The Glas s Town Game

They stumbled and snuck and tiptoed for hours. Branwell hadn’t really any idea which way to go, but he’d chosen this way, and he meant to stick to it. This way was his way. It would lead them true. Eventually. He realized he was viciously hungry. How long had it been since porridge? How long had they been here? How long had they slept?

“Bran, look!” Anne pointed up ahead.

A dark golden light spilled out into the hallway. They hurried after it. They were so thirsty for light!

The light was coming from the floor below them. It shone up through a little

row of alcoves and pillars in the endless, blank stone wall. It wasn’t endless and blank at all. They stood on a long balcony overlooking a room filled with candles, torches, and three hearths at full blaze. Branwell and Anne tucked themselves behind two pillars and peered over the edge.

“That’s Napoleon!” Bran hissed excitedly.

“Shush!” Anne hissed back.

Napoleon Bonaparte hunched over his war table in that glowing room. The firelight reflected on his long, white bones. It must have been his office, or at least his strategy room. Miniature models of the cities of Glass Town covered every table and chair. Papers littered the floor. Marengo, his loyal rooster, roosted by one of the hearths, his own green flames banked and quiet, snoring his high, trilling chicken snores. One of the armored frogs stood at attention. His poleax glittered by candlelight.

Brunty was there, too, sitting at Old Boney’s side. He looked exhausted. His pages hung limp. The headlines on his waistcoat read: IS THIS THE END FOR BRAVE BRUNTY? and THE INDUSTRY OF WAR GRINDS ON, and DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI. The wooden scroll-knob of his belly lay open. The bat-tree burbled away weakly inside. Napoleon poked at the machine that powered Brunty now. He lifted up a few of the thick saucers with the barrel of his rifle-arm and let them fall again.

“Is all very well and good, mon ami, but what am I meant to do with it? How shall we make more? We can’t even take it out of you. You just fall down. At first, it was a bit funny, my best spy going up and down and up and down like a windup Brunty. But now what? One of these does me no good. I need one for every beautiful toad in Gondal. And then a few more. And a few more after. And what are we calling it? Bat-tree? That’s awful. Misérable. No style to it.”

“It’s a Voltaic Pyle,” Brunty wheezed. “It’s devilishly simple, really. The discs are copper, zinc, and silver, wrapped in scraps of a housewife’s dress or something, soaked in brine. Back where it came from, it makes an electrical current, and the wires conduct it, and it stores the energy for you. It’s their magic. Their only magic. But once I got it across the borderlands, it perked up some. It woke up. Our bouncing baby Pyle is”— the Magazine Man coughed—“a little more interesting over here.”

“Voltaic Pyle. Too long,” Napoleon grunted. “Monsieur Grenouille, come up with something better!”

“Right away, sir,” the bundle of cast-off armor shaped like a frog answered. He sunk his chin into his chest, deep in thought.

Brunty closed the scroll-knob. He wiped dried ink off his papery mouth.

“Our man in Glass Town is handling the rest,” the Magazine Man said. “I sent him a ghost with a letter that explains all the technical rubbish that weakling Volta said to me. It must be terribly sad to be a breather. They break so easily. At any rate, it won’t be a problem. Our boy’s infiltrated the army. No shortage of supplies in Wellington’s tents. The first shipment will be arriving tonight. Twelve. They’ve got three of everything over there while we’ve got one or none. Isn’t that always the way?”

“Not for so long, mon frere,” Bonaparte said affectionately, and patted Brunty on the shoulder. He wiped the grimy ink off on his coat.

“I’m tired, Boney,” Brunty rasped. “I think it’s running down. It would appear that bat-trees don’t last. I don’t know how much longer I can stomach it all.”

Napoleon held a rifle-barrel hand to his forehead. He yanked off his bicorne hat and threw it across the room. “I am also, my boy! Do you think I’m not? But what else was I made for, if not this? With these arms, who else could I have been? I don’t even remember anything else but this. This war, and Josephine. I miss her so, Brunty. I miss the smell of her rosy hair and the way she stabbed me with her thorns whenever I held her.” He held up his rifles to the fire. “What else is there in the world but thorns and gunfire and tiredness?”

“See?” Bran mouthed. “We should be helping them!”

“Help them make an army of acid lightning bat-tree bombs like Brunty? Are you mad?” Anne whispered back. “If he’s so tired he ought to have a nap!”

“Well, what’s Leftenant Gravey, then? He’s been brought back loads of times.”

“Leftenant Gravey doesn’t shoot green electric rubbish out of his nose! Doesn’t that seem like an awfully big difference? Bran! Stop gawping at that nasty old tyrant. We have to keep on!”

Branwell dragged his feet. In all their games and stories, in all the times he’d led their toy army, pretending he was Napoleon, that he was conquering Europe and the downstairs parlor, he never could have imagined he’d be so close to the man he could smell his cologne. He didn’t want to go back to the black maze of the Bastille’s halls. He was meant to be in charge now. But what was Bran in charge of? Trudging along in the dark? That wasn’t any kind of a thing to lord it over.

Down more staircases. Through more corridors. Past more empty rooms.

Until one of the rooms wasn’t empty. Twilight and candlelight streamed through the bars of another heavy door like all the other heavy doors. Only this one was cut out of thick green glass. The window was bigger, too. They didn’t need to stack Anne on top to see inside. They looked at each other, trying to talk it over without talking out loud. Should we keep moving? It’s just some poor soldier or something, I expect. But there’s no one else in these cells. Maybe we should let the poor fellow out, too.

They raised their eyes above the stone sill of the barred window.

Napoleon had locked up a mountain of toys in a prison cell. Anne had never seen so many all in one place. And no two the same! Dolls in dresses, soldiers of wood and tin and porcelain and lead, woolen babies in swaddling clothes, delicate Princesses of silver and gold, glass angels and clay devils, even a taxidermied dog fitted with runners like a rocking horse.

“Must be some very bad-tempered toys.” Bran laughed softly.

Something moved in the heap of playthings. Something thin and small and white and quiet.

One of the dolls was a girl.