The Seven Markets (32 page)

Ellie moved without thinking, pushing through the mass of travelers and Market folk. She knocked one man aside and vaulted over a woman who’d stumbled in the confusion. It was slow going. Any space she cleared was filled almost instantly, the people flowing like water around her. She lost sight of Joshua a dozen times, but she wasn’t going to let him get away. It was only as she reached the outer edge of the crowd, where three large, hairy men with teeth jutting up like tusks from their mouths were dragging Joshua away, that she realized she was no longer insubstantial.

She stopped short. Joshua’s heels were digging deep furrows in the ground. Behind her, the Prince and her other self were even now making their slow march through the Market. Could she stop him now? Could she catch the Prince before he lifted the necklace over her head, binding her to him? She wished Bo were here to explain what was going on, why she could push these people but not stop herself from going with him. Was it something about him, the same aspect to his glamour which protected him from her? But that didn’t make sense. When she’d tried talking to herself, the Prince hadn’t arrived yet. The other Ellie didn’t have a glamour to keep her away.

I can’t affect myself. Maybe I can still help Joshua.

Mama and Papa caught up, breaking through the crowd. Papa caught Ellie’s arm just as she was setting off after Joshua.

“Ellie!”

“Not now, Papa—they’ve got him!”

She took off after them like a shot, racing into a part of the Market she hadn’t been to before. Ellie would have said that was impossible after all the time she’d spent here but there was no arguing with the evidence of her own eyes. Unfamiliar storefronts filled the streets on either side. And something else: houses. She saw a cottage with a green roof, smoke escaping through a capped chimney. Was this where the vendors traveling with the Market lived? If so, that explained why she’d never been here before. This was hardly the sort of place the Prince would have deigned to visit.

At the end of the street, the three hairy men had paused to argue about which way they should take their captive. She sped up to catch them, adjusting another of Bo’s rings on her finger. It would increase her strength, giving her a chance against three foes who probably knew quite a bit more about fighting than she did. It would also, she reminded herself, protect them all from the Market Peace. These men were under the Prince’s spell. She had no desire to see them dead, only to protect her Joshua.

As she reached them, Hart’s voice piped up in her mind, urging her to attack swiftly and without mercy. They were the Prince’s thralls, true, but no less dangerous for that. If she gave them a chance, they’d gut Joshua and then her for good measure. She gained nothing by giving them the opportunity to strike first.

Ellie slowed and approached, rubbing the phantom pain in her ribs as she went.

“Hold,” she said, raising her hands to show they were empty. “That man is mine. I would have him back, if you please.”

The two holding Joshua by his arms deferred to the third—their leader, she assumed—to answer.

“This
boy
displeases the Prince. He must be removed.”

“Let me remove him. He will never trouble your Prince again.”

“No! He honors us with this task. We will gain great prestige in his eyes by disposing of the boy.”

“What honor can there be in harming one who is helpless? Give him to me and tell your Prince whatever tale you care to tell.”

The third man, the leader, was bigger than the other two. His tusks gleamed with golden decorations etched right into their surface. No man at all, then. He waved his fists at Ellie as he talked, and she realized the glamour he and his men wore to attend the Market was bleeding off. Whether this was purposeful or a side effect of the Prince’s influence, she couldn’t have cared less.

“If this boy is such a treasure to you, perhaps we’ll dispose of you both for the great Prince!”

The other two released their grip on Joshua’s arms. The dull thud when he hit the ground was the same sound his sack of flour had made when he dropped it to hold her in his arms yesterday, all those years ago.

They advanced on her together, moving in a coordinated way she recognized at once from watching Hart drill his men. The two on the sides would angle to flank her, but their attack would come from the front.

“Very well,” she said, lowering herself into a facsimile of the combat stance she’d seen her soldiers assume countless times. It was enough to give them pause as they seemed to confer, wordlessly, between themselves.
Does this girl perhaps know how to fight?

Ellie held back a grim laugh.
No, she doesn’t. And more’s the folly.
How many opportunities had she had over the years to sit in with Hart as he drilled his men? How many chances since Bo had grown her this new body to do more than watch them train?

They continued advancing. She stepped back, letting them think they had her cowed. What she wanted was for them to continue spreading out as they came to her. She shifted to the left, making a small opening—the kind an amateur would make—on her right. She was inviting the leader in, hoping he’d attack before his men were in position.

He did, charging at Ellie with his fist cocked, ready to deliver a crushing blow. She sidestepped it neatly, bringing her right foot up in an almost lazy swipe at his leg as he passed. Augmented by Bo’s ring and the glamour, it was enough to bring him to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said, snatching him by the hair with one hand and flicking his forehead, gentle as a feather, with the other. He flew back, skidding across the ground as if trampled by a raging bull.

She was quick, but not quick enough. The leader was down but the other two fell on her, pinning her to the ground and raining down blow after blow. Ribs that shouldn’t have ached screamed in protest. One of them was biting into her shoulder, great tusks tearing through her tender, unprotected flesh.

“No!”

Panic overwhelmed Ellie and she flailed blindly. The biter went sailing through the air to flatten against the side of a nearby house. The one who’d been working on her ribs somehow managed to keep from being thrown clear. Ellie didn’t like the way his arm hung dead at his side.

She huffed and puffed, pushing up from the ground. In a deep crouch she removed the glamour of strength, running through her pockets for the healing ring, rushing to find it before she bled out and lost consciousness. There were so many pockets to search through, so many places it could be. Which one was it in? Could she tell it by touch? Her fingers had become dumb, unable to do much more than jab senselessly at things. She felt the pull of the world on her, dragging her down. And blackness, sweet restful blackness. It would be good to rest.

“Ellie?”

Mama’s voice brought her back—a short way—from the edge of the abyss. How was Mama here? Now? How could that be? It had been so many years, so many lifetimes since that morning she and Joshua had snuck away in the Market. But Mama had found her out, as she always did. Tricky lady, Ellie’s Mama.

“Is this what you need, honey? Here.”

Mama slipped the ring over her finger. Ellie was aware of this in the same way a person might be aware of a field mouse hiding, unseen, in the attic. Small footsteps and nothing more. Still, when the wound in her shoulder closed and the protestations of her ribs and back faded to faint, discontented murmurs, Ellie was able to open her eyes once more and see her Mama’s face.

“Ellie?”

“Mama . . .”

“Your Papa and I—Ellie, what’s going on?”

“Hold on.” She was tired, so tired, but it wasn’t safe yet. With Mama’s help, Ellie was able to stand. She stretched, pressing at her ribs and the vanished wound on her neck.

“You were in a terrible way, honey. I don’t understand—”

“Mama, I’m sorry,” Ellie said, cutting her off. “Just give me a minute to clean things up and then I’ll explain everything, okay? I promise I’ll explain everything.”

“Okay?” Mama said. A distant, curious part of Ellie tried to remember if that bit of colloquial slang had come into use yet. What if she’d just created it?

The first thing she did was go to Joshua. He was face down in the mud, but apart from a bruise on the side of his head, appeared unharmed. She slipped Bo’s ring from her finger onto his. It was a space of seconds before he opened his eyes to see her leaning over him.

“Ellie?”

“My darling,” she said.

“I don’t—Ellie, who was that man?”

She frowned. “It’s a long story. How do you feel? Can you stand?”

He could. They helped him up and she bade him stand and wait with her parents while she tended to the tusked gentlemen.

Their leader was the least injured but she went to him first. She didn’t need Bo’s ring to heal him, just a couple hard slaps in his face to bring him to.

“Miss?” he said, eyes glazed.

“Sir. Do you know me, sir?”

“You are . . . no. You are familiar, though.”

“Aye. Can you stand and help me with your men?”

“I can, miss. Thank you.”

She helped him up and made him stand by as she healed first the one nearby, whose arm had been nearly torn from his body, and then the other, who’d suffered multiple injuries from Ellie’s wild punch and from his violent impact with the wall.

None of them, when back to their old selves, had any recollection either of the Prince or of fighting with Ellie.

“Thank you for your help, miss,” the biter said, bowing low in gratitude.

She returned the gesture and warned them their glamours appeared to be slipping.

“Cheap charms is all,” the leader said. “Gold don’t buy what it used to, miss, an’ that’s the truth. Time was you could get a glamour to last ’tween Markets, but nowadays . . .”

Ellie left them to attend to Joshua and her parents, who had waited patiently by as she’d helped the three men back to health.

“Ellie,” Mama said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Please, can you tell us what’s going on?”

“Of course, Mama. I think Joshua has something he wants to ask me, though. Don’t you, darling?”

He nodded. “I do. Ellie, I . . . are you taller?”

Watching was an unbearable torture.

Ellie and her parents hid in the shadows as Hart took the Market. It played out as she’d described, down to the last detail. Cutter’s valiant charge, the fall of the giants, the destruction of the mechanical beasts; all of it, exactly as she remembered. When the smoke cleared and the travelers were either caged or killed, she knew the time for watching was almost at an end.

Papa crouched in the darkness. For perhaps the millionth time she corrected herself:
Reynold. Call him Reynold now. Or Rennie, if you can’t manage the whole thing.

“You going to be all right, hon?”

“I’ll have to be. Don’t worry about me. Just free Joshua and the others.”

“All of them?”

“Yes, all of them. Yes, even the Prince—he’s harmless now. But Hart, he’s mine. My responsibility. My fault. Just clear them all away to safety.”

Papa laid a hand on her shoulder but said nothing. Mama, who she was supposed to call
Tara
now, stood with tears in her eyes.

“You sure you’re good?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Ellie said, her face dark.

“I’m not worried, it’s just—I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”

“It’s nothing to do with that anymore. I just want to set things right.”

Mama hugged her, squeezing as hard as she could. “You make me proud, honey.”

She vanished after Papa, leaving Ellie alone, curled up in the darkness. A pulsating flash of white light told her the time was almost here. The Prince’s wedding gift was overflowing with power. She felt a morbid curiosity to witness her moment of freedom, but couldn’t bring herself to look. What did it matter in the end? For her, the necklace was long gone, the Prince’s hold forever broken.

She’d been dreading her beating at Hart’s hands, but it was over with merciful speed. How many times had she relived that assault over the years? It was quicker and more brutal than she remembered. And in no time at all he was hoisting her into the air, lifting her like a paper doll, and flinging her into the nexus to be consumed.

A tingling sensation crawled over her skin.

At last.

Ellie closed her eyes and slipped the golden collar around her neck. For a moment, nothing happened. Then it seemed as if the entire world
bulged
around her. It was as if a larger Ellie was unfolding from within, the way a flower will open its petals to the sunlight.

She left the darkness, darting from shadow to shadow, rooftop to rooftop. For six hundred years she’d been curious to see what would happen next. Her best guess was he’d seek his revenge on Captain Cutter. Or would he go after the Prince first? She was embarrassed to discover she was excited to finally find out.

“Get him down here,” Hart said, speaking to his men high up on the platform without raising his voice. There seemed to be a problem, some sort of malfunction. As Ellie peered out from her hiding spot, Hart’s soldiers lifted Cutter’s cage up several feet, only to drop it again just as quickly.