"When, then?"

"Soon. Trust me. I will find a way. I must be careful. You know how powerful the Pretender is. If he knew I was here now, he might send the Silent Guardian." I felt a shiver, of fear go through her; the same chill touched me.

But she was right. I couldn't tolerate her torment much longer. The soft swell of her belly under the dress was an accusation. I told myself that I would find a way, no matter what obstacles the Pretender placed in my way.

The strength is within you, she had told me. I wish that I felt it were really true.

"I won't let them hurt you anymore," I whispered to her, the Princess with Kelly's face. I said the words, and they became a vow, a resolution. "I will make you a way out. Believe me."

Before she could answer, there was the sound of nearby bolts being loosed. I felt a rush of panic. I kissed the tips of her fingers before I hurried away from her into the darkness of the Catacombs and the long stairs under the Ruined Castle. I began the long climb back to the sun.

The ascent was becoming more difficult every time. The hallways of the Catacombs had shrunk, pressing inward. I seemed heavier and much larger. My body barely fit in the passageway. The stones tore at my leather clothing, holding me back and making it difficult to maneuver through the twisting turns of the labyrinth.

Exhausted and bloody, I paused at the landing where the crevice led to the caverns. The crevice had widened as the Catacombs had diminished. The opening was now easily large enough for me to fit through. I looked into the caverns beyond-there was a figure there. I thought for a moment that it was the toadlike presence of the Pretender, and my heart hammered against my ribs while my breath came harsh and quick. I held my torch high, letting the light shatter on the crystalline walls. I pulled the rapier from my belt.

The penguin laughed at me. "You don't need that here, Fatboy. What a fucking scaredy-cat."

"I'm not scared," I told him. "The Outcast is never scared."

"Yeah. Right. That's why you've let your Princess sit in her cell for so long. That's why she's knocked up. That's why you've always tried to get someone else to do your dirty work. You're scared, all right, or you'd've done something." The penguin cocked its head at me. "You gonna stay out there, or are you afraid of the dark?"

The penguin's scorn made me scowl. I scrambled through the rocky opening into the cool air of the caverns. Shadows fled the light of my torch. This place was vast: I could not see the roof or the far walls. Blackness hinted of openings leading out into secret ways and further caverns.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"It's your dream. You fucking tell me. All I know is that it's big and there're places here I wouldn't care to stay, and other places so damn beautiful, it makes me cry. It's a place. That's all. Big enough for everyone and all the horrors and beauty that the Rox can dream."

The penguin looked at me strangely. "So, when you gonna do something?"

"When the time is right."

The penguin hawked and spat an enormous glob of spittle at its feet. Centipedes crawled from the rocks and lapped at the moisture. "Bullshit again. The time is now"

"The Pretender's still too strong, even with the death of the Overlord."

"Nope. You're too weak. It's time for you to grow up, Fatboy."

With those words, the penguin sounded exactly like my father. "Just shut up!" I shouted back at him. Shadows moved in the darkness, as if my words had stirred unseen creatures to life. "What the hell do you know?"

"I know that you're acting like a kid afraid of the neighborhood bully," the penguin told me. "I also know that for as big as you are, you just don't think big enough."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"You really love her? Then get her out. Do something."

"I don't know how!" I told the penguin in anguish, and my voice was a wail.,

"I'll help you, Governor. Let me help you."

My whole body shuddered. The dream had dissolved. I found myself in the lobby, and Peanut was looking up at me with trust and loyalty and sadness in his mind. His wide sympathetic eyes, caught in their eternal hard folds of skin, gazed at me.

"Peanut-"

"It'd be best that way. Really. I know the way through the caves to her better than anyone. All you have to do is make an opening into her cell. You can do that, can't you?"

He looked up at me with those trusting eyes. "I can lead her through the caves, get into a boat, and take her to where she'd be safe. No one would know, Governor."

"No," I said. I couldn't send a whole contingent of jokers-that would start a civil war here, and the jokers would inevitably lose. I couldn't afford to oppose Blaise directly, and with Latham gone, I had no more leverage within the jumper camp. So many people gone: K. C., Latham, Zelda…

I smiled at Peanut. So simple and confident and faithfulhe believed that there was always a way. He believed that Good always had to win in the last reel.

And so, I guess, did I.

I felt the same stirrings of something that I'd felt when I'd made the caves, and I knew that, yes, I could make the door into her cell. I could do that much, I was certain.

"Let me think about it," I told Peanut.

Lovers

The little room under the eaves was a stupendous improvement over the basement cell. There was a narrow window, and she could watch the sun set. She had a cot and folding metal chair, and once a day her guards took her for a walk about the perimeter of the hospital building. The food was no better, but at least there was more of it. But unfortunately she was, for the most part, denied the things most necessary to a breeding female-milk, fresh green vegetables, fruit. But as the days and weeks passed, as she became rounder and rounder, she developed a grudging respect for Illyana even as the baby made her more and more ungainly.

"You are a tough little bitch, aren't you? Fed on next to nothing, and you still thrive. That's your Takisian bloodmakes you a fighter."

Tachyon was sitting on the chair gazing out the window at a truly lovely sunset, provided courtesy of Manhattan's smog. It was beastly hot up under the eaves. Tach lifted the skirt of her dress, opened her legs even wider than was necessary to accommodate the bulge of her belly, and farmed herself vigorously. And for the hundredth time she made herself-and the illusory wife she might someday possess, should fate and fortune smile and restore her to her rightful body-the promise that she would never force a woman to endure a pregnancy in the summer.

A small knot of jumpers emerged from the door four stories below and walked toward the trees. Tach leaned forward, more from force of habit than any real drive, and studied them. Fell back when there was no glint of copperred hair. Her body was not among them.

This complacency was a recent development. In the beginning, she had peered from the window. During her walks, she had cast about like a hunting hound seeking desperately for a glimpse of herself, but the Tachyon body remained stubbornly out of sight. Now it was hard to arouse that level of concern. Her focus had narrowed to the room, and more importantly to what was occurring within her borrowed body.

She was content to sit for hours listening to her heart beat, weaving her thought colors through the fabric and colors of the baby's thoughts, singing Takisian lullabies she had thought long forgotten.

The grate of the key in the lock brought her head around, a frown of puzzlement between the blond brows. One of her guards, his mouth slack, drool running down his chin, jerked zombielike into the room. Her body was behind him. The reaction ran like fire along her nerve endings. Tach came to her feet, stared hungrily at her own body.