“Oh,” said Franklin. Chantel was pleased to see he looked slightly nonplussed.
Finding a button didn’t seem like much of a hope. But treacherous Queen Haywith had once opened a breach in the wall . . . maybe now, with no sorceresses to do the Buttoning, it might be possible to do it again.
They followed the wall. They made their way through the harborside neighborhood. A woman was cooking stew, over an open fire on the cobbles. People were lining up to buy bowlsful of it, and Chantel looked at it longingly. It smelled good and she was very hungry.
The woman said something to a girl next to her and handed her a bowl. The girl took the bowl and, stepping carefully so as not to spill it (the bowl was very full) brought it over to Chantel.
“I don’t have any money,” said Chantel.
“My mother said to give it to you.” The girl’s accent was different from Franklin’s, but also different from the people in Lightning Pass.
“We’re not beggars,” Chantel heard herself say, to her horror. It was terrible having a snake in your head.
“But we are grateful,” said Franklin, taking the bowl from the girl’s hands. “Thank you.”
The stew was the best thing Chantel had ever tasted. It had things from the sea in it, fish and shellfish and green stuff, and tomatoes and potatoes and a lot of pepper. It was gone too quickly, and the little girl came and took the bowl away. Then she brought it back, full again. Bowser tried to give her his knife in payment, but she wouldn’t take it.
They gave the empty bowl back, and walked on, feeling considerably livelier and better about the world.
They passed through another gate, and were out in the Roughlands again, this time to the west of the city. They were, according to Franklin, now in the kingdom of Eastern Karute.
“I know that,” said Chantel. “Eastern Karute is known for its—”
Barbaric behavior. Bloody history. Vicious Marauders. Even with a snake in her head, Chantel had to stop and think. Not everything she’d learned in school about the Roughlands seemed to be bearing up.
“Apple trees,” said Franklin. “I wonder if we’ll see any.”
They didn’t, though. They saw weeds. The Roughlands seemed to be largely composed of weeds. And then, although they were climbing toward the mountains, they ran into marshes. By the time they were all soaked well past their knees from stepping on what looked like solid ground and turned out to be cold, murky water, Chantel had learned to avoid walking on the greenest bits.
“How far do you think we’ve come?” said Anna.
“About two miles,” said Franklin promptly. “I’m going to climb this tree.”
It was a three-quarters-dead tree, drowned, Chantel thought, by the surrounding marsh.
“What good does that do?” Chantel asked, as he hoisted himself into its bare branches.
“He wants to see where we are,” said Bowser.
They watched the Marauder boy climb as high as he could, and stare off to the north, shading his eyes. A moment later he was clambering down at great speed. He fell off the bottommost branch and picked himself up, wincing.
“There’s an army coming,” he said.
“An army?” said Anna.
“I don’t believe you,” said Chantel. “Why would there be an army?”
“Let me see,” said Bowser, grabbing the branch and trying without success to swing himself up as Franklin had done.
Franklin seized him and pulled him down. “There’s not time! Where’s your wretched secret gate?”
Chantel looked at the wall. If they’d come two miles, they ought to have reached one of the seven buttons by now. The wall looked exactly the same everywhere. Flat and shiny and utterly impassable.
“Hurry up!” said Franklin.
Chantel ran to the wall, jumping from tussock to hummock, and occasionally missing and splashing into cold muck. She put her hands on it, feeling for a crack, a line, anything.
“Do some magic or something!” Franklin yelled.
“We’re trying,” muttered Anna, who had joined Chantel at the wall. “Chantel, can you—”
Chantel wasn’t listening. She was trying as hard as she could to summon an opening in the Wall. To summon a spell. To summon anything.
It wasn’t working.
Consider the girl.
We do. We have considered her for some time. The girl is dangerous.
But is she more dangerous inside the wall, or out?
Outside the wall she cannot cause any harm. At least, not for some time.
But if we lose her?
Inside the wall, we can keep an eye on her.
Inside the wall, she may be of use to us.
Of use? She may be one of us.
I think she summons us.
Summons us? A mere child?
A powerful child.
Why does she not see Dimswitch, then?
She ought to.
If she is as powerful as we think she should see it plainly.
She is upset. She is angry. She is thirteen. It’s a difficult age.
Very well.
Show her Dimswitch.
10
DIMSWITCH
Suddenly Chantel saw something—a dark shadow against the vast expanse of smooth stone. “There! See that?”
“I think,” said Anna, squinting. “Almost. Yes.”
The shadow was the shape of a—well, a coffin, Chantel thought. And it was oddly really there. When Chantel put her hand over it, the shadow didn’t cover her hand; it stayed beneath it.
“It’s a button. It’s—it’s called Dimswitch. And it seems like we have to—turn it somehow,” said Chantel. Touching it, she felt she could understand how it worked. She could feel that it was connected to the other buttons, and to . . . something else. She couldn’t tell what. “We kind of push it a little bit sideways . . . Anna, do the fourth sign and the sixth. Fourth with your right hand and sixth with your left. Together.”
“That’s impossible,” said Anna.
“No it’s not,” said Chantel distractedly. “I’m sure you can do it.” She listened to what the button was telling her. She took two steps backward, and sloshed into water halfway up her shins.
She heard a cry behind her.
She spun around. Bowser was still beside the tree—with a Marauder’s arm around his neck and a Marauder’s knife at his throat.
The Marauder was tall and thick and utterly diabolical-looking, just like the drawing from the Girls’ First History Book at school. Chantel desperately wished she’d been taught any kind of magic that would help.
“Let him go.” Franklin was halfway between the wall and the tree, his crossbow aimed at the Marauder. “Now.”
His crossbow? Chantel wondered, with the tiny portion of her mind that wasn’t watching in horror.
“You can’t shoot me,” said the Marauder. “You’ll hit the city boy.”
“He’s right!” Anna called. “Franklin, don’t—”
The crossbow went kerchunk.
The bolt struck the Marauder in the arm, an inch from Bowser’s head. The Marauder yelped and dropped his knife. Bowser wrestled free and ran. Franklin, meanwhile, was fitting another bolt to the crossbow.
The Marauder fumbled with his own crossbow—it couldn’t be easy with the bolt sticking through his arm—and Franklin shot him again. In the other arm.
The Marauder turned and fled.