Chapter 27
A rock camethrough the window.
It cracked the glass so loudly, Viviane jumped.
Her focus had been on Ric, who was slumped against the wall, looking as gray as he had the first day he’d woken up, and the rock had been a shock of sound—completely unexpected.
It hit one of the bars of their prison cell and spun back to the wall, and Ivan reached out and plucked it from the air.
He ripped a piece of paper off it, read it, and passed the scrap to Gallain.
“Theo.” Gallain grinned.
Ivan snatched the paper back and began to write on it with a pencil that she saw now had been tied to the rock, and then he swore as it disappeared in his hand.
“Melodie,” Caro breathed. “She painted it.”
“The paper’s real,” Jacinta said, and Viviane saw it was the only thing that was still visible. Even the rock had disappeared.
“Can you reach the door?” Caro asked Gallain, who was closest to it. “Slip the paper under it?”
“Maybe.” He glanced at Ivan and they both got to their feet, shuffling as close to the door as they could. Eventually they lay down, and Gallain stretched out an arm. The paper fit under the door, and it was jerked out of his fingers.
“Gallain?”
Vivi heard Theo’s voice coming in a whisper from under the gap in door, and for the first time allowed herself to believe he was really there.
“Lieutenant. We’re in here with the children.”
“All four of you?”
She saw Gallain wince at the question, and realized he must feel foolish that they had all been so easily taken. “Yes.”
“I’m glad you’re safe. What’s the layout in there?” Theo asked.
“We’re chained to the wall under the window. The children are in a room with a wall of bars enclosing them, directly opposite us.”
“We’ll see if we can break open the door. Melodie will draw a crowbar.”
Viviane tried to understand what he meant, and there was sudden silence, and she guessed he had slipped away.
Having gone outside earlier, she knew the building that was most likely Marchant’s house faced the door, so every moment he crouched beside it opened him up to discovery.
“Who’s Melodie?” Genevieve asked. “And what does he mean, ‘draw a crowbar’?”
The four soldiers said nothing in response, and Viviane guessed they were probably under orders not to talk about Melodie’s gifts.
The rock had disappeared, the pencil had done the same. Maybe this Melodie could draw things into being for a short time.
A moment later, there was a scratching sound, and then a crack of wood as Theo levered a crowbar against the door.
After only a few minutes, the noise stopped and she guessed the crowbar had disappeared, but almost immediately, he started again. Maybe Melodie was making more as he worked, so he would have a never-ending supply of them.
“So glad we brought her along,” Ivan murmured. “That was a very good idea.”
The others said nothing, but Viviane could see their full focus was on the door, and all of them were standing now, tense and ready for whatever was to come.
She rose herself, her gaze flicking to Jon, who nodded, and crouched beside Ric.
“Tell us what he did to you,” he murmured. “We need to know.”
“Run without me,” Ric said. He was still sitting against the wall, eyes closed, and there was something wrong with the way he was breathing.
“Not going to happen,” Jon said.
“Ric, you insult us,” Vivi said softly. “We would never leave you. Never.”
He opened his eyelids a little, so she just caught a glimpse of the bright blue of his eyes. “You must.”
“Never,” she said again. “I’d rather stay behind.”
“He did something to me. I don’t know what, but it hurts to move.” Ric finally opened his eyes fully. “And just now, in that torture chamber, he hit me with a stick. I don’t think it was a normal stick. There was some spell on it.”
“Where?” she asked.
He touched his ribs. “It hurts to breathe.”
She wished she had needle and thread. She wished his hair was longer. But wishing would accomplish nothing right now.
She would never sleep without a needle and thread wound into her clothing ever again.
“Gallain and I will carry you,” Ivan said, his tone matter-of-fact, as if it were a foregone conclusion.
Ric looked like he wanted to argue, and Vivi pointed to him, then put a finger to her lips.
She saw his own lips quirk a little at her silent command to keep his mouth shut and accept he was going to be helped.
It was the first smile they’d gotten out of him since they’d been taken, and the sight of it lightened her heart.
And then her heart soared as the door gave a final crack and Theo shoved his shoulder into the gap and pushed his way into the room.
He glanced at her, his eyes crinkling in the corners at the sight of her.
He turned back to the door. “We’ll need you in here,” he whispered to someone outside. “They’re chained.”
A woman slipped through the narrow gap, and then Theo propped the door closed. Hopefully, if Marchant looked across at his prison, he wouldn’t notice the door had been forced.
“Melodie.” Caro gave a little wave. “Thanks for the rescue.”
Everyone seemed a little . . . embarrassed at the sight of her, and Viviane wondered what had happened to make them all feel guilty.
Melodie didn’t seem to hold any grudge, though. “Let’s see,” she said, crouching beside Caro to look at the rough keyhole.
She lifted Caro’s ankle, angling it into the sunlight coming through the window.
“The key is square-shaped, and the end is short and bent at a right angle to the part he holds.” Jon had been watching their rescuers with a face that tried not to show too much hope. “If that’s what you’re trying to understand.”
Melodie looked over at him. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to understand.” She lifted her bag over her head and set it down, along with the small cup Viviane had noticed she was holding. She pulled out a piece of paper, and then a brush and a wooden box. She set the paper over the key hole and gave it a light rub, then opened the box to reveal watercolor paints, and began painting in quick, sure strokes.
Theo stood near the door, sword drawn, as if this was their usual method, his gaze flicking to Melodie every now and then, as if to make sure she was safe.
“What else would work, if this doesn’t fit?” Melodie asked as she set the paper in a patch of sunlight. “Maybe a hand tong?”
As she said it, she pulled out another piece of paper and began to paint something on it.
While she was busy doing it, Theo stepped to the painting she had left to dry, plucked up what looked like a key that had suddenly appeared on it, and tried to open Caro’s shackles.
“Too small,” he said.
“I was afraid to make them too big,” Melodie answered, grimacing. “It will take time to get it exactly right.”
She set the second piece of paper in the sun, took the now blank page she’d drawn the key on and began to paint something else.
Theo had moved from Caro to Ivan, and tried to insert the key into his shackles. “No.” He pulled back in frustration, and then lunged at what must have been a hand tong, not that Viviane had ever heard of one, or even seen it.
“Brace,” Theo said to Ivan as he inserted the tongs into the shackle on his left ankle. He widened the handles.
The metal groaned as it was pushed outward, and with a final crack, it separated.
Theo bent to Gallain’s ankle, but as he did, Vivi saw the hand tong wisp away to nothing.
Theo turned, as if there was no doubt there would be a replacement for him, and plucked it off its resting place on the paper, just as Melodie placed another painting in the sun.
“She makes it real, and then it disappears.” Genevieve’s words were hushed.
Theo had got Gallain free when they all heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel.
“He just needs to look at the broken door to know I’m here,” Melodie whispered. “It won’t be a surprise.” She pointed behind the door. “Hide.”
Theo shook his head. “We both hide. I’m going to cut him down.”
She gave a nod, and Vivi saw she’d been packing away her magic painting set, and as she moved to stand up against the wall behind the door, she folded a shirt over the top of her bag, covering the contents completely before she closed the flap.
Theo stepped in front of her, blocking her body, his sword raised.
His face was grim and his expression was flat.
But Marchant saw the door was broken before he even reached it.
“Who’s in there?” he called out.
Theo shook his head to tell them to all keep quiet.
“Is it you, little girl?” Marchant’s voice was a mix of excitement and fear. “Is it you breaking down my door?”
Everyone remained absolutely still.
Viviane saw Melodie and Theo exchange a quick look with each other, and she guessed Melodie had already had a run-in with Marchant. And come out of it unscathed.
He was frightened of her.
“You want to lure me in, but I’m not going to do that.” Marchant’s voice was sing song.
The silence stretched out.
Genevieve reached out and grabbed Vivi’s hand, and a quick glance told her the boys looked as tense as she felt.
The four soldiers had risen to their feet, and Ivan and Gallain were loosening their shoulders, readying for a fight.
Marchant wouldn’t last a moment if he stepped through the door, and Vivi guessed he suspected as much.
“I know the prisoners are still in there. You don’t have a key to their shackles and there’s no way you could have freed them all since I was last in there. So I’m going to make a deal with you.”
“I wouldn’t trust a deal with him under any circumstances,” Jacinta murmured, and Vivi had to agree.
There was going to be no fair play here.
“The key and free passage for your friends, in exchange for you, little girl.” Perhaps their silence had emboldened Marchant, because he sounded more sure of himself now. As if he imagined them in here, frightened and huddling. “I’ll give you a few minutes to consider my offer.”
The sound of boots on gravel told them all he was leaving, or at least moving away.
The moment he began to retreat, Melodie was crouched on the floor again, painting. The first of her hand tongs had just shimmered into existence when the crunch crunch of the stones alerted them to Marchant’s return.
Theo’s arms bunched as he snapped Caro’s shackle, then he took up position as protector as Ivan grabbed the next one, and began working on Jacinta’s ankle.
Theo crouched and tried to look through a crack in the door for some clue as to what Marchant was doing, and after a moment he swore, and jerked back.
“He’s run up to the corner of the building and set something up against it.” He moved to the door again, and when he turned to look at Melodie, his mouth was a grim line. “I think he’s setting up some kind of magical barrier in an arch around the building, corner to corner, and . . .” He put his eye to the crack in the door again. “Three more in a semi-circle.”
Melodie finished a hand tong painting, set the paper in what was now a much narrower strip of light, and stepped up to the door. She leaned against Theo, and Vivi saw his arm come around the back of her legs, as if supporting her.
But she didn’t really need support.
Vivi’s mind turned it over.
Maybe he just liked touching her.
She was beautiful. Her hair fell in a thick plait down her back, dark, glossy brown with fine threads of gold and red woven into it, and she radiated competence and intelligence, two things Vivi knew that Theo found almost irresistible.
“Whatever it is, it’s spelled.” Melodie shrugged without turning around. “I mean, he wouldn’t be bothering otherwise, would he?”
“No,” Theo sighed.
“What’s the proposal, old man?” Melodie called out.
Vivi saw Theo’s grip on Melodie’s leg tighten, and then he forced himself to open his hand. He lay the flat of his palm against her thigh.
Melodie glanced down at him. “No choice. The tongs won’t get the children out of the cell.”
“He can’t be trusted.” Gallain was rubbing his ankle.
“I know.” Melodie stepped back.
“I thought my little fence would force you to speak.” Marchant chuckled. “The proposal is, you give yourself into my hands, and I’ll let the others go.”
Melodie turned her head so her voice would carry through the door. “The counter proposal is you let the others go, and then I give myself into your hands.”
“Why would I agree to that?” He sounded so smug, Vivi wanted to hit him in the face the way he had hit her.
“Because every moment I’m in here, and you are standing watch out there, is another moment the Kassia and Cervantes army draws closer to Warven.” She leaned against the wall near the door so he could hear every word she spoke.
Marchant was silent for a few minutes.
“The whole army?” He sounded like he was trying out the words on his tongue.
Melodie laughed. “After the horrors of the Chosen camps, what did you think the reaction was going to be from the Turncoat King when four of his baby soldiers were snatched?” She clicked her tongue. “Maybe you weren’t thinking at all.”
There was another silence, and Vivi didn’t know if it was her imagination, but she thought it was electrified.
“Who would have even known they were gone so soon?” he asked at last.
“You know who, stop stalling, old man. There were two of us who came into Warven the night you took my colleagues around the camp fire. And your spy, who I followed here from town, already told you one of us left at first light this morning, headed back to Illoa. We were just the advance guard. For our children, we would burn down the world. Don’t you remember that from the days of the Rising Wave?”
“Let’s say all that’s true, they won’t find me here.”
“Oh, they will. You’re forgetting your box of nightmares is no more.” She slid another painting into the sun. “I destroyed it.”
Melodie stood and walked to the door.
She shooed Theo back, out of sight, and leaned out a little, so Marchant could see her.
“You miscalculated, old man. And the longer you pretend there isn’t a ticking clock above your head, the better for me, so get back to me when you have a plan to do things my way.” She stepped back, and Theo pulled her to the side, one of his big hands curled around her slim upper arm.
Vivi thought he was holding himself back, as if he wanted to pull her close in a hug.
“You aren’t giving yourself up to him,” he said.
“If it means getting the children free, I am,” she said. “It’s not as if I don’t have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
Theo closed his eyes, and Vivi thought he was going to say she wasn’t giving herself up, no matter what, but after a beat, he gave a nod of his head.
They were buying their safety for Melodie’s, and Vivi didn’t even know her.
“Who are you?” It was Ric who asked. “Are you from Kassia and Cervantes?”
Melodie turned to look at them. “I’m a person who doesn’t like people who steal children,” she said. She stepped toward the door of their cell and Theo came with her.
She studied the lock, grimaced. “It needs to be precise, and that’s just about impossible without the key, in which case I wouldn’t need to paint it, anyway.”
“At least paint some tongs to get them out of their shackles,” Caro said.
Ivan lifted a shoulder. “It was hard for me to do. I don’t think they’d have the strength to do it.”
“Let’s try another crowbar,” Melodie said, and went back to her paints and paper.
“I’m ready to talk.” Marchant’s voice sounded tight and unhappy.
“Just a moment,” Melodie called back, her brush giving a final flick before she shoved the page away and stepped back to the door. “Yes?”
“I let the children go, then you give yourself up, then I let the soldiers go.”
“You let everyone go, and then I give myself up. The only details we have to discuss are how we accomplish that.” She stepped away.
Ivan and Theo had wedged the crowbar between the door and the bars that made up the front wall, and with a surprisingly loud pop, the door snapped inward.
“What was that?” Marchant’s voice was steeped in suspicion.
“That was me freeing the children from their cage, old man.” Melodie stepped back to the door. “Tick, tock.”