All That Lives Must Die (49 page)

Louis passed the guards and triple-locked outer door of the keep without notice, and glided up the stairs.

The map room would be on the third floor, where her winged insect spies brought the latest intelligence from the field.

He set one finger on the living wood of the map room’s tiny door.

No pulse beyond. It was empty.

He then undid the puzzle knots that would have given any mathematician specializing in topology psychotic fits. He slipped inside and ever so carefully eased the door shut.

Louis was grateful for the cool darkness within. The only light twinkled from the map table in the center of the chamber. From the decided lack of echoes, he felt of the dimensions of this place were larger than he recalled.

No matter. He tiptoed closer and saw the snaking Laudanum River and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, smoldering jungle and patches of black silk draped over fields that marked the locations of Mephistopheles’ armies in the Poppy Lands.

He also noted with great interest that a game of Towers had been set up alongside the map table, white and black cubes stacked and arranged to fight, and a handful already removed from play.

How intriguing.

Torches whooshed to life—thirteen fiery brands about the perimeter of the room—each held by a Champion of the Blood Rose, Sealiah’s personal guard.

Sitting upon a tiny throne, orchids twinning along her arms, was Queen Sealiah in armor that appeared as if it had been painted upon her body—curves of dark silver that flashed with light and shadows and reflections of fire . . . and pulsing a nacreous green from the emerald set upon her exposed throat. She was all the more lovely because her features also smoldered with the angry passion that came from bloodlust . . . and lust . . . and anticipation of the kill.

She held a sliver of dark-matter steel that had existed before the mortal Earth had been dust gathering in void: Saliceran—the broken sword. Its blade wept poison from its Damascus metal folds that had sent many to a painful demise. She pointed the jagged tip at his neck.

“Welcome, Great Deceiver,” Sealiah said in a mocking tone. “Welcome to your death.”

               56               

TWO MORE PIECES IN PLAY

Sealiah, Queen of the Poppy Lands, raised one finger, and her thirteen personal guards set their torches in wall sconces and lowered their rifle lances at Louis. They would not miss.

“Not a word from you,” she cautioned Louis.

She held her rage in check only because she felt the smug satisfaction of being right.

Louis had come. He had tripped but a single of her black widow warning lines that crisscrossed every square meter of her castles’ walls. Even without the warning, though, she knew he would eventually have tried to enter
this
room. It was too much of a temptation for one so far fallen from glory.

And for once, the crowned, clown Master of Deception had been caught red-handed. Perhaps weakened by his association with too many mortals? Or had he only allowed himself to been captured . . . part of some more intricate ruse?

Nothing was ever what it seemed with this one.

Louis sighed and nodded his head in the slightest of bows. The rogue even had the temerity to smile!

She admired such daring.
Almost
enough to forget he had come to betray her and sell her battle plans to Mephistopheles.

Would the slightest of dalliances hurt? Louis was handsome and cunning once more—all the things she remembered that had once attracted her to him. And he was never more attractive than when in the midst of his duplicity.

But such thoughts made her vulnerable. She exhaled. If she took advantage of his weakened position for her pleasures, she would be exposed in their intimacy . . . and he would take advantage of her as well.

Perhaps mutual vulnerability was the very definition of “intimate.”

Louis opened his mouth.

Sealiah held up one hand and stood, keeping the jagged end of Saliceran pointed at his throat. She walked over to him.

Louis shut his mouth, no longer smiling.

“Your words are too sharp,” she whispered. “So I shall not give you the chance to cut me.”

She motioned and three of her champions searched him. They found wallet, cell phone, handkerchief, poker chips, dice, and bottle of Irish single malt whiskey—but no weapons.

“His cloak,” she said. This was a game for her now. Certainly Louis would not be here without tricks up his sleeves.

Her champions ripped it off and examined it: ordinary black wool.

Louis held up his hands in mock surrender.

As if this would make her think him defenseless. She knew better than to fall for his simpleton’s misdirections.

She looked from his hands, to his animated angular face, to the floor—to the flickering shadows cast by her guards . . . to the decided
lack
of any shadow attached to Louis’s feet.

“Of course,” she said, “you would not risk coming with it. But where I wonder does your shadow
now
roam?”

Louis shrugged, and the simpleton look of innocence on his face told her no answers would be soon forthcoming.

“So be it.” She moved to his back and raised Saliceran.

One thrust and she could forget Louis. That would be best.

Under normal circumstances, having him underfoot was dangerous. In wartime, leaving Louis alive could be a fatal oversight.

And yet why did she still imagine him joined with her? Was that
so
impossible? Him by her side as Urakabarameel once had stood?

Yes.

And a thousand times no.

It had been so long since she trusted another. This above all else was why the Post twins fascinated her: brother and sister, part Infernal, and yet they worked together. It was such an obvious strength, something her kind had long forgotten.

She lowered Saliceran (although the blade twisted in her grasp, sensing her equivocation—and sensing that it would not taste Infernal blood tonight).

“Take him to the Well of Mirages,” she told her Captain. “Set three guards to watch him at all times. Have them stuff beeswax in their ears so he may not trick them with his silvered reptile tongue.”

The Captain grabbed Louis by his shoulders.

“I yet have a use for you,” she said.

Louis’s smile returned—that smirk all men don when coming to the
wrong
conclusion.

Sealiah was all too happy to deflate his zeppelin-sized ego. “Not for that, my un landed and unimportant cousin. I would not stoop so low for so quick a snack.”

His unassailable grin faded.

“I have another use for you . . . involving your family.”

Louis eyed her with suspicion, and he twisted in her Captain’s grasp. “Eliot is mine,” he growled. “Leave him to me.”

The Captain struck the back of his head with a mailed fist, and Louis fell to his knees.

Sealiah laughed. It was good to see him so clueless. There was no greater satisfaction than hoodwinking one’s relations. She ran a razor-edged fingernail down his chin . . . careful not to break the skin because the scent of his blood would drive her crazy.

“Not Eliot, my dear Dark,” she whispered. “I already have the boy well in hand.”

Louis’s face registered confusion for one instant, then crystallized into an unreadable mask. He was quickly analyzing and recalculating his plots.

But too late. The Deceiver was no longer playing in this game.

“There’ll be none of your usual tricks,” she said. “The Well of Mirages has once more been repaired and will not bend or fold to your will. Glow fungus covers its walls, so there are no shadows to slip through, either.”
53

Sealiah ordered her Captain, “Make him comfortable.”

The Captain nodded, understanding that she meant the opposite. He dragged Louis off, and the Deceiver did not even struggle.

In fact, his smile returned.

Perhaps she should have skewered him while she was in the mood. Well, if he turned into his usual annoyance, she could always fill the Well of Mirages with molten lead. Let him grin at that!

But such pleasantries aside, she had more serious matters to consider. Time was short, and Mephistopheles moved closer with every heartbeat—to either destroy her or be destroyed by her trap.

Sealiah turned to the map table and examined the pieces in play. Mephistopheles’s shadows were near the station house. A few more hours and he would cut the rail lines.

Her trap was not merely the hidden army within Doze Torres. Even those forces would only make the final battle more bloody; their two sides were too evenly matched.

Two more pieces have yet to be brought onto the board—figuratively and literally.

The timing was delicate; she had to wait until the last possible moment to maximize the drama. That was a necessary risk. Sealiah knew the hearts of men and how to manipulate them, but she also had to make up the mind of a young woman—and that was a much more difficult task.

She withdrew the letter she had written weeks earlier, and made sure all was in proper order and her signature and seal were intact. All as it should be. No need to let some fussy Paxington protocol stop her greatest ploy.

She gestured at the ceiling, and a tiny mouse-tailed bat spiraled down. It lit onto her cupped hand.

She rolled the letter into the tube fixed to the creature’s leg. “Take this to the Ticket Master. Caution him to tamper not with the seal. He would not wish to irritate the intended recipient. Few survive the disapproval of Miss Westin.”

The bat chirped once, understanding.

She tossed it into the air and the bat fluttered out the window.

So much in balance. Forces of destruction and love and betrayal orbiting her the likes she had not seen since the War in Heaven. She smiled, tasting the anticipation of victory on her lips.

Sealiah turned to her guards and, with a nod, singled out their shortest member.

Her champion came to her, kneeling on one knee, head bowed.

Sealiah gestured for the spiked helmet to be removed.

Jezebel shook loose her platinum curls. Her eyes burned with hate and she quickly lowered her gaze. “He is dangerous, My Queen. I beg you; give me the order to destroy the Deceiver.”

Sealiah smiled. “Not yet, my pet.”

She appreciated her protégée’s viciousness. Under normal circumstances, she would have agreed with her. It was an instinctual reaction: erase one’s smartest enemies when the opportunity presented itself, and allow the stupid ones to live to breed inferior competition.

But instinct changed and evolved or a species perished. Even for the Infernals. Especially facing the new order heralded by the Post twins.

Sealiah lifted Jezebel’s face. The girl’s shattered bones had mended, and her battle-won bruises all but faded. Only the slightest imperfection marred her features, but for what Sealiah needed her for next, her broken doll had to be perfect.

“We must make you ready.” The bones would have to be rebroken and properly aligned. Sealiah brushed a finger over her cheek.

Jezebel stiffened and stood straighter, and a flicker of horror flashed across her features.

“Are you ready for the next act of our little drama?”

“Yes, My Queen,” Jezebel relied. “I will perish for the cause if so ordered.”

“Very good,” Sealiah whispered, “because that may be precisely what I require.”

53
. The magic (or wishing) well is common in fairy tales, often depicted as granting three wishes, dispensing healing waters, or giving (all-too-often unheeded) advice to young heroes. The earliest stories of these wells, however, contain sinister forces: trolls or imprisoned spirits eager to pull in unsuspecting children. Many of the tales relate that these wells were conduits to hell or the Fairy Lands. Coins were dropped into their depths in the hopes of appeasing the evil within.
Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 5, Core Myths (Part 2)
. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.

               57               

HOW TO FOIL A DEATH TRAP

Fiona stood in the middle of a war zone.

Not entirely unexpected . . . not after the last few times when Mr. Ma had ramped up the difficulty of the obstacle course, but this was ridiculous!

She ducked—a jet of flame roared over her head.

Eliot knelt next to her and pointed his guitar at the pipe hissing fire. He twanged and held a single note, made it waver and warble and growl with feedback.

The pipe sputtered and sparked. It exploded, extinguishing the flames.

She twisted the shutoff valve closed.

Fiona wasn’t sure where Eliot had gotten his new instrument (or, for that matter, how an electric guitar made so much sound without any wires or an amplifier). He’d just showed up at the start of gym class today with the thing. No explanations.

Time for question and answers later . . . if they made it through today’s class. She scanned the course, trying to reorient.

They were thirty feet off the ground. The ramp she crouched upon was aluminum, fireproof thankfully (one of the modest safety considerations Mr. Ma had allowed for his reconstructed course), but the surface reflected heat so she felt as if she were in an oven.

Mitch was at the top of the ramp. So was Amanda.

Twin waters cannon pelted her teammates with high-pressure streams—forcing them into a corner to keep from getting blasted off the edge.

Mitch tried to shield Amanda from the worst of it, but they both looked as if they were drowning.

“Are you sure this is the
easiest
way?” she yelled at Eliot over the noise.

Eliot gave her that
I know what I’m doing
look, but nonetheless strummed his guitar, turned back and forth, and nodded his head.

Fiona squinted through the smoke and mist. Lines of fire crisscrossed the obstacle course. She didn’t see any trace of Team Falcon . . . or how far ahead of Scarab they’d gotten.

Team Falcon was the number one team at Paxington. They’d taken an early lead on the course—and then disappeared.

But there’d been no gunshot signaling the end of the match . . . so Scarab still was in the game.

“We’ve got to free them up!” Eliot yelled and pointed to Mitch and Amanda.

Fiona nodded, but stayed where she was, thinking. She didn’t want to rush up there and have the cannon turn on them—get knocked off this slick-with-water ramp.

She traced the water pipes as they snaked back around the supports.

She leaned over the ramp and with care looped her rubber band about the two-inch water main. She eased back, focused her mind along the edge—made the cut.

The pipe ruptured.

Steel twisted into a jagged flower. Pressurized water sprayed high into the air and arced onto the field below.

“Fiona!” someone called from above.

She shielded her eyes from the sun. Jeremy and Sarah were twenty feet above her on the next level. Jeremy’s hands were pitch black.

“We’re stuck,” Sarah cried. “Everything up here is covered with tar! You’ll have to go around.”

For the bazillionth time today, Fiona wished Jezebel were here. Infernal schemes or not—even with all the drama between her at Eliot—it would’ve been worth it. She could’ve easily gotten up there, freed the Covingtons, and then they’d have three team members close to the top. Almost a win.

But no use wishing. It was a fact Scarab was down its best player. Fiona’s job was to figure out how to win anyway with only seven.

Seven: Her and Eliot . . . Jeremy and Sarah . . . Mitch and Amanda . . .

She turned to Eliot. At the same time they both asked, “Where’s Robert?”

“Here!” Robert called. He extended a hand up and over the edge of the ramp; Eliot then helped Robert onto the steaming aluminum surface.

“Are you okay?” Fiona crouched next to him.

She wanted to touch his arm, just to reassure him, but with all the weirdness between them lately . . . and all the stuff happening between her and Mitch, she decided not to.

“I’m just peachy,” Robert muttered. He slicked back his wet hair. “Nice plan—charge straight into a trap.”

She glared at him. “I didn’t see it. And Eliot said it was the way.”

“It
is
the way,” Eliot replied, annoyed. “I keep telling you.”

“So we keep going,” Fiona said, and then to Robert, “and try not to fall off this time, okay?”

“I didn’t fall.” Robert frowned and his brows knit together, uncharacteristic worry lines creased his forehead. “But we’ve got to go back.” He pointed over the edge. “Team Falcon is there. They’re down.”

Fiona stood and set her hands on her hips. “If they’re down, isn’t that a good thing?”

Robert shook his head. “They cut a gas line to stop the fire . . . and there’s no shutoff valve. They’ve passed out.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she whispered.

Robert narrowed his eyes. “Come on. They might be dead already. I need your help. I can’t do it myself.”

Mitch and Amanda trotted to them. “What’s going on?” Mitch looked back and forth between her and Robert.

“New plan,” Eliot told him.

Fiona’s face burned—not from anger, but from shame that she had actually considered moving ahead and capturing their flag . . . at least getting four of them up there, instead of going back to help people who were dying.

This was not a war. This was just a class. Everything at Paxington was warping her sense of right and wrong.

“Okay,” she said. “New plan.”

Fiona figured they’d been on the gym for about five minutes (she made a note to buy a shockproof, waterproof watch after this). So there’d be time to do the right thing
and
win. But there was no time for Team Falcon if they were breathing methane—so they were the priority.

“Robert, Eliot, and Amanda get down there,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you. Go!”

The boys nodded, Eliot slung his guitar over his back like a samurai sword, and they clambered over the side.

To Mitch she said: “Get up to Jeremy and Sarah. They would have transformed that tar if they could have, so something’s stopping them. Get them free, and then get down to help us.”

Fiona tried to communicate all her concern and her confidence in Mitch with a nod, and failed miserably, she was sure, but Mitch smiled anyway.

“I’m on it,” he said.

Amanda looked at her feet. “I can’t go down there,” she mumbled. “Not near the gas.”

Was Amanda really so much of a coward that she’d let people die? Maybe she was more shaken from those water cannon than Fiona had realized—almost getting knocked off the course and then nearly drowning.

“Okay,” she told her, “go help Mitch.”

Fiona scrutinized the course, a lattice of supports, ramps, stairs, and moving clockwork parts—and the plumes of water and fire that filled the air, mixed smoke and mist . . . and then she glanced down. Somewhere down there a cloud of natural gas billowed and expanded, complexly invisible . . . and lethal.

The encyclopedic part of Fiona’s mind clicked on. Natural gas was primarily methane, and lighter than air, so it would be rising. If it didn’t ignite off the open flames, it’d displace the oxygen and asphyxiate them all.

Either way—
this
was not the place to mull over what to do next.

She eased over the edge and climbed down.

Methane was odorless, but the gas companies added mercaptans as a safety feature so it smelled like sulfur.
54

She hesitated, only a second, but the fear washed over and through her all over again.

No. She had to do this.

That’s what Mr. Ma had been teaching her in the Force of Arms class—to push past doubt and fear on the battlefield—to keep thinking and trying and moving even if it looked like you were going to die.

She continued down. The fear was there, but she could deal with it.

She stepped onto a bamboo platform.

Eliot and Robert were waiting.

So was Team Falcon. All of them passed out (or dead, it was hard to tell) on the floor ten paces away. Near them, but too deep to reach in a tangle of pipes, a ruptured gas line hissed.

Eliot was on one knee and strummed his guitar. Robert stood by him. The notes were a simple scale, but they make the air swell and ripple about them.

Fiona got dizzy.

She ignored the urge to run as fast and far away as she could from the danger, and instead joined Robert and Eliot.

The stink cleared. The air within the circle Eliot had created smelled sweet.

“Can you make this area of clean air bigger?” she whispered. “Or move closer?”

“Methane concentration too high closer,” Eliot said, through gritted teeth. “Trying to expand the circle from here. Still getting used to the steel strings. The methane in the air is . . . slippery.”

Fiona stopped asking questions. Eliot had tried to explain the intricacies of his music, and it’d been as enlightening a square trying to explain “corners” to a circle.

Robert looked at her expectantly, and then stepped toward the fallen members of Team Falcon. “They can’t wait any longer.”

Fiona grabbed his arm. If Robert charged in and tried to pull them out one by one, and she’d end up rescuing him, too.

“Agreed,” she said, “but that way is too slow. She nudged Eliot. “Strings?”

Eliot paused a beat. The odor of sulfur rushed back. He ripped off a tiny envelope taped to the back of his guitar and handed it to her. After Lady Dawn had busted a string, he always carried spares.

Eliot went back to playing. The air cooled and the noxious odor again vanished.

Fiona took two strings from the envelope, uncoiled them, stared along their lengths—and the steel wire stiffened straight.

She looked up into the lattice of the course and spotted Sarah, Jeremy, Mitch, and Amanda as they clambered to a pole and slid down to safety. Good. Four less lives to worry about.

“We do this my way,” Fiona said. “Get the rest of them down all at the same time—fast.”

Robert nodded. “A twenty-foot drop.” He looked over the platform that held Team Falcon. “Four supports,” he said. “I’ll take the closest. You get into position near the far two.”

“Then we go together.”

Robert held her gaze. Emotions flashed in his normally too-cool-to-let-anything-show eyes. There was courage and determination . . . and worry.

At that moment he had never looked like more of a hero to her, and she knew that she still cared for him.

Fiona looked away. There was no time to feel for Robert now, though.

She took a huge breath and ran.

She jumped over the prone bodies of her classmates and stopped on the far side of the platform—between two telephone poles that held up the bamboo floor.

Robert darted to the other corner. He dropped to all fours, stared at the foot-thick posts, lashing, and bamboo . . . and drew back his fist.

He struck.

The wood shattered.

Robert rolled back as the platform, now free from the support, dipped toward the mangled corner.

The brass knuckles he’d worn when he’d displayed such feats of strength before weren’t there. Robert had done that
bare
fisted. He was stronger, and tougher, and it wasn’t just from the training they were getting in Mr. Ma’s class. Something else was going on with him.

Robert knelt by the post on the far side and looked to her.

Fiona, still holding her breath, nodded.

She held one stiffened steel string in each hand. She looked along one, then the other; the metal glistened. She fixed them both in her thoughts, imagined them thinner and thinner until their leading edges were so fine and sharp that they flickered in and out of existence.

She lashed out—both arms at once, angled to intercept the floor, ropes, and two supporting telephone poles.

Robert punched.

It sounded like shotgun fire—three shells simultaneously blasted as wood cracked, bamboo fractured, and ropes snapped.

The platform hitched and dropped.

Fiona fell along with it and lost her focus. The bamboo floor rushed up and swatted her. She crumpled—hard—and bit her tongue. The edges of her vision blurred.

She spit and shook her head to clear her confusion.

Dust filled the air, but it no longer stank of sulfur.

She shakily stood and saw Robert dragging two Team Falcon boys away by their feet.

Eliot dropped down, too, and helped by picking up and carrying off one of the unconscious girls.

Fiona grabbed the nearest limp body, a boy, and pulled him by his armpits to the relative safety of the grass—far enough from the jungle gym so if it blew up there was a decent chance they wouldn’t all get incinerated.

Mitch, Amanda, and Jeremy and Sarah (both covered in black splotches) appeared as well, and got the remaining members of Team Falcon away from the danger.

Fiona checked the pulse of the boy at her feet. It was weak, but steady. Would there be brain damage?

How could Mr. Ma do such a dangerous thing?

Robert started mouth-to-mouth, and got one boy breathing again.

The other Falcon team members groaned, threw up, and slowly regained consciousness.

“That was too close,” Eliot whispered.

Jeremy glanced at his wristwatch. “Saving these folk be all well and good,” he murmured, “but there be three minutes. We can still get the flag.”

A gunshot cracked through the air.

The arcs of water and fire on the obstacle course stopped and only swirls of smoke and fog remained.

Mr. Ma strode onto the field. He clicked his stopwatch, made two marks on his clipboard, and then announced: “That is time.”

Fiona approached him. She felt dizzy again, her feet uncertain. Maybe she’d gotten a lungful of that gas . . . but
something
definitely felt wrong.

“Mr. Ma, there has to be a mistake,” she said. “We have three minutes.”

“I do not make such mistakes, Miss Post.” He narrowed his dark eyes to slits.

“No, sir,” Fiona said. There was no way she was going to say he was wrong. She glanced back to Jeremy, who looked incredulous, shook his head, and pointed emphatically at his watch.