Bowser goggled at the dragon. He blinked. Then he remembered Chantel. “The king’s been keeping me close. To get you to come to him.” There was a note of warning in his voice.
“But he had me locked up!” said Chantel.
“He must’ve known you’d get out. Everyone knew. There’s been talk.”
“Even with the Contentedness spell?”
Bowser frowned. “Is that what it is? I knew there was something weird. Anyway, people have been asking questions, about the dragon and—”
Bowser trailed off as one of the guards gave him an angry shake.
“Well, the king shouldn’t worry,” said Chantel. “I’m going to do the Buttoning. That’s what he wants. And I have to do it right now, because—”
“It’s not all he wants,” said Bowser.
“Oh goodness no,” said another voice from the boat. “No more spells on the wall, please. You’d better talk to the king.”
Chantel recognized Mr. Less, sitting among the guards. She could make out his curlicue mustache in the growing light.
He nodded a greeting. “Miss Flivvers is well, I hope?”
“About as usual,” said Chantel.
“Such a brave woman,” said Mr. Less, without apparent sarcasm.
“If we don’t do the spell now,” said Chantel, “the wall is going to collapse from the weight of all this water. It’s already been weakened, and—”
A guard interrupted. “You had better not do a spell without the permission of the king.”
“He already forbade the sorceresses to try it again,” said Bowser. “Because they’ve done so much damage already. And it kept raining and the floods kept rising. He’s got some of them trying to open the city gates now.”
“They can’t do that! If they open the gates, all the water will rush out and people in the harbor will drown!” Chantel thought of the kind woman and her daughter.
“Perhaps you’d care to come and tell him that yourself?” said the clerk.
The sky was growing lighter still. The sun would rise very soon.
“No. I’m going to do the spell. It didn’t work before because—”
A huge stone, flung by the Sunbiters’ catapult, came sailing overhead. It crashed down into the water, causing an enormous wave. The boats and rafts pitched and rolled. Some capsized; Chantel heard the cries of people tumbling into the water.
“It didn’t work because I wasn’t helping!” Chantel shouted. There was no time for maidenly modesty. “I have to help with any great working because I’m the dragonbound sorceress now.”
“How very interesting. When did—”
“Mr. Less, there’s no time!” said Chantel. “Excuse me, but I have to go now!”
There was a rasp as several sentinels drew their swords.
“No!” said Bowser.
The dragon arched his neck, and Chantel could feel fire rumbling inside him.
“No!” Chantel told him. “I would not! Not Bowser!”
“Where is the king?” Franklin called suddenly.
“His Majesty is in the upper tower of the Hall. His Majesty must be kept safe,” said Mr. Less in neutral tones.
“With some of the sorceresses to protect him,” said Bowser bitterly.
“I think you’ll find,” said Mr. Less, “that he is protecting the sorceresses. Yes, I’m almost certain that’s the case.”
“Lightning, go on, please,” Chantel murmured. “It’s almost dawn.”
And the dragon swam on. Chantel looked back to see the boat bobbing dangerously in their wake.
The top of the wall, behind the parapet, was thronged with soldiers, both men and boys. There were a few sorceresses casting small spells—they had probably been forbidden to use bigger ones, Chantel supposed.
Chantel did an abnegation spell on herself, and turned quickly to do one on Franklin. She was surprised to see that he had a crossbow in his hand. It occurred to her suddenly that he was a Sunbiter, inside Lightning Pass, and armed.
Then again, she told herself, he was Franklin. He was on her side . . . right?
“Didn’t they take that from you?”
“I hid it at the school.”
They climbed off the dragon. Soldiers stared at Lightning. People jostled past. The water splashed at their feet, cold waves that lapped over the wall-walk and wet their shoes.
Franklin lowered his crossbow and, rather to Chantel’s surprise, took her hand. “Listen, um,” he said.
There’s not time for this, Chantel thought. She could see the crack in Dimswitch. Water was seeping through it. The wall was weakening. It was tired. She could hear the excited voices of the Sunbiters below. It was nearly dawn.
But Franklin was still hanging on to her hand. “If things turn out . . . well, I mean . . . that is, if anything happens that, um, isn’t exactly what you’re expecting . . . just remember what you have in your pocket, okay?”
“I have a lot of things in my pocket,” said Chantel.
She squeezed his hand, let it go, and turned her attention to Dimswitch.
The sorceresses were levitating rocks and letting them fall on the enemy. Paving stones, rubble from broken buildings, even gravestones. The soldiers were raining down arrows and boiling water. Through a crenel in the parapet she could see ranks of Sunbiters standing, just out of range, with crossbows aimed. They’d built new siege engines, too.
A ray of the rising sun caught the red-horned helmet of Karl the Bloody.
Chantel couldn’t see the men who were scraping and hammering and prying at the wall. But she could hear them, the sound of iron screeching against stone. She sensed the weight of water pushing at Seven Buttons. The wall groaned. It was battered and ancient and almost ready to give up.
Well, she was here to strengthen it. She raised a light-globe and waved it to Anna, on the rooftop, the signal that it was time to begin.
Across the water, Chantel could just make out the figures of the other girls starting the new spell.
No bells or trumpets sounded in the beseiged city now to announce the dawn. Instead, bleary-eyed soldiers did battle.
Chantel kicked off her shoes. She cast down powdered snake oil leaves washed with the mist of May morning. She drew the seventh and fourteenth signs with her feet. She drew three new signs the girls had invented. Then she spoke the words that she’d heard Miss Ellicott use.
“Derval sabad ijee. Dwilmay kadapee pasmines choose maul.”
And she touched the wall to make it whole.
Nothing happened. The wall felt just as weary and hopeless as before. Down below, iron scraped relentlessly at stone.
Well, they’d known when they made their new spell that those old words might not work. They’d made a list of things that Queen Haywith had said.
Chantel tried the queen’s vow. “‘By the power of the dragon, I swear to protect the city of Lightning Pass and its people from any force, within or without, that may harm it.’”
Still the wall felt exhausted.
Chantel went through the whole list of words of Queen Haywith that they’d gleaned from different books. None of them seemed to be the right ones.
So maybe the sorceresses were right when they said you couldn’t make new spells. Chantel slumped in despair.