Chapter 44

“Guards!” Leopold shouted. “Guards!”

“They won’t come, my lord,” I said, suddenly seeing all. “They’re asleep, if they aren’t dead. Queen Annalise has drugged them with her wine.”

King Leopold looked dazed. He shook his head. “Annalise?”

Prince Ronald pointed his sword straight at Leopold’s heart.

King Leopold whirled upon the queen, breathing hard from his nostrils.

“Tell me the truth of this, Annalise,” he said. “Tell me this is not your doing.”

The Circus Phantasmagoria pressed in closer, forming a ring around the king’s table. Ronald dragged me with him by my collar and threw me against the table.

The monkey was back on his master’s shoulder, chattering, baring his gruesome teeth, twitching his long tail.

Clair, I called to my leviathan. I’m in danger.

I’m coming to you, Mistress!

No, I said. Instead can you upset the ship?

“My lord the king,” Annalise cried in a fluttery voice, “I know nothing! These performers must be hired by some foreign power plotting against us!”

The fire breather exchanged an uneasy glance with the dagger mistress.

“You see?” I said. “What did I tell you? She’ll betray you, too, in the end.”

Annalise opened her mouth, then closed it again. The ship groaned and creaked as if it were being compressed by a giant nutcracker. Then it lurched sharply to one side, causing dishes and silver to topple off the table and slide to one wall. The clown fell backward, and so did the fire breather, while Prince Ronald fell forward, nearly crushing me.

Good, Clair. Good! Do more!

Queen Annalise, who only tipped over slightly on her cushioned couch, pulled out her small velvet purse and slipped out Bijou. She gave him a kiss and then set him on the floor. He flashed away like a golden bolt of lightning, wriggling his way over the wreckage and out the door of the salon.

King Leopold saw him go and looked at Annalise with new terror.

“What in heaven’s name,” he panted. He backed away from Annalise. “What are you?”

She smiled at her husband. Her charade was over. “Princess of Merlia, by my birth,” she said. “Now queen of Pylander, through your grace.”

“Soon to be queen of Danelind as well,” the strong man said, lifting Annalise by her waist and kissing her. She drew her arms up around his neck and kissed him back, long and full. The circus members drew in closer.

The king scrambled sideways to get away from them both. “Treason!” he cried. “Treason and murder! Is there no one to hear?”

The ship lurched to the other side. Churning waves began hitting the windows of the salon. Up till now the sea had been perfectly calm. The circus members stumbled and fell once again. Out the windows of the salon I could dimly see the thrashing forms of our battling leviathans, gleaming against the dark.

The fire breather pinioned King Leopold’s arms to his back.

Annalise turned to me with a face full of malice. “So this is how it ends, little sister,” she said. “I would have made you a queen. See how my love is repaid.”

There was a loud crack. The fire breather relinquished his grip on the king, who broke away from him with a cry. The fire breather toppled to the ground. There behind him stood Alfonso, looking astonished, holding his wooden sword high.

“Stop the actor fools!” Ronald cried, but too late. Rudolpho had smashed a heavy chair over the clown’s head, and taken a nasty bite from the monkey as payment.

The ship rocked once more, snuffing out several lamps in the salon. In the shadowy light I saw the dagger mistress raise her arm to take aim at the king. Where she’d found more knives, I didn’t know. I whipped off my tin crown and flung it in her face as hard as I could. Her knife missed the king, but hit Rudolpho in the arm. Alfonso pounced on her.

The king recovered his wits enough to draw his own sword just as the acrobat girl came within reach of him, lashing and kicking at him with powerful, precise movements. But the king managed to reach his sword to her throat.

“Never before have I injured a woman,” he said, panting, “but I will, if you move another inch.”

And still the ship rocked and reeled in the unseen battle of the leviathans.

Clair, are you all right?

I am here, Mistress, was his terse reply.

It wasn’t just their battle now. Angry winds had roared up, bringing clouds that hid the waning moon, churning up waves that rocked the ship and smashed salon windows. I remembered Clair’s words when I asked him if he’d caused that other storm. It isn’t natural. The ocean abhors it. I wondered, how did the ocean feel when two leviathans waged war?

La Commedia and the Circus Phantasmagoria lay bruised and beaten amid the shattered glass on the salon floor.

“Enough!” Prince Ronald roared. He snagged me in one brawny arm and disarmed the king with one fierce stroke of his other, sword-bearing arm. Annalise raised the hem of her skirt and picked her way daintily over bodies and wreckage, following as Ronald dragged us out onto the deck.

Even Ronald stopped a moment to take in the dreadful sight. Silver blue Clair, thirty feet long, with green eyes flashing, darted his long neck in and out to avoid and counterstrike lethal blows from amber Bijou. His horns dripped with seafoam and blood, his whiskers were plastered against his scales. And still Bijou struck, and struck again, almost faster than the eye could see, knocking my beautiful beast back, and farther back, in the water.

“Heaven help us,” the king breathed, and crossed himself.

Winds buffeted and rain lashed against The Starlight.

“You shall not prevail, Evelyn,” Annalise said. “Relinquish now and I will spare you. Otherwise, you and the king die together.”

Rain pelted us all, soaking gowns and wedding clothes. Only bare-chested Ronald seemed unaffected by the storm. If anything, it animated him. He herded the king and me into a pathetic pair, poking his long sword at us both until we cowered against the outer wall of the salon, while behind Ronald, the battle in the sea still raged.

King Leopold placed himself between me and Ronald’s blade.

“Choose!” Annalise cried to me. “Or the beast dies, and you with him.”

How could I kill Clair? What did I dare do? I reached once more for the charms around my neck. Love had abandoned me. Luck couldn’t reach me here. And snakebite? I never needed that one in the first place. Silly schoolgirl, to think gypsy trinkets could ever do anything, much less help me now!

I was beaten. I opened my mouth to give Annalise my answer.

Then Ronald’s sword clattered to the slippery deck and slid under the rails and out to sea.

Something had dealt a crushing blow to his shoulder.

That something was Aidan Moreau.