lsewhere, away from fairies and frozen forests, a great and desperate gathering was under way. Steel mills were rebuilding a fleet, with thicker hulls and more powerful engines. Troops were being trained, supplies stockpiled and all the many races and species of man, woman and beast were putting aside their differences for a single common purpose.
These gathered fair-folk no longer trusted what was left of the Twelve, no longer trusted Atticus Fife. On Barbarossa’s orders, Madame Oublier’s former second-in-command, now their new leader, had forced those remaining under his control to act in a way that was nothing short of cruel. At a time when they needed it most, communication of any kind amongst the many factions of the Hidden had been banned unless sanctioned by the Twelve, and travel had been outlawed completely. As a result, entire cities, towns and villages found themselves completely isolated, and any information they were party to heavily monitored and doctored by Fife and his men. It didn’t matter that the Twelve no longer had the ear of its people. Fife was on a different mission: a mission to keep them separated. The more apart and leaderless they remained, the less likely they were to unite.
But that was the thing about the Hidden and its many factions – they needed each other both in peace and war, and the Governor-General of St Albertsburg, its Protector and Viceroy, was doing what he could to spearhead an alliance. They were now preparing to fight for their very existence. His beloved city literally groaned with the weight of new bodies walking its streets. St Albertsburg and its twelve isles had become a beacon of hope in a world where light had been all but extinguished.
With Benissimo’s help and advice, the Viceroy had offered up St Albertsburg as a place to prepare for the coming battle, and those brave enough to make a stand had come in their thousands, in their tens of thousands, with many more ready to heed the call to arms when the time came. Every square inch of the isle’s open spaces was now full to bursting with airships, supplies and tents – the greatest military gathering of the Hidden in living memory. Deep in the guts of the coal-heavy isle, furnaces burned by day and by night. But not for the making of arms – St Albertsburg had stockpiles of weapons that could arm any force of man or beast. They burned for glass – for the making of mirrors.
Carrion Slight and his network of mirrors had given them the notion. The plan was as follows: on Benissimo’s command, the Viceroy’s owls and any airship deemed battle-ready would go by air, as expected, to fight the Darkening King. Their ground troops, however, would arrive at the taiga by mirror. No amount of winged or legged ticker could warn Barbarossa in time, not if they arrived at once. Overseeing the operation from the painstaking creation of the mirrors, to their packing and transport to Siberian Russia, was Ignatius P. Littleton the Third, otherwise known as the Glimmerman.
The Viceroy’s mind was ablaze as he made his way to the hangar. In every crevice, nook and cranny that he walked past he saw the same thing: hope, a desperate hope that their tireless efforts would be enough to win the day and that their faith in him would be answered with victory. The Viceroy also hoped – hoped that they were right, even though his heart told him it was madness. Everything now rested on the gambit of surprise – almost everything. Benissimo had assured him before travelling to Ireland that everything was in hand, though he still hadn’t divulged what it was he was hoping to find at the Seelie Court. Whatever it was, the Viceroy knew that no amount of hope or courage would win the day without it.
The loading bay was frantic with last-minute preparation. They had built a special transport for the journey and several of his own carriers would travel in convoy to offer protection. Once the initial load of mirrors had safely made it to Siberia, the rest would go via the mirror-verse itself.
The Glimmerman was less rotund than when he’d arrived and the Viceroy had been informed that the man no longer slept. Gone was his cheerful jacket of tiny mirrors; in its place a white shirt long stained with soot and sweat.
“Well, Ignatius, how goes the glass?”
Despite the heat and exhaustion, the arrival of the Viceroy in the loading bay straightened up Ignatius and his group of master glassmen immediately. They were in one of the many loading bays that cut into the isle’s side and all about them military personnel heaved at the vast mirrors as they loaded them on to the transport.
“A-another hour or so, my lord,” said Ignatius, then, spotting something from the corner of his eye, his face turned bright red as he shouted, “Will you be careful with that? You have no idea what it took to make!”
The little man’s nerves were clearly shot to pieces. Any movement of glass was a tense affair and Ignatius had never been tasked with creating so much and certainly not in such a short space of time.
“Ignatius, you’ve done admirably. Why don’t you give yourself some time off? There are plenty of glassmen who can hold the fort for one night.”
“T-time off, sir?” he answered as though the words were completely alien. “Time … off?” he mouthed again.
And that was when they heard it, muffled as it was, high above the city and its streets – a scream, and then another, till there was a long, drawn-out wail of hundreds and thousands. The rock above their heads shook and the air filled with sirens and the screeching of the Viceroy’s giant owls. It was only when the first bomb dropped that His Grace, the Viceroy and Governor-General of St Albertsburg, the 37th Duke of de Fresnes, understood.
BOOM!
And one bomb became many. High above them the crystal city shattered under hellfire, and beside them two vast planes of mirrored glass cracked from the ensuing tremors.
“My glass!” stammered the Glimmerman.
“My city!” roared the Viceroy.
To their left, the loading bay’s open doors offered a clear view to the sky – a sky now peppered with the black silhouettes of Barbarossa’s fleet. Each and every one of its Daedali loaded with the Central Intelligence’s metal men and a hoard of Demons to guide them.