“But we have otherrr trrroubles rrright now. Justine is holding a pistol on Clairrre; Gunnarrr is missing; Florrrence was hit by an out-of-contrrrol vehicle and she’s lopped off at the knees. Octavia is now Septavia—she lost a tentacle, but she’ll rrregenerrrate. Sean and Meghan arrre on the rrroof playing sniperrr.”
“Egads.”
“I’ll say.”
Mr. Today gazed across Artimé, counting the remaining Quillens, and then mused over his spell strengths and capabilities. “There are less than a hundred of them left,” he said. “I think I can stop the remaining ones now on my own. And Quill has seen enough to know we are a strong force to be reckoned with—they’ll think twice about fighting us again, which means our future is safe from further attacks. Yes, my friend, it’s time. You and I both know the only spell that will end this.”
“I hate to do it.”
“It won’t hurt them.”
“That’s exactly why I hate to do it,” growled the cheetah. “Though you might catch Aarrron in it, which would keep him out of our hairrr forrr now.”
Mr. Today patted the cheetah’s smooth neck. “You had your moment of glory in the palace, Sim—you saved Alex. And you’ll have another one soon. In the meantime, Claire will be all right, won’t she?”
“I cerrrtainly hope so.”
“Justine won’t shoot her without me there. She’ll want me to witness it. I’m sure she thinks it’ll be symbolic.” Mr. Today’s voice was bitter.
“I imagine Clairrre knows that too.”
“All right then, it’s settled.”
“Herrre we go, my frrriend.” Simber took a pass along the seashore, from mansion to jungle, as Mr. Today held out his hand over the lawn. Back and forth they flew, Mr. Today keeping his hand out and concentrating very hard to hold the spell on so many people, Simber being very careful to weave just so across the property trying not to miss any of it, as if he were mowing the lawn.
When they had covered all the land up to the entrance to Quill, Mr. Today, barely holding on to the weighty spell, whispered, “Quillitary, take a dive,” and snapped his fingers.
Immediately, and as one body, the remaining mobile Quillitary stopped fighting, turned, and marched their way to the seashore. The Artiméans who had a moment ago been fighting now caught their breath and watched in surprise as the Quillitary stopped and stood in the shallow water.
Simber flew over them.
“Freeze,” Mr. Today said.
The water at the shore froze, trapping all the Quillitary in place, making them furious but oddly cooling off some of the hotheads nicely.
The people and creatures of Artimé looked up at their leader and broke into applause.
“All right, Simber. Take me to Claire. And then stay alert. Watch for my signal.”
Lani gasped and clapped her hand to her mouth as the great gray wolf stumbled off. She was confused. “Father?” she whispered, but he was already gone.
She had seen the wolf before from a distance. And she’d thought it odd that such a wild creature would have bounded out of the mansion the previous day, only to disappear again shortly thereafter. And then it all began to make sense.
“Oh, Father, what have I done? What have you done?” Gingerly she picked up the gun, feeling its weight in her hand, remembering when she was ten and her father had let her hold it—had even taken her to the Quillitary range on Purge day when she was eleven to teach her how to carry it safely, and to let her shoot it when no one else was around. He had made her promise not to tell anyone. That was one secret she’d kept, because it seemed too—too—sacred a moment to work into one of her wild stories.
But to her, now, the gun represented awful things. She disarmed the gun and slid it into her vest, realizing that despite her knowledge of its workings, and all her father had taught her, perhaps even in preparation for this day, she could never, ever use it. She snuck off through the trees, growing wearier and hungrier as the evening slipped into night, and suddenly wondered what had happened to Alex, for it had been hours since she’d last seen him. She stopped short. Hmm, she thought, wondering if she could manage to do one of Alex’s favorite spells. She withdrew a paintbrush from her pocket, whispered, “Invisible,” and brushed herself up and down with it.
The last thing to disappear was the gleam in her eye.
Back at the mansion the injured Samheed had too much time to think about how his actions as Will’s assistant had contributed to the battle raging. And seeing his father again—once his hero—so willing to kill his own son … how could Samheed have ever wanted to go back there? Be a part of that? Now the guilt overcame him, and he could lie still no longer with this battle raging around him. He struggled to his feet, slipped his component vest on, and when the caretakers weren’t looking, he limped outside.
As the entire remaining Quillitary marched into the sea, a drenched, bedraggled body finally hoisted himself up to his feet on the beach. He coughed and spit seawater, and began wiping the sand from his face and clothes. In the dark he located the looming mansion and stole quietly in that direction, limping and squishing slightly.
He stepped over bodies until he found one wearing a vest like Alex’s. Aaron disrobed the fallen Artiméan and slipped the vest over his own shoulders, feeling for the one magical item he actually knew how to use.
He found a treasure of them and took one, rubbing it between his fingers, his eyes darting wildly now, looking for prey. I’ll earn my position back! I must prove myself to the high priest. I’ll find the old man, and I will kill him. And then I’ll finish off Alex, once and for all.
At the corner of the mansion Aaron stood, deep in the shadows. He saw her—the great high priest, the one he would do anything for in order to regain her favor. He knew that now he must be Alex. Act like Alex. They must not suspect. He only hoped no one had yet heard what had really happened to his twin.
As he watched Mr. Today approach, he looked around at the bizarre assortment of creatures.
“Alex,” someone whispered. Aaron jumped and turned sharply, coming face to face with a sharp-toothed alligator that had several spindly arms. He nearly screamed in fright.
“Alex,” Ms. Octavia whispered again. “Be ready with your scatterclips. The lethal verbal component is ‘die a thousand deaths.’ If Justine makes any false moves, do your worst, my boy. She’ll have to die if any of this is to be resolved. Are you comfortable with that?”
Aaron blinked, sucked in a breath, and nodded. He didn’t understand half of what the creature was saying, but it was enough to know that he had accidentally stumbled upon the verbal component to the spell, which was also the mantra of the Quillitary. He held the clip, poised, appearing ready to throw in the direction of Justine, but his eyes burned into the back of the head of Mr. Today, who stood only slightly to the side of the high priest.
Samheed, seeing the high priest, crept forward behind the octogator and Alex, realizing the severity of the scene before him—Justine and Mr. Today, about to be face-to-face once again. He remained quiet, pulling a throwing star from his vest in case it was needed. If only he could take down Justine, it would prove to everyone that he was not a traitor.
Ms. Octavia readied herself as well, and then glanced more carefully at the boy beside her. She frowned. Something didn’t seem right.
Samheed noticed her glance, and he took another look at Alex, at the way he stood, and at his hand that held the scatterclip. Samheed’s eyes narrowed and then flashed with fire. He and Will Blair had been studying Alex for months. He knew what was wrong. This boy held the scatterclip in his right hand.
“It’s not Alex!” Samheed whispered.
Aaron’s eyes widened in surprise. He tried to run, but Samheed muttered, “Break a leg!” which made Aaron squeal in pain and hop on one foot.
In one swift, smooth motion four of Ms. Octavia’s remaining seven appendages threaded and twisted over and under the boy’s arms and around his legs, rendering his struggles useless and fo
rcing his good leg to buckle. He dropped to the ground.
“Silence,” she said in a low voice.
Aaron’s cry died in his throat. He shook violently, helplessly.
“Well done, Samheed,” Ms. Octavia said. “Don’t move another inch, Aaron Stowe, or you’re a dead man,” she growled into his ear, and chomped her teeth together to keep from biting his head completely off.
“Hello, again,” Mr. Today said coldly as he approached the high priest’s vehicle. All around him were piles of wounded, sleeping, or splatterpainted Quillitary. On the road beyond the high priest a pileup of smoking vehicles groaned in various stages of death. The rest of Artimé’s walking wounded, suddenly bereft of their enemies, picked their way around bodies and fell in behind their leader, ready to carry on if necessary for as long as they could stand and draw breath.
“Marcus, my dear,” came the sarcastic reply. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“How terribly polite.”
“Indeed,” she said. The High Priest Justine sat on the seat of her vehicle with Claire Morning tucked securely under one arm, a pistol pointed at Claire’s temple. Governor Strang sat beside her, his pistol trained on Meghan Ranger, who lay on the corner of the mansion roof nearest them. Four more governors stood at the entrance with their pistols, pointing randomly at anyone who dared move. Only Senior Governor Haluki was missing.
“Your young protégé, Aaron, sends his regards. Shame that you should punish him. He’s the one who might have saved you all,” Mr. Today said evenly.
Justine’s eyes narrowed.
“Oh, come now, Justine. Why so suspicious? Have you forgotten our little secret passage to the palace?” he asked. “And, oh dear, let me see. One, two, three, four, five … good heavens! You’re missing a governor. Pity.”
The four standing governors wavered, casting sidelong glances at one another in the starlight.
“Dear me. And have you told your governors about your secret gift? You know,” he whispered loudly. “Magic.”
“Enough!” shouted Justine.
“You do not deny it?”
“Silence, you traitor!”
Marcus Today smiled a small smile. “Justine, honestly. Have you no secrets on me that you can reveal to my people so that they might gaze at me as suspiciously as your governors are now looking at you? Surely there must be something.”
Justine glared at Mr. Today. She cocked the hammer of the pistol that grazed Claire’s temple.
Claire closed her eyes reflexively, and then opened them again, granting permission to her father to do whatever it took.
“What have you done with Aaron?” Justine growled.
“Hmm? Oh, the twin? Well, there was a bit of a skirmish at the palace, you see. You know how it is with twins.” He chuckled hollowly. “Best of friends, worst of enemies. All that rot. I imagine he’s around here somewhere. Pity he isn’t coming to your aid.”
Justine snarled and looked at Claire, judging her features. “All these years, Marcus? Thirty of the last fifty years you’ve spent betraying me and all I’ve stood for. All we’ve stood for! After all I’ve done for you and for Quill! How could you?”
Mr. Today sighed and looked up at the sky. He shook his head slowly, and then looked back at the high priest. “The question is, dear sister, how could you?”
Justine’s face burned. She stood up in the vehicle and wrenched Claire to her feet. “Say good-bye to your daughter, once and for all,” she spat.
Mr. Today nodded amicably at the high priest and smiled warmly at Claire. “Good-bye, daughter,” he said.
From the sky, a whirlwind. Simber swooped in with his powerful wings, knocking four governors across the road and the fifth headfirst into the backseat. He grabbed Claire in his jaws and sailed away.
When shots rang out in the confusion, it was the High Priest Justine who slumped over in her seat and began to deflate like a balloon, until she was nothing but a flat rubber body that flopped over and fell to the floor, only to be stepped on in the aftermath. Clearly, no bullet had done that to her.
No one could see the invisible Lani, nor could they hear her whisper “Evermore, nevermore,” an irrevocable spell that she had delighted in finding in her studies. And this was the perfect use for it. Justine would forevermore be silent and useless. “Take that, you old windbag,” she muttered when she saw it had worked perfectly.
Afterward Lani ran as fast as she could toward the part of the shore that remained unfrozen. She took the gun from her vest and flung it as far as she could into the sea. And then, finally, she slipped away to the forest to find her father.
And So It Happened That
When it was all over, in the wee hours of the morning, Mr. Today visited the newly created hospital wing of the mansion. There he found Lani dozing on the floor next to Alex, and discovered Meghan asleep in a chair near Samheed. The old mage roamed from bedside to bedside, offering whatever healing spells he could to the people of Artimé who had served and sacrificed for him. Eventually he took a chair, settling in near Alex, who was the most seriously injured of them all. And while he was glad for the protection spell on Alex’s vest, Mr. Today couldn’t stop thinking. Had he made a mistake? He buried his face in his hands as the ward tossed and turned restlessly, painfully, in the dim light around him. The old mage would not sleep that night.
By morning Gunnar Haluki had arrived. He paced anxiously with his arm in a sling, waiting for his daughter to wake up. Claire, who was quite calm despite her near-death experience of the previous evening, joined them.
Claire bent down and kissed her father on the top of the head. “Octavia’s working on Florence’s legs. She ought to have them solidly reattached by the end of the day, walking around good as new.”
“How’s Octavia’s stump?”
“Oh, it’s good. She’s perfectly fine. Though a tad annoyed, since it was her eraser appendage. She’ll have to adjust a bit until the new one grows in.”
“And the twin, Aaron?”
“In custody for now. Beside himself over Justine’s death but trying hard not to show it.”
“How did Samheed know he wasn’t Alex?”
“Alex is left-handed. Aaron was ready to throw a scatterclip, probably aiming at you, Father. He held it in his right hand.”
Mr. Today pulled on his hair. “Of course,” he murmured. “Identical twins—sometimes a righty and a lefty. I had forgotten that. He’s brilliant to have noticed.”
“Samheed knows Alex well. Perhaps now he will try to be a bit more like him.”
Meghan stirred and opened her eyes. When she saw Gunnar Haluki pacing the floor, she sat up, alarmed. “What is he doing here!” she cried out, waking Lani in the process.
“It’s okay, Meghan. Gunnar is on our side, and always has been,” Claire told her. “We kept it a secret to protect him.”
Lani sat up and looked around. Gunnar Haluki stopped in his tracks.
“Hey, you,” Lani said, a sleepy smile spreading across her face. “You’re pretty sneaky. I couldn’t find you last night. Sorry about your shoulder.”
Gunnar pressed his lips together, perhaps to stop them from quivering, and reached out his good arm to her. Lani stumbled over to him and buried her face in his shoulder.
Samheed awoke, his face throbbing, his voice hoarse. “What’s going on? Good grief, what happened to Alex?” He blinked his good eye in surprise when he saw Lani embracing her father, and then glanced at his beside table, where Mr. Appleblossom’s small, icelike sword gleamed in the morning light. He bit his lip, wincing at the pain but smiling inwardly as he remembered the words from his mentor, and his own ultimate save in recognizing Aaron. Perhaps it had been enough. Gingerly he rolled onto his side to watch and listen.
Mr. Today gazed over the small group with a tired half smile. All in good time, he thought. He rested his eyes on Alex, whose pale face set the mood for days to come. But deep down Mr. Today knew that Alex would mend and that the boy would rise up, str
onger and wiser than before, preparing to take on a new role from an ailing mage. It had to happen this way, Marcus thought. For him. For Artimé.
Alex stirred and opened an eye. When he caught sight of Mr. Today, he whispered, “Don’t forget … to go back … and feed the guards.”
Mr. Today, overcome, nodded his assurances.
“And … Aaron?”
Mr. Today hesitated. “We’ll take care of him, too.”
Alex closed his eyes again and slept.
Over the next days the mess of broken-down vehicles was cleared from Artimé. The remaining Quillitary, none the worse off for the dip in the ice, had been immediately freed from the sea, and those who had been attacked with permanent spells had been disarmed and released one by one, with the understanding that everything had changed, Quill had been defeated, and the war was over.
Samheed was up and around after a day or so, and he joined Lani and Meghan at Alex’s side whenever the protectors would allow them to visit. “I heard what you did,” Alex told Samheed. “Thank you.”
Samheed smiled grimly. “I’m sorry … about everything,” he said.
Alex smiled and held out a weak hand. “I still get to punch you, right?”
Samheed laughed and shook it. “And I still don’t guarantee what will happen if you do.”
Although Alex didn’t know it, Mr. Today spent his nights watching over the boy until he fell into an exhausted sleep, at which time Simber took over, both of them keeping their worries to themselves. And when Alex finally came around for good, even the enormous stone beast shed a private tear, or perhaps even two.
Every day Mr. Today, Gunnar Haluki, and Simber took a trip to the palace to check on the guards. And finally, one day, seeing no reason to keep them entombed in the palace, Mr. Today removed the spell from the palace entrance and set them free. Gunnar Haluki was grateful. So were the guards. Simber … well, not so much.