No, the noise wasn’t from inside her head. Tor halted, a fresh thread of blood soaking into his T-shirt from a ragged slice on his back, and she heard rippling. The gleam on the floor wasn’t the fungus; it was a reflection of the light from the ceiling on slowly moving water.
A canal. And as the breeze chuckled to itself, creeping fringes of perfumed smoke stringing from the left-hand archway where the water disappeared, she heard another sound. A rhythmic splashing.
Oars, dropped into water.
The boat was coming.
Tor stepped to the very edge of the canal. Chips of ancient yellow paint under the crusted dirt leered up at them. She stared at the ceiling, her mouth slightly agape, and as the splashing intensified a sodden gleam appeared.
It was a small flat-bottom boat, its draping of rotting white velvet trailing the scum-laden surface. Dimples showed in the water where invisible oars dipped, disturbing the weird scrim of paleness, probably some algae related to the fungus all around.
The boat was empty—or anyone inside it was invisible, too. It nosed gently up to the side of the canal and halted. Cami’s throat had closed up. Her eyes prickled.
The worst part wasn’t the alienness of Underneath. It was the familiarity. No wonder the house on Haven Hill wanted another girl, a different girl.
This was where Cami—or whoever she was—belonged.
Tor stepped off solid land and onto the boat. Her arm stretched out, their fingers linked, and he glanced over his shoulder at her. The bruises and welts on him showed up garish and hideous in this directionless foxfire light, and the rippling reflection turned him into a monster for a moment. A jack, or a Twist, the bruises peeling skin and the blood on him black.
He’s just . . . he’s like me. Cami stepped forward. He is me. We’re the same. The boat gave a little underneath, swaying, and Tor steadied her. A splash and another lurching, and his arms were around her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The boat almost-spun, righted itself, and drifted for the left-hand tunnel, where the wreathing smoke was incense, and the smell of it filled her head with blind numb buzzing.
The archway swallowed them. Here it was dark, except for the algae’s weaker glow.
“Princess.” His breath was hot against her ear. “I tried. Sorry.”
She shook her head, carefully, hoping he’d understand.
She was the reason he’d been beaten like this. She was the reason the Strep had snapped and started in on Ellie. She was the reason Nico was screaming with blood-madness, locked away. She was the reason Papa Vultusino had Borrowed and come downstairs . . . and transitioned to Unbreathing.
If anyone should be sorry, Tor, it’s me. But her tongue was knotting up, she could feel it.
Book. Candle. Nico. The charm wouldn’t work now. She was going to fix the problems she’d made for everyone. Take the extra piece out of the puzzle, and throw it into the trash where it belonged. Where it had always belonged, no matter how far it had been flung.
THIRTY
WHEN THE BOAT BUMPED AGAINST THE BOTTOM OF A high sweeping flight of stone stairs, she was almost—but not quite—ready for the terror.
The stairs.
They had sharp polished edges, each step mirror-shining. She knew how they bit when you fell down them, stabbing and slicing. She also knew what the fresh red streaks bubbling on the glossy stone were.
She gets . . . hungry.
The doors were tall, made of the same polished black stone. Their carvings shifted with faint scratching noises, apples and dogs and faces with long flowing hair and foxfire-glowing eyes. The bad place in Cami’s head bulged again, and she heard tinkling laughter.
This time she stepped off the boat first. Felt the sharp edges under her bootsoles, and the idea that she might faint and fall on them kept her upright. Tor’s arms dropped to his sides; he hopped with eerie grace to the steps too, balancing.
Her hand flashed out, she steadied him.
He didn’t even look at her.
The doors creaked, a soft musical sound. Tor stepped up once, waited for her. She took a step, and her breakfast rose in a hot acid gush.
She retched, milk-curds and blackcurrant jam splattering on the bright clean steps, and her heart was going to explode. She could feel it tightening before it shredded into useless scraps, her entire chest full of clawed wriggling dread.
The doors flowed outward, and the hounds poured free. They were almost silent, only the occasional yip as they bolted down the stairs and surrounded Cami’s swaying and Tor’s poker-stiff frame. They didn’t press close, and she struggled to stay upright.
Just at the threshold, the man in the tan trench coat stood. Only now he was in leather, different tones of brown matching his wooden skin. The Huntsman’s face was wooden too, blue eyes afire with a different light than the pale diseased glow. That light dimmed as he gazed down, and behind him, like a pale moon rising, was a shadow of white.
“My runaway children,” the White Queen murmured. Dulcet honey, her voice scraped like the smoke and made the bad place in Cami’s head shudder and squeeze down on itself. “Home at last. How I’ve missed you.”
A dog snarled and jumped. Cami let out a miserable vomit-scented little cry and took the next three stairs in a rush. Tor began to climb, and the reek of spoiled honey and rotting fruit was quickly swept under a pall of spiced, numbing smoke. The inside of Cami’s head began to feel very strange—too big, an empty ballroom with nobody to take her hand or start the scratchy ancient Victrola.
The dogs drove her through the door, and as she passed the wooden man he twitched. Not much, but the Queen laughed.
“One happy little family,” she purred, and one broad, soft white hand touched his shoulder for a moment. “Greet your father, little Nameless. After all, he gave his heart for you.”
The warm draft was from tall greasy-white candles with oddly pallid flames, serried ranks of them on either side of the high-ceilinged hall. Blue gouts of incense rose from powdery dishes, veiling the ceiling. The Biel’y—tall spare men and women with blank eyes holding only her reflection, there were no children—wore gray robes, and each throat held a silver gleam. The medallions were eager, avid little eyes too, and Cami, her mouth full of sourness, stumbled miserably up the center of the aisle in the White Queen’s wake.
She was so tall, the Queen. Her parchment hair was piled high and elaborate, ringlets bobbing and bone pins with dangling colorless crystals thrust artfully through. The other women were shaven-headed, the men short-haired, and their feet were bare while the Queen swayed on lacquered sandals with funny wooden blocks on the soles that went tic tic tic against the stone floor. She wore white velvet and silk, but the hems dragged on the dusty floor, little motheaten bits showing.
At the far end, there was a low wide padded bench on a dais, under a great fountaining fall of crystallized glowing fungus. It pulsed and glittered, this colony of light, and its glow bleached the Queen still further.
Cami stopped dead at the bottom step of the dais. Her arms and legs shook, the tremors spilling through her in waves, her bandaged knees and hand throbbing. Every hair on her body was trying to stand up.
Imagining that pale slimness with a baby was . . . Cami’s stomach cramped again. Heaving nausea passed through her and away, an earthquake in numb flesh.