TWO

HIDDEN

There had been times when Delia wished she was invisible. She had majored in psychology long enough to recognize that impulse in herself, along with the contradictory urge to be noticed and admired. She had once called it the “Look at me! Don’t look at me!” syndrome.

After a few days of the actual thing, though, she was tired of invisibility. Part of that was the constant fear of being discovered. She wasn’t silent, after all, and just as Copper had seemed to see her from the corner of her eye, several of the guards had somehow noticed her briefly. There was also the matter of getting food without being discovered, taking care of the business that eating and drinking inevitably led to—worst of all, finding someplace to sleep where no one could possibly trip over her. If you had a rat in your house, it was usually evident even if you never saw that rat itself—and she was much bigger than a rat.

Fortunately, the castle was also much bigger than an ordinary house. And had rats.

It took her a few days to search most of the building, narrowing her hunt down to a few rooms that were locked. These she had to stake out, waiting for someone to come and unlock them before she could see what was inside. In so doing, she discovered a small treasury, an apparently special wine cellar, and an empty room where one of the handful of female servants met to make out with one of the more human-looking guards.

Eventually, she found Aster, in a room near the top of the castle. Almost no one went beyond the fourth or fifth floor due to the climb, except for the soldiers who manned the watch from up there. But one day Vilken passed her on the sixth floor, and she followed him. He unlocked a door and entered the room where he was keeping Aster.

It wasn’t large; it didn’t have to be. She lay asleep in a small bed, and didn’t stir when he came in. Delia watched with growing disgust as he fondled her unconscious body and murmured to her all of the things he planned to do to her once Kostye’s spell was completely removed. He opened her mouth and poured a yellow liquid in. He made sure she swallowed it all, wiped her lips clean with a small rag, and kissed them. Not a little peck or a nip, but a long, lingering kiss that ended with what might have been a playful little bite if it weren’t part of a pervert’s assault on a drugged, sleeping girl. He kissed her neck, too, and her breast, before rising with what was clearly great reluctance.

She watched all of this from the threshold, trying not to vomit. The room was so small she feared he would notice her if she went in.

Finally, he left, closing the door behind him. She followed him down at a discreet distance, hoping to see where he put the keys, but he vanished into his room with them, locking his door behind him.

She kept careful watch after that, and the next time he went up, she did slip into the room, practically holding her breath the whole time he was there. When he left, he locked her in, as she knew he would, and she spent the next several hours trying to wake Aster—but whatever it was he gave her, it kept her asleep, and her breathing so shallow that at times Delia feared she was dead.

She woke after a brief nap, feeling something was wrong, or different, and turning, found herself nearly face-to-face with a swan perched in the narrow window. It stared at her for what seemed a long time before taking wing and gliding off toward a nearby river.

When next Vilken came, she slipped out quickly, dizzy from thirst. For the next few days she checked on the room often, hoping against hope he would leave the door unlocked.

Then, as she was lying nearby, drifting in and out of sleep, she heard something that sounded like deep drumbeats in the distance. Her weary, sleep-deprived mind took her back to a performance of the 1812 Overture she’d once heard, with its symphonic bombast and actual cannon fire thrown in for good measure.

That’s when she realized what she heard was cannon fire, up near the roof. Shaking off the cobwebs, she made her way up the steps.

She emerged to clouds of smoke and the smell of black powder. She was now on top of the tower of Babel, the small end of the telescope. A low wall edged the circular roof.

Divling bodies were strewn upon the stone platform, some wounded and some clearly far beyond that. Down below, she heard a clamor of alarm—horns blowing, bells ringing, cannon firing.

A ship was drawn up to the fortress wall, and as she watched, a gangplank thudded onto the castle roof and sailors began streaming down it. They were mostly girls. With a start she realized their leader was familiar—Dusk, the young woman who had dragged her along with Kostye into this bizarre land. With her was another girl, and young man in odd-looking armor. His visor was up. He looked familiar.

After strafing the roof a couple of times with cannon fire, they invaded. Errol followed Dusk down the gangplank, trying to ignore the mess their guns had made of the boys standing guard. He hadn’t fired any of the cannon himself, but he was complicit. His vow to not kill anyone was broken, at least in spirit. He pushed that down; the eggs were broken, and they couldn’t be put back together. And besides, the enemy had no compunction about killing Dusk’s girls. He couldn’t put his feelings over their lives.

He waited impatiently as Dusk made certain the roof was secure, that the survivors were disarmed and helpless.

Veronica’s back way into Vilken’s demesne had been far from easy. The storm clouds hung so low above the waves it was impossible to fly. Rain and hail pounded them without mercy, and the sea tried at each turn to murder them. Through it all Veronica stood at the bow, her eyes empty of human emotion, fingers writhing on the rail like sea anemones. She was beautiful, and she was terrifying.

It must have taken days, maybe a week before they reached a break in the clouds, a hole like the eye of a hurricane, but small, barely wide enough for the ships to pass through.

It had been worth the trouble. They had arrived at the castle unnoticed until they were mere yards away, swooping down out of a dense cloudbank drifting near the fortress.

Now came the hard part—finding Aster. The castle was a single tower, rising up in tiers, but it was a big tower, and they didn’t have long before the fleet he’d seen in the harbor was airborne along with dragons and whatever else Vilken had to throw their way. Surely by now, more soldiers were swarming up from below—soldiers they would probably have to wade through to get to Aster. And that was assuming she was in this building, and not someplace else. But this was the only place Dusk knew to come; if she wasn’t here, they were out of luck no matter what.

They were about to start down the stairway, when Dusk—who was not easily surprised—yelped and took a quick step back, raising her sword.

A naked woman had appeared in the stairwell.

“Don’t hurt me,” the naked woman said. “I’m here to help.”

“Delia!” Dusk said.

“Ms. Fincher!” Errol burst out. He knew he ought to avert his eyes, but the whole thing was so weird. He knew, intellectually, his school counselor was in the Kingdoms, but seeing her here, now—in her birthday suit—was hard to handle.

Ms. Fincher’s eyes went round. “Errol Greyson?”

“Uh . . . yes ma’am.”

“This is no time for greetings,” Dusk snapped. “We’ve come for Aster. Do you know where she is?”

“I do,” Ms. Fincher said. She pulled something around her, and most of her simply vanished, although her head was still there, and bits of her arms and legs.

“Follow me.”

The door was sturdy, and it took quite a bit of effort to break it down—way more time than Errol thought they probably had. Aster was asleep, like Ms. Fincher said she would be. He went in to pick her up, but Billy shouldered roughly past and gathered her in his arms. Then they started out and back up.

As they got back out onto the stairs, he heard the inevitable clatter of counterattack coming up from below.

For Errol, it was a moment of déjà vu. He remembered another tower, another staircase he had defended. It hadn’t turned out that well for him.

Dusk saw his hesitation and tugged on his arm.

“We can make it back to the ship,” she said.

But up above, things weren’t looking so good, either. Two of Vilken’s ships had already arrived and were trading broadsides with Dusk’s remaining two. He saw Billy running up the gangplank with Aster in his arms, even as the ship shuddered beneath a fusillade. The shock slammed the ship hard against the top edge of the castle wall, and then it rebounded, sending the vessel drifting away, dragging the gangplank away into open space.

Worse, another of the enemy ships had thrown out grappling hooks and was pulling itself toward the wall. At least Vilken’s guys weren’t firing cannon at them, but he figured that was probably because they were wanted alive.

This was going to be a hell of a fight, after all.

“I’ll keep those guys from coming up the stairs,” he told Dusk. “Can you and your Amazons hold those guys off until your ship manages to get back to pick us up?” He pointed to the divlings massing on the enemy ship, ready to leap onto the roof as soon as the grapples pulled it close enough.

Dusk nodded grimly. “When I call for you, come, and quickly. There will not be much time.”

Looking down from her place at the bow, Veronica saw more ships rising from the harbor. They were already overwhelmed, and soon things would be much worse. She knew the Raggedy Man was down there, close to the sea. She could feel him. She had a chance; once he got up here, into the air, that chance might slip away.

Another round of artillery fire smashed into the ship. Through a blooming cloud of smoke, she saw Errol on the roof, ready to fight against every odd for her, for Aster—and yes, for Dusk. That was who he was. She might be able to reach him, pull him out of the fight once more, but he would just come back, wouldn’t he? Until he was dead, or this was all over.

Billy was on board, carrying Aster, looking dazed.

“Billy,” Veronica said, but he didn’t react. She slapped him in the face, not too hard. “Billy!”

“Yeah?” he murmured.

“Can you become a giant again? Can you get us out of here?”

He could probably carry them all, a ship in each hand, get them all away from here in ten big steps.

Billy looked around, his eyes still largely blank. But he nodded.

“Aster,” he said.

Then he started to grow.

The ship sagged as his weight increased, but before it could flip over, he reached out with one leg and stepped onto the tower.

“Billy, wait—” she said.

He was really going up, now. He stepped down with his other foot onto a lower step of the castle. Aster was tiny in his hand.

One of his feet reach the ground, and as his head rose above the tower, he began to walk away.

“Well, hell,” she said. She couldn’t blame Billy. If he had time to settle into his human self, to become the thoughtful, considerate person she remembered, he would never have abandoned them. But this Billy had spent too much time moving back and forth between human and giant, and giants were simple. And what had brought him back—the single thing that truly motivated him—was Aster. He’d found her, she was in trouble—he’d gotten her the hell out of there. Good for him. She hoped it worked better than her attempt to save Errol.

Her own choices were easier now, as well. She had come here to do something, and her feelings had gotten her all muddled.

She took one more long look at Errol, as he started swinging his sword. Then she leapt overboard.

The thought of rescue, of escaping from Vilken’s castle, his demesne, and all of its madness was all Delia could think about at first. By the time they’d broken into Aster’s prison, the wheels in her head had inevitably begun turning, and she knew what she wanted wasn’t that simple. When she reached the roof, and saw that the rescue was going south anyway, she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what she ought to do.

She put the veil back on and ran down the stairs.

A few floors down, she ran into some of Vilken’s twisted boys, but with all of the clamor it was easy to slip against the wall and let them go past. One of them bumped into her, but he kept going.

She found Kostye in the room they’d shared, slumped on the bed, a bottle of some sort of liquor in one hand. Four empties lay on the floor. He was conscious, but his eyes were fogged from the inside by alcohol.

“Well,” she said. “This is familiar.”

His eyes turned toward the sound of her voice.

“You,” he said. And took another drink.

“Me,” she said.

He rubbed his hand on his forehead. “Why did you come back?” he said. “Didn’t I warn you? Weren’t you there to hear?”

“Of course I was,” she said, pulling the veil off. “And I heard you and Vilken on the ferry.”

“Then you know you should not have returned.”

“Listen,” she said. “Listen to me. I don’t know what he has on you. I don’t know how he controls you. But I’m telling you this. Your daughter Aster is upstairs. Vilken has been keeping her unconscious, Kostye, and he’s been doing things to her. Disgusting things. He plans to do worse—he plans to murder her—but some spell of yours is stopping him. There are people upstairs right now, trying to rescue her—but they’re going to fail, unless you help them.”

He took another pull on the bottle.

“Come here,” he said.

“Kostye . . .”

“Come here!”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her down; his grip burned her arm, and she gasped as he pulled her in for a kiss. She felt a kind of pinch, like a needle going on, but all through her body. Lights began to flash, bright, colorful, painful. She closed her eyes, but it didn’t help—they were still there. She felt as if something was unwinding; she heard voices, music, thunder, windchimes, a child crying, her mother singing.

She tried to pull away, but it was if their flesh had fused where the touched—at the lips, where his hands gripped her arms. She began to tremble, then to shake. Her hands and feet felt like ice, and cold crept up the back of her neck.

Then he let go, and she slumped to the floor. She lay there, breathing weakly, fighting for the strength to run.

Kostye was no longer paying any attention to her. She realized she was lying near the veil and, feeling her nakedness, pulled it back on.

Perhaps a minute after, Vilken entered the room.

“You!” Kostye growled.

Vilken’s eyes widened in surprise, but he reacted quickly, drawing the orb from beneath his robes and holding it toward Kostye. As before, it stopped him cold. He seemed hypnotized by it.

“What’s happened?” Vilken demanded. “Why do you address me so?”

He didn’t see her. The tiny globe was perched between his fingers.

She didn’t know what it was, but she knew what it did.

She knew she couldn’t consider too long, or she might talk herself out of it. She rose, took four steps forward, plucked the sphere from his fingers, and ran.

She didn’t make it far before he roared in a voice that was louder than human.

She sped down the stairs, not certain where she was going. Away, that much was certain. As she ran, she had an idea. If she could reach the bay and cast it in, he might not find it. If he couldn’t find it, maybe whatever hold Vilken had over Kostye would be ended. If so—well, at least it would stir things up.

She was within sight of the water when something seemed to pass through her, literally—it was as if a wind physically cut through her body. She accomplished three more steps before realizing she was no longer in control of her limbs—only momentum had carried her forward.

She struck the ground, banging her head so hard that for a moment everything went white.

When it was over, Vilken had her by the ankle, and she wasn’t wearing the veil anymore.

“So nice to see you, Delia,” he said. “I should have known he would have a hard time killing you. I should have asked to see the body. He has developed a weakness for women, I suppose.”

“Let go,” she gasped. The little ball was still clutched in her fist. He pulled her up and forced her fingers open.

“Thank you,” he said. He set her on her feet and said a word. She found she was able to walk again, but not of her own will. She could only follow Vilken—down to where she had been headed, to where the causeway met the water. Ahead of her, at the port, more ships were lifting into the air.

Vilken glanced up. “This will all be over soon,” he said. “But I’m afraid you won’t be here to witness it. Jump into the water, please, and make no effort to swim. You may breathe or not breathe as you wish, but it will go quicker if you do.”

She wanted a rejoinder. She wanted last words. But she wasted the moment between her next step and the fall to the water to take a deep breath. Then the water closed over her.

She sank. She opened her eyes, despite the sting. She wanted to see, to be aware as much as possible.

And she wanted to live.

But as the rippling, silvery surface grew further and further away, and her arms and legs refused to obey her panicked commands, she knew she would not.