But his commands don’t work on the saboteur. Somehow, she is fully animated, but able to ignore his desires. The rest of the puppets, however, cannot. One by one, the marionettes holding Prima loosen their grip at their master’s command to halt. Like ropes falling away, the spell’s hold is shed and she begins to shake them off.
“No!” Laszlo shrieks at his tiny army. “No, no! Not you! Don’t you stop! Leben consurge!”
But Prima is already fully unleashed from her prison of clawing hands. She tears a long, thin switch from her awakening bed and thrashes it about like a whip, knocking puppets from the trees and the fountain’s rim, scattering them away. The old cleric himself is knocked to the floor by the soaring marionette of a shepherdess who smacks him soundly across the face with her staff.
Laszlo seethes. “You will obey me, saboteur. You’ve killed for me before and you’ll do it again. Valder mortifikanto.” He repeats the directive to kill over and over again while trying uselessly to butcher me with his blade.
The saboteur doesn’t seem to hear him. She shoves me behind her, her whole body now a shield between me and the Margrave. When she fights, she is a thing to behold; Laszlo has studied the art of fencing and fighting, to be sure, but only ever with an opponent who wished to keep his head at the end of a lesson. The saboteur is a creature who cares not for her own welfare. She is focused solely on winning the fight.
Her arms and legs fly so fast, Laszlo can’t see them coming; the saboteur interrupts every strike. He begins screaming for the guards, but they have retreated in fear, leaving the cleric, Prima, and I to fend for ourselves against the Margrave’s horde.
The call to kill was heard by the other marionettes. They skitter toward Prima and me and Vincenzo, who has scrambled to our side, hoping to find sanctuary behind the saboteur. Puppets who can still crawl or march come at us in waves. They’ve broken off branches of the trees, snatched up the gardeners’ tools, grabbed whatever they can find to use as weapons. The wounded ones twitch on the ground, some with limbs missing or still dangling like forsaken fruit from the trees. A few heads roll haphazardly on the ground, searching in vain for their wayward bodies.
In the distance, through the domed roof, above the uproar, bells begin to chime. It’s the unmistakable song of the glockenspiel, fully resurrected, bells and all. The eerie melody rouses Laszlo to a new level of fury, no doubt reminding him of the victory he thought he had claimed over the clockmaker.
My heart surges with the bells, knowing who climbed up there and set them in motion, completing what Emmitt was never able to. Though I normally detest the glockenspiel’s song, right now it renews the fight in every swing of my arms.
The saboteur delivers a powerful blow to Laszlo’s jaw, sending him flying back into the fountain. Blood pools in the water. Eventually, he lifts his head and comes up sputtering. The saboteur turns toward Prima and me, who are still battling with the other puppets, I with my splinter and she with her whip of wood.
The saboteur seizes the cleric’s lantern from where it fell and holds it high, turning to face us while Laszlo struggles to emerge from the fountain. Her gaze is still the same as when I’d painted it, intense and sure. Her mechanical chin drops like an open door, and the only word I’ll ever get to hear her speak aloud is released from its depths.
“Run.” The command is a sharp bark, the sound of heavy boards clattering together.
I falter. It feels wrong to leave her, especially now. There’s something in her, some spark of me or my father, some element of goodness itself ingrained in her wood. Something the blue moon brought to light tonight. Something impenetrable to Laszlo’s misery and destructive spells.
“Run!” she bellows again, pointing intently to the shadows among the trees. Her mouth snaps shut like a sprung trap. She turns her back on us.
Laszlo limps bitterly toward her, looking like one of the maimed marionettes coming back for more. For a second, I think she’s going to wallop him with the lantern, but instead, the saboteur smashes it broadly against her own chest. The globe shatters across the stone floor and oil douses her body. The flame follows.
“No!” I scream in tandem with Laszlo.
Prima uproots me where I stand. She drags me behind her, toward a slew of broken windows. I cannot take my eyes from the saboteur.
My saboteur.
Like a wooden torch, her whole body is marvelously alight, glowing with leaping licks of flame. Tears stream down my cheeks. She lifts her arms, darting and whirling among the trees, touching every branch and marionette she can reach, with hands that singe and burn. Laszlo howls like a wolf in pain; his worst fears are come to life. When she reaches out to enfold him in her embrace, his wails cut through the crackling flames like ice.
The last thing I see as Prima hauls me through the smoking grove is my saboteur, destroying everything she touches, dancing beneath the blue moon like a scorching star fallen to earth.
CHAPTER 31
WITH EVERY FREE HAND OF WOLFSPIRE HALL RUSHING TO put out the fire and save whatever’s left of the Margrave and his collection, Prima and Vincenzo and I are hardly noticed as we dart through the back stairwells and halls. We don’t have a key this time, but I hope with Prima on our side we can barrel our way through any guarded doors.
Suddenly a very large redheaded man runs up the stairs toward us. He flattens himself against the wall, wheezing at the sight of us.
“Fonso?” I ask, squinting in the stair’s weak torchlight.
“Marco,” he pants,
