Teo clasped his shoulders, turning Ev to face the Chimney, the wall separating real from unreal. “Dig.”
Ev put his hand on the rough bricks, feeling a bit of crumble within them, shifting his hand to pry out a loose bit of stone. His nails shredded immediately. Gritting his teeth, he pushed harder, scraping the pads of his finger, then a knuckle. The blood seemed to soften the stone, so he kept digging, worming blindly through brick and iced vitagua, groping for home as the pain in his hands worsened.
The song rose around him, and soon there was nothing but the pain in his hands and the pounding of the drums.
A chunk. A sense of give. The bloodied tip of his finger broke through to hot air on the other side.
“You’re doing great,” Teoquan murmured in his ear, and Ev raked his wrecked hands along the sides of the channel he’d made, digging up to daylight, or possible ruin.
“Hang on, Pete,” he murmured. “Pop’s coming.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE PREGNANT REFUGEE, MARY, was screaming her throat raw.
Will found her on hands and knees in the plaza, head down, fists pressed against the stone floor. Alchemites surrounded her, holding off a medic who’d come to assist. They were cursing the Filthwitch with enthusiasm.
Will flashed on Mary’s intake interview; he’d been distracted by the padlock, the question of Ellie. Astrid had suspicions, but he hadn’t cared, he was going to change the past—
“Something’s wrong.” It was a man’s voice, behind him.
“He’s here!” Mary moaned.
The letrico in Will’s pocket sparked and shrank, a sign his ring was drawing power, defending him from danger. A teenaged volunteer—Suri from Afghanistan, the wiki told him, she’d been defusing bombs in Kabul—pitched over.
Volunteers began passing out all over the plaza.
Mary screamed, with joy this time. Her belly expanded, ballooning within her silk maternity dress. Her outstretched hands began to crack, then crumble, falling to pieces like dried clay. Then she was silent, and from the dead, steaming crust of her body stepped Passion, Sahara’s right-hand Prima, her chief torturer.
Passion was covered from head to tattooed toe in magical objects, rings and bracelets, caps, trinkets, a host of chanted gewgaws. Alchemites were swarming to grab them.
Will sprinted to the glowing columns of vitagua, thinking about the Octagon.
“Alchemites have taken over the plaza,” he said as he stepped through into the steel vault.
“Shut Bramblegate down,” Jupiter said.
Aquino slid the pin into one of Mark’s toy grenades, setting it on the blackjack table as he released its striker lever. “Good news, they’re stuck. Bad news, with our transport hub out, so are we.”
“Boss, come on,” Jupiter said, addressing the ringer sitting next to him. But Astrid was frozen solid, caught in openmouthed surprise. “Pike, I need Astrid.”
The pipe hummed. “She’s not answering, Jupiter.”
“Eyes on Astrid,” Jupiter said.
The bamboo screen shimmered, revealing the plaza.
With Bramblegate shut, the Alchemites were hemmed in on all sides by impenetrable, overgrown forest. Some tried to find a way out, examining the frozen archway, probing for exits in the wall of greenery and between the columns. Others were tying up the unconscious volunteers in the plaza. Once restrained, each prisoner was jerked upward, drawn by invisible forces so they dangled, head down, above the plaza.
“What’s with that?” Jupiter said.
“A precaution,” Will guessed. “If we attack whichever Alchemite is holding them up, the hostages fall on their heads.”
“Fantastic.”
“Doghouse, send out a bulletin,” Aquino said. “Alchemites have taken the plaza. Bramblegate is closed, repeat, Bramblegate is closed.”
Pike broke in. “Astrid’s out there.”
“What?”
“There.” Aquino pointed. “The guy with the red scarf.”
“Didn’t take them long to make a move,” Jupiter muttered.
“Igme,” Aquino said, breathless, as they hoisted another hostage. “Oh no.”
“Astrid got him onto the Big—” Jupiter fell silent when Aquino shot him a glare.
“They’re drawing a lot of letrico,” Will said. “Will we run out?”
“With them gassing and hanging people and us burning power to hold out the Fyremen? Reserves are already dropping.”
“Octagon, we have a call from Passion,” Pike said. Sure enough, Passion was brandishing a tuning fork, holding it to her mouth like a microphone.
“Put her through to me, Pike,” Will said.
“—said, anyone there?”
“This is Will Forest,” Will said.
“We’ve got your people,” Passion told him. “Unless you want to see them hurt, you’ll make me happy.”
Time to dust off the old skills. He took her in—body language, posture. Was she scared? Angry? “What is it you want?”
“I want the gate reopened.”
“That’s going to take a minute.… You’ve overdrawn our power resources.”
“So?”
“It takes a lot of juice to open Bramblegate.”
“How long?”
“I’ll get an estimate from our engineers,” he said. “It would help if you lowered the prisoners—”
“Forget it,” Passion said, sounding distracted. The image of her frowned; her eyes fluttered.
“She having a seizure?” Jupiter said.
“We should be so lucky,” Aquino said.
Will tapped the screen. “The goal in a negotiation is to prolong things. Longer the talking goes on, the better the chances everyone escapes.”
“If we run out of letrico, or Passion figures out she’s got Astrid…”
“Yeah. Our clock’s shortened.”
Passion’s apparent confusion resolved itself. “You don’t have a gate problem. Open it, or I start killing your people.”
“Is that what you do for Sahara, Passion—execute people?”
“Wanna test me?” She raised a scalpel to Igme’s throat.
Aquino sucked in his breath, but Will lay a hand on his shoulder. “Where is it you want to go, Passion?”
“That’s not your problem.”
“If we reopen Bramblegate, what do we get in exchange?”
“There’s no exchange. You do as I say—that’s the whole deal.”
“We do things by committee here,” he lied. “Give me something to work with.”
She flapped a hand derisively, eyes fluttering again.
“If it’s not seizures, why is she gapping like that?” Jupiter asked.
“She’s talking to someone,” Will said. “Relaying what we tell her. Getting orders?”
“Passion only takes orders from Sahara,” Aquino said.
Jupiter groaned. “Eyes on Briarpatch.”
On the bamboo screen, a field of brambles appeared. Dozens—no, hundreds—of Alchemites were entangled in it.
“They don’t want out, they want in,” Jupiter said. “All those Alchemites, stuck. Look—there’s the lady herself.”
He was right: Sahara was trapped along with all the others.
“Let her rot there,” Pike said.
“Is this something you can work with, big guy?” Passion dangled a fine golden key in the air. “I’m prepared to let you have your chicklets back.”
His heart slammed.
“Will,” Jupiter warned.
“Open the gate, Forest.”
Pike protested: “Ye can’t leave the boss hanging there!”
“What’s it gonna be? You sold out Wendover—you gonna betray the Filthwitch too?”
Jupiter said, “You can’t!”
“It’s a deal, Passion,” Will said.
“Dude!”
“They’re my children,” he said, and before Aquino could weigh in, he said, “Passion, untie Igme.… He’s the man—”
“Oh, I know all your names,” she said.
“Give him a tuning fork and the key to that chantment and let him walk to the columns. Then move your people to the Bramblegate side. I’ll open the gates. Igme leaves, your people get in, simultaneously.”
Jupiter made a grab for the Bramblegate grenade, but Will had chosen Igme for a reason—Aquino held him off.
Pike’s voice thrummed through the guitar. “Lad, if anything happens to Astrid—”
“Astrid promised us that everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Now you believe her? That’s convenient.”
“Who would she choose, Pike—herself or them?”
By now, Igme was at the columns, the key in his hand.
“Where’s Sahara?”
“More distance between you and him, Passion.”
She sneered, but the Alchemites moved, clustering against Bramblegate.
“You better know what you’re doing, lad.”
“Igme, whatever you do, don’t lose that key,” Will said.
He pulled the pin on the grenade.
Igme sprinted into the glow as Alchemites poured through Bramblegate. Sahara was the first through. She was thin and dirty, her hair rat-tangled. She looked very much the part of a terrorist on the run.
“Home, sweet home,” she said.
A crack, like a rifle shot. Smoke billowed up from the crack in the marble floor of the plaza. A thousand new fissures ran through the stone, breaking it into wedges.
“Oh,” Jupiter said. “This is bad.”
“Why?”
“Because this vault is in the train tunnels underneath—”
Before he could finish his sentence, the whole of the Octagon roof crisped away in a mirage-ripple of searing heat. Jupiter and Aquino collapsed. Will lunged to scoop letrico crystals from the safe deposit boxes with his free hand.
Then he was staring up at Sahara as she peered down at him … and backed off.
A moment later, Juanita Corazón started down into the Octagon with a resigned look on her face.
Will was stunned. “You’re an Alchemite? You?”
“I’m a real joiner,” she said. “Look, Sahara wants your ring.”
“Why doesn’t she come get it?”
Juanita’s eyes flicked, meaningfully, to his hand.
Mark’s toy grenade. He remembered Astrid standing right here, saying it would come in handy, that he’d use it to bluff—
He made a throwing gesture, and there was a cry above, the sound of shuffling retreat. Juanita flinched.
“It’s okay, Juanita—it’s plastic.”
A flicker of surprise. She took another step down the incline, and then stumbled, hooking the wall with badly bitten, retractable claws.
“You’re contaminated?”
The barest of nods.
“Are you hearing voices?”
She nodded. “Now we’re here, it’s gotten pretty bad.”
“I want Caroline’s ring, Forest!” That was Sahara. He let his gaze rise, but apparently the Alchemites thought he was holding a real grenade. He and Juanita were, effectively, alone.
“Actually,” Juanita said, and he could see how much it cost her, pushing down her pride, “I could use some help.”
Will nodded slowly. “A chantment, embedded within you, would treat the contamination, stop the voices.”
Juanita flushed: “In exchange for what?”
“No price,” he said. “And only if you want.”
A pained smile flickered across her face.
“Did I say something funny?”
“No. Go ahead.” She held out her hand. “And, Forest?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for giving me a choice.”
“You’ll need to scratch me,” he said. Clumsily, he pushed the magic ring off his finger, working it around to his palm. He reached for Juanita, and the claws dug in, drawing blood. He remembered what Astrid had said: it was like pressing the chantment into warm butter.
Juanita’s eyes shifted, becoming normal. Now she was the one drawing vitagua … and Will’s eyebrows were singeing.
“Here,” he said, scooping another letrico hunk off the blackjack table. “You’ll need this.”
She tucked it away, then cursed, loudly, in Spanish.
“Juanita?”
She turned her face upward. “The ring’s vanished. He put it in my hand, but—”
Sahara trilled in frustration. “Can you disarm him, at least?”
“I let go of the grenade, the gate closes!” Will shouted. “You want that?”
A pause. “Fine, Forest, hold the gate open. Juanita, get him up here.”
“We can’t leave these guys to burn,” Will said. He rolled Jupiter off his chair and onto his shoulder with a grunt. Juanita picked up Aquino. The two of them scrabbled up the incline of rubble, climbing to the plaza and lowering the unconscious men to its broken marble floor.
“Superman no more, eh?” Sahara said. She grasped Will’s jaw, squeezing until his teeth ground. Her talons were like knives. “You’re my prisoner now. How do you like it?”
“Beloved Goddess.” Passion held out a yellow poker chip.
Sahara’s face glowed with the affection a sane person might reserve for their newborn child. Shoving Will away, she scooped up a hunk of letrico, then flipped the chip like a coin.
Chantments dropped from above, falling off the bound, hanging volunteers. Alchemites dived after the items eagerly. The scarf around Astrid’s neck untied itself, whisking downward to the cracked marble … and as it fell, Astrid became herself again.
Sahara trilled happily. “Passion, wake the hostages.”
The dangling Springers opened their eyes. Some cried out; others struggled against the ropes holding them. As Sahara approached Astrid, a hush fell.
“Beloved Goddess,” called an Alchemite. “The Fyremen are about a mile from the plaza.”
Sahara pivoted beneath Astrid, so they were nose to nose. “Bet you weren’t expecting to see me again, hmm?”
Astrid’s face was turning red. Will swallowed. No chance she was really a mouse.
“Hello, Sahara.”
“That’s all you have to say?” Sahara walked a slow circle around her, flicking her talons through Astrid’s curls. “No declarations of undying love, no apology for turning me over to the man?”
“Would you accept an apology?”
“Don’t be tiresome.”
“You should go, Sahara. It’s not safe here.”
“Is that supposed to be clever?”
That got a flicker of weary resentment. “I’m not clever, Sahara—that’s your thing.”
Sahara reached up with one misshapen talon, stroking her hair. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“It wouldn’t, would it? I’m too solid, too unimaginative. Isn’t that it? You’re the one with the flash.”
“Right. You’re substance and I’m … what? Vapor?”
“You might still escape.”
“Running, Filthwitch? When I’m finally where I belong?”
“Sahara, you can’t fight the Fyremen.”
“I fought the U.S. Army to a standstill.” Her voice rose. “My few, my followers, using troves of chanted weapons—”
A hoot from one of the captured volunteers. “You kept them off our backs.”
Sahara wheeled, infuriated. “Who said that?”
“Don’t—,” Astrid said.
“Troves of chanted…,” Will repeated.
“I created the war chests,” Sahara trilled. “I told my Primas where they were. I told them what to do, where and when to attack. All from jail, I might add. What did you do in jail besides suck your thumb and mourn Jacks Glade?”
“My God, Astrid, you armed them,” Will said.
“Yes,” Astrid murmured. “This is where he finds out.…”
Some of the Alchemites exchanged uneasy glances.
Oh, he’d been blind. “It wasn’t a chantment here or
there to keep them from doing too much damage. It was everything. Everything they used against Roche in the battle with the army.”
“Not the lock they used on your daughter,” said Astrid. “I swear, Will—the stuff from Nevada, they stole that themselves.”
“Nobody armed us,” Passion said scornfully.
“You’ve been conned, Passion,” Will said. “We all have.”
Astrid’s eyes were locked on his. “They were going to go after Wendover anyway, Will. Roche had Sahara.”
“You gave him Sahara! And you used me to do it!” He laughed. “You asked what Astrid was doing in jail, Sahara?”
“She was crying her little Filthwitch eyes out.”
“She apparently found time to set us all up. She set the Alchemites on the army—using you as bait.”
“Silence!” Sahara bellowed.
“Try to understand,” Astrid pleaded. “The people she would have killed—the soldiers, cops. Lowering the body count—”
“And if the pesky Alchemites kept you off Roche’s agenda, that was … what? A side benefit?”
“What was I supposed to do, Will, take ’em on? Me, Ma, Mark, and Patience? All Roche had to do was drop one nuke on the well. I needed time, and the Alchemites wanted to fight.”
“My wife was an Alchemite!”
“I didn’t know she’d be killed!”
“You’re just like the grumbles. Always a card hidden, right? What was it your dad said, magic grows best in the shade?”
“Darlings, darlings.” Sahara tried again: “Charming as it is to have ringside seats on your first lover’s spat—”
Will spun, confronting the dumbfounded Alchemites. “It never made sense, did it? All those chantments waiting, none of them lethal enough to give you an outright victory.”
“The Goddess respects life!” someone shouted.
“All so fragile, so easily burned out … Astrid didn’t want you getting too powerful.”
“My Primas sacrified themselves for magic, not for the Filthwitch!” Sahara bellowed. “They fight for me. They died for me.”
Astrid sighed. “And that’s something to be proud of?”
Sahara’s face darkened. “See how you like it.”
With that she spun, slashing a razor-sharp talon across Astrid’s throat.
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