Chapter Fifty-four

Sparrow moaned, breaking the silence. His dog licked his face while it stared watchfully at Platt and the princess beyond the bars.

The smith had stacked ore and pieces of metal over his partial construct. The arrangement shivered. Bits fell to either side, and a puff of dust spurted from the interior.

Miriam turned from the barrier. "What's he doing?" she hissed, an apostrophe to her own frustration rather than a question for the attendant.

Platt lowered the wineskin. He stared goggle-eyed at the princess. The skin had been empty for more than an hour, but at intervals the feral attendant lifted it again to his lips.

Miriam grimaced in disgust. She spun on her heel and cried, "You! Prisoner! What are you doing?"

Sparrow had been dipping in and out of his working trance. Now he awoke slowly but completely. He rose into a sitting position and stretched his mighty arms—straight out from his sides; back as far as they would go; and then forward, crossing in front of him.

The smith's blue eyes snapped with the lively humor which had been lacking since his capture.

"What are you doing?" Princess Miriam repeated in a less assured tone.

"I'll show you, lady princess," Sparrow said. He reached into the slag and lifted out his workpiece.

"What the bloody hell is it?" Platt mumbled.

The attendant rose from his stool and stepped heavily toward the barrier. Drink had not impaired his coordination, but his face was a mask of truculent evil.

Sparrow lifted the broad saddle with his left hand until it was more than a meter in the air. The four legs dangled loosely.

"Don't you recognize it?" the smith asked with patronizing amusement. "But then, I don't suppose you've ever been on precisely the same timeline as one before."

His right index finger made an adjustment at the base of each leg. Mechanisms clicked into place. The leg joints locked into self-supporting springiness.

Sparrow lowered the dragonfly. He brushed bits of rock dust from the saddle.

There was no sign of the mirror in the pile of slag. Its material had provided elements necessary to create the dimensional vehicle.

Sparrow's dog whined in curiosity and concern.

"I'm leaving!" shrilled the princess. She turned and collided with Platt.

The attendant cursed and grabbed at the girl reflexively. When he realized what he had done, he snatched his hands away as though they had touched hot metal.

Sparrow chuckled. "She's the nicest piece you'll ever have in your life, Platt," he said. "Why are you letting her go?"

Miriam broke for the door.

Platt snatched at her. He caught a handful of the sealskin cloak. Miriam clutched convulsively at her throat and bent open the pin of her gold clasp. The cloak fell away and tangled the attendant's legs.

Miriam took two steps and tripped over the slops bucket. Her head and right shoulder crashed into the heavy doorpanel. The shako fell off.

As the princess crouched on her knees half-stunned, Platt gripped her shoulder and flung her onto her back on the floor. The necklace of light winked on steel as Platt slit Miriam's clothing from hem to neckline.

The princess began to scream. Platt's clenched fist knocked her head against the stone floor. Her eyes unfocused.

Sparrow used the strength of his arms to pull himself onto the dragonfly's saddle. His dog whimpered and tried to climb up with him. The animal's scarred hind legs would not support it; it could only nuzzle its master's feet.

Platt had lowered his leather breeches. The half-rotten tie-string parted under his desperate enthusiasm. He knelt between the woman's legs.

Princess Miriam turned her face away from the attendant. Her eyes followed without understanding the smith's activities beyond the bars.

Sparrow leaned over and scooped up his dog with one hand under its rib cage. The animal whined and thrashed its limbs, but it settled again when Sparrow rested it on the saddle ahead of him.

"Prisoner!" Princess Miriam whined. "Help me! You've got to—"

Platt hit the princess again, bloodying her mouth. He attempted to enter her. In his excitement, he instead ejaculated across her white belly. He screamed a curse and slapped her, front and backhand.

"I would rather leave on my own legs, princess," Sparrow said in a tone of inexorable calm. "But your parents denied that to me."

Miriam sobbed at a pain so intense that it penetrated her state of borderline consciousness.

Sparrow touched a control. The dimensional vehicle faded from sight, then reappeared on the other side of the barrier, hovering in the air as Hansen had done when he visited the smith.

Platt did not look up. He removed the knife hilt with which he had forced the virgin and bent to his work again.

The dog looked around brightly. It gave no sign that it was concerned at what was happening to it.

Sparrow slid into the curtains of the Matrix again. The light was sharp and pure, perfect. He had duplicated the dimensional vehicle with a skill that no other smith in the Open Lands could have imagined.

The dragonfly returned to synchrony with the world around it. The waste ground between the citadel and the modern city was dark and silent. The eastern sky lacked an hour of dawn, and the stars were feeble tremblings, above the haze of smoke that trickled from chimney pots.

Sparrow slid the in-plane controls forward, heading for the stone mass of the palace. The dragonfly rose as he proceeded. It climbed until the vehicle was almost two hundred meters in the air and the great gargoyles carven on the palace roof were insect-sized blotches.

"King Hermann!" the smith shouted. "Queen Stella!"

Sparrow's words were little more than a suggestion in the cold night. From within, the walls echoed, "King Hermann! Queen Stella!" in childish voices, terrible and terribly loud.

"King Hermann!" Sparrow cried. "Run to the citadel to find your children!"

The voices from the palace repeated Sparrow's words. Lights winked through the cracks in shutters as servants ignited rushlights on the hearths.

King Hermann and a dozen of his barons in battlesuits poured out of the front door of the palace. The king wore the armor he had stolen when he captured Sparrow. Stella, throwing a cloak over her night dress, ran after the men.

"Quickly!" the smith urged. "To the citadel!"

His dog howled. Sparrow began to laugh.

The two mobile chairs the smith had built for the royal couple slid through the palace gates behind them.

The chairs had voices. They echoed Sparrow's laughter, but they did so in the cruel, childish tones of Bran and Brech.