They rushed toward Jonah through water, then earth, then water again as they joined the stream that ran behind the Bissells’ house. X was a powerful swimmer. Ripper matched him stroke for stroke. Her hair had come loose. X could see it fanning out under the water—floating above her for a moment, then sinking down again. He didn’t know what they’d find at Zoe’s house, but he was glad to have Ripper with him. He felt there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Nor he for her. As they neared the surface, light began to leak down and glint off her dress. She shimmered like an iridescent fish.
The cold water gummed up their muscles. It felt nearly solid. It seemed not to want to let them through. X had promised Zoe three things: that he would save Jonah, that neither he nor her mother would ever discover that her father was still alive, and that he himself would return to her one more time. But X felt no certainty now. He pictured Jonah in his room, surrounded by figurines of animals and elves. He pictured him on his ladybug bed, hugging Spock and Uhura to his chest, and trying to gentle them down with that quavering voice that seemed to run in the family: D-don’t be scared, guys. Because—because I’m n-not scared.
As X and Ripper reached the pocket of air beneath the ice, their lungs were bursting. He nodded to her. Together they raised their fists and punched through the translucent ceiling. Ice fell into their eyes. It rained down around them in splinters.
Ripper climbed out of the river first, her hair flat against her skull, her dress twisted and wrinkled as tissue paper. She helped X out of the water. The moon was already up.
For a moment, they stood shivering and stamping. X felt a presence behind them. It seemed enormous. It was breathing and pulsing—and watching them. He wished with his whole being that he didn’t have to turn. But he did.
A hundred lords stood in a chain around Zoe’s house.
The house itself was so thickly coated with ice that X could hardly make out the windows, the roof, the doors. The land around it was ravaged and scarred. Trees had been pulled out of the ground and hurled like sticks. What was more, everything was frozen and glittering so that there was an awful beauty to the devastation: it was a wasteland strung with diamonds. The willow where Jonah had buried the Ninja Dad T-shirt lay on its side, broken and contorted as if its neck had been snapped.
The lords glowered at X and Ripper across the upturned earth. They seemed to be daring them to step forward and engage. Their silky garments—purple and green and yellow and red—were sickeningly vivid against the desolation of the hill. Their golden bands shone in the moonlight.
“Apparently,” said Ripper, “we will not be taking them by surprise.”
X gave a grim laugh.
“You have been a fine teacher to me,” he said quietly. “Might I ask you to recommend a strategy one last time? If it would help, I would trade myself for the boy a thousand times.”
“Well, we could ask them nicely,” said Ripper. “But the fact that the lords have not already descended upon you and pulled you back to the Lowlands by your handsome hair suggests that they want more than merely to bring you home. They want to boil your heart. They want to watch as you listen to that poor boy scream.”
Ripper paused. She seemed to regret speaking so bluntly, for X’s face was clouded with pain.
“That being the case,” she continued, “I propose a simple, unornamented fight to the death. I have always rather enjoyed them—though they’re never quite as satisfying when no one can actually die.”
Together, they circled the house at a safe distance, looking for weaknesses in the chain of bodies. There were none. The lords remained still, but even their stillness was full of menace. They were coiled and ready to strike. X peered into every face. Some were handsome, some ancient. Some were lovely, some desiccated or burned. No one regarded him with anything but disgust. X had questioned their authority. He had shamed them. He’d been offered an unheard-of chance to leave the Lowlands forever—a chance perhaps even the lords themselves had prayed for—and made a mockery of it. He’d refused to collect even one more soul. Now it was as if X and the lords were opposing magnets: the air between them vibrated with hatred.
As the chain of lords snaked by the front door, he saw Regent in his deep blue robe.
He was staring down at the snow.
X felt a tiny flutter of hope, but almost immediately it escaped his body like one of those clouds of breath, for Regent would not speak to him. He would not so much as raise his head. He stood with his arms clasped behind his back, as if they’d been bound together—as if even his body was saying, This is beyond my control.
A voice, high and nasal, called out from farther down the chain: “Not even your faithful kitten will help you now—you have betrayed him too many times!”
It was Dervish.
He grinned at X, his pointy, ratlike countenance all aglow.
“You even struck him in the face, or have you forgotten?” he continued. “Goodness, that was sweet comedy!”
X ignored him. Ripper snarled in the lord’s direction.
The ice on the house cracked and contracted, each spasm as loud as a rifle shot. Jonah was in there somewhere.
X put a hand on Regent’s shoulder.
“There is a boy in the house,” he said.
Regent clenched his teeth, but did not reply.
“You must spare him,” X pleaded.
Again, there was no answer, though the muscles in the lord’s neck and jaw twitched violently.