T
hey stood on the edge of the tower and looked out over the city. The murk was as gone as the Ice Devil that had spawned it. George carried the stone arm, and Edie had retrieved her heart stone from the center of the roof. Spout stood beside them.
“George,” said Edie. “It’s quiet.”
He nodded.
“I can’t hear the guns.”
“Yeah,” he said, ears straining for any distant sound the wind might bring them. “I think the battle’s over.”
“
Gack
,” confirmed Spout.
Here and there, George could see what he first took for birds returning to the empty skies, and then he saw that they were taints, flying back to their perches.
“It’s all over,” said Edie.
“Not quite,” he said, hefting the stone arm. “I’ve got a couple of things to do. First we need to put this back in the London Stone, where it can’t do any more harm. Then I’ve got to go and mend the little dragon I broke. Then . . .”
“Then it’s all over.”
“No.” He grinned. “Then it begins.”
Edie looked questioningly at him.
“You think all
this
was impossible, try and figure out how we explain you to my mum.”
She looked away, her eyes skating over the strangely peaceful city below.
“We don’t have to,” she said.
“Yeah we do,” said George. “And we will. She’s not entirely normal herself.”
“What do you mean?” she said, bridling.
“Nothing,” he replied. “You’ll see. Don’t be so touchy.”
“I’m not,” she sniffed. “And I’m not some lost puppy that needs a home.”
“No,” he agreed. “But you’ve got one anyway.”
They didn’t say much else. Not right then. And because Spout could only carry one of them at a time, they didn’t fly straight to the London Stone. Instead they just let him ferry them to the foot of the tower, and walked through the empty city while he flew back to Trafalgar Square with news of what had happened.
“They’re not going to understand him,” said Edie. “It’s not like he talks very well.”
“He’ll do fine,” said George, nodding at the black Raven that had looped overhead and had joined Spout on his journey west.
As they headed off toward Cannon Street through the snow-clogged wilderness of the City, they really didn’t talk much at all. Partly it was because they didn’t want to disturb the silence around them, partly it was because they both had so much to say that they didn’t know how to start, but mainly it was because they were both as tired as they had ever been, and now that the adrenaline and fear had gone, they felt all of it at once.
“What was that?” said George.
Edie had stopped dead and was peering down a side street, suddenly tense again, like an animal poised to run for its life.
“I saw something,” she said. “At least I think I did. . . .”
George looked down the empty street and saw nothing.
“Saw what?”
He walked into the side street and looked down its length.
“There’s nothing here, Edie. Not even footprints.”
He was so sure, and his certainty was reassuring enough that she let herself relax. She hadn’t seen anything properly, just a brief dark blur caught the corner of her eye as she passed, something random that her mind had cobbled into a false impression—that looked like Little Tragedy ducking out of sight.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. I’m just still jumpy. . . .”
“Me too,” he said. “And tired. More than tired, really . . .”
“Chinstrapped,” she said, straightening up. “Come on. And we should walk on the pavements. In case time starts suddenly.” She pointed at the frozen traffic all around them. “Getting run over would be a pretty stupid way to end this.”
George didn’t say anything, but he did switch carrying the stone arm from one shoulder to the other as he stepped off the road and onto the pavement. He was so exhausted that the arm just seemed to get heavier with every step.
And then they heard wheels and horses and saw the Red Queen turning her chariot onto the street ahead of them. The Gunner rode beside her, still helmetless. They were both smiling.
“Well,” said the Queen.
“Yeah,” said the Gunner, hoisting first Edie and then George onto the chariot and slapping them both on the back. “That was something.”
“Why hasn’t time started again?” asked Edie.
“The Queen of Time has to get back to her plinth, see to the Clock of the World,” replied the Gunner. “The Clocker and her’ll see to it. Don’t you worry.”
“We’re not,” said George. “It’s peaceful like this.”
“Besides,” continued the Gunner, “them what are left in the square’ve got a lot of dead spits to get back on their plinths before turn o’day. There’s no hurry.”
“Have your daughters come back?” asked Edie quietly.
The Queen shook her head.
“The Queen of America has gone to look for them. She usually finds anything she tracks. And they are big girls. They can look after themselves. I am not worried.”
Edie looked at the Queen, but all she got was the side of her face and a tight smile. She decided not to pursue the question for now, but she noticed that the Queen was a great leader, and a surprisingly bad liar.
And again, because there was so much to say, they all remained silent as the Queen drove them to London Stone.
There were two figures already there when they arrived.
The Old Soldier and the Young Soldier were standing looking at the sword and the hand and the frozen gout of metal that had once been the Duke, trying to work out how to remove it from the Stone.
“We don’t know what to do,” said the young one.
“I do,” said George, jumping off the chariot and walking over to have a look, followed by the Queen and the Gunner. He knelt in front of the Stone and reached out. His fingers felt the thin crack in the limestone block that the Duke had kept open.
“I can get the stone arm and we can widen this crack and put the old darkness back in and seal it up. . . .”
“Where have you two dozy beggars been?” asked the Gunner.
“We got lost in the murk,” said the old one.
“We thought we’d try to get old Hooky, what’s left of him, back on ’is plinth.”
“So that, come turn o’day, he gets better. . . .” explained the Young Soldier.
“Nothing gets better,” said a dry voice from behind them, a voice shot through with malice and satisfaction. “Not ever. Not really. Certainly not for any of you.”
George was the first to turn.
It was the Walker.
He held Edie tightly around the neck, the thin straight blade of his dagger pressed to her jugular, so nearly cutting it that George could see every vein pulse against the sharp metal edge.
Edie stood still as a statue. She didn’t look scared. She looked angry; angry with herself for letting her guard down; angry for believing that she, of all people, might actually deserve a happy ending to her ordeal; angriest of all for letting the Walker creep up behind her and trap her again.
“You shouldn’t have come,” said a thin urchin’s voice from the right. “You really shouldn’t have come. Not here. Not now . . .”
Little Tragedy stepped out from a doorway, shaking his head. It was probably just melting snow, but there was water running down his cheeks.
“I
did
see you,” said Edie. “Stupid. Of course . . .”
She should have trusted her first instinct. She hadn’t been jumpy and imagining things. She’d been right. And now it was all wrong. She looked at George.
George didn’t waste time trying to figure out how the Walker had returned; though it was, in the end, simply because the world likes balance: in the same way that the Ice Devil had entered this world by filling the space displaced by the Walker, so when the Ice Devil returned to the outer darkness, it was the Walker’s body that had been spat back out of the mirrors and had fallen off the roof, unseen by George and Edie.
Just because the world likes balance doesn’t mean that the weights and the counterweights are always good ones.
George didn’t worry about that. He put all his energy into trying to work out how to keep that knife from cutting into the fragile pulse pumping in Edie’s neck.
Little Tragedy walked past him, toward the Walker. He was holding something down by his side, slightly behind his back, something shiny.
“No,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come here, because it’s the first place he’d look, innit? And now he’s got you again, and I’m sorry he got you the first time. . . .”
It was the Walker who realized it first. It was the Walker who saw that the moisture on the boy’s bronze cheekbone was real tears, and knew that the catch in the voice was crying, and it was the Walker who understood, just fatally too soon, that Little Tragedy was going to try to rescue Edie.
“Get back!” he shrieked, pointing the dagger at him.
“No,” said Little Tragedy, and leaped for him.
The shiny thing he had been holding at his side was a gin bottle he must have taken from the Black Friar’s pub. He moved surprisngly fast, and got his wiry little body between the dagger and Edie. He grabbed the Walker’s wrist with one hand, keeping the blade away from her as he smashed the bottle on the side of the Walker’s head with the other.
“Leave her alone!” he yelled.
It almost worked. But the Walker hacked Tragedy’s legs from under him with a brutal kick, and as the boy fell, they all saw the speed with which the Walker freed his knife hand and slashed the blade through the falling figure, in a movement that was almost balletic in its elegance and power.
Before Edie could make even one step away from the Walker, he had the knife back at her throat, and Tragedy was sprawled at her feet, looking in horror at the terrible wound that had almost cut him in half.
“Look,” he said, his eyes dimming. “Look. I’m hollow. I knew it. I ain’t . . . there’s no . . .”
“Stop your whining,” spat the Walker, and kicked him so hard that his torso hinged back off his legs and sprawled on its back.
George saw Tragedy staring at him in shock, upside down.
“I told you I was made wrong. . . . Nothing in there. No heart . . .”
And then his eyes rolled back, and he died.
“Poor little bugger had a heart in the end,” growled the Gunner.
“Oh do shut up your sentimental claptrap,” hissed the Walker, seemingly oblivious to the damage Little Tragedy’s attack had done to the side of his head. “Where is this stone arm you say has the darkness in it? I would enjoy having the darkness in my power for a change. I’m sure I could encourage it to lift my curse. I imagine we could even enter into a more beneficial partnership.”
“I’ll see you in hell first,” said the Gunner.
“You will all do exactly what I tell you, or I shall open her smooth little neck and we shall all see the color of her blood on this white, white snow.” The Walker smiled. “Where is this stone arm?”
George looked at Edie. She tore her eyes from Little Tragedy’s broken body at her feet.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Whatever you do. It’s okay.”
“Go and get it for me, boy,” said the Walker licking his lips as if he could already taste the power he was about to get control of. “Give me the darkness and I will let the girl go free.”
George spared a quick look at Tragedy’s lifeless eyes.
“All right.” He nodded.
“Wait . . .” said the Queen.
“You can’t trust him,” agreed the Gunner.
“Have you got a better plan?” said George, looking at them both. He could see they didn’t. They looked as frozen by this as he felt. And so he knew what he had to do.
“Don’t,” said Edie.
“I’m not going to watch him kill you just to keep himself amused,” George said flatly. “Not amused.”
“Very sensible,” spat the Walker. “Go get it, boy.”
George turned and walked past the shocked faces of the Gunner and the Queen, over to the chariot. He reached behind the front wall and hoisted out a bundle and walked across to the Walker.
“Don’t hurt her,” he said, his voice trembling a fraction. “Please don’t hurt her.”
“George,” pleaded Edie. “Don’t . . .”
“Just don’t hurt her,” repeated George, the tremble growing as he avoided Edie’s eyes. He looked like the frightened boy she had seen from the very beginning. He looked tired and beaten. “Really. There are better ways . . .”
“Of course I won’t hurt her,” lied the Walker. “Not if you give me the bundle and stop your whining.”
He reached for the bundle. George let him have it.
And as the Walker scrabbled the wrapping open, George straightened up and looked Edie right in the eye, all the trembling and illusion of weakness suddenly gone.
“Edie,” he said. “You know how you never do anything anyone tells you?”
She looked straight back at him.
“Close your eyes.”
And she did.
The Walker laughed as he unwrapped the bundle.
The sudden shriek of terror with which he greeted the contents was cut off as abruptly as it had begun, frozen on his snarling lips as they and the rest of him instantly turned to stone.
The glare of the Gorgon’s head, which George had handed him instead of the bundle with the arm in it, literally petrified the Walker, changing flesh and blood into a rough granite, greasy and crazed with flaws.
“It’s the Medusa, isn’t it?” said Edie, her eyes still shut. “Not ‘amused.’ Medusa.”
“Yup,” said George as the Gunner stepped across and covered the Medusa’s head. “The Sphinx told me to remember that riddle.”
The Queen met his gaze and smiled. “I’m glad you did,” she said.
Edie opened her eyes and twisted out from the Walker’s grip, and they all stood and looked at him. He had been turned into a grotesque statue, eyes ripped wide with horror, mouth rictussed into a scream, long coat dramatically whipped back as if blasted by a great and sudden wind, his naked fear and weakness immortalized in stone for all the world to see.
“I’m not much of one for poetry,” said the Gunner, “but that’s the kind of justice I like.”
“The world balances stuff out,” said George. “Let’s get this finished.”
He and Edie walked back to the chariot and got the other bundle containing the stone arm. And while the spits watched, they worked quietly together, freeing the sword from the Stone and pulling apart the crack wide enough to put the arm in. Then they closed up the crack, so that the London Stone looked as it always had and always would.