“Where—”
“Milk first!” Mommadoll ordered, shoving the thermos into Carlyle’s hands. “No arguments. And as for you, Stander-Y, I have a hot pot pie for you, and you’re eating all the vegetables this time or else you’re not getting any cobbler afterward. Well? Come out!”
After a few breaths’ pause, a tiny figure in sand brown crawled out from the shadow of the stairs up to the walkway above. “Mommadoll, a secret spy mission means no one is supposed to know I’m here spying.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks,” she countered, gold curls bouncing. “The Major left me in charge while they’re on the rescue mission, and I say you get a hot dinner.” She produced a tiny pie. “It’s not right you getting stuck by yourself all night. The least the Major could do is see you get a decent meal.”
Carlyle stared at the thermos in his hands, despair’s tears turning to relief’s. “You were spying on me?”
“No, we’re spying on Thisbe.” The tiny soldier’s eyes glowed as Mommadoll lowered the pie into his arms. “And the bash’house. We’ve moved Bridger to safety, but best to keep an eye out here. There could still be evidence, and Dominic could get to Thisbe.”
Carlyle gulped the milk, and gasped as Mommadoll opened her sack to display the chocolate chip treasures within. “I can’t believe you brought me milk and cookies.”
“You need it after facing one of Thisbe’s bullying moods.” Mommadoll offered a napkin from the stash in her apron pocket.
Carlyle sprayed crumbs. “Did you know?”
Stander-Y snorted. “Know what? That Thisbe’s a scary-ass psychopath? Of course.”
“Language!” Mommadoll chided.
“Sorry, ma’am. It’s true, though. Thisbe’s scarier than Mycroft. Reliable in her way, but scary.”
Carlyle paused, facing the ageless question of whether to dip her cookies or keep her milk crumb-free. “You knew Thisbe’s a witch?”
“That’s nonsense!” Mommadoll smiled the thought away with rosy cheeks. “Thisbe just says that to play with people. Thisbe’s upset. I’m sure that’s the only reason for this bullying tantrum just now. It’s been a trying time for poor Thisbe, police stomping around the house. I’ll bring more cookies later.”
Carlyle frowned. “You saw what Thisbe almost made me do.”
Stander-Y took a long breath. “I don’t know if Thisbe’s really a witch, but I do know she can do … something. Witchcraft would explain a lot, actually. Just now, where I was standing, it felt like I could feel all the same things you did, sad, then really sad and ashamed, then suddenly terrified when Thisbe snapped her fingers the first time, then weakness in my legs, and when she shushed you I choked too, like in a dream when you can’t speak. Maybe Thisbe and Bridger have powers from the same source, something about this place.”
Carlyle gazed into her milk. “The place wouldn’t explain J.E.D.D. Mason.…”
Stander-Y shook his head. “I think you should stay away from J.E.D.D. Mason. Mycroft said they’d die before they let you close to them, and Mycroft Canner is a man who’s thought a lot about their death and how best to use it.”
Carlyle’s frown deepened as she took a long breath, two. “I’ve been wondering, does Bridger…”
“Does Bridger what?”
The sensayer closed her eyes, as if afraid to face the question and the world at once. “Does Bridger have a belly button?”
“Good question, if a little out of nowhere.” The soldier smiled. “No, he doesn’t. First real belly button Bridger ever saw was Mycroft’s, and the kid thought it was another bullet scar.”
A cleansing tremor shook Carlyle’s frame: laughter. “That’s proof then.”
“That Bridger had no parents?”
“Yes,” Carlyle answered, though her eyes dodged the others’. “No parents.”
“Yep, the kid sprang from nowhere,” the soldier confirmed, “the belly button and the thumbs prove it.”
“Thumbs?”
“You didn’t notice?” Stander-Y fished through his pie for chicken bits among the vegetables. “Bridger has little red welts on his thumb tips, like scarred-over acne. Mycroft scanned them. When an infant sucks its thumb, wouldn’t you call it a substitute for a nipple? A toy nipple, in other words?”
“Then … Bridger nursed themself?”
The soldier nodded. “Take that, conservation of matter and energy.” He smiled again. “You must be feeling better, thinking about metaphysics again?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m feeling much better. Thank you.” Carlyle gave panting Boo another scritch. “You rescued me.”
“You needed it.”
“Agreed,” Mommadoll announced. “And now, Carlyle, you are going home to get some rest. Everything will be better after a good night’s sleep.”
Carlyle breathed deep. “Thisbe’s not really watching constantly, are they? They were surprised when I said I’d talked to Dominic. They didn’t realize I was hiding in Mukta until Cato Weeksbooth noticed. Even the details … there are photos in my profile where I’m in a bedroom painted with birds, but that’s a bash’mate’s bedroom, not mine. It was a lie. Thisbe’s not watching. They want me to think they’re watching.”
The soldier nodded approval. “You’re quick.”
Carlyle sniffed. “Julia trained me well.” She closed her eyes for a pensive second. “You need to go. Both of you, Boo too. Now.”
“Why?”
“I’m finally strong enough to make an important call.”
Foster: “Hello? This is Special Informant Carlyle Foster, calling for the Commissioner General. It’s an emergency.”
Desk: “Patching you through.”
Papadelias: “Foster! You finally worked up the courage to testify against good old Julia Doria-Pompous-Head? Now’s a great time!”
Foster: “It’s not about Julia. It’s about the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’.”
Papadelias: “Ooh … you have my full attention now. What’s up?”
Foster: “I think Thisbe Saneer just tried to kill me.”
Papadelias: “Great! How? When? Where? Why?”
Foster: “I don’t know, in the trench in their backyard, about … a little while ago. We were just talking, and Thisbe did something, and suddenly I tried to kill myself. It was so fast, I don’t know how it happened but I’m sure Thisbe did something, they said they did.”
Papadelias: “Suicide on cue, that’s perfect! Stay there! Stay exactly where you are. Don’t move! Don’t touch anything! Don’t move anything! Don’t alter the chemical composition of anything! I’ll have forensics there in ten minutes, just hold still!”
Foster: “I will. I’m ready.”
CHAPTER THE NINTH
The Visitation
It never seems to stop, this long night of the twenty-seventh. Here in Paris it has already been March twenty-eighth for some hours, but no mathematician’s prescription will ever force the mind to call those stifling hours of black before the dawn ‘tomorrow.’ I did not want that night to end. With Saladin around me, the universe outside our cage might have melted away with me uncaring. Only the coat around us reminded me of the present, Griffincloth heavy like womb-water, but on every second or third tossing or turning my elbow would nudge a weapon nested in the coat and remind me that, at least once upon a time, there were members of the human race beside we two.
“Mycroft? Mycroft?” This part was not a dream, I think, though as I dozed in the ambrosia of Saladin’s arms, it seemed one. “I’ve come to get you.”
“Leave me.”
“Your friend looks hurt.”
I stroked the bandages; Saladin has always been the deeper sleeper. “I don’t know what I was hoping for. It was inevitable Saladin would get caught up in this someday, I just thought maybe they’d get killed first, fighting a monster somewhere. That would’ve been a good end. There are monsters in the world these days, more than just the two of us.” I raised my eyes now, seeking the visitor’s shadow in the shimmering dim that darkness makes of Madame’s gilded halls. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“And you should?”
“Yes, I should.”
“Why?”