Bowser reached the wall and collapsed against it, panting.
Franklin was close behind him. “Open the blasted thing! Do your magic! There’ll be more coming!” He turned on Anna. “You had to call me ‘Franklin,’ didn’t you?”
“You could have hit Bowser!” said Chantel.
“No. I couldn’t have,” said Franklin. “Open it!” He raised his crossbow and pointed it at the distant fleeing Marauder. “I should have killed him.”
“Why didn’t you?” said Chantel.
Franklin spared her a look. “Killed a lot of people, have you?”
“Chantel, let’s do the spell,” said Anna urgently.
“There. There’s the other two,” said Franklin. “Karl the Bloody always sends three.”
“I don’t see anyone,” said Bowser, still out of breath.
Chantel didn’t either. She saw tussocks and hummocks and space.
“Chantel, start the spell again!” said Anna.
“I’m not bringing a Marauder with a crossbow into the city,” said Chantel. “Where did you hide it?”
“They’re not much use for city fighting anyway.” Franklin had the crossbow aimed straight at something only he could see. “No good at close range.”
“Then drop it,” said Chantel.
“Chantel, he can’t!” said Bowser. “There are more of them out there. Just do the spell!”
“There. They just moved closer,” said Franklin, shifting his aim slightly.
“Come on, Chantel,” said Anna.
Chantel didn’t like it, but she started doing the spell again. Anna, looking relieved, joined her and made signs.
Chantel drew the third sign in the air with one hand, and the ninth and first alternately with the other. Then she switched hands. It was difficult. But not impossible.
And slowly Dimswitch turned, folded itself sideways. A passage opened through the wall.
Seven Buttons was fifteen feet thick. At the end of the passage Chantel could see a cobbled street of Lightning Pass.
“Great. C’mon!” said Bowser.
Franklin gaped.
“Now leave the crossbow,” said Chantel.
Still staring through the gate, Franklin began undoing little catches and clasps on the crossbow. It came to bits, which he stuck into various pockets.
Chantel didn’t want him armed at all. But just as she opened her mouth to protest, two Marauders sprang up from the swamp and rushed at them.
Bowser shoved Anna into the passage, and then ran back and tried to grab Chantel. Anna ran back too. Chantel dodged them.
“I have to be last! It’s part of the spell! Just go!” She grabbed Franklin, pushed him into the passage, shoved Bowser and Anna after him, and then leapt after them as the Marauders reached the wall.
The wall shut, starting from the outside. The children ran, passing solid wall that crunched as it tumbled into place behind them. Then Franklin, the fool, stopped, and just stood there, staring at the inside of the wall as it closed toward him.
Chantel threw all her weight at him and knocked him through the passage and into Lightning Pass. The wall shut so quickly behind them that it caught a shred of her robe.
Franklin picked himself up off the ground, without seeming particularly upset or grateful. “That’s odd,” he said. “The insides of walls don’t usually look like that.”
“Why have you seen the insides of walls?” said Bowser.
“Well, we knock them down sometimes. There’s usually infill.” Franklin stared up, down, and all around. “Everything here is so . . . squashed together!” he said. “All those tunnels and arches and things! Where does that one go to?”
“To a court, probably,” said Bowser. “C’mon.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“There are hundreds of arched alleys like that,” said Bowser. “They all go to courts with houses and shops and stuff, and then there are more alleys off of them to other places.”
“Amazing,” said Franklin. “And those bridges up there—”
“Yeah. They go places,” said Bowser. “But could you stop being amazed? People are staring.”
They were, Chantel saw. Not many people, but a few—a woman sweeping a doorstep, a boy carrying a load of firewood, a passerby stopping to open a door for him. Chantel wondered if anyone had seen them come through the wall.
The only sign that Dimswitch had been there at all was the few green threads from Chantel’s robe, sprouting from a blank expanse of wall.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Mrs. Warthall might be selling the girls at this very moment.
They climbed up steep streets, crossed by arched bridges that braced the stacked houses. They climbed a staircase that spiraled around a tower and deposited them on a path that crossed the rooftops. It was funny to see Franklin, the know-it-all of the Roughlands, utterly dazzled by Lightning Pass. Chantel felt a surge of pride. Lightning Pass was amazing. And it was a relief to have walls around her again. She was back where she belonged.
Still, she hoped she hadn’t seen the Roughlands for the last time. She hoped she’d get a chance someday to see High Roundpot and the Stormy Isles.
They hurried up the narrow alley that ran behind Fate’s Turning. The back door to the skullery was guarded by two skulls set into the bricks.
From inside came the sound of thumps, followed by wails of pain.
“What’s that?” said Franklin, alarmed.
Chantel grabbed the doorlatch and tugged. The door was locked.
“Hang on.” Bowser kicked off his boots and climbed up the brick wall, fitting his toes into small cracks and gaps left by crumbling mortar. He reached behind one of the skulls and retrieved a slim length of metal.
They heard a sharp, angry crack from inside the school—the sort of noise that might be made by a belt hitting someone. Chantel jerked furiously at the locked door.
“Let go.” Bowser stuck the length of metal into the crack between the door and the wall and slid it all the way to the top. Something clicked. “Okay, now try it.”
Chantel yanked the door open and charged through the skullery, pausing only to grab a frying pan. She could hear the others behind her. The snake inside her head was a mighty hooded cobra, all fangs and venom. She hardly had time to take in the scene—all the girls lined up, except Leila, who was standing before them wielding the ladle. Mrs. Warthall was swinging a belt.
Chantel rushed in and hit Mrs. Warthall with the frying pan.
In a story, the frying pan would have clanged and Mrs. Warthall would have dropped to the floor, unconscious.
In real life, the frying pan hit Mrs. Warthall edge-on in the face, opening a gash. And since Chantel wasn’t used to hitting people with frying pans, the momentum made it fly out of her hand. It struck the brick floor with the world’s loudest clang. Mrs. Warthall didn’t even fall down. She grabbed Chantel by the hair and wrapped the belt tightly around Chantel’s neck.