He looked down on the floor at the portrait of his mother. She peered back at him from behind cracked glass. Such a beauteous and terrible frown—the convention of the artist, perhaps. How she did look like his Alyson.
His mother had probably never been happy, either.
* * *
It was Juniper who got to him before the others. He called out to Marvel from behind the locked slot. Marvel fairly hugged him with delight once he’d opened the door. “My god, why didn’t you run away?” he almost cried.
Juniper paid him no attention. He held a finger to his lips and whispered, “Michael is ranting and raving for you. More guards will be here soon, they can’t understand why you don’t open the door. They think you might have poisoned yourself.”
Marvel peered around the younger man into the hallway. A single body—a lion-faced guard’s—was sprawled at the head of the stairs like a carpet, run through with a pike. Blood had not even stopped pumping from the wound. Juniper’s cheek was smeared with red.
Marvel nodded, grabbing his bag and stepping into the hall. Only a few torches remained lit, the others had burned out. They cast wobbling shadows on the rounded walls. One of the decorative tapestries had fallen from its hanger and lay in a pile on the floor. Marvel toed the dead man’s arm. “You found a weapon, I see.”
Juniper joined him, glancing around them apprehensively. His shoulder brushed Marvel’s. “You said you’d pay me three times what the Mystagogue would.”
Marvel actually laughed. “I believe I said two times.”
“That’s not what I heard. I’ve got an exceptionally keen memory. That’s how I crossed the continent.”
“Really?”
“Everyone’s got a talent,” Juniper said as they crept down the stairs.
“How lucky for me.” Marvel attempted to sound restrained, but could not contain his pleasure. “You know, I was going to have you tortured for whatever information I could get about the deathscapes. But then I thought better of it.”
“A true statesman, you.” Juniper regarded him closely in the dim light. “Tygo will be going back, with or without David. A catastrophe is about to unfold here.”
“I’d say it already has,” replied Marvel. They took the steps two at a time.
“A different kind of catastrophe.”
When they reached a side door on the bottom floor, Marvel threw his hood over his head, though he knew it would make little difference—his figure was too well known to remain hidden. “I have my horses,” he offered.
“They’re not in the stable, I checked,” Juniper said. Even now he looked a bit as though he had just woken up. He’d found a helmet somewhere, probably on a dead man. He pulled the faceplate down. “You got any armor?”
Marvel blinked. “Not here.”
“We’ll have to make a run for it, then,” he replied. “There’s no other way.” He pushed his shoulder against the door. But he stopped and turned, his brow furrowing. His ill-fitting uniform was pasted to his body by sweat on his chest. “I’ll take you back to Kansas. But when we get there, you have to do a certain thing for me.”
“What?”
“Something that requires powerful magic.”
Marvel almost asked, What? again, but a crash echoed from the other side of the tower, and he nodded, wiping nervous sweat from his forehead. “If you get us to Kansas alive, I’ll do anything for you.”
* * *
Then they were in the fray. The clanging pandemonium. They had only to cover a short distance before they could escape through a cart-gate behind Endeavour Tower. Marvel prayed under his breath.
They drew closer, closer, sliding along the compound wall, their feet wet from seawater that had flowed in when the water-gate exploded. Carnival men surrounded the small service gate—they must wait for a distraction. They hid for a long time behind the same cistern that had shielded the outlaw king only hours before. Marvel was astounded at the disarray of the courtyard. How had the outlaws destroyed things so quickly? They had even set up a wooden plank bridge where the water-gate had been and were wheeling in more exploding barrels.
No one noticed Marvel and Juniper.
While they waited for a distraction, Marvel became aware of a wagon, at first far from them, then nearer, until he craned his neck and realized that it too was making for the cart-gate. Barreling over men as it surged forward. He saw one of Alyson’s handmaidens in the front, and his heart sank. Michael and Alyson were surely inside. Marvel watched in slow horror as a carnival man threw a burning stick at the horses. They reared up and the wagon toppled.
Marvel nearly stepped out from behind the cistern. His mouth opened. He took a breath as though he meant to speak, and improbably Juniper heard it, for he turned to Marvel with wide eyes. Marvel opened his bag, fingered one of his vials. It would be easy to throw another potion, to cause a momentary distraction. But then the outlaws would surely come toward them.
There was no stopping what would happen. Whatever would be, would be. And yet Marvel did love them—both. He loved them as he ever had—flawed and lost, his only child and her husband, his friend. A painful spasm overcame him as he thought, In my way I created this. All of it. The thought did not ease his guilt.
He watched the outlaws yank them from the upended wagon, along with their servants. He watched them throw his daughter and Michael to the ground, their faces now in several inches of water. The scene grew harder to see as men crowded around them.
His daughter screamed. There was a scuffle, a wallowing of people, a splashing of bodies atop one another, slipping past one another. Then there was another awful scream, much more terrible than the scream of fright moments before, and Marvel sealed shut his eyes but of course that did nothing—still he heard his daughter screaming. When he opened one eye, he saw one of the outlaws stepping away from her body, her neck half
