Mama chuckled, sat, and laid a whetstone against the blade of her meat cleaver. “I’m thinkin’ they’ll do just that, first time that there cat-a-pult throws and cracks a wall. When that happens, it ain’t gonna be them soldiers we got to worry about. No sir. It’s gonna be every man jack under this here roof, aside from the Lady and that fool man of hers.”
“I know it.”
Mama didn’t look up. Her whetstone scraped hard against the bright steel.
“You ready to spill blood to keep that there banshee alive?”
Darla hugged Buttercup close to her. “Mama!”
“It’s got to be said, young ’un. Are you?”
“Nobody takes the banshee. Nobody kills the banshee. I’ve got reasons. It’s better if they aren’t discussed.”
Mama nodded. “So be it.” She held her cleaver up to the dim candlelight, squinted along its edge. “I’m ready, then.”
Gertriss put her ear to the door. “They’re gone,” she announced. “Down the stairs. Boss, what about making a run for the tunnels?”
“It may come to that. But not yet.” I never liked being herded. One thing I’d learned from being chased by Trolls across hill and dale, during the War. Never take the obvious route, when another presents itself. The moment you let your enemy dictate your next move, you’re on the road to an early grave.
Or, in this case, a very old tomb.
“Stay here.”
“You’re not?”
“Nope. Evis. You say Victor and Sara are watching this door?”
“They’re watching me, actually, but I can arrange for a change in assignment. Should I?”
“You should. You and I have business downstairs.” Both Darla and Gertriss turned to protest. “Absolutely not,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Evis will be with me. I’ll be fine. There’s still one avenue we need to explore, and I can’t guard a whole parade now that the household is up in arms.”
“He’s right,” said Mama. “But, boy. When them soldiers start taking down the walls. We head for the tunnels, fight our way down, if’n we have too. Meet you down there if you ain’t with us. That sound about right?”
“Just about.”
“I hope you know what you’re doin’, boy.”
“Always, Mama.”
I gave Darla a kiss, Gertriss a quick hug and Evis and I quietly unlocked the door.
We dodged panicked bands of the Lady’s staff all the way downstairs. We couldn’t avoid them any longer at the first floor landing, but having a grim-faced vampire clutching a long silver blade in each pale hand by one’s side does give would-be attackers pause.
“We ain’t aimin’ to die for that creature you brought in here,” said the man I’d punched in the face earlier.
“I’m not planning on dying either.” I kept walking. The half-dozen of them gathered at the foot of the stairs fell back. “You really think they’ll let you just walk away even if you do give them the banshee?”
“Ain’t got no reason to think otherwise.”
“Fools.” Evis spoke in a raspy hiss. “The banshee’s presence is the only thing keeping you alive. Otherwise they’d have killed you all with magic at the start.”
No one dared dispute Evis. He made big vampire spooky eyes at the mob, and they made way with admirable haste.
We passed through them without incident, though they grumbled and cursed at our backs.
I led us down the hall to the gallery. Evis glanced sideways at me, bemused.
“You’re not serious.”
“You have a better idea?”
“How about we just take the ladies and make for the forest tunnel right now?”
I shook my head. “I’m guessing their sorcerers can follow Buttercup, at least to some extent. You and Evis and Sara could outpace horses. But Mama? Me? You know we can’t outrun cavalry.”
Evis frowned but opened the door.
“The Corpsemaster will have a conniption fit,” he observed. “Do you really think trying to communicate with some ancient force of nature is really a good idea? That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it? Even considering the historical evidence that suggests such efforts are generally fatal?”
The artists were still hard at work, still arrayed in silent standing ranks.
Most of them, anyway. Serris was slumped in the floor, breathing but otherwise motionless. A male whose name I couldn’t recall was snoring on his side toward the front of the room.
I tried to waken Serris, but only managed to produce a brief unfocused stare and a few twitchings of her fingers.
“They’ll all be down before long,” whispered Evis.
I agreed. Some of the hands that still moved across their canvasses were visibly trembling.
I gently pushed Serris aside, found her brush, managed to scrape most of the dried paint out of the worn bristles. I took up her paints, lit a fresh candle, and turned my gaze toward her canvas.
If she’d been depicting a subject, it was one I couldn’t discern. There were lines of grey, touched with crimson, across a black background.
“Finder,” said Evis. His ashen halfdead face wasn’t made to express concern.
“Watch my back. Give me ten minutes. Hit me in the head if I start painting bowls of fruit.”
Evis cussed.
I dipped my brush in blood-red paint, and put it to the canvas.
And then I closed my eyes. I thought about Buttercup, thought about her playing with dolls, running, laughing, like the children in the paintings I’d seen painted in that very room.
I thought about Buttercup, and I hummed the tune, and remembered the words-
“Don’t you fret child
Don’t you cry,
Mama’s gonna make the black-birds fly.
And when those black-birds fly away,
Mama’s gonna make you a bed to lay…”
Chapter Twenty
Evis put his hand on my shoulder and shook it.
“Markhat! Markhat, wake up or I swear I’ll start pulling off ears.”
I blinked. I dropped the brush. I forgot I was holding a board filled with paint and spilled the whole works down the front of my shirt.
“Markhat!” Evis slapped me. I shook my head and raised my arms, just in case he hadn’t been exaggerating about the pulling of ears.
“I’m back, I’m back. Easy.” I found a rag and dabbed at the paint that covered me.
“Back? Where the Hell were you?” Evis glared at my canvas. “Markhat, what have you done?”
He held the candle close, and I saw too.
I’d painted. I tried hard to remember what I’d painted, or why. You know those dreams, the ones you wake up from, the ones that instantly start to fade as soon as you try to grasp them and hold on?
I’d painted, though. I’d painted a white ring that took up most of the canvas. In the center of it was a strange white shape.
No. Not a shape.
A character.
Not one I knew. Not one that would be known to Evis or Mama or even the Corpsemaster.
I couldn’t remember its name or its significance. I didn’t even try. I had a lingering sense that merely knowing such a thing would injure me in ways far beyond that of the huldra or even the catapults waiting outside.
“Finder!”
“I’m here. I’m here.” I was having trouble talking. I spat out a short harsh word and then spoke again. “It is done.”
I didn’t know what I’d said, or why I’d said it is done. But as soon as I did, all around us, the artists started collapsing.
Easels went down. Artist’s tools and artists themselves fell clattering to the floor. A few moaned and blinked and looked around. Most simply settled down with weary sighs and fell into what I hoped were simply deep exhausted sleeps.
Evis turned about. A knife had found its way into his hand.
“Please tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“Old Bones.” I worked my jaw, found the right words. “Old Bones is sleeping. Right below us.” Parts of the dream scampered past-laughing children in the sun, a castle in the air, Buttercup playing in a marble fountain that bubbled with lights amid the waters. “They’ve been painting dreams. Old Bones’s dreams.”