“Oh gods,” said Ruby with a hysterical laugh. “I was afraid she wouldn’t drink it.” She pulled out a chair and dropped into it while the others gaped—all but Sparrow, who let out a shaky sigh.
“Well done,” she told her sister, picking her way through shards of shattered teacup to reach Minya’s limp form. The little girl was sprawled across the table, eyes closed, mouth open, one arm flopped over the side. She looked very small. Delicately, Sparrow lifted the flopped arm and tucked it onto the table.
“What just happened?” Feral asked, his eyes darting from girl to girl. “What did you do?”
Ruby lifted her chin. “Something,” she said with great dignity. “You might have heard of it. It’s the opposite of nothing.”
He looked at her blankly. What was that supposed to mean? “Would you care to elaborate?”
“I drugged Minya.” When she heard her own words, Ruby’s eyes went wide. She repeated, with wonder, “I drugged Minya,” and then, warming to her subject, “I saved us, that’s all. Weep too. Maybe the whole world. You’re welcome.” As an afterthought, she admitted in a substantially lower voice, “It was Sparrow’s idea.”
“But you did it,” said Sparrow, who felt no need to claim credit.
Sarai came up between them. She didn’t have to worry about the broken porcelain on the floor, but just floated an inch or two above it. She looked at Minya’s little face. With her eyes closed, and her mouth relaxed from the tight line or smirk it was usually fixed in, you could see how pretty she was, and how very young. She didn’t look at all like a tyrant intent on starting a war. And now…for the moment, at least…she wasn’t. She was just a little girl asleep on a table. “Thank you,” breathed Sarai, reaching for Sparrow and Ruby. They were all shaking in the stillness, trying to adjust to the sudden lack of threat.
“Yes,” said Lazlo, breathless. “Thank you.” He was still reeling under the full horror of his predicament. He didn’t know what he would have done, or whom he would have sacrificed. He prayed that he would never know, and never again be in such a position.
“I can’t believe you two did this.” Sarai laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh. It was weak and amazed and, above all, relieved. She had thought she had come to her end out there, where it was so cold, and souls melted like darkness at dawn. “It was the bottle?” she asked. “The green one?”
“It was,” said Ruby. “And to whoever might have called me an idiot for tasting it, I am accepting apologies. Not granting pardons, mind you. Just accepting apologies.” She didn’t look at Feral, so she didn’t see his scowl, but she imagined it, and, in fact, the one in her mind perfectly matched the one on his face.
“Tasting what?” asked Lazlo. “What bottle?”
Ruby held up a finger at him. “Hold that thought, please,” she said, adding in a stage whisper, “I’m waiting for an apology.”
“Fine,” drawled Feral. “I take back what I said when we were children. You weren’t an idiot for tasting Letha’s potion. You were a lucky idiot.”
Ruby’s eyes flashed to him. “You’d know all about being a lucky idiot. But you’ve run out of luck. Now you’re just an idiot.”
And so Sarai inferred that whatever had begun between Feral and Ruby had ended. She didn’t know if she should be sorry about it; it seemed rather a terrible idea, the two of them paired up. She told Lazlo, “Ruby’s room used to be Letha’s, and there was a green glass bottle she’d kept on her bed table. When we were little, Ruby tasted it. She thought it might be sweet, but it wasn’t.”
“I only touched my tongue to the rim of the bottle, like this,” said Ruby, demonstrating.
“And she passed out for two days,” added Sparrow.
“And woke up feeling perfectly fine,” concluded Ruby. “Having understood, even as a child”—and this next bit was directed at Feral—“that Letha would hardly have kept poison on her bed table.”
“She could have,” argued Feral. “For all you knew, she murdered her lovers when she was through with them.”
“What a fine idea.”
“Stop it, you two,” Sarai said mildly. The point was: The green glass bottle had held a sleeping draught. Looking at Minya laid out there, so vulnerable, she realized something. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her asleep.”
Nor had the others. They had assumed she must sleep, but none of them could recall ever seeing her do it.
It was then that Sarai noted a peculiar absence from the discussion and craned her head to look for the Ellens. They ought to have been right here, tongues clucking with praises and scolds, but…they were still in the kitchen doorway, and they weren’t moving.
They weren’t moving at all.
Sarai said, “Ellens?” and the others turned to look. For the moment, they forgot Minya and went over to the nurses. “Ellen?” coaxed Sarai, reaching for Great Ellen’s shoulder. There was no response, and…it wasn’t just that she was frozen. Great Ellen was blank. Less Ellen was, too. There was no expression at all on their faces, and worse: no awareness in their eyes. Sarai waved her hand in front of them. Nothing. She made a quick glance round at the rest of the ghosts, and they all looked as they always did: Their bodies were rigid, but their eyes were free and they watched everything, fully conscious inside their puppet forms. But not the Ellens.
It didn’t make any sense.
The nearest they could figure—this was Feral’s theory; he was always good for a theory, if not for a decision—was that when Minya fell asleep, her ghosts went on in whatever state she’d left them, until such a time as they received new orders. If they were frozen, they remained so. On guard duty, the same, though that they could not prove, since all the ghosts had been gathered here in anticipation of invading Weep. As for Sarai, she’d just been given back her free will, so she retained it.
So why hadn’t the Ellens?
“Maybe Minya froze them,” said Sparrow, “to stop them from interfering with her?”
But Ruby had talked to them just the moment before, when she pushed back through the doorway with her tea tray. “They were normal,” she said. “They were crying.” Indeed, tear streaks were visible on their cheeks. “Great Ellen caught my elbow,” she said. “She made the cups slosh. I hissed at her to let go.” She frowned. “I wasn’t very pleasant.”
And even if Minya had frozen them, as they all knew she had earlier in the garden, that couldn’t explain this vacant state. It was as though the two ghost women were… empty.
Unsettled though they were, they had to leave them like that and turn their attention back to Minya and the very large question of what to do about her. “We can’t keep her drugged forever,” said Feral.
“Well, we could,” Ruby argued, looking around at them. “I mean, it kind of solves all our problems. Sarai’s free, no one’s making us kill anyone, and it’s not like we’re hurting her. She’s just asleep. Sarai can give her nice dreams now and then, and we can do what we like from now on.”
“It’s hardly a permanent solution,” said Sparrow.
“Maybe not forever,” said Ruby, “but I’m in no hurry for her to wake up.”
None of them were, but it was still unsettling to think of keeping her drugged. And she wasn’t the only one affected.
“What about them?” Lazlo asked, meaning the slave ghosts packed into the gallery.
Ruby grimaced as she considered them. “We could move them, I guess.” Her eyes lit up. “You can make mesarthium servants to do it, so we don’t even have to touch them.”
He regarded her, quizzical. “I meant…” he began, at a loss, and looked to Sarai for help.
“He meant,” she said with a note of censure, “that they’ll be slaves, and stay trapped, as long as Minya’s unconscious.”
“At least no one’s making them kill their own families,” said Ruby. “They’re fine.”