And then, wonderfully, from a few alleys away—I heard her voice, yelling at someone. No one else could say ord with that level of disgust. I ran over, almost forgetting for a second not to run directly out onto castle grounds.
She was in a dark little corner of a dark little alley. Trixie. Worn and pale and ragged and … bandaged. Her arms were wrapped up, hand to shoulder, and most of her legs, until she looked like an escaped mummy. She was hissing, “You will listen to me if you want to live,” as she struggled with—
“Peter!” It came out a lot louder than I intended. He looked rumpled and exhausted and annoyed, but he looked okay, other than the fact that Trixie had his arm twisted so far behind his back that he was on tiptoes. They looked up at my shout, and for a second they both had the exact same surprised expression. And then Peter tried to shove Trixie and get away, yelling “Abby, get out of here!” but she held on, almost absentmindedly. Because she was looking at me now. Glaring at me.
“You?” Trixie’s cry was as hot and harsh as brimstone. “Of course. Of course you’re alive.”
“Are you okay?” I ran toward Peter, but he pushed me away one-armed and yelled for me to go away, go away as Trixie started cursing about me turning up more times than an enchanted ring. “Fred—Fran—they took Fran, and the goblin said something about … divvying them up.”
Trixie was still spitting like a basilisk. “I told those goblins—and when they didn’t come back with you, I hoped you were dead.”
“She sold them,” Peter said, and the anger in his voice almost covered the way it broke. “She gave some to the red caps and she sold the rest.”
“S-sold?” The shock made me stumble. “How? To who?”
Trixie gave a patronizingly irritated sigh. “I have had time to think about this. To plan. And, believe me, it’s not hard to find buyers, especially with your school cornering the market.” She unhooked a pouch from her belt and tossed it at me; it jingled expensively when it hit the pavement. “That will give me and Mike the means to go wherever we need to hide from your king, with enough left over for our next six adventures. Almost makes me consider ord dealing professionally.”
I stared at the pouch, wondering how much was in it. Then I decided I didn’t really care.
“Now, it is so nice seeing you again,” Trixie continued, yanking on Peter’s arm until he cried out, “but your friend and I have some business to take care of.”
“Stop right there.” I tried to sound like the heroes in action movies. They always say that stuff to let the bad guys know they mean business, and then the bad guys always have a moment of oh no when they realize they’re in trouble because the hero is not going to let them get away with it.
Trixie laughed.
“I mean it,” I said, pointing my finger at her. “Let him go.”
“No,” Trixie said, still laughing. Then her face went bitter as she took a step closer to me. “Tell me, little ord. How exactly are you going to stop me?”
“I’m, I’m not,” I said, telling myself don’t back up, don’t back up as she took another step. “I’ll help you.”
Trixie bore down on me, slow and steady, until we were face to, well, belly button. She cupped my chin with one mummified hand and nudged it up so she could smirk down at me. “Help me. How?”
“Abby, shut up,” Peter said.
I ignored him. “I’ll get Barbarian Mike out. That’s why you’re here, right?” I rushed on. “To break him out. You can’t go in yourself, there are shields and wards and the magic is too strong. That’s what you need one of us for. Let Peter and the others go, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you want and afterward, I’ll go with you. You guys needed an ord, right? I’ll go with you, free of charge.” I really hoped I didn’t sound as desperate as I thought I did. “Just let him go. That’s all. Just let him go.”
Trixie wasn’t laughing anymore. “How noble. But it didn’t work when he tried it”—she gave Peter’s arm a sharp jerk—“and I’m certainly not going to listen to the little brat who ruined everything,” she finished on a growl.
She started dragging Peter toward the plaza. I raced to block her, arms out. “No, no, no, you want me—me, not him, because I’ve seen him. Barbarian Mike.” That stopped her. She was still glaring at me, but her eyes were speculative. “I asked King Steve if I could see him—Mike. I know where his cell is. I know what staircase to use.” I jabbed a finger at Peter. “He probably doesn’t even know about the giant spider.”
Trixie arched an eyebrow. “You’re making that up.”
“I am not,” I insisted. “And, and, and—you’re right. I am the brat who ruined everything. The king likes me. And that’s why he came down so hard on Mike. If you had kidnapped anybody else, you wouldn’t be here now, and Mike wouldn’t be in there. The two of you, you would have gotten a stern talking to and been sent packing. But you didn’t.”
Trixie’s face grew harder and darker as I talked, and I could smell the magic gathering around her, thick and smoldering. “Do you know what they’re going to do to him?” Her free hand wrapped around my neck, and I had to force myself not to scream and kick and flail. “Do you know what I had to do to get those goblins on my side?”
Then she took a deep breath and smiled. “All right, then. If you’re so eager to repay your debt—”
“Let him go first,” I said, nodding toward Peter.
“No. Don’t think for one second that I trust you to go off like a good little ord and rescue Mike just because you said you would. You go break Mike out, and I’ll use the time to think up all the lovely things I can do to your friend if you don’t return. When Mike is standing here before me, safe and sound, then we can reconsider. Oh, and—” She nodded at the money pouch on the ground. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
I crouched down and carefully picked up the leather bag. Peter watched as I hooked it back on her belt. “Don’t do this,” he said, staring into me. “Please. Don’t go.”
“We’re not friends,” I told him, squeezing my eyes shut. I didn’t want to look at him. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
Trixie twisted a leisurely hand through my hair and pulled me away. She nodded to the castle.
“All right,” I said. “Come with me.”
CHAPTER
28
The dungeon entrance, like the main doors for the palace, was the sort of thing you couldn’t really pass by and not notice. It was a massive set of double doors—huge and heavy and carved with intimidating, eye-catching runes. The doors were bolted shut with an immense bar that, according to the guidebooks, had been forged out of ogre clubs.
I ran straight past it. Like the main entrance, those doors were just for show. I led Trixie (dragging Peter as he tried to dig his heels in) through the shadows to an alley right across from the little hidden door Alexa and I had used the day we’d come for tea. After we’d visited Barbarian Mike, King Steve had brought us up and out through the same door, so I figured I could backtrack my steps.
“Wait here,” I told her breathlessly. “I’ll be back.”
I raced across the wide-open plaza to the castle, hoping somebody would see me. This was the royal palace, after all, they had to have eyes out. The castle itself was probably watching, and if it was watching, it could tell somebody and I’d get some help. Right?
Alexa had needed a good fifteen minutes to open the door the last time we were here. I just had to hold my breath and charge through.
The hallway was the same—short and beige, with an ordinary door at the end and little (in)visible portals all along the walls, and the two guards—guards, oh, thank goodness, I knew there had to be somebody. I think I scared them a little, because I basically launched myself at them and started babbling. “Please, please, you have to help me, Trixie’s out there and she’s got Peter and she’s going to hurt him, she already hurt him—”
One of the guards, the older one with the gruff voice and the beard, pried me off, set me on my feet, and demanded that I calm down
. “What do you think you’re doing? How did you get in here?”
But the other guard, the younger one with the serious face and solemn blue eyes, crouched down in front of me. “Are you hurt?”
“What?” I gasped, and it took me a second. Oh. My nightgown. The red caps. Oh. “It’s a long story, and I don’t have time—”
He put a hand on my elbow because relief was making me a little shaky. “What’s your name?”
“Abby Hale. You have to help me, this is an emergency!”
“Tell me,” he said.
The older guard scoffed. “Don’t bother, Ned. Look, little girl, this is very funny, but it’s a little too early for practical jokes.”
“It’s not a joke!” I insisted.
“I don’t know how you got in here,” he continued, shaking his head, “but this is a dangerous place and you’re committing a crime by being here. We’re going to have to call the cops.”
“Yes, please, call the cops, call anyone, but she’s out there and someone has to stop her—”
“Tell me,” the second guard repeated.
I took a deep breath and tried explaining again. “I’m an ord. Trixie, this woman, she kidnapped a boy from my school, and she said she would hurt him if I didn’t come in here and try and get her friend. He’s in the dungeon because the two of them tried to kidnap me before except he got caught, and then she set red caps on the school. She said they could take us kids as payment!”
The younger guard looked up at his partner. “I think you’d better wake the king.”
“The king’s sleeping,” the older guard replied.
“That’s why I said wake him.”
“Over a kid?” The older guard crossed his arms, and I had to fight to keep from bouncing up and down on my feet. Why were they still talking?
The younger guard sighed and stood. “I’ll wake him. Wait here,” he told me, and disappeared.
The remaining guard stared me down a bit before asking, “You really an ord, then?” When I nodded, he pointed to the far end of the hallway and told me to go over there and keep still. He barely looked at me. He didn’t even care.
I wanted to wait for the other guard, to see what happened. To see if he brought help. But then I remembered how Peter screamed when Trixie twisted his arm, and I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I followed my nose to the right portal and sprinted through.
Either the staircase was asleep or it remembered me, because I was able to corkscrew straight down without any shifts or trick steps. It was dim and I was going too fast—taking steps two and three at a time when I could manage it—I slipped a couple times and wrenched my foot, bad enough that I had to run one hand along the wall for support as I hopped down the steps. Fortunately, the wall had cracks and carvings that I could cling to. Unfortunately I ended up grabbing the wrong carving and set off a crisscrossing spiderweb of flames throughout the rest of the stairway. I had a moment of “I’m going to be burned alive” panic, but when I wasn’t, it was followed by an “oh thank goodness it’s just magical fire” relief. Even so, the sudden, fiery light seared my eyes; I had to squeeze them shut and find the way with my hands until my eyes adjusted.
Another twist in the staircase, and I felt a hint of coolness beyond the fire. I threw myself at it blindly and tumbled out onto the hard, level floor of the dungeon.
Behind me the staircase was still flaming and it was bright enough that I could see where I was going. Maybe I could do this. I mean, I’d been here once before—with King Steve. The icy, slicing thing overhead—I remembered to duck … except this time it didn’t come. And then the manticore pit. That was still there. In the light, I could see the illusion of floor covering it, and the dark, gaping space beneath. I plastered myself to the wall as I inched along the narrow ledge. A soft, almost soothing, hooting sound drifted up from the hole in the floor.
Then solid stones stretched out under my feet again, and I scrambled over to Barbarian Mike’s cell.
His cell door was barred—barred, with one of those sliding-bolt things, not even a proper lock. I jerked the bolt back loudly and dragged the cell door open.
Barbarian Mike looked like he’d been Banished already. He was on his cot, arms and legs shackled (that was new), eyes closed, curled in on himself. Like Fran, I thought, and it churned like acid in my stomach. He didn’t move when I ran over; I grabbed one of his arms and shook.
He had his fingers around my neck before I realized it. Then he stopped and blinked. “What’re—”
“Trixie sent me.”
This took a couple seconds to sink in. When it did, he looped his shackled arms around me and crushed me in a hug. I think he might have been crying.
I tried to shove myself free. “We have to hurry. We don’t have a lot of time.”
He let me go, a wide grin splitting his face. “Anything you say.”
I didn’t like taking off his shackles, but I didn’t think I had a choice if I wanted to get him out. His shackles were secured with a simple toggle latch, although, okay, Barbarian Mike did look unpleasantly gray until I peeled them off, and they left these weird bubbly marks on his skin that he wouldn’t stop rubbing.
Barbarian Mike raced out of the cell, then stamped his feet a couple times and started bounding off the way I’d come. And part of me wanted to let him go that way. I really did. Let him drop into the manticore pit, or roast alive in the stairway. Or, even better, help him get through all that and lead him back up to that hallway, where there’d be, hopefully, cops or guards or Kingsmen waiting. I wanted to, but I couldn’t; I needed to get him to Trixie, or Peter would suffer.
I grabbed his arm. “Not that way, you can’t go that way. It’s, uh, on fire. Do you know any other way out? Maybe seen the guards coming and going?”
Barbarian Mike looked around. “This way,” he said, nodding in the other direction. “Guards always bring food from over here.”
There were a couple of shock traps along the hallway—we hadn’t gotten to them in school, but it didn’t matter because Barbarian Mike would just grit his teeth and charge through, though a couple of bolts made his hair stand on end. As far as I could tell, that was his strategy for everything. I had to pull him back before he barreled into a loop and got caught running the same three feet of hallway over and over.
But he was right. There was a door. I almost ran straight by it at first, because, for one, it wasn’t oozing magic like every other trap and trigger in the place. And, for another, it blended in with the rest of the stone wall. But it was just a little … off, the stones a little too regular and even, not quite matching the rest of the wall. I tugged Barbarian Mike to a stop. “Wait, wait, wait. Here.”
He looked it over and cursed.
“What? What is it?” I demanded.
“It’s a puzzle door. See?” He cast a light, held it up so we could get a better look. “These stones, you slide them around, right?” He shifted a couple of stones; they slid back and forth easily. “You get the right pattern, and the door opens.”
“What’s the right pattern?”
Barbarian Mike shrugged. “Search me. They’re usually easy to figure out. Markings you have to match up, or get the red block from the bottom up to the top, something like that,” he added, scanning the door. “Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.” He started shifting stones around. “You just have to be careful, though, because if you get the wrong pattern a couple times—”
The sound knocked me back. A screeching, pounding wailing that made the air rattle and the ground throb. It blared up through the floor, jangled out of the walls, until my bones were buzzing with the sound of it. King Steve told me later that they modeled the alarm system on the cries of real-life banshees. Hearing that, you can tell why banshees are so successful; after a few minutes of that screeching, you would do anything just so you don’t have to hear it anymore.
I clapped my hands over my ears, almost choking on panic. Could they hear that in the rest of the castle? On the s
treet? Could Trixie hear it? How could anyone not hear it?
“Okay, so that’s not it!” Barbarian Mike bellowed amicably. “How about you give it a go?” And he looked so calm, so relaxed, I wanted to scream at him—not words, just scream, the way the alarm was screaming.
On the far end of the corridor, on the opposite side of the dungeon, the fire suddenly cut off from the staircase, slamming us into darkness. Then wall torches flared up, turning the hallway bright as day. Oh, sure, now someone was coming.
I turned and ran back to Mike’s cell, and yanked the iron bolt out of the door. It slid free easily, which made me think that if I got out of this and saw King Steve again, I was going to make him put actual chains on the actual cell and they were going to have a real, nonmagical lock and it was going to be as big as my head. The bolt was heavy, heavy enough that my arms ached from carrying it by the time I got back to Barbarian Mike.
Anger makes you strong, or at least it makes you able to pretend you are. I swung the bolt back and, with a yell, smashed it into the door. The stones cracked. I swung again and again as stones popped free and went flying and the door crumpled inward.
I could see shadows now on the staircase behind us. Barbarian Mike caught my arms just as I was about to swing forward again, and pushed the door open one-handed. It teetered slightly, and crashed against the wall, revealing what appeared to be a small, empty infirmary. Above one length of counter was a window, and the window led to the street.
I scrambled through first, but the window was a little small for Barbarian Mike, and I had to help him, yanking on his arms until he finally popped free. I fell backward on the smooth pavement of the plaza, and he pushed himself up and left me behind, running down the street and bellowing Trixie’s name.
And Trixie came right out into the open dragging Peter with her. Barbarian Mike’s voice broke when he saw her. Peter looked okay. Trixie had him by the hair, and he was cradling his arm, but he looked okay, and the second she saw Mike she let go of Peter and ran. She didn’t even look to see if there were any guards coming. She just ran straight for Mike, and took a couple of leaping steps, and they collided. Arms wrapped around each other, faces pressed together, in a clutching, smooshing, desperate kiss. It was like a scene from one of Gil’s books.
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