There was another sound behind the roaring of their many unknowable engines. There was a rising whine of power, which became sharper and harder as the pieces converged, and arcs of scarlet lightning leaped between the parts, and down from the descending tenth, to connect with the nine below: a spitting, blazing net of energies drawing them together.

Below them all, still raised high in Mater Motley’s hand, was the beacon bone. The Old Mother kept her eyes turned skyward watching the convergence. But the moment that Maratien covered her ears and closed her eyes she knew.

“What are you doing, girl? I didn’t bring you up here to have you whimper like a beaten child.”

“It’s too much.”

“Too much? This?” She reached down, her fingers suddenly horrifically long, digging into the girl’s hair and scalp. “Open your eyes!” she shrieked. “Or I’ll have the lids off them, so you’ll never close them again.”

“No, please, Mother, please! I’m just afraid!”

“I said: OPEN YOUR EYES!”

“Please, I can’t. Don’t make me.”

Mater Motley glanced down at the girl, with her face buried in the souls sewn to her gown. “Is that where you want to be, Maratien? You want to be wrapped up forever in a place you’ll be safe?”

Maratien didn’t open her eyes. She simply nodded and sobbed.

Mater Motley looked down at her with utter contempt on her face.

“You disappoint me, girl,” the Old Mother said. “You bore and weary and disappoint me. But if that’s what the child wants, who am I to deny her?”

“Thank you,” Maratien said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Oh don’t thank me too quickly, girl,” the Old Mother said. “Wait a hundred years.”

The fingers in Maratien’s scalp dug farther still, plunging into her thoughts and memories, reaching down with her needle fingers in search of the part she would keep: the soul.

Too late, Maratien understood the significance of the Old Mother’s words.

“No, Mother, please! No, I didn’t mean. No, no, no—”

Her words dissolved into a single shriek as Mater Motley’s fingers found her essence and closed around it. In desperation Maratien reached up and attempted to catch hold of the invading hand but before she could do so the will to act was taken from her in that same instance as her soul.

Out of the girl’s head the Old Mother drew the girl’s last light, delivering it into one of the countless rag dolls that were sewn to her gown, still awaiting a soul.

Mater Motley returned her gaze to the glories of the convergence that blazed above, allowing her hand to linger in Maratien’s head only long enough to raise the puppet corpse to its feet, then let it go. Gravity did the rest. The body toppled backward, and dropped off the point of the Needle Tower.

Just as the ten parts of the Stormwalker touched and fused, Maratien’s body met the ground. There it broke open, its pungent scent alerting scavengers from every direction to come partake of the feast while it was still warm.

Chapter 48

Smiles

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Gazza asked. He had appeared over the top of the sand dune behind which Candy was summoning up a glyph big enough for two.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she told him. “I’m not even supposed to be looking at you.”

“Well, I am and you are.”

“Yes, so I see.”

“So where are you going? I know what you’re doing. I may be just a fisherman but I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You’re making a glyph. You’re flying away somewhere, leaving me—”

“I’m not leaving you. I’m going to find Finnegan.”

“Oh, good. So I can come?”

“No. I didn’t say—”

“You just said you weren’t leaving me.”

“Where’s Malingo?”

“All right, if you have to go, at least show me how to make a glyph for myself so I can follow you. I will. I can do anything if I want something badly enough.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“And I want to be wherever you are.”

“Gaz . . .”

“Is that wrong?”

“No. It’s not wrong. It’s just a bad time, that’s all.”

“You showed Malingo. He told me. So show me!”

“No!”

He ran down the slope of the dune at a rush, his piebald features bright with fury in the light off the solidifying glyph.

“You think I’m like all the rest, don’t you?”

“I don’t want you to get bent out of shape, but we don’t have time for this, Gaz.”

She turned her back on his stare.

“I’m not,” he said.

Candy stared hard at the ground, trying to remember where in the glyph summons she’d been. She was tired, and her fatigue was starting to affect her ability to get things done.

“Not what?”

“I’m not like all the others,” he said. He came around to the other side of the glyph so that she couldn’t continue to avoid engaging his stare. “I’m not waiting for the miraculous Candy Q to come up with all the answers—”

“Well, that’s good because I haven’t got any! Sometimes I think I don’t have anything except . . . except . . . except . . . you’re not to blame.” Candy looked up at him through the skeletal form of the glyph, its lines solidifying in the air.

“You look like you hate me right now,” he said.

“No,” Candy said. “Not hate. Just . . . why now?”

“Why now what?”

“You know why.”

“Do I?”

“Stop it.”

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you feel. What we feel.”

“So I’m not just imagining it?”

“Oh, Lordy Lou,” he said, throwing up his arms. She couldn’t tell who he was angry at. Or whether he was even angry. “No. You’re not imagining it.”

“So do you . . . ?” she asked.

“Well . . .” he said.

“Because I do.”

“Ha!”

Such relief flooded his face. He grinned the grin of all grins.

“You should see the grin on your face,” he said to her.

“My face? What about on yours?”

The glyph finished itself while they were standing there, exchanging their grins. She sensed its stillness. So did he.

“Your magic’s done,” he said.

“I know.”

“You want me to go find Malingo?”

“In a minute.”

“We don’t have much—”

“Half a minute?”

“No. A minute’s good.”

Before they’d been mortal enemies, Candy and Deborah Hackbarth had been friends. And two summers before, when on the first day back at school after summer vacation they walked home together, exchanging tales of summer, Deborah had one big story to tell. His name was Wayne Something or other and she’d met him in Florida, where she’d gone to visit her grandmother. Wayne was the One, Deborah had said; she knew so because it felt right when she said it, which she had, over and over, during that long walk home, and Candy, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the conversation would falter for a moment, and her best friend would sew the seeds of their enmity with the oh-so-casual: “And what about your summer, Candy?”

How times had changed! Perhaps the street had survived the flooding of Chickentown by the Sea of Izabella and even now there were two girls sharing secrets as they wandered home from school, but Candy would never know. Not because Mater Motley’s all-devouring darkness would devour her, though that was possible. But because she didn’t care. She didn’t want to go back there. She could live and die here, under these troubled heavens, perhaps even staring at the troubled face on the other side of the glyph.

k

Then came the first shot. A missile was fired out of the west by a weapon of such power that the projectile it launched toward the shore punched its way through Hour after Hour before striking its target. The trail of fire it left on the air was still decaying when a second projectile was fired, this one aimed much lower than the first, barely clearing the shore as it screeched overhead.

When it landed, the force of the explosion was powerful enough to knock Candy to the ground. She got to her feet, gasping for breath, and raced up the dune. To her relief she saw that Malingo, along with the rest of the refugees, had sought shelter among the rocks.