Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2)

by Nina Smith

  In the now sluggish fountain, a ten foot high statue of a Moon Trooper glowered over the entire street. Down one side of the square sprawled the offices of the Moon Troopers. Utilitarian gas flares blazed at every door and window. Tall, masked streaks of terror teemed inside.

  Flower groaned under her breath. They had to come this way to get to the press. A whistle shrilled for backup even as their hunters streamed into the Piazza; an answering whistle pierced the night from the precinct. Sirens wailed like doom.

  “Faster!” she yelled.

  Fitz grabbed two straggling fairies by the topknot and lifted them into the air. Nikifor’s axe hit bone with a sickening thud.

  Then they were there. Shadow Press towered like a crooked mushroom just off the piazza, sandwiched between a broken down cottage and a watchtower still under construction.

  Shazza ran up the stairs ahead of them all and disappeared in a puff of smoke. Seconds later the door opened and the fairies streamed in.

  “We have to go in that one!” Fitz gestured at the cottage with one of the fairies in his hands.

  “No time.” Flower prodded him up the stairs after the fairies. She stopped in the narrow, crowded hall. “Nikifor!”

  Caught up in a scuffle on the steps, Nikifor balled a fist and launched it into a Moon Trooper’s face. The Moon Trooper dodged and came back with a flying backfist that sent Nikifor stumbling into Flower and the Lord of the Gourd.

  Shazza slammed the door closed, shot all five bolts home and leaned against it. It shuddered. She grinned at Flower. “That felt good, eh?”

  “If you say so.” Flower tried to catch her breath. The door shook again. “Fitz, we have to get these fairies through. Now.”

  Fitz gently deposited the two fairies into the crowd. He tugged on his beard. His wrinkles deepened. “We have to go through next door. If we go through here we’ll end up close to where we need to be, but we risk being seen. You don’t know the dangers.”

  “I know the dangers out there!” Flower jabbed a finger at the door. “These fairies are not taking a stroll next door, it has to be from here!”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere until I get that book on the press,” Shazza said.

  “Where’s the press?” Flower asked.

  “Upstairs.”

  “Fine. Let’s get moving.” Flower strode forward, her movements hampered until the fairies got into the momentum, surged up the stairs and streamed through the door at the top. When she was quite sure they were all through, Flower checked behind them in time to see the front door splinter and crack. She slammed the second door behind her. Fitz shot the bolt home and dragged a heavy desk in front of it.

  They were in a large room, where more heavy desks lined two of the walls. In the far corner lurked a giant black machine. For a dizzying moment Flower thought it might be Nikifor’s nightmare machine, until she realised it was just the press. Her pounding heart slowed. The thing was twice as tall as her and filled a whole wall. Pitted and bent from years of use, a row of eight-spoked silver wheels ran from one end to the other, and a giant, fluted chimney connected to the roof.

  Back before things went wrong, the press had printed novels written in both Shadow and Dream, classics and trash alike. It had always been a point of pride that creativity had free rein. She’d spent a decade or two running a program to encourage literacy in all the tribes, about a hundred years ago. She’d given out free copies of every book from Tom Sawyer to Caterpillars on Mars. The worlds had shared a rich literary heritage then. For the last ten or fifteen years, however, all the press had churned out was pamphlets about new Guild laws and trashy novellas that turned her stomach about heroic Moon Troopers and unwashed fairies.

  Mudface pushed her way through the crowd, her book clutched to her chest, wide eyes fixed on the machine. She barely breathed.

  Flower deposited the Lord of the Gourd on the ground, ignored the old woman’s protests and pushed her way after Mudface.

  Mudface met Shazza in front of the machine, her face pale against the black of her clothes. She looked up at the false muse with both fear and desperate hope.

  “Mudface,” Flower said, but she was too far away to be heard. She pushed forward. A deep sense of foreboding made her very skin prickle.

  “Give it to me.” Shazza reached out for the book.

  Heavy footsteps ran up the stairs outside the room. The door shuddered.

  Mudface clutched the book tighter. “You promise lots of people will read it?”

  “Chicky everyone in Shadow will know your name. Give me the book.” Shazza took hold of the corners.

  Mudface surrendered it reluctantly.

  “Mudface no! Wait!” Flower still struggled to get through the tangle of fairies around her knees.

  Shazza took the book to one end of the press and disappeared behind it.

  Flower said a bad word under her breath and changed direction. When she got closer, Shazza’s back was to her and she was bent over the book.

  The door shuddered under the sound of Fitz trying to make himself heard over the fairy hubbub.

  “Sharon,” Flower said. “What are you doing?”

  Shazza’s eyes gleamed and her smile was thin. She placed the book into a chute and pulled down a huge black lever. The machine ground and shook. Lights flashed along the wheels and a puff of steam escaped from a vent under its chimney.

  Mudface, watching from nearby, emitted a squeak and jumped up and down.

  The rest of the fairies stopped yelling and stared at the noise.

  “Finally,” Fitz said. “Listen to me, all of you. I’m going to cut a door into Dream now, and you need to go through as quietly as possible, then stay together and follow me. It’s very important. Do you understand?”

  But the fairies weren’t even listening; they continued to stare hypnotised at the machine. The grinding noises turned to cracking and then a steady rumble. Mudface was so pale and tense she seemed about to fall over.

  The door to the room splintered under repeated blows from outside. The desk in front of it slid forward an inch. A silver moon trooper mask peered through the cracks.

  Fitz said several very bad words. Then he said some other words Flower didn’t recognise. She shuddered when the room turned cold. With one hand on Mudface’s shoulder, she watched Fitz use nothing more than his hands to draw a large rectangle in the air. Before her startled eyes, the entire shape turned black.

  The Moon Troopers hacked a hole in the door. The first of them crawled through, only to be met with a swing of Nikifor’s axe. A head went flying; blood spurted from the neck and splashed the wall. The head landed near Carrots, who promptly kicked it straight back through the door.

  Flower swallowed a surge of nausea and collected her thoughts. She let go of Mudface, who was still transfixed by the press, and pushed the fairies towards Fitz. “Go, get out of here!”

  Fitz began to shove handfuls of fairies through the cold black opening.

  The Moon Troopers finally broke a big enough hole in the door to pour through it. Nikifor was swamped in seconds, but from his yelling and the amount of blood on the walls Flower knew he was just fine. She urged the fairies toward the opening with renewed urgency. She ducked a Moon Trooper who had got past Nikifor and kicked him in the shins when he made a swipe for Mudface. “Mudface we have to go now!”

  Mudface broke and ran to the other end of the press.

  Flower almost fell over the Lord of the Gourd sitting on the floor, arms crossed, scowling at the whole riot. She scooped her up and shoved her at Fitz, then went back for Mudface.

  Nikifor had been pushed back toward the door in the air by the knot of Moon Troopers around him. Long, black-clad bodies littered the floor in his wake. Almost all the fairies were through.

  “Flower there’s no time!” Fitz roared.

  Flower balled a fist and drove it into the face of a Moon Trooper who blocked her way to Mudface.

  He caught her upraised hand and wrenched it behind her bac
k. His breath was cold on her neck. “You’re overdue for a little chat with the king, Muse.”

  Flower was a peacemaker, always had been. At least, she’d tried to convince herself she was for years after she was finally freed from her duties defending Shadow. She didn’t want to fight all her life. She didn’t even like violence, but if this creature didn’t get out of her face she was going to break his head. She spoke through clenched teeth. “If you dare to utter the name of the king again, you faceless creature, I will personally remove your tongue and then feed it to you!” She stomped on his foot with the heel of her boot and elbowed him in the ribs.

  “You want to act like a fairy, I’ll drain your blood like a fairy, I don’t care how disgusting you taste.” The Moon Trooper’s fingers dug into her neck.

  “What are you, some kind of wannabe vampire?” Flower struggled and twisted against the grip. Her stomach churned with a cold, remembered fear. Those roars in the night echoed down the passage of twenty-five years. The Moon Trooper bent her head to expose her neck.

  A meaty thwack made her very skull vibrate. The Moon Trooper’s grip released; he slumped to the ground with Nikifor’s axe buried in his head. Blood spurted all over Flower.

  She spat the foul substance from her mouth and stared at Nikifor over the body. Her heart felt heavy and sick. “Are these–are these–” she couldn’t complete the sentence.

  “Duck,” Nikifor said.

  Flower ducked, then scrambled out of the way when Nikifor’s axe swung at more Moon Troopers. With no more time for thought, she ran to where Mudface was jumping up and down at the far end of the press. Steam escaped from the machine near her hands and the rumbling reached a pitch.

  “Mudface we have to go!”

  “My book! I want my book!”

  “We can’t wait!”

  But even as Flower yelled the words, a slim, black-covered book fell from the machine into Mudface’s waiting hands. Mudface squealed and hugged it to her ribs.

  Flower grabbed her just before an avalanche of books tumbled onto the spot where the fairy had been standing.

  Shazza ran to the pile, straightened them and picked them up. She chuckled at Flower and Mudface. “I wouldn’t come back in a hurry if I were you, Fairy,” she said, and vanished, books and all, in a puff of stale smoke.

  “Flower! Nikifor now!” Fitz roared.

  Flower picked Mudface up under one arm and charged through the fighting. She dodged Moon Troopers, ducked Nikifor’s swinging axe and leaped through the opening into darkness so thick she could have cut it with a knife.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The hole between the worlds sucked Nikifor right out of Shadow and into darkness. It was all he could do to keep hold of the axe, and there was nothing at all he could do when the Moon Troopers followed.

  He fell onto a cold, hard surface littered with wriggling forms. One of them kicked him and said a bad word when he pinned a foot to the floor. He dragged himself free, blind, listening desperately for the sound of Moon Troopers under the babble of the fairies. “Quiet! They followed us in!” he roared into the darkness.

  From somewhere high, high above, there was a loud thump, a slam and scrambling feet. Then a rush of air. Nikifor ducked. Something swiped right over where his head had been. They could see in the dark. He felt sick. The look in Flower’s eyes not five minutes ago when he’d dragged a Moon Trooper off her neck had already told him what he’d known, deep down, for years.

  A thud. The crack of bone. A short, sharp, high-pitched scream, just as quickly cut off.

  Somewhere above them a door swung open and a shaft of light revealed a tall staircase with two figures at the top. Then a click. Light flooded from bare bulbs overhead into a big, cluttered room with no windows. Bloomin Fairies were packed into the space so tightly there was barely even room to stand. Nikifor, Flower and Fitz formed a living shield between them and fifteen Moon Troopers ranged against a wall. One Moon Trooper held a broken, lifeless form by the topknot. The body dangled, eyes staring into nothing.

  The silence stretched on forever.

  Then a breathless, horrified whisper from one of the fairies. “Carrots!”

  The fairies began to scream. Someone at the top of the stairs screamed. The fairies stampeded, some towards the stairs, some towards the Moon Troopers, until it was all Nikifor could do to keep his footing.

  But he didn’t care. Rage possessed him so hard he barely knew his own name. With one swipe of his arm he pushed all the fairies around him toward the stairs, then swung his axe around his head so quickly the weapon turned to a gleam of light. On the second circle the blade sliced off the head of the Moon Trooper who had killed Carrots. Flower darted forward to rescue the frail, broken body and then herd the fairies up the stairs.

  Nikifor drove his fist into a silver mask and struck out with an elbow to the neck of another. The Moon Trooper fell. He raised his axe for the next blow, but it stayed in midair. A woman stood in front of him clutching a broadsword too big for her in one hand and a dagger in the other. She stared up at him with big dark eyes. Her long, long hair, dishevelled and loosely pinned as though she’d been sleeping, was threaded with grey. The lines around her eyes jolted him. How clearly he remembered her now, a young girl of twenty, innocent, violent, desperate to escape a tyrant.

  “Hello Nikifor,” she said.

  Nikifor couldn’t make his voice work.

  Your destiny is to kill the muse king.

  He could hear the words, see her face as though she were saying it right now. “Hippy,” he finally whispered.

  She jerked her head at the stairs. “Come on. Some of them got up there. Fitz and Clockwork are holding them off, but if they’re not careful they’ll wake Krysta.” She headed up the stairs.

  Nikifor followed. “Who is Krysta?”

  “My daughter. She doesn’t exactly believe in any of this, and I’m not keen on her finding out tonight. I’d never hear the end of it.” Hippy hurried through the door at the top of the stairs and into a big, carpeted room where Bloomin Fairies packed into every bit of floor space and furniture possible, jumping up and down while they cheered on Fitz, Flower and a Freakin Fairy: Clockwork. A man of fifty, toughened, lined, where Nikifor remembered a fresh-faced boy who had saved his life. But he remembered nothing more. The blank spaces in his mind swamped him when he looked at this man.

  “Hey!” Hippy yelled. “Would you lot keep it down? There are people still asleep in this house!” She charged into the fray and dealt a savage blow with her blade to the stomach of the one Moon Trooper foolish enough to get in her way. She strode straight on through and scowled fiercely at the Bloomin Fairies, whom she towered over by at least a foot. “I said keep it down! My house, my rules, understand?”

  The Bloomin Fairies stared at her in wide-eyed astonishment. Behind her, Fitz and Clockwork took down another three Moon Troopers.

  Nikifor roused himself from his stupefied staring and counted the Moon Troopers. There were only two left in here fighting the others, which meant another two had slipped out.

  A shrill scream echoed through the house. Nikifor bolted through the door and into a room dominated by a wide staircase. There was nobody there. He was poised to race up the stairs when he heard glass smash in the kitchen just across from him. He was there in seconds.

  Two Moon Troopers advanced on a girl with bright pink hair and striped pyjamas. She stood on a big table, armed with a wooden stick that was curved at one end. It didn’t look especially dangerous, but when one of the Moon Troopers leaped onto the table she came in low with a vicious blow to the knees that ended in a sickening crunch. The Moon Trooper stumbled and fell, but he grabbed onto the girl’s legs and took her crashing to the floor with him.

  So this was Hippy’s daughter. Nikifor buried his axe in the other Moon Trooper’s head and kicked him aside. He hauled the attacker off the girl by the scruff of the neck and drove the mask into the table so hard the table cracked, along with the creature’
s neck.

  Krysta screamed, scrambled for her curved stick and brandished it at Nikifor. “Who the freaking hell are you? And who are they?”

  Nikifor looked down at his hands holding the axe. Both were covered in blood. What must she think? He dropped the axe and held up his hands. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

  “You’d better not you psycho! Where are my parents? What have you done with them?”

  “Your parents are fighting Moon Troopers to the magnificent death!” he boomed. Then he clapped a hand to his mouth, mortified. “Sorry,” he whispered. He backed up a step. Krysta’s face was as fierce and determined as any Bloody Fairy going into battle and he didn’t particularly want his knees broken.

  Hippy burst through the doorway and raced over to her.

  Krysta broke her death glare from Nikifor and dropped her wooden stick. “Mum you’re okay! What’s going on? Why are you covered in blood? Do we need to call the police? Who’s he?” She pointed at Nikifor.

  Hippy glanced around the kitchen, took in the dead Moon Troopers and the mess, gave the girl a sunny smile and patted her on the cheek. “Nothing’s going on at all, sweetie, you’re just having a bad dream. Why don’t you go back up to bed?”

  Krysta gave her an incredulous look and patted herself down. “But it feels real. Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am. Look, would this happen in real life?” Hippy took a jar from the spice rack, uncorked it and sprinkled sparkling powder all over the bodies of the Moon Troopers. Smoked curled up. The bodies blackened and turned to ash.

  Hippy aimed a savage kick at the nearest one, which turned him to powder. “That,” she said through clenched teeth, “Is what we do with vamps.” She turned back to Krysta, all sunny smiles again. “Off to bed with you, dear. And don’t forget to get changed, you’ve got blood on your pyjamas.”

  “Okay. If you’re sure this is a dream.” Krysta picked up her wooden stick and with one last bewildered glance at Nikifor, left the room.

  Nikifor watched her climb the stairs and disappear, then glanced over his shoulder at Hippy. “Will she really believe that?”