Eliza tried to ignore the sounds of pandemonium coming from the other side of the wall, from where Liv was trying to keep the wizard’s party from turning into a slaughter.

  What in the Hells was she thinking? She’d come here to rescue Liv, not let the girl get herself killed. Eliza calmed down, took a deep breath, and reminded herself that Liv generally knew what she was doing. After all, as Oliver she’d gotten the better of her for what? a month, stealing her silverware, and she’d been the one to get the Sylvan book back. But still…

  Eliza blinked, coming out of that thought. Thelemule and Rafe were staring at her like she knew what to do. Better act like it.

  “Alright boys, we’ve got… eight minutes to get to the cathedral, find five blooms, and disarm them.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Any ideas how?”

  “Uh, it’ll take twice that long just to get there,” said Rafe.

  “Yes, that is a problem.”

  “Maybe not,” Thelemule’s voice cracked. “We’ve got my carriage. It… does a thing.”

  “What thing? You don’t mean…” With her eyes, Eliza traced the copper lines running from the wheels to the back compartment. “Is it?… spark propelled?”

  “No, not exactly.” Wincing, Thelemule retreated to the back of the carriage. “You know I’ve always been more interested in flying.” He pulled a lever, and the cargo compartment began to hum.

  “Wait, it flies?” She gasped.

  Thelemule pulled another lever, and the compartment dropped to the ground with a thud. It opened, and from it, a long rail extended skyward. “If by ‘fly,’ do you mean, can it launch a heavier than air glider at a ballistic trajectory, then yes.”

  “Glider?” All she saw were two seats bolted together, one on either side of the rail.

  “That’s what I was working on when you turned me into an eagle.”

  “Working on?”

  Thelemule glared at her. “And I would have finished it too if ‘someone’ hadn’t stranded me on an island for two months.”

  “How far along is it?”

  “No wings as of yet.”

  “Oh my Songs, we’re going to die.”

  “No… not if my calculations are just slightly incorrect.” Thelemule pinched two fingers almost, but not quite, together. “What direction is the cathedral?” He looked at Rafe.

  When the boy pointed over his shoulder, Thelemule turned a dial, and the rail clunked and swiveled.

  “I don’t have to...?” Rafe backed away.

  “No no, we just got that death sigil off you. Let’s not waste that,” Eliza said as Thelemule lowered himself into one of the seats. Pulling a strap over his shoulder, he buckled in.

  She stared at him: Thelemule, the man who’d sell his own mother.

  “What are you looking at?... Hop on.” He patted the seat next to him.

  “You do know there’s no profit in this, right?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “And we’re trying to save a bunch of people who want us dead?”

  “I am aware,” he said wryly.

  “Then why?”

  “Because apparently,” he grumbled. “I’m an old Thele-fool.”

  “Huh.” Eliza shrugged, dropped into the seat on the other side, and began buckling herself in.

  “Either that, or I’m high as a kite on rot brew. Rafe, could you hand me that?” Thelemule pointed, though Eliza couldn’t see to where.

  “What, this?” Rafe asked back.

  “No, the grenade launcher. And the gloves next to it.”

  “So, can you explain to me why we’re not going to die?” she asked.

  “Not in the next six minutes. See that metal bar? The one like an armrest?”

  Eliza looked down and did. “Yes?”

  “When I tell you to, dump spark into it.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know… a lot, but not too much. We’ll need to do it twice.” He pulled a lever, and the platform below, a wide cylinder, began pressurizing. “Ready?”

  “No, but,” she turned to Rafe, “tell Liv, she has my full permission to sell all my stuff.”

  “What?” asked the boy.

  “If I don’t make it. I’m—”

  “Now!” yelled Thelemule.

  Eliza felt a mass of spark enter the seat below. Her body froze as the air itself became solid. Blue spark light flooded up from the base, and just as she managed to force a bit of her own spark into the rail, her guts yanked downward, the frozen state they were in keeping them from liquefying.

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  The buildings fell away, and the city skyline turned sideways as the river passed under them.

  It reminded her of being at the top of the Tower of Silence, only absurdly higher. Everything just kept getting smaller and smaller.

  An instant later, whatever force had been keeping her frozen blinked away. The wind rushed into her face, painfully flapping her cheeks. It whipped through her rag of a dress, ripping the heat from her body.

  As the pull on her stomach lessened, and the wind died down for one brief moment, she found herself neither rising nor falling but perfectly suspended above Greatwen. The city seemed like a map of itself while the lights of the cathedral crept ever closer.

  “Thelemule!” she screamed into the wind.

  “Yes?!” he screamed back.

  “I thought you should know! Your sign! Is tacky!”

  A pulse of spark flooded into her seat. Her stomach yanked up into her chest, nausea hit, and the cathedral grew faster and faster as the ground rushed up toward them.

  “Get ready!” he screamed.

  “Just a bloody eyesore!”

  Below, the cathedral seemed like some elaborate child’s toy, lit up like an Allsongs decoration. Which, she supposed, was exactly what it was.

  On the wind, the sound of singing, the First Chorus, the Hymn of Joy.

  “Now!” yelled Thelemule.

  Again, she felt a mass of spark enter the rail. And again, the air froze around her. This time she dumped everything she could into it—

  Just as the front of the cathedral smacked into them at several hundred miles an hour.

  Her guts lurched forward as they pierced the outer wall. Whatever force had frozen the air around them had also kept it from smashing them to bits. Granite floor tiles shattered as their frozen bubble drove into the floor, bouncing to a stop against the inner doorway.

  Through it lay the nave of the cathedral, the main chamber that could easily fit several city blocks. It was separated into thirds by two rows of columns arching into a marble ceiling four stories high. Between each pair of columns hung a green banner, and at the far end of the chamber sat an enormous tree dressed in gold: The Allsongs tree.

  Her head still spinning, Eliza unbuckled herself and stood up. Thelemule stumbled into her, spun around, wobbled, and fell over. But she managed to walk through the doorway without tripping—

  Thousands of candles flickered, each held by a person, all of them silently staring back at her.

  She found herself suddenly aware of being a grime-covered, half-naked woman with no hair, entering Firstsong unannounced after destroying the front of the cathedral.

  “Don’t worry,” she called out, trying to sound reassuring as her voice echoed down the chamber. “We’re here to save you.”

  Faces in the back row: A young plump-faced nun, a monk with a long nose, a white-haired vicar, all of them, their mouths hung open.

  “The Song Mother saves as all,” a voice echoed back. It was strong, a bit condescending, and more than a little scared.

  It had come from the man all the way at the other end of the chamber. The man standing in front of the golden statue of the Song Mother. The man in the tall pointy hat. The man who was the cardinal.

  “From bombs?” Eliza called back.

  A gasp rolled over the crowd.

  “Look,” she said, focusing on the plump-faced nun. “Has anyone seen any red stones, about half a foot long, bound in iron?”

  “Guards!” the cardinal cried, and armored footsteps stomped in from behind, about a dozen men rushing through what was left of the entryway, readying halberds.

  “Oh, come on!” Eliza lifted her hands, raising a wall of fire between them and the guards.

  Flickering in the firelight, the plump-faced nun’s eyes shot wide. The crowd erupted in frightened chatter, distinct among it, was the word ‘witch’. Pews flipped over, cracking on the floor as candles blinked out.

  “Two minutes,” Thelemule said. “Ideas?”

  “Can we scare them out?” Eliza called back, already running for the front of the chamber, toward the altar.

  She dropped the fire wall that had been holding the guards at bay and formed another, shaped like a wedge in front of her, trying to panic the crowd out of the way.

  But monks and nuns, vicars and children alike, flooded the inner aisle in a mad rush. Climbing over each other, they fought forward, away from her… and the exit.

  She snuffed out the fire wedge and, in desperation, flung her spark, sending a fireball through the air just above the crowd’s heads, toward the altar.

  Screams erupted as people dove out of the way.

  Eliza threw another fireball, this one slightly higher, and the crowd began shoving to the sides, rolling over each other like crashing waves.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work!” Thelemule called from behind.

  “Got any better ideas?”

  “No. Ninety seconds.”

  Eliza pushed off with her spark, flinging herself up and forward. A young priest shrieked as she landed next to him.

  She threw another fireball. This one went long and crashed into the Allsongs tree. Embers popped from its boughs as it burst into flame. Paper-wrapped boxes tied with ribbons, presents for the poor, flickered to life. One began sputtering orange-red flames that twisted like tendrils.

  “I found the blooms!” she yelled to Thelemule, who had just caught up with a spark leap of his own.

  “Where?”

  “The freaking presents!” And with another great leap, she landed at the base of the tree. The flame-sputtering box turned to ash, revealing one glowing bloom stone while sparks began to shoot from another.

  “Is that why you brought the grenade launcher?” she asked.

  Thelemule looked down at the weapon, confused for a moment like it wasn’t. He looked up. “Give it a try!”

  Eliza grabbed the burning stone and, worried what it would do to someone who wasn’t fire-proof, tossed it, but Thelemule caught it in a thick-gloved hand and dropped it down the barrel.

  He aimed high, and with a bark, the gun sent the burning stone up through a stained-glass skylight.

  Orange light burst with a boom as the bloom exploded high above, its fire twisting upwards.

  She tossed him the next stone as two more boxes began to sputter, then rushed to the next.

  The grenade launcher barked again. This time the explosion came sooner, the light brighter, closer.

  She tossed the third stone, glowing with fire, and spun when Thelemule yelped in pain. His glove was smoking.

  He raised the weapon and fired skyward.

  The explosion was bright as the noon day sun, as loud as thunder. She tossed him another.

  His beard turning to ash, Thelemule shrieked as he loaded the fourth stone and fired.

  Searing light pressed into the congregation, their screams echoing throughout the chamber.

  “The fifth. Where’s the fifth?” Eliza looked back and saw Thelemule’s weapon glowing yellow. The barrel folded over itself as he tossed it to the ground.

  And then the star atop the Allsongs tree, the icon of the Song Mother’s redemption, shot out a twisting arc of flame.

  “Damn it, Drake!” she huffed. “Do you always have to make a statement?”

  Eliza closed her eyes and swirled spark around the base of the tree, moving it faster and tighter, rolling it in on itself. The tree started to lift off, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t going to clear in time.

  She ignited her spark, surrounding the tree in a funnel of flame, and pushed with everything she had. Tree and bomb went tumbling, crashing upward through the stained-glass ceiling in the vortex of a fire tornado.

  The bloom exploded just as it passed through, bursting its fiery tendrils, and sent a wave of heat and light mixed with glittering glass down into the chamber.

  People screamed, but there were no death howls.

  The chill filling her veins, Eliza collapsed to the floor, her teeth chattering as armored footsteps closed in.

  Beside her, Thelemule dropped to his knees and held up his hands as the remnants of his beard smoldered.

  And as the chill fuzzed her vision, she passed out.

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