The Chestnut King

  The climb into the hills had been long, up cattle trails, through tall grass, and over boulders. Her shoes, more useful as slippers than for what they were doing now, had already torn scrambling over rock.

  Una held her hand. Fat Frank walked easily in front of them, unaffected by the climb. Richard was wheezing behind. She wondered if he had asthma. The other faeries seemed to be all around them, appearing and disappearing into shadow. Occasionally, disembodied voices called out to each other, or strange whistles—soft and almost impossible to hear, or sharp and strong—echoed in the rocks.

  “I thought the soldiers and the ships left,” Anastasia said. “Why are they still in the harbor?”

  Fat Frank jumped onto a rock, and his round features were sharpened with moon shadow. He looked like a badly carved statue, maybe of a young troll. “The big galley left,” he said. “The others are only wishing that they had.”

  “Why’s that?” Una asked.

  “Because,” Frank said, jumping down, “Mordecai’s still loose, and that’s his town they’re in, and that’s his house they’ve burned, and that’s his family what’s missing. The red-shirts down there are in for it, and they know as much, too. Three heads or no, that snake’s coiled in an eagle’s nest.”

  Jacques appeared out of the shadows beside Anastasia. “Mordecai,” he said, and his mustache grinned. “Again this Mordecai. Not all peoples fear the green men like the low faeren. The greens do little but tell tales of themselves and grow in legend.”

  “Low?” Frank asked. “The queene’s faeren are low, are they? And Mordecai’s a liar?” He snorted. “Who put Nimiane in her bed, then? Did the ‘high’ faeren?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Jacques said. “Not having been there. Were you, Fat Franklin? Did you stand and watch or were you shrouded deep within your mound, guarding the grubs with the other brown ants?”

  “Maybe I was,” Frank said. “And maybe I wasn’t. Where was the king? In his gardens, growing chestnuts? He’s shown no face or fight in my lifetime, nor my father’s. Where were you, Jacques One-Eye, when Endor spread its fingers through the earth, graying the green things?”

  Frank stopped and shifted his belt beneath his belly. Jacques faced him, smiling, pulling his mustache.

  “Men make their own troubles,” Jacques said. “Let them bury their own nightmare dead. Faeren should keep to the Second World and wash their hands of green men.”

  “What’s the Second World?” Anastasia asked.

  Jacques winked at her. “Does faerie blood tickle your veins? Have you walked the ancient mounds? We faeren have our secrets.”

  “Mr. One-Eye,” Richard said between breaths. “Does your king not stand against the villainy of Endor?”

  Jacques grinned, and he scrambled up the path in front of them to the top of a small rise. “My king,” he said, raising his arms, “stands against the villainies of the villainous. He stands against big-booted empires and egg-sucking snakes and over-preening queens and groveling faeren and trouble-picking green men and dead-living witches and walled cities and rules by the ruled and foxes in cages and duties and obligatings.” He took a deep breath and held up a thick finger. “He stands for all laughter, aged honey, naps in the sun, and high-sky winds. He stands for troubling the troublers and freeing the foxes and liberating treasures and eating grapes. He stands for doing as he pleases and keeping to hisself. And chestnuts. He stands for chestnuts.”

  Fat Frank snorted and shook his head. Jacques laughed and disappeared into shadow. Anastasia looked at Una and then back at Richard. The four seemed to be suddenly walking alone, climbing higher and higher into the hills as the moon dropped slowly.

  “How far?” Anastasia asked.

  Una smiled with tight lips. “Too far.”

  “Three more hills.” Jacques’s voice floated out of the darkness. “We have to be cautious magicking in the low faeren regions.”

  Anastasia felt a tap on her shoulder. She and Una both turned. Richard, struggling behind them, coughed and cleared his throat. “If,” he said, “either of you have need of assistance …” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I will oblige.”

  Anastasia laughed. Una squeezed her hand. “Do you need any help?” she asked Richard. “You don’t look too well.”

  Jacques hopped down behind the girls. Standing on the slope, he grabbed Richard’s cheeks and looked directly into his eyes. “Whelpling,” he said. “We have three more ridges to cross before morning. Are you ill?”

  Richard shook his head and winced. “I’m fit,” he said.

  The faerie ran his hands around Richard’s scalp. “What is this?” he asked. “A hen lay an egg in your skull or has someone been clubbing you?”

  “The street,” Richard said. “Fat Frank knocked me out of the wagon into the street. I hit it then.”

  Jacques closed Richard’s eyes with his thumbs, muttered a string of words, and blew in the boy’s face. Richard went completely rigid, his mouth hanging open, his arms at his sides, and Jacques laid him down on the slope.

  “The lads will bring him,” Jacques said. “We must move more quickly.”

  Fat Frank bent over Richard and stuck his fingers on his neck. “More likely the wolves will find themselves an easy supper. Bring him along now, where I can see.”

  Jacques sniffed and adjusted his eye patch. “Franklin Fat, don’t you trust me, an agent of your king?”

  “No,” Frank said. “That I don’t. No more than a weasel with ducklings nor a heron with fish. This lad’s had his feet on a hard path long before being grabbed by serpent soldiers, cracked on the cobbles by my own self, and dragged up here by outlaw faeren. I won’t risk him being left here in the tall grass and nibbled to his death in the night.”

  Jacques whistled and turned up the hill. Two faeren stepped out of the darkness and lifted Richard easily to their shoulders. Pale, light, and stiff, he looked like a paper statue. The faeries moved quickly around the girls and up.

  “Richard is honestly the most annoying person I know,” Anastasia said.

  “He is loyal,” Una said. “Be kind to him.”

  Anastasia thought about this. He was loyal. He was also scrawny and fat-lipped and pompous. Fat Frank glanced back at her and nodded.

  “Right, then!” Jacques yelled from the dark. “Quicken up, girlies, before we leave you all for the night nibblers.”

  The two girls climbed with the moonlight on their backs. Ahead of them Franklin Faerie walked quickly, full of nervous energy, skipping onto rocks, ruffling his thick hair, muttering to himself, and pulling at his earlobes. Somewhere, hidden from the moon by shadow and magic, thirteen faeries moved around them, and one boy, rigid as a wooden bat, bouncing on shoulders, dreamed concussedly that he could play baseball.

  Henry turned in place, studying the roof and its beams, flicking his flashlight off and then back on, his mind whirring frantically. His jaw throbbed with piercing cold. He was sure sound carried well up the stone stairs, but they still couldn’t have long.

  “What do we do?” Henrietta whispered. “You have our only knife.”

  “Barricade?” Zeke asked, tugging at a beam.

  “I have to think,” Henry said. “Think.” He grabbed at his necklace, gripping it tight. “We can’t fight,” he said. “Not all of them.” He set down his flashlight and kicked at the rubble.

  “All of who?” Henrietta whispered behind him.

  Henry held up a finger to the back of his head.

  “What? All ten?” she asked.

  “Nine,” Henry said. “I killed one in the fire.” He grunted, shoving a beam, looking for he didn’t know what. An elevator?

  Thick rope for the bell twisted through the rubble, but nowhere near what they would need to reach any of the lower roofs, let alone the street. There were stones, bent spikes, splayed and rotten beams, an old slat-sided box—nothing that could help him against what climbed the stairs. He needed time. A little space to think. Henry picked up the biggest stone he could
find. Turning to the bell, groaning, he struggled to lift it above his head.

  “Henry?” Zeke said.

  Henry yelled, as loud and as long as he could. Green pulsed through his bones, gold fired in his blood, and he heaved the rock onto the ancient, tarnished bell.

  The stone shattered, sparking blooms as the deep peal climbed into the sky and vibrated through the stone floor. It passed through Henry in quivering waves, and he grabbed at his ears. Henrietta dropped to the ground and curled into a ball. Zeke staggered backward.

  As soon as he could, Henry straightened and kept rooting through the rubble.

  “Why on earth?” Henrietta asked.

  “Do it again,” Henry said. “A few more times. There’s no point in hiding. Make them wonder. If they think we’re planning something, they might slow a bit.”

  Henrietta stood up. Zeke scooped up two rocks and bounced them off the bell one after the other.

  “Are we planning something?” Henrietta yelled. She heaved her own rock, and Zeke bounced two more. One hopped over the edge and off the tower. Henry watched it fall.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Listen at the stairs. Tell me if you hear anything.” He looked back at the old slatted box, tangled with rope, half-buried in shattered stone. “Zeke, help me.”

  Henry jumped over a beam and grabbed at the box. Zeke followed, and together they shifted it out of the rubble, dumping old bolts and a rag as it came.

  Henrietta crouched by the stairwell. “Nothing,” she said. “But you all are making too much noise.”

  Henry sawed at the thick bell-rope with his kitchen knife. It was dry, already frayed, and his blade went through easily. He tucked the little knife into his pouch with the baseball. Picking up the old box, Henry scrambled to the side of the tower overlooking the tiny street below. He fed a few coils of rope in quickly and then nestled the little black pyramid inside them. Then he wound more rope around it, leaving only the door exposed. He picked up the whole thing, and Zeke, understanding, wrapped the excess rope around the slats. Then Henry tipped the rope-wrapped and rope-stuffed box onto its side so the pyramid faced him, and he balanced it on the ruined wall.

  He shut his eyes.

  “Steps,” Henrietta said quietly. “They’re still coming.”

  The world around Henry was nothing but gray and black, slow and twisting. His own gray jaw strands mingled with it, drifting out, and then bending sharply away behind him. They were thicker and more taut than they had been. Something was pulling on them.

  He had nothing to draw on. There were no dandelions here, no living wood, no living stone. The life had been drained from everything.

  He had the necklace. His hand found it. He had himself. Hot life grew inside of him. He had his cousin and his friend. Reaching behind him, he found their strength, mingling with cold fear and doubt. Stretching out his right hand, he opened his eyes.

  “Getting louder,” Henrietta said.

  Henry slid backward. “Go, Henrietta,” he said. “Quickly. Dive. The seam’s not big.”

  “What, off the edge?” Henrietta asked.

  “Into the box,” Henry said. “Now.” He shut his eyes again and raised his dandelion hand to fight the shrinking hole. His cousin’s life stepped past him and disappeared.

  “Zeke,” Henry said, and his own voice sounded strange to him, lost in the distance.

  Zeke’s settled, slow strength moved forward and disappeared.

  Henry clenched his jaw and lunged into the swirl.

  The flashlight, perched on a beam beside a forgotten backpack, stared across the rubble and the bell. It watched an empty sky. It watched men in black rise from the stairs carrying torches. It glinted off the long silver knives in their belts.

  Henry didn’t have time to wipe his bleeding nose. He groped around on the attic floor.

  “Flashlight?” he asked the darkness. “Flashlight?”

  Henrietta groaned.

  “Hold on.” Zeke’s voice.

  Henry felt for the wall. A light flicked on, and he oriented himself. The wall of cupboards, swirling their smells and sounds around him. His old mattress. The black door to the little pyramid perched on a tower wall in Endor. He dropped to his belly and shoved his right arm in, feeling for stone, for something to push against.

  Coradin stood on the tower. The others had come as soon as they had felt Henry’s presence in the dead city. Mordecai was not so easy to hunt.

  Coradin’s shirt was torn, but he’d ripped the strange boy’s weeds from his chest. He stared at the flashlight. He picked up the backpack.

  The boy still felt very close, but a sensation of extreme distance seemed stronger. He had learned what that meant. The boy had used a doorway. To the others, this was new. He could hear them sniffing. And then a cry of surprise.

  He turned. Something was moving on the wall. A white hand and wrist, stretching out of a box. Young fingers. The box was tipping.

  Henry couldn’t tell if it was working. He pushed against stone and then grabbed at the box’s edge and pulled.

  A strong hand closed around his wrist.

  Henry jerked back. He swung his legs around and braced his knees against the wall. There was life here in the attic, strength in the wood, in the cold air above the roof and the endless grassy plains. He grabbed his opponent’s wrist and felt bursting dandelion heat pour through his palm. The man screamed and tried to tug his arm away. It was Henry’s turn to hunt. He pulled hard. Air moved around his hand and whistled into the cupboard. The box was free-falling, and a fingerling with it.

  Henry pulled the writhing arm all the way in and held it tight. The thick, scarred fingers splayed and twisted, searching for a grip. The arm jerked and fought to pull free. Suddenly, a splintering crash lifted Henry off the attic floor and slammed him into the wall. A cloud of ash and dust exploded into the room.

  “You okay?” Zeke asked behind him. “Did it work?”

  Gasping for breath, Henry sat up and stared at the now-limp arm in its black sleeve. He couldn’t make the same mistake again. Taking the little knife out of his pouch, he reached back through the cupboard and felt for the fingerling’s head.

  Coradin watched his blood brother grab the boy’s wrist. He watched the shock and burning pain when the boy grabbed back with that fiery hand. He’d felt it. The box toppled. His brother had gone with it.

  Leaning over the wall, Coradin dropped a torch to the street. When the ash had cleared, the flame still sputtered on. Rope and splintered wood tangled with the body. A hand moved. The boy’s hand.

  Coradin flinched as an invisible tie was severed. Another blood brother had gone.

  He waited for the witch’s anger to burn through him. To punish him. Nothing. He looked at his other brothers, five of the six sent to Endor for Mordecai. He nodded at the stairs.

  “Down,” he said, and they turned.

  Far to the south and to the east, the morning sun climbed over a strip of land between two seas—one pale and bright, smooth, with white sand at its shallow bottom, and the other dark and angry, frothing deep water against worn sea walls. The sun blazed on the waters’ backs and poured through the tall sea gates of Dumarre, the City of the Seas, warming the stone. In the streets, merchants and vendors called to each other, and wagons wound their way from the piers of one harbor to the piers of the other. Slaves dragged barges through narrow canals, the drivers’ tongues and whips lashing them forward.

  Over the walls, above the palaces, a red flag flew, forked at the fly. The three white bodies of a single-headed serpent writhed in the wind. In a great hall, the morning sun fell on a wide wooden throne, its dark legs crawling with carvings of people and armies and cities and rivers and beasts. The back was scaled like a serpent, but as it rose, instead of three bodies, it divided into three open-mouthed heads. An old man with hooded eyes sat on the throne, leaning against the broad arm. A heavy chair sat empty beside him. Crowded nobles shifted nervously in their finery, curious why they’d been called. The o
ld man lifted his hand, heavy with rings, and the men and women parted and faced a pair of tall doors in the rear of the hall.

  It was time.

  A drumbeat, and a voice echoed through the vaulted ceiling. The doors creaked open.

  “Nimiane, one-time sovereign of Endor, daughter to the ancient kings, queen consort to the emperor!”

  A rustling wave of shock and whispers swept through the crowd, and Nimiane, tall and terrible, beautiful as a forest in flame, stepped into the hall. Her rich skin shone as she walked. Her hair towered in glistening gold-dusted braids above her. Her sleek, bare arms held a white-faced cat. She stopped before the throne and dipped herself slowly. The old emperor nodded. Facing the assembled, she sat and filled her lungs with the deep and ancient smell of power.

  A man, fair and thin, with a face like the man in her garden, stepped out of the assembly and walked quickly toward the doors. Two men in black stepped in front of the red-shirted guards and blocked his way. Nimiane smiled at him, at the anger of the emperor’s son. No noble blood, no matter how pure, would leave the hall without bowing before her.

  She would possess the world.

  A sudden bite flicked through her. She winced. A mind had been lost. A finger had been cut.

  Beyond the hall, stretched between two trees, a man cried out in pain.

  Henry groveled, coughing in the street’s ash. He hadn’t brought Zeke’s flashlight, but dandelions glowed around the fingerling’s body and out the back of his head. Ten yards beyond the body, a torch sputtered on its side. Henry, sniffing against his bloody nose, staggered toward it. The tower loomed high above him. Somewhere inside, Coradin and the others were descending.

  Henry lifted the torch and surveyed the scene. The box had shattered, rope splayed around the street in the troughed ash. The door to the little pyramid was gone, and the wood was splintered around the hinges. Other than that, it seemed fine. He pulled it out of its rope nest and looked down at the man’s gold-rimmed body.