Shushu grabbed it, held it up to her nose, took in a deep sniff, then threw it down at her feet. The pomander exploded into a cloud of highly perfumed smoke. The witch gestured at this cloud and called out.
“Duke Rikard! Duke Rikard! Duke Rikard!”
Nothing happened. Shushu grimaced with annoyance, then called out again.
“Duke Rikard! Duke Rikard! Duke Rikard!”
Slowly, a face formed in the smoke: the unpleasant, deathly pale face of Duke Rikard. He was wearing a high-collared black jacket that accentuated his pallor, and there were red rings around his eye sockets, which might or might not have been from the application of rouge.
“What?” he asked testily. “I’m busy. Who calls?”
“The witches of Brokenmouth Hill. I am Shushu, head witch. Greetings.”
“What do you want?” Rikard’s image was becoming clearer in the smoke. From the look of it, he was on top of the south tower back in Trallonia castle, which Anya found odd. Right on top, as in standing on the roof. Why would the Duke be on the roof of the south tower?
“We are calling to claim your offered reward,” said Shushu evenly. “The two hundred gold nobles for the location of your runaway princess.”
“You know where she is?” asked the Duke. He was getting that supposedly secret smile again, the corner of his thin-lipped mouth twitching up.
“We have her here,” said Shushu. She gestured towards Anya. “You can see for yourself, if the vision is clear enough.”
“It is,” purred the Duke. He started rubbing his hands together and cackled a little bit before continuing. “Keep her there. I will come and collect her within the hour.”
Anya suppressed the panicked leap that suddenly sparked up inside her. The Duke coming to get her? Within the hour?
“What?” asked Shushu, startled. “But you’re in Trallonia, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” replied the Duke. He cackled again, and spread his arms wide. “But I have a new means of travel. You have called me at a most suitable time, for my power grows by the day, and my labors bear many fruit. Um, many fruits! Such as this one!”
The vision grew clearer around the Duke, colors and lines becoming sharper in the smoke. He wasn’t standing on the roof of the tower at all, but on the deck of a strange little ship, a slender, sharp-prowed ship, all white, with a peculiar bare mast that had many kinks, as if it was made of lots of short poles stuck atop each other. Two patchwork sails made from thousands of feathers somehow woven together were furled vertically against the mast. From their position they would unfold as wings.
The little ship was perhaps thirty feet long and six feet wide, and floated in the air as easily as if it lay upon the water. It was moored to the lightning rod on the tower’s roof by a thin rope that glittered in the sun like spun gold, which it very well might have been.
“Make sure you bring the money,” said Shushu. But even as she spoke, the vision faded. The pieces of pomander on the ground blackened and curled, and the sweet scent of ambergris, orange, and peppermint was replaced with the foul stench of rotting food.
“I don’t like this at all,” said the older witch. “He’s made a bone ship. And did you notice? He wasn’t breathing.”
“What’s a bone ship?” asked one of the younger witches. At the same time another asked, “Not breathing?”
“Bah!” said Shushu. “He’s a very powerful sorcerer, that’s all. We were right to deal with him.”
“A bone ship is made from the bones of myriad birds,” said the older witch heavily. “He would have had to kill or organize the killing of a thousand or more birds, of all different sizes. The mast alone requires the femurs of thirty-nine great eagles. It is an evil construction, to make a flying craft in such a way. And if he’s not breathing, he has grown totally cold, devoid of any human feelings. He has given himself completely to his own ambition, without care for anyone or anything else. That is truly evil.”
“You know we do not make such judgments,” said Shushu. “Business is business. We do not question whether our customers are ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ ”
“Once we did,” said the older witch. “When the Bill of Rights and—”
“Oh hush!” snapped Shushu. “The Bill is long gone! Gone and forgotten! Think of the two hundred gold nobles. Why that’s … fifteen gold nobles, two shillings, and sixpence each!”
“Little enough if word gets out we sell our customers to evil sorcerers,” said the old witch, with a very telling sniff. For a moment it seemed like she might spit on Shushu’s feet.
Then she did. She hawked up a huge gobbet of spit and sent it straight at the head witch’s clogs. It spattered on her toes with a sound like bacon hitting a hot frying pan.
Shushu howled and reached inside the pocket of her apron, drawing out a crystal potion sphere that she lifted to throw. At the same time the other witch reached in her apron and pulled out a black bottle that she uncorked and raised to pour down her own throat.
All the other witches scattered, shouting and screaming.
“Duel! A duel!”
Anya chose that moment to spring up and sprint for the closest gap in the stones, the precious bottle of witches’ tears hugged to her chest. As she ran, she heard a hissing behind her, like the sound of iron being quenched by a smith, only much, much louder—and, in counterpoint to that, a noise like hail falling on a tiled roof, rat-a-tat-tat.
She didn’t dare look to see what was making these sounds, but raced down the hill, zigzagging in case one of the witches threw a potion at her, or even just a rock. The noises behind her changed, the hissing suddenly replaced by a great boom, accompanied by a blast of hot air that hit Anya and helped her along her way. Presuming it had cooled from its point of origin it must have been very hot indeed back there. Behind it came a sound like dozens of animals screaming, but not any animals Anya could recognize.