Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles 3)

Jacques then turned to the Unadoptables. “I’m afraid our Comrade Posholsky made a bargain he cannot, in good conscience, keep. Your colleagues are in the tower. They’re as good as gone, my friends. No one could bring them back.”

“Liar!” shouted Rachel suddenly. She leapt up from her bench and threw herself at Nico, who scrambled backward to avoid the girl’s attack. Elsie let out a shrill yelp of surprise and Michael dove forward, grabbing Rachel by the shoulders.

“Rachel!” he shouted, pulling her back. “Easy!”

“We would’ve killed him,” yelled Rachel, her voice breaking with anger. “But we let him go. He promised us!”

Nico had scuttled over behind several other members of the Chapeaux Noirs and was laughing embarrassedly, having been so spooked by the teenager’s sudden attack. Jacques watched him calmly, his eyes jumping the distance between him and the black-haired girl. He sighed heavily before speaking.

“Oh, Nico,” he said. “It is a sad man indeed who makes a promise he cannot keep. Even if it’s only to save his life.”

“Apologies, Jacques,” said Nico, smiling. “Excuse-moi. I did what I had to do.”

“The Chapeaux Noirs keep their promises, children,” sai

d Jacques. “But I tell you, this thing you want, the rescue of your friends, it is an impossible task. Titan Tower is impregnable. Full stop.”

“Then give us Nico back,” said Rachel calmly. “That’s the deal, right?” A mischievous smile cracked across her lips. She shook free of Michael’s restraints.

“Yeah,” said Cynthia Schmidt, rising to stand by Rachel’s side. “Give us our prisoner back.”

Nico’s face went pale. “Jacques,” he said desperately. “You can’t do that. These kids are . . . these kids are savages.”

Jacques seemed to be considering the exchange. He remained quiet, his hand gently stroking the little gray triangle of his beard. “A deal is a deal . . . ,” he mused.

“Wait a second, Jacques,” pleaded Nico. He shook his finger at the elder man, buying the time he needed to conjure the right words. “Operation: Urban Renewal. Remember? We could do it, with the right guys.”

Jacques cocked an eyebrow. “That wouldn’t work on several levels. I assume these children want their friends back alive and not vaporized?”

“With a little rejiggering—couldn’t we make it work? I mean, it’s about time we went for the big guy, isn’t it?” Nico’s voice was trembling in its desperate sincerity.

Jacques folded one leg neatly over the other, as someone whose sinewy joints had seen years of careful exercise, and continued to stroke the fur on his chin. “I apologize for my associate’s irresponsible behavior, children,” he said. “He made a gambit knowing that it was an unlikely bet. However: We do have a similar goal, the two of our, shall we say, organizations. It might be that our aims are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they might dovetail in a very satisfactory manner.” He looked around the room, at the other black-clad saboteurs present, and said, “Call Le Poignard. Clear the table. Let’s see what sort of plan we can hatch.”

CHAPTER 8

The Interim Governor-Regent-Elect

It had been nearly seven months since Prue had last set foot in the Pittock Mansion, the seat of power of South Wood, with its opulent twin towers and ivy-laden facade. It was no longer the pristine, whitewashed edifice she remembered; the interior seemed to have suffered the effects of a weeklong party that no one was too keen to clean up. The portraits in the foyer, the walls of which she only had a moment to scan as the throng of celebrants carried her on their shoulders through the doors, hung badly askew. One of them, of a corpulent general in dashing fatigues, had been defaced with a giant, black-marker mustache below the general’s regal nose. The red velvet bunting that had hung along the central staircase’s banister and along the first-floor balcony had been torn out in favor of a ream of fabric striped blue, white, and green that looked like it had been hung by a person with poor spatial coordination.

A smell of smoke and possibly cheese that had gone bad was on the air. Prue tried to organize her thoughts as the crowd, with some difficulty, managed to navigate the looping central staircase toward, she supposed, the Interim Governor-Regent’s office. There, she thought, she would present her plan. Out in the open, as Curtis had said. Announce the tree’s call for the resurrection of Alexei; damn the skeptics. Get the entire populace to fall in line and help in the search for Carol Grod, the other maker. Who would dare assassinate a child while surrounded by her staunchest fanatics? Still, the sight of the guillotine, something she recognized from a book she’d been shown once by a friend, was deeply troubling to her. And was that blood on the blade? She’d only had a moment to see it, but the image haunted her.

“What is this racket?” shouted a man at the top of the stairs. Prue looked up and immediately recognized him: the attaché who’d presented her to Lars Svik, back when she’d first set foot on the Mansion’s parquet floors in search of news of her brother’s disappearance. “No more mobs in the Mansion! I thought we’d come to an agreement!”

The crowd paused on the steps, awkwardly juggling their twelve-year-old cargo in place.

“Put me down,” said Prue calmly. Her carriers did as she asked. She pushed her way to the top of the stairs, to the head of the crowd. The attaché peered through his spectacles at her.

“I know you,” he said.

“I don’t s’pose I’ll need to make an appointment this time,” said Prue.

The attaché smiled nervously at the crowd behind the girl. “Not that you did last time, if I recall correctly.”

“In fact,” said Prue, emboldened, “I think that I will be making a general announcement right here.” She gestured to the bowed lip of the second-floor railing, a balcony that overlooked the whole of the foyer. “If the Governor-Regent would like to be here for that, it would be fine with me.”

“I will ask the Interim Governor-Regent-elect himself,” said the attaché, and he ran off toward a pair of doors down the hall.

A young man in bicycle britches at her elbow said, “What are you going to say?” He spoke in a breathless, excited voice that seemed to match the general tenor of the entire crowd.