CHAPTER 26

CORDELIA MADE FOR THE TOWER DOOR BUT Sam grabbed her hand.

“Not that way! She’ll see us!” he hissed.

“Who?” Cordelia whispered back.

“The one who sings while she works. Downstairs.”

Cordelia remembered the lullaby lilting through the great chamber. “Is there someone else hiding out here?”

Sam nodded.

“I get in and out through the window, cos I can’t open the front door. But she uses it. I never seen ’er, but she always sings that song when she’s workin’.”

“But how does she get in?” Cordelia frowned. “My aunt told me only a Maker or a Monarch can open the front doors.”

Sam vaulted to the top of the wardrobe and leaned out of the window. He turned to look doubtfully at Cordelia.

“I dunno if you’ll make the climb,” he said. “How are you with heights?”

“I’m all right with heights if there’s something to hold on to,” Cordelia said.

Sam shook his head. “It’s sheer.”

“We’ve got to go,” Cordelia urged in a low moan. “There’s no time! My family’s going to be thrown in the Tower!”

Sam leaped lightly down and padded across to the door. His mouth was set in a grim line.

“Nuffin’ for it, we gotta go this way. Foller me.”

They crept down the silvered stairs back onto the gallery populated with the silent mannequins.

Cordelia peered over the wooden balcony. A rectangle of flickering light stretched across the floor of the chamber below. One of the old workshop doors was open and there was a fire crackling in the fireplace. She heard two voices mingling. One belonged to the stranger in the cloak. The other was a woman’s.

In the darkness of the vast chamber, their shapes moved like sharks in a deep sea. They reached the far wall and stopped. Then the woman lit a lantern and her shadow splayed, massive, across the floor. Distant, but distinct, came the clinking of keys and a scraping screech of metal on metal.

Cordelia frowned. She turned to Sam, fretting silently beside her.

“The keys—did you steal them from every Maker family?” Cordelia whispered.

Clink—scrape.

Sam nodded tersely.

“We gotta get outta here, Cor,” he muttered.

Clink—scrape.

A wailing shriek split the room in two.

A moment later, the air had claws and teeth. It surged and snapped around her, and a scorched, sulphuric stink—like rotten eggs laid by Firechickens—blackened the atmosphere in a foul tidal wave. Cordelia choked, clapping her hand over her mouth to stop herself coughing.

Down in the depths of the Great Chamber, the woman gave a howl of vicious delight. The man’s triumphant laughter rang around the domed ceiling.

Sam sprang to the window, gesturing silently for Cordelia to join him. She scrambled after him and he eased the window open. They took grateful gulps of the fresh night air.

“It’s gonna have ta be this way out,” Sam muttered, hoisting himself up.

He stretched a hand out to Cordelia. She clambered up beside him onto the windowsill and felt her stomach churn. The ground was a long way down.

But a little way below the window was the stone statue of the Maker. They were above the front doors.

“Jus’ foller my lead,” Sam whispered. “You’ll be all right.”

Cordelia tried to nod, but it was more of a nervous jerk of her head. She felt dizzy from the sickening mixture of curdled air and sudden space beneath her feet.

Sam swung his legs out over the space and tentacled a leg into the air as he reached for a foothold. His toe brushed the stone feather of the statue’s hat.

“Right,” he murmured. “Bit of a stretch. Gonna have ta jump it.”

“What?” Cordelia gulped, but Sam had already leaped—

—and was wrapped around the statue’s shoulders like a living cloak.

He slid down onto the narrow stone ledge and turned his face up to Cordelia.

“Come on!” His voice floated up to her.

Cordelia silently cursed her skirts, which flapped heavily around her legs as she pulled herself around to face out over the abyss. As she stared at the statue, it seemed to get farther and farther away.

“Don’t think—jus’ jump!”

Her hands were slippery with sweat and her mouth was dry and her stomach was knotty as Eelweeds.

“You can do it, Cor!” Sam’s voice was a red thread made of courage.

She screwed up all her guts and heart and muscles into a tight bundle—and everything else she was made of too: bravery and imagination, wildness and wits and her spark of magic—

—and she jumped!

“Oof!” The statue knocked all the air out of her, but she clung on.

“You done it!” Sam whispered joyfully.

The doors to the Guildhall, just inches beneath their feet, opened. The children froze.

Cordelia felt the night shift around her as the cloaked stranger emerged onto the steps. The rotten stink came with him in a revolting surge. Cordelia took a tiny sip of air and the vile taste—like vomit and old milk—made her gag.

If the man looked up now, he would see her wrapped in a strange embrace with the stone Maker, and Sam splayed against the wall behind her, desperately clinging on with his fingertips.

She slid an inch down the statue and Sam gave the tiniest of whimpers. They were trapped halfway up the bare face of the building. She clung to the cold stone figure, feet dangling helplessly.

Cordelia felt hope ebb from her heart just as surely as she felt the strength ebbing from her muscles. The stranger slowly turned his head. He would spot them in a second—he would wait for them to fall, like shot birds, to the ground, and drag them away to the Tower.

“I say, Archie, darling, you are such a flash at the card table. I’m terribly proud of you!” A voice, brighter than the moonlight, rang through the gloomy alley.

“Well, my love, Lord Buncle was just begging to gamble away all of his cash,” another voice replied. “And I was very happy to help him do it!”

Two young men burst, laughing, from the dark mouth of the alleyway.

Cordelia recognized them, even though there was cold sweat trickling into her eyes. It was Archibald and Ferdinand, the boys who had almost dueled in Berkeley Square.

They stopped dead when they saw the situation they had stumbled into: the ominous stranger in a black cloak and two terrified children clinging to the building right above his head.

Help! Cordelia mouthed without a sound. Help!

Both boys leaped into action at once.

“Good sir!” Ferdinand cried, stepping sideways so that the stranger, watching him, turned his back on the children. “We are lost in this maze of alleyways! Can you tell us the way to—ah—the Sargasso Chocolate House?”

“Ah, yes!” Archibald said, leaping in front of the stranger too. “We are hopelessly lost. And I’m craving a cup of Mrs. Tempest’s hot chocolate.”

For a moment, the stranger did nothing. The boys froze, smiling uncertainly at him. Then one hand emerged from the deep black cloak and pointed back down the way they had come.

The boys laughed and clapped each other on the back, rolling their eyes.

“I told you we were lost, Archibald!” Ferdinand laughed, bowing to the cloaked stranger. “Sir, may I humbly beg you to show us the way? I do not trust that my companion here will lead us aright.”

The cloaked stranger growled a word which sounded like “no.”

“Once we are set on our way, we shall leave you to your business,” Ferdinand insisted. “This way, you say?”

The boys each took the cloaked stranger by the arm and led him down the alleyway. Just before they were swallowed by the darkness, Archibald glanced back, his face full of concern.

Thank you! Cordelia mouthed.

And the three of them were gone. The Guildhall square was empty and the boys’ voices faded as they strode away with the villain into the night.

Sam slid off the ledge, down the wall and sank to the ground, clutching his heart.

Cordelia gingerly let go of the statue and slithered onto the plinth, her whole body shaking with effort and fright. Then, too numb to feel any more fear, she jumped.

The shock of the earth shot up her shins and she tumbled into a slushy puddle. But she did not care. She laid her cheek on the muddy street, profoundly grateful to be on the ground.

Without stopping to congratulate her on her safe arrival, Sam grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet. They slipped away down the alley, into the safety of the dark.