Darla, always angelic, found an icebox and wrapped a good big scoop of ice in a burlap flour sack, which she pressed gently to my side.

“You think the Elf was communicating with the outside?”

It seems likely.

“So they’d know we have two hours before we make ourselves vulnerable. I assume we’re still heading south at what…twenty knots, figuring the current?”

I have no contact with the wheelhouse or the engine room. But yes, we are still underway, at speed.

“I’ve got two ideas. You’re going to hate both of them.”

The gunfire outside wasn’t slowing. Shouts for more ammunition and more rifles sounded. I couldn’t see out the kitchen door, but it seemed the bone-men were massing for a charge.

“First, we take the rotary guns and as much ammunition as we can carry, and we march right into the shadow. They’re not expecting that.”

Suicide. Sheer suicide. Even my limited exploration of that place revealed it to be populated by creatures against which the guns would have little or no effect.

“She’s right about that, boy. I got a glimpse myself. Ain’t got words for what I seen. We could each charge in with a handful of cannon and still end up stomped flat.”

“I told you you’d hate it.”

I do indeed.

“Then we’re left with an easy choice,” I said. “We hand everyone a gun and we line the outer decks and we drop the shield. That will close the door to the shadow realm, will it not?”

I believe so. It will also render us immediately vulnerable to Hag Mary and her allies, who we know to be waiting in ambush.

“If they’re planning an ambush, they’ll be massing their main forces right at the spot they think we’ll be when the Queen’s shields fail. If you say we could hold out another two hours, and if we’re doing twenty knots, that might put them forty miles away.”

You realize this will be an arcane assault, and forty miles may make little difference to its execution.

“I know that. We might buy a few minutes, no more. We might be able to make for the riverbank, and we might get some of these people to safety. You have a better idea? Anyone?”

I shall need a moment to coordinate with the Regent.

“I don’t.” I was about to add a treasonous comment upon the Regent’s lack of involvement in the saving of his own hash when a pair of halfdead floated into the room and whispered to Stitches.

She dismissed them with a wave.

I shall see to the containment of the constructs while you coordinate the evacuation to the outer decks, she said.

“What about your word with the Regent?”

The Regent and his staff are gone. Vanished. Presumably via arcane means beyond detection by my skills or those of his adversaries.

Her voice maintained its careful neutrality, but the sutures in her lips beaded with tiny droplets of blood and she involuntarily clenched her jaw.

“Too bad. I was going to thank his girlfriend for adding her poison to the huldra. Or was that your magic that set him on fire?”

I have no such magic. She lowered her hood to hide her face. I wish you good fortune, Markhat.

“You should go with Darla and Mama,” I said. I showed her the key Evis had given me, to the false boiler and a hiding place. “You sure as hell don’t owe the Regent any loyalty. Not now.”

Stitches turned and walked away.

“I’m not hiding in any steel bowl,” said Darla.

“Me neither,” said Mama, loosing another savage kick at the smoldering remains of the Elf. “Might take me one of them fancy guns, though. I aims to do some harm.”

Buttercup looked up at me and grinned.

“Hell with it then,” I said. “Mama, I’ll get you a rifle. Buttercup too, maybe even a brace of cannon.”

Mama cussed and grabbed the little banshee and hauled her out of the kitchen. Darla and I kissed, checked our pistols, cleaned chicken broth off Toadsticker’s noble steel, and set about arming the survivors and warning them not to fire too soon or at each other.

The bone-men stood in clacking rows halfway to the stage.

Stitches fussed with the rotary guns, banging away at some brass mechanism with a hammer in a most unsorcerous fashion. A hundred halfdead ringed the advancing line of skeletons, rifles ready. Behind the riflemen stood more halfdead, each holding a fresh weapon and kneeling by a crate of ammunition.

The bone-men advanced another step, coming even with a chalk line inscribed on the floor.

The riflemen fired, working their bolts until their weapons were empty. Then they dropped them, grabbed the fresh ones handed to them by their reloaders, and started firing anew.

The bone-men fell in scores. The smoke from the rifles filled the ruined casino with a thick and choking fog. Lady Rondalee still held the stage, her voice a dry croak, but her words still sounding.

I counted a dozen dancers limp and pale, still moving though dead or nearly so. Evis and Gertriss still held their heads upright, still showed signs of life in their movements.

“What about them?” said Darla, tearing her eyes away from Gertriss and Evis.

“When the shadow gate closes, the music box will be inside. They’ll stop dancing. You’ll see.”

“You’re makin’ that up, boy. Though it does make a kind of sense.”

“With any luck, as soon as we close the shadow, the music box will start making those damned things in the shadow dance.” I had a brief vision of the monstrous, shambling hulks I’d seen in that place, locked forever in some clumsy round of pirouettes twenty stories tall.

That’s what you get for hurting my friends, I thought. Dance ’til Doomsday, you bastards.

Mama stomped hard on my foot.

“What the hell was that for?”

“Sorry, boy, you got a funny look all the sudden. All glazed over like. Thought you was about to start dancing with them others.”

“Smoke got in my eyes. Save it for Hag Mary, Mama.”

Another wave of skeletons poured out of the gap in the Queen’s hull. This time, though, something came with them.

I used to fish the Brown, like every other poor kid in the city. We’d sneak into the big lumber yards and dig at the edges of the mountains of sawdust. There we’d find enormous, fat nightcrawler worms, perfect for catching Brown River catfish.

This was like those nightcrawler worms, only as big around as I was tall. It glistened, and its segmented, oily body heaved and pulsed. It knocked bone-men aside and ground them into splinters as it struggled to push its bulk toward us.

Stitches gave the rotary gun a final savage blow and brought it to bear, cranking it with her pale, thin arm. It erupted in gunfire, and the rounds slammed full into the eyeless face of the worm.

The worm raised up, its end splitting into a wet opening lined with spikes. It howled as the rounds sank in. Thin, black blood spewed with each impact. It made a deep, gurgling roar and surged forward, rising higher, towering above Stitches.

A halfdead leaped to the other gun and began cranking and firing. He stitched a line of wounds across its neck. Black blood splashed and flew, but the creature kept coming.

Stitches backed away from her gun. A halfdead leaped to her place. She lifted her hands, filled them with light, and hurled an infant sun toward the worm.

The Queen shook, her deck heaving as the thing slammed its bulk down and then-flames coursing from its maw-it began to flail wildly about, striking the deck again, the ceiling, the walls. The guns followed it as best they could, sending wood chips flying and probably carving fist-sized holes in the deck and the hull.

Skeletons swarmed about, nearly lost in the smoke and the dark. All but one of the massive hanging lights were extinguished by the worm’s death throes, leaving us all half-blind.