The Runaway Queen

Think. He had to think. And he knew that Marcel was watching him think. “If you insist,” Magnus replied. “But, as I said, I was still working. I just had a few finishing touches left to do. She still has a few unfortunate habits left over from her previous life. All of those Versailles mannerisms—there are so many of them —they all had to be stitched in like fine embroidery. And I hadn’t yet signed the work. I do like to sign my work.”

“How long would this take?”

“Oh, not long at all. I could bring her back tomorrow . . .”

“I would prefer she stayed here. After all, how long does it take you to sign your work?” Marcel asked with a light smile.

“It can take time,” Magnus said, responding with his own knowing smile.

“I have an exquisite signature.”

“While I deal in used goods, I do prefer ones in pristine condition. Don’t be long about it. Henri, Charles . . . take

Madam upstairs and put her in the blue room. Let Monsieur Bane complete his signature. We are looking forward to seeing the final product shortly.”

“Of course,” Magnus said.

Slowly he followed the prostrate queen and the darklings back inside.

After Henri and Charles put the queen on the bed, Magnus locked the door and slid a large wardrobe to block it. Then he threw open the shutters. The blue r oom was a third-floor room, a sheer drop down to the receiving courtyard.

That was the only way out.

Magnus allowed himself a few moments of swearing before shaking his head and taking stock of his situation again. He could probably get himself out of this, but to get both himself and the queen . . . and to return the queen to

Axel . . .

He looked out the window again, to the ground below. Most of the vampires had gone back inside. A few servants and darklings remained to greet the carriages, though. Down would not work, but up . . .

Up, in a balloon, for instance.

Magnus was certain of one thing—this work was going to be very difficult. The balloon itself was on the other side of

Paris. He reached out with his mind and found what he was looking for. It was rolled up still, in the gazebo in the Bois de Boulogne. He rolled it to the grass, he willed it to inflate, glamoured it invisible, and then he lifted it from the ground. He felt it lift, and he guided it up, over the trees of the park, over the houses and the streets, carefully avoiding the spires of the churches and cathedrals, over the river. It was strongly buoyant and was pulled easily by the wind. It wanted to go straight up into the sky, but Magnus held on.

At some point he would run dry of power, and then he would lose consciousness. He could only hope that this would happen late enough in the process, but there was really no telling.

As the balloon drew nearer, he did his best to glamour it completely, making it invisible to even the vampires just below. He watched it come to the window, and as carefully as he could, he guided it close. He leaned out as far as he could and caught hold of it. The basket had a small door, which he managed to get open.

When one steals a flying balloon and animates it to fly over Paris, one should, ideally, have some idea how said balloon normally works. Magnus had never been interested in the mechanics of the balloon—his only interest was that the mundanes could now fly in a colorful piece of silk. So when he discovered that the basket contained a fire, he was dismayed.

Also, the queen herself was probably not heavy, but her dress—and whatever she had concealed or sewn into the dress for her escape—certainly was, and

Magnus had no energy to spare. He snapped his fingers, and the queen woke.

Just in time he drew a finger across her lips and silenced the scream that was about to come from her mouth.

“Your

Majesty,” he said, the exhaustion weighing his voice. “There is no time to explain, and no time for introductions. What I need you to do is —as quickly as possible—step out of that window. You cannot see it, but there is something out there that will catch you. But we must be quick.”

The queen opened her mouth and, finding that she could not speak, began to run around the room, picking up objects and hurling them at Magnus. Magnus cringed as vases hit the wall next to him.

He managed to lash the balloon to the window with the curtain and grabbed the queen. She began to pummel Magnus.

Her fists were small and she was clearly unused to this sort of activity, but her blows were not entirely ineffective. He had very little strength left, and she seemed to be running on raw fear, which quicksilvered her veins.

“Your Majesty,” he hissed. “You must stop. You must listen to me. Axel—”

On the word “Axel,” she froze. This was all he needed. He shoved her backward out the window. The balloon, bumped back by the force, shifted a foot or so away from the window—so she landed half in, half out. She hung there, terrified and grasping at something she could feel but not see, her slippered feet kicking into the air and smacking into the side of the building. Magnus had to accept a few flurried kicks in the chest and face before he was able to roll her over into the basket. Her skirts tumbled over her head, and the Queen of France was reduced to a pile of cloth and two flailing legs. He jumped into the basket himself, closed the basket door, and released the hold on the basket with a deep sigh. The balloon went straight up, shooting above the rooftops. The queen had managed to flip herself over and scramble to her knees. She touched the basket, her eyes wide with a childlike wonder. She drew herself up slowly and peered over the side of the basket, took one look at the view below, and fainted dead away.

“Someday,” Magnus said, looking at the crumpled royal person at his feet, “I must write my memoirs.”

This was not the balloon ride Magnus had hoped for.

For a start, the balloon was low and suicidally slow, and seemed to like nothing more than dropping suddenly onto roofs and chimneys. The queen was shifting and groaning on the floor of the basket, causing it to sway back and forth in a nausea-inducing way. An owl made a sudden assault. And the sky was dark, so dark that Magnus had largely no idea where he was going. The queen moaned a bit and lifted her head.

“Who are you?” she asked weakly.

“A friend of a friend,” Magnus replied.

“What are we—”

“It’s best if you don’t ask, Your

Majesty. You really don’t want the answer. And I think we’re being blown south, which is the completely wrong direction.”

“Axel . . .”

“Yes.” Magnus leaned over and tried to make out the streets below. “Yes, Axel . . . but here’s a question . . . If you were trying to find, say, the Seine, where would you look?”

The queen put her head back down.

He managed to find enough strength to restore the glamour on the balloon, rendering it invisible to the mundanes.

He did not have the energy to completely glamour himself in the process, so some people were treated to the view of

Magnus’s upper half sailing past their third-story window in the dark. Some people didn’t spare the candles, and he got one or two very interesting views.

Eventually he caught sight of a shop he knew. He pulled the balloon down the street, until more and more looked familiar, and then he caught sight of

Notre Dame.

Now the question was . . . where to put the balloon down? You couldn’t just land a