Abarat: Absolute Midnight

other time.

“Gazza,” she said. “I’m going to have to leave you in charge of getting this glyph and everyone inside it away from Mater Motley. Do whatever you have to do.”

“Where are you going?”

“To keep my promise.”

“Are you crazy?” Gazza said.

“A promise is a promise.”

“Even when you make it to a Carrion?”

“He can hear you, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Gazza said. “He’s going to get you killed. And I—” He growled, his brow in knots. “Why can’t I—can’t I?”

“We have to go,” Candy said.

“I have stuff to say.”

“Then say it.”

“I love you,” Zephario said.

“Oh?” said Candy. “Well, that’s sudden.”

“I’m speaking for the young fellow here.”

“Oh,” Candy said matter-of-factly. Then, comprehending, “Oh. You do?” she said to Gazza.

“Yes,” Zephario replied again. “He loves you with every last bone in his body,” Zephario replied.

Gazza smiled confidently. “There’s more,” he said.

“There’s no time for more,” Zephario said.

The look of confidence had gone from Gazza’s face. His eyes looked at Candy, ashamed of the young man who stared out from behind them, unable to say the words.

“Zephario and I need to go,” Candy said.

Gazza simply nodded.

“I’ll be safe up there.” They looked at each other. “I wish it was different,” she said, staring at his sadness with her own. “You know what I mean—”

“Yes.”

And his knowing was enough for her. Maybe there’d be another time, when things were different. But for now . . .

“I’ll see you soon, then. . . .” Candy said, and with perfect timing the glyph released her, extending its own structure twenty feet or so, allowing her to drop down below, without injury, onto the shattered ground of Mount Galigali.

The Empress had begun to give her instructions. Time was of the essence, she let it be known. Time, and that the job be done flawlessly.

“In a few moments,” she told her Commanders, “the Stormwalker will emerge from the cloud of volcanic dust that the lightning limb has caused to temporarily blind the vessel. At which point,” she went on, “I will have a comprehensive view of the site of execution. We should expect some minor attempts to resist. These people have foolishly tried to live by their own laws, refusing to obey the judgments laid down by their superiors. Obviously no Empire can sanction the presence of such individuals in its midst. They will—”

“Leave before their executioners arrive?” Carrion suggested.

“Do you find this funny?”

“No, Grandmother, I believe what you say is absolutely correct, and these iconoclasts should be executed. But—”

“But nothing. A knife for every heart, remember?”

“Of course.”

“Well?”

“You have the knives, I realize. But regrettably the hearts have already departed.”

“Impossible.”

The vessel was emerging from the smoke now, and what Carrion could see was visible to a growing number of soldiers. The camp was empty. The prisoners had gone.

“Where are they?” she said, quietly at first. Then more loudly: “They were here! Six thousand, six hundred and ninety-one prisoners! The gates are still closed. THEY WERE HERE!”

“Two of them are still here,” one of the commanders—a small, gray-skinned stitchling called Chondross—pointed out.

“The compound is empty.”

“They’re not in the compound any longer, my lady,” Chondross told her. “They’re down there on Galigali.” The stitchling pointed out of the window down at the boulder-strewn slope. “Do you see them?”

“It’s Candy Quackenbush,” Carrion said.

“Of course it would be her,” the Empress said. “She was bound to be in this chaos somewhere.”

“Who’s with her?”

“It doesn’t matter. Whoever he was, he shouldn’t have gotten so close to her. It will be the death of him. I need a gunner!” she demanded.

No sooner had she uttered the words, than one stitchling called out: “Empress. I have the gunner ready at the bows. She has acquired your target.”

“Gunner?” the Empress yelled.

The gunner’s image appeared.

“Here, my Empress,” she said.

“Targets,” Christopher said.

“Ah, there you are,” the Empress said. “Two stupid animals standing in our way. Thank you, Christopher.”

“My pleasure, Empress. And my duty. Shall I have them killed?”

The image of Candy Quackenbush and her traveling companion came up on the Window. The latter had been extensively scarred—his face little more than a rigid mask of disfigured tissue; out of which he gazed blindly. Despite his maiming there was something in the man’s bearing that caused Mater Motley to hold back for a few moments.

“I have the target in my sights, Empress. Shall I fire?”

“Wait . . .”

She brought the Window closer to her so as to better study the mask of scar tissue for some clue as to the face it had been, before its destruction by—

“Fire,” she murmured.

It was a simple, stupid mistake. Gunner Gh’niemattah had been trained to respond to an order without hesitation. The syllable her Empress uttered was barely audible, but she responded to the sound of that one syllable by simply pulling the trigger.

It was impossible not to be astonished by the speed with which the girl from the Hereafter and the blind man beside her were erased by bursts of brilliance as each rocket found its target.

Chapter 62

The Volcano and the Void

CANDY, SITTING ATOP THE higher slopes of Mount Galigali, stared up at the immense expanse of the Stormwalker’s underbelly as it slowly passed over her. The immense machine seemed almost close enough for her to reach up and touch. The guttural drone of the vessel’s massive engines made the scree on the slope dance a lunatic dance.

“It’s time. Take me to my son,” were the words Mater Motley had watched Zephario say to her.

He was right, Candy knew: this was the moment. The Prince of Midnight was inside the Stormwalker with his