As one of them punted a cage, Sophie saw the King of Jaunt Jolie tumbling inside it, his royal robes slashed and stained, his crown-points speared with rotted fruit, as he tried to grip onto two bawling boys—the same little boys Sophie had seen playing with the dog in the foyer painting. (The dog was cowering beneath a woman’s blue gown in another cage, anticipating the next kick.)
The line pulled Sophie forward and the library started to recede from view. Through the glass she met the eyes of the king, who spotted her as his cage stopped swinging. His eyes watered as he clasped his hands, appealing to her for help, his tear-stained boys tucked at his sides. Sophie could only gawk back like a tourist in a sadistic museum being pulled to the next display.
This man’s wife has been killed for satchels of gold, she thought, sickly. Were these his boys? Sophie felt her own eyes grow wet. His now-motherless boys? Sophie thought of Honora’s two young sons, just like these, who her father, Stefan, loved so much—
Agatha elbowed her and Sophie saw her best friend nodding subtly at the next cage about to be kicked. The one with the dog cowering beneath the woman in the blue gown. Only now Sophie got a good look at the woman’s petrified face and gasped. It was the same face they’d seen on that poster in the pavilion.
The one stamped EXECUTED.
The Queen of Jaunt Jolie was alive?
Astonished, Sophie and Agatha watched the queen try valiantly to reach through her cage bars and touch her children and husband as their cage swung past—
The chain jerked Sophie and Agatha forward and the library was out of sight.
Dragged ahead, Sophie thought back to the Lady of the Lake, who’d looked just as tortured as the Queen of Jaunt Jolie. The Snake could have killed the sorceress in Avalon, but instead he’d drained her magic and left her feckless and afraid. He could have killed this queen too, but instead he peddled news of her death. And he could have left Avalon without a trace, but instead he’d left that map in Chaddick’s hands to taunt them. . . .
He’s always one step ahead. Like Evelyn Sader and Rafal used to be, Sophie thought. And this one plays games too. Just like them.
An unsettling thought crossed her mind. But why? If he has Arthur’s blood . . . if he thinks he can pull Excalibur . . . why play games?
Sophie held her breath. Was it really Camelot’s crown the Snake was after? Or was he after something else? Something . . . more?
The line halted in front of her and Sophie broke from her trance to see golden double doors at the end of the hall.
They opened magically, revealing a room Sophie couldn’t quite make out from this far back in line.
Suddenly her cuffs split open. So did Agatha’s, and the piece of chain between them levitated into the air, turning black and shiny like an eel before it flew off into the room, vanishing from view.
“You two,” Thiago said, pointing a grubby fingernail at them. “Come here.”
Sophie and Agatha clasped each other’s hands.
The tattooed pirate gestured ahead with his sword, directing the two girls through the gold doors. Holding hands tighter, Sophie and Agatha stepped out of line and entered the room. They looked back at the pirate and the rest of their friends still chained in the hall, gaping through the doorway.
“He’s waiting,” Thiago said darkly.
Agatha swiveled to Nicola, eyes wide—
The door slammed shut, leaving Sophie and Agatha inside alone.
Neither girl moved.
“All that planning with your new friend . . . ,” said Sophie softly. “And here we are. You and me. Like always.”
Agatha didn’t answer.
They peered around warily, expecting a trap.
“No one’s here,” Agatha said, letting Sophie’s hand go.
The first thing Sophie noticed about the room is that it was enormous—as vast and high as one of the ballrooms in the School for Good and Evil, lined with tall pillars. There were no doors, no windows, and no furniture, except for a long black stone table at the rear of the room.
The second thing Sophie noticed was that the room was green. Whereas most of Jaunt Jolie featured Easter-egg hues, here the carpet, pillars, and walls were a deep, luminous emerald, textured with shiny, snakelike scales. The torches on the walls crackled with green flames. Sophie knew this color well: it was the color of her own eyes as well as the color of Rafal’s old school that had sought to turn her Good classmates Evil. But here it felt out of place, as if they’d passed through a portal into another realm.
There was something that wasn’t green, though, Sophie realized, looking upwards.
Six parchment maps floated in rows above the center of the room, each as big as a flag.
“It’s a Map Room,” said Agatha, moving towards them.
“A what?” said Sophie.
“Tedros showed me Camelot’s on our first night in the castle. It was where his father used to meet with his Round Table. It had floating maps of neighboring kingdoms just like this. Tedros couldn’t wait to hold meetings there with his knights . . . but he never got the chance.”
Sophie saw sadness in her friend’s eyes, but there was no time for that now. “Do you recognize any of the maps, at least? I don’t see labels on them,” she said, gripping one by its corner and holding it while it tried to sail off like a balloon. “This one looks like Avalon. See, here’s the sea around the kingdom and the big gates and the lake—”
Her throat closed up. “Aggie.”
The map had a three-dimensional toy figurine positioned on top of the lake. The same exact figurine they’d seen on her and Professor Dovey’s enchanted maps.
The figurine was labeled CHADDICK, his name crossed out.
Stomach fluttering, Sophie let go of the map and rushed to catch hold of the next. More figurines inched across black, rocky terrain: RAVAN . . . ARACHNE . . . DRAX . . . . Agatha grabbed on to a map with clear-colored mountains: KIKO . . . GISELLE . . . HIRO . . . Another with purple hills had VEX . . . BRONE . . . MONA . . .
“They’re our Quest Maps,” said Sophie, instinctively touching the gold vial on her neck to make sure it was still there.
“No wonder he knows our names and faces and could see us coming. No wonder the quests are going badly,” Agatha said breathlessly, watching KIKO’s figurine inch across the map. “Sophie, he can track all our moves! That’s how he sent thugs to every kingdom and sabotaged their quests!”
“But I thought Kiko’s and Vex’s teams were missing!” said Sophie.
“Not missing. Just not responding to Dovey’s messages,” said Agatha, glancing between maps. “But why do all the teams seem to be moving in the same direction?”
Sophie jumped up and snagged the next map, spotting a peanut-shaped shoreline, a pavilion on a hill, and a pastel-colored castle. “Here’s Jaunt Jolie,” she said, spotting figurines labeled SOPHIE and AGATHA against the castle, while HESTER, ANADIL, DOT, BOGDEN, NICOLA, and HORT were moving out the back of the castle in a single-file line through what looked like the royal gardens.
“The pirates are taking them somewhere,” Sophie said.
Her eyes flared. On the opposite side of the castle, far from the pirates and the captive crew, she saw three more blue-labeled names on the map lurking in a forest: BEATRIX . . . REENA . . . MILLICENT . . .
“Sophie,” Agatha choked.