“Marco!” He looks so like his cousin, I want to hug him on the spot.
“I was just on my way to see if I could help, but you’ve made it without me, I see. Heard all the commotion of the guards.”
“Oh, thank you! Can you lead us out of here?”
Marco nods, his copper beard bobbing reassuringly. “Come!”
The four of us start to descend, but then a sudden thought trips me and nearly sends us all plunging down the spiral steps in a heap.
“Wait! What about the others?”
Prima looks to me. “Others?”
“Those in the Keep,” I say, thinking of the poor souls who still remain.
Marco turns around with a grin. “The only reason the tailor’s Golden Boy isn’t here right now is that he had a bit of an errand to run first. As far as the Keep goes, we already got things started.” He pulls the tailor’s seam ripper from his pocket. “Your friend Nan and I picked all the locks we could. She had a second copy of that skeleton key made, stashed for safekeeping. It’s just as well we got there when we did. By the time Bran was out, the other prisoners were already near to tearing the doors off their hinges.”
“Thank the stars. How did you get past the guards with the seam ripper in the first place?”
“Those blokes are a dirty lot. Your extra francs were enough to grease a few palms. A few less mouths to feed in the Keep is of no consequence to them.”
Energized by this news, I run faster, dragging the cleric behind me by one of his vestments while Prima brings up the rear as lookout. Outside, we all gulp huge mouthfuls of fresh air, eager to have done with the smoke and flames. I try desperately not to think about what’s been left behind, my saboteur lost to the flames.
Outside the gates, Nan sits atop the driver’s seat of a familiar wood-hauling wagon.
“You made it,” she says with whoop. “Looks like we’re just in time! Who’s your new friend? Another captive of the Margrave’s?”
“We’ve really no time for introductions, but you already know the cleric of Wolfspire Hall,” I begin.
“Regretfully true, lass. The puppetmaster and the Margravina, they saved me from the fire,” Vincenzo says humbly. “Our Margrave is a very disturbed young man. Dark magic … dark indeed,” he mutters to himself. “Never thought I’d live to see the day …”
“Margravina?” Nan asks, confused.
“Nan, this is Prima. She’s only just been … she’s only just,” I say hesitantly, trying to delicately explain her existence.
“Begun,” Prima speaks up. “I’ve only just begun.”
The bells in the high tower of Wolfspire Hall peal frantically, the same pattern rung the night the old Margrave died, the same ones that sang while my father slipped away. Those bells can only mean one thing … Laszlo is gone.
“They’re sounding the full alarm,” Marco says. “The fire must be sweeping through the whole castle.” He begins to run back toward the Commoner’s entrance.
“Come with us, Marco! There’s room in the back of the wagon!”
“No, not yet,” he calls. “The guards will all be fleeing their posts—and they’ll forget.”
“Forget about what?”
“The Keep! I need to make sure everyone got out! Otherwise, any poor sots left behind who can’t walk’ll roast alive. I’ll check, you go!” The big man bolts, determined to make sure every inhabitant of the Keep is set free.
“Prima, let’s go,” I start to say, turning to find her lifting the cleric like a sack of meal onto Burl’s back.
“Oh, I can’t possibly, my lady,” he says, fumbling apologetically and awkwardly trying to dismount. “You should be the one to ride. You are our Margravina now.”
“Margravina?” the newly made girl asks. “What is that? Everyone keeps saying it.”
“Yes, milady, if the duke, er, Margrave, had survived the fire, they wouldn’t be ringing the high bells as they are. Therefore, you are not just a new bride; you are the new ruler of Tavia. I myself conducted the ceremony. Your marriage to him was legal and binding. The puppetmaster witnessed it with her own eyes.”
“I did,” I say, in shock. “If Laszlo is truly gone, and they were married before he … then that would make Prima the new Margravina.”
Prima looks to me. I can’t speak for a minute. There are so many questions we’ll have to answer. How can we invent a story for her, a believable history, without betraying both of our origins? She doesn’t even know yet about the splinters that plague our kind. And a girl cannot be a Margravina from nowhere. She needs a family, a noble bloodline.
“What do I do?” she asks, her green eyes unsure.
I look to the smoking castle behind us and the village below. The blue moon has bled out all its power. It’s back to being that pale, milk-glass eye once more; pretty, but impotent.
“What if the fire spreads to the village—to the farms or the wood?” I ask in alarm.
“We got almost everyone out of the village already, Piro,” Nan says. “For days now the women and children have been quietly fleeing to the woods, hiding from the constant patrols of wooden soldiers. We can stay there until it’s safe to return. The others are waiting for us.”
I breathe a deep breath of relief. “Then let’s go. We’ll retreat from the fire. And hope that there’s something left for us all to return to.”
“I will see to it that your reign is uncontested, milady,” Vincenzo says, bowing as best he can from Burl’s back. “After the horrors I’ve seen today, it’s the least I can do. We’ve been too long under the rule of the old von Eidles, if I do say so myself. A new Margravina shall be a breath of fresh air indeed!”
“I need you,” Prima says to me, taking my hand, her eyes locked intently on mine. “You will help me?”
“We’ll help you,” I say, pulling her up to sit on the wagon seat beside Nan
