Finale (Caraval, 3)

Tella loved dogs. Back on Trisda she’d even gone so far as to steal a puppy once. She’d cleverly named him Prince Tuckleberry the Dog. But after her father found her, Tella had never seen Prince Tuckleberry again. She’d spent such a short time with the animal that Tella had a limited understanding of the way dogs communicated. But clearly Nicolas’s pet was trying to tell them something.

The massive black dog barked. Then he turned his great head toward the outside, as if he wanted the three of them to follow.

“Do you think he’s telling us Nicolas is somehow still alive?” Scarlett asked.

“No,” Tella answered. But maybe someone else was—like Legend.

The trio started toward the cracked barn doors and out into the late afternoon. Julian clutched Scarlett’s hand as if he never planned to let her out of his sight. Tella hoped he didn’t. Now that Scarlett was back, Tella needed to go to the Vanished Market and do whatever it took to purchase a secret that would show her how to destroy the Fallen Star—before he could get his horrible hands on her sister and turn her into a Fate.

Tella wanted to believe it wasn’t even possible. But it should have been impossible that a Fate was actually Scarlett’s father—or that Scarlett now had the ability to see other people’s feelings. Not that it changed anything. Tella meant what she’d said—even if they didn’t share a drop of blood, Scarlett would still be her sister.

An early-evening breeze cut through the air as Tella continued to follow Timber’s lumbering steps to the back of the estate. She didn’t feel the least bit rested. She felt as worn as the slippers on her feet. But her heart kicked out extra beats as Timber led them to a cobbled path so overgrown with purpling brambleberry bushes that she and Julian hadn’t noticed it during their initial exploration of the grounds.

The dog halted and barked until the trio worked to part the prickly plants.

As soon as there was enough space to run through, the animal raced ahead.

The air turned acrid as Tella followed. Her nose wrinkled at the scent of blood and sweat and embarrassment. Suddenly she hoped Legend wasn’t on the other side. The stench wasn’t nearly as foul as Nicolas’s house had been, but Tella felt a sense of building horror as an aged amphitheater came into view. She saw the steps first; their stones were almost blue in the fading light, the color of cold hands and blood veins under skin. There weren’t many of them. The theater was small, the sort built for family plays or bits of light entertainment. But there was nothing entertaining about the forced masquerade taking place on the center of the stage.

The people were dressed in servants’ clothes, and wearing horrible half-masks that came in sour shades of plum, cherry, blueberry, lemon, and orange. The colors made Tella think of rotted confetti that refused to fall as the servants moved about the stage, their arms and legs strung up with rope that turned them into human marionettes.

Tella cursed.

Scarlett gasped.

Julian looked as if the food he’d eaten in the barn had risen up to scald his throat.

No one appeared to be pulling the servants’ strings. The cords all moved by magic, bobbing them about the stage in a forced dance full of disturbing bows and curtsies.

Tella’s eyes latched on to the youngest forced participant, a boy with ringlets as pretty as a doll’s and a face stained with dried tears.

“No wonder we didn’t find any servants,” said Julian.

“How long do you think they’ve been like this?” Scarlett asked.

No one knew how to answer her. If the servants had been strung up when the count had been killed, it must have been at least a full day. Most of them didn’t even appear to be conscious; their heads stayed bowed as their bodies were jerked about the stage.

Tella raced toward it, hoping it wasn’t too late to save them. “This looks like Jester Mad. He has the ability to animate objects. He must have tied them all up and then used his magic on the ropes to keep them moving.”

“How do we undo it?” Scarlett asked. “When the Poisoner petrified that family, he left a note.”

But no one found a note on the stage.

“I think we just need to cut the cords, or untie them,” said Julian. Which proved easier said than done.

The poor servants’ arms and limbs moved faster with each attempt to set them free. Julian was the only one with a blade; he gave it to Scarlett. But none of them had an easy time of things. They all had to jump back more than once to avoid being kicked in the stomach or punched in the face as they worked to undo the servants’ bonds. Thankfully Nicolas didn’t employ too large of a staff.

There were only half a dozen of them. Their hearts were still beating, but barely. None of them could stand on their own legs very long once they were freed.

“The master has infection remedies for the wounds in his greenhouse,” muttered an older man as he ripped a rotted blueberry mask from his face. Tella imagined he was the butler. His eyes were the saddest of the lot, as he looked over his fellow servants all slumped across the stage.

Julian found the remedies while Tella fetched water, and Scarlett procured bandages from a small closet for the servants’ raw wrists and ankles. The entire ordeal was terribly somber. Neither Scarlett, Julian, nor Tella told any of the servants what had happened to Nicolas, and none of them asked, making Tella suspect that they must have already known. Or they’d experienced enough terror and they didn’t want to know.

There were lots of murmured thanks, but no one met her eyes, as if they were ashamed of what had been done to them. Only the boy with the ringlets looked at Tella directly. He even managed a crooked smile, as if she were some sort of hero, which she wasn’t, not at all. She was part of the reason all of this had happened. But in that moment, she vowed that she would make up for the part she’d played in freeing the Fates. “I’ll find who did this to you, and make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

“He wore a mask,” offered the boy. “But it wasn’t like this.” The child kicked at the scrap of cherry fabric that had been tied to his face. “His was shiny, like porcelain, and one side was baring teeth while the other side winked and stuck out half a tongue.”

“Jester Mad,” said Tella. “He’s a Fate.”

Several of the adults suddenly looked her way as she spoke; at least one appeared to think she shouldn’t be saying any of this to the little boy. But after what they’d just experienced, none of them contradicted her.

Tella didn’t go into the history of the Fates, or how they’d been freed from a Deck of Destiny, but she said enough so that once the servants and the boy recovered, they could warn others about the danger Valenda was now in.

It felt like an insignificant effort, but hopefully it would save a few other people from being turned into human toys, or from being murdered—like her mother, and Legend.

Tella’s eyes scanned the dusky horizon, as if Legend finally might appear on it, shining brighter than the stars that were beginning to sneak out. She kept searching for signs of his return after all the servants were fed and bandaged and helped back to their quarters in the rear of the estate, which didn’t possess any of the rot that had clung to the count’s library.

Tella was ready to follow the servants inside and wash up. But Scarlett lingered outside the door on an overgrown path covered in peculiar faisies.

“Do you want to come inside with me to wash up?” Tella asked.

The air was still, but Scarlett’s skirts rustled around her ankles. Tella hadn’t noticed when the gown had shifted colors. Earlier, it had been a brilliant ball-gown red. Now it was mourning-black.

“I’m sorry about Nicolas,” Tella said. “He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

“No, he didn’t. I should never have tried to find him. Then he’d still be alive.” Scarlett’s eyes glistened with tears as she looked up at Tella. “We can’t let the Fallen Star do this to anyone else.”

“We won’t.” Tella reached out to take her sister’s hand.

But Scarlett stepped back, a worried line between her brows. “I’m sorry, Tella—I thought I could stay here with you and Julian, but I need to return to the Fallen Star.”

“What? No!” Tella’s voice was joined by Julian as he emerged from the servants’ quarters. “You can’t.”

Julian must have just cleaned up. His dark hair dripped water all over the overgrown path as Scarlett stepped closer to the estate and away from the servants’ open windows.

“I’m sorry,” Scarlett said. “But I have to do this. I think I might be the key to defeating the Fates.”

“Absolutely not!” Julian bellowed while Tella yelled, “Have you lost your mind? He killed our mother and threatened to turn you into a Fate. You can’t go back to him!”

“I don’t want to go back,” Scarlett said. “But I knew I had to as soon as I saw those servants. If they’d been left much longer, they wouldn’t have survived.”

“But how will your going back do anything to help other people like them?” Tella argued. She wanted the same thing as her sister. She wanted to find a way to kill the Fallen Star and protect everyone from the terror of him and his Fates. But this was not the way to do it. “The Vanished Market is one of the Fated places,” she said. “There are sisters there who sell secrets, and I think they might have one that will tell us how to kill the Fallen Star.”

“What if they don’t?” Scarlett argued.

“Then we’ll find another way,” Julian cut in.

“I think this is the other way,” Scarlett said. “The Fallen Star wants me to master my powers, and I think that might be the key to stopping him. There was another Fate there, the Lady Prisoner. She told me that to defeat the Fallen Star, I needed to become what he wanted.”

“Of course she’d say that,” Tella spat. “The Lady Prisoner is a Fate.”

“He has her locked in a cage; she can’t get out unless he dies. And even if she is trying to manipulate me, it doesn’t mean she’s wrong. What she told me makes sense. Tella, you said that if an immortal loves, they become human. If I conquer my powers, I could make him love. I could turn him human and then we could defeat him.”

“Or you could conquer your powers and turn into a Fate,” Tella said.

“And love doesn’t work that way,” Julian added. “Magic can do a lot of things, but I don’t think you can make someone love with it. This is too dangerous.”

“I’m not asking either of you to let me do this. It’s my choice, not yours. So I’m only asking you not to stop me. Unless we find another way to destroy him, I’m the only one who can do this, and I want to do this. Tella, you once told me there’s more to life than staying safe—”

“I was talking about having fun, not moving in with murderers!”

“Well, I don’t think any one of us will be having fun if the Fallen Star takes over the empire. And we both know you’d do the same thing.”

Scarlett enclosed her sister in another hug. She gave incredible hugs. She knew exactly how tight to hold, when to stay silent, and when to let go. But no matter when she let go of this hug, it would be too soon.

Tella held on tighter. She wanted to keep arguing. If she kept fighting, if she told Scarlett how terrified she was, if she went into details about Nicolas’s gruesome death and reminded her of the way the Fallen Star had killed their mother, Tella knew she could convince her to stay. Tella wanted to do that so much. But she’d just vowed to do whatever it took to defeat the Fallen Star, and she meant it. She just hadn’t thought it would take her sister.

She sagged against Scarlett as the sky finished darkening into a rippling black night. “Are you sure you don’t want to be selfish right now and just think about saving yourself?”

“Of course I want to do that. But I need to do this—for me, for you, for Julian, and for all the servants we just helped, who don’t have a chance at doing what I can. I can’t do nothing when I have the ability to do something. And I have the Reverie Key; if it gets too dangerous, I’ll escape.”

“Keys can be stolen,” Tella murmured.

“I’ll be cautious.” Scarlett hugged her sister tighter, until Tella finally pulled away. She hadn’t wanted to. But if Scarlett was going to go back to the Fallen Star she needed to do it soon, before anyone noticed her absence. Scarlett probably wanted a proper good-bye with Julian as well.

And by proper, Tella imagined it would be the sort of good-bye that the prying eyes of a sister weren’t meant to witness.