“Silence,” she said in a low voice.

Aaron’s cry died in his throat. He shook violently, helplessly.

“Well done, Samheed,” Ms. Octavia said. “Don’t move another inch, Aaron Stowe, or you’re a dead man,” she growled into his ear, and chomped her teeth together to keep from biting his head completely off.

“Hello, again,” Mr. Today said coldly as he approached the high priest’s vehicle. All around him were piles of wounded, sleeping, or splatterpainted Quillitary. On the road beyond the high priest a pileup of smoking vehicles groaned in various stages of death. The rest of Artimé’s walking wounded, suddenly bereft of their enemies, picked their way around bodies and fell in behind their leader, ready to carry on if necessary for as long as they could stand and draw breath.

“Marcus, my dear,” came the sarcastic reply. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How terribly polite.”

“Indeed,” she said. The High Priest Justine sat on the seat of her vehicle with Claire Morning tucked securely under one arm, a pistol pointed at Claire’s temple. Governor Strang sat beside her, his pistol trained on Meghan Ranger, who lay on the corner of the mansion roof nearest them. Four more governors stood at the entrance with their pistols, pointing randomly at anyone who dared move. Only Senior Governor Haluki was missing.

“Your young protégé, Aaron, sends his regards. Shame that you should punish him. He’s the one who might have saved you all,” Mr. Today said evenly.

Justine’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, come now, Justine. Why so suspicious? Have you forgotten our little secret passage to the palace?” he asked. “And, oh dear, let me see. One, two, three, four, five … good heavens! You’re missing a governor. Pity.”

The four standing governors wavered, casting sidelong glances at one another in the starlight.

“Dear me. And have you told your governors about your secret gift? You know,” he whispered loudly. “Magic.”

“Enough!” shouted Justine.

“You do not deny it?”

“Silence, you traitor!”

Marcus Today smiled a small smile. “Justine, honestly. Have you no secrets on me that you can reveal to my people so that they might gaze at me as suspiciously as your governors are now looking at you? Surely there must be something.”

Justine glared at Mr. Today. She cocked the hammer of the pistol that grazed Claire’s temple.

Claire closed her eyes reflexively, and then opened them again, granting permission to her father to do whatever it took.

“What have you done with Aaron?” Justine growled.

“Hmm? Oh, the twin? Well, there was a bit of a skirmish at the palace, you see. You know how it is with twins.” He chuckled hollowly. “Best of friends, worst of enemies. All that rot. I imagine he’s around here somewhere. Pity he isn’t coming to your aid.”

Justine snarled and looked at Claire, judging her features. “All these years, Marcus? Thirty of the last fifty years you’ve spent betraying me and all I’ve stood for. All we’ve stood for! After all I’ve done for you and for Quill! How could you?”

Mr. Today sighed and looked up at the sky. He shook his head slowly, and then looked back at the high priest. “The question is, dear sister, how could you?”

Justine’s face burned. She stood up in the vehicle and wrenched Claire to her feet. “Say good-bye to your daughter, once and for all,” she spat.

Mr. Today nodded amicably at the high priest and smiled warmly at Claire. “Good-bye, daughter,” he said.

From the sky, a whirlwind. Simber swooped in with his powerful wings, knocking four governors across the road and the fifth headfirst into the backseat. He grabbed Claire in his jaws and sailed away.

When shots rang out in the confusion, it was the High Priest Justine who slumped over in her seat and began to deflate like a balloon, until she was nothing but a flat rubber body that flopped over and fell to the floor, only to be stepped on in the aftermath. Clearly, no bullet had done that to her.

No one could see the invisible Lani, nor could they hear her whisper “Evermore, nevermore,” an irrevocable spell that she had delighted in finding in her studies. And this was the perfect use for it. Justine would forevermore be silent and useless. “Take that, you old windbag,” she muttered when she saw it had worked perfectly.

Afterward Lani ran as fast as she could toward the part of the shore that remained unfrozen. She took the gun from her vest and flung it as far as she could into the sea. And then, finally, she slipped away to the forest to find her father.

And So It Happened That

When it was all over, in the wee hours of the morning, Mr. Today visited the newly created hospital wing of the mansion. There he found Lani dozing on the floor next to Alex, and discovered Meghan asleep in a chair near Samheed. The old mage roamed from bedside to bedside, offering whatever healing spells he could to the people of Artimé who had served and sacrificed for him. Eventually he took a chair, settling in near Alex, who was the most seriously injured of them all. And while he was glad for the protection spell on Alex’s vest, Mr. Today couldn’t stop thinking. Had he made a mistake? He buried his face in his hands as the ward tossed and turned restlessly, painfully, in the dim light around him. The old mage would not sleep that night.

By morning Gunnar Haluki had arrived. He paced anxiously with his arm in a sling, waiting for his daughter to wake up. Claire, who was quite calm despite her near-death experience of the previous evening, joined them.