I sat on my ass and puffed. Darla and Buttercup joined me.
“It was after the banshee,” said Mama, stirring the remains with a boot. She spat in the ashes. “Bet it meant to pick her up and fly her out, owl-like.”
“The chimneys,” I puffed more air. “Light a fire. In all of them. Must have come down a chimney.”
Marlo barked orders. He had the presence of mind to order torches brought to us all. This time, his orders were heeded.
“Thanks, Mama. How’d you know it would burn?”
“I didn’t,” she replied. “It was that or a chamber-pot. Ain’t you glad I chose like I did?”
Evis came gliding up. He regarded the ashes and frowned.
“Sorcery.”
“Looks like.” I stood. “Make a circle. Darla, you and Buttercup in the middle. Might be more of those about, until we get some fires burning.”
We arranged ourselves. I felt Buttercup’s tiny hand on my back as she grabbed a handful of shirt and held on.
Upstairs came the sound of windows breaking. I cringed. “Better get a torch behind all those too,” I said. “If they can fly high enough to come down chimneys they can fly through windows.”
Marlo repeated what I’d just said. There were nods and then running feet.
Buttercup still whimpered. I wondered what she could see that we couldn’t, whether she knew what was being arrayed against us outside. If Hisvin had been telling the truth, Buttercup was a creation of something so ancient it predated all of Kingdom history-what, I wondered, would be sufficient to frighten a creature which had seen all the horrors it must surely have witnessed?
Mama broke the silence by beginning to sing.
It was a lullaby. I knew the tune, but not the words. My own mother had hummed it, over and over, as she mended the whole neighborhood’s shirts with the same century-old needle and threads she salvaged from the trash-heap of a grave clothes maker.
I guessed the song itself was as old as the language.
“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…”
Buttercup stopped whimpering. Mama kept humming, probably because she either didn’t know any more of the song or she hadn’t come up with a rhyme yet.
We heard shouts, hammers beginning to fall inside, the scraping and shoving of heavy chests and tables and cases. Glass shattered, up above.
And then behind me, a tiny voice that was not Darla began to sing as Mama hummed.
The words weren’t clear. After an instant I realized they weren’t even Kingdom. But the voice, tiny and high as a bird’s-
“Darla? Is it?”
“She’s singing, Markhat. It’s her.”
Buttercup sang, her words still strange, but obviously sang in accompaniment to Mama’s hummed tune.
“Buttercup? Do you understand me?”
No response, except more song.
“She was raised, I knew it,” said Darla. “You didn’t always live in the trees, did you, honey?”
Buttercup stopped singing, but if she meant to reply she didn’t get the chance. Shouts sounded above, and blows, and then a second ball of black came soaring down the stairs, headed right for Buttercup.
This time it was Evis who attacked. He simply leaped up, grabbed the black mass, and wrestled it to the floor. It thrashed and grappled, but Evis kept it down, pinning it with hands and knees.
Gertriss came charging down the stair, a cut on her temple and bloody murder in her eyes. The sword in her hand gleamed.
“Flew right through the window,” she said, taking the last few treads with a jump. “I’m sure I hit it, but it kept flying.”
I leaned over it. Evis grinned, having no trouble keeping the flapping thing pinned to the floor.
In the light, it looked like black paper, wadded and glued and stuck together at random. There was no face, no body, no wings as such.
I grabbed a corner of the thing.
It tore like paper.
Hell, it was paper. Black paper, that somehow moved in my hand, trying to fold its way out of my grasp.
I poked and prodded while it flapped. There was a cavity in the middle of the thing. A cavity just big enough to hold most of Buttercup.
A bevy of gardeners came charging up, bearing the torches Marlo had ordered. I took one and thrust it down into the thing after pinning it with Toadsticker and my boot.
It went up as quickly as the first one.
Everyone grabbed a torch. Gertriss came around to stand on my right, which put her well away from Mama. I surmised their relations were still a bit strained.
We put another of the paper things to the torch before the fires in the chimneys and the torches at the windows rendered the House impassable to them.
Mama hummed some more, but Buttercup didn’t sing. She just clung to either Darla or Gertriss and when she did peek out from behind them her eyes were wide and fearful.
Another tree fell outside. I smelled the first faint stench of smoke, and I wondered if our besiegers would have the sense to pile the cut timber against the house and set it afire. The House would resist burning, to a point, but if the walls themselves got hot enough we’d find ourselves in a well-furnished oven.
“Gertriss. Darla. Keep torches handy. Stay with Buttercup.”
Evis whispered something. Shadows moved at the end of the hall, as Victor and Sara flitted away on some errand of their own. I lifted an eyebrow at Evis, but he just grinned and winked at me over his dark spectacles and I let it go.
“Reckon we might ought to move the banshee to a room,” said Marlo. “One on the second floor with no windows, one door, stone floor, timber ceiling. Nothing getting in there unless we let it.”
“They’ve got wand-wavers. We keep her moving. Make it harder for them to aim another spell at her.” Marlo didn’t like my plan, but he had the sense not to argue.
“Mama, keep an eye on things. Evis, you’re an art enthusiast, are you not?”
The vampire shrugged. “The House maintains a modest collection,” he replied. “Seems an odd time to discuss it.”
“Walk with me. I have some interesting works to show you.”
I turned before anyone could argue and headed for the gallery. Evis fell into step beside me while Mama began bellowing orders designed to move Buttercup up the stairs.
“What have you got on your mind, Markhat?”
We reached the door to the gallery and I pushed it open and motioned Evis inside.
“Hell if I know,” I whispered. “But have a look. Tell me what you think.”
The gallery was just as I’d left it. The silent ranks of artists worked feverishly, wordlessly, oblivious to anything and everything save their paints and their canvases.
The only sounds were those of brushes.
Evis pulled down his spectacles. All but two of the lamps had gone out. The room was dark enough for vampire comfort, and yet the painters painted on.
“Oh my.” Evis stepped cautiously into the room. He moved to stand fang-to-face beside a skinny young woman with big mouse eyes.
She gave no sign of knowing a halfdead was beside her.
Evis reached up, stroked her pale neck. Nothing, save the darting of her brush.
He put his hand before her eyes.
She made no reaction at all. Her brush stabbed and scraped, as purposefully as before.
“Sorcery.”
“Looks like. But it isn’t the Lady. And I don’t think it’s our friends on the lawn.”
Evis frowned. “The Corpsemaster?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. But if it was his, why not tell us? And what on Earth is he hoping to accomplish?”
Evis frowned, and his gaze moved from the painter to the painting.
“I can’t quite make out the subject here. Interesting.”
I squinted, but in the dark all I saw were blotches. “Mind if I light a few lamps? I don’t see in the dark as well as some persons.”