Page 28 of Come Tumbling Down

“I’m counting on that,” she said.

Silence fell, save for the thin, gasping sound of Cora’s sobs, and the distant, untamable roaring of the sea.

13 THE BROKEN CROWN

JACK SAT RAMROD straight in the driver’s seat of the wagon, reins clutched in her gloved hands, hair braided so tightly that it became a measuring stick for her posture, sketching the line of her spine. She kept her eyes on the horizon, and on the growing shape of a small village protected by a vast wall, huddled in the shadow of a castle like a fawn seeking protection in the jaws of a lion.

Sumi lounged next to her, perfectly relaxed. She’d managed to acquire a wicked-looking baling hook from somewhere inside the Drowned Abbey and was using it to pick her fingernails, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that it was a rusty piece of metal large enough to pierce her entire hand.

Christopher and Kade sat to either side of Cora in the bed of the wagon, their shoulders hunched, tense, protective. There was no ocean here, no way for her to drown again, but her skin gleamed with rainbows, and no matter how much water ran from it, her hair never seemed to dry. They knew how close they’d come to losing her. Her and Kade both.

Cora said nothing as they rode, only gazed back at the shimmering line of the sea, and shivered, and clutched her fingers in the tatters of her shirt like she could serve as her own anchor, her own rocky shore.

Behind them came the acolytes of the Drowned Abbey, with Gideon at their head, seated astride a creature risen from the briny depths that was something like a great black frog, and something like a terrible fish, and something like nothing that had ever been intended to walk beneath the Moon. The luminous lure sprouting from between its bulbous eyes dangled in front of its terrible maw, sending glints of light dancing across its teeth. Gideon’s sedan chair was affixed to the creature’s back, and he rode with the comfortable ease of someone who knew that the most terrible of potential fates was in front of him, aimed at someone else.

Further back, behind the silent, hooded acolytes, who carried barnacle-encrusted swords and left trails of saltwater behind them, like they carried the sea itself in their pockets, came the villagers from the nameless settlement that lay beneath the Abbey. To be a villager on the Moors was to be a pawn in the long, slow game of life and death played between monsters, and they knew what was expected of them. They marched with grim expressions on their faces and the tools of their trade in their hands, baling hooks and fishing spears and tridents. Some of their number carried torches as well. Fire and water stood in opposition, but the casual reminder that most things could be flammable under the right circumstances was tradition, and tradition had a large part to play in this encounter.

Jack held the reins but didn’t move them, trusting Pony and Bones to know the way, and tried not to think of Alexis, alone in the windmill, waiting for her to come home. Alexis wouldn’t care if Jack won or if she lost, only that she survived, and Jack wished she could be that generous with herself; wished, with a fierce inner loathing, that she could be that generous for Alexis. If they failed to get her body back, she was going to break. Maybe not tonight, maybe not for weeks or even months, but she could feel the fault lines forming, could barely fight the urge to score her sister’s unwanted flesh with her fingernails, trying to scrape enough of it away that she could find the cleanliness buried somewhere deep within.

They had to win. If they lost, even if she lived, she died, and it would be the kind of death that lightning couldn’t save her from. They had to win.

Clouds gathered overhead, obscuring the great red eye of the moon. In the distance, thunder rolled, and a cold wind swept across the Moors, rattling the brush and chilling the flesh of the marchers. Jack flicked the reins, keeping her eyes only on their destination.

“It will be all right,” said Sumi. “People will die or they won’t, but either way, it’s almost at an ending, and things that are almost at an ending have a way of making their opinions known.”

“If that was meant to be comforting, you’re worse at this than I am,” said Jack.

“Not comforting; comfort comes later. How well do you know Gideon?”

“He was here before me. His door dropped him on the seashore. I suppose the Moon makes some of our choices for us, and then everyone tries to pretend that She didn’t. That’s the trouble with gods. They don’t care much how poorly they treat their toys.”

“Mmm. Does he like girls?”

That was enough to startle Jack into looking Sumi’s direction. The other girl was still picking her fingernails, but she was watching Jack out of the corner of her eye.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I never asked him.”

“He’s pretty.”

“I’ve noticed that much, yes, but by the time he became High Priest—thanks to the previous High Priest having an unfortunate accident involving an unsecured widow’s walk and a long plummet into an unwelcoming sea—and was hence free to court, I was already with Alexis, and I find monogamy unhygienic enough. Imagine needing to maintain a grooming regime for multiple partners.” Jack shuddered delicately. “He’s pretty, he’s poisonous, and he’s yours, if you want him. Leave me out of it.”

“You’re not my type,” said Sumi.

Jack laughed—a single harsh, mirthless bark—and as if that were the cue for the distance to distort, the walls of the village loomed in front of them, too close too quickly. They were locked against the gathered darkness. Spots of fire glowed from the top, marking the position of the watchmen.

“I believe this is my cue,” said Jack. She adjusted her glasses, took a deep breath, and called, in a voice gone suddenly sonorous, like the weight of the Moors lay across her shoulders, “I am Jacqueline Wolcott, apprentice to Dr. Michael Bleak, come to answer the challenge set against my house. Open your gates and let us pass. Our quarrel is not with you.”

“Does that work?” asked Christopher, from the back of the wagon. “Why would these people just let us in when we’re here to fight their big bad boss?”

“Because we have an army, and they enjoy their homes being unburnt,” said Jack. Her gaze didn’t waver from the wall. “You have to be at least a little bloody-minded to survive here. They know their Master won’t reward them for defending him. That isn’t how a challenge works. All they can do is die for a man who’s never viewed them as anything more than cattle. It would be senseless.”

As if to prove her point, the gates creaked open. Jack nodded to herself, gathering the reins.

“They are, however, likely to attempt to pour pitch or oil on us, so we’ll be going through as quickly as—yah!” She flicked the reins as she shouted. Pony and Bones, not bound to the physical limitations of ordinary flesh-and-blood horses, recognized this for the challenge it was and took off at a run so fast that it felt, for a moment, as if the wagon might come apart from the strain.

They dashed through the open gates directly ahead of a sheet of bubbling liquid that caught fire when it hit the ground. It clung to the cobblestones marking the edge of the village, burning. Cora and Kade watched with wide, horrified eyes as the acolytes of the Drowned Gods continued marching. Gideon raised his hand in a careless wave. The storm, which had been threatening for some time, descended. The sky tore, and water sheeted down, extinguishing the flames.

The rain was localized, and stopped as quickly as it had started. Kade squinted, and realized he could still see the torches held by the marching villagers, untouched by the downpour.