest point of the basement, the driest spot.
Driest, but not dry. Damp had seeped into the chalk summoning circle, darkening it and bleeding white roots across the concrete; but the circle remained intact.
And so did Sr. Nordfeld.
My breath caught when I spotted him. He slumped beyond the circle, against the corner. His chest rose and fell, and although his face was slack, it did not bear the total vacancy of Ignorance. Asleep, then. But how asleep, and why?
I edged around the group toward him. Torben beat me there and crouched to check his pulse and eyes. “Alive,” he announced to the king. “This was Prefect Avior’s demonology expert.”
“Turned against him, I suppose,” the king murmured, absorbed in contemplation of the circle. “This is where you summoned your demon?” he asked Avior, his voice amused and unafraid. “What do you think, Souza?”
The kingsman shrugged. “Not my area of expertise, sire. Looks like the usual mumbo-jumbo.”
“Not a magical portal through which my knights were transported to demonland?”
“I shouldn’t think so, sire.”
The king’s laugh careened off concrete pillars. “Smoke and mirrors, hocus pocus. I’m disappointed in you, my prefects. Here I was promised a really good treason plot, and all I get are children’s games! I hope,” he said cunningly, “this isn’t meant as a birthday surprise. You’re a month off!”
“I can see you don’t take this seriously,” Avior said. He wasn’t offended. I don’t think other people’s opinions meant much to him. “You don’t believe I succeeded in summoning a demon.”
The humor dropped off the king’s face. “I know what real magic looks like,” he said, “and this isn’t it. But I always take it seriously when people try to murder me. I came to Edenfield for one reason and one reason only: for proof, absolute proof that I could see with my own eyes, of your treason. Once I have it, you will be transported back to the capital and executed. You won’t get a chance to grandstand at a public trial, so you can take that scheming look off your face, Prefect Lindo. I see right through you. I see through all of you. Go on, my faithless prefects: try to kill me. This is your only chance. Try it, Avior, if you’re man enough.”
“If I don’t,” Avior said, smiling, “will you let bygones be bygones and forget this whole sorry event?”
“Lucio!” Lindo hissed.
“No,” said the king, “but I will have you shot right here and now and save you the shame of being slapped in handcuffs, dragged back to the capital, and publicly executed.”
“How very generous,” Avior said, the edges of his lips quirking. He folded his hands behind his back and examined the ceiling. “Out of curiosity,” he said, “what happened to all your people?”
The king’s eyes narrowed, and he growled, “We’ll find them soon enough. Locked up in a secret room or wherever you’ve stored them.”
“Oh, not the royal knights,” Avior said dismissively. “I meant your other people, the ones we came down with. Your kingsmen who were searching the basement. I can’t hear them. Can you?”
We held our breaths, listening. We heard:
The gentle gurgle and drip of water.
The faint buzz of fluorescent lights.
No footsteps or voices.
“This is absurd,” the king spat. “Men! Kingsmen, to me!”
Sr. Nordfeld’s unconscious breathing.
The weight of earth pressing upon us.
The manor above.
Drip, drip.
I blinked and refocused. The unnatural lighting had messed with my perception, and I’d had the strangest impression that the basement was breathing.
“All right, Avior,” the king said, �
��you’ve had your fun. Where are they?”
Avior shrugged.
“What have you done with them?” the king insisted.
“I? Nothing,” Avior said. “But perhaps—yes. Children!” he called. “Children, come here, please. I’d like to introduce you to someone.”
We held our breaths again, and the king looked about to object. But then, as one, we lifted our heads at the sound of small feet pattering on concrete, splashing through puddles. The children came hand in hand. Neither seemed injured in the least, and the boy bore no signs of violence. By contrast, the girl’s sackcloth had been ripped long past the point of indecency: no more than a few shreds clung to her neck, waist, and wrists. The men shifted, embarrassed. The remaining kingsmen clearly wanted to act, but their training overrode every delicate instinct.
“So you do have children here,” the king said, grimacing. “These are . . . your children?” He sounded doubtful. With their pale skin, fair hair, and narrow features, Want and Ignorance no more resembled Avior than they resembled—well, me.
“They’re mine,” Avior affirmed. “Children, this is King Emil II. The one I told you about.”
Want didn’t need to be told twice. She lunged at the king, teeth bared, fingers clawing. A kingsman caught her around the middle and lifted her away. She tore into his chest with small, yellowing teeth: biting and slurping and swallowing with impossible speed, hardly chewing . . . and the kingsman was gone, without even a bloodstain to mark his passing.
Most of the prefects fell back, horrified. The king himself froze, lips parted, lost to shock.
His men were better trained. They whipped out their guns and opened fire. The remaining rags clinging to Want were shot away in seconds, but every bullet mysteriously missed her skin, driving chunks out of concrete pillars, floor, and ceiling.
Bargaining Power Page 40