While LongClaw whipped his subordinate for wrinkling the king’s very important documents, Peter and the others crept through the shadows and tried to figure out where exactly they were. The tower before them was by far the tallest structure in the kingdom. An archway at the base revealed the inside to be empty, save a stone stairway that curved around the inside wall. “Those stairs go all the way to the top,” the princess whispered. “But I’ve never seen what’s up there—he keeps this place guarded every hour of every day.”
Presently, dozens of apes were hauling armaments up the tower stairs. “Hurry it up, you louts!” LongClaw shouted at them. “The king wants these weapons in the desert by sundown!”
“It makes no sense,” Peter said. “How can they cross the chasm from all the way up there?”
Sir Tode peered above and gave a report. “It looks like there’s a wooden dock sticking out from the turret. There’s some kind of largish contraption hanging over the edge. I see flames, ropes, and some sort of canvas balloon thing.”
“Of course,” Peter said. “The king has a dirigible!”
“A dirigiwhat?”
“It’s a flying machine,” Peter explained. He had never witnessed such a wonder himself, but he had heard talk of them from sailors who had ridden them at carnivals abroad. “That’s how he reaches the deserts . . . he just flies there.”
Simon squinted up at the barge, trying to make sense of it. “I do not understand this ‘flying machine.’ Where are its wings?”
Peter ignored the question, knowing it was useless to explain (and also being somewhat uncertain himself). “Sir Tode, if those weapons get across, the ravens will be finished. We have to commandeer that vessel. It’s no job for a blind person. Do you think you can pilot it?”
“Me? I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how.”
“That balloon you saw is controlled by a furnace and damper. The hotter the fire, the higher the ship will rise.” Peter hoped he had it straight. “The rest is just like a regular boat with sails and a rudder.” He placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You navigated the Scop all the way here . . . to a vanished island. Sir Tode, I know you can do this.”
There was something in Peter’s voice that filled the knight with a faith that eclipsed fear. “If you trust me that much, I will try to trust myself . . . but I’m taking Simon with me. If that thing pops, I want someone who can fly back to tell my story.”
“I would be honored to fight alongside you,” the raven said.
Peg stood up and took her brother’s hand. “Then it’s time. Peter and I will sneak back to the mines and slime the locks. You and Simon steal that machine, fly across, and fetch the Royal Guard!”
Hearing this summary, Peter realized just how feeble his plan was. His mind flashed through a hundred ways the voyage might go wrong for Sir Tode and Simon. The fire in the furnace could die. The balloon could tear. A storm could blow them off course. Even if they reached the Just Deserts, they would be sailing into the middle of a brutal war. “Sir Tode . . .” Peter started.
The knight silenced him with a tsk and placed a hoof on his arm. “Run along, Your Majesties. You two have a kingdom to save.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE ROOT of the PROBLEM
If Peg and Peter wanted to get the locks greased in time, they knew they would have to reach the slave kitchen before nightfall. The shortest way there was through a hidden passage in the center of the palace. The only problem was that this same route took them right past the Eating Hall . . . and hundreds of watchful citizen eyes. The princess decided they should use the shortcut anyway, hoping that the nightly feast would provide sufficient distraction for her and Peter to sneak by undetected.
As it happened, distractions were unnecessary.
Just as they reached the entrance of the hall, Peter stopped. “No one’s eating,” he said. Peg strained her ears (which were not nearly so extraordinary as her brother’s) and realized that he was right—the glasses were not clinking, the cutlery was not clanking, the people were not chatting. There was just one voice ringing out over the crowd.
“Our waiting has finally come to an end! Soon we rise up in greatness!”
“It’s our uncle,” Peter whispered. “He’s giving another address.”
And indeed, he was. The king was telling the people of his plan to take over the world, though in terms that made him sound more hero than tyrant. “Your Brave Ruler will lead you all to victory! We will vanquish the savage fiends of these foreign lands, helping them to love me as you all do!”
“Hooray for victory!” the people shouted, not really knowing what all those other words meant.
“Keep to the shadows,” Peter said. “If the king is here, his guards must not be too far off.” He could smell nothing, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.
Peg followed her brother, crawling behind a row of potted trees. She peered out over the hall and gasped. “Peter! They’re all carrying weapons.”
“Who?” He rested a hand on his fishhook. “You see apes?”
She shook her head, horrified. “No . . . the parents . . . they’re armed.” In one hand of each man and woman was a long black spear with a pair of twisted, razor-sharp prongs at the tip; in the other was an enormous shield bearing an imprint of the king’s face. Every time the king finished a sentence, the people beat their spears against their shields, stomping and shouting. “This is ridiculous . . . they’ll stick themselves if they’re not careful,” Peg said.
The king’s voice rang over the crowd. “The reason I have called this emergency meeting is to update you on the events from this morning. My soldiers and I captured the evil spies, of course. But we have since learned that many more are plotting to besiege this palace. They look just like humans, but smaller, with skinnier arms and legs.”
“He’s talking about children,” Peter said. “He must be afraid they’ll try to escape.”
“If you see one of these wretched monsters lurking about the palace, kill it without a moment’s delay! It is a spy sent to assassinate your king! Don’t listen to a thing it says—just attack without thinking!”
“No thinking!” the people shouted.
Peter and Peg sat in the shadows, stunned at what they were hearing. “How can they just believe him like that?” she said angrily. Many times since escaping the mines, the princess had wondered whether these lazy, mindless adults even deserved to be rescued—this was one such moment. She reminded herself that underneath each spear-waving maniac was a loving grown-up, just like Lillian. “We have to figure out a way to make them remember who they really are.”
Peter nodded, listening to their cries. “If only we knew how the king was controlling them,” he said.
Their speculation was interrupted by Incarnadine’s voice. “But enough business! We have a great battle ahead of us—and tonight we feast!” He clapped his steel gloves, and giant platters of hot food floated into the hall, releasing delicious, intoxicating smells into the air. Peg watched as Incarnadine took an empty goblet and raised it over his head. “Long live me!”
Every citizen took up a sloshing wineglass and cried “Long live the king!”
As the people drank to their impostor king, the true prince and true princess of HazelPort melted into the shadows and disappeared through a crack in the wall.
“Can’t you fly a bit faster?” Sir Tode said, squirming. “And ease up with that grip, while you’re at it!”
“Would you prefer I drop you?” Simon had Sir Tode by the scruff of his neck and was flapping his wings with considerable effort. The pair had decided the safest way to reach the top of the tower was to fly around the outside, where they could ascend undetected. Sir Tode’s hooves made him significantly heavier than he appeared, and Simon was forced to make the trip in multiple legs, stopping to rest on whatever outcropped stones he could find.
At last they reached the deck, which extended far over the chasm. Simon flung Sir Tode behind a cask of gunpowder a
nd landed beside him. “Of all the indignities,” the knight said, massaging his neck. “Carried about like some kind of bawling infant.”
“You make about as much noise as one,” Simon muttered under his breath. He marveled at how any self-respecting knight could ever behave so fussily. “We are just lucky that the apes were too busy with their work to overhear us.”
“Lucky. Right.” Sir Tode eyed the dozens of guards loading pikes and nets into the flying machine’s basket. The balloon was fully inflated, and the craft appeared ready to fly. Three guards held on to anchor ropes, pulling with all their might to keep it from floating away.
LongClaw paced among them, shouting orders. “Stoke that furnace! Ape the bellows! Get those nets stowed already!”
“Thought we had slaves for this kind of labor,” one ape growled, dumping an armload of shields into the basket.
Another snorted in agreement. “Demeaning! That’s what it is!”
LongClaw cracked his whip. “The king needs all the chiddlers for diggin’! Now, stop your whining or I’ll demean you right off the edge of this deck!”
Sir Tode studied the vessel before them. The flying machine had only two apes aboard, both wearing goggles. The first one was hunched over a great furnace, which fed hot air into the balloon sails; the ape next to him was strapped into some sort of giant bicycle contraption. “I’d bet that’s the steering device,” he said, studying the brass levers. “If we can get up there, I think I can manage it.”
“Excellent.” Simon flexed his talons. “I count two dozen guards. How many do you think you can kill?”
“How many?” Sir Tode swallowed. “I was, er, sort of hoping you could do the fighting bit.”
The raven looked at him, uncertain of whether this was a joke.
“Well, you see . . . I’m afraid I’m not really a big one for bloodshed.”
“What of the dragon clan you slew to win your title?” Simon asked, recalling the rather dramatic tale the knight had shared with them back in the den.
“The thing is, my slaying didn’t transpire quite the way I let on. There was only one dragon, actually, and he sort of . . . well, he did most of the work himself.”
This was true. In fact, Sir Tode had been asleep for the whole thing. Back then, he had been a simple peasant named Sheepherder Tode. One fateful night, a local dragon—which had been terrorizing the region as of late—swooped down on Tode’s unlucky flock, gobbling them up. Like most dragons, the creature had no manners, and taking little time to chew its prey, the monster soon found itself choking to death on a plump ewe. The following morning, when the locals saw the dragon’s dead body and Tode sleeping next to it, they proclaimed him a hero and demanded that he be knighted. From that day forward, Sheepherder Tode was called Sir.
This had, of course, been a great mark of shame for Sir Tode—one he had been too embarrassed to ever share with another living creature. Until now. “I’m no hero,” he said, tears welling in his feline eyes. “I don’t deserve your respect, let alone my title. I’m just a shepherd with a fancy name.”
Simon studied his companion for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice had lost its harshness. “I, too, know what it means to face terror. I watched the enemy kill my brothers and my king. Once Mordecai escaped with the infant prince, I was completely alone.” He paused a moment, unsure of whether he wanted to continue. “You may wonder why it took me so long to work my way underground and free the princess. The reason was simple: I was afraid. I spent years hiding from the apes like a coward. But then one night, from my roost in the rafters, I saw her—my princess—being dragged through the palace halls with the other slaves. It was then that a terrific gust of wind took hold of me and swept me from my perch. In that moment my life of hiding came to an end. Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself flying toward the apes, talons raised for battle.” The old raven shook his head. “There are times when Justice demands from us more than we would give. I have no beak, and yet I must fight.”
Simon looked to the airship and saw that the apes had finished with their loading and were preparing to launch. He extended his wings. “I am afraid we do not have time to discuss whether you feel like a hero—Justice compels us to act!” He took hold of the knight and lifted him into the air.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing?!” the knight sputtered. “They’ll kill us!”
“Not if we kill them first! It’s time you earn your title, Sir Tode!”
As Peter suspected, the walls of the entire palace had been hollowed out to make way for the locking mechanisms. In this darkness, he was the one to lead. “Keep up!” he urged Peg as he slipped between dormant cogs and wheels. “We’ve got to get to the slave kitchen before the magic bell starts up.”
The princess wriggled beneath a giant wooden gear, imagining what it would do to her skull if it suddenly came to life. Preferring not to dwell on such possibilities, she put her energy into trying to follow Peter, who was several lengths ahead of her.
They dropped down from the gears into a narrow waterway. Unlike the sewers, which smelled filthy, this tunnel carried fresh spring water. Floating along the surface was an endless procession of platters, all piled high with steaming food. “The slave children have to prepare every meal,” Peg explained. “They send the platters out to the Eating Hall on these little rivers—that way the grown-ups never have to see who’s serving it. If we follow this water upstream, it should lead us straight to where we need to go.”
As they traveled, Peter told her all about growing up a thief in a small port town. He talked about Mr. Seamus and his vile dog, Killer. He explained how he stole the Haberdasher’s mysterious box and almost drowned with Sir Tode in the Troublesome Lake. He told the story of meeting Good Ol’ Frederick and earning his fishhook.
“If only we had a giant dogfish to help us now,” Peg said. “I bet he could stop those horrid sea serpents.”
“It’s too late for that. Once we crossed into this kingdom, we lost any way of reaching him. I’m afraid it’s up to the four of us . . . and the Fantastic Eyes.” Peter patted the box inside his bag.
This led Peg to a question that had been nagging at her for some time. “Why haven’t you tried the green pair? They are your birthright, after all.”
As desperate as Peter was to don the eyes of Hazelgood, he knew the time had not come. “The professor warned me to wait till the moment was right. That’s good enough for me,” he said with what could only be described as blind faith.
The princess gave no immediate reply, but Peter heard her mutter something to the effect of “I sure hope he’s right.”
When Peter and Peg reached the slave kitchen, they found it overrun with apes. It seemed that with all children working in the mines, it fell on the Night Patrol to do the cooking—a task they were enjoying not at all. The air was filled with frustrated snarls and shouts of “Get yer paws offa my soufflé!” and “I’ll whisk you, if you don’t hand over that mixin’ bowl!”
With so much ambient chaos, Peter and Peg had little trouble sneaking to the scouring station. Her Majesty dipped a stray goblet inside a large wooden barrel and came up with a cupful of yellowish grease that smelled faintly like earwax. “Slug lard,” she said with a smile. “They use it to clean the pans—just the thing for rusted shackles, I’ll bet.”
She threw her brother the goblet, which he caught and stuffed in his bag. With the help of a rolling dish rack, the two children managed to sneak to the kitchen’s service entrance, which led to the mines directly below. But when they reached the small tunnel, Peter stopped.
“There’s something wrong,” he said, smelling the air. He pointed to a workstation, where completed meals were being placed into the water. A sous-ape wearing a leather apron was hunched over the food, applying generous dustings of black powder to all the dishes before sending them off. “What’s happening over there?”
Peg, who was nervous about being detected, gave an impatient sigh. “It’s just an ape putt
ing a seasoning the king likes on all the food before it’s sent out. Come on.”
This “seasoning” was the bitter flavor Peter had detected his first night in the palace. “He puts it on all the food?” the boy asked, rolling the dish rack closer for a better whiff. There was something familiar about the odor, something he had smelled many times before on the docks in his port town. His face lit up as he realized the secret to his uncle’s power. “I know how the king’s controlling the adults . . . he’s using the Devil’s Dram.”
“What’s that?” Peg asked, alarmed. “It sounds like poison.”
Peter shook his head. “It’s a special root that you grind up and mix into tea. In the town where I grew up, sailors used to drink it to forget the horrible things they’d seen. It makes your mind weak, sleepy. The effects wear off pretty quickly, which means you have to take it several times a day.”
“Like at every meal,” she said, suddenly understanding. “Can we stop it?”
“So long as the adults keep eating the stuff, they’ll never remember the truth,” Peter said. He pushed his bag behind his back and flexed his fingers. “I might be able to swap the powder for something else, but first I would need some kind of distract—”
Before the boy could finish, his sister leapt from behind the rack and jumped onto a counter. “Hey, apes!” she cried, knocking two pots over her head. “Come and get me, you ugly goons!” Apes looked up from their duties to see the girl who had bested them only that morning. They dropped their utensils and charged for her. The princess ran to a stove and kicked over a cauldron of butter soup—scalding hot and very, very slippery. The first ape to hit the puddle slipped and crashed into the floor. The rest of the apes slipped and crashed into him, and pretty soon the entire kitchen was awash with buttery, furious primates.
Peg jumped from counter to counter, hurling insults and pots at the apes, drawing them farther away from the seasoning station. Peter knew better than to waste such a valuable diversion. While the beasts contended with the princess, he ran to the Devil’s Dram. Fast as his hands would allow, he emptied the black powder into the trash and refilled the shaker with ordinary pepper. He felt his way to the rear tunnel and hid in the shadows.