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The Sword of Hunyadi felt heavy at his hip.
Whatever truth there might be in the story of the Legend-Born, and no matter how much he wanted to be home, he knew he had become a part of this world. It had changed him. All of the things he had always imagined he might be, had always wished, he was becoming. And there could be no turning back now.
He drew the sword.
In the moment before he ran after his sister, he caught sight of something moving out of the corner of his eye. He glanced over and saw Kitsune by the doors of the Sandman’s castle. He’d assumed she had hung back to watch for the sand creatures that had attacked them inside.
Her soft green eyes gleamed in the dark, her fur almost orange in the starlight. The hurt and bitterness on her face was unmistakable. Oliver caught his breath. In the exultation of saving Collette and the shock of seeing Julianna, he’d barely spared a thought for Kitsune.
He forced himself to break the moment, raised his sword, and ran after Collette.
“Wait!” he shouted. “Coll, wait!”
If she heard him, she did not listen. Oliver raced after her. He figured the Sandman was so occupied trying to stay alive that he couldn’t control the constructs inside the castle anymore, which helped. But even so, the monster’s existence endangered them all. So why weren’t these soldiers helping? Even the commander who ran after the man with the gun seemed only to be trying to stop him, to draw him back. Nobody wanted to go anywhere near the Sandman except the nutjob.
That ought to tell you something, he thought.
But fear would not turn Oliver away. Why none of the Myth Hunters had shown up was a mystery, but he figured maybe Frost and the Borderkind were keeping them busy elsewhere, and whoever their hidden enemy really was—Ty’Lis or someone else—they assumed an ordinary brother and sister, soft and pampered humans, shouldn’t be much of a challenge for the Sandman.
Under other circumstances, they’d have been right. Oliver would have been dead many times over if not for Kitsune, and they’d both be dead if not for the Dustman. And he knew the Dustman had come at his request, but hadn’t been too difficult to persuade. They all faced the same enemy. They were all in danger.
But right now, Oliver wasn’t feeling solidarity with anyone. Not Kitsune or the Dustman or the tall woman with the sword or the soldiers who followed her. And sure as hell not the lunatic with the gun. Collette wasn’t going to fall into the Sandman’s hands again, and now that Julianna was here, he wanted nothing except to get them both away from this place.
“Coll!” he shouted, chasing her.
The sight of the sand-brothers at war sickened him. They tore one another apart, sand swirling and mixing and battering. The Dustman seemed to have weakened, and as he tried to focus himself again, to form the persona he had adopted with his greatcoat and bowler hat and mustache, he faltered. The vague shape remained the same, but the details were a blur, like an old statue with its features eroded by entropy.
After her imprisonment, Collette was in no condition to run. Oliver overtook her easily. He grabbed her arm from behind and pulled her up short. She spun on him, eyes wild.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Stay here. I didn’t come to get you just to watch you die!”
“I won’t die. We’re not helpless here. We can fight! We can hurt him. ” Collette held up her hands. “I’ve done it!”
Oliver wanted to ask what she was talking about, but there just wasn’t time. A gunshot rang out, the first one in long seconds, and he turned to see the shooter aiming at the Sandman. In the midst of the churning sand, the twist and turmoil of the warring brothers, the monster turned its yellow eyes upon the man with the gun and stared murder at him.
Oliver glanced at Collette, and then they were running together.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked
She said nothing, but when he looked down at her, he saw the set of her jaw and the grim knowledge in her eyes, and he knew she had never been so certain of anything in her life.
The tall soldier caught up to the gunman and tried to pull him back. He fought her, trying to get the gun free, to shoot again, no matter how useless his bullets were.
“Who the hell is this guy?” Oliver snapped.
“Halliwell. He’s a detective. He was looking for you when you disappeared,” Collette said, huffing, trying to keep up with him.
A cold finger of dread went up Oliver’s spine. So he was responsible for this Halliwell being here as well.
They were twenty feet from the churning tornado of the screeching battle between the Dustman and the Sandman when the gunman shot an elbow into the tall soldier’s abdomen. Cloak billowing out behind her, she staggered back a step and let go of him.
Julianna stared at Halliwell and slowly brought her hands up to cover her mouth. Her fingers splayed across her eyes and she peered between them. Like a marionette whose strings have been cut, all the strength left her muscles and she went down on her knees.
She watched Collette and Oliver run toward Halliwell, but could not rise. A terrible chill enveloped her. She had watched his mood grow darker with each hour that passed, seen his eyes go numb, and his nerves become more brittle. All along, she had wanted nothing more than to keep him going until they could find Oliver, find the answers that they were looking for. Guilt consumed her now as she accepted the selfishness of that. Yet it had not been only for her. She’d wanted to give Halliwell hope, something to hold on to long enough for them to ask Oliver the all-important question: Could they go home again?
Virginia and Ovid Tsing had told them it was impossible, as had the guardians of Twillig’s Gorge, and King Hunyadi himself. But Halliwell had never let himself believe it.
Julianna knew that his denial of that fact was the only thing that kept him from falling apart completely. Without hope that he would see his daughter again, he would shatter.
Now it was happening right before her eyes.
Collette and Oliver ran toward Halliwell. Captain Damia Beck tried to get hold of him again, to keep him back. But Julianna could see, even in profile, the expression on his face, and she knew there was no point. Ted had lost all hope, and now all that was left was his anguish.
Halliwell started firing again, and he ran right into the midst of the sandstorm created by the Dustman and Sandman at war.
“No!” Oliver shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”
Too late, Julianna thought. But, in her mind’s eye, she could see the way the kindly curmudgeon had changed when they had crossed the Veil into this world, could remember the panic and anger and cynicism that had eaten away at him, and she wondered if it had always been too late.
In the starlight, Julianna could see a difference in the hue of the sand and dust that made up the brothers, one more brown and one more gray. Striations of that sandstorm whipped in a frenzy, twisting in on each other. And when Halliwell stepped into their midst, it whipped at him as well.
He fired his gun one last time. His clothes flapped around him, driven by the force of the wind the two Borderkind were creating. Collette screamed. Oliver shouted at the man to get back, to step away, but it was too late. The sandstorm had him, the war of these two brothers had consumed him.
The churning storm must have been like sandpaper, all of that grit spinning around. It tore Halliwell’s clothes from his body and then began to scrape his flesh, stripping the skin and muscle and then scouring every bit of gristle from his bones.
Oliver staggered to a stop in horror. Beside him, Collette also halted.
Where she still sagged on her knees, a hundred feet away, Julianna let her hands slip from her face. Warm tears painted tracks in the dust on her cheeks.
“Ted,” she whispered.
As they watched, the storm abated and a figure began to form. With the winds dying, Halliwell’s bare bones fell to the ground.
Julianna wept for him, and for his daughter, Sara—a girl she had never met. All Ted Ha
lliwell had wanted was to be with her, to tell her that he loved her and that nothing else mattered. Now he would never have that chance, not until they met again in the afterlife.
As she stared at the place across the sand where his bones lay, a terrible thought occurred to her.
Ted Halliwell had died in the world of the legendary, but his daughter lived on the other side of the Veil. If there truly was a heaven, would they be together there, one day, or separated for all eternity?
Numb, she staggered to her feet and forced the question from her mind. But, deep down, she knew it would haunt her always.
The Sandman stood before them, sickly lemon eyes glaring. His hideous, obscenely long face split in a grin. He spared a single glance for the tall soldier with the night-black skin and then ignored her, turning toward Oliver and Collette.
“Bascombes,” the Sandman said.
The soldier raised her sword and barked a command. The men and women in her command began to close in around the Sandman. Oliver knew they stood no chance. The Sandman would slaughter them.
“Come on,” he said.
The Bascombes ran toward the monster that had killed their father.
“Back away!” Oliver called to the soldiers. “Leave him to us. ”
“Oh, yes, by all—” the Sandman began.
His voice cut off. Something shifted in his eyes, in his form. Beneath the cloak he wore, things moved and shifted. Puffs of sand erupted from his back and chest and mouth and he started to twist in upon himself like a dog chasing his tail. For a moment his features blurred, and when the sand stopped swirling enough to make out what they were all seeing, Oliver realized he now wore a bowler hat.
The Dustman and the Sandman had merged and become one, and now the Dustman turned toward Oliver.
“Now, while I am ascendant. ”
Oliver and Collette raced at him. The Sword of Hunyadi flashed through the night air and cleaved the Dustman’s head from his shoulders. It fell to the ground and burst into a cloud of sand that eddied in the mountain breeze. The rest of his body seemed to have frozen, as though sculpted from sand. Collette began to tear at it, and even as she did it crumbled at her touch.
The Dustman collapsed, sand spilling across the ground, half burying the bones of Detective Halliwell, until no form remained at all. Only sand. Only dust.
“How did you…?” one of the soldiers said.
Oliver turned and saw it was the woman who had chased after Halliwell and tried to save him. She wore the insignia of a captain in Hunyadi’s service.
“That’s just not possible,” she said. “They were legends. ”
Collette leaned against him. Oliver put his arm around her, helping to hold her up with his free hand. In the other, his sword hung low, point digging into the soft sand.
He could not claim to understand exactly what had just happened. Had the Dustman destroyed his brother, or did he and Collette really have some kind of magic in them, some legendary power?
Oliver met the captain’s gaze, unflinching. “This world is full of impossible things. ”
The entire city of Palenque was a maze, a circular labyrinth of dead-end streets and alleys that twisted back upon themselves. The architects who had conceived it were brilliant, and the king who’d ordered its construction ruthless, for the entire city had been created as protection for the palace that lay at its center. Enemies who intended to destroy the palace or usurp the king would become lost in the maze of stone and wood. Each long, curving street of Palenque looked, with its balconies and lanterns and white-washed walls, much like the others.
Ingenious. But it also revealed how little value the king placed upon the lives of his subjects. Instead of building walls to protect his people, the founder of the city had used those very people as his walls.
Tonight, they showed King Mahacuhta the same courtesy.
Night had fallen, and though the city flickered with electric lights and gas lamps alike, Frost felt invigorated by the darkness. The sun and heat had been a constant drain upon his strength and power. Now only clear black velvet hung in the sky, punctured with starry pinpoints and a sliver moon. The heat of the day seeped away quickly, and while the night was still warm, he felt much improved.
“Not exactly the reception we were expecting,” Blue Jay whispered beside him.
Frost nodded intently, not returning the trickster’s smile. Caution demanded they take care, no matter how cooperative the citizens of Palenque seemed.
“You thought the people would attack us?”
Blue Jay shot him an odd look, punctuated by the rasp of denim on denim and the slap of his boot heels on the street. “Attack? I figured the whole city would be villagers with torches. If Ty’Lis is really the guy behind the Hunters, why would he just let us walk up to his front door?”
The winter man did not reply. This was precisely the question he had been mulling over, and as yet he had not come up with an answer.
The streets of Palenque were alive with life. It was, after all, the capital of Yucatazca, one of the most powerful and most alive cities in all the world. Frost did not eat, but even he marveled at the mélange of aromas that filled the labyrinthine streets: scents of cooking meats and spices and fruits and boiling fish stews. Distant sounds of engines and of the hoofbeats of horses carried to them along the curved alleys and roads of that circular maze city as they made their way toward the palace at its center.
Along the way, as though their route had been announced earlier, hundreds of people gathered to watch them pass. Some of them were grim-faced and anxious, but others cheered and whistled in support as he and Blue Jay, Grin, Li, and Cheval passed by. The strange Borderkind who had met them at the outskirts of the city accompanied them, as did dozens of Lost Ones. Others fell in with the parade as they marched through the streets, all of them headed toward the palace in search of answers.
Music and singing, shouts and laughter came from many of the buildings they passed—inns and drafthouses and restaurants alive with the lives of ordinary people who had toiled all day in the sun.
Some of the people seemed troubled by their passing and strode quickly away, not wishing to be anywhere near the trouble that the Borderkind might cause. Frost felt disgust roil in him. If there was danger to ordinary people in simply being in the presence of Borderkind, the Hunters ought to be accountable, not the Borderkind themselves. But regardless of who was at fault, just being near Frost and the others could have been fatal.