They’ll never let us in. We look like street urchins with good teeth and swords. We don’t have time to both change and get there, even if we had appropriate clothing to change into.” Jes rubbed her forehead.
Amalia paced. “Too many guards to fight our way in. Is there any way to sneak in?”
“Sewers?” Chris asked. “Every place has sewers.”
Sewers … water … Darrius Hall. “Isn’t there a huge water garden in Darrius Hall? Alex mentioned that she was looking forward to seeing it.”
Kegan nodded. “Enormous indoor waterfall. There’s a faint mist inside most of the time.”
“The water has to come from somewhere. Is it near the river?” Jes turned to Donal. “Do you think the skiff would fit?”
“Only one way to find out.” Donal frowned intently. “It’s worth a try.”
“What are you planning?” Kegan asked, perplexed.
“Adventure,” Chris assured him. “The very best kind.”
Amalia, Chris, and Donal scoured the workshop for useful things while Jes tried to explain the plan to Kegan. Fortunately, impulsiveness ran in the family, because he just nodded and grabbed his coat. Jes threw on a cloak, and then they were ready.
The way out was far less eventful, although Kegan was disturbed at the evidence that Mathis had set the spiders to attack anyone who might disturb—or warn—him. “But he’s been such a good friend. Always found me parts, never made me leave off inventing to go be social …”
The skiff distracted him, and he and Donal talked about the craft while they boarded and then took it underwater again. The Hall was upriver, on the opposite side, and within a few minutes, they found a huge underwater vent with an inflow pipe beside it. This, aggravatingly, had a sturdy grate over it, and in the interest of time, they agreed that Donal could use explosives to unmount the grate. The ripples from the explosion rocked them back a bit, but they were able to enter the pipe and follow it upward.
Time was passing, and Jes found herself checking Kegan’s watch over and over again. When the pipe divided, they took the larger branch. Soon, the rush of water was such that Donal had to set the engines on reverse to slow them down so he could steer—and, if necessary, stop. The noise outside became louder, the motion more turbulent, and then, for one instant, they were suspended in open air.
They were in an enormous room. Across from them was a balcony with a dozen people on it. Below them, the fifth android pointed a gun at a tall man in a crown. Crowds of people watched in dismay. Jes blinked, and then they were falling, plummeting, landing in a wave of water that sent the crowned man back and knocked the android over.
“Everybody out!” Donal shouted, hitting the lever to open the door. Jes scrambled out of her harness, but Amalia and Chris were already out, swords brandished. She ducked out between Donal and Kegan, splashing through the waist-deep water toward the crowd.
Amalia and Chris had taken up positions in front of the king like bodyguards, and Jes looked around wildly. She knew Dark Mathis had to be here, but what did he look like?
Lady Whatever was staggering to her feet, soaked from the waist down, but her grasp on the gun was steady. “Three for the price of one,” she said coolly, pointing.
Kegan ran up and grabbed the android’s arm. She lifted the arm and flung him away while transferring the gun to her other hand, her gaze never wavering. Kegan landed against a pillar and groaned.
Jes felt the world narrow. You will always know one good thing to do. She felt in her pocket and pulled out the flamer. The android’s clothing was soaked, but her hair …
Even wet, her boots were quiet on the stone floor. One step closer, another, a third. She lifted the flamer, pushed it on, and held it to the android’s thick braid.
For a moment, nothing happened, and then the flame spread up the black hair like a sunrise lighting a mountain. The android tilted her head slightly, as though aware of a problem she couldn’t identify, and then her hand with the gun fell as she began to twitch. Her head was melting, features blurring into each other. In another few seconds, she was on the floor, the flames sizzling as they met the puddles around them.
There was shocked silence for a long moment, and then the sound of clapping. Jes looked up to see a pale man with black hair and a beard on a balcony above them.
“Oh, bravo. Or brava, perhaps, for some of you. Nicely done, but I can’t have my grand revenge stolen so easily, even if I can’t pin it all on poor Kegan there. Soldiers? Shoot them.”
Donal shouted and threw something, not toward Dark Mathis, but toward the king. Smoke spewed out from it instantly. Even as the soldiers on the balcony lifted guns, they vanished from view.
Donal grabbed her arm, handing a wobbly Kegan off to her as he led them to the others and out of the room. There was shouting around them, but she ignored it as Donal took them through a low grate she hadn’t noticed. It opened onto a passageway. There was a staircase down in front of her, unnerving in the dark, but someone was in front of her, and she just counted her steps as she supported Kegan down the stairs. Eighteen, twenty-four, thirty, thirty-six … and she was on a level surface. She moved forward carefully with Kegan until she found a wall to her right to let him lean against.
There was a scraping sound from behind her, and a flickering light appeared in the darkness. Donal, Amalia, Chris, Kegan, and the king stood in a round chamber with high walls, a staircase at one end, and an archway at the other. The archway was set with fancy projecting bricks. It towered over them, maybe fifteen feet high, and the ceiling was even higher than that. Donal’s candle didn’t reach to the darkness beyond. Jes leaned against the corner, out of the way, and caught her breath.
“Your Majesty?” Donal asked politely. “Do we hide here, or is there a good way out?”
“It opens up ahead. There’s a hidden stair to the balcony, but I’d recommend that we let the trained professionals take on the people up there.” Gregor sighed. “Thank you, by the way. Once this is settled, I’d love to know why—and how—you came here.”
There was a sound from the darkness, then a circle of light, and Dark Mathis appeared around the corner, gun drawn in his right hand, his left holding a torch. “That would be fascinating, but unfortunately, all of our curiosities will have to go unsatisfied. It’s time for the final act of my grand revenge.”
Amalia and Chris still had their swords out, but he could take them both out before they reached him. Maybe if we all rushed him, one or two of us would make it. Jes looked at the arch again. He hadn’t seen her. He was standing just below the center of the arch.
“Why revenge?” Amalia asked. “It doesn’t seem grand at all. It seems rather petty. Oh, boo-hoo, Gregor’s friends stopped me from pirating, gave severance pay to my crew, and failed to imprison or execute me. It’s just not fair, my life is over. Seriously, what have you got to even be annoyed about?” Amalia put her free hand on her hip and shook her head. “And my parents say I can be unreasonable.”
It was too high. I can’t. I just can’t. Jes took a silent breath and put one booted foot up on the lowest stone.
Chris was talking, but Jes couldn’t stop to look. “She’s got a point. I mean, I’d never even heard of you, so how important could you be? Especially if nobody even put you in jail?”
For a moment, there was silence. Jes grabbed the blocks above and kept climbing. “How could children like you possibly understand?” Mathis exploded.
Gregor cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I don’t understand either,” the king apologized. “It all does seem a bit like a temper tantrum.”
Jes’s eyes threatened to cross when she looked down, but she was above the pirate now. She held on with one hand as she unfastened her cloak with the other. A drop of water fell from it, hitting Mathis in the forehead. He started to look up, and she dropped the cloak onto him.
The torch sizzled as the wet cloak doused it, then Donal blew out his own candle as Amalia and Chris rushed forward. Everything was dark, scrabbling, and swearing from the darkness that might have been Mathis but sounded like Gregor.
Jes held on with both hands to the stones of the archway. There was a squeal that sounded like Chris, the noisy patter of shoes on stone, and then the familiar scrape of flint on steel. A small circle of light showed Donal holding the gun while Chris and Amalia held blades at the ready over the kneeling pirate.
Below her, Mathis was holding a candle, pointing at Gregor as though his free hand still held a weapon. “You—you idealistic idiots! Calm and understanding and always taking the higher ground! You’ve just never cared enough about something to kill for it!”
A dark object connected with the back of his head with a crack, and the pirate slumped to the floor. Chris dove for the candle as it rolled out of his hand and held it aloft.
“That’s where you’d be wrong,” a familiar voice said grimly.
“Daddy?”
King Willem took a step further into the room and looked up at Jes. “Hello, Peanut. How did you get up there?”
“You didn’t kill him, did you, Willem? There will be so much more paperwork if he’s dead.” Jes’s mother came into view behind him.
“I’ll do the paperwork,” Alex volunteered. “Or we could just let Uncle Phineas carry him. It wouldn’t be his fault if he dropped him. Down a flight of stairs. Repeatedly.”
“Are you all here? Our parents, too?” Amalia asked.
“All of us.” Jes’s mother smiled. “We’ll have stories to share, after everything’s settled.”
Jes’s father never took his eyes from hers. “First, I think, we have to get Jes down. Do you want to climb, honey?”
Jes’s father was the tallest person in the room. It was still a long way down to him, but not as far away as the floor. “Catch me?” Jes asked.
Her father opened his arms and smiled. “Always.”
After Dark Mathis and his mercenaries from the balcony had been dragged off to jail, they gathered in Gregor’s library for a late breakfast. Soldiers had been sent to clear the islands of conspirators, and Jes felt almost like the whole thing had been a dream. Except that she was tired, starving, and badly in need of a bath.
“We would have been in trouble if Willem hadn’t insisted on seeing the life jackets before we took off. They’d been moved to someplace you couldn’t reach while the airship was in the air, and in retrospect that should have made us all a bit suspicious. But we had them, and even when we were hit, the Captain managed to slow our descent so that we could escape the ship when it landed in the water. The life jackets kept us afloat so that we could cobble a raft from the wreckage. It still took us a long time to get to shore, and then it was to a little island off the mainland. We left the crew and captain there when we took off again to go for help—a few of them had gotten hurt helping us and were in no condition to be moved again. Then we got to the mainland and discovered that there was no word of a conference, but we did hear about some people being kept in a smuggler’s den.”
“That was us,” Aunt Anya confirmed. “All the rest of us, so apparently, we weren’t considered dangerous enough to kill. Possibly because Willem was the only one who really argued for executing Mathis, back at the beginning.”
“Was I wrong?” Jes’s father asked.
Aunt Anya grimaced. “I guess not.”
“We had just gotten ourselves free when we met the three of them coming to rescue us,” Queen Melia added. “From there, we were going to warn Gregor that something was terribly wrong and then get back to all of you.”
Uncle Darby took a swallow of his drink. “We were about five minutes too late. But fortunately, you were right on time.”
Gregor sighed. “I’m in your debt, again. I wish I had thought to invite you all here for a visit.” He brightened. “Well, you’re here now. Why don’t we just start today?”
“Oh, but—” Jes broke off, blushing.
“But,” Gregor prompted her gravely.
“I really need to get home to make sure my people are safe. After that, I’d love to come back for a visit.”
Gregor looked at her for a long minute. “We’ll arrange that.” He looked over at her parents. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Mom shook her head. “Don’t be. Some people are suited to it.”
It was a strange conversation, but Jes focused on the part she understood.
“Can I go home soon? Now?”
“Now,” Gregor agreed. “You can come back for the visit when you’re sure everything is settled.”
Mrs. Clemens hugged her so hard that she could barely breathe. “Well done, Princess Jes.”
Nickname and title. Jes thought she could live with that.
“Was anyone hurt? Are you all safe?”
Mrs. Clemens smiled. “It only took us a day to figure out who the people reporting to that creature were. Then we locked them up, and her little worm of a secretary, and her. The soldiers who came switched her off and took her apart, and took the others off to jail. It wasn’t a pretty thing to see, even though we already knew that she couldn’t be human from the way she kept trying to beat down the door hour after hour. If we hadn’t tricked her inside, I don’t think we’d have been able to contain her.”
Jes smiled. “Mrs. Clemens, I think you have to be the one in charge whenever the family can’t be here. No one else is as amazing as you are.”
The housekeeper turned pink, but Mom and Dad nodded their agreement.
They stayed long enough to tell her the whole story, and for baths, and for Alex to pack replacement dresses for all those lost at sea. Jes let her mother pack for her, just insisting that a clean pair of boots be included.
She settled back on her sister’s bed, watching Alex pack once again. “I’m sorry about your earring.”
Alex hugged her. “Silly. As though an earring mattered more than you do.”
“Do you still think you want to stop being a princess, after all of this?”
Alex laughed. “Now more than ever. But I’ve always known.”
Jes frowned. “How can you? I don’t have any idea.”
“Jes, you’ve always known, too. What was the first thing you did when you found out that those people were going to use you as a puppet and possibly hurt the people who live here?”
Jes paused. “I made sure they couldn’t.”
Alex nodded. “And the first thing you thought of when the crisis was over? Checking to make sure your people were safe. It’s not something I want, Jes, but it almost doesn’t matter if you want it or not. It’s something you are.”
Responsibility. And fighting her own battles, which might involve numbers or conversations instead of swords but would still be important. Jes imagined the wandering under the water, and the same thought came to her. I could be happy, if I knew my people were safe.
She hugged Alex. “Thank you.”
Alex laughed. “Hey, this time you’ll be coming with me.”
Jes nodded. It would be fun, going back to the mainland without androids and pirates to fight. The best part, though, would be coming home again afterwards.