A Crystal of Time. Soman Chainani

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СКАЧАТЬ at the hole with her thumbnail, feeling the mildewed stone crumble. Clearly the dungeons, like the rest of the run-down castle, hadn’t been fortified or maintained. With the tip of her hair clip, Nicola pulled away more dirt and stone, which widened the hole a smidge bigger, more light spearing through.

      “I see . . . sunlight . . . and the slope of a hill. . . .”

      “Sunlight?” Hort scoffed. “Nic, I know they do things differently in Reader World, but in our world, dungeons are below ground.”

      “Is that one of the perks of having a boyfriend? Having him explain things to me I already know?” said Nicola acidly, squinting through the hole. “Dungeons might be below ground, but we’re right up against the side of the hill. It’s the only explanation for why I can see the castle.” She scraped away more dirt with her clip. “I see people too. Lots of people packed uphill. They’re looking up at the Blue Tower. Must be watching Rhian . . .”

      The king’s voice echoed louder through the hole.

      “For as long as you’ve lived, you’ve served a pen. No one knows who controls this pen or what it wants and yet you worship it, praying it will write about you. But it never does. Thousands of years, it’s ruled these Woods. What do you have to show for it? Each new story, it chooses someone else for glory. The educated. The children of that school. And leaves scraps for you, the hardworking, the invisible. You, the real stories of the Endless Woods.”

      The crew could hear the people buzzing.

      “Never talked that much when he was with us,” Dot mused.

      “Give a boy a stage,” Anadil quipped.

      “Nicola, can you see the balcony where Rhian is?” Dovey asked.

      Nicola shook her head.

      Professor Dovey turned to Hester. “Have your demon chip at that hole. We need a view of the stage.”

      Hester frowned. “Maybe you can turn pumpkins into carriages, Professor, but if you think my demon can get us out by boring a tunnel through a wall—”

      “I didn’t say ‘get us out.’ I said ‘chip at that hole.’ But if you prefer to doubt me while we lose our chance at rescue, then by all means,” Professor Dovey snapped.

      Hester cursed under her breath as her demon tattoo swelled red on her neck, lifted clean off her skin, and flew towards the hole, jabbing its claws like pickaxes and garbling grunty gibberish: “Babayagababayagababayaga!”

      “Careful,” Hester mothered, “your claw is still wounded from Nottingham—”

      She froze, catching a black blur of movement through the hole. Her demon spotted it too and recoiled in fear . . . but it was already gone.

      “What is it?” said Anadil.

      Hester bent forward, inspecting the hole in the stone. “Looked like . . .”

      But it couldn’t have been, she thought.

      The Snake’s dead. Rhian killed him. We saw his body—

      “Wait a second. Did you say ‘rescue’?” Dot said, twirling to Dovey. “First of all, you heard Willam: there’s no way out of this prison. Second, even if there was and we summoned the League of Thirteen or anyone else, what would they do . . . storm Camelot? Rhian has guards. He has the whole Woods behind him. Who on the outside could possibly rescue us?”

      “I never said it’d be someone on the outside,” said Professor Dovey intently.

      The whole crew looked at her.

      “Sophie,” said Hort.

      “Rhian needs Sophie,” Good’s Dean explained. “Every King of Camelot needs a queen to consolidate his power, especially a king like Rhian who is so new to the people. Meanwhile, the Queen of Camelot is as vaunted a position as her counterpart. It’s why Rhian took careful steps to ensure Sophie—a legend and beloved face across the Woods—would be his queen. As the people see it, the best of Good is marrying the best of Evil, which raises Rhian above the politics of Evers and Nevers and makes him a convincing leader to both. Plus, having Sophie as queen will calm any doubts about having a mysterious stranger as king. So now that that king has his ring on Sophie’s finger, he will do everything he can to keep her loyalty . . . but in the end, she’s still on our side.”

      “Not necessarily,” said Reena. “The last time Sophie wore a boy’s ring, it was Rafal’s, and she sided with him against the whole school and nearly killed us all. And now you want us to trust the same girl?”

      “This isn’t the same girl,” Professor Dovey challenged. “That’s why Rhian handpicked her to be his queen. Because Sophie is the only person in the Woods who both Good and Evil claim as their own—at once the slayer of an Evil School Master and now Evil’s new Dean. But we know where Sophie’s true loyalties lie. None of you can argue that everything she’s done on this quest has been to protect both her crew and Tedros’ crown. She accepted Rhian’s ring because besides being enamored with him, she thought he was Tedros’ liege. She took Rhian’s hand because of her love for her friends, not in spite of it. No matter what Sophie has to do to stay alive, we cannot doubt that love. Not when our own lives depend on her.”

      Beatrix frowned. “I still don’t trust her.”

      “Me either,” said Kiko.

      “Join the club,” said Anadil.

      Professor Dovey ignored them. “Now for the rest of the plan. We’ll wait for Anadil’s rats to return with news of the others. Then, when the time comes, we’ll send Sophie a message through that hole and establish a chain of communication. From there, we can plot our rescue,” she said, checking on the quarter-sized breach that Hester’s demon had managed to bash out of the wet, cracked stone. Rhian’s speech amplified louder through it—

      “And let’s not forget my future queen!” he proclaimed.

      The people sang back: “Sophie! Sophie! Sophie!”

      “Can you see the stage yet, Nicola?” Professor Dovey pressured.

      Nicola leaned forward, eye to the hole: “Almost. But it’s so far uphill and we’re on the wrong side of it.”

      Dovey turned to Hester. “Keep your demon digging. We need a view of that stage, no matter how remote.”

      “Why? You heard the girl,” Hester pestered, wincing vicariously as her demon punched at the hole with its injured claw. “What good is a pea-sized rear view—”

      “One of Rhian’s pirate guards will likely check on us soon,” Dovey continued. “Hort, given your father was a pirate, I’m assuming you might know these boys?”

      “No one I’d call a friend,” Hort punted, picking at his sock.

      “Well, try to befriend them,” Dovey urged.

      “I’m not befriending a bunch of thugs,” Hort shot back. “They’re mercenaries. They’re not real pirates.”

      “And СКАЧАТЬ