The Glas s Town Game

Wellington ignored her. “Who knows, perhaps we’ll have a bit of luck and Old Boney’s snoozing away himself in there while his men go off to fight nothing.”

They occupied the courtyard quickly. The infantrymen relaxed at last, joking and breaking open treats from home on the flagstones. Even Josephine ate a bit of hardtack. They never noticed the oiled portcullis sliding closed behind them.

“Nothing?” came a familiar voice. It echoed round the courtyards, a boney voice with no meat on it. “My men will fight nothing, and they will crush it! You are nothing, my dear Wellington, and so are the rest of you! Toy soldiers for babies to gnaw on! Allez! Allez!”

Out of every crevice in the Parsonage, every cranny in their lovely old home, the Gondaliers came. They leapt down from the walls and poured out of the windows. They swarmed from the roofs and the cellar grates. Bonaparte himself, all bones and rifles and chicken, soared down from a turret and landed squarely in front of Wellington on Marengo’s back. The rooster crowed green fire. Copenhagen roared blue foam. Charlotte and Emily screamed. Crashey and Gravey screamed. Everyone screamed. The battle had begun.

Charlotte leapt off Copenhagen and ran for the gate that lead into the depths of the castle. Emily darted after her. They kept their heads low, took cover behind barrels and racks and infantry lines. Branwell and Anne. Branwell and Anne. That was all that mattered. Get to them. Get to them fast. Chaos exploded around them, a smear of color and noise. Frogs bellowing, limeys shouting, flashes of musket fire and splintering barricades and bayonets charging. Their boys tried to get into formation in the hurricane of it all.

Then, lightning forked across the clear, cloudless morning. Blue lightning, tinged in green foam. Twelve knights of Gondal knocked down the gates of the Parsonage in one blow. Charlotte and Emily stumbled out of the way. The knights sprinted toward the fight, laughing, cheering each other on, firing electricity from their fingers, spitting acid from their mouths like tobacco juice. One of them had an eyepatch. One had a waistcoat made of newspaper. One had skin of ash, with fire beneath, and a sword that flashed in the sun.

“Oh, Rogue,” whispered Emily unhappily. “Oh, Douro. And the Magazine Man.”

Had they volunteered? Had they been forced? Emily didn’t suppose she’d ever know. She wasn’t even sure whether or not it mattered. They were coming for her, and if they remembered that she’d once been kind to each of them, they didn’t show it.

Glass Town men were falling all around them. Medics bolted from body to body, pouring out grog and moving on to the next. But the lightning-knights kept coming. Sickly green lightning struck over and over again. Charlotte stared over the horrible scene. Frogs and limeskin troops and men made of lace and fireplace pokers and felt hats and soap cakes lay moaning. Her mind wanted to run away, but her heart would not. A calm, amused, ridiculous voice rose up inside her. They’re all made of our things. Two nations made of everything we’ve got in our house. Bookends and powder and book bindings and books and bones and pottery and armor out of our magazines and limes out of the market. And they’re all our age because we played their parts in every game. Wait till I tell Dr. Home.

They were pinned down behind a stone pillar. An armored frog keeled over and clattered down beside them. Their way to the gates was blocked.

“All right,” Emily shouted over the din. “I’m ready to go home now. School isn’t so terrible.” She clung to her sister. She could feel something in her pocket as she leaned against Charlotte. Something heavy and round. “Charlotte! You go after Bran and Anne! I’ve had a thought! Oh, where is George? I want his horse!” She laughed madly, remembering Richard’s ghost posting her letter so mournfully. “?‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’?”

As though he’d heard them, Lord Byron’s ho

rse galloped across the battlefield. His furry hair flew in the wind and he looked for all the world like an illustration of a hero in a fairy book. Emily smiled, despite everything. Byron skidded to a halt beside their pillar.

“Get off!” she yelled over the clash and clang of it all.

“Excuse you,” Lord Byron huffed. “She’s my horse, you know.”

“I’ll bring her right back, I promise.”

“Mount up behind me; I’ll protect you,” Byron said, wheeling the mare around.

“It’s my plan! I’m not your passenger!”

“Ellis . . . Emily . . . if something were to happen . . .”

Emily rolled her eyes. “If something happens and Gravey’s guzzled all the grog, I’ll haunt you, I promise. Now let me up!”

Lord Byron dismounted and laced his fingers together to give Emily a boost. He meant to hop up after her before she could protest, but she was gone before he got one leg up. He watched the pair of them go with tears in his eyes.

Emily’s heart hammered wildly. Branwell and Anne, she thought. Branwell and Anne. Hardy and half-savage and free. That’s me. She slapped the shield-covered flank of the horse and bolted into the courtyard, galloping at full speed toward the portcullis their side had managed to get open at last.

“Come on, you big dumb green bludgers!” she screamed as loud as she could. “Come on, Rogue, you traitor! Come on, Brunty, you miserable waste of pages! Come after me! I’m easy pickings!”

Emily and Lord Byron’s horse burst out into Verdopolis. The bat-tree men thundered after her. Brunty’s eyes foamed green with contempt. Rogue’s good eye wept. The Marquis of Douro’s handsome dark hair sizzled with acid and fire.

And Emily pulled her postal bell out of her breastplate.

She rang it madly as she rode, rang it and rang it and rang it until it shattered in her hand. She galloped down the narrow Verdopolis roads, past the Tower of All Nations, past the Hall of the Fountain, past the Alhambra and the Colosseum and the Grand Inn of the Genii. I did get to see them! I did get to look at it all! The bat-tree men fired lightning at her back, and it was only luck, luck and the twists and turns of the streets they’d lovingly drawn, that kept her whole. “Where are you?” She looked up into the sky. “Cathy, Richard, everyone, where are you?”

The ghosts came flooding down the alley behind her in a blue and silver sigh. They flowed over the acid-knights like wave after wave of a sparkling sea. Over Brunty and Rogue and the other frogs and men with their Voltaic chests. Frost trailed behind their bare, mournful feet. They reached out their pale arms to catch any letters the Gondaliers might have to send, and where their fingers touched, ice blossomed. The twelve electric soldiers froze in place on the cobblestone road, mid-war-cry, mid-confusion, mid-bolt-and-glob.

Emily laughed and laughed. Not because it was funny, for it wasn’t, not at all. But because it had worked. It had worked and she was alive. She reached into her breeches and pulled out the ruby medal she’d swiped from the Glass Town Train. FOR LAUGHTER IN THE FACE OF CERTAIN DEATH. Emily stuck it onto her chest, where it glowed redly. She’d earned it now. She jogged up to the frozen knights and stood before them, out of breath. The bat-trees jutted out of them, those strange, horrid discs and wires. She pulled her toffee hammer out of the pocket of her officer’s trousers, the one that said EMILY on the handle.

One by one, she struck the Voltaic Pyles, and one by one, they shattered into a million shards like snowflakes.

Far above the battle, Victoria huddled against the tapestries as muskets and cannon and lightning thundered outside. She dared not look out—windows could break so easily. The walls of the Bastille, which was the Parsonage, shook and coughed dust.