Some twenty feet in front of her was Ducarte, veering madly from side to side, bashing himself against the walls. Two children, a boy and a girl, were attached to his body; they twined around him like serpents, hands and arms seemingly everywhere, and Ducarte screamed as the girl bit into the back of his neck. The Queen remained frozen for a long moment, trying to sort out what she was seeing—did they drink blood, these children, or were they trying to feed?—but then the giggle came again, and the Queen whirled around. There was nothing behind her, but the sound had been very close.
Ducarte stumbled to his knees, and the boy made a low, growling noise, the satisfied grunt of an animal that had brought down prey. The Queen could not outrun these children forever; they were too strong, and while the scattered reports from northern Mortmesne had become increasingly bizarre over the past month, they were very clear on one thing: there were a lot of these things, too many to repel. The Queen needed help, but her only ally was dying before her eyes.
You lost.
The Queen’s eyes opened wide. She had thought she was out of options, but no. One remained. She felt suddenly galvanized, new life in her legs. Leaving Ducarte to his fate, she turned right and darted down a nearby staircase, heading for the dungeons.
The man in the next cell knew more science than anyone Kelsea had ever met, including Carlin. His name was Simon, and he had been a slave since his sixteenth year. Upon his arrival in Mortmesne, he had been sold from master to master for heavy labor, until his fifth master finally realized that Simon had a great aptitude for building and fixing. The next sale had been to a scientist, a man who designed weapons for the Mort army. The scientist—whom Simon spoke of with real affection—had also loaned Simon out to several like-minded men, all of whom had taught him something. Elementary physics, a bit of chemistry, even the properties of plants, a subject on which Simon seemed to know as much as Barty. He had quickly surpassed his new master and begun to design more complex offensive weapons. It had not taken long for him to come to the Red Queen’s attention.
“The footbridges?” Kelsea asked. “The platforms the Mort used to cross the river. Were those your handiwork?”
“A group effort,” Simon replied. “The design was mine, but I needed the help of a physicist to understand weight ratios and leverage. My gifts are mechanical, not theoretical.”
“Yet you made a printing press,” Kelsea mused, still marveling at the idea.
“It’s a simple press, hand-operated. But it will output twenty pages a minute if run properly. The hourly rate goes down, as you need to include loading time for the plates. And each page needs at least several minutes to dry properly; someday a better man than I will invent ink that doesn’t smear.”
“Twenty pages a minute,” Kelsea repeated faintly. The man on the far side of the wall seemed suddenly more valuable than all the gems in Cadare.
It was the middle of the night, but Kelsea had been awake for more than two hours. Emily, the page, sat outside her cell, apparently standing guard. It was almost like having Mace himself there, except that Emily had fallen asleep, her knife clutched in her hand.
Kelsea’s mind continued to run busily on the same track it had run so many times before: what were the sapphires, really? Why could she use them, when the Red Queen could not? The small chunk of sapphire from Katie’s world was in Kelsea’s lap, but it merely lay there, inert. She felt that she was very close to an answer of some kind, but every time she reached out to grasp it, it danced just beyond her reach. The dungeon was wearing on her, on her ability to think critically. A few more months in here, and even rudimentary thinking might feel like slogging through mud. She lashed a vicious kick at the bars, hating them, hating the Red Queen, the Palais around her, this cursed country, all of them conspiring to keep her from her home.
“You’ll break your foot doing that,” Simon remarked mildly, and Kelsea drew her feet beneath her with a low oath. She sensed a storm brewing, but whether that storm gathered in the present, the future, or the past, she could not say. William Tear’s town was beginning to crumble. Kelsea looked down at the rock in her lap, considering it. So much sapphire underlying the Tearling; was it all the same? And did it even matter? Tear had understood his sapphire, controlled its power, so much better than Kelsea did, but he still hadn’t been able to save his town, or his son. A few more years, and the dark-eyed boy who only wanted what was best for everyone would be dead.
How did Jonathan Tear die?
Kelsea didn’t know why, but sometimes she felt that everything hinged on this question. Row Finn was the obvious suspect; even if Katie couldn’t put two and two together, Kelsea could. Corpses stolen, silver stolen, Row’s bright fascination with Tear’s jewel . . . Kelsea would have bet her kingdom that the second Tear necklace had come from Row’s talented metalworking hands, but that wasn’t all. In the dark of the Town, Row was up to no good. Katie didn’t want to think about these things, but Kelsea could and did.