“So he can hear you from his castle in the sky,” the Snake demanded.
“Cowardly Little Lion!” the crowd yelled louder.
“He can’t hear you!” the Snake lashed.
“COWARDLY LITTLE LION!” the crowd thundered, shuddering the land.
The Snake dropped his finger and the prince’s noose relaxed, the young child wheezing for breath. His mother and father crumbled into sobs.
“Cowardly Little Lion indeed,” said the Snake.
His eyes flicked to Sophie and Agatha. “Well, then. Let’s see if he comes out of his cage.”
He whirled to the mob and with a wave of his hand, snuffed out the sea of torches.
The stage plunged into darkness.
In the vast, empty night, two dozen nooses glowed green, fluorescing like electric eels, lighting up the prisoners with heads looped through.
At the front of the stage, Sophie and Agatha faced off against the Snake, awash in the gallows’ alien green haze.
Beyond the iced walls, the crowd was hushed in the dark, like an audience in wait of a play. Sophie could see them looking back anxiously, searching for any sign of Tedros.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t write off the Lion so soon. By now he knows of your predicament,” the Snake said to the girls, the edge coming off his voice. “I’ll give him ten more seconds to show his face.”
Neither Sophie nor Agatha moved.
“Aren’t you going to help your friends?” the Snake said serenely. “1 . . . 2 . . .”
“Go!” Kiko shrieked.
Sophie twirled to Agatha. “I’ll take front row.”
“He’s lying, Sophie,” Agatha breathed—
“3 . . . ,” said the Snake.
Sophie took off, shooting the back nooses with her pink glow. Agatha unleashed her gold glow at the front row’s.
“It’s not working!” Sophie shouted—
“Magic won’t break it!” said Dot.
“Try something else!” said Anadil, her three rats dangling from tiny nooses next to her.
“4 . . . 5 . . .”
“Break the wood!” Nicola cried, eyeing the beams over their heads.
Agatha and Sophie both fired at them—
The beams only turned thicker and stronger.
“6 . . .”
“Hurry!” Hester bellowed.
Sophie magically sealed the trapdoors around her feet, but the doors grew weaker, threatening to break.
“Spells are backfiring!” Hort said.
“7 . . . 8 . . .”
Sophie shot the frozen walls with her glow, hoping to shatter them and let the crowd storm in— Nothing.
“9 . . .”
Agatha climbed the beams and tried to undo the nooses by hand. They shocked her like lightning and she fell to the platform— “10,” said the Snake.
The two girls turned to him, panting.
“And still no Lion . . . ,” the Snake tutted. “So now the real show begins.”
He opened his palm and a pack of playing cards appeared with a tuft of smoke. He spread them out in his fingers, revealing some of their faces— Not card faces, Sophie realized. Actual faces. For each of the cards had a prisoner painted on it: Dot . . . Bogden . . . Nicola . . . the King of Bloodbrook . . .
“Each of you takes a turn picking a card,” the Snake said to Sophie and Agatha. “Whoever you pick, their door drops.”
The crowd drew a breath, cocking towards the horizon like panicked chickens. Surely Tedros would stop this. Surely he would slay this villain the way King Arthur had slain many before. . . .
“Why are you doing this?” Agatha rasped.
The Snake’s eyes glittered like gems. “Ask my father.”
He held out the deck. “Pick.”
Sophie looked at Agatha, paralyzed.
Agatha slackened, her cheeks bright red.
Then she picked the first card, the back of it painted with the Snake’s crest.
Her hands shook as she turned the card over.
The face on it was Kiko’s.
The door under Kiko’s feet dropped open but Agatha was already diving, snagging her friend by the legs and pulling her back onto the platform so she couldn’t fall through.
It happened so fast that the crowd didn’t make a sound.
Agatha stayed on her knees, hugging Kiko’s calves with all of her strength, as Kiko hung from the noose at an angle. If Agatha let her go, her friend would drop and break her neck. Which meant both of them were trapped in their position.
“Don’t leave me,” Sophie heard Kiko whimper.
“I won’t,” Agatha assured.
“Bad things happen when you leave me,” Kiko said. “Bad things happen to all of us.”
“Your turn,” a voice said.
Sophie looked up to see the Snake glaring at her.
He held out the deck of cards.
There was a flatness in his eyes, a ruthless insistence on the rules of the game as if he knew precisely how it would end.
“Pick,” he said.
Sophie did.
The card was Nicola’s.
Across the platform, Nicola’s trapdoor opened.
In a flash, Sophie sprinted across the stage and tackled the first year just before she fell through, shoving her to the side of the opening and holding her by the ankles.
Sophie looked up and saw Nicola goggling at her. Agatha too.
“Guess we’re friends now,” Sophie said to Nicola.
With no sign of Tedros, the crowd revolted, battering the walls with renewed force— Suddenly, thirty young pirates broke through the crowd, seizing the hardest protestors from behind, swords to their necks. The rest of the mob went quiet with fear.
“It seems we have a dilemma . . . ,” the Snake continued, watching the two girls in opposite corners, clutching their friends. “Because someone has to pick next.”
Neither girl budged.
The terrified crowd glanced between them and the Snake.
“Ah, I see,” the Snake said. “It seems you’re both a bit tied up. Well, then.”
He held out the deck in his open palm.
“I’ll pick.”
He turned the first card over.
Hort.
Sophie and Agatha whirled to each other. Either one of them had to let go of their friend or Hort would hang.
“Go!” Nicola said to Sophie.
“No! Stay!” Hort cried.
Tears fogged Sophie’s eyes. She couldn’t watch Hort die—
His trapdoor opened. The noose around his neck yanked tight.
Sophie and Nicola screamed—
Instantly, the rest of the prisoners in the row kicked their legs out, using the chain cuffed across them to swing like a five-headed dragon: Hester, Anadil, Willam, Bogden, and finally Dot, who thrust her legs and caught Hort’s backside with her shins before he fell through the door. With every ounce of strength, she held him up by the tailbone, their bodies planked at right angles, like trapeze performers midflight.
Sophie buckled in relief, briefly losing grip of Nicola but catching her just in time.
Hort was dripping sweat, rope burns around his neck.
“Thanks, Dot,” he croaked.
“Don’t thank me, thank Uncle Miyazaki,” Dot panted, smiling over at Nicola. She looked back at Hort. “Though I’ll take a date too if you’re offering.”
Hort coughed.
The Snake watched all of this, his body still, his green mask obscuring any reaction, except for his winnowing blue eyes.
“So much for the rules of the game,” he said.
With a flourish, he flung the cards into the air, dozens of painted faces glinting in green glow as they fluttered to the stage.