The Water and the Wild (33 page)

Once Lottie grew brave enough to pull her face out of the Barghest's thick mane, she saw that they were no longer traveling through the forest but across a field. Blank sky stretched across the horizon, and beneath it cut the stone walls of the Southerly Court. Even though there were no longer branches and brambles to avoid, the Barghest still swerved erratically, forcing Lottie to reclutch a fistful of fur at every bump and jostle. She could not understand its unsteady canter at first. Then her eyes adjusted to the morning sun, and Lottie saw that hundreds upon hundreds of jaggedly hewn tree stumps surrounded them, pocking the green grass all the way up to the Southerly Court walls.

“What happened here?” she called to the Barghest, just as it took a great leap over one of the trunks, forcing Lottie to clench her ankles into its belly.

“The Plague,” rasped the Barghest. “This was once the apple orchard of the sprite kings. Sprites and humans could come and go between worlds freely here. No more. The Plague poisoned them.”

“But they're not all stumps. Look!” Lottie nodded to a lone tree amongst the nearby stumps, then to another, farther out. They looked sickly. “What about those?”

“There were survivors,” the Barghest snarled as it ran. “There always are.”

“I'm glad,” Lottie said.

“You should not be,” said the Barghest, crouching to take a new bound. “It is the survivors whose lot is longest and hardest.”

The Barghest bounded on, faster than before, and Lottie struggled to keep her watering eyes open against the wind. She could see, as they came closer to the walls, a break in the white stone. A great silver gate stood ahead, open and crowded with the figures of sprites bustling in and out of its hold.

“Are we going through there?” Lottie called over the wild wind.

The Barghest shook its head and veered instead to the left.

“The Southerly Guard will not let a Barghest through the court gates,” it called back. “We will go the way other beasts do.”

Lottie began to notice a thick, squelching sound as the Barghest ran on. She looked down to find that they were crossing over a watery expanse of mud. The water grew murkier and deeper, too, until it was lapping against Lottie's ankles. Suddenly, the Barghest gave a great leap, and a warm spray of mud splashed into Lottie's face.

The Barghest had come to a stop. Lottie wiped the mud from her face and blinked upward. The Southerly walls were towering just above them, larger and more imposing than ever. The walls, Lottie saw now, were built upon a hill, and she and the Barghest stood at its base. This particular side of the hill was covered in slick muck that seemed to have originated from a wide grate above, built into the face of the wall.

Lottie slipped from the Barghest's back and set her feet down into mushy ground.

“Are we going through there?” she guessed, pointing to the grate.

The Barghest only bounded ahead, finding foothold after foothold on his ascent up the slippery slope. Lottie had a harder time of it and ended up getting her tweed coat muddied to within an inch of its periwinkleness. At last,
she squelched to a stop next to the Barghest, inches from the grate. The wall was less than pristine white here, and an unbearable stench surrounded them. The smell reminded Lottie of the time that the house on Thirsby Square had reeked for a full week after Mollie Browne's eviction and before Mrs. Yates had discovered a rotten hard-boiled egg that Mollie had wedged between the sofa cushions as a farewell present.

The grate looked larger than it had looked from the bottom of the hill. Both Lottie and the Barghest could fit through its rusting bars with a little maneuvering. Lottie hoped that she had not upset the Barghest when she had given it a helpful push from behind; it struck her as a very proud creature.

Once they had passed through the thick bars, they sloshed into a dank, dark pool of water that came up to Lottie's shins. Though they were now within the city walls and though the sun was shining down brightly on them, neither of those advantages improved upon the foul smell.

“Is it really that easy to slip into the Southerly Court?” Lottie panted.

“No,” replied the Barghest. “We're not in the Southerly Court yet, only Southerly City.”

They waded out of the muck and up a silty incline. Lottie just managed to keep down a shriek as something slithered across her green-sneakered foot. But her sneakers reminded her of Eliot, and Lottie felt a new determination as she pulled herself up out of the sewer ditch and onto street level.

All this time, Lottie had been spending every scrap of her energy on trying to get within these walls. She hadn't ever stopped for a moment to consider what the city might actually
look
like. Had she imagined something, though, it wouldn't have been a thing like the scenes that now so solidly smacked her senses. The streets were cobblestone, as they had been in New Albion, but they were narrower here, and rougher, too. Each side of each street was nothing but floor topping floor topping floor of fogged-up windowpanes, short doors, and swinging signs. A spiced, woodsy smell shot through the alleyways and mixed with occasional spurts of smoke from underground grates that Lottie and the Barghest passed in the push and pull of the crowd.

Hoarse vendor calls of “Fresh hummingbeak juice!” and “Boysenberries!” and “Hot flower-bulb soup!” carried through the muggy air. Sprites bustled so thickly around her that Lottie had to grip the Barghest's fur with all of the strength she had left just to stay upright. At least, she thought, she was so squished out of sight that no one would think her and her muddy tweed coat out of the ordinary.

In fact, blending into this crowd would not have been a hard thing to do. Everyone here looked different. Some of the passersby were ridiculously tall, others no higher than Lottie's shoulder. Some had blazing shocks of red hair, others startling mohawks, others unkempt braids. Some were dressed in formal business attire, others in tights and miniskirts, still others in loud plaid prints. All of them were in a hurry, and their frantic energy leaked into Lottie's breath and sped up her heart. When Lottie saw the next deserted alleyway, she pulled the Barghest back by the fur and reeled into it.

“Wait,” she gasped. “Now what do we do? Do you know where we're going? How do you know where Mr. Wilfer is?”

The Barghest was whining softly, and Lottie realized that she had accidentally managed to pull out a good clump of fur from its mane.

“Oops.” Lottie cringed. “Sorry.”

“I do not know where your friends are,” the Barghest said, “but I do know the way to the Southerly Court Palace. It is to that place that I am taking you.”

“To the Southerly King,” said Lottie, nodding. “And the dungeons, where Mr. Wilfer's being held—they're nearby?”

“They lie underneath the palace.”

“All right,” said Lottie. “Then take me there.”

“Do you know what you are going to do once you arrive?”

Despite herself, Lottie found herself laughing. “I haven't got a clue.”

“Very well,” said the Barghest, who was not affected by this answer one way or the other. “I will lead you to the palace. If I'm not mistaken, this will be the time of day that the king is holding court.”

As they pressed on, the crowd grew thicker, the shouts of the vendors faded away, and Lottie had to shove harder
against unmoving bodies. Then the talking around her gave way to murmuring, and the murmuring to whispers, until suddenly a complete and eerie silence enveloped Lottie, and all that she could make out were the angry grunts of the people she was pushing past, and then there were no more people to push past at all. Then Lottie just managed to catch herself from tumbling over a thick red rope that separated the silent crowd from a long flight of wide, marble steps. At the top of the steps were ten majestic columns, curled into contortions that Lottie had never seen back in her world, and higher still towered a sunstruck, silver dome. There could be no mistaking it: this had to be the Southerly Court.

The palace steps were lined on both edges by deep stone trenches, and from those trenches shot fountains of water. A landing cut across the very middle of the steps, and from it rose a towering stone figure fashioned in the form of a winged, regal sprite. He held a scepter in one hand, and the inscription at his feet read
KING OBERON I
. Positioned just in front of the statue was a throne with legs made of silver, spun like holly and sprigged by ruby berries. On the throne sat a sprite that could be none other than the Southerly King himself.

All this time, Lottie had expected the Southerly King to be gray-haired and wizened by years of rule. But the king's face was young and smooth. Though not one wrinkle creased his features, dimples cut into his cheeks in what looked like a perpetual, languid smile. His eyes were thickly lashed and a warm brown, like cocoa. Around his flawless face hung long locks of blond hair that Pen Bloomfield's minions would have killed to possess. This king did not look harsh at all. He also did not look a day past twenty-two.

Then the king raised his hand.

Lottie gasped. His fingers were shriveled and thin, browned with sunspots and bulging with veins; they shook as the king held them aloft. They were the fingers of an inconceivably old man. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong with the king.

On the palace steps, a row of red-cloaked sprites surrounded the king. Each guard held a large, wooden mace, except for the two who were currently dragging a limp figure before the throne. The Southerly King had raised his pruny hand, Lottie now saw, because he was speaking into the eerie silence around her. He was giving some sort of order.

“. . . to be hanged by the feet until unconscious, then dipped into the sulfur baths, drawn, and quartered.”

Lottie stiffened. This wasn't just an order. This was a sentence. A death sentence.

The king lowered his hand, and the two red-cloaked guards who held the limp figure bowed their heads at the king's words. The guards turned around, and Lottie's gasp was drowned in a sudden roar of cheering and applause from the crowd.

The sentenced prisoner in the guards' arms was a boy not much older than Lottie herself. He did not scream any protestations or wriggle about. His limbs and mouth seemed to have all gone slack. The only sign that he was conscious at all was a look of absolute horror burning in his eyes—eyes set in a perfectly expressionless face.

“Wait,” the king shouted over the roar of the crowd. “Aren't we forgetting something?”

The guards halted. One of them stooped to take something out of the boy's pocket. He handed the object to another guard, who approached the king's throne, knelt, and passed something small and fluttering into the king's hand. It was the boy's genga. The swallow's frantic chirruping bounced off the palace columns until, abruptly, there was a
crunch
. The chirruping stopped. The king opened his
fist, and a brown lump fell from his hand back into the cupped palms of the guard.

“Carry on,” said the Southerly King.

Again, the guards began to pull the paralyzed boy away.

“Oh!” cried the king. “Did I say quartered? I meant
fifthed
.”

The crowd erupted into another deafening roar of approval. Lottie felt the Barghest shudder against her leg.

“Fifthed!” chanted a group of boys next to Lottie who looked uncomfortably like the boy who had just been sentenced to death. “Fifthed! Fifthed!
Fifthed
!”

From his throne, the Southerly King daintily crossed his ankles and produced a dazzling smile worthy of an orthodontic ad. Lottie could see, though, that the king's old hand was impatiently tapping against his armrest, one emaciated finger at a time. After minutes of undiminished cheering from the crowd, the king raised the ugly hand, and silence descended once more.

“Truth be told, my faithful Southerlies,” the king announced in his songbird of a voice, “I've grown bored with the petty cases of this month. It's high time for a trial of real import, wouldn't you agree?”

The crowd gave its roaring affirmation.

“Then let this serve as an invitation,” the king said, “to a case of particular public fascination: the sentencing of one Moritasgus Wilfer, former Head Healer and now confirmed traitor to the Southerly Court!”

A mixed eruption of boos and cheers.

“I have more to tell!” the king shouted over the din. “Just this morning, there has been a thrilling development in the case. The fugitives of the Wilfer household, who had heretofore evaded capture, have at last been apprehended. They, too, will stand trial before the throne to receive their sentences.”

Lottie felt as though her stomach was melting into wax. They had been caught. Oliver, Adelaide, and Fife could not have made it more than a few feet within the city walls before they had been arrested by the Southerly Guard. The king was not going to hear their petition or make any trade after all; he was going to
sentence
them.

“The trial shall be held tomorrow, on these very steps, at noon sharp. I would suggest an early arrival for all of those hungry to see justice exacted upon a foul and seditious wretch.”

The crowd burst into a brain-rattling roar of excitement. Then the noise fell off into conversation, murmuring,
laughing, and whistling as the sprites dispersed to their daily routines. The Southerly King's announcement was over. He himself had disappeared from view, and his guards were toting his throne up the steps and into the safety of the palace through its great marble doors.

“Ow!” Lottie swatted at something that had hit her right at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes refocused on the offending object, which was still fluttering in front of her.

It was a finch. A white finch.

“Oliver!” The name passed Lottie's lips as a reflex.

Dizzying joy and relief swelled in Lottie at the sight of Oliver's genga, Keats. This had to mean something good, didn't it? It must mean that Oliver was somehow all right.