Yarlo tipped his hat again. “We’ll be on our way, then.” He tugged Grit to her feet so she could stagger alongside him. “No more funny business from you, ya hear?”
Grit shook her head, still glaring daggers. She had no delusions that the mermaids would let them go the rest of the way unobserved; it seemed she was Yarlo’s prisoner for the rest of the evening.
The crabs scuttled away to let the faeries pass, but their beady eyes watched Grit much too attentively for her liking. She waited until they were at least a dozen human paces away before muttering to Yarlo, “That was some quick thinking.” It seemed odd that these Unseelies hadn’t recognized her, but perhaps word of her visit to the palace hadn’t yet reached all of the fae.
Yarlo looked at the angle of the sun and the waves on either side of them.
“You’ve gotta be quick in these parts, little lady,” he replied, and Grit understood his meaning. They’d wasted time in their dance with the mermaids—time they didn’t have. The walkway to the lighthouse was exposed only during low tide. If they didn’t make it to Wetherwren before the water started to rise again, they’d be out of luck.
And Grit doubted very much that the mermaids would be inclined to help.
21.
TOO MANY TINKERTONS
Come forth, fine friends.
The old year ends.
Its candle is burning low.
A new day is dawning,
So come, join the revel
At the Roving Wonder Show.
The Whale of Tales rose first, leading the fleet for the first time. Much to the disappointment of the wealthy Driftsiders, there were no golden tickets for sale for Rinka Tinka’s Roving Wonder Show’s New Year’s Eve Spectacular. There would be no guests on board that evening, they were told, though all were welcome to join them for a reception at the Topside Hotel after the city fireworks display. It would be magical, they were assured. The performers would be there. Even Rinka Tinka himself would be there, if the gossip was true.
It was to be a masquerade.
But first, the spectacular itself: a sunset parade through the city’s skyways, culminating with a final show right on the pier. Giant floodlights had been set up to point at the sky and illuminate the show once the sun had set; the whole pier was strung up with lanterns and filled to bursting with vendors and food carts taking advantage of the crowds. After the show, at the stroke of midnight, the ships would retreat for a finale of fireworks as the city rang in the New Year.
Almost every ship in the parade had a crier leaning out of its gondola, waving to the crowds. Curiously—perhaps to enhance the masquerade theme—they were all dressed exactly the same, with long, full black hair, smart silver jackets and caps, and black or white gloves. Each one wore an intricately carved mask in silver, white, black, and gold.
At the city center in Topside, the ships spread out, reaching out over the city as they had when they first arrived, spreading the invitation to the night’s performance not just to Topside, but over every district—Portside, Scudside, Downside, and beyond. Their song rang out over the whole city in the chilly afternoon air.
Unbeknownst to the public, each crier also had company—a faerie tucked into the fake sandbags at their waists that usually held the golden gliders.
Well, every crier except one.
If one ship took a more circuitous route around the city, its crier waving rather shyly—if the ship was a little plainer than the others, not as brightly colored, and slowly broke off from the rest as it neared the coast and struck out over the ocean, well, no one could be expected to notice that, could they?
IN THE CROOKED Castle, Rinka and Mr. Tinkerton were having an argument. A very loud argument.
“You can’t make me stay here, Father!” shouted Rinka, striding carelessly through her ship of hanging curiosities. “And you can’t make me go to some stupid masquerade! You can’t make me do anything!”
“Rinka,” came Mr. Tinkerton’s voice, “listen to me. You will do what I say. I’ve given you an opportunity—a chance for a lovely evening!”
“Oh yes,” said Rinka. “A chance to hide in the crowds behind a silly mask, not telling anyone who I really am!”
“I’ve told you time and time again, Rinka, it’s not safe for you out there!”
Something was dashed to the ground with a splintering sound.
“No, Father!” cried Rinka. “Carmer was right! You’re just selfish, and greedy, and you want to keep my inventions all for yourself! Well, I just can’t take it anymore!”
The hatchway flew open, and a girl with thick black hair ran out, rubbing her tears on her sleeve. “Leave me alone!” she sobbed, and ran, shoulders hunched and hair falling in her face, until she reached a steam car parked at the edge of the camp. The engine was already running as the newest Wonder Show employee futzed around with something under the hood. Word around camp was the boy had a knack for all things mechanical and Tinkerton had asked him to do a quick checkup on all of their ground transportation.
The girl yanked the car door open, threw herself into the passenger seat, and sat sobbing with her head in her hands.
A moment later, the driver’s side door opened.
“Rinka, what’s the matter?” Carmer asked.
“Just drive,” said Rinka. “I can’t stay here another minute.”
A small, light green head poked out of Rinka’s pocket, and Beamsprout whispered, “You nearly squished me!”
And the girl dressed as Rinka looked up and muttered, “Pipe down, will you? My wig nearly fell off. We’ve all got problems.”
Nan gave the wig an aggressive pat, disguised with another round of wracking sobs.
Carmer drove.
MILES AWAY, the real Rinka Tinkerton made her way toward Wetherwren Light.
At least, Carmer hoped that she did. It had been his idea to dress up the Rinka decoys under cover of the Wonder Show and Driff City’s annual New Year’s carnival. Rinka needed to get to Wetherwren Light, along with Grit, but the Unseelies were clearly watching her movements closely. If they figured out what she and Grit were planning, they would surely try to intercept her on the way.
Then, there was the matter of her . . . well, complicated magical existence. Grit had explained that faeries could sense the presence of one another’s magic, even if it was just a general, inexplicable feeling; it was part of the reason why so many Free Folk had been attracted to the Wonder Show in the first place. They knew Rinka was magical, but they couldn’t quite put their finger on how. This complicated the ruse further, as they couldn’t just dress a bunch of Wonder Show employees like Rinka and hope for the best. No, each Rinka decoy had to be paired with a faerie, to at least create the illusion of something magically “off” about them.
At the insistence of the faeries, most of the decoys didn’t know about the magical guests on their ships. Carmer had protested that people dressing up like Rinka had a right to know they might be attacked, but he was voted down with the promise that the faeries would abandon their ships at the first sign of any real trouble and lead the Unseelies away from the show. And this time, Grit hung around to make sure he didn’t write any letters.
Nan Tucket, despite knowing something of the danger ahead, had volunteered right away.
“I like that little girl,” she’d said, as though that settled everything, and though Nan couldn’t have been more than two years older than Rinka. “And I’ve always wanted to try going brunette.”
Now, Nan’s teeth chattered in the open cab of the steam car as the frigid winter wind rushed past them. It appeared that, like other aeronauts, Tinkerton’s obsession with lightness had extended to eliminating any excess weight on his vehicle—even if that meant freezing to death.
“Where are we going?” she asked Carmer as he drove farther and farther away from Elysian Field, down the muddy back roads, until the ships above Driff City began to shrink into specks in the distance.
“As far away from the shore as we can
get,” he said with a quick glance behind them. He had hoped that causing such a ruckus back at the camp would attract the attention of the faerie they wanted to keep the most occupied and farthest away from the Wonder Show and its spectators—Princess Purslain Ashenstep.
Of course, that also meant there was every possibility they’d bring the wrath of the entire Unseelie Court down on their heads. Carmer thought of Grit’s comment about faerie war making the other day’s blizzard seem like a summer breeze. He tucked his scarf more snugly around his neck and would not—could not, for Nan’s sake—think of train whistles. Or dripping red caps. Or creaking wheels and gunning, wheezing engines. Or tunnels filled with smoke.
He would not think of any of those things.
“Carmer . . .” said Nan quietly, pulling her fake hair farther around her face. “I think we’re being followed.”
The road they were driving down was deserted, but Carmer knew what she meant. Nan didn’t think they were being followed. She felt it, and so did Carmer. He pressed his foot into the accelerator and willed the car to go faster.
It was the sheer flatness of the landscape that disturbed him the most. There were no mountains, no trees, no buildings to give them any sort of cover—just miles of increasingly muddy reeds and cordgrass bent into swirling patterns by the wind, and giant puddles of melted snow. Eventually, the roads weren’t roads so much as infrequently traveled paths the odd traveler on horseback or a tractor from the city’s outlying farms might occasionally trundle over. The tree line of a swampy, scrubby forest popped up some distance ahead, a forgotten corner of wilderness no one had bothered to clear and wring out to dry. In Carmer’s nervous haste to get away from the city, he’d driven them right into a swamp.
When the sound of revving engines surrounded them, it was like another part of the wind itself. Carmer was barely surprised, though Nan squinted into the distance and twisted around in her seat, searching for whoever was tailing them. Whatever was tailing them.
Carmer remembered Bell Daisimer’s warning, the first morning they’d approached Driff City.
You’ll want to steer clear of gangs like that, traveling on your own.
The steam car’s wheels carved deep grooves in the sodden ground as Carmer fruitlessly tried to drive it forward. Specks of mud flew up from underneath, spattering Carmer and Nan every time he gunned the engine.
“Stop!” Nan cried, flinging her arm up to her face to protect it against more flying muck. “Carmer, just stop! We’re stuck!”
Carmer sank back against the driver’s seat, clenching and unclenching his gloved fingers on the steering wheel. His burned hand stung.
It was getting colder—colder and darker. Overhead, the overcast sky swirled, clouds shifting in and out of one another and changing color like a graying bruise. The tall brown cordgrass was whipped into a frenzy by the wind, rippling this way and that like the very ocean waves they were running from.
The sound of the engines came closer, and then Carmer saw them—the ghostly velocycles of the Wild Hunt. They circled the car, closer and closer, wicking up mud that froze rock hard at the touch of their wheels. Their riders flickered in and out of view, never entirely solid, never really altogether there. There were skeletons with artificial, empty grins and black oil leaking out of the hollows of their eyes; human-sized faeries strapped to their bikes, their blistering skin wrapped in iron chains, pointed ears perked up in the wind; ancient-looking men in full suits of armor whose velocycles seemed to morph from machine to horse and back to machine again. Their jeering calls and ululations echoed even over the cacophony of the engines.
“Run,” Carmer told Nan. The girl was frozen in fear, her back pressed up against the seat as though if she leaned far enough away from the Hunt, they wouldn’t be able to chase her. She fished a necklace with a cross charm on it from underneath her blouse and held it up with a shaking hand. She whispered something to herself, barely audible above the noise around them; it took Carmer a second to realize she was praying.
A gust of wind whipped the necklace out of her hand.
Nan shrieked. Carmer grabbed her empty hand and pulled her toward him.
“RUN!” he said again, kicking open the door. Nan’s boots scrambled against the car as she clambered out and nearly fell. Carmer helped her to her feet, noting a flash of polka dots among her skirts; even under all the layers of Rinka’s plain clothes, Nan still couldn’t resist her signature pattern. He would have laughed if they hadn’t been about to be run down by a roving supernatural band of lost souls.
Still firmly gripping Nan’s hand, Carmer ran away from the car and farther into the grass, ignoring the way the squelching mud pulled at his feet like grasping hands. Nan staggered behind him.
Beamsprout forced her way out of Nan’s pocket. She looked impossibly small.
“We should separate!” she insisted. “It’ll confuse them!”
“No,” said Carmer, barely looking back.
“Not you two, obviously,” said Beamsprout. “Just me! I’ll keep my light off and see if I can’t lead some of them away!”
Her little white head dimmed, no longer glowing with its usual pearlescence. She shot out of Nan’s pocket and into the air before either of them could protest, a blur of green and white against the deadened landscape.
Carmer pushed aside the reeds slapping at his face. If only they could reach the tree line, they might find some sort of shelter, somewhere to hide. But the cackling laughter and trail of broken reeds on either side of them told Carmer the Wild Hunt could catch him and Nan any time they liked. They were simply enjoying the chase.
But then—it might have been Beamsprout’s promised distraction, it might not—a few of the cyclists veered away, back toward the road. Carmer and Nan reached the tree line, gasping for breath as they clutched at the slippery trunks of the bald cypress trees around them. The swollen, pale “knees” of the trees that rose up from the watery soil reminded Carmer too much of the skeletons in the Hunt.
Nan’s wig had fallen almost totally off, and her dress was torn and sodden with mud nearly to her waist. A long scratch across her cheek looked red and smarting. Carmer imagined he must look equally bedraggled, but they didn’t have time to stop. He reached for Nan’s hand again.
“We have to keep—”
Moving, he wanted to say, but his words were drowned out by a gust of wind that blew the standing water on the swamp into freezing waves that hissed and steamed as they came crashing back down. Carmer ducked, pulling Nan between the nearest tree and his own crouched body. A thin layer of fog crept along the ground. Carmer peered out from under his arm.
The wind had brought with it a rider from the Hunt. He sat upon his velocycle like a warrior knight would upon his faithful steed. The bike was all mud-spattered, peeling white paint and tarnished steel, but flickering beneath it, under the glamour meant to suit the modern age, Carmer could almost see the red-eyed white horse, eager to charge. The rider tossed his long blond braid over his shoulder as he leaned to one side and touched his toes to the ground, bringing the velocycle to a stop. He pushed up his fogged riding goggles with red-gloved hands, and Carmer saw the tip of a pale ear that looked much more pointed than the last time Carmer had seen it.
The rider was Gideon Sharpe.
Carmer didn’t loosen his grip on Nan, but she must have heard his breath hitch, because she squirmed out from under his arms just enough to turn around and see Gideon. Carmer wondered what this boy—this young man, really—looked like to Nan. Did she see something inhuman, a monster in a gray riding jacket and blood-red leather gloves? Did she see his pointed ears—his fine, thin features and the sharp lines they cut? Did she see the dark circles under his wide eyes, the lines around his mouth that looked out of place for someone so young?
Gideon looked just as surprised to see Carmer as Carmer was to see him. What had the rank-and-file members of the Hunt been told about who they were chasing?
The encroaching fog rippled around Ca
rmer and Nan; it was bitingly cold, numbing their skin as soon as it touched them. Carmer felt as if his blood was freezing in his veins, rooting him to the spot. He looked for something else in Gideon’s eyes, beyond surprise—a burning hatred, maybe, or his old disgust at Carmer’s mere existence. But even though he would never win any awards for reading people, Carmer didn’t see any of those things behind Gideon’s hard stare.
He saw fear. Helplessness and fear.
Gideon moved his arm in a swift, graceful arc, and the freezing fog was swept back from Carmer and Nan—though it still hovered inches from their toes. The feeling returned to Carmer’s feet like a thousand pins and needles; it was almost as bad as the day he’d been caught in the storm. Beside him, Nan gasped as the magic loosened its hold on her, too.
“P-please,” Nan said. “D-don’t—”
“Shut up,” said Gideon.
Ah. There was the Gideon Sharpe that Carmer remembered.
“You’re not her,” Gideon continued, glaring at Nan and the brilliant red hair plainly visible under her skewed wig. He spoke stiffly, like one of his master’s old automata might have. “You’re not the one we’re supposed to find.”
Nan gulped and shook her head.
Carmer tried to find his voice, but the words felt stuck in his throat, just as frozen as his feet had been moments before.
“Gideon, I—” I’m sorry, Carmer wanted to say, but the other boy had already looked away, his head cocked toward some sound only his not-so-human ears could hear.
“You have to go,” Gideon said, his voice low and rough.
It took Carmer a moment to realize Gideon was speaking to him. “What?”
“I can only lead them away for so long,” Gideon explained, his eyes already darting around the trees.
Lead them away? Was Gideon Sharpe . . . helping them escape?
“Go, Felix Carmer III,” said Gideon. “And consider us even.”
He righted the velocycle, revved the engine, and sped off before Carmer could utter another word.
The Crooked Castle Page 20