by Nina Smith
“No harm done. They won’t hear us from there,” Fitz said. “But you’re right, it appears to be a quicksilver shipment. If we can keep the fairies down and quiet it’ll never know we’re here.”
“No,” Nikifor said, and the word was so forceful it surprised even him.
“He’s right,” Mudface said. “That lot never keeps quiet.”
“No, it’s not that.” Nikifor sat back on his heels. Excitement seized him when he contemplated the plan he hadn’t even realised was forming in the back of his mind. “I know where that silver is headed and I’m going to stop it.”
Fitz laid a hand on his wrist. By the calming tone of his voice, Nikifor could tell the man thought he was talking crazy again. “I’m sorry Nikifor, but it’s not the mission.”
Nikifor snatched his hand away. “But it is the mission! It’s all connected! When you showed me how to fight the Tormentor I saw a machine. A bad machine.” He raked his hair back and flung out a hand to point at the dust cloud. “That silver is being taken to feed the machine! If we stop it, then the machine will stop, even just for a short time. And maybe we can find things out!”
“Machine?” Mudface inched closer, alert and wide-eyed, her book clutched as always to her chest. “Stop the machine?”
Fitz looked at her. “You know about this machine?”
She nodded vigorously. “Bad, bad, bad machine. Makes him crazy.” She pointed at Nikifor.
Nikifor stared. “How do you know?”
She tapped her book. “It’s all in here.”
He looked from the little drab fairy to the book, not quite sure what to say. “In there?”
Fitz crouched between them. “Show him.”
Mudface laid the book on her lap as carefully as though it were a newborn baby. She opened the covers and turned pages for a while, keeping them covered with her hands so Nikifor and Fitz couldn’t see. Finally, she stopped and turned the book to face them. “There.”
Nikifor bent over the page. He brushed the air over it with his fingers, marvelling. Right there was a charcoal drawing of the machine. The detailed image made his skin go cold and prickle all over. The keys looked more than ever like bones. Up in the corner of the page liquid poured from a pipe into a funnel. He pointed at it. “There,” he said. “That’s the quicksilver.” He looked up from the page and found Mudface’s eyes burning right into his, excited and defiant at the same time. “How did you know about this?”
“I just know things. Ever since I was dead.”
Fitz drew Nikifor’s attention to the opposite page, where three lines of pictograms were drawn in.
Nikifor had to concentrate to translate them. Then he read the words aloud. “The bad machine finds all the muses, except the one it was made to kill. Him it makes crazy for years and years and years.” He looked back at Mudface, but it was hard to see just another little Bloomin Fairy there. The prickling of his spine and a surge of nausea in his gut made him think she was something else altogether. “What does this mean?”
Her eyes never wavered from his. “Means what it says.”
“But–” Nikifor turned to Fitz, desperately searching for a way to make the whole thing mean something else. “The bad machine finds all the muses except one? It hasn’t found me or Flower.”
“Hasn’t found Flower yet,” Mudface said.
Fitz looked very, very serious. “It’s going to find Flower?”
Mudface shrugged. “Probably.”
“What about Nikifor?”
“It already made him crazy for years and years and years.”
Nikifor put his hands over his face. “No,” he said, as though just denying it could make it untrue. “Why? Why would this happen?”
Mudface’s little hand patted him on the shoulder. “Probably because you’re going to-”
“No Mudface,” Fitz said.
Nikifor took a deep, shaky breath and got a grip on himself. “I’m going to what?”
Fitz ran a hand over his beard. “You’re going to hijack a silver shipment,” he said. “And slow this machine down, so maybe we can save Flower from meeting the fate of the other muses.”
Nikifor turned to Mudface. “Tell me. Tell me what you know.”
But she glanced at Fitz and took a step away. “Shadow is in grip of evil it was born of,” she said. “And you is the champion. I’ll get the tribe. Help steal the quicksilver.” She hurried away.
“What did she mean by that?” Nikifor demanded.
Fitz went back to the incline to look at the dust cloud. Inside it could now be seen three covered wagons drawn by teams of six heavyset mules each, and behind them another cart with a cage on the back. “Mudface is a prophet, my friend,” he said. “But it’s not always wise to know things before they happen. Now tell us how you propose to take this shipment.”
Nikifor leaned over to watch the wagons while the first wave of Bloomin Fairies caught up to them and crowded in close around his shoulders. For once their chatter was muted. Nikifor grabbed Carrots by the back of the shirt when he leaned out so far he almost fell over the edge. He looked about doubtfully. “This may be too dangerous. I should go alone.”
Every face he could see looked mortally offended.
“Don’t underestimate Bloomin Fairies,” Fitz said. “They’ve just lost their homes, their livelihoods, everything. They’ll fight.”
The second wave of fairies arrived, and with them Flower and the Lord of the Gourd, the latter sleeping soundly on her wooden litter.
Flower pushed her way through the crowd and crouched down between Nikifor and Fitz. “What’s going on? Mudface said something crazy about hijacking a silver shipment!”
Fitz put a finger to his lips and pointed at her key.
“What? You’re not serious.” Flower shot Nikifor a warning glare. “Tell him my key is harmless!”
The image of the machine was still so strong in Nikifor’s mind he no longer cared how mad she got. He reached over and twisted Flower’s key into two separate halves. Instantly the rising panic subsided. That alone gave him a jolt. He stared at the key, too shocked for words.
“Nikifor!” Flower’s voice went so high it was almost a squeak. Her face flushed bright red. “How dare you!”
“The key is dangerous.” He kept his voice low. He’d never argued with her before. Never challenged her. She was the elder, the one with all the authority.
Flower went even redder. “We’re going to have a serious talk about this later.”
“Fine,” Nikifor said. “Right after we steal all this quicksilver.” He pointed at the wagons, which were now only a short distance away.
Clouds of dust thrown up around the footfalls of the mules shrouded the slow, ungainly movement of the wagons. Fetches hovered in ungainly flight around the perimeter and a false muse armed with a shiny bronze blunderbuss headed up the procession.
“We can’t steal quicksilver!” Flower’s whisper of alarm was almost lost in a wave of fairy excitement at the sight of the blunderbuss. She grabbed Nikifor’s arm and raised her voice. “Are you insane?”
Nikifor removed her hand from his arm. He looked for a long moment at her freckled face, the alarm in her eyes and the outrage in the set of her mouth. She really thought he was crazy, and that hurt. “I’m not insane,” he said, in the calmest voice he could manage. “I am being pursued by a madman I do not know, and that-” he pointed at the wagons “-is destined for him. Are you going to help us or are you going to stay up here with the Lord of the Gourd?”
The colour drained from Flower’s face. Her mouth tightened. “Of course I’ll help.”
“Good,” he said. “You and Fitz need to come with me.” He glanced around. “Bloomin Fairies, stay up here until I give the signal. Then come help us.”
“What’s the signal?” Carrots asked.
“Us getting ourselves killed.” Flower scowled at them all and headed for the road.
Fitz, Flower and Nikifor ran down the forest track, keeping under
the shelter of the foliage, until they found a hollowed out washaway leading down the steep incline to the road below.
It wasn’t the safest path by any means, but there was little time to find a better one. Nikifor pushed aside the bracken that concealed the top of the steep track, hung onto the sides and climbed down by jamming his boots into any precarious hold they could find in the rock. Flower came after him, and then Fitz, his hooves sending showers of dirt tumbling down the path and into their faces.
It wasn’t an easy climb. More than ever Nikifor felt how his muscles had softened from years of addiction and squalor in Shadow City. Yes, strength had been creeping back to him ever since he’d gone to work in the quicksilver mine, but his arms shook and every downward swing was agony, every moment between finding safe handholds a moment between safety and falling to his death far below. He clung to the rock face with grim determination and reminded himself with every ounce of pain that whoever the Tormentor was, he was not in control of this. He would never be in control again. Nikifor was going to claw his life back inch by inch from the monster who had stolen it.
He dropped to the road covered in scratches and bruises, then helped Flower down the last few feet.
Flower fended his hands off as soon as she was on solid ground and brushed herself down, ignoring him completely.
Fitz skidded the last few yards on the backs of his hooves and landed awkwardly. “I’m not built for this.”
“Come on.” Nikifor loosened the axe in its binding on his back and strode in the direction of the oncoming wagons.
“I’d like to know what you plan to do,” Flower said, hurrying to keep up.
“What I always do.” Nikifor could hardly keep the bitterness from his voice. “Kill everything that moves.”
“I’m sure that’ll work out fine for the fetches, but what about the false muse riding in front? How do you propose to kill her?”
Nikifor stopped walking. He hadn’t thought about that.
“We don’t kill her.” Fitz looked ahead at the bend in the road around which the wagons would come at any minute. They were now almost underneath where the Bloomin Fairies waited at the top of the cliff.
“What?” Flower and Nikifor said in unison.
“I want to know what she knows.” Fitz ran a hand over his beard and for a moment had the same cold look Nikifor had seen on him the night before, when he’d threatened Flower’s life over keeping Hippy Ishtar a secret. “Leave her to me.”
“Honestly,” Flower said. “I could be using this whole thing to feed my writers some serious inspiration if you two weren’t so uptight about my key.” She stalked ahead.
The wagons rounded the bend, lumbering along behind the upright figure of a young woman in a long gray coat. She could have been the sister of the one who’d led the attack on Pumpkin. She had the same dirty blonde hair, pulled back in a ponytail. Pale blue eyes ringed with black makeup were every bit as sulky as the mouth set in a permanent pout.
Flower planted herself in the middle of the road, folded her arms and scowled. Nikifor and Fitz ranged themselves behind her.
The false muse stopped just a few feet from Flower and raised a hand. The wagons lumbered to a halt. The fetches flew in low, lazy circles over their heads, but did not attack. Nikifor’s fingers itched to seize his axe, but he held back.
Then Flower did the last thing he expected. She smiled. “Hello,” she said. “What’s your name?”
The false muse scowled and studied her nails. “Shazza. What’s it to you?”
“Where are you going, Shazza?”
Shazza lifted her eyes and studied Flower hard. “Down this road. Move aside.” She gestured with her blunderbuss.
“Do you know who I am?” Flower asked.
“Couldn’t care less. Get out my way.”
“She’s good, your friend,” Fitz whispered in Nikifor’s ear. Then he moved around slowly, while reaching inside his coat.
Nikifor kept an eye on the fetches, who circled lower still.
“I met another false muse like you,” Flower said.
“I’m a real muse.” Shazza’s blunderbuss swung around to point at Flower.
“Oh, it was just she looked a lot like you. She wanted to take me back to the Guild, you see. I’m top of their wanted list.” Flower brushed the hair away from her face and smiled.
“That’s my sister Kazza. But I still couldn’t care less. I’m not in charge of catching crooks. I’m in charge of transporting freaking quicksilver.” Shazza stomped her foot. “So get out my way!”
Fitz by this time had made it past her and to the edge of the wagons, all the while trailing salt behind him on the ground.
Flower gave Shazza a look of wide-eyed sympathy. “You mean Kazza gets to chase crooks while you’re stuck with guarding a pile of quicksilver? That’s not fair!”
Shazza’s pout deepened. “No it’s not fair! She’s not so good as she makes everyone think! I-” She stopped and looked at Fitz, who had circled around and was almost back to Nikifor. “You! What are you doing?”
Fitz smiled, closed the circle and stepped inside of it.
Shazza screeched like a boiling kettle. Flower leaped forward and clapped a hand over her mouth. To Nikifor’s amazement, she didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke. She gave an outraged squeal and kicked Flower in the ankle.
He didn’t see what happened after that, because the fetches swooped. He had his axe in his hands in a second. He swung once, twice, three times and blew the first fetches into clouds of stinking gas. More swooped, but there were only about ten to deal with, which was nothing after yesterday.
The fairies came swarming down the cliff. They didn’t climb or tumble; like all fairies, they simply walked down the sheer surface as though it were an ordinary flat road.
Nikifor caught the last fetch on the tip of an axe blade and ducked the explosion of gas. The Bloomin Fairies swarmed over the road and onto the wagons, jumping up and down, shaking and rocking everything in sight like overexcited children.
Flower wrenched the blunderbuss from Shazza’s hands after delivering a nasty kick to the shin. Fitz grabbed her arms.
Shazza twisted in his grip and caught sight of the Bloomin Fairies. “Hey!” she yelled. “Hey you lot, stop that! This quicksilver is important you know!”
“We know.” Flower curled a fist, drew her arm back and punched Shazza in the nose. “That’s for pretending to be a muse.”
Shazza’s eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the ground. Nikifor winced. It wasn’t often he saw Flower display any kind of violence, but when she did, it generally wasn’t a good idea to be on the receiving end. She knew what she was doing, no matter how hard she tried to pretend she was nice.
“We haven’t much time,” Fitz said. “We need to get her into that prison cart before she wakes up.”
Nikifor picked Shazza up by the shoulders and dragged her past the fairies, who continued to jump up and down on the carts. For someone made of smoke, Shazza wasn’t light. Sweat rolled down his face by the time he reached the final cart.
The cage was made of iron bars on an iron platform, with a door barred shut by a wooden pole fixed to the outside. Inside, three very miserable and ragged Freakin Fairies huddled in a corner. The three scrambled to the front of the cage and pressed their faces to the bars at the sight of Nikifor and Fitz.
Nikifor felt sick. “Strike Pin!” His voice rose. “But this is disastrous! Those dastardly fiends!”
Strike Pin sniggered. “That curse worked good, huh?”
Tick Tick and Tock Tock, both looking the worse for wear, sniggered too.
Nikifor’s cheeks burned. For a split second it occurred to him the fairies could be left in there. But the thought made him feel horrible. It was the kind of thing the Tormentor would have demanded. He dropped Shazza, yanked the pole away and wrenched open the doors.
The Freakin Fairies scrambled out of the cage. Nikifor lifted Shazza and shut her in there, before Fitz r
eplaced the pole and set to work making a salt circle around the rim.
The Freakin Fairies watched in puzzlement.
“Look, what’s going on?” Tick Tick finally asked. “Why aren’t you looking for the Silver clan?”
“The Silver clan are locked in their mine under heavy guard,” Nikifor said. “We’re on our way to fetch someone who can help us free them.”
Tock Tock scoffed. “A likely story from a muse.”
“Why were you locked up?” Nikifor looked again at the state of them. Their faces were pinched and blue. They probably hadn’t even eaten in days.
The three glanced at each other.
“The Moon Troopers came and demanded we hand over every drop of quicksilver,” Strike Pin said. “We tried to stop them, so they put us in the cage there and said we had to go to Shadow City to stand trial for treason.”
“Where is the rest of your clan?”
“Probably locked up like the Silvers,” Tock Tock said.
Strike Pin studied Nikifor closely. “You’re not crazy anymore.”
Nikifor shook his head.
A big grin broke out on Strike Pin’s face. “That curse did work good! I’ll tell Coalfire.”
The three fairies began to walk away.
“Where are you going?” Nikifor said.
“Back to get everyone out of the mine.” Strike Pin gave a cheery wave. “You don’t expect us to hang about with a pack of Bloomin Fairies?”
“I’ll be back with help,” Nikifor said. “I swear it.”
“You can swear as much as you like mate, you’ll still be a muse in a pack of Bloomin Fairies.”
Nikifor watched them go. Fitz chanted unfamiliar words in a low voice while walking around the prison cart. Behind him, the Bloomin Fairies noise level escalated. The stench of dead fetches lingered in the air. He thought about the Moon Troopers imprisoning entire clans of Freakin Fairies to make them drag more and more quicksilver out of the reservoirs to feed a machine strung together by the keys of missing muses. A machine built, if Mudface was correct, to kill him.
For the first time Nikifor wondered what he’d done to merit such a fate from someone he didn’t even remember. Surely, when this was all over and he and Flower found the king, he would have all the answers.