Oddson steamed on.
“Deftly explanated, Mr. Blue! Any Cheating, Rule-Trampling, Duel-Tampering, or Belligerence Toward Myself will earn you a visit to the Penalty Box! Which brings me to my last invention: Halfway Through the Derby, Everyone Shall Switch Places According to Whatever Scheme I, Ajax Oddson, Deem to Be Most Hilarious at That Time. That is all! And I must inform you that everyone else has finished talking to me and seems quite anxious to begin! Are you ready to meet your steed and hit the road? Shall I fetch the starting catapult?”
September looked to Saturday and Ell. They’d been cooped up in the cellar so long. It would feel wonderful just to run and run and run together. And who knew? Perhaps at the end of all that running, she might still have her crown.
“We’re ready, Mr. Oddson,” she said firmly.
The Racemaster reached into his left sleeve, covered in zigzagging golden lines. He drew out a little catapult—and as he drew it out it grew and grew until it was bigger than Ajax himself, made all of obsidian and wolf-bone. The pocket overflowed with bizarre and mysterious objects, some colorful, some drab, some large and covered in spikes, some soft and small and well-worn.
“Ladies and lads and gentle-wyverns, Queens and Questers! I have packed my personal catapult full of items you would find incredibly useful in the running of a Derby, from Seven League Boots to salamander cloaks to Belinda Cabbage’s new and untested Geographickal Engine! I have selected these objects with love and care and malice aforethought, to protect and guide you on your way. Let the Cantankerous Derby begin!”
A dagger flashed in Ajax Oddson’s hand. He slashed through the Sauterelle’s ropes. The catapult sprang forward and fired all those wonderful, useful things into the sky. They soared over the spires of Pandemonium and far away, so high and far that September lost sight of them long before they landed. The invisible horns sounded, fireworks exploded over the Plaited Plaza, raining confetti down into the Mallow and Goldmouth fountain. The Gabardine Gate raised up slowly, showing the road out of Pandemonium and the sparkling waves of the Barleybroom river.
The Racemaster seemed to deflate like a hot air balloon. His silks drooped to the ground, suddenly empty. His crisp points started to come loose, his cheeks and eyebrows unfolding and untying until there was nothing left but a great pile of old flags on the patchwork cobblestones. But no—not only a pile of flags. From the depths of all that fine, painted fabric, they heard several snorts, a furious squeal, and an indignant roar. Then the loud, horrid rip of silk tearing in half, and then in half again. Something was trying to come out from inside the rags that had, only a moment ago, been Ajax Oddson, Blue Hen Island’s greatest student. September’s stomach went cold. She remembered Tanaquill’s dreadful horse, Hushnow’s gargantuan Roc, Curdleblood’s hideous shade of black.
“Get off!” snarled the silk-heap. “Get off me, you nasty old bedsheet! I’ll bite you stupid! THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED I HATE YOU AND I HOPE YOU COME APART IN THE WASH.”
An orange spike snagged through a flag showing a noble crest with polar bears rampant and a hobgoblin with spectacles on. Then another spike. Then a pair of chomping, gnashing, vicious teeth.
Wombat teeth.
Blunderbuss burst out of Ajax’s racing flags, shredding them to stitches and tatters.
“TA-DA!” she bellowed. “Did you hear those snobs calling me a steed?”
CHAPTER VII
EVERYTHING HAS A HEART
In Which No One Is a Steed, Cross-Referencing Proves Unhelpful, and A-Through-L Proves Himself a Librarian in Good Standing
September grabbed Saturday’s hand. Her whole body shook with the need to go, go, go, run, faster, get ahead of the pack, find a shortcut, pound the road. The Marid looked up and down the Barleybroom for a ferry, for the other racers, for anything the catapult might have dropped. But the scrap-yarn wombat was in no such hurry. Blunderbuss stomped up and down the shores of the windy river. She snatched at the chinstrap of her grass helmet and tore it off, kicking it along the sunny grass like a ball that had greatly disappointed her.
“A steed! Me! A mount! And this is the second time, too! That dull battle-ax Tanaquill put me in a stable, if you can believe it. A stable! As if I’m nothing but a pitchfork! Don’t I talk? Don’t I know my multiplication tables? Don’t I have my own tender ambitions? Don’t I bite with conviction? I busted on through an apartment wall into Fairyland just the same as anybody else. I am not a Chevrolet! I am a stupendous splendid fantastic amazing combat wombat. I am! I’ll steed them!”