Clair and Faline reappeared, and from the looks on their faces, everything was fine.
Of course it would be fine. I think we all expected that, but Faline just had to find a way herself.
For a time everyone was silent, as we loaded our plates and chomped away. Then Clair said, “Go on, Puddlenose. Tell them the rest of what you told me.” She said ‘them’ but her glance went from Puddlenose to Seshe.
Puddlenose hastily swallowed down the huge bite of buttered muffin he’d chomped into, then he sat back. “Since I hadn’t been around for a while, I decided to do some nosing. Glad I did. I was comin’ down from the north anyway so I stopped by the Auknuges. On the road I’d heard a lot of rumors about how they were losing trade, and raising their taxes and tolls. But you heard that part, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Irene said. “Did people say anything about us?” She held the back of her hand to her forehead.
“Yes!” Puddlenose grinned. “Sounds like you girls have been giving PJ and his mother all kinds of trouble. Kwenz, too, when he pokes around. He thinks someone’s given you black magic lessons.” He said this to Clair.
“No, but CJ’s ring has a spell on it that I found recently. Warns her against wards and traps in the Shadowland. We can’t do anything about them, but we can avoid them.”
“But that doesn’t explain your shape-changing.”
A few people looked Faline’s way. She went red again, but didn’t grin, so no one said anything.
“We all have talents,” Seshe said. “And we combine and use them.”
Puddlenose nodded. “Well, you’ve done a good job. Maybe too good. Kwenz hates his brother. They all hate each other! Or did. There’s only the two of ’em left alive, far as I know. Uncle Doumei is safely dead now.”
Clair winced.
Puddlenose went on cheerily, “But Kwenz has got something goin’ on in there, that’s for sure. What I overhead was what he told Jon — PJ. Love that name!” He paused to laugh. “PJ! Prunes. Perfect! Anyway, Kwenz was hinting around about allies, and plans, and he did say he was looking to the south. But then someone saw me. Seem not to have believed my hasty disguise!”
Everyone laughed.
“So I skipped out, Auknuge fumblers on my trail, but I guess Kwenz whistled up some of his boys and just about when I thought I’d escaped ’em, I nearly ran smack into those Night-eyes, a-ridin’ lookin’ for me. Then you came along. Glad I was, too. Thanks for the rescue.”
The girls muttered, and Irene preened.
Puddlenose turned to Clair. “You want me to go poking around in the Shadow?”
Clair hesitated, then shook her head. “No. Kwenz might have traps set just for you, at his brother’s behest. Unless they have given up that terrible plan?”
Puddlenose shook his head. He was still grinning, but the corners of his mouth turned down. “Oh, no, he’s just as determined to get hold of me. It’s not me, you understand. He just hates being thwarted.”
Clair rubbed her thumb over her lips. “I guess I need to try the provinces once again.”
Puddlenose made a face, making me suspect Clair wasn’t in any danger of losing her throne to her cousin. Seshe winced.
The others did not react at all. I suspected they either did not know, or had forgotten, that Clair had mostly been ignored by the provincial governors — all except the gentle old man in mountainous Seram Aru.
Clair went right on. “So are you going to stay home now?”
Puddlenose shook his head. “Not with Kwenz after me. I don’t know what he’d get if he handed my worthless carcass over to Shnit, and I would as soon not find out.”
Dhana’s lips moved, and though I would swear no one heard, Puddlenose grinned at her. “If it’s got worth to Shnit, then it’s worthless,” he stated.
Dhana returned his grin, then said, surprising me, “If you stay, we’ll find room.”
Puddlenose flushed. “If that isn’t a mighty fine invite, then I don’t know what is. Tell you the truth, I never stay anywhere very long. But it would be good to know I have a place when I come back.”
Seshe rose. “Then let us let you finish your visit.”
Oh, yeah! Leave Clair with her cousin! The idea hadn’t occurred to anyone else. We all left, Faline whispering behind her hand to Sherry, “Is he leaving right today? What’s the rush? She could hide him from Kwenz’s knucklebrains easy.”
No one answered.
But we weren’t surprised when Clair joined us for dinner, saying only, “Puddlenose left. He wants to get a certain distance before the coming storm.”
We made no comment about that. Instead Faline rubbed her hands together. “Prunebald! Can’t have the Chwahir thinking up better insults than Us.”
“No!” Sherry shook her head, earnest as always.
Irene suggested we do a trial performance of the play they were putting together, one about PJ meeting a goat at a bridge that refuses to bow to him, then tries to eat the tassels on his jacket, so he challenges it to a duel. A play that promised to make Clair laugh.
Faline declared she had to play the goat.
EIGHTEEN — Changes
It made perfect sense to us that Puddlenose, with a cousin who commanded a giant castle whose rooms we never did manage to count, would want a place in the Junky. The white castle, pretty as it was, however much it symbolized, was not a part of us so much as part of the kingdom — and the fact that Puddlenose had seen our underground hideout, instantly admired it, and longed for a spot of his own there too suggested like nothing else could that he was one of us, if only a boy.
But the Junky really was small.
Too small — that I’d realized when silly quarrels broke out, the more frequently after the snows came, and the first delight changed to days and days of frigid weather and no wish at all to be outside. We did go up to the castle to run around and visit Clair, but it seemed cold up there, though magic somehow kept the weather out; the whiteness of the walls blending into the whiteness of the mountain, the sky, and the treetops, made it seem we lived in a palace of ice.
So one morning, when I said, “Why don’t we expand?” the only one who looked surprised at the idea was Sherry.
“We need a guest room or two,” Seshe said.
Clair had been wandering again, her way of dealing with winter and no news of her absent cousin and the on-going problems with the kingdom. We’d had a couple of girl visitors that she’d found; after one of Clair’s disappearances, Gwen joined us — another from Earth, only she was from Australia. She was short, with short, wispy blond hair and wide-set light-colored eyes that turned down at the corners, an ordinary girl except for an extraordinary gift at mimicking voices. She copied PJ’s voice exactly on one of our forays. That is, we were chasing PJ & Pals after their invasion of our forest on a fine wintry day. I guess they thought we girls would melt in snow and came to see how far they’d get — at any rate, I laid on a bunch of illusions, this time of Chwahir chasing them. While I was busy with my spells (one to each fake warrior) she kept popping in and out of bushes, using PJ’s voice, and I was laughing so hard I kept messing up the spells.
After that she had to stay — and having no family at all, she accepted gladly. There were now eight of us downstairs, nine if Clair stayed, ten if Puddlenose did return for a visit. We needed more space.
The discussion was typical: Irene began with, “We can have an underground palace!”
“And who to do the work?” Dhana snapped back.
“We will,” Irene said, surprised. “With magic help, of course.”
“I don’t see any greatness in a whole lot of holes underground,” Faline said doubtfully.
“We’ll fix ’em up, of course,” Irene declared. “A palace, after all, is not just a bunch of rooms. It has to be grand.”
“And where do we get grand stuff?” Dhana scoffed.
“From the Auknuges,” Irene said, crossing her arms. “After all, they stole that whole city, and everything in i
t, from Clair’s family.”
“She’s right,” Diana murmured, flashing her brief grin. “Get what we need from them. Just like the trade thing.”
Seshe nodded slowly. “We must be sure to let them know, then, or we’re ordinary thieves.”
“Oh, not ordinary,” Gwen said. And she added in Fobo’s lisping moo, “Or even common.”
Faline rolled over backwards, sputtering with snickers.
“But not a palace,” Sherry said. “I don’t want to get lost underground.” Her great blue eyes were earnest.
I said, “What I’ve been thinking ...”
All eyes turned my way.
I went on, “This being underground, we can go further down, but also out. And what I figure is this, everyone can have at least one room — one for sleeping and keeping her things, and one for extra things, that can also be a guest room, if we have people over.”
Diana grinned. “My collection!” She’d kept up her habit of taking trophies every time we tangled with the Auknuges, or Chwahir, and won. She already had three of PJ’s ornamental swords, and various Chwahir weapons, but not just weapons — she had one of Fobo’s fanciest crowns, another of her gold-and-crystal perfume bottles, and various other items.
Irene cast a challenging glance over her shoulder at Dhana. “And my collection.” Costumes, of course, including the stuff she’d swiped from Fobo, as well as her wardrobe of pretty dresses.
“I’ll have a sewing room,” Sherry said happily.
“Me, I figured on having a library,” I said — and then thinking that sounded mighty pompous, “Well, maybe a bookshelf. In my own room. Magic books, and my records, since I seem to be piling ’em up.”
The girls grinned. They all loved the idea of my writing up our adventures, and sometimes I even read them aloud, with plenty of insult added against the villains, even if it wasn’t all on the page. The girls knew what was going to happen, of course, but most of them loved hearing their names read out loud. Sometimes we acted out the adventures, trading off being PJ and Fobo, outdoing one another in ridiculousness.
“If we go downward,” Dhana said, “then I want the lowest room, because there’s a stream below us.”
No one asked how she knew.
“We’ll have the lower rooms reachable by rope,” Diana said.
Everyone loved this idea — at first. (Later, after we’d done it, and everyone had to climb up and down a rope a few times, we added tunnels to and from the rooms, so we had two entrances — a fast one and an easy one.)
“Booby traps?” Faline asked, rubbing her hands. “Fake tunnels and stuff?”
“Not down here,” Seshe said, frowning a little. “After all, if villains find the hideout, we’re already in trouble. But outside the entrances, I think it a very good idea.”
“Let’s go tell Clair!” Sherry said, leaping to her feet.
Of course Clair liked the idea. It was a perfect winter project, and so we began right away — one group being decoys, and starting chases and the like in the Auknuge palace, which had become our favorite raiding ground. The second group was for digging and design, and the third for stealing — that is, taking back what was ours. The groups switched around every day, unless everyone felt they needed a day or two for plans.
About four raids in, I got the great idea of leaving letters for PJ, detailing what we’d taken — and why. After that nasty trick against Clair, I made sure that every encounter we had, in person or on paper, I got the words “pretender” “usurper” and “imposter” in. Judging from the squalls and cussing and threats, he hated being called an imposter just as much as I did.
We didn’t want Kwenz finding out, either. We didn’t try any raids against the Chwahir, just decoying the occasional roaming spies.
Just before the first thaw of spring, we did have to make a raid on the Shadow Castle, as a result of Sherry getting pinched.
Poor Sherry! She’d gone to the Auknuge castle to search for pretty fabric for curtains, when she couldn’t help poking her nose in on PJ, who was entertaining some of his stupid friends in one of the overheated rooms.
It was the sight of PJ posing with a goblet of wine in his hand that stopped her. Sherry watched, wondering if he’d actually drink any, the way he kept posing and waving it about while going on about “Wine is a man’s drink. Good wine is only something an aristocrat understands. Mumsie’s palate is so delicate, she says that the mere scent of common wine, and she feels faint ...” And more like that, his pals nodding and agreeing (and the biggest one slurping up wine by the bucketload).
She stood there waiting to see PJ drink it. Finally a toady proposed a toast to Fobo and her elegant tastes, and as they all faced PJ. He finally sipped.
Now, Sherry had some sympathy with people not liking wine — she hated the stuff the only time she tried it — but with PJ going on so long about it, but not actually drinking, she had her suspicions.
He finally took a sip, shuddered just slightly, and demanded that one of the toadies pass the bottle around. While everyone was looking at the toady, he tossed his wine into a potted frond!
And Sherry snickered.
PJ whipped around, screaming for his guards while his free hand fumbled in a pocket of his brocade and diamond-encrusted coat.
Sherry said, “Your plants are aristocrats too?”
One of the girls giggled, then stopped herself quick. She looked away, her jaw tight, and several of the others were so wooden-faced it was obvious they were trying not to laugh.
PJ shouted a lot of stupid cuss words and threw something at Sherry, which she caught rather than let hit her. A magical transfer token, it turned out — which unfortunately sent her straight to Kwenz.
By now Clair had perfected a spell that she put on our necklaces so if we ended up in trouble and needed her, we just touched them, said a couple of words, and Clair’s necklace reacted with a magic alarm (which is kind of like a bell tinkling inside your head).
We’d agreed that we’d only use the words if it meant Kwenz and the Shadowland — we could always get away from the Auknuges. (Their guards, hampered by the stupid uniforms Fobo made them wear, never tried very hard to catch any of us.)
Clair came down to the Junky. “We need to go rescue Sherry,” she said. “But at the same time, I would like everyone to spy around, even if it means getting caught.”
“What are we looking for?” Diana asked, fingering one of the knives she’d taken from the Chwahir, which she now wore when she patrolled.
“I wish I knew. Kwenz has been up to something, that much I am sure of. He seems to be ignoring the Auknuges unless they call for him.”
I nodded. Traders on the cloud city had been repeating gossip from their friends below about that. At first we’d thought it a good thing, but the longer time went on, the scarier it seemed. Kwenz, after all, had to be doing something if he wasn’t trying to get some alliance going with Fobo in order to squish us between threats west and east. Something mean, that is. None of us believed he spent his days tending a garden or reading up on old letters.
“I’m going in, too.” She began braiding her long white hair. “Diana, I want you to show me how you got up the tower to his magic chamber that time.”
“Creepers outside on the wall,” Diana murmured. “Test each.”
Clair nodded. “The air is getting warmer, so maybe he has the window open again. Since there isn’t any weather in the Shadowland.”
That led to our sneaking into the Shadowland that evening, after we’d eaten a hearty dinner and drunk plenty of hot chocolate to fortify our nerve. Before long Clair was perched outside on the tower wall, which, she discovered, was cold and slimy with moss — the stone probably hadn’t dried all winter, just froze — listening at the imperfectly fitted casement in the tower window.
She could hear Kwenz’s cracked voice inside, and she knew he was talking to someone. Or rather — judging from his tone — lecturing someone, but she didn’t know who. Her fingers and toe
s slowly numbed from a combination of cold and the tightness with which she clung to the dark, rangy creepers that grew thickly along the stone, seeking some semblance of light. Clair pressed her cheek against the sour-smelling leaves, determined not to look down; when Kwenz said something about “Wesset North” followed by abrupt silence, she eased her moc lower, lower, toes stretching in the air as her hands trembled with tight grip on the creeper vines, seeking a toehold, ah! Test: sturdy. And so on, toes, hand, toes, hand, she crept down the tower again, silent, scared, relieved when at last she felt stone beneath her feet.
Then she looked around. The cloud overhead seemed to press down, and she frowned at it. She had not put it there, and on the one hand, it seemed right and just for Kwenz to have that cloudtop overhead, especially as his ancestors couldn’t leave the Mearsieans alone, but on the other hand — what about the ordinary people? Did they deserve to live in that awful shadow and never get to see sunlight?
She turned slowly, pulling the hood of her cloak overhead to hide her white hair. Towers, walls, stone, stone, stone. Torchlight throwing shifting reddish light along walkways and up rough walls — there.
A little movement, she turned her head sharply, and Diana emerged from the deep shadow of the lower tower at the next corner, beckoning.
Together they slipped downstairs. By now a few of us knew the halls as well, or better, than the Chwahir. Faline had found Sherry. Those old locks were also no hassle for Diana. The halls were mostly silent as Diana raced along gathering us. There was a heavy sense of magic in the air, pressing down on your brain.
When we were together the night was nearly spent, and everyone was tired. Or it could have been that faint magical nastiness, I don’t know. But as soon as we got out of the heavy wards of the Shadow — and you could feel it, a lot like when you go from inside a cave to outside in the sun and air — Clair got us into a group, all holding hands, and she performed a transfer. Only the short distance to the Junky, but transfers of many felt like we’d gone out of the world. Slam! Most of us fell right onto the carpet, which as least was soft, the air still and warm and smelling of home.