The Edge of Everything (Untitled #1)(94)

“Apparently,” said Ripper, “we will not be taking them by surprise.”

X gave a grim laugh.

“You have been a fine teacher to me,” he said quietly. “Might I ask you to recommend a strategy one last time? If it would help, I would trade myself for the boy a thousand times.”

“Well, we could ask them nicely,” said Ripper. “But the fact that the lords have not already descended upon you and pulled you back to the Lowlands by your handsome hair suggests that they want more than merely to bring you home. They want to boil your heart. They want to watch as you listen to that poor boy scream.”

Ripper paused. She seemed to regret speaking so bluntly, for X’s face was clouded with pain.

“That being the case,” she continued, “I propose a simple, unornamented fight to the death. I have always rather enjoyed them—though they’re never quite as satisfying when no one can actually die.”

Together, they circled the house at a safe distance, looking for weaknesses in the chain of bodies. There were none. The lords remained still, but even their stillness was full of menace. They were coiled and ready to strike. X peered into every face. Some were handsome, some ancient. Some were lovely, some desiccated or burned. No one regarded him with anything but disgust. X had questioned their authority. He had shamed them. He’d been offered an unheard-of chance to leave the Lowlands forever—a chance perhaps even the lords themselves had prayed for—and made a mockery of it. He’d refused to collect even one more soul. Now it was as if X and the lords were opposing magnets: the air between them vibrated with hatred.

As the chain of lords snaked by the front door, he saw Regent in his deep blue robe.

He was staring down at the snow.

X felt a tiny flutter of hope, but almost immediately it escaped his body like one of those clouds of breath, for Regent would not speak to him. He would not so much as raise his head. He stood with his arms clasped behind his back, as if they’d been bound together—as if even his body was saying, This is beyond my control.

A voice, high and nasal, called out from farther down the chain: “Not even your faithful kitten will help you now—you have betrayed him too many times!”

It was Dervish.

He grinned at X, his pointy, ratlike countenance all aglow.

“You even struck him in the face, or have you forgotten?” he continued. “Goodness, that was sweet comedy!”

X ignored him. Ripper snarled in the lord’s direction.

The ice on the house cracked and contracted, each spasm as loud as a rifle shot. Jonah was in there somewhere.

X put a hand on Regent’s shoulder.

“There is a boy in the house,” he said.

Regent clenched his teeth, but did not reply.

“You must spare him,” X pleaded.

Again, there was no answer, though the muscles in the lord’s neck and jaw twitched violently.

“Please, Tariq,” said X.

At this, a gasp of shock went up among the lords and traveled down the chain like a lit fuse. Regent closed his eyes as a wave of dread passed through him. Even Ripper was struck dumb. She pulled X away from Regent just as Dervish hooted with glee and came scampering toward them.

“The kitten TOLD YOU HIS TRUE NAME, did he?” he said. “My, what a grand romance you have had! Did you sit by a river and feed each other figs?”

Dervish puffed out his chest, and looked down the line of lords, expecting laughter. There was none.

Ripper, enjoying his humiliation, sneered at him.

“Will you not shut your mouth just this once?” she said. “No one likes you.”

Dervish’s face flushed and his wormy lips quivered as he tried to think of a clever response. Finally, he turned to X.

“What absurd friends you have,” he said. “Yet I suppose only a lunatic would join you on an errand such as this. She shall be punished, too—as will the dim piece of meat you call Banger, for serving as your messenger boy.”

There was another sound like a gunshot. The ice had contracted again. It was strangling the house.

Jonah was in there somewhere.

X remembered how they’d all huddled together during the first ice storm. He remembered how it felt to be trapped in a groaning house. He hoped Jonah was looking out at him now—he wanted him to know that he’d come for him. But X couldn’t see a thing through the ice. Jonah might have been banging on the glass with a little dinosaur in his hand. He might have been screaming. X would never hear him.

“You must spare Jonah,” X said again, this time to Dervish. “He has no part in this.”

“Ha!” shouted Dervish. “You have refused to bring me the father—so I will take the son! It seems a fair trade, does it not? I regret snuffing out the life of such a sweet boy—it is not the way of the Lowlands, just as it is not our way to parade about in the Overworld like this—but you yourself have driven me to it. It is you, not me, who is the cause of all this pain. It is YOU who laid waste to this mountain—YOU who imprisoned that boy in his tomb. Had you not been so insolent, none of this would have come to pass! But you believed yourself too fine for the Lowlands—just as your vile mother did. You are better than NO ONE and NOTHING, I assure you. Because you ARE no one and nothing. The foolish letter you call a name will not alter that. Your beloved Tariq should never have trusted you. He dealt you so much rope that you strangled not only yourself but a family of innocents besides!”