. . . and a few other things that Anna thought could be turned into useful spells.
Chantel tucked these things into the pockets of her dragon robe. Then she and Franklin left hurriedly, in case Miss Ellicott came back.
Anna and Chantel worked on inventing a new Buttoning, matching up magical elements. The new spell was going to have to be different from what the sorceresses did. For one thing, Chantel didn’t think girls could be stationed at each of the six buttons to do the spell. Not in the middle of a war. It wasn’t safe.
“I wish the king would just give in to the Sunbiters’ demands,” said Chantel.
“He can’t,” said Franklin. “You can’t give in to force. Not if you want to rule.”
He watched Chantel carefully as he said this.
“It’s not giving in to force if you just offer what you should’ve offered in the first place,” said Chantel.
Anna looked uncomfortable. “The king must know better than we do.”
The streets will run with blood, Chantel thought. They didn’t have much time to come up with a new spell. Maybe she should ask the sorceresses for help.
They wouldn’t help, though. They wouldn’t approve. They’d say making new spells was dangerous. And they’d put Chantel in a cage.
So Anna and Chantel worked into the night, matching ingredients to spell elements, trying out new signs, trying to invent spells of fortification.
They coudn’t make anything stronger, though. They tried to make a spare octopus tentacle as strong as an iron cable. Instead, it merely shattered, sending tiny bits of octopus everywhere.
“I just don’t think we can do it,” said Chantel, as she crawled around under the table picking up the shards.
Anna seemed to be thinking the same thing. “You should at least go talk to the sorceresses. If you just explained to them . . . and didn’t get close enough for them to put you in a cage . . . I mean, they have to help, it’s their city too . . .”
Chantel sighed. “All right.”
Lightning had been asleep all this time. Chantel supposed he was tired from having breathed so much fire.
The next day, Chantel set out to talk to the sorceresses. She was on her way up to Bannister Square—in fact, she was almost at the top of the tunnel—when she saw a light floating toward her through the murk. A smell of soap and magic came with it.
The light resolved itself into a globe borne by Miss Ellicott herself.
“Miss Ellicott. I was just coming to see you.” Chantel stood in such a way as to block the passage.
Miss Ellicott held up her light-globe and tried to see past Chantel. “Is this where you have secreted my kidnapped pupils?”
“I didn’t kidnap them, Miss Ellicott. I brought them here to keep them safe.” The sorceress tried to sidestep, and Chantel put out a hand to stop her. “Miss Ellicott, no. I beg your pardon, but no. There’s a dragon down there, and he’s dangerous.”
“And this you call keeping them safe? The king intended to keep them safe. Do you think you know better than the king?”
From above, a grating sound echoed and rang down the tunnel.
“They’re safer than anyone else in Lightning Pass right now,” said Chantel.
Miss Ellicott peered over Chantel’s shoulder. “To ascertain that, I require to see the dragon.”
“I—I’m sorry, Miss Ellicott. You can see him if he comes out.”
“I have every right to see him. He was mine once,” said Miss Ellicott.
“The snake was your familiar. You had your chance, and you didn’t take it.” Chantel felt a twinge of sympathy. It must be awful to look back and feel you had made the wrong choice, when it was too late. “I’m the dragonbound sorceress now.”
Miss Ellicott looked down her nose sharply at Chantel, and Chantel thought she was going to tell Chantel that she was not a sorceress, she was just a child. Miss Ellicott did not do this.
“You can’t do the spell on Seven Buttons without me,” said Chantel. “Any great working is going to require my help.”
“Then you will help us,” said Miss Ellicott.
“On one condition,” said Chantel.
“You make conditions? The city could fall at any moment.”
“That’s why I’m making conditions,” said Chantel. “What are the Sunbiters asking for, Miss Ellicott?”
“Some nonsense,” said Miss Ellicott. “It’s no affair of mine. Or yours, I might add.”
“Are they still asking to have the tolls and port fees lowered? Because I think it would be better to give them that than to have them invade.”
“You know nothing of statecraft,” said Miss Ellicott.
“Of course not. I didn’t learn it in school,” Chantel said. “But that’s still what I think. They’re much stronger than us, and they can lay siege to the city and starve us. Would you please be so good as to tell the king that I’ll help strengthen the wall when he agrees to give the Sunbiters what they want. And not before.”
From up the tunnel came a metallic clang.
“I will ask you one last time, Chantel, to do your duty.”
“I’m doing it, Miss Ellicott.”
Miss Ellicott’s mouth became a thin, hard line. “You will regret this, Chantel Goldenrod. You will come to wish you had done as the king asked. You will come to wish it very much indeed.”
And she turned, her robes sweeping the rock floor, and marched away into the darkness.
Chantel wasn’t entirely sure she’d done right.
She would talk it over with Anna. But first, having come so far, she might as well go into the city.
It was only a hundred yards or so, and a couple of turns in the passage, before Chantel reached a point where sunlight filtered in. The light threw a yellow beam onto the rough rock wall. The beam was crisscrossed into neat squares.
Her heart in her mouth, Chantel ran to the end of the passage.
A metal grid covered the mouth of the tunnel. The grid was padlocked on the outside. And it was so tightly guarded with wards that Chantel couldn’t even touch the bars.
23
THE FINER POINTS OF CRYSTALLIZED RAT URINE
Chantel screamed. She yelled. She hollered. She would have banged on the copper bars had the wards not been in the way. The people going about their business in Bannister Square seemed not to hear her.
Then she remembered the abnegation spell hiding the cave entrance. She undid the spell, and shouted some more.
A man stopped and looked at her.
“It’s no good your yelling,” he said. “You’re imprisoned by order of the king. It says so right here.”
He pointed to a wooden sign wired to the outside of the grate.
“I need to get out so I can save the city,” said Chantel urgently. “Without me the sorceresses can’t protect the city, and I’ve got to get the king to—”
“It says you’ll say that,” said the man, squinting at the sign. “It says there’s treasonous magic in your voice, too, and that we’re not to listen.”
And he clapped his hands over his ears and hurried away.