Zib thought he must be lying. Adults didn’t smile that fixed, glossy smile, or speak with so much sharpness, when they were telling her the truth. Oak was shivering behind her, with fear as much as cold, and she felt a stab of pity. The owl had only been trying to help her. This fight—if it was a fight—was hers, and hers alone.
“No, thank you,” she said, and moved so that she was no longer in the sheltering coil of Oak’s wing but was standing between the great owl and the king. “I am on the improbable road to the Impossible City, you see, and I haven’t the time to stop and be a part of someone else’s protectorate. I need to find my friends.”
“They must not be terribly good friends, to be lost so easily.”
Zib bristled. “They weren’t lost. I was taken away from them. A dreadful girl who calls herself the Page of Frozen Waters pushed me off the side of a cliff, and I fell for quite a long way, and Oak came to stop me from being harmed. Now I’m on my way back to where I should have been, so I can finish going where I’m supposed to be. Please, do you know the way?”
The King of Cups smiled like a winter storm rolling in. He looked younger when he smiled. He looked no less terrible. “The Page of Frozen Waters is a part of my protectorate,” he said. “She gathers the lost things and brings them to me, and it seems she has gathered you, because here you are, and aren’t you lovely? Aren’t you rare and fine? I’ll make you better, child. I’ll make you more than you ever thought you’d be. You’ll be happy in my company, for you’ll know that you’re precisely where you belong.”
“Run,” whispered Oak. There was no flurry of wings, for owls are silent in flight, but there was a sudden feeling of absence, and Zib knew that the great owl was gone.
Zib couldn’t blame her brief companion for fleeing. She would have fled, had she known how, although she thought she wouldn’t have been quite so quick to leave someone else behind—she thought she would have stayed until she knew Oak could be free, if she had been the one with wings. Still, she took the owl’s parting advice seriously, stepping nervously backward as she prepared to run.
Something sharp pressed against the skin between her shoulders, stopping her. She could no more keep moving, knowing it would impale her, than she could have flown away.
“I see you found your way,” said the Page of Frozen Waters, sweet and bright and overjoyed, and Zib knew that she was lost.
“She’s lovely,” said the King of Cups. “Wherever did you find her?”
“The Queen of Swords gave her and her companions a skeleton lock,” said the Page. “They were meant to land nearer to the Impossible City, but it was a cold wind that blew them, and I was able to convince it to freeze and bring them here instead.”
“Companions?” asked the King.
“A boy child and the traitor Crow. They’re somewhere off in the mist. It’s no matter. I knew this was the one you’d want.”
Zib balled her fists and stomped her foot and said, “I’m right here! It’s rude to talk about a person like they aren’t in the room when they are!”
“Ah, but this isn’t a room, and moreover, I am a king; the rules are different for me.” The King of Cups stepped smoothly forward and grasped Zib’s chin in his cold, cold hand. With the blade at her back, she couldn’t even pull away. “Yes, you’ll do nicely, child. You’ll learn to love it here, with me, and I’ll give you something all children want, in their secret hearts, which are hungry, hungry things, and will devour whatever they are offered. I’ll give you wings.”
Zib tried to shake her head, to break his hold on her, but her body refused to listen, and the cold swept over her, and it was easier to be still; it was easier to be calm, and quiet, and frozen, and cold, cold, cold, and then she was falling again, falling into the mist, which had no end and no beginning, which was everything …
As she fell, she thought she felt feathers brush against her cheek.
I am sorry, whispered a voice. Meadowsweet: the first of the three great owls. How queer, to hear that long-left bird speaking to her here. I am not strong enough.
Strong enough for what? Zib thought, but could not speak, and then the voice was gone, and she was alone, again, and falling.
I am sorry, whispered another voice. Broom: second and coldest of the great owls. He sounded genuinely unhappy, which did not make things any better. I am not swift enough.
Swift enough for what? Zib thought, and did not expect an answer.
I am sorry, whispered a third voice. Oak, and this voice ached most of all, for of the three great owls, Oak was the only one to have left her. I am not sure enough.
Sure enough for what? Zib thought, and hit the ground with what felt like force enough to break every bone in her body. Her eyes, which she had not been aware of closing, snapped open.
She was in a cage.
The bars were black iron, rimed with ice and studded with decorative swirls that were probably lovely to the people outside the cage, but created a field of spikes and sharp edges for the person inside the cage. Zib scrambled to her feet, looking wildly around. The cage was on a stretch of wide, flat, frozen ground. Nearby, there was a throne. On the throne sat the King of Cups, and around him …
She froze for a moment, trying to make sense of what she saw. Her eyes, adjusting to the
