They both look up, faces covered with a mixture of dirt and blood. Gus’ face breaks into a relieved grin. He whispers to Ellie, “see? What did I tell you?”
Something warm washes through me at the thought that his reassuring whispers had centered around me. I hope I don’t disappoint them.
“stand back,” Josephine orders me, and I jump out of her way as she places her hands flat against the lock of the cell. Now we’re not doing normal servant stuff, and evidently the guards have noticed. The tooth-picker heaves himself off the wall and starts toward us, boots clumping as he comes, “herr, now,” he says gruffly, “what are you two up to?”
I stand in front of Josephine, hyper aware that I haven’t got anything on me, no swords, no daggers. Only a black diamond that was slowly infecting the world. What exactly was I going to fight him off with? “the empress wants these two…er…bathed.” I managed to squeak out.
Toothpicker looks confused. His bushy caterpillar eyebrows shoot up all the way to the brim of his dirty cloth cap, he repeats the word as though he’s never heard it before, “bathed?”
“Yes,” I speak loudly, hoping to drown out the sound of Josephine muttering her spell to break the lock, “can’t you smell them? They’re disgusting! The smell offends the high empress very much! She has decreed that the prisoners must smell like…um, lavender. At all times.”
“Lavender?” Toothpicker scratches his head through his cap, looking completely perplexed. Behind me I heard the ping of metal unlocking and say loudly, “Yes! Have you two had your lavender bath yet?”
Now his furry brows creep down, creasing together in concern. He’s clearly wondering if he’s missed something, some important talk they all had without him. I have to keep myself from grinning, “you didn’t get the memo? Oh…wow, you had better get up there. She might be really mad.”
For a moment I think it’s going to work. He’s going to turn on his heel and run upstairs and demand to know about the lavender bath he missed, but then he leans to the left and peers over my shoulder, just in time to see Gus and Ellie slipping out the open door of the cell, and something registers in his face. He knows he’s being duped. I brace myself to run at him, trying to decide if I should go for the head but or punch him in the stomach. I’m just bracing myself for the stomach punch, when the tooth-picking guard’s eyes roll up into the back of his head, and he falls over backwards with a resounding crash.
“Go!” Josephine’s voice rings through the passageway, “he won’t be out for long!”
Before I turn, I see the sleeping guard start to stir at all the noise, and then I’m pelting widly down the tunnel, following close on the heels of Josephine. We zig zag left and right with the tunnel, panicked gasping and echoing footsteps blending together, hearts beating wildly. I imagine one set of footsteps must be the guard, and I wish Josephine would run faster, imagining a blade suddenly piercing my back.
Suddenly there’s daylight, blaring in my face as Gus flings open the door in front of us. We stumble out one after the other, plowing into one another’s backs like dominos. I turn hastily, shoving the door shut as hard as I can in case the guard is still chasing us. A dull “thunk” reverberates through the surface of the door, signifying that he was indeed. I can’t help a little smile in spite of everything, picturing him running his ugly face right into the thick oak door.
“No time,” Josephine pants, “not out of the woods yet.”
There are no woods, but when I look around I see what she means. We’re still very much in the palace “area”. We appear to have stepped into some kind of oriental garden, complete with graceful red maple trees and a perfectly round pond with stepping stones in the middle. A white lattice fence runs around one side, covered in creeping green vines. It’s utterly out of place in Bristol, wildly beautiful, and I want nothing more than to get the hell out of here and never have to see it again. Josephine is already heading for the crack in the low, sandstone wall that runs around the outside of the palace, and it doesn’t look as though there’s going to be anyone to stop us getting through. I catch up to Josephine and shoot her a grin as we race through the gap in wall, panting out, “that went well!”
She only gives me a narrow glance and says, “that wasn’t the hard part. Keep running.”
We obey, but when I glance over my shoulder I can see we’re not being followed. Probably the guards are all crowding around the dungeon scratching their heads. I have a feeling the two who saw us make a break for it aren’t going to be conscious for quite some time. I can’t help but think though, as I stare at the back of Josephine’s flowing robes, that there was something very foreboding in her voice. That had felt like the hard part to me….
Finally, when all of us are completely and utterly spent, we pause, gasping and choking, trying to get our breath back. I brace my hands on my knees and it takes me several long moments before I can recover. When I finally look up I see we’re in some kind of market square. There are a dozen tables set up in a circle, complete with colorful canvas tents to keep the rain off. There are shoppers crowding around the fruit and vegetable carts, some of them are glancing over their shoulders at us, but most of them don’t even notice the four, panting, slightly panicked looking people that had just burst into the square.
After a second Josephine looked at the three of us and said grimly, “Now. Now comes the hard part.”
My hand strays to my pocket subconsciously, feeling the sharp edges of the black diamond. This has to be what she’s talking about. The hard part.
Josephine’s face is serious, she appears to straighten, as if she’s fortifying herself, steeling herself for what’s coming next.
“We have to destroy it, right?” I ask, anxiously, “the diamond? It has to be destroyed before…before….whatever. The end of the world.”
“Yes,” the word comes out on a breath of exhaled air, and the witch seemed to deflate a little, “but it won’t be easy.”
I fish in my pocket and draw the black diamond out, cupping it in my hand so that it rests in my palm, concealing it from the crowd around us, “how do we do it?”
“There’s something I need to tell you all first,” Josephine says, and her voice is deadly serious, “the diamond…it isn’t just a diamond.”
“Well, yes…” Ellie says, “it causes people to turn into horrible monsters.”
“Not just that,” Josephine’s eyes flick nervously to each of our faces, “when I do destroy it, we’re going to have more trouble on your hands than you can possibly imagine.”
“What sort of trouble?” I grip the diamond tightly enough that the edges bite into my palm, “What do you mean?”
“The diamond is a carrier, a vessel. The thing that makes it black isn’t just magic, it’s…a soul…” she trails off helplessly and I gape at her in disbelief, “a soul?”
“The soul of a black wizard. I trapped him in it years and years ago,” she shakes her head, “I had no idea his…his evil would leak out the way it did. That it would cause…whatever that plague is. It’s my fault. I should have known he would find some way to release some last, horror on everyone.”
“So…the diamond is a…person?” I’m struggling with the concept, fingers still wrapped tightly around the black rock, “someone’s soul is trapped in here?”
“A dark magician,” Josephine says, “someone who needed to be stopped at any cost.” She glances down at my closed fist, “well…at almost any cost.”
“So when you…drain it…or, break the spell or whatever you have to do…”
“He’ll be released,” Josephine finished, “and he’ll be mad. And powerful.” She’s looking straight at me now, “and there’s nobody with enough magic around for miles to take him on. He’ll completely destroy Bristol…unless….”
I’m painfully aware that everyone is suddenly staring at me, “unless someone fights him that has no magic…” my stomach is suddenly doing back flips, “like….an anti-mage.”
“Exactly,” she says, “his magic will have no effect. It will be like fighting an average man.”
“With no sword,” I say pointedly, “not even a dagger.”
She nods, “we don’t have much time, but I think we can afford to take a few hours. I have a friend who will hide us while I try to dig something up for you. Follow me.”
Suddenly we’re in motion again, slipping through the crowd with as much subtly as possible. Josephine leads us through a few crooked back alleys, where the houses are all crowded together and falling apart all at the same time. Finally we stop in front of one of them, a tiny, cramped little shack with yellow light shining through the windows. Josephine raps once on the door, waits for a moment and then knocks again. Footsteps echo from the other side of the door and then the hinges creak, revealing a single blue eye that peers out at us suspiciously.
“Yes?”
“Elizabeth, it’s Josephine.”
“Josie!” the door rasps inwards, revealing the dim interior of the little house. The woman standing there is short and round, with a mop of straggly grey hair. The house is really more of a room, there’s a modest hearth in the corner, with a cheerful orange fire that casts light off the grey walls. There are bundles of herbs hanging on metal hooks from the ceiling, dried flowers and grasses.
The woman rubs her hands nervously as we file in, peering out into the street behind us, as if she’s afraid we’re being followed, “Josephine,” she croaks, “you left the palace? Did she let you go? Did you…part ways amicable?”
“Not as such,” Josephine says, and Elizabeth bobs up and down rubbing her hands together anxiously, “Yes, I thought so. Yes. Nobody followed you? No one knows you’re here?”
“No one,” she said, and I’m about to go out for something, I’ll cast a protection spell around the house as I leave. It will only be for a few hours, will you be alright?”
“Yes, yes that’s fine.”