The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (17 page)

Henrietta snorted. “Will we?” she asked.

Zeke looked at her. “Yeah. We will.”

Henrietta raised her eyebrows. “Maybe Henry should tell us a little more first, then we could help him decide.”

Zeke shook his head and looked at Henry. “Which is it? Pick a doorway or keep climbing?”

Henrietta pushed herself up and crossed her arms. Her eyebrows were still high, creasing the dust on her forehead.

Henry turned around in the center of the room. Dust piles drifted around his shoes. “Up,” he said. “Henrietta, you can go first this time.”

“You go first,” Zeke said. “Same as last time.”

Henry looked at Zeke and then at Henrietta. She shrugged at him and nodded at the stairs. Henry picked up the pyramid, moved into the stairwell, and waited for Henrietta.

She stared at Zeke for a moment and then pulled the collar of her shirt up over her nose and mouth and stepped into place. “Watch yourself, Ezekiel Johnson,” she said quietly.

Zeke smiled. “I’m pretty sure you’ll do that for me.”

Henry tried not to kick up as much dust, but it was hopeless. He couldn’t move at all without ashen clouds swirling up around his legs. He felt bad for Henrietta and worse for Zeke and not just because they were breathing dust. Neither of them seemed to have a sense of what they were in for. Yeah, they’d been willing to crawl through the black cupboard, and they’d already been trapped in Nimiane’s crypt, but he should have told them about the fingerlings. He should have realized that they would still be following, that he was no better than a fish on a line. He had gray strands trailing him, blood in him that they could sense.

Suddenly, relief surged over him, relief that they hadn’t stayed in Kansas longer. If Coradin had come through the crypt cupboard, that meant that he’d found Henry’s Kansas door in the cistern in Hylfing and gone into the attic. If Henry had stayed in Zeke’s house, Coradin would have come to him there. He sneezed. How far could they track him? Through worlds? Could they find him in
Boston? How many cupboards would he have to jump to throw Coradin and the other eight off his scent? Or could he ever shake them?

Had they climbed another four stories? Five?

A window loomed in the wall beside Henry. A window filled with smooth stone, but still a window. Were they close? Another one. Henry slowed and pushed on it, but it was as firm as the wall itself.

“Are these windows?” Henrietta asked behind him.

“Yeah,” Henry said. “I think we’re close.”

Henry dragged his fingers across three more as the stairs twisted on, and then he stopped. His hand was on a fourth, and the stone was cracked. Even better, dust was moving slowly down the stairs toward him. The air was moving. It didn’t smell fresh—at least not Kansas fresh—but there probably wasn’t such a thing in this place.

“What is it?” Zeke asked.

“The air’s moving.”

“Well, hurry up,” Henrietta said. “I’d like to breathe again.”

Henry forgot his rubber legs and hurried forward. Another window, and around the next twist … he was pushing through rubble and found himself standing on a stone octagon, a small platform. But this time, they stood beneath a night sky. There were no stars, and only the faintest hint of moonlight managed to filter through a blanket of clouds. Cool air drifted freely around them, and on every side, the walls were gapped or missing entirely. Rotten beams from what had once been a ceiling sprawled across
the floor. Beneath them, bent and angled, there lay a huge bell, tarnished and green.

Henrietta and Zeke squeezed up beside Henry and stood silently surveying the situation with flashlights.

“Um,” Henrietta said. “Henry, are we in a bell tower?” She climbed over a beam, walked to the edge of the platform, and looked down. She sighed and turned her flashlight on Henry’s face. “We’re higher than I’ve ever been before.” She swung her flashlight around, and its light caught the spires of neighboring towers and the distant teeth of rooflines.

Henry followed her to the edge, leaned over the low rubble, and pointed his flashlight down the side of the black tower. It fell away smoothly, spotted only with dust and windows, until its rounded surface seamed into the wall of a bigger building and eventually, at the very bottom, reached a pale street. The thin gray street ran on a little ways and then emptied into a city circle, just visible from their perch. The buildings around them were a few stories shorter, and the flashlights brushed over silent windows and gaping doors.

Henry sat on a beam and put his head in his hands. “Turn it off,” he said, and flipped the switch on his own flashlight. “Anyone watching will know we’re here.”

Henrietta and Zeke both killed their lights. Henrietta turned. Henry could barely make out her shape. Or he thought he could. “Well,” she said. “On the bright side, we are definitely aboveground. And we don’t have to climb
any more stairs. For some reason, I thought we’d have some daylight. I’m kind of glad we’re not down in those streets right now. Ouch.” Henry heard rocks crack together, and then she sat beside him. “Now give me a piece of jerky.”

Henry set the pyramid on the beam beside him and unzipped his backpack. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This really isn’t good.” He handed Henrietta the jerky.

“Jerky doesn’t go bad,” she said, and he heard her rip it with her teeth.

“No.” He smiled despite himself. “I’m sure the jerky’s fine. Everyone here seems to like it.”

“I think this is as good a place as any,” Zeke said from the dark. “It’s not exactly expected. We could stick here until daylight and then look for your dad.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Henry said. “We can’t stop. We can’t stick. Not until we’re ready to fight. Coradin can find me anywhere. And there’s eight others who can, too.”

“How?” Henrietta asked.

“The witch’s blood,” Henry said. He tapped his jaw. “It’s in me. I shouldn’t have brought you here, but I didn’t want to come alone. I’m sorry.”

Zeke and Henrietta were both silent.

“Okay,” Henrietta said. “I need to know. What
is
a fingerling?”

Henry massaged his cheekbones. He was such an idiot. What had he been planning to do? How would he possibly find his father in an enormous, pitch-black city? It had
seemed so easy, like it would all just fall into place. He pulled the necklace out of his shirt and gripped it tight. Now he was sitting at the top of a tower, waiting. Coradin was on the stairs somewhere, climbing. The only question was how far he had come already.

Henry cleared his throat, and as quickly and as painlessly as he could, he described his dream of the men in the garden and the gray strands he could see growing from the fingerlings’ heads

“That’s pretty sick,” Henrietta said. “Are they wizards?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said. “Could be, but their power seems more like hers. I want you both to go.”

“Where?” Zeke asked.

Henrietta laughed. “Henry, I am not walking back down those stairs. My legs are fried, and some guy with notches in his ear and a finger on his head is coming up the other way.”

Henry dug through his backpack until he found his own kitchen knife, borrowed from Mrs. Johnson. He’d thrown Henrietta’s. Holding the knife, he stood up.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Zeke said.

Henry flicked on his flashlight. Henrietta and Zeke both blinked. He pointed his light down, down on the little pyramid, then he bent over and flipped open the triangle door. “You’re going back to Kansas,” he said.

Zeke stood up. “Not a chance, Henry.”

Henrietta laughed. “Now who’s the boss?”

Henry ignored her. “Listen,” he said. “The witch only cares about me. If you leave, you’ll be fine.”

“Or,” Henrietta said, “we could throw you off the tower. Then we’d be fine, too. Right?”

Zeke crossed his arms. “We’re not going anywhere.” He looked at Henrietta. “At least I’m not.”

“We’re not,” Henrietta said.

Henry pointed his light down the stairwell. “This was a horrible idea.”

“There weren’t any better ones,” Zeke said. “You need to find your father.”

Henrietta hugged herself and shivered. “Now what? Wait?”

Henry pulled his wadded-up cloak off his backpack and tossed it to his cousin. “I don’t think we should wait. I think we should go down. Maybe he was slow getting out of the crypt.”

“Maybe we got lucky and Nia ate him,” Henrietta said. “Is this a baseball in your pocket?”

Henry looked back at his cousin. She held the ball up in the light.

“Why do you have a baseball in your pocket? That’s not your handwriting. Henry York Maccabee.” She grinned at Henry. “Richard wrote your name on the ball?”

Henry nodded and reached out for it. “I took it with me for luck when I went out with Fat Frank before … well, before everything.” Henrietta handed it to him; he gripped the leather and the strings and tucked it into his sweatshirt pouch.

“I’m sure Richard would love to be here right now,” Henrietta said. “He’s worse than the raggant.”

“Henry,” Zeke said, stepping closer to the stair mouth. “Listen.”

Henry clicked off his light, and the three of them held as still as the stone. A dry breeze shifted the ash and dust around their feet. Night, black and heavy, swallowed them.

Drifting out of the stairwell came the sound of shuffling feet. Henry’s ears strained, and he swallowed hard. Now was the time. Coradin would die here on top of a ruined bell tower. He would have to. Henry didn’t want to think about the other option. He blinked. Something about the sound was strange. There were more than two feet.

“Is that an echo?” Henrietta whispered. “Please tell me that’s an echo.”

The shuffling grew louder. Feet tromping in and out of sync. Lots of feet. Henry’s heart sank. His skin went clammy.

“That’s not an echo,” Zeke said.

Voices rose out of the stairs.

Anastasia
looked back over her shoulder at the city. The pale walls and spires were glowing in the moonlight. Two galleys stood out in the silvered water of the harbor.

They were going to see someone the pirate faeries called the Chestnut King. That much she understood. But whether he was a real king or not, she hadn’t expected this. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but definitely not a long walk into the hills.

The faeries had invisibly led them through the streets, through the square, and out the rear gate. She’d been surprised to see red-shirted soldiers still in the square and around the hall. She’d been surprised to see a three-bodied serpent still flapping over the city.

The climb into the hills had been long, up cattle trails, through tall grass, and over boulders. Her shoes, more useful as slippers than for what they were doing now, had already torn scrambling over rock.

Una held her hand. Fat Frank walked easily in front of them, unaffected by the climb. Richard was wheezing behind. She wondered if he had asthma. The other faeries seemed to be all around them, appearing and disappearing
into shadow. Occasionally, disembodied voices called out to each other, or strange whistles—soft and almost impossible to hear, or sharp and strong—echoed in the rocks.

“I thought the soldiers and the ships left,” Anastasia said. “Why are they still in the harbor?”

Fat Frank jumped onto a rock, and his round features were sharpened with moon shadow. He looked like a badly carved statue, maybe of a young troll. “The big galley left,” he said. “The others are only wishing that they had.”

“Why’s that?” Una asked.

“Because,” Frank said, jumping down, “Mordecai’s still loose, and that’s his town they’re in, and that’s his house they’ve burned, and that’s his family what’s missing. The red-shirts down there are in for it, and they know as much, too. Three heads or no, that snake’s coiled in an eagle’s nest.”

Jacques appeared out of the shadows beside Anastasia. “Mordecai,” he said, and his mustache grinned. “Again this Mordecai. Not all peoples fear the green men like the low faeren. The greens do little but tell tales of themselves and grow in legend.”

“Low?” Frank asked. “The queene’s faeren are low, are they? And Mordecai’s a liar?” He snorted. “Who put Nimiane in her bed, then? Did the ‘high’ faeren?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jacques said. “Not having been there. Were you, Fat Franklin? Did you stand and watch or were you shrouded deep within your mound, guarding the grubs with the other brown ants?”

“Maybe I was,” Frank said. “And maybe I wasn’t. Where
was the king? In his gardens, growing chestnuts? He’s shown no face or fight in my lifetime, nor my father’s. Where were you, Jacques One-Eye, when Endor spread its fingers through the earth, graying the green things?”

Frank stopped and shifted his belt beneath his belly. Jacques faced him, smiling, pulling his mustache.

“Men make their own troubles,” Jacques said. “Let them bury their own nightmare dead. Faeren should keep to the Second World and wash their hands of green men.”

“What’s the Second World?” Anastasia asked.

Jacques winked at her. “Does faerie blood tickle your veins? Have you walked the ancient mounds? We faeren have our secrets.”

“Mr. One-Eye,” Richard said between breaths. “Does your king not stand against the villainy of Endor?”

Jacques grinned, and he scrambled up the path in front of them to the top of a small rise. “My king,” he said, raising his arms, “stands against the villainies of the villainous. He stands against big-booted empires and egg-sucking snakes and over-preening queens and groveling faeren and trouble-picking green men and dead-living witches and walled cities and rules by the ruled and foxes in cages and duties and obligatings.” He took a deep breath and held up a thick finger. “He stands for all laughter, aged honey, naps in the sun, and high-sky winds. He stands for troubling the troublers and freeing the foxes and liberating treasures and eating grapes. He stands for doing as he pleases and keeping to hisself. And chestnuts. He stands for chestnuts.”

Fat Frank snorted and shook his head. Jacques laughed
and disappeared into shadow. Anastasia looked at Una and then back at Richard. The four seemed to be suddenly walking alone, climbing higher and higher into the hills as the moon dropped slowly.