“Either in the tunnels or dead,” said Scatter. “Seen Lank head down when the first catapult threw.”
“The Lady?”
“Down there, I reckon.”
Shouts sounded outside. I could hear them plain through the many gaps in the walls.
Evis came charging up, trailing smoke and ashes. “We can still reach the other tunnel,” he said, coughing. I’d never seen a halfdead cough before. “Need to go now, though, while they reload.”
Darla’s grip on my hand tightened.
“Forget the tunnels. They’d just dig us out. Got thirty artists in there too. Can’t just leave them there.”
“Finder, listen to me. We need to get underground. Right now.”
“Take your people and go,” I said. “I wish you luck. But we’re not taking to the tunnels.”
“You’d go where the Corpsemaster won’t dare?”
“Can you think of a better hiding place?”
Evis snarled, muttered something to Victor and Sara, and stalked off toward the gallery. He did not take the door that led to the second tunnel. He did give it a damned good kick as he passed.
Darla found me a sooty half-smile. “Please tell me you’ve thought this out.”
“In detail,” I lied. I grabbed her briefly, held her close. “Trust me,” I whispered. Forty pairs of eyes looked to me for salvation.
“There’s another way out,” I shouted. “It’s magical. It’s dangerous. You can follow us, or try your luck with the other tunnel. We’re leaving. Keep up if you can.”
I grabbed Darla’s hand and charged.
They followed, one and all.
I hoped I wasn’t merely adding to the numbers of the dead.
Chapter Twenty-One
The gallery was largely intact, though the ceiling sagged and the walls bulged and a steady rain of plaster fell.
The artists, bless them, still slept. I set Scatter and his fellows to moving them out of the way while Evis and the halfdead darted to and fro, arranging the paintings in a rough circle about the room.
I took the canvas I’d painted.
Mama was grasping every bird she owned. Gertriss was muttering with her, her voice too low to hear. Darla held Buttercup in a tight hug and stayed close by my side.
Evis and his halfdead finished arranging the paintings.
“Whatever it is you plan to do, it had better not take long.”
“It shouldn’t.” I moved to the middle of the room, kicked a fallen easel aside, and laid my canvas on the floor.
The strange symbol I’d left upon it did nothing. The other paintings followed suit. Outside, we heard the thunder of hooves, and shouting, and the smell of smoke was thick in the air.
“Dammit, Finder, hurry this up,” muttered Evis.
The canvases watched us, unmoved.
“Knock knock,” I said, aloud.
Ropes creaked and groaned, the wall beside up began to tilt. I hadn’t heard the grappling hooks hit, hadn’t heard them swat the oxen, hadn’t heard them start to pull down the damaged walls.
But I was hearing it now.
“Me again,” I said. Darla locked her eyes on mine. She smiled.
“You said you would open a door for us. It’s now or never. They’re about to pull the House down on top of us.”
Nothing.
I put my right hand on the symbol.
“Please let us in”
The soldiers outside fired their iron weapons again, in a tight-spaced volley. The wall to my right erupted in splinters and stones, and Darla opened her mouth to draw in a gasp, and Mama opened hers to shout something.
Mama’s word was never born. Darla’s gasp went unbreathed. The splinters and the stones that erupted from the breached wall simply halted, hanging in mid-air, stilled, engulfed in newborn flames, chaos frozen, gone inexplicably peaceful.
And then it all simply faded away. All of it-the walls, the cracked ceiling, the tangle of easels and chairs and stools. Painters and halfdead and Markhats remained, surrounded for a moment by mists, and then we were somewhere else.
It was bright and sunny. Birds sang. Butterflies flitted past, riding a breeze that was scented with honeysuckle. There was a marble floor below, and a wide blue sky above, and lush rows of green ferns set around a wide shallow fountain.
The water in the fountain burbled and splashed. Great gold fish the size of dinner plates swam in it, and when they saw me they poked their heads through the surface and began to speak to one another in chirps and whistles and quick wet laughs.
Behind me were rows of easels, exactly like those I’d just left behind. On each easel was a portrait, and when I saw them I shivered and the crowd of fish whistled and hooted.
Darla was portrayed on one canvas. She was standing in the doorway to my room at Werewilk, her hands on her hips, her face in that bemused expression she’d worn the instant before she’d spoken when she’d walked in on Buttercup’s ill-fated first bath.
The artist had somehow captured that twinkle of razor-sharp wit in her eyes, and the devastating humor in the lift of her eyebrows.
A portrait of Evis was beside her, gaunt and tragic, his halfdead face finally able to reveal the compassion and charm that refused to die within him.
Mama was there too, squat and stalwart, those tiny Hog eyes piercing right through me even though they were mere dabs of paint.
Gertriss, in her canvas, stood half-concealed behind the trunk of a bloodoak. Only half of her face showed, and that was dappled with shadow.
And Scatter, and all the rest, each portrait the work of a master.
Only Buttercup and I were missing.
“Thank you,” I said aloud. I realized I’d been holding my breath, and I let it out in a long loud sigh. “For bringing us to safety, I mean.”
There was no reply.
Buttercup came prancing up. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the fountain before leaping barefoot within it and splashing merrily about. The fish turned from discussing me and began to play some intricate game of chase with Buttercup instead.
I waited for a long time before speaking again. I wandered through the easels, taking them in, hoping with all my soul that the people portrayed were indeed safe and only out of sight.
Buttercup squealed and splashed, and for the first time I heard her speak. Her words were foreign, but the fish knew them, and responded in kind as their game went on.
“The people up there want to take her, and use her,” I said. “They think they can either free you, or free you of certain of your belongings. I myself have no such intentions.”
“I know what they want.” The voice came from nowhere, and everywhere. It was female, and when it spoke, Buttercup shrieked and danced and put her hands toward the sky. The fish whirled and vanished in a sudden spray of silver water and fine golden scales.
“Then you know the kind of danger she’s in,” I said. “That we’re all in, as long as we keep her from them.”
