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“I usually am,” September said with a sigh.
Ajax Oddson smiled with the tips of two pink flags. “It’s to keep the whole thing fair. If everyone could see where everyone else dashed off to first, then you’d all have a pretty good idea where to start looking for the Heart of Fairyland and there wouldn’t be any sport in it. Besides, people tend to make a hash of the starting line. Pushing and shoving and stabbing and turning into turtles. As a courtesy, all racers have been enclosed in a small bubble of space and time. They cannot see us and we cannot see them, but I assure you they are all safe and sound and so are you. These bubbles will last for a few hours after the Ready Steady Go to ensure a fair start for all. It’s a fantastically difficult bit of hexing, I’m told. Something about Wet Magic and Severe Magic and Shy Magic all at the same time and also a certain very expensive opossum. At the same time, all participants have been delivered to their individual and individualized Starting Lounges, arranged in a large circle around the city of Pandemonium, so that no one has an advantage. Some of them are quite near to us right now—but our little space-time opossum has provided this lovely peace and quiet before it all goes absolutely mad. Within their bubbles, each registered racer is at this very moment hearing this exact speech from their own personal copy of Ajax Oddson. The race will begin once everyone has heard the rules and asked whatever adorable questions they have in their back pockets.”
“So you’re not really here?” asked Ell uncertainly.
“Oh no, Master Wyverary! I am where I belong—at the finish line. It’s all done with mirrors! And a dash of Hot Magic from a bruja named Quintuple Pod. She’s a doppelgänger and my right-hand man. Got a cabinet full of copies of herself hanging up like winter coats. She can do this sort of thing while eating scrambled eggs with one hand and reading the newspaper with the other. Now, let’s take attendance and make sure it’s all gone to plan. It’s not easy to coordinate mirrors and opossums and Quintuple, you know. We could all lose our heads. Or the spare change in our pockets. Is your team all present and accounted for?”
“No!” cried September. “No, they are not. Aroostook is gone.”
Ajax Oddson unfolded his forearm and peered at the silk. “I don’t have anyone registered under that name.”
“It’s my … it’s a car. A Model A Ford with a burlap potato sack over the spare tire and a green sunflower for a steering wheel.”
“Ah. Ah-ha. And by car you mean a carriage?”
“I suppose.”
“Any carriages, cars, catamarans, or other conveyances are classed as steeds, my dear.”
“Aroostook is not a steed! Well, it might have been, but it’s been through a lot.”
The Racemaster seemed terribly excited. “I have invented a number of thrilling, terrific, tremendous rules especially for the Cantankerous Derby, the most spectacularly important Derby in the history of Fairyland, but this is my favorite. All Steeds Shall Be Collected and, at the Firing of the Starting Catapult, Redistributed to Racers at Random!”
Saturday frowned deeply. “What? Do you mean … someone else is going to drive Aroostook, and we’ll get … what? Queen Mab’s hazelnut coach?”
Ajax clapped his own hands in delight. “Yes, you’ve got it! Isn’t it genius? No one will have the vehicular advantages they so carefully planned out or built or tamed or enchanted. It will be gloriously, brilliantly fair. Let’s hope you don’t nab the nut, though, eh? I shouldn’t like to be in possession of anything belonging to Miss Mab. And no abandoning your steeds just because you got a rocking horse instead of a rocket! Anyone crossing the finish line without a mount shall be disqualified!”
“Poor Aroostook,” September said softly. She did hope someone not too terrible got her beloved Model A. She shouldn’t like to think of Tanaquill grinding the gears.
“Poor us,” Saturday whispered
back. “Did you see the magma skis Our Lady of Lava brought? Or the Knapper’s gyroscope of daggers?”
“At least they didn’t put me down as a steed,” Ell sniffed.
“You rode round my neck once, Ell,” said September, reaching up to touch his warm, scaly flank. “On the Moon, when you were small. So if you’re a steed, then I am, too. No one had better call you one unless they’re prepared to saddle me up alongside. It’s not a very nice word, really.”
Ajax clapped his silken hands. “Let’s not hold up the whole Derby, boys and girls! Shall I tell you my second one-time-only special Cantankerous Rule? I shall! If You Should Encounter Another Racer, the Two of You Shall Be Said to Occupy the Same Square on the Playing Board and Shall Duel at Once. The Opossum of Space and Time will provide a Dueling Ground in which both fighters will have access to the same magic, no matter their species or education. Quintuple Pod and I Will Doppelgäng a Random Racer to Your Side Immediately to Officiate the Duel. Hopefully this will winnow down the numbers a bit. It’s dash crowded out there.”
“Duel to the death?” September asked. She would not kill anyone. She would not. How could she ever go home if she did such a thing? How could she ever stay? A death is too big to forget.
“We are not barbarians, madam!” Ajax Oddson held his hand to his breast, mortified. “No, these will be Duels to the Dodo! Well, to the Dodo’s Egg, to be exact. The loser of the duel shall be considered Out of the Game. Disqualified, three strikes, offsides! They will find themselves safely returned to the Egg—to wherever he or she came from, be that the Moon or Nebraska or primordial chaos or the land of the dead. It’s quite humane. After all, everyone was content in their own good homes or graves or prisons three days ago—no reason to fear such places now! No harm, no foul.”
“And the … Officiants will be just like you?” asked Saturday. “We’ll be able to hear and see them, but they can’t touch us or harm us. They’ll still be running the race, wherever they are. Or, I suppose, we will, if the lot falls to us.”
Oddson steamed on.
“Deftly explanated, Mr. Blue! Any Cheating, Rule-Trampling, Duel-Tampering, or Belligerence Toward Myself will earn you a visit to the Penalty Box! Which brings me to my last invention: Halfway Through the Derby, Everyone Shall Switch Places According to Whatever Scheme I, Ajax Oddson, Deem to Be Most Hilarious at That Time. That is all! And I must inform you that everyone else has finished talking to me and seems quite anxious to begin! Are you ready to meet your steed and hit the road? Shall I fetch the starting catapult?”
September looked to Saturday and Ell. They’d been cooped up in the cellar so long. It would feel wonderful just to run and run and run together. And who knew? Perhaps at the end of all that running, she might still have her crown.
“We’re ready, Mr. Oddson,” she said firmly.
The Racemaster reached into his left sleeve, covered in zigzagging golden lines. He drew out a little catapult—and as he drew it out it grew and grew until it was bigger than Ajax himself, made all of obsidian and wolf-bone. The pocket overflowed with bizarre and mysterious objects, some colorful, some drab, some large and covered in spikes, some soft and small and well-worn.
“Ladies and lads and gentle-wyverns, Queens and Questers! I have packed my personal catapult full of items you would find incredibly useful in the running of a Derby, from Seven League Boots to salamander cloaks to Belinda Cabbage’s new and untested Geographickal Engine! I have selected these objects with love and care and malice aforethought, to protect and guide you on your way. Let the Cantankerous Derby begin!”
A dagger flashed in Ajax Oddson’s hand. He slashed through the Sauterelle’s ropes. The catapult sprang forward and fired all those wonderful, useful things into the sky. They soared over the spires of Pandemonium and far away, so high and far that September lost sight of them long before they landed. The invisible horns sounded, fireworks exploded over the Plaited Plaza, raining confetti down into the Mallow and Goldmouth fountain. The Gabardine Gate raised up slowly, showing the road out of Pandemonium and the sparkling waves of the Barleybroom river.
