Rise of the Ragged Clover

by Paul Durham

  “Don’t underestimate us,” Poe said.

  Darwin scrunched his face, shrugged, and shook his head at Rye in disappointment.

  “Darwin says the same,” Poe translated. “Just not as nicely.”

  “I meant that after all you’ve been through, I can understand why you might be reluctant to help the villagers,” Rye explained.

  “We’re villagers, too,” Poe said. “Even if the rest of Drowning forgets it sometimes.”

  “Nobody knows the streets like we do,” Hope added, with a nod to her extended family of orphans and foundlings. “And we have plenty of lanterns.”

  “We would make a handsome army of Wirry Scares,” Truitt said.

  “Ooh,” Hope said, looking up at her sister. “You’re on the bottom. I get to wear the pumpkin.”

  There was a murmur of anxious, but confident, enthusiasm among the others.

  “Even if we could warn the villagers, how can we destroy the culverts?” Quinn asked. “It seems an impossible task.”

  Rye reached into her pocket and carefully removed the flask Folly had given her. “Folly, do you still have yours?”

  Folly retrieved the matching flask from her own pocket and examined it in her hand. They all stared at the containers.

  “Rye,” Quinn said, “you do realize what you’re suggesting?”

  Rye nodded gravely. “There’s no other way. We need to drown the village.”

  27

  A Toll Comes Due

  The friends and link children all stood in silence, the full weight of Rye’s words taking hold. There were a few whispers, but no objections.

  “We should go,” Folly said finally. “It will take some time to get to the culverts.”

  “You’re right,” Rye said. “But I need to go myself.” She kept talking before Folly could interrupt her. “It can’t be you. Or Quinn. If this doesn’t work the way we hope, whoever destroys the culverts will be the most hated villain in Drowning. Your family runs the Shambles, Folly. And Quinn, you need to warn your father—you’re both important parts of Mud Puddle Lane and Market Street.” Rye sighed. “My family, well, the Willow’s Wares is long gone. We’ve already been declared outlaws. I’ve got the least to lose.”

  “Sometimes it takes a villain to save you from the monsters,” Bramble muttered quietly.

  The children turned to him. His eyes were half open. “Riley’s grandfather Grimshaw said that once long ago,” he added, then closed his eyes again.

  “You can’t go alone, Rye,” Quinn objected. “You need help.”

  “You’re right, Quinn,” Rye said. “I’ll need Truitt to guide me if he’s willing.” Truitt gave her a nod in reply. “In the meantime, you, Folly, and the link children take to the streets and warn the villagers. Bang on doors. Yell from the windows. Whatever it takes to get people to higher ground.”

  Folly stared Rye down with icy blue eyes.

  “This is the last time, Folly,” Rye reassured. “We won’t split up again. But this only works if we all do our own part.” She opened her palm and held it out.

  Folly’s face relented. She studied the flask between her own fingers, then moved to place it in Rye’s hand. She hesitated.

  “Mix the two liquids . . . that’s all it will take,” Folly said, then carefully handed it over. “Just find a way to do it without standing nearby.”

  Rye passed Truitt the flask, keeping it an arm’s length away from her body as she did so. She looked at her friends, old and new. Hope, Darwin, Poe, and all the others listened eagerly.

  “After you’ve warned the village, be sure to get yourselves to safety. The Keep is on high ground. Meet Truitt and me there if possible; otherwise find a roof and stay put. Then we’ll have done all we can.”

  Rye followed Truitt through the Spoke to the twin culverts. The trek was tedious and wet. At times they found themselves wading through waist-deep floodwater. In other stretches, they covered their heads with their coats to keep from being drenched by the leaking tunnels.

  Throughout their journey, Rye considered how they might combine Folly’s potions. Perhaps they could drop them from a distance, or place one then throw the other at it. But when they finally arrived at the spot where the Spoke dead-ended at the underground length of the culverts, she realized their dilemma. Spill from the Great Eel Pond rushed past them, flowing into each culvert and continuing toward the sea. Rye could see the tiny pinpoints of moonlight in the culverts’ distant mouths. But destroying one culvert wouldn’t be enough—the water would just redirect into the other. They would need to destroy the entire drainage system here, closer to its source, to completely block them both. Her spirits fell.

  “Truitt, there’s no place to mix them. There’s no ledge to drop one from. And we won’t be able to place one and throw the other with any accuracy.”

  Rye studied the tunnel. The water was strong and swift as it roared into the culverts. But along the edges, smaller rivulets had carved shelves and grooves into the stone and earthen walls. Pools had formed in hollows where the water level had not yet filled so high as to spill into the main channel below. She placed her finger knuckle-deep in one hollow, and her eyes followed the tiny rivulet to its source. The underground storm water splashed and frothed relentlessly.

  “Maybe the current itself will mix it for us,” she said. “There’s a small pool here. We can fill it with one flask while emptying the other farther back at the source. If we’re lucky, we’ll be far enough away from the reaction.”

  “Folly would be proud,” Truitt said.

  But Rye’s hope diminished as she thought it through. One of them could fill the pool and flee down the culverts to safety. But the person who navigated deeper toward the Great Eel Pond and the water’s source couldn’t rush toward the explosion. And once the tunnel collapsed, both the culverts and the way back into the Spoke would be blocked. She bit her lip.

  “Truitt, only one of us can leave through the culverts. The other will need to find another way.”

  “So you stay here and empty your flask in this pool,” Truitt said. “I’ll take my flask back toward the pond.”

  Rye hesitated before speaking. “But we don’t know what’s back there. It may be too difficult to find another tunnel.”

  “The dark doesn’t frighten me, Rye,” Truitt said, placing his hands on her shoulders as if he could sense her concern. “The Spoke is my home. I’ll find my way out before it floods.”

  Truitt’s mismatched eyes held Rye’s own, and for a moment it was as if he could actually see into them.

  “Go straight to the Keep and look for me at the mouth of the sewers. I’ll wait for you there,” he reassured, and offered a smile. “Now tell me exactly what I need to do.”

  Rye carefully took Truitt’s hand in her own, then placed his fingers into the flowing water and gently guided them back.

  “Follow this little stream as far as you can,” she said quietly. “When you get there, whistle so I know you’re ready. You can whistle, right?”

  Truitt nodded. “Everyone can whistle. It’s just like blowing a kiss good-bye.”

  Rye could feel her cheeks blush.

  “Pour the flask I already gave you into the flowing water,” she said. “Then run. Folly says there is enough here to destroy a village street. It should bring down the tunnel and dam the culverts. After that, the Great Eel Pond will spill right into Drowning.”

  She hesitated, then finally loosened her grip on his hand.

  “Sounds easy enough.” Truitt said, reaching into a pocket of his coat.

  Rye’s eyes fell to the ground, and her nervous fingers went to work on her already well-picked nails.

  “Don’t be so worried,” Truitt said softly. “I’m not.” He pressed two items into her hands. “I’d hate to lose these. Hold on to them for me? One you might find useful. The other is for Malydia.”

  Rye felt the hard ridges of the Everything Key, then ran her thumb along the smooth lines of the tiny silver-framed
portrait of Truitt, Malydia, and their mother. She studied them between her fingers before looking up, but when she did, Truitt had already slipped away.

  It wasn’t long before she heard his high-pitched whistle over the churn of the current. Rye removed the flask Folly had given her and poured it into the pool. It shimmered like oil on the surface.

  Rye picked a culvert and fought through a rush of water that nearly knocked her off her feet, following the pinpoint of moonlight that grew larger and larger ahead. She made it out of the culvert and stumbled onto the abandoned sands of the beach, where the water raged past her and spilled into the darkness of the ocean beyond.

  There was a rumble from somewhere deep below, as if the earth itself had skipped too many meals. She felt a tremble under her feet, and she couldn’t be certain if it was the ground or her raw nerves. Then the first billow of smoke emerged from the culverts behind her, quickly becoming a storm cloud of dust. Rye coughed and ran to escape the choking fog. She splashed through the deep runoff, watching as the cloud drifted up and cut a dark swath through the sky. Rye looked down to her feet. The flow slowed around her oversized boots until it became just a trickle, then dried up altogether.

  Truitt, and Folly’s potions, had been successful. Rye followed the beach toward the dim glow of Village Drowning.

  The full moon disappeared as Rye slogged across Grim Green, and the clouds emptied just as she began her climb up the craggy hill that wore Longchance Keep like a jagged crown. The rain was punishing. Unforgiving. The type of rain that made her forget, momentarily, the weight of her worries as she struggled through sliding mud and focused only on getting dry.

  Fortunately, Rye found the gates flung open, and she hurried across the abandoned grounds. She passed the stables and the well house, then descended down a set of slick stone steps at the base of the Keep. They led to a platform over the vast chasm that served as the castle’s sewers. Overhead, openings in the facade drained swill down from the tower chambers into the sewer pits, while the platform could be used to toss carcasses and larger waste by hand. Rye knew that they emptied into the Spoke. And she knew that this was where Morningwig Longchance must have taken Truitt many years before.

  Her chest tightened so fiercely she could no longer breathe. Not for what happened long ago, but for what she saw now. The sewers had spilled up and over the sides, black water overflowing. The underground tunnels were now surely filled. And she was alone.

  Truitt had not made it out of the Spoke.

  Rye dropped to her knees. Rain ran down her face and dripped from her nose for a long while before she moved again.

  It was only the thought of her family and friends that gave Rye the strength to push on. She rushed down the corridors of Longchance Keep, but found them deserted. As she approached the Great Hall, she heard the echo of a waterfall. She paused to peek through the doors. The Great Hall was abandoned, and a torrent of rain poured through the hole in the roof, water splattering and flowing in rivulets along the cracks of the stone floor.

  Rye ran through the maze of hallways, searching for signs of life. In a familiar passageway, she came across the tapestry depicting the Descent tossed in a pile. The crack it had once concealed had since been battered and pummeled to rubble, and it was now large enough to step inside. A trail of coins littered the floor as if grabbed greedily by the handful. She didn’t bother to enter the Treasure Hole—whatever riches the Fork-Tongue Charmers might have left behind were useless to her now.

  Rye leaned against the wall in dismay. Clearly, none of the villagers or link children had made it back to the Keep. She wasn’t about to wait there idly if there was still anything she could do to help in Drowning, but as she gathered her strength and readied to leave, her memory of Truitt and his words became an anchor. Truitt had intended to return here and free Malydia, and after all he’d done, Rye owed it to him to see those wishes through.

  Malydia might not be in the towers or halls, but there was still one area of the Keep she hadn’t yet searched.

  The torch-lined labyrinth of cells was deserted except for the ghosts of those who’d once dwelled in the dungeons of Longchance Keep. Rye had little fear of the dead anymore; she’d long since learned that it was the living who were far more fearsome. But a sense of dread grew when her calls for Malydia went unanswered except by the echoes of Rye’s own voice. She descended as deep as the catacombs would allow, until she finally reached an ominous black portal in the floor. Below it lay the deepest, darkest dungeon of Longchance Keep. Rye had been in there once before, and didn’t welcome a return trip.

  The portal’s handle was secured with a thick but simple lock, and for a moment Rye worried that she might never be able to open it. Then her hand went to her chest, where the Everything Key hung from her neck. She removed it and inserted it into the lock, taking a deep breath as it turned with a click.

  It took all of Rye’s might to heave open the heavy portal at her feet, and when she did, the stench almost knocked her onto her back. She covered her face and leaned over the edge. The sound below was unmistakable and all too familiar. Water. Rye knew there was a secret entrance to the Spoke hidden in the deepest, darkest dungeon. With the Spoke now flooded, it must have filled the dungeon too.

  “Malydia?” Rye whispered. Again, no response.

  “Malydia,” she called louder, and thrust her torch over the opening. It reflected off the deepening water below. “It’s Rye. Are you down there?”

  The ghoul that sprang from the depths was like nothing she had seen before. It was as white as a corpse and its two heads were covered in long, wet, black hair. Coal eyes blinked in pain and it thrashed its skeletal arms to shield itself from the torchlight.

  Rye leaped away from the opening in shock. Fortunately the lowest cell was too deep for it to reach her.

  “Girl,” came its dry voice from the pit. “Return this instant.”

  “There’s no one here,” Rye said, unconvincingly.

  “Quickly,” the voice rasped. “The water’s rising.”

  Rye carefully leaned over the edge, angling the torch so she could see what lay below. The ghoul twisted his neck and averted his sensitive eyes, but Rye could now see him better.

  His clothes had rotted to rags, and his beard had grown long and wild. Months in the deepest, darkest dungeon had rendered him almost unrecognizable. But Rye knew him well.

  It was Morningwig Longchance.

  And the imprisoned Earl had not grown a second head from his emaciated shoulders. Malydia’s arms were wrapped around his neck, and she clung to his back so that she might not sink below rising water that now met his chest. Only the Earl’s unusually tall stature had kept them from being completely submerged.

  Rye blinked at the strange scene in disbelief.

  “Don’t just stand there,” he barked. “Help us.”

  It seemed that Longchance’s time in the forsaken pit had done little to improve his temperament.

  “How?” Rye asked. “I have no rope. There’s no ladder.”

  The Earl growled, jutting his chin upward to avoid swallowing the rising spill. “Just my luck—my rescuer is a helpless imbecile. Here, take Malydia.”

  Rye reached down, and with a last burst of energy, Longchance lifted Malydia up and clear from the water, extending his arms as high as he could so that Rye was able to snag a handful of her sopping clothes. Malydia’s fingers clawed the edge of the opening. Her mismatched eyes seemed vacant as they met Rye’s and she clambered up on her stomach. Malydia turned and they both leaned over the edge, dangling their hands as far into the pit as they could.

  Longchance groaned and stretched, his gaunt hands clutching Rye’s, then Malydia’s, as he struggled to spit water from his mouth. Try as she might, Rye couldn’t budge him, and she felt her body dragging into the hole.

  “Longchance, wait! We can’t lift you!”

  The Earl’s overgrown nails dug into Rye’s wrists as he desperately struggled to pull himself up. Instead of t
rying to help, Rye found herself fighting to break free. Next to her, Malydia shrieked and kicked at the floor to keep from being dragged back down herself.

  “Enough,” Longchance said, and released them. His voice was resigned. Rye and Malydia fell back, breathing hard.

  “Malydia, take this,” he said slowly, sputtering water as he pressed his face above the surface. He reached up, and in his fingers extended a thick gold ring, topped with onyx and sapphire gemstones. The stones were carved in the shape of a clenched fist and coiled hagfish—the Crest of the House of Longchance.

  Malydia hesitated, then reached down and took it between her own fingers.

  “You are a good daughter, Malydia. With this ring I bestow upon you all of my land and title. Henceforth you shall be Lady Malydia Longchance, Countess of Drowning.” His eyes flicked to Rye. “And should anyone doubt your claim, Riley O’Chanter shall be your witness.”

  The Earl’s lip curled. “Not my first choice, but at present, we are without any other option.”

  Malydia blinked at the hefty ring in her palm, then at her father.

  He lay back, his arms floating akimbo like a weary lord flopping into bed for a long slumber. “I wish you luck,” he said in a whisper. “Whether the title shall be a gift or a curse, only you can say.”

  The water filled the deepest, darkest dungeon, and Morningwig Longchance’s face disappeared beneath the surface.

  Rye sat with Malydia in the torchlight for a long while. Malydia still hadn’t moved or spoken; she just stared at the ring in her palm. Rye didn’t know how long Malydia had been locked away. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to have been trapped down there with the Earl. But she did have a sense of what it was like to see your own father sink helplessly beneath the surface. As horrible as the Earl was, she was certain Malydia must be in turmoil. And now she had no choice but to share even worse news.

  “Malydia,” Rye said quietly. Malydia’s mismatched eyes didn’t move from the ring. “I need to tell you something.”

  Rye hesitated, the words nearly as difficult to say as they would be to hear. “It’s Truitt. He’s . . . not coming. The Spoke’s been flooded, and Truitt was in it. He sacrificed himself for the village . . . for us.”