The Seven Markets (30 page)

“I’ll blame the man who robbed me of my Joshua! Who turned me into a mindless slave for two centuries! Who cursed me to live like a rotted corpse!”

The dragon pulled back and examined her. “You don’t look like a rotted corpse. How’d you manage this, by the way?”

“My friend, Bo. She’s—well—she’s amazing.”

A shower of dust fell onto them as the fliers returned.

“They’ve got terrible aim,” the blue dragon said.

It launched off the side of the tower, beating its wings, climbing over the surprised fliers. Before they could react, it tucked its wings in close and sank like a stone through the rushing air. When it spread them again, arresting their momentum in a terrific
woosh
of air, they were skimming the very rooftops of the Market, passing over the high street and the scene of the battle.

“Take me back, take me back, take me back!”

“Not until you listen to reason. You
cannot
kill the Prince.”

“I will force him to free me! I will have my revenge!”

“Ellie—”

The blue dragon’s flight was interrupted as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. It flattened suddenly, dropping Ellie. She fell to the street and landed hard. The dragon’s wings lost their air and it too fell, mashing a group of armored soldiers who’d been beating back a trio of heavily wounded Shivari warriors. The dragon raised its head, but before it could do more than look around, heavy chains of shimmering light formed on its neck, wings, legs and tail. A muzzle closed over its mouth. The chains pulled taut, pinning the dragon to the ground.

“Ellie,” it said, muttering through its teeth. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

She picked herself and dusted herself off. A long cut ran down the side of her head where she’d banged it falling to the ground. The gem at her neck had become a volcano of white lava, spewing forth destructive energy in every direction. It consumed humans and travelers without discrimination.

She stood on the street and screamed at the top of her lungs up to the platform.

“GIVE HIM TO ME!”

The light grew and grew. It reached out with unstoppable fingers, devouring one of Hart’s mechanical beasts. Three of the fliers were unlucky enough to be caught in one of the tendrils of light and vanished without a trace. It reached up to the sky, dug down into the street. It swelled over the fleeing soldiers and travelers, feeding on her centuries of rage.

From above, Hart watched the growing destruction with an amused eye. Those around him—Bo, Clay, even Cutter and the Prince—could not tell if he’d gone mad or if he somehow did not comprehend that death was coming for him, coming for them all. He ambled over to the twin cages and lowered himself to where the Prince crouched, still struggling to breathe.

“You did this, you know? All of this.”

The Prince frowned. “I do not know her.”

“No? Funny, I’d say she knows you.” He turned to Bo and Clay. “Refresh my memory, where did Ellie say this charmer picked her up?”

“Oberton,” Clay said.

“Right. Ring any bells, your highness?”

The Prince peered through his bars at Cutter, pleading with him for help.

“The Scottish girl, you damned fool. You can’t tell me you don’t remember. You sent her away with the cook’s boy”—he pointed up at Clay—“with him, actually, though I haven’t figured that part out yet. Don’t play dumb. Let her go or we’re all dead. Even you.”

“Do as he says, your highness. She’s a mite angry, if you ask me.”

The Prince closed his eyes, lowering his head in concentration.

“She liked to dance,” Cutter said. “Remember?”

The Prince nodded. Of course, the girl who liked dancing. He said a word, a single word, too low for any present to hear.

Down on the street, the spreading flow of whiteness stopped.

Ellie sank to her knees. The fracture running through the center of the Prince’s gem shrieked as if in pain. Several links on the heavy gold chain snapped and the gem fell from her neck. When it hit the ground, the gem shattered into dust, and was no more.

Hart grinned. He patted the Prince’s cage. “Thanks, little guy. Knew you had it in you. Now . . .”

He threw himself over the side of the platform and landed deftly next to where Ellie knelt in the dust and debris. He brushed a bit of rubble off his sleeve and regarded her.

“Big lightshow,” he said, walking around her in a wide circle.

The high street was deserted. All the fighters and soldiers had either fled or been reduced to dust and ash by Ellie’s rage. “Tell you the truth, that’s been my biggest fear, all these years. Couldn’t die, couldn’t kill you, couldn’t risk getting the big bad on my case. ‘Oh, yes mum’ all over the place. What a thing it is, really. But I’ll tell you something—you killed my friends.”

He kicked her. Hart wore no armor, but his boot was heavy and the kick sent her sprawling across the rubble-strewn ground.

“Maybe you remember, maybe you don’t. But you flashed your money and told us your fairy tale and you
knew
we didn’t believe you. Knew we wouldn’t learn the truth until it was too late.”

He pulled her up by her long braid of hair. For a moment he paused, as if unsure of what to do first. There were so many options, so many ways to hurt a person. A flash of green light made up his mind in an instant.

“I suppose some of it’s on our heads for taking the job in the first place. Fair enough. Still, there’s a world of difference between taking a crazy old lady’s money and tricking a guy into getting his friends killed. My friends, Ellie.
My friends!
”

By her hair, he dragged her past the blue dragon where it was bound to the street. Past the portal building, still untouched by battle, right up to the source of the green glow, the entrance to the tower that stretched up into the sky.

“You remember that day? Just another test for you, wasn’t it? But not for me. Not for my brother. Your pal up there might have done the deed, but they were only there because of you. I’ve watched that replay a million times, watched him fight, watched him die. And I can’t think of a thing in all the world better than watching you go out the same way.”

He hefted her up, one hand still clutching her braid, the other up under her arm, snaking around from her back.

“Upsa daisy, dear.”

Hart threw Ellie into the nexus, the heart of the Market. There was a sizzle of burning hair, a short scream that cut off almost before it began, and a distant boom of thunder.

And then nothing at all.

Three suns overhead. Joshua’s fine, strong hand around hers. A day, a magical day like no other. A promise and anticipation and then . . . what? A fair stranger with lies on his lips and white fire in his eyes. The world turning into a hazy, unreal thing.

Nothing but a dream.

Ellie opened her mouth, gasping for breath. Her ribs ached where Hart had kicked her. It hurt to inhale. It hurt to move. She did anyway, hauling herself up from the dewy grass. First to her hands and knees, then to an agonizing kneeling posture, and finally, after so very long, to her feet again.

“Where?”

She was in a wide meadow. The triple suns of the Market had not yet climbed high in the sky. The great wall of the Market loomed over her like a silent guardian. How many times had she seen it over the years, in how many different guises? In waking and in dreams, there had always been the wall. Surrounding her. Enclosing her. Even in her rage for revenge, it had been there.

Now she could see through it, past it, to the land of her birth. Earth. The human lands. She’d learned many names for it over the centuries, but it still held its oldest, truest identity for her: home.

“I’m home?”

She took a tentative step—and nearly fell. Pain shot through her left ankle as she put weight on it. Broken. Hart. It had happened so fast. The necklace had come off and she hadn’t been able to think straight. He must have known, must have anticipated her confusion at being freed. His attacks had come with such swift ferocity, beating her back, never giving her a chance to collect herself and fight back. Smart. Just like a soldier. How long had he been planning this little coup?

A second step and a third. If it was just the ankle, just the ribs, she could have pressed on. Together, they hobbled her. Too much pain to walk, too much pain to draw a decent breath. It was all too much. She wanted to lie down and let it end. She was free. She had what she’d wanted. Whatever vengeance she needed against the Prince was nothing compared to Hart’s. Her revenge would have been a mercy by comparison. Removing his glamour with Bo’s little trick, exposing his true self for all to see. And she was free. It was over, finally over. She could let the pain take her and rest.

Except . . . she found she couldn’t. Who was this Ellie who refused to fall, who kept walking beyond all reason? Was it the Prince’s Ellie? Was it the Ellie who’d gone into exile with Rossi, mooning over the lover who’d cast her aside without a thought? It wasn’t the Ellie who’d built an army to hunt him across the ages; her heart was placid, the fires of her rage quenched at last.

She was free. He would suffer. Pursuing him further was only tying herself to him once again. A different kind of bondage. She would have no more of it.

Ellie stumbled. She nearly fell, catching the branch of a tree and holding herself upright through sheer force of will. The ankle. Something had to be done about it.

“Okay, Bo, let’s see some magic.”

She leaned back against the tree for support and dug into her pockets. Hart had wanted her, Bo, and Clay to wear combat gear like his soldiers. She’d refused, insisting on simple clothes to blend in with the other travelers. A dark skirt and a dark jacket. A green cloak trimmed with gold the hue of fresh grown wheat. And pockets. Secret pockets wherever she could stash them.

In one pocket she found a ring. It was twin to the ring she already wore, the one that had protected her and those around her from the Market Peace. A handy thing to have when you’re marching to war.

Ellie removed the ring from her finger and swapped for one from her pocket. This carried the same protective glamour as the first, but it knew other tricks as well. Bo, sweet Bo, who’d grown her a new body and discovered working with glamours wasn’t much different than tinkering with DNA. Once you had the code, well, there wasn’t much you couldn’t do.

She turned the ring once on her finger and quickly dug her hands into the tree. It occurred to her she might have sat down again, even laid down, but Ellie MacReady would have none of that. She would stand and take her medicine.

It wasn’t that her ribs were healing, not exactly. It was that they were
wrong
and the glamour was correcting their wrongness. Bo’d tried to explain the science behind it, but in the end had fallen back on her stock explanation: “It works, trust me.”

The pain in her ribs filled out like an inflating balloon. It wasn’t pain, not anymore; it was air, the sweet, pure air of the Market flowing into her lungs. An ache in her back dwindled to nothing. The grinding agony in her ankle flashed warm, making her toes tingle. She fought to remain still, convinced moving would jinx the deal—even though Bo had told her it would not—and suddenly the pain had become so small it might never have existed at all.

“Okay, let’s see.” She stepped away from the tree, convinced she would stagger and fall. Two steps, three, four, ten—she was walking without the barest twinge of discomfort. If anything, she felt better than she had before Hart’s attack. Sore feet from walking through the Market, a pinched nerve from tossing and turning all the previous night—they were gone as well.

“Good mojo, Doctor Beauregard. Have to thank you if I ever see you again.”

She considered the healing glamour. Could it be harmful to continue wearing it once its work was done? She was embarrassed to admit she’d never thought to ask.
Better safe than sorry, isn’t it?
Ellie removed the ring and slid the original onto her finger again.

Noise caught her ears, the sounds of the Market, rising up all around her. Had Hart injured her ears in some way? She realized she hadn’t noticed much in the way of noise since opening her eyes to find that familiar trio of suns staring down at her.

Ellie walked in the direction the noise was coming from. It wasn’t long before she came to a cobblestone street lined on either side with tinkers and cobblers and dressmakers and all manner of Market vendors. A hundred mouth-watering aromas filled the air. She bought two steaming hot rolls from a cart, scarfing them down not five paces from the vendor himself.

“Hungry?” the man said, grinning.

“Famished. I feel like I haven’t eaten in centuries.”

“More where that came from, missy, just you ask.”

She thanked him and moved on to explore the Market. She realized that in all her visits, she’d never truly taken the time to just look around, apart from her short time with Joshua all those years ago. She wandered from stall to stall, trying on hats and jewelry, sampling piping hot muffins and cider which stung her nose. She played with mechanical animals and tried on a pair of sandals which allowed her to walk without touching the ground. She put on glasses which enabled her to see a great distance. She skimmed through a book which filled itself with words as she read, crafting the story according to her reactions.