By all rights, it should have been a beautiful day. Not only was Teriana, The Free City, a locus of natural beauty intermingled with buildings as much grown in place as lovingly handcrafted, with thoroughfares of rusticated humans strolling beside talking deer, mice, cats, hounds, wolves, raccoons, and bears, a fairy chain of Eldryn flitting in a spiral, a few drunken dwarves pounding bistro tables made of sanded tree trunks so enormous that they surely died of nothing but great age, and a few flirty mermaids in the streams flowing under the footbridges, rudely spritzing passersby by jetting water through their teeth; not only was it a picaresque scene worthy of illustration and fable, but the tropes of fantasy were so abundant that it seemed a treasure trove plundered from daydreams and fairy tales.
Isola should have liked to stop to smell the roses, to kick off her sandals and feel the grass and mud between her toes, or lie on a bench to watch the scruffy clouds scud under the hazy, milk-white sun. She might have taken a load off, that is, if she wasn't animated by a sense of urgency ignited by Lucien's kidnapping, then exploded by the happenstance of running into Lucien's mother, The Architect. Not just the mother of the boy she loved—and this wasn't the best time to admit this to herself—but the long lost mother whom Lucien had never known, and to whom he would no doubt glom on instantly, forgetting all about Isola.
The Architect's head and neck jutted over a window of steel mesh topping an immense contraption which resembled grasshopper legs spearing a salad of gears. While the device was so cluttered that any thought of passengers was surely an afterthought, and it wasn't clear how The Architect fit inside this jumble, her chauffeur, the badger, was so scruffy and haggard that he also seemed some kind of makeshift prototype for a better animal, and, on first glance, seemed permanently installed,his eye pressed against a steel tube, and his hands not gripping, but gripped by, the bizarre steering claws.
"You heard her," snarled the badger, whose scowl had dipped so low, he looked like he might bowl forward like a cannonball, propelled by nothing but the momentum of his surplus aggression.
Unflinching, Isola slid inside the spidery vehicle, and Akachi crept in next, thinking again of Isola's ghostly similarity to Michel. It was like her best friend, the friend she betrayed, haunted Akachi. After Chiyo clambered in, Jgorga had to nudge Conrad before the big boy squeezed in the vehicle.
"Where is he?" asked the imperious lady, once the raccoon was seated.
"Their tracks lead to the Beora river."
"It may be too late," whimpered Isola. "He's in a corsair's hold by now."
"Too late, my dear? Are you my son's friend?"
"Yes, your...highness?" While Isola knew her earlier gaffe, 'your majesty,' was inappropriate, she was yet unsure of the right honorific, and didn't want to make a bad impression on The Architect. While she told herself this had nothing to do with her being Lucien's mother, she also knew that she was lying.
"If you must, call me your grace, as I was conscripted into her majesty's cabinet. Not that I've ever showed my face, despite countless summons from the Queen."
While Isola assumed from the walker's jerking march that it was a bumpy ride, she was now enthralled by its elegant gait, in which they were suspended with more care than a nest on a branch; neither Teriana's uneven dirt paths, nor bustling pedestrians, nor even the wind, caused so much as a flutter in the coach. While they trotted faster than a horse, Isola felt as snug as a foal in the womb, and though they no doubt swayed less than a gestating horse, she couldn't imagine how anything natural could be more soothing and tranquil than the bizarre apparatus. While its heavy tread was by no means noiseless, the gears moved with a gentle hush.
"Your machine is a wonder," said Isola.
"No, a walker. I do not like that word."
"Wonder?"
"Machine. It has ignoble overtones. Call it a tool, if you'd like, but machine means a device with some independence from its creator. We don't build such things. Everything we make assumes one crucial component—a sentient mind, whether human or talking animal."
"Our machines are the same," bragged Conrad.
"Are you inventors, your highness?" asked the Architect.
"Have you heard of Earth?"
"Young prince, many of the gates between our worlds are of my devising."
"You mean the glowing portals that never shut off? Sound independent to me."
"Forgive the boy," said Jgorga.
"Why?" said the Architect coolly. "He is right. When we were young, we thought nothing of so indelibly marking these pathways that the boundary between our world soon cracked, bled, and began to fountain horrors."
"You mean the Ashflowers and the Sargan Vos," said Isola.
"The first of many terrors, with more yet to come. I could not regret our handiwork more."
While the machine suppressed its own noise, the mesh windows did not quiet angry bellows, outraged shouts, fearful shrieks, or the whinnies and neighs of horses. When the walker swayed to a stop, Agassus turned from the controls, his hand still clutched by a large brass claw topping a long lever. "Your grace."
"What is it, Agassus?"
"There's a commotion at the docks."
The Architect shifted forward, clutched his arm-rest, and peered through the mesh windscreen. "I see that, Agassus. We'll disembark here."
"Your grace!"
"Unless you can bring us any closer to this disturbance?"
"Closer? It's no street performer, your grace! It's nearly a riot!"
Isola pressed her cheeks to the mesh side window. When the yammering crowd parted for the pell-mell sprint of several dozen men brandishing swords, she recognized the smaller figure they pursued. "Lucien!" When the boy's pace faltered, but did not change direction, she screamed, "over here!"
"Didn't you hear her, Agassus? Get closer!"
"Yes'm," growled the badger, then ratcheted the lever until a barely perceptible jolt shivered the coach propped on the furious chug of gears meshing with the pounding dash of metal grasshopper legs. "We'll be on him in a minute," he continued sulkily, "what did you have in mind? This is a walker, not a grabber."
"Allow me, your grace." Smacking the controls for the mesh screen, Jgorga leaned out so fast and without warning that if Isola and Akachi had not caught his hindlegs, the raccoon would have bowled over Lucien, instead of yanking him inside the walker, which he did, as swords rattled on the doors. As Agassus moodily flipped a switch, the walker's legs telescoped, so that their blades scraped the steel undercarriage, causing only a resounding din inside the vehicle.
Though Lucien lay on the walker's floor, dazed and panting, Isola caught herself, and looked first to The Architect, then to Lucien. "I'm so glad you're safe."
"No hug, Isola?"
"Lucien..." Even to herself, Isola's voice sounded strained.
"Are you OK? Who are these people? Are they kidnapping us?"
"Pretty much," sighed Conrad. "No one's asked my opinion."
"Out of the frying pan and into the fire."
"Ignore Conrad," said Jgorga. "Lucien, this is your mother, The Architect."
Lucien's eyes wideneed and his jaw dropped. Backing against the door, his elbow hit the latch, and as he swung out over the slashing swords—their points pricking the breeze fluttering just under his feet— he clutched for dear life.
Digging his nails into the roof, Jgorga swung towards Lucien, dodged flung shortswords, grabbed him by the rags on his back, and plucked him back inside, where he landed atop Akachi and Chiyo.
Lucien was so breathless that he did not immediately try to extricate himself from his friends. As he lay there, at first panting, and then too hoarse to speak, Akachi squirmed left and Chiyo sidled right, leaving Lucien wedged between the girls. "My mother?" he gasped. "The Architect? I thought he was my father?"
"Why? They're both The Architect. It's a shared honorary title, not that we ever had an Architect before they arrived. I thought you knew."
"How would I know? I lived on Earth."
"Lucien." The Architect bent low to his face. "Look at me." As he lifted his eyes,
he was struck by how little his face took from hers: his eyes were blue, while hers were an eerie shade, not the green of tree tops, but of faded grass; her hair was curled, coifed, and fringed with soft, white locks, and his was a coarse charcoal; unlike his soft baby fat, her cheeks and chin were hard lined, and not as if by the happenstance of experience, but as if each crease and wrinkle was deliberately, painstakingly self-inflicted, as if she said, 'I will grow old in thus and thus a way, by this, this, and this.'
"You should be grateful," she said.
Lucien felt his heart sink as he realized the truth of this. Whoever she was, and whatever this contraption was, it was better than holding on for dear life to the gray, grizzled stag who kidnapped him, snorted at all his frantic questions, galloped so fast that the wondrous city and its people were a blur, then flung him at the feet of a throng of malicious-looking soldiers, their armor poorly concealed by robes so bright and colorful they were surely bought minutes ago from a smuggler. Whether or not The Architect was his mother, it was good to be rescued.
"You're right, your majesty. Thank you."
Her stern face relaxed into a playful smile. "Don't cry, Lucien. I only meant you should be grateful you take after your father. Your majesty? Is that what you call your mother on Earth?"
"What?" blurted Lucien, tears leaking from his eyes so quickly that they seemed to stream from his nose. "What mother?" he sobbed, "I had no mother on Earth."
"That's not what I meant." She patted him on the back, then on the head. Her hands batted at him awkwardly, as if a boy was a stranger machine than her magical engine. "Your friend tried calling me the same thing not two minutes ago. Not mother, but your majesty." The Architect settled back in her seat. "If I don't show it, I'm happy to see you, Lucien. While I'd like it if you called me mother, you can call me Adjia, if you'd prefer."
"Are you sure?" While Lucien's face had already melted, the embarrassment glowed red under the hot tears. "Not that I shouldn't call you mother, but right now it doesn't feel right."
"Right now I understand. One day, then." She shrugged. "I hope you're not expecting me to thaw, Lucien. I have a cold face, and given that your father strove to no avail to melt it, that's not likely to change. Not that I'm unhappy to see that the next generation model runs warmer, but even in Teraiana, you shouldn't wear your heart on your sleeve."
Even as he heard her comparing him to one of her prototypes, he strove valiantly to smile back through the tears, but failed miserably, snuffling into the ragged sleeve that she had just called attention to.
"Heading, your grace?" The badger cut her off so gruffly that Isola suspected he was trying to spare the boy, and everyone present, from the scourge of Adjia's well-intended advice.
"Home, Agassus."
At sunset, the blood-orange sky floated on the dark earth, and the darkening skies cloaked the arboreal city until it seemed a slope of rolling hills and dim recesses, its woodland dwellings mingling seamlessly with trunks and boulders. Then Teriana sparked to life,
illuminating windows, porches, and thoroughfares with pearly, scintillating light. Like oystershell, it was only white light to those who were wide awake and not paying any attention, but to exhausted, excited children, it rippled with every color, even shades of green and yellow they had never seen before that night.
While the walker shook the entire way from the wharf, Isola had thought that was normal, and not said anything. But as twilight brushed the woodland city and breathed a blue, hazy breeze through the mesh, the lighted instrument panel shivered and whirred, the red lacquered dashboard—a strange glossy wood melted into shape, like cheese—shuddered and hummed,until the tremor drummed, then hammered, the doors, the floor, the seats, and then, with tooth-rattling, finger-trembling thoroughness, themselves, so that even her eyes quivered in their sockets and her tongue numbed against tingling jaws.
When a rhythmic ratcheting sharpened with each ping, until it rang like a bell, then knelled like a gong, Isola fretted what might happen on the final toll, and the flicker of concern on the Architect's face inspired no confidence. Though Adjia's anxiety faded to a smooth and unruffled face, her cool and blithe tone was so artificial as to seem the prototype for a model decorum. The Architect seemed so cool and collected, it was as if she invented herself anew in every moment, on the spot. "No worries, children. We'll be home shortly. Not only for Lucien, but all of you, for as long as you choose. This is only a timing gear, and shouldn't bother us until..."
She was interrupted by a sound not unlike shredding tinfoil, if the tinfoil was a mile wide, six feet thick, and not only electrified, but thunderfied. When the walker's legs unzipped from the tangle of gears, they fell side to side, depositing the passenger carriage roughly in the thoroughfare, like an aluminum egg fallen from an airplane's nest. While it did not crack, or seep its jolted contents, they spilled over each other inside the brass coach, so that Conrad sprawled on top of The Archiect, Lucien rolled over Akachi and Chiyo's laps until his knees clacked Akachi's chin, Jgorga was flung through the door, then clapped back inside by its violent slam, and Agassus clutched the wheel as he was battered against the roof and dashboard.
When the compartment rocked to a stop, they breathed a sigh of relief, looked at each other, and vented relieved laughter as The Architect continued her sentence, as if their demolishment had not provided a large enough exclamation point: "...as I was saying, it shouldn't bother us until..." As if the fates were determined that she not finish her thought, the subsiding wreckage lurched into another bobbing spin, colliding with hapless passersby, who cursed, growled, hissed, or whinnied, each according to their human or talking animal custom.
"...until now," she said. "I'm sorry. There must have been a flaw..."
"You think?" shot out Conrad.
"Forgive my charge," said Jgorga. "My prince, you ought not conspire with the bad design to interrupt her grace."
"Bad design!" The Architect's jaw dropped in astonishment. "You haven't even seen the schematics!"
"Now I must apologize for myself." While still flat on his back, Jgroga inclined his head, as if to say that he would like to bow, if not flat on his back in a precariously balanced and topsy-turvy contraption. "When I said design, I misspoke. For all I know, your diagrams may have the layered complexity of an epic poem. It may even be a poem. I wouldn't doubt it. What I meant was execution, for while I haven't laid eyes on your blueprints, I'm here in the debris, the undeniable blooper that remains of your great idea."
"You've seen many walking coaches for a fair comparison?"
"Not as such. But I have been to Earth. In fact, I'm just coming from there now."
"Hmmph," sniffed the Architect. "You will not compare my handiwork to Earth motorcars. My pollution-free walker runs on a fuelless engine."
"Pollution-free?" Jgorga shrugged his shoulders and swept his arms around the crumpled machine.
"And it's not running on anything," said Isola. "Not without legs."
"And we came to rest on what's left of the engine," said Lucien.
"Not to mention what's left of this corner of Teriana." Chiyo pointed to the crowd silhouetted in the mesh.
When the Architect strained against the pinned canopy, Jgorga popped it with a jingling screech, and as they all rushed the opening, the mesh shredded, spilling Adjia and Jgorga onto the thoroughfare, then the children, piling up in a heap, which slid to one side when Jgorga raised to all fours—his stiffened back and stomach like a furry picnic table—to shelter Adjia.
When Isola toppled backwards over Conrad, her flailing hands groped the mud, but when her arms gave out in the jarring, scraping impact, her back splashed tendrils of mud, and the sopping cold puddle seeped in with goosebumps and shivers. When Akachi landed beside her, a muddy streamer splattered Isola's face, and having closed her mouth a quarter-second too late, she spat a few brackish drops as she wobbled to her feet.
As Isola's ears still roared from the crash, she could not tune out the angry murmurs. Why weren't they thankful? They had not fallen—shouldn't they be rushing to help? While the crash had heaped wreckage in the street, there were no injuries save wounded pride, and if a talking beaver lay woozily in the mud,he was no more bedraggled than Isola.
Swaying to his feet, the beaver straightened his spectacles and tie, sucked in his stomach to tuck his shirt-tails, then took in a lungful to bellow, "who do you think you are?" While he waddled shakily, he was neither bleeding nor bruised, and his quivering only funneled into his trumpeting anger. "Did you hear me? Look what you did? Who—" The beaver trailed off, having glimpsed Adjia being helped to her feet by Jgorga and Chiyo.
Having cast his eyes downward and bowed low, the beaver's voice dipped to a reverential hush. "Forgive me, your grace. I had no idea..."
"Your first instinct was the right one. It is I who must apologize," said Adjia. "Not only had you every right to yell at your Architect, you undoubtedly knew whom the wreckage ejected, unless you know of any other artificers in Teriana. But I forgive your hypocrisy, as it was only the veil behind which you vented all that bluster."
"Your grace." The beaver's hushed tones became even more cushioned, as if to prepare a velvety seat for his soft flattery. "I must repeat that I had no idea. Perhaps this incident knocked out my brains, for I have nothing but admiration for our beloved Architect, no mere artificer, but the benefactor that gives us light at night, water at all hours, and heat in the winter, and even now draws up unimaginable wonders for Teriana's future."
"You mythify me, badger. You speak of me as if I was the Red Cowl, with a sackful of goodies for children." Despite the warm spring evening, a visit from the Red Cowl herself—the spirit of generosity that traveled the wintry night on Celemir Eve—was more likely than this colorful simile, but it nonetheless had the desired effect of defusing the tension, as a ripple of laughter dispersed first the angry buzz, then the swarming crowd.
"Agassus."
"Yes, your grace."
"My son will escort me home."
The badger sneered. "Does he know the way?"
"He is not too old to be guided, unlike some."
"I'm to clean up this mess?"
"See, Agassus? Even the most miserable need only gentle prodding. Sometimes the carrot, sometimes the stick."
"You're entirely too liberal, your grace," said the old badger with a sour tone. "Keep your stick, and the carrot to boot. Unless—what kind of carrot did you have in mind? Not a literal carrot?"
The Architect sighed. "It will be reflected in your quarterly bonus."
"Well, then. Let's have it." Agassus turned to Conrad, who still sat on a pile of gears. "Clear off, lad! You're sitting on my incentive!"
In that moment, and in his scornful glare, Conrad seemed more of a badger than Agassus. No sooner had Conrad stood, and ran his hands ruefully through his rags, than The Architect took Lucien's hand, and strode briskly through the milling foot traffic.
"You'd best keep up," she called. "There's no time to go back for stragglers."
"I'll herd them, your grace," said Jgorga, but as the Architect advanced with confidence, the crowds parted in deference, and Adjia and Lucien soon vanished into the murmuring, lowing, braying, woofing, and mewing throng.
"Where's she taking Lucien?" Isola's chest tightened. She had just got him back! How dare this crabby old inventor make off with her friend. "What's the rush?"
"Hurry, Isola. There's no time." While Jgorga loped along at a snappy pace, now and then he turned his head to sheepdog the children, and only once they had trudged to a few yards behind him would he again trot ahead.
"What do you mean? She called us stragglers! Why would she risk leaving us behind, Jgorga?"
"I promise to give you all the answers I can, as soon as I can."
"Tell me!"
"For now, how about a question."
"What?"
"Why would the stag make his move now, Isola?"
"How should I know!"
"Think about it. And save your energy for walking."
"This isn't walking," panted Conrad, "this is jogging."
"Only for two legs. Drop to all fours."
The raccoon's evident sincerity enraged Conrad. "What do you think I am? A pony?"
Jgorga's eyes widened in feigned shock. "I would never call a jackass a pony."
While Akachi and Chiyo broke into convulsions of laughter, Isola purpled with unvoiced frustration, and when she opened her mouth, only panting came out. Though she racked her brain with the raccoon's question, confusion gusted in a hurly-burly of nonsensical possibilities, such as the belligerent one—"Because it's rutting season, you beast, you should know that"—the juvenile one—"He's making his move now because he's been constipated all day"—and the sarcastic ones—"he was hungry, and Lucien looked appetizing"; "because he was summoned to identify a Jane Doe"; and, "because there was a sale on antler wax."
"What's wrong, Isola?"
"..." Isola's brow pinched into a scowl, and she looked away from the raccoon. Though Jgorga appeared in earnest, she knew the caprice of his moods, and it was more likely that he feigned concern to draw out her anxieties for the butt of a joke. "Nothing."
"I wouldn't make light of your fears, Isola," said Jgorga. "Not only were you in a tyrant's clutches last week, but your father was a good friend."
"You're awfully friendly with this tyrant," grumbled Isola.
She was so accustomed to the raccoon's eyes half-shut in sarcastic slits that it came as a shock when they widened in indignation or disbelief. "If Adjia seems like Suvani to you, listen to me now. I tell you that in all of Alsantia, Lucien could be in no safer hands."
"What about my hands?" shouted Isola. "What about my hands, Jgorga?"
"Forgive my saying so," said the raccoon, striking such a humble tone that he seemed an entirely different raccoon,"but you are not his mother, no matter how devoted a friend."
"A mother he did not know until today. A mother who not only sent him away, but out of his world. A mother who knows nothing of her son but his name and the facts of his birth. She might as well be a crocodile, a vulture, or some other mother whose affection stops just short of eating its young."
"Shh!" Having scampered two steps back, Jgorga leaned his front paws on her shoulder and chest, and the hiss roared in her ear. "You mustn't say such things."
"She's long gone," sulked Isola. "That was, in fact, my whole point."
"Teriana is devoted to The Architect. So devoted that, good or ill, they might tear you to pieces for thinking such things. Or, at the very least, castigate you up and down this avenue."
"What's the difference between Teriana and Ghulmarque then? A tyrant of a different stripe? A purple and green tiger claws just as ferociously as an orange and black one."
"There will come a time when you are glad that we are in the purview of The Architect, who rules by reason, rather than The Marquessa, who rules by whim, or The Queen, who rules by fancy.You see, all kingdoms are governed first and foremost by their ruling imagination, and imagination is a very wide spectrum comprising the wicked and the good, the insane and the rational, and the chaotic and the patterned. Be glad we are in Teriana, which is shaped by the intelligible imagination of its Architect." Jgorga's tenor had subtly shifted, until he now seemed no longer sarcastic, but fearful past the point of honesty, to the point of reverence.
"A kingdom with no king," snorted Isola. "What good could The Architect do anyone? The Queen's forces would..." She stared at Jgorga. "That was what you meant. That was the answer to your question."
"Shh. There's no reason for the others to know."
"To know what, Jgorga? That this enlightened land of intelligble imagination is looking forward to a siege?"
"Shh!" he hissed.
"What was that?" asked Conrad. "Was that you, Jgorga?"
"Only indigestion, my prince."
"I'd be glad of a little indigestion," grumbled Conrad, "seeing as we haven't eaten since breakfast. I'm starving!"
As crowds clustered around town criers spreading news of the brave scout who brought back news of the approaching army, others fought the lines, running to vendors selling flour, beans, rice, and wine at exorbitant rates. "Queen Suvani would never let merchants fleece her wolves! Am I a sheep, that I should pay such prices, and not turn my coat?" groused one wolf to another.
"Audren would skin you like a lion," said his pack fellow. "I should not like to be so honored."
"There are good wolves?" Conrad asked.
"There are good people?" replied Chiyo.
"I haven't met any," said Conrad, "except Jgorga."
"Conrad! Not even me?" Chiyo pouted, then muttered, "ilure zevoro litana tari."
Conrad looked at her quizzically. "When did you have time to learn Alsantian?"
"You never pay attention. I was born here. And it's not Alsantian, it's Daikonese. 'Evil eyes find snakes in paradise.'"
"I suppose I should be flattered, Conrad," interjected the raccoon. "Although I'm sure I don't deserve it, the way I've bullied you."
"While you haven't protected me from embarrassment, you've saved my skin more than once, Jgorga."
"That's a princely sort of thing to say, Conrad," said Aito.
"You wouldn't be so proud of him if you heard what he said about me," huffed Chiyo.
"Not you specifically," sneered Conrad. "The whole human race."
"So long as you're not lumping the Free People in your condemnation, my prince," said Jgorga, "I'm inclined to agree."
"Do you mean talking animals?" scoffed Conrad. "So far, they've been especially rude to us. The wolves chased us to a Greyhound bus, our cat is a loudmouth, the vultures pecked Chiyo's eye, tried to pull us from the mountain, and maybe wanted to eat us, and the stags weren't much nicer, as I threw up in my mouth twice, and if I had lost my grip, they would have thought nothing of trampling me and leaving me for dead."
"And the raccoon?" growled Jgorga.
"Like I said, the raccoon's been good to me. Not great, and I wouldn't call him a friend, but good. I'm thankful he's here. The rest of you I could do without, no offense," added Conrad, no trace of apology in his dimpled smirk.
"What about jackasses, Conrad?" Aito glowered at the older boy. "Present company included." As if absorbed in some complex thought problem, Aito had been silent since they had arrived in Teriana. At times, Isola thought he was looking for something...or someone.
"That's enough of that," warned Jgorga. "We've arrived. I want you all on your best behavior. No hurt feelings, because Conrad doesn't have the brains to mean half of what he says. If you ignore him, he'll chase his own tail."
"What tail?" vented Conrad.
"See?" snorted Jgorga. "The tail is what he's mad about."
"What? I have brains," Conrad roared scornfully.
Jgorga led them along a low wall of shrubs so knotted and gnarly that they were impassable as stone, above which jutted a dense orchard that littered shrunken, rotted cores along the matted grass. The odor of sour apples mingled with a smell like pine until they arrived at a gleaming circular door, at least ten feet in diameter.
While the silvery disc was opaque on their approach, at Jgorga's touch, it turned glassy, then gelatinous, bubbling under his nailed finger until only a white mist filled the entryway to The Architect's estate.
As Jgorga trundled through, Isola followed right behind him, and when Conrad matched her pace, she half-ran to Jgorga's side.
"Are you tired of the Conrad show too?" murmured the raccoon.
"What do you mean?"
"It's an Earth joke, Isola. You might like a few things on Earth. Television, for one. A kind of serial theater that employs actors over long-term stints."
"Lucien mentioned a show he liked. He said it was made of drawings that moved, by something he called Any Motion."
"Animation."
"That's what I said. I would like to see that."
"You might, if you hang around this crowd."
While the grounds were nothing but greenery from one wall to another, and there was nothing so trodden down as a dirt path, parted, flattened grass marked a descending route from the enchanted entrance downslope to a hilly meadow. Grass shoots poking through this matted path indicated it was seldom taken by The Architect.
Behind the apple orchard was a woodlet of maples, and behind that an almond grove, in the branches of which perched monkey-like marsupials, with furry, spidery limbs, fuzzy membranes stetched between their ankles and wrists, and some with bulging pouches of squirming infants.
"Are those flying squirrels?" asked Conrad
"How would I know? I've never seen one."
"You don't know?"
"I've never been to Teriana, remember?"
Given Jgorga's reverence for The Architect, and his familiarity with Teriana's streets, Isola didn't know whether to believe the raccoon. Why should he lie, she wondered. Not that she could expect a straight answer to that question. As she pondered what question he would answer, and how to ask it without calling him a liar, Conrad blurted out, "Does it talk?"
Jgorga bent his head so low in frustration that he narrowly missed a hulking, moldering stump. "Talk to it, Conrad. On second thought, better not—it might run headlong into a tree trunk."
Isola snorted in mirth.
"Why do you hate me?"
Isola froze, then turned her head slightly, like a deer eyeing a slavering carnivore. "Who, me?"
"Of course you. Jgorga belittles me, but he doesn't hate me, unlike you, who laughs meanly at every opportunity, then turns away every other moment. It's like a nasty magic trick, like I'm invisible to you."
"It's not that I don't want to look at you, Conrad, it's that I don't want to see you."
"Why?" While Isola had treated Conrad with studied aversion, and looked only where he was not, his insolence and swagger was so blatantly obvious that it oozed around the corner of her eye, and forced her to take notice, so that even though she had taken in as little as possible of Conrad, she was struck now by this abrupt change, as his voice rose several octaves in a strangled, wheezy, whine.
"It's different for you. While you've been on another world, unaware of your betrothed, I was promised to a boy I'd never seen. My childhood was attaining those merits and graces requisite to marrying a Gaonan prince. For my first ten years, I wasn't living so much as cultivated in the greenhouse of my parents' expectations, in the hopes that I might blossom above my station.When the Albatron revealed the ill-mannered bully for whom I was cultured and saved, I realized the apple of our family ambition was a swaggering brute, and disappointment flowered in the place of promise. When that callous mirror showed me the wreckage of my mother's lands, and I knew there was no looking backwards, I knew I must find my own future."
"Land a little lighter, my lady."
Isola turned. She hadn't recognized the voice, a reedy, nasal sneer that lilted at the end like a whistle.
"Was that you, Jgorga?"
"I thought it was you." The raccoon stopped, scurried to their rear, then gazed back the way they came.
"We're up here, chubby," piped the voice, sparking a cackling chitter in branches suddenly set ashiver, as if the tree laughed in applause and merriment. Tipping her head back, Isola gasped. There must have been hundreds: cardinals, starlings, robins, and blue jays, a startling variety of talking avians more colorful than a tulip garden.
"Who are you calling chubby?" Putting his shoulder to the tree, Jgorga gave it such a vigorous shake that it shivered from its roots to its branches, shedding leaves and sarcastic birds so ferociously that Isola expected to feel the ground quake, as if the brawny raccoon might so easily rattle Alsantia from its mooring in Olaalo, the world ocean.
When the ground did shake, Isola stepped back in alarm. "Stop! What are you doing?"
"That wasn't me!"
When Jgorga's snorts dissolved into raucous laughter at the ridiculousness of the thought of him setting the Alsantian supercontinent adrift, his sparking hilarity sizzled into rage at the first drop of excrement, then was fanned into a livid wrath as white drops pelted down, sticking to his fur, snout, ears, and tail. The birds showered him with such a dense storm of excrement that Isola backpedaled in dismay, towards the crunching, splintering advance of some earthshaking behemoth. While she wanted to turn her head towards the crashing, mashing racket coming up behind her, she could not tear herself away from the raccoon's just desserts, and she froze in her backwards step, between Jgorga's comeuppance, which she had long desired, and the fearsome unknown, which might, any second, grind her into the wreckage.
Covering his head with crossed arms, Jgorga ran out of the defecating rain, and though most had long since voided the entirety of their bowels on the poor raccoon, he was followed by a white drizzle so persistent, one might almost call it loyal. If she was not mistaken—she was neither a great authority on, nor a friend of many, birds—this persecutor was the one who had called Isola on her meanness toward Conrad, gone on to call Jgorga chubby, then called for a blinding crapstorm like so much white lightning.
"Stay away!" Isola pleaded. "Jgorga, don't touch me!"
"Behind you!" he called.
With one hand still stretched toward Jgorga as if she intended to banish the demon of defecation, she half-turned to the creaking destruction which overshadowed the almond trees, sending into sprightly, scurrying flight the gangly, monkeylike marsupials.
The towering contraption first reminded Isola of an iron scarecrow spangled with glinting gears until she was struck by its resemblance to the walker, if that vehicle could stand on its hind legs. At least twenty feet tall, the welded colossus rocked as it teetered over Isola and Jgorga, its vast stride clearing their heads with one step. A giddy laugh resounded as the swaying machine rounded a knotty tree, strode back, then clanked to its knees before Isola.
"Isola!"
"Lucien?" Nothing in the gargantuan automaton's endless gears and wires connected to her friend. Isola carefully trod around its demolishing feet, under which the broken sprigs of a sapling lay cracked and fragrant with a sweet smell, not unlike how she imagined Dr. Pepper, after Lucien had often described this marvelous potion.
A canopy of clear faceted stone bulged from the machine's massive chassis-torso, then popped open with a whirr and a hiss, disclosing Lucien gripping the controls.
"What are you doing?"
"Wow, Lucien," said Aito. "You haven't been home for five minutes."
"She said she didn't see why not," Lucien laughed with a hint of hysteria. His eyes swept along the wake of his destruction through The Architect's estate. "I could have told her, I suppose."
"What are you talking about?" said Isola. "Come down from there."
"That I couldn't control this thing."
"Look how much damage you did!" Conrad's voice dropped in hushed tones of awe. Behind the gigantic automaton, high branches dangled in splinters, low branches were fallen and trodden in the grass, and several saplings were pulverized, leaving drifting clouds of scraps, flecks, and wood dust. "You were just ahead of us."
"She was giving me the tour. No sooner than I saw this in her workshop, I asked, 'is that for riding in?' To which she said, 'Maybe. You'd be the first." When I shouted, "WHAT?", she said, "Give it a whirl for me.' My jaw dropped, and I froze in place, but she egged me on. 'Go on! What are you waiting for?'"
"The Architect—your mother—dared you to hop on her mad science experiment?"
"That's what I said! 'Are you daring me to do it?' To which she said, 'I don't see why you wouldn't want to. Your father would.'"
"That's what motivated you?"
"No." Lucien laughed. "I knew when I saw it that I wanted a ride."
Jgorga sighed wearily. "I'm glad you're not my responsibility any more. Maybe you can help us from here? Which way is The Architect?"
"Can't you see it? It's that way." Leaning back in the canopy, and coming dangerously close to spilling from his seat, Lucien pointed from whence he came.
"We're not as high up, Lucien. And I was joking. We'll follow your trail."
"I think I'll walk with you." Climbing onto the automaton's chest, Lucien shimmied down the torso.
"That's a big drop," said Aito. "Why not walk back in the machine, then use whatever ladder you climbed?"
"Not on your life," said Lucien. "I'm not riding this thing, not anymore. At least not today." Having reached the waist, Lucien dangled from there, then let go, landing on his feet in a backpedaling trot until he windmilled his arms to check his momentum. When Isola ran up to catch him, his back burst into her, knocking the wind out of her, and sending them tumbling in a jumbled backward somersault.
As Isola raised her head, Lucien's woozy eyes wavered under her angry ones, and she pushed herself out of their sprawl onto her hands and knees.
"Sorry, Isola."
"I should apologize. I got in the way."
After Aito and Akachi helped Lucien to his feet, they hiked through the debris-strewn path. When Lucien kept trying to make it to the front of their group, she joined him the first time, but when she realized his excitement was not in rejoining them, but in wanting to lead them to his new house, a crushing heat rose to her face, and she fell back toward Jgorga.
Aside from the tree carnage cutting a corridor through the wooded estate, The Architect's grounds were very green, overflowing with a profusion of trees, shrubs, and bushes, vines strewn so thick they were like veins and arteries, and stalks, sheaves, and flowers plotted so methodically, that they were surely the product of decades of cultivation. The Architect must be an inherited title, Isola mused, supposing all this growth could not have happened overnight, and this much transplanting would be a massive endeavor that would exhaust the coffers of anyone but the richest merchant princes. There were not only orchard trees, but aziaks, trucura, and simornul trees, each littered with a fecund spattering of capped, winged, and tailed seeds. The aziaks from the Luskveld were adorned with creeping orchids, which Isola was not happy to see, for the crawling plants always creeped her out, the way their blossoms tracked your progress warily, and the way they would waver in one place if you walked too fast, or stood too still. While she had been taught that their blossoms were not acual eyes, but only instinnctual sensors responding to vibrations and the shift from light to shadow caused by passing walkers. the creeping in her stomach nonetheless mirrored the creeping of the orchids.
When a bearded, brown-eyed face peeked from the mid-branches of a thicket, Isola thought it was one of the spidery monkeys, until its muscular forequarters stepped forward from the brush, followed by a dappled coat, powerful hindlegs, and mighty arms clenching a crude bow of horn and sinew. It was so massive that it was like a slope had snapped off, to shudder forward still surmounted by the shaggy bush of its head, from which a rippling red mane flowed like a penant, so massive and ropy that Isola would have struggled to lift it, and there was no question of riding such a creature, despite what the myths said about centaurs. Not for its fierceness, but for there being nowhere on its back free from the swish of its voluminous mane. While its long, uncropped tail was brushed and well-groomed, the centaur's face, etched with a dangerous scowl, sided with the barbaric mane. While its trot was cautious, Isola stepped back as if from an avalanche.
Most confusing of all was the centaur's bosom, which strained against her white woolen jacket in seeming contradiction to the wispy hair on its chin. Having never seen a centaur, not even in books or paintings, Isola would have been more awed by her first sight of a centaur if she was less bewildered by her realization that this mannish face belonnged to a woman.
As their weary group passed without a glance, Isola stopped, and Jgorga turned with a vacant expression that left room neither for recognition nor confusion, being too at sea in exhaustion. "Keep up, Isola. You want a bed, and I'm tired of being one for a bunch of kits."
Raising her wavering hand, Isola pointed, but by the time Jgorga shifted his bleary stare, he saw only a shiver in the thicket. "Never seen a rabbit before?"
"Rabbit? That was a centaur!"
"Centaurs don't exist."
"What do you mean they don't exist? There's one just over there."
"You saw something else. It's a shadowy wood."
"Jgorga!"
"Well, they did exist, but they're extinct. The Regent hunted their last tribe down to the last centaur."
"Not down to the last centaur. I'm telling you, I saw her."
"You saw a lady centaur, huh?" Jgorga grinned. "Then we can settle this. What did she look like?"
"She was beautiful. I've never seen anything like her."
"Beautiful," yawned Jgorga. "That cinches it. Centaur women have—"
"Beards, I know. She was beautiful despite that."
"That wasn't what I was going to say. Raccoon women have beards, you know. Technically, I'm all beard, head to toe."
"No you're not."
"I know, but I'm sure it looks like that to you. I was going to say that centaur women have breasts and udders. It's unnatural! They don't need to nurse babies on top and colts on bottom, you know, just centaur foals." After seeming to mull things over, Jgorga barked, "Conrad! Lucien! The rest of you kits!"
Once the children trotted back, Jgorga said, "We've been treating this like a preserve. From here, think of it as wilderness."
"From here, think of The Architect's preserve as wilderness."
"Wilderness? Through there, I see walls," said Chiyo.
"Isola saw something."
"What, like a bear or a wolf?" Conrad snickered. "I see a raccoon now."
While Jgorga's eyebrows raised, he did not dignify Conrad with a glance. "Nothing so civilized as talking animals, not by any stretch of the imagination. I won't say what. The shadows might have played tricks on her—"
"Jgorga!"
"—but since she has the details right, we'll act like she saw what she says she did."
"My mother's house is just over there."
"Then let's head straight there," said Jgorga.
Having crested a ridge crowned with rosebushes, they stared down at a wide creek, which were by no means rapids, but waist-deep waters spraying churning foam on the rocky shore.
"You neglected to mention this," said Aito. "We'll be soaked."
"I was in the strider," said Lucien.
"What's a strider?"
"That's what she calls it. She's a genius, but not very good with names, is she?"
"Her grace awaits us," said Jgorga. "I'll go first. Lucien next, to take the lead on the other side. The rest of you, focus on keeping your footing. There's no need to run."
When Jgorga rose on his hind legs and waded through the creek,
Isola yanked Lucien in with a splash that spattered Akachi and Aito, and sent Conrad flinching into Chiyo's arms.
"Do you still like me, Conrad?"
"Why would I stop?" Taking her wrist, Conrad took a sullen, savage plunge right after Lucien and Isola. By the time Akachi and Aito trundled in, the rapids whitened from the spray streaming from their wading bodies.
While they went in groaning, they came out giggling. Though no less dead on their feet on the other bank, they felt a little satisfied and a lot fresher.
It didn't feel right. When Isola could not put her finger on what was wrong, she surveyed them with a sweep of her head, and recognized what it was--they were all smiling. She had never seen them all smiling. Two waves washed away this happy realization: first, she remembered the Alsantian swarm coming for Teriana; second, she spotted the centaur, and this time, all their eyes were drawn to the hulking myth.
Whether the centaur was called by the roar of the agitated creek, or simply thirsty, she did not stop to explain, and bounded back into the bushes.
"I stand corrected." Jgorga's voice swelled full, as if on the verge of tears. "I thought they were all gone."
"What was that?" said Conrad.
"That was a centaur."
"What's a centaur?"
Lucien said, "you've never heard of a centaur?"
"Should I have?"
"Don't you read?"
"Centaurs are in books?" Conrad sighed, then smirked. "That makes a lot of sense, actually."
"What do you mean?"
"If we saw something from a book, then we're in a book, right?"
"I assure you," Jgorga said gravely, "Alsantia is very real, and you're standing in it."
"Maybe so, or maybe not. Maybe you're a dream too, Jgorga."
"Oh, you're definitely standing in it. About neck deep, I'd say."
When Conrad looked down to see his foot mired in a giantic log of manure, he stepped back, dragging the muck with him through the grass. "Uggh! Tell me this isn't centaur poop, Jgorga!"
Upon recovering from their burst of laughter, they continued through The Architect's estate. As they walked, they drizzled, until their shirts felt poured on, their pants sagged, and their feet swam inside their boots and sandals.
"Lucien! You're barefoot!" How had she not noticed? Or had she, and not thought anything of it, being used to the unshod peasants on her father's fief. Is that what she thought of Lucien? That he was a shoeless peasant? The moment of self-loathing dissolved in her smile as Lucien reddened in embarrassment. He cared what she thought--or, at least, he cared what she saw.
"Look!" Stunned by Conrad's shout, Isola's head jerked towards the direction of his outflung arm, pointing to the herd of unicorns. Though there was no fence, none of the grazing animals ranged beyond the meadow where the snorting beasts chuffed and chomped, paying less attention to them than they did to each other.
"Remember The Hare and the Unicorn?" asked Akachi. "Here are Alsantia's wild gluttons in the flesh."
"Glutton doesn't begin to cover it," said Isola.
"Unicorns are four-legged turkeys. My father's unicorn was such a bottomless pit that if we had released him into the wild, he might have eaten himself to death, or drowned, trying to drain a river down to the last drink."
"You could ride it, Chiyo," smirked Conrad.
"What?"
"You're pure after all."
"Pure? I'm twelve! And what does pure have to do with anything?
"It has to do with Conrad playing dumb," said Aito. "What else do you know about unicorns?"
"I'm wondering where he read that," said Lucien. "Even in Worlds class, he only ever used books for pillows."
"If he was playing dumb, it's the role he was born to play," said Isola. "If it didn't throw Chiyo instantly, it would run away faster than the gray stag, and we'd be lucky to see her again. Why does The Architect keep wild beasts, Lucien?"
"How would I know? You act as if I lived here all my life."
Having given a wide berth to the unicorns, they brushed through the prickly fringe of gigantic firs, where the tingly evergreen scent mingled with the odor of the misty river and its muddy banks.
Isola carried her mud-caked sandles as she trudged barefoot uphill to the crennelated battlements peering over the horizon. From this ridge, the tower ramped down into the vast building below, as if not masoned from stone, but poured from a volcano.
While Castle Ghulmarque had been open to a grassy bailey hung with criminal ornaments, and roared with hooves, lances splintering on cracking shields, and swords ringing on armored knights, the Architect's estate seemed less a castle than a factory, studded not only with stone towers but smokestacks billowing steam and smoke, shaking with the clinking of metal and stone work, and radiating an overwhelming warmth that drenched them in sweat and enveloped them in smog soup.
"We're in the wrong book," snickered Conrad. "This isn't a fairy tale castle, it's a supervillain lair."
From here, Lucien picked up his half-run to a sprint, and led them down to the loading bay, where stone, wood, and brick were being unloaded from a wagon, then walked into a vast interior on the scale of an airplane hangar. In rows of black iron scaffoldings linked to striders like the one Lucien had operated, one was empty, its restraining chains dangling, while a smaller empty rigging was at the level of the walker. Frameworks also stretched to dozens of contraptions in varying states of construction and disrepair, from bipedal automata with backwards-bending legs to octopedal vehicles with treaded tentacles that presumably rolled forward with a milling motion, to automobiles that might have seemed pefectly ordinary on Earth, were they not perched on ten foot long stilts, like a cross between a car and a flamingo.
While the dim lighting suggested that the cargo handlers were shabby and tattered, it was only tussled hair, matted and tufted from the sweat of their labor, that covered them head to toe, and ran thickest on goatish bow legs. They were only hairless on their hooves and bald pates, from which two glossy black horns, as thick at the base as coffee mugs, protruded into spirals that curved back to rest on their foreheads, before rolling back out into wicked points. While these kinked curls extended less than a foot, they were of such volume that if you could have hammered out the snarls, they would have been longer than swords.
"Lucien," whispered Conrad. "Satyrs?"
"Are you asking me or telling me? It sounds like you're more of an authority than I am."
"Where is it, Lucien?" The Architect's breezy yet strident voice channeled electricity which swept now not only through her hair but her entire body. "Where is my strider?" As she strode down the aisle of scaffolding, there was the trace of a smile, but her eyes were riveted to her son.
"Um, I can't even drive a car. You don't want me behind the wheel of your strider."
"Oh, I know," she laughed. "Mitras galloped here to bray about it."
"You mean your pet centaur," said Conrad.
"Prince Conrad, I gather."
"Please don't. Gather, I mean. I've been gathered here and there all over by Alsantia, first in an apple in an ogre's pocket, then by a sarcastic raccoon, then trigger-happy fairies, then giant stags."
"Poor little prince. You must be weary."
"If you mean dog tired, yeah, I'm as weary as they come."
"Ernastus and Clyre cook a feast suitable for so many lords and ladies, but if you'd rather be shown to your bed, or have a bath drawn, I'll send your plates to your rooms."
"Architect..." started Jgorga.
"If you promise to be better conversation over breakfast, you may call me Adjia."
"Adjia, there is no time. Prince Vemulus will return with his forces."
"Our spies say they were dispatched to Ephremia."
"Please, Architect..."
"Adjia."
"Adjia. When we escaped Ghulmarque, we had to take him with us."
The Architect's face froze into an anguished astonishment. "You didn't."
"We did."
After a long pause, Adjia said, "While he was your security in escape, your stratagem may have doomed Teriana. Already spited the throne, that wicked prince won't let a grudge slide. He will crack our walls and burn our homes to have you in his grasp."
"I don't care!" Conrad's voice broke mid-yell, so that it was part boyish screech and part mannish holler. "I'm tired. I have to sleep, whether it's a cell or a tree branch. If we can't sleep here, I'll hide in Adjia's woods and take my chances."
"Just walk into his camp," snorted the raccoon. "That would be faster, if death is what you're after."
"I'm so tired, Jgorga!"
"Surely Vemulus won't come tonight."
"Maybe not," said Jgorga. "But before we cram food in our mouths and crawl sluggishly into soft beds, we must plan our departure."
"Someone stop him," moaned Conrad. "I've traveled with that raccoon since I set foot on Alsantia."
"Not strictly true," snickered Jgorga, "but literally true, since you were a worm up until then."
"Please," begged Conrad. "He'll wake me up so before the sun rises. You see how he is! Vemulus couldn't be much worse!"
"I don't see the need for such an early departure," said the Architect. "We'll take the walkers."
"What good will your toys be when Suvani besieges Teriana?" Jgorga grumbled
"If they barricade our departure, we'll take the striders."
Jgorga's heart sank at the thought of towering so high. Having climbed trees higher than the striders, and knowing the Luskveld's road of branches well enough to walk them in his sleep, Jgorga was unafraid of heights, but knew a raccoon's place was neither in a cockpit nor a treetop. As the humans yammered about which teetering contraption would convey them faster and further from the impending siege, Jgorga realized it wasn't just that they were talking nonsense, they weren't thinking sensibly.
"He'll never allow it."
As if sparked by his muttering, the Architect's eyes glinted back. "You mean Audren."
"If we want to leave, it has to be now. Before Audren worries about loyalties and assets."
Conrad groaned. "My bed!"
The Architect mused. "While he's running ahead of rumors."
"Yes. Today, he's heading off imminent panic. Tomorrow, he won't be able to deny the advancing armies, and his eyes will be on keeping pieces in play."
"Then we can't take the walkers or the striders."
"I'm afraid not." Within Jgorga's crestfallen exterior, the grateful raccoon breathed a sigh of relief. "Audren would detain any convoy that looked like an exodus, if only to save himself the trouble of explaining your departure to his anxious people. And tomorrow, he will have his excuse to conscript you for city defense."
"Ridiculous," sniffed Adjia. "Audren wouldn't dare stop me from coming or going as I please. I meant only that we must take the omnibus."
"The what?" barked Jgorga.
"The omnibus." The Architect smiled, then lazily pointed beyond the row of walkers to a hulking steel behemoth much like a cross between a submarine and a cockroach, having six metallic legs stretching twenty feet from the floor to prop up a tubular iron carapace studded with rivets and embedded with black windows of such opacity, they at first seemed the drowsy pupils of a dozing beast.
In an awed hush, Chiyo said, "is that a camper?"
"You weren't listening." Adjia sighed. "While the omnibus never passed beyond prototype, being abundantly more expensive in time and material than the striders or walkers, when I left off, it was fully functioning."
"Are there beds?" asked Conrad.
"While I had intended a half-dozen cushioned recliners, I only installed the first two. While we must pack bedrolls, we have more room for luggage. We'll leave within the hour."
Beckoning to her sweaty satyr crew, Adjia baaed and bayed in their goatish tongue, ending with a magnanimous sweep of her arm that encompassed the rows of machines.
"They're not coming with us?" Jgorga asked.
"Should I leave my loyal staff to the mercies of Vemulus?"
"But..."
"You needn't worry," said Adjia. "I left orders to man the walkers and striders if the city is besieged, or if Audren orders it. I am a loyal Terianan."
"Shouldn't we stay?" said Lucien. "If you're Terianan, I am too."
"Loyalty knows its limits, Lucien. You're my son. And what of your friends? Have I the right to keep so many young lords and ladies underfoot when a siege is coming? When you're safe, I'll return to the defense of my homeland, or if I'm too late, I'll go to Ephremia."
"We're already too late," said Jgorga. "It will be all we can do to leave the city. We head for Ephremia now."
Adjia's brows knitted, and she turned, waved them toward the omnibus, then led them to that immense metal insect. "To what purpose, Jgorga."
"Without allies, there is no future for Teriana."
"Do we have an ally in Ephremia?"
"The enemy of my friend and so forth," said Jgorga.
"Would it be enough? An army that size goes where it wants. Even if the Queen's armies are hit in a two-pronged attack, we could not stop such a large host from retreating to more advantageous positions. While our losses would be grievous, every petty gain would be wasted when they redeployed. And having come to lift our siege, The Ephremians would leave their own lands ripe for conquest and entrench their forces in a gruelling, profitless battle. If I was their queen, I would decline the honor of an alliance."
While Adjia rattled along as if talking to herself, her mutter was as crisp as a stage whisper, and Jgorga heeded every word. "What of Gaona?"
"Whose army numbers less than fifty."
"But their navy has sixty ships of war."
"Aside from stemming the flow of supplies, they are little good in a land battle.' Adjia sighed. "But what choice do we have? By the time I take you to safety, I will not be able to return except in the Ephremian forefront. We go to Ephremia."
Despite their urgency to leave, it took twenty minutes. After the satyrs loaded the omnibus with sleeping rolls, chests, crates, and lidded crocks, the children crossed the swaying mesh bridge into the capacious steel shell, which echoed with their anxious breathing and shuffling feet.
Pausing by one of the padded passenger seats, Conrad then stepped further back into the cavernous interior to sit cross-legged on the floor, leaning on a sleeping bag.
"Conrad," growled Jgorga. "don't pretend to be self-sacrificing, then moan about your seat all the way to Ephremia."
"Oh, I plan on taking my turn," said Conrad. "But Isola and Chiyo should go first."
"I say Lucien," said Isola. " He was captured and has been under more stress than all of us."
"And under more reward," said Conrad sullenly.
"You don't have to ask me twice." Throwing himself in the cushioned seat, Lucien buckled the seat belt loosely, turned onto his side, and struck such a perfect attitude of repose that he was at least halfway to dreamland already.
Having paused by Lucien's seat, Isola headed back to squat against a bedroll, her head bent in a sullen, wide-eyed glare. Jgorga stifled his grin. The young aristocrat was not accustomed to being called on her magnanimous offers.
"I had hoped Agassus might have made his way back by now." Adjia settled into the pilot's seat, flicked a few instruments on the panel, and gripped the levers. "He always wanted to give the omnibus a whirl."
"It's not tested?" said Aito.
"What do you take me for?" groused the Architect. "Every gear, strut, tube, and wire, having passed every conceivable test, was perfectly calibrated before assembly."
"That's good then," said Chiyo hopefully, belting herself in the seat beside Lucien.
"That said, it's never left this dock."
"As if that wasn't what I meant," howled Aito.
"As if I had the time to play with all my creations." Having heaved a sigh of discontent, Adjia looked back fondly, her gaze coming to rest on Lucien, who was now snoring. "I should make the time." Pushing both levers forward, the gigantic contraption pitched backward, a precarious motion that jarred the underframe, rattling finger bones, toe bones, and teeth.
"Aggh!"
"We're going to die!" shouted Conrad.
"No," said the Architect testily, "I forgot to detach the mooring chain." On tucking forward to unbuckle herself, the creaking chain whipped from its restraining bar, and the omnibus lurched back in a shambling backpedal. Although Adjia seized the levers, tilted them forward, then ratcheted them to the side, the omnibus remained poised in a slant so steep that Chiyo wedged into the cushioned seat and stared very nearly straight up, and the others had settled atop the jumbled luggage. While Lucien also lolled onto his back, and his closed eyelids pointed through the windshield to the hangar roof, it was clear now that he was not pretending, having fallen fast asleep.
With two shambling steps, the omnibus's backwards shuffle cleared the dock, where Agassus stood by the restraining bar, his hand hanging mid-air.
Having undone the latch and popped the left window, the Architect yelled, "I should revoke your hangar privileges."
"Then who would drive you whereever you're going?"
"I had nominated myself," huffed Adjia.
"All the way there? And back?" The badger whistled.
"You don't even know where we're going! Am I not qualified to take us on a family outing?"
"While I may not be qualified for hangar work," said Agassus, "everyone knows The Architect doesn't hire fools."
"What's that supposed to mean? You know what? Never mind. Get in."
"If you'll be so kind." The badger gestured to the span between the omnibus and the dock, and the mesh bridge dangling alongside.
"No one ever said The Architect was kind."
"Yes they do. Not that I would ever be so bold."
"Climb, badger." While not a clever rejoinder, as this command was uttered with the awful finality of a king's last word and underscored by Adjia's scowl, their banter ceased, and leaping from the dock scaffolding to the mechanical leg, Agassus climbed as spryly as a badger half his age.
As his Architect slid to the copilot's chair, buckled herself in, then inspected the spinning wheels and buzzing apertures on that side of the dash, the badger took the helm with a look of glee, gripped the levers in his paws, and levelled the omnibus—producing a sigh of mingled relief and indignation, as those jumbled in the back subsided with the heaped luggage—then turned it in the narrow aisle with such confidence, precision, and certainty that only he was unflinching when the omnibus nose scraped a neighboring dock. Having yawed out into the aisle, the omnibus made a booming elephantine stomp for the hangar doors, which raised at the last minute, producing only a creaking gasp in the children, whose reservoir of shock and awe was drained nearly dry.
"Agassus," said Adjia.
"Yes, ma'am."
"As I'm no longer amused by your pranks, and the rest of your audience is children, you needn't cut it so close."
"Ma'am!" The badger's wounded, plaintive tone was so deliberately theatrical that Jgorga shuddered. "As if I would bully the Architect's son."
"I would never think so, Agassus, if I didn't know you."
Having vented a reluctant smile, the grumbling badger heaved on the levers until the omnibus quickened to a rapid gait.
From atop the chest he came to rest upon, Jgorga saw only gray sky and a patch of cloud peeking through the windshield. How were the Terianans taking the galloping steam-and-magic machine, he wondered. Were they fleeing madly, or briskly stepping to the sidewalk, frowning and gossiping about their eccentric Architect? Or was the city deserted, its people clamoring at the gates, for fear of the advancing army?
"What do you see?" asked Jgorga.
"Who, me?" shouted the badger. "The road."
"Does it look like a normal day in Teriana to you?"
"Other than the shadow cast by this lumbering monstrosity, and the agitated throng yielding to our drumming steps? While I like a sunny day, they're one harsh word away from rioting, so I would have to say no."
"Very helpful." Jgorga said, in a sarcastic tone that said the badger was being anything but helpful.
"Do you want to drive?"
"We'd walk to Ephremia if I had my way."
"Why don't you? Stuck up raccoon," grumbled the badger.
"Be courteous to our guests, Agassus."
"He's casting aspersions on my driving. Wait--what's that?"
"Tell us, don't ask us!" Jgorga let loose an exasperated sigh.
"It's the gate."
"We're already at the gate?" asked Conrad.
"Yes and no."
"Don't be so obtuse!" shouted Jgorga.
"Don't go through!" Adjia exclaimed, and the omnibus rang with Jgorga's bellowing,
then the shrieking of the children, who screamed despite being blind to the unknown provoking such fright. "Agassus, don't!"