A lazy morning interrupted * Terrible things * The cats’ hiding place discovered * Stax has a question

And then something happened that’s unfortunate but understandable, or at least I think so: Stax forgot.

Oh, he didn’t forget for the rest of that day, or the next. In fact, he was agitated much of the time on both those days. Every stray moment—and Stax, as you’ve learned, had a lot of stray moments—his thoughts returned to Fouge Tempro, and how rude he’d been, and what a nuisance his associates would doubtless prove to be, and what the nature of his proposed business might be, and whether doing business with Fouge might mean having to put up with him being a frequent visitor, and why he had to put up with visitors at all, and even thinking about all that was more than Stax could bear.

But the next day Stax planted a drift of cornflowers on the ridge, above the allée of birches, and was pleased by the splash of blue it added to the hillside. The day after that he fixed the cracked board on the boat dock, while Coal, Lapis, and Emerald snoozed on their backs with their bellies pointed up at the sun, and it was such a nice day that Stax thought of his disagreeable visitor only three or four times. Then the day after that Stax trimmed back the shaggy birches, and hardly thought of Fouge at all. On the fourth day after Fouge’s visit, Stax couldn’t think of anything he needed to do—he’d entirely forgotten about the flowerpots and the expedition to fetch clay—and so he spent the morning fishing from the dock while the cats meowed encouragement, and then he spent the afternoon puttering in his father’s library.

Stax was used to being reminded about his business appointments by the Stonecutter office, which would send a messenger out to the estate to prevent an important visitor from finding Stax, say, mucking out the cow pen. (No, really; that had happened not once, but twice.) But Stax had never gone to the office to warn them about Fouge, because thinking about Fouge upset him too much. So no one there thought to ask about the possibility of a return visit, or warn Stax that something bad might happen.

Stax forgot, and the next couple of days slipped by, tranquil and torpid and free of not just trouble but even the thought of it.

A week after Fouge’s visit, Stax was sitting by the little table on the end of the boathouse dock. He’d finished a leisurely breakfast, with a smear of honey remaining on his plate, and was skimming Optimized Mining Practices for Locating Emerald Deposits, a book from his father’s library that was even more boring than its title might suggest. Coal, Lapis, and Emerald lay in lazy S figures around him, next to the picked-over bones of fishes.

When he saw the first boat in the distance to the south, Stax thought it was a cloud near the horizon. But this cloud kept growing, and pretty soon Stax saw it was a boat, and that there were other boats behind it—more than a dozen, in fact.

“Why can’t that horrible man use the cove like he’s supposed to?” Stax asked the sleeping cats, who ignored him, unless a sleepy flick of Emerald’s tail counted as an answer.

As the boats drew closer, Stax became more uneasy. He could see Fouge standing in the lead boat, his blond hair shining in the sun, and he was pretty sure the man was smiling that unsettling, predatory smile of his. The other boats were festooned with banners—black-and-purple, red-and-gold, green–and–sickly pink—and filled with rough-looking men and women, the sun flashing on swords and axes.

Lapis was the first of the cats to awaken, and she hissed and growled low in her throat, her tail held back behind her.

“It’ll be okay, kitties,” Stax said, getting to his feet. But he heard the doubt in his own voice, and realized he no longer believed that.

Move, he told himself. Go! Run!

But he couldn’t make his feet move. He felt frozen, like he was trapped in a dream where he kept trying to run but found himself stuck in place.

The cats shot off up the stone stairs when Fouge’s boat ground against the side of the slip with a groan of wood. Fouge stepped nimbly onto the dock as the other boats bumped up against the steps. Their occupants leapt out into the shallow water, looking up at the house and laughing.

“Stax Stonecutter,” Fouge said. “So good to see you again. I’d introduce you to my associates, but well, there’re quite a lot of them and they’re going to be very busy. And you’ll have time to get acquainted later.”

“Now see here,” Stax managed. “This has gone quite too far. I insist that you visit our office. That’s the proper way to—”

Fouge had been listening silently, with a slight smile on his face. As Stax lectured him, he picked up Optimized Mining Practices for Locating Emerald Deposits where it lay on the table, glanced at it, and then tossed it into the sea.

“Hey!” Stax cried out, staring at the book where it was bobbing, facedown, in the swells. “That’s Father’s book!”

“And now it belongs to the deep,” Fouge said. “A trophy for puffer fish, maybe. A plaything for dolphins. Who’s to say?”

“You have no right—”

“Look at my associates’ weapons, Stax,” Fouge said. “Gleaming iron, sharp arrowheads and shafts, and diamond honed to a razor’s edge. Those give me the right to do as I please, as long as I’m strong enough. And ultimately, in this world, that’s the only right that matters. Ladies and gentlemen, take Mr. Stonecutter in hand and make sure he has a good view.”

“A good view? What are you going to do?”

But Fouge was opening the boathouse door and directing some of his associates inside, while other bandits climbed the stairs to the house.

“You’re going to rob me?” Stax demanded.

“For starters,” Fouge said, and gestured for several raiders to follow him up the stairs. Two burly men seized Stax by each wrist and dragged him along behind them. He heard glass shattering and looked back to see a raider had bashed his sword through the boathouse’s window, while another had brought his axe down on the railing of the dock.

“Help! Robbery! Help!” Stax yelled, but he lived alone, far from his neighbors, and so there was no one to hear and no one to help. Fouge didn’t even look back, and the raiders just laughed as they hauled him up the steps and forced him inside the house.

Fouge’s associates had already been at work in the trophy room and the storerooms. A line of raiders passed by Stax, their arms filled with iron ingots and diamonds. They’d ripped down the map in the trophy room and carried it out in pieces, and Stax saw his grandmother’s armor departing, one diamond piece at a time.

“Got a bottleneck here at the door, boss,” grumbled a black-bearded man. “Too many what’s goin’ out while too many others is goin’ in.”

“So make a bigger door,” Fouge said.

The man nodded and barked orders and the raiders smashed down the glass walls, leaving the house open on all sides. That freed them to carry out paintings and furniture and tools, like a swarm of furious ants serving their queen. Stax watched in horror as raiders worked in pairs outside to chop down the birches and rip out the flower beds, while others broke down the fences keeping the cows and pigs and sheep penned up. Confused and frightened, the sheep raced in all directions, bumping into one another and bleating in distress as the raiders laughed and jumped at them to spook them further.

“Leave my animals alone!” Stax yelled.

“Or you’ll do what, little man?” asked a grinning bandit carrying away a stack of his father’s books.

Nothing. There was nothing he could do, not against such numbers. There were too many of them, they were all heavily armed, and they were veteran warriors, while Stax had rarely lifted a blade to deal with anything that wasn’t vegetation. He sank to his knees in despair as the destruction raged around him.

He was still there, limp with shock, when Fouge arrived half an hour later, whistling cheerfully as he yanked Stax’s grandmother’s stone pickaxe off the wall, along with its frame.

“Stax, come with me,” he said. “You’re not going to want to miss this part.”

When Stax said nothing, Fouge ordered two ruffians to drag him to the back door. Fouge pointed to where a pair of his bandits were standing by the diorite swimming pool, bundles of red explosives in their arms.

“Do you know what that is, Stax?” Fouge asked.

“TNT,” Stax said hollowly. “It’s used for mining. Or rather, it’s used by fools who don’t care about putting themselves or others in danger.”

“Oh, we’ll be careful. Now watch.”

Fouge nodded and the two bandits lit arrows, then fired them at the TNT. It ignited, with the detonation knocking both raiders backward. Stax raised his arms reflexively against the blast. He heard a roar of overstressed stone and then the bottom of the pool collapsed, sending water pouring through the breach into the Stonecutter mine.

“I’ve just created the Overworld’s deepest swimming pool,” Fouge said. “Wouldn’t you say so, Stax?”

That was when Stax caught sight of a black shape in the shadows by the now-wrecked pool. It was Coal; the explosion had frightened her out of whatever hiding place she’d found.

Stax forced himself to look away, hoping Fouge wouldn’t spot her. But Fouge had seen the black cat, just as he’d seen Lapis and Emerald, who were huddled behind Coal, all of them wild-eyed with fright. He gestured to the raiders.

“No!” Stax cried out. “Do what you want to me, do what you want to the house, but don’t hurt my cats! They’ve done nothing to you!”

“Well, neither have you,” Fouge said.

One of the raiders crouched down and reached out to the cats, a wide smile on his face, and made psst-psst noises of enticement. Stax opened his mouth to yell a warning, only to have Fouge clamp a hand over it.

“Stax!” he said mildly, wagging a finger. “That’s cheating!”

Stax stared in horror as the cats shrank back from the raider’s outstretched hand. Silently, he begged them not to fall for the trick. They hesitated, uncertain, and then Coal hissed and spat. A moment later all three cats had shot up the cracked diorite stairs and vanished into the shadows of the garden.

Stax closed his eyes in relief, but Fouge just shrugged.

“Our work is almost done, anyway,” he said. “In fact, it’s time for the finale, Stax.”

They dragged Stax out into the yard, now marred by pits and littered with broken birch limbs. He watched as the raiders bashed down the diorite-and-granite walls and tore up the stairs. The animals had fled or been carried away, the fountain was shattered and befouled, and the fences had been toppled.

“That ought to do it,” Fouge said. “Set the rest on fire.”

A raider poured lava from a bucket into the center of the living room, then hurried out as the remains of the carpet caught fire. Fouge nodded and marched away, down the sandstone steps. The planks of the dock were floating in the water and the little trim boathouse was a burning, roofless shell. The boats sat low in the water, overloaded with goods pillaged from the Stonecutter estate. At Fouge’s orders, Stax was forced into one of the boats and made to sit by a big, black-bearded ruffian at the oars. The man was wearing Stax’s third-favorite shirt, the yellow one with red dragons on it.

“Comfy, Stax?” Fouge asked. “I hope so. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

Stax looked at Fouge and found his face outlined by the burning boathouse, a red halo of fire. It was twilight and bright cinders were drifting through the air like little stars.

“Why?” he managed to ask.

“You know, everyone always wants to know that,” Fouge said. And then he shrugged. “It’s funny.”

Stax stared at Fouge, waiting, and it wasn’t until the bandit leader had climbed into his own boat that he realized that there wouldn’t be more. Fouge had given him the only answer he was going to get.