The Crooked Castle

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  Nan leaned back against the tree, clearly trying not to sob. “Who . . . who was that? Do you know him?”

  “Sort of,” Carmer breathed, his own heart hammering.

  “‘Consider us even’?” she quoted Gideon, her voice high-pitched. “What does that mean?!”

  “I have no idea,” said Carmer truthfully, getting unsteadily to his feet. He offered Nan his hand to help her up. “Come on, we’ve got to keep moving.”

  “But where?” Nan asked. “Carmer, we can’t outrun those velocycles or . . . whatever they are. And I am not going farther in there.” She pointed into the thickening trees.

  Nan was probably right. Heading farther into the wood would only bring them closer to the kinds of magical creatures that would do them harm; that much he did remember from his lessons with Grit.

  Carmer hoped Rinka had gotten a head start on her journey to Wetherwren Light, because their time was running out. He and Nan needed to get back to the Wonder Show and the (slightly) safer realm of human civilization. But they were still miles away from the city . . .

  He had a very, very stupid idea.

  “Make a run for the car,” Carmer said. “Don’t stop for anything, okay?”

  Nan looked at him like he had three heads, but Carmer was already running.

  If they couldn’t get back to civilization, he’d just have to make civilization come to them.

  IT WAS LIKE the swamp didn’t want to let them go. Carmer looked down as he ran and was convinced he saw the mud under his feet take on the form of clawing hands, just as it had in the subway tunnel the first time he’d seen the Wild Hunt. But then he would blink and shake his head, and the ground would be simply ground once more. He stomped a little harder, just to be sure.

  Their jog back to the car was eerily quiet. It seemed Gideon had succeeded in leading the Hunt away, at least for a little while.

  Consider us even, he’d said. Was he looking to pay Carmer back for leading him right into the Hunt’s hands the night he’d been imprisoned? Was he right now planning a more sinister or painful plan of attack?

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” Carmer whispered to Nan as he unlatched the hood of the car and threw it open. They’d left it running in their flight.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Nan.

  “Um, calling the police,” said Carmer. “Sort of. You might want to step back.”

  “Oh, sure thing, Mr. Carmer,” muttered Nan, but she backed away all the same. “I’ll just stand here and leave my fate in the hands of a twelve-year-old boy . . .”

  “I’m thirteen, actually,” Carmer corrected. He handed her a large, rusted-over wrench he’d found in the trunk. She took it without comment; any iron weapon against faeries was better than none at all. “Let’s hope you don’t have to use it.”

  Nan continued her fuming while her eyes darted around the cordgrass; she jumped at any sign of movement. Carmer forced himself to be calm, though his hands were shaking so badly he could barely grip the hood. He stared into the engine of the car and all he saw was a maze of metal; mysterious compartments and springs and tubes and turning knobs. Carmer normally knew a steam engine inside and out, but he couldn’t make sense of anything through the pounding of his own blood through his ears and the echo of the Wild Hunt’s cries and—

  He took a deep breath and refocused, remembering something he’d told Grit when they’d been working against Titus Archer:

  Everything is less scary when you know how it works.

  Carmer knew how this engine worked. The Moto-Manse worked on a similar principle, if on a larger scale. This was just another day at home in his workshop, focused on the task at hand, or an afternoon spent in the Moto-Manse’s engine compartment. And this—this was even easier, because he was trying to foul up on purpose.

  He hoped Mr. Tinkerton wasn’t too attached to his car.

  He worked quickly but calmly, his hands moving of their own accord, trusting Nan to alert him to any danger. When the wind picked up again and the cordgrass around them was frosted over and pressed flat from the freezing gusts, he knew he didn’t have much time, but he kept going. He didn’t have a choice.

  “Carmer . . .” Nan warned.

  The same fog from earlier appeared, creeping inches closer every second. The laughter and the banging of weapons and the war cries cut through the still air.

  The velocycles burst out of the ether, riding around Nan and Carmer over and over again in a dizzying, ever-tightening circle. It was impossible to tell if they knew Nan was a decoy or not; perhaps they did, and they were just angry.

  “Carmer . . .”

  “I know, I know!”

  Carmer fumbled through his pockets until his fingers closed around the small, round object he was looking for. “Run!” he said again, and grabbed Nan’s hand.

  She planted her feet. “I am not running toward those things—”

  “You don’t want to stay back here,” warned Carmer, and to the great surprise of everyone there, he led them toward the menacing circle of velocycles.

  Five paces, ten paces, fifteen paces—how was he going to aim for anything with his heart pounding like this? The cyclists parted before them, surprised, stirring up more clouds of dust and frozen mud. Carmer turned to Nan.

  “How’s your throwing arm?” he asked her.

  “What?”

  He pressed the glowing, Grit-enhanced smoke bomb into her hand. “What are the odds you can hit the boiler from here?”

  “Probably better than yours,” said Nan, with a quick, panicked glance down at the bomb. She threw it with all her might.

  Nan’s aim was true. A second after the bomb pinged against the already overheating boiler—Carmer had disabled the safety valve—the engine exploded. Carmer fell forward, trying to shield Nan as best he could. He looked back and saw a great black plume of smoke rising from the car, which was now engulfed in flames. He willed it to rise higher and higher.

  Please work, he thought. Please, please work.

  One of the riders, on a large black velocycle that emitted a strange red glow, slowed to a stop in front of Carmer and Nan. His bike belched black smoke into their faces until they coughed.

  “Oy, what do we have here? The princess of the freaks’ little Friend, is it?” asked Mister Moon, dismounting. He had left his train conductor’s uniform behind for a set of black riding leathers. The red cap, though, was still as red as ever.

  “We’re not who you’re looking for,” said Carmer. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Speakin’ up today, are we?” said Mister Moon. “I think I liked it better when you cowered in the corner.” Jeering laughter from the other riders. “You’ve led me and my boys on a merry chase, that’s for sure. Their blood’s up. Who am I to deny them two lonely souls lost in the swamp?”

  Some of the riders howled.

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” said Carmer slowly, spotting the approaching shapes behind Mister Moon with relief.

  The leader of the Hunt laughed. “And why’s that, little Friend? I don’t see your pet princess around to protect you. No, you were foolish enough to come here alone.”

  “What do I look like?” Nan piped up. “Chopped liver?”

  “But we’re not alone,” said Carmer. “Not for long.”

  The airship approaching from the city was a small fireship, one of the first on the scene for rooftop or upper-story blazes. Two more ships—probably police—followed behind, racing toward the tower of flame Carmer had created. Their sirens blared, cutting through even the sound of the wind and the Hunt’s engines.

  The Hunt could materialize only in certain places—in the wilderness, or in the dead of night, in spaces unfrequented by most humans. They were a ghost story, and so they lived like one. Shrieking sirens and ships crawling with humans from big cities were not their area of expertise.

  “Ain’t you a clever one,” sneered Mister Moon, but even then, he seemed less substantial, somehow. Like Carmer cou
ld see through him if he tried. “I’ll be seeing you again some day, boy. You can be sure of that.”

  The leader flicked his forked tongue at Carmer and swung a leg over his velocycle.

  “Come on, boys!” cried Mister Moon. “The night is young! And tonight, we ride!”

  The Wild Hunt sped off as quickly as they had come, until all that was left were fading tire tracks in the mud.

  The firefighters’ siren was the most welcome sound Carmer had ever heard.

  22.

  NOTHING TO SEE HERE

  Judging by the moon, it was after ten o’clock at night. Grit and Yarlo were a little over halfway to Wetherwren Light, and walking slower every minute. The water was up to their knees, the waves regularly sloshing into their faces and occasionally bubbling up over their heads. Grit gasped, nearly inhaling a mouthful of seawater, as another freezing cold wave slapped her in the face.

  High tide was at ten thirty. By then, the rocky sandbar would be completely submerged again. Grit had always boasted that she’d been a good swimmer—but she’d learned in the tranquil frog ponds of the Oldtown Arboretum, not the churning depths of the Atlantic Ocean. If she wasn’t careful, she and Yarlo would be riding in the belly of a real whale instead of the Whale of Tales.

  Yarlo had clearly chosen to meet their fate with the stoic strategy of Firmly Not Talking About It, but Grit wasn’t about to drown without at least complaining about it first.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Grit shouted to him over the spray. He pressed onward as if he hadn’t heard her. “Hey, are you listening to—”

  Thwack. A wave knocked her completely off her feet, tossing her aside like she was just another jellyfish in the sea. Grit reached out blindly, scrambling to grab on to the slippery rocks, but her hands only pushed against more water—until a vine shot out of nowhere and snapped around her wrist, pulling her back to the sandbar.

  She crashed into a sopping wet Yarlo.

  “Thanks,” she gasped, black spots blooming across her vision. The pain in her shoulder made her shudder, almost as badly as when she’d gotten trapped under Bell’s balloon. Yarlo wedged them between the tops of two rocks at the edge of the path. Their feet slipped against the wet stone. “What are we going to do?”

  Yarlo squinted up at the sky, reaching up to tip his hat, but it had long since been lost to the waves. “Well, little lady, I’d say one of us is going to use those two good wings of hers and fly away.”

  Grit stared at him and flexed her mechanical wing, clutching his arm as pain and dizziness washed over her. Her wing barely extended all the way. The winds were probably too strong, the waves too high for her to even dare to finish crossing on her own.

  It also hadn’t even occurred to her to leave Yarlo behind.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. Drops of water flew from her hair. “No way. You’re supposed to be my guide through Unseelie territory, remember?” She didn’t much care if any of the Unseelie guards were listening. Their story had been thin to begin with, and the Unseelies surely knew that if the mermaids didn’t get them, the sea definitely would. What a nice, built-in security system.

  “And ain’t I just doing a wonderful job?” said Yarlo, spitting out a mouthful of seawater. “Now get outta here before I toss you up myself!”

  But Grit couldn’t. She couldn’t leave another faerie behind, even an Unseelie who’d spied on her and worked to kidnap Rinka, because she’d promised to see him through this. She’d promised him another way.

  Grit looked up at the sky, pleading with the very stars for help—even that beady-eyed falcon would do, at this point—when she saw the silhouette moving toward them, buffeted slightly by the wind.

  “Sorry, but you’ll just have to throw me off something another time!” She risked her grip on the rock to point up for a moment. “Do you trust me?”

  “Not as far as I can throw you,” joked Yarlo, though he nodded at the approaching shape in the air. The water was up to their chins.

  “Wait here—”

  “As if I’ve gotta choice—”

  “—and after a few seconds, turn your light on as bright as you can! Okay?”

  Murderous mermaids be darned. They’d just have to risk it.

  Rinka’s ship flew closer toward the lighthouse; in a few moments she would pass right over them. Grit felt the vine uncurl from her wrist.

  “Get goin’, then!” groused Yarlo, and she launched herself into the air.

  Grit dodged a crashing wave just in time. The wind snatched and bit at her almost as badly as the waves below. Between the sea spray and the pain blackening the edges of her vision, she could barely even see where she was going. She kept listing to one side, falling much too close to the water below, and having to beat her wings with agonizing effort to regain the height. A moment before she finally, finally landed, she heard something snap, and it was all she could do to grab on to the edge of the ship without passing out.

  Rinka shrieked at the sight of an unexpected, bedraggled faerie boarding her ship and nearly let go of the tiller.

  “Relax!” cried Grit, panting as she heaved herself onto the gondola. “It’s me, Grit!”

  This didn’t seem to relieve the changeling girl as much as it should have. Rinka still looked out at the night sky as if the clouds themselves were about to transform into demons and rip her from this earthly plane—which, admittedly, was not entirely out of the realm of possibility, depending on who they were dealing with.

  Grit rushed through her explanation of her and Yarlo’s predicament and looked down at the disappearing walkway with dismay. Below, she could have picked out her and Yarlo’s rock in a lineup. But all the way up here, in the dark, with the crashing waves . . .

  And then she saw it—the flickering golden light, just a pinprick from Rinka’s ship, dipping in and out as merciless waves pounded the pathway.

  “There!” She pointed the spot out to Rinka, before realizing, “Can you get us that close?”

  Rinka may have been a girl of few words, but her reaction to being questioned about her ability to fly her own ship was clear enough.

  “Of course you can,” corrected Grit. “Of course.”

  Grit never would have thought she’d be so glad to see a smarmy Unseelie cowboy faerie. Neither she nor Rinka missed the webbed hand that reached out of the water, snatching at his heels as they hauled him aboard.

  IT WAS THE last thing Grit had to be glad about.

  Landing the ship took far too long without a crew or mooring mast on the ground—and there wasn’t a lot of ground to land on to begin with. Rinka had to lower the ship as much as she dared, release her magnetic docking cables in a complicated web they could only hope would latch on to enough rocks on the shore, and climb the rest of the way to ground herself. Rinka froze up more than once, and it was only Yarlo and Grit’s encouragement that finally got her down safely, her poor hands rubbed raw from the rope—even through her gloves—and her arms shaking from the effort.

  They tied the rope to the biggest, sturdiest rock on the shore they could find and hoped it would be enough to keep the wind from snatching the ship away.

  Rinka clutched her coat around her as she climbed the steep, rocky hill that led to the lighthouse, Yarlo and Grit riding on her shoulders. Yarlo would have preferred to scamper along the ground, as usual, but they’d both taken a good thrashing from the waves. Some of his ropes were torn or frayed, and he looked so exhausted and waterlogged, Grit thought another dunk in the ocean would surely finish him off. She kept her wings folded against her back, wincing with every step that jarred her side.

  Yarlo had warned her the lighthouse had mostly fallen to pieces years ago, and so she hadn’t panicked when they weren’t able to see a tower from the air. Ruins could still be powerful; the many old landmarks even the humans revered were proof enough of that. What mattered was that the Seelie king’s heart—and the power it contained—was still there.

  But as they climbed, Grit couldn�
��t help but feel a distinct lack of power. This wasn’t like walking into the Arboretum, which thrived on her mother’s magic, lit by faerie lanterns and made beautiful by the faeries for hundreds of years until it was almost a magical creature itself. It wasn’t even like walking into the airship graveyard, where the weight of the blizzard and the forces hiding behind it had made her hair stand on end and sent chills up her spine.

  There were no chills. No shimmers of faerie dust in the air. No doors that opened themselves, or faces appearing where no faces should be. No telltale silvery-blue glow to lead them to a faerie’s heart.

  And when they reached the top of the hill, Grit knew, deep down in her bones, that it was because there was no magic here, and hadn’t been for quite some time. There was just a big, sad crater in the ground, filled with water from years of rain and high waves and crumbling chunks of what had once been the lighthouse. One bit of the circular wall was still standing, but it looked like a stiff wind would blow it over.

  Somehow, a single wooden staircase had survived, spiraling up through the center of the former lighthouse before breaking off, splintered and twisted, into the ether.

  “There’s nothing here,” Grit said hollowly. Rinka and Yarlo were silent. Grit turned to the cowboy faerie. “You told me the stories. You told me the old king’s heart was still here.”

  “I, well, that I did,” said Yarlo, with a tired scramble down Rinka’s arm. He jumped down onto another rock. Maybe he thought being so close to Rinka wasn’t a good idea, at the moment; Grit certainly felt like punching him in the face. She grabbed a lock of Rinka’s hair, ignoring the girl’s yelp of surprise, and rappelled down to waist height before jumping onto one of the piles of crumbling stone. She stumbled on the landing.

  “You said there was Seelie magic here,” Grit continued, stepping toward him. “You told me it was the last ‘bastion of their power’ or whatever!”

  “I told you that one old Seelie lived here for a few years until he finally decided to take his chances against us and lost,” countered Yarlo. “Maybe he wasn’t even a king. Maybe his magic died when he did. Maybe a few will-o’-the-wisps play around up here when they’re feelin’ frisky, and that’s it. I told you there were stories. And maybe . . .” His voice broke a little. “Maybe that’s all they were.”