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Banners shall unfurl
And in this crown let Glass Town be
The lowliest of pearls!
Soult let all the puppets drop at once. He fell back onto his high cushion, exhausted. All the shouting and fighting and accusing only grew louder. Douro kicked at the wooden soldiers like a child caught stealing. Bit by bit, he dragged them all toward the poor poet, who was beside himself with fear and pride.
“He betrayed us!” Soult shrieked as Adrian’s long fingers reached up for his throat. “His grandfather betrayed us then and he’s betrayed us now! He’s sold us out to Gondal for a crown!”
The green poet’s eyes were wild and panicked. In that moment, up there above everyone, trying to do the right thing and ruining himself anyway, Charlotte could not help but think how like Bran he looked. She whirled round to face Sergeant Major Rogue. Jane had fainted again, and this time she’d come by it honestly. Zenobia was stroking her hair and calling her name.
“Help him!” Charlotte cried.
But the wooden soldier only looked down at her sadly out of his one good eye. Douro had nearly reached the puppet theater, which seemed to be coming apart in the crush. Young Soult the Rhymer threw down puppet after puppet onto his head. “There is a plan! It’s all to do with a man made of books and the Other Place and something called a bat-tree!”
“Brunty!” Charlotte yelped.
Young Soult kept hollering. “I know everything! I’ve seen letters and such! Douro’s not alone! He’s got friends!”
“Well,” sighed Sergeant Major Rogue. “I wouldn’t say friends. Collaborators, at a stretch.”
Charlotte blinked. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, then turned her head to one side. Zenobia’s fiery eyes began to drip white flame. Sergeant Major Rogue shrugged and winked at them.
“Oh dear . . . ahem. Good show, I suppose. Both him and me. Tip the lad for me, won’t you, Zenobia? He’s earned it. And do tell old Bravey I’m sorry. It’s not his fault. When you’re born a Rogue, you know, what else can you ever hope to be? Erm. Rather. Well. That’s me, then! Bye, bye!” he chirped. Then Captain Bravey’s right hand turned, got his foot up on the pedestal of one of Dr. Home’s grisly statues, and in half a blink was up, over the holly hedge wall, and running at a dead sprint across the dark, open fields beyond the estate. A black diamond lung toppled onto the ground where he’d kicked it loose.
“Never get involved with a man in uniform, Miss Bell,” Lady Zenobia sighed. “They’re always too loyal to somebody else to ever be loyal to you. I expect he’s already married to some Gondalier cow. Shall I scare us up some champagne?”
“We might still catch him,” Charlotte said, putting her foot experimentally on the pedestal to see if she could manage it in Ginevra’s gown.
“Why?” Zenobia sighed, and disappeared into the glittering riot. “You can’t fix a bad man like a bad staircase. I’d end up locked in his attic or something. Thank you kindly, but no. Really, who has the time?”
Charlotte watched her go and saw all the rest happen. Douro finally got one hand free. He drew a flintlock pistol from his beautiful, expensive coat, spun round, shot Gravey in the chest, then again, and stabbed Crashey through both eyes—one! two!—with a dagger hidden in his sleeve. Charlotte and Emily screamed.
“Rude,” Crashey said, and collapsed in a heap.
Charlotte ran to the fallen boys, but Byron held Emily by the wrists and would not let her go.
“Watch, watch!” he insisted. “This is the best part!”
Adrian stared up demonically at the puppeteer. But at the sight of all that sap, the boy seemed to finally pull himself together. He stared down at the Marquis of Douro with something like pity.
“If you think Boney means to keep his bargain, I’ve got a unicorn for sale out the back.” Soult called out for Wellington, for Copenhagen. One of the torches had fallen into dry grass. Black smoke began to billow and blow. “Wellesley! Arthur! Douro and his friends, they’ve built something terrible and when it’s finished, Gondal is coming for us all!”
The Iron Duke stood leaning against the stone archway with an oddly satisfied expression on his metal face. He touched his fingers to his hat in a little salute. Young Soult the Rhymer closed his eyes then and waited for Adrian of Douro to kill him flat.
Nothing happened.
Douro had run. When he opened his eyes again, Soult saw the tails of that splendid coat disappearing through the holly. Below him, half the nobility of Glass Town sobbed or tried to put out fires or swung punches at one another, each assuming everyone else had thrown in with the traitors. Copenhagen padded lazily round the Vivisectionists’ Garden, where Glass Town’s nobility had well and truly been vivisected. He dropped down onto his seawater haunches here and there to drench the smoking grass. In the middle of it all, Josephine sat in her cage, her rosy arms crossed over her chest, fuming.
“I hate you all so much,” she said simply. “So enormously much.”
Soult crept backward on the platform above the stage until he was half buried in hedge, weeping pitifully. He craned his neck, searching the mob for his protector, his boss, the boy who came to him months ago with a horrible story and a bag of gold, who helped him pick out the milk pitcher for the rooster and bead the scarlet flower past three in the morning, who thought, at last, of rhyming unfurl with pearls. But half the steam from the lion’s firefighting efforts was too thick and he was crying too hard to see Lord Byron, still lounging on his patchwork quilt, grinning and munching on raspberries next to an utterly shell-shocked young girl made all of silver.
“Well, it was mostly rubbish, but the ending was a bit of all right,” Byron said happily. He stretched his arms in front of him and yawned. “What did you think, you naughty little breather minx?”
A heavy hand fell on Charlotte’s shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her golden skin. Wellington stood behind her with the oddest half-embarrassed smile on his iron face.
“I am sorry for my attitude earlier,” he said. “I couldn’t let Douro think I was on to him. Needed the scoundrel to hear the trap I’m springing on Old Boney at Verdopolis. But it does seem that your problems and my problems are having a fine old time together. Shall we put them all together in a big pile and light them on fire?”
