ZACHARIAS HAD BITTEN his nails to the quick. Sitting on the judging stage beside his giant nutcracker soldier, he watched his neighbors and friends carry on normally while his son hid for his life across the city.

This was lonely work. People swirled around him like colorful snowflakes in the wind. Girls in their winter coats clustered together, laughing and whispering like conspiratorial hens. Young men in new hats strutted by like peacocks. Babies bounced in daddies’ arms. Mothers herded their children past the toy display, clucking at naughty little ones who certainly could not have yet another toy before morning. It was a veritable farmyard of humanity. Wonderful, but utterly alien to him tonight.

Samir had shared Stefan’s analogy of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Zacharias. Now, all he could see was how many of these good people would fall to the famine and pestilence of mice.

“Come, Zacharias. You act as if this is your first Kindlesmarkt!” Tobias Muller said, thumping him on the back. Tobias was a woodmaker like Zacharias, but where they might have been rivals, they were friends.

“Of course, this will be the hardest time of year, with Elise gone now. You always were a nervous one in competition. She knew how to handle you just so,” Tobias said kindly. “This piece of yours, though. It’s wonderful. A perfect blend of truth and whimsy. I thought it was Stefan himself when you first arrived. It’s sure to do well tonight. It’s one of a kind.”

In fact, it’s three of a kind, Zacharias thought. Smiling, he allowed himself to be cajoled into drinking a cup of hot cider. As the warmth of cinnamon and apples filled his mouth, the taste of fear and the chill of the Boldavian dungeons began to wash away. He was safe for the first time in many weeks.

And then the screaming began.

• • •

SAMIR HAD BARELY REACHED the street when the enemy appeared. The road before Professor Blume’s house was teeming with mice.

Samir turned and ran. Down the walkway, through the rows of carefully tended flowering shrubs, the annuals, the perennials, the evergreens. His boots slapped the flagstones as he bounded up the front steps. He raised his fist and banged on the door.

Professor Blume blinked out into the night air. “Yes?”

Samir broke into a relieved grin. “I’ll have that tea after all, if you don’t mind.”

The old botanist stepped back and let the Arab inside. He did not appear to notice that the underbrush in his garden was moving.

Samir pulled him away from the door, throwing the bolt.

“I say, it looked a bit breezy out there,” the professor said.

“Indeed, that is what chased me back,” Samir lied. He peered out into the night from behind a heavily draped curtain. “Must be a storm coming,” he murmured less boisterously.

For on the lawn and in the trees, the eyes of a hundred mice looked back at him.