Venn threw down the piece of wood and stood still.
Gideon waited, breathless. The room was so small now that he could reach out and touch both sides of it, as if the very cube of the world was dwindling to a point as minute as infinity.
Venn looked up.
The ceiling was a glass plane, still out of reach. He seemed to focus on it with a bitter, controlled fury. Gideon waited, fighting down panic. Glass walls nudged his arm. His own reflection pushed against him. He was replicated, hand to hand, face to face, an eternity of Gideons crowded together with his stifling terror. He would be suffocated, crushed against his own face, his hands clawing hopelessly against their glassy copies.
He tried to turn, but there was no space.
Venn shivered. He seemed thinner, paler. His fingers a little longer. His eyes bird-blue.
He had lost something of himself.
He crouched. “On my shoulders. Quickly!”
Gideon climbed, light and fleet; Venn stood, heaving him up. “Push. Push hard!”
He strained. His palms forced against the glass roof, but it was solid, hard as ice, impenetrable. For a second he understood the whole horror of being sealed in, the fear of the baby in the womb, the chick in the egg.
“Push!” Venn yelled.
The walls crushed against them.
Then, with a crack that sent Gideon’s heart leaping, the world shattered.
Water roared down. Into his yell of terror. Into his mouth and eyes.
Sarah said quietly, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Wharton was a little startled. For a moment he was not quite sure where he was. He looked around curiously at the sumptuous room, then at Summer, who smiled sweetly.
Sarah held his eye. “Good. Be careful. Please.”
She dared not say more. But if he guessed she was here for the half coin, surely he would know not to risk mentioning it. She felt the tiny half-moon of gold move against her skin, under her clothes. Now all she had to do was get it—and them—out of here.
“But where’s Venn?” Wharton turned, astonished. “And Gideon?”
“Oh, I think it only fair they have a little difficulty, don’t you?” Summer stretched her small feet languorously. She fixed Sarah with a sudden sly glance. “Because Gideon was supposed to be bringing me one of those lovely magic bracelets, and he has failed me. Again. How very disappointing.”
She sat up. “And you see, Sarah, something else is all wrong.” She stood and crossed lightly to the red box and picked it up. Wharton stared at it.
“I don’t believe you came for this. I think you came for something else.” Summer pouted. “Now, I wonder what that could be? Something so powerful you would even dare to come to my house for it?”
Sarah dared not move. She sensed Wharton edge closer.
Summer opened the box. “You, in there!”
The bird popped up and chirruped brightly.
“Stop that.” Summer extended a finger. “Listen, I know she’s taken something. What is it? Tell me at once or I’ll turn you into a cockroach and you can crawl in dung for a thousand years.”
The bird was silent. Then it looked at Sarah, a bold flicker of its beady eyes, and before it spoke, she knew that this time it would betray her.
“What do I get if I tell you?”
“Freedom. You get to fly in the greenwood.”
“And change my shape back?”
Summer shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I could let you be a real bird.”
“A starling? And fly with the Host again?”
“Why not.”
The wooden bird considered. Then said, “A half coin of gold. On a chain around her neck.”
Sarah grabbed at the chain and leaped back. Wharton stepped between her and Summer.
Summer laughed. “That trinket! So the emperor’s face does have power. I rather thought so when I asked you for it. But it must be far, far more powerful than I thought.”
She came toward them and Wharton braced himself to stop her. But to his astonishment his body refused to move. His arms remained at his sides. Furious and terrified, he tried to yell. Nothing came out but the faintest of gasps.
Summer came up to him and stood on tiptoes to stare into his eyes. “Sorry, George,” she whispered. “It won’t last, I promise.”
He tried to squirm as she passed behind him.
Summer came to Sarah and said quietly, “When a gift is given, it should never be taken back.” She reached out lightly and took the chain from around Sarah’s neck, her touch light and cold as a spider’s.
Furious, unable to move or even access her invisibility, Sarah saw the glittering broken coin held before her eyes, the key to the mirror’s destruction dangled like a taunting toy before a child.
A terrible, wrenching anger surged in her; she cried out in her mind, a great cry of despair that seemed to well up and burst into abrupt sound as if her ears had popped. Summer stepped back, astonished, and in that single instant the tiny bird flew; it snatched the half coin from Summer’s fingers and fled with it, up and up, into the high white ceiling of the room, into the curtains, through the opened window out into the mothy night.
Sarah collapsed. Wharton gasped.
Summer screamed a shrill screech of fury and with a flurry of feathers became instantly a black hawk with yellow eyes; she flew and the room flew with her, the sofa transforming into a fallen log, the deep carpet a pile of leaves, the ceiling the crowded trees of the Wood.
And above, in the starry darkness of the sky, the tiny bird flew up and up and up, until it was lost to sight in the frosty galaxies, the endless black eternity of space.
24
Come with us! Join us, all you men and women who have courage in your hearts. For what is life without freedom?
Illegal ZEUS transmission
MASKELYNE HURRIED PIERS through the corridors of Wintercombe.
The crashing from outside was enormous, as if all the trees of the Wood were marching down on them. At the front door Piers hung back. “Why me? Why me? I can’t . . .”
“You will. You must.” Maskelyne grabbed the little man and turned him, pulling the white lab coat off him quickly. “Piers, we’re all depending on you.”
Piers laughed, a horribly nervous cackle. His red waistcoat darkened to brown, his clothes faded to the drabbest of tweeds. “Got to blend in, then. Camouflage.” He pulled a coat from the rack and huddled into it.
“Now listen to me.” Maskelyne already had both hands on the door bolts. “Get out there and find Venn. You have to tell him what Sarah is up to. You have to protect the Zeus coin. If Summer gets her claws on it . . .” He shook his head, anxious, the scar livid against his dark hair. “You’re the hero now, Piers. Not the servant anymore. You’re the warrior, the lonely defender against the dark. If you do this, Venn will never be able to thank you enough.”
“You think so? Really?” The little man swelled a little. “Well . . . right.”
“Ready?”
“No . . . Look. I don’t . . .”
Maskelyne hauled the bolts back. The door crashed open. The gale hurtled horizontal rain across the hall.
Piers’s objections were snatched away. He took a great breath, clutched the coat around him and was gone, as if he were a small brown leaf the wind had sucked up and blown far away.
Maskelyne instantly slammed and locked the door. Leaning his back on it, he stood there a moment like a shadow in the hall, his eyes on the rain patterns, the damp tiled floor, the stairs going up into the deserted corridors and attics of the Abbey.