Chapter Twenty-Eight. Scarecrow
TWENTY-EIGHT
Scarecrow
It’s complete chaos.
People are rushing for the ballroom doors, but the hallway out is a bottleneck and people quickly stack up.
Looking for escape and finding none, they turn into feral animals practically gnawing at one another to get free.
Across the ballroom, Kansas is still scanning the crowd looking for me. When she doesn’t immediately spot me, she takes her red dress in hand and disappears through the open balcony doors.
I set down one of two glasses of ozrum on a nearby table, then swill back the second glass, the alcohol warming my throat.
The music has halted, the band gone. There is only the symphony of panic and terror now.
A chair is knocked over. A woman calls out for her partner. Someone trips and a string of lights flickers and goes dark.
I check my newly acquired pocket watch. Has it been several hours since Fink’s guard warned him about the Tinman’s arrival? I suspect it’s close enough.
Leaving the main exit behind, I follow in Kansas’s footsteps and exit through the balcony doors.
Down the steps, I spot her trailing behind several staff members, her dress clutched in hand. When the servants leave her, she searches for a way in the dark and decides to follow the trail to the front of the house.
“Kansas,” I say, but she doesn’t hear me.
I quicken my steps, but I’m not quick enough.
Someone snatches her through an archway in the garden and she lets out a yelp.
“I’ve got her,” someone says. Not the Tinman. One of Fink’s guards.
“Help!” she calls.
I stumble through the archway. “Let her go.”
“Rook.” My temporary name is almost a sigh on her lips.
A man twice my size has her back held tightly against his chest. It’s the same guard Fink met at the guardhouse. I never caught his name but he looks like a Brutus or maybe a Belcher. He has two other guards with him, both of them big, burly men.
“Or what?” one of them asks.
I say nothing. They all laugh, thinking this must be confirmation that I am scared.
“Take care of him,” Brutus says.
The men come at me.
“No!” Kansas shouts and wrestles against Brutus’s grip.
“It’s going to be okay, Kansas,” I tell her because you’re supposed to tell people these kinds of reassuring things when they’re in danger. I think.
The man on the left with a blond beard and a diamond stud in his left ear reaches me first. He doesn’t take any time to assess the situation. He throws a punch aimed directly at my face.
The fist lands. The blow reverberates through my skull and down my neck.
“Stop it!” Kansas rams her elbow into Brutus’s stomach but he doesn’t even flinch. He’s wearing a thick leather cuirass, penetrable only by blade or magic.
The second guard—I’m not sure what he looks like with tears blurring my vision—punches me in the gut. All the air rushes out of me. I keel over, landing on one knee.
The guards chuckle to themselves.
“So much for riding in like a knight to save your girl, huh?” The blond man plants his boot on my shoulder and kicks me over. Gravel crunches beneath me. Dirt grits in my teeth.
The other man kicks me in the stomach. He has impeccable aim, hitting the same spot as before, doubling the dull ache that radiates across my ribs.
“Please stop! He’s already injured.” Kansas’s voice is wobbly with terror, but beneath that is something darker. Something born of rage.
Another kick, this one to my back, to the kidneys. I curl into a ball. Let out a pathetic little moan.
“Please! Please don’t hurt him!”
The ground trembles beneath me.
The wind shifts, dirt clouding up around me.
The bearded guard lands another blow to my stomach.
“I said stop!”
There’s a sudden rush of air. The force of it is so great, the hedges bend backward. Leaves tear from their branches and shoot across the clearing.
The men have to hunch, hold their arms over their eyes to shield against debris.
Kansas stomps on Brutus’s foot. He howls and lets her go.
Another squall blows in, knocking all three guards off their feet. One ends up in the bushes. Another tossed through another archway. Brutus ends up crashing into a stone bench, toppling over the other side.
Kansas is untouched by the phantom wind.
“Come on.” She bends down to lift me up. “Can you run?”
“Of course.” But once I’m on my feet, I find myself limping. “It’s okay. You can leave me.”
“Absolutely not.” She drags me back through the archway. Light from the mansion shines across the dark like a beacon.
“You idiots. Get them!” Brutus shouts.
“Hurry,” Kansas tells me.
“I’m holding you back,” I tell her.
“I’m not leaving you.”
Her dedication to saving me is amusing. Again and again, she’s shown loyalty that I have not earned.
We race through the rest of the garden. Brutus and his men spill out through the archway behind us, but we’re already in the light, already on the mansion’s front lawn.
But we find all the carriages gone.