His expression gave no doubt as to what news he thought that would be.
“We’re not leaving,” Noah and Weyland said together, and the fire chief gave a tired shrug, then walked away.
Weyland turned to Jack. “Surely you can do something!”
Jack was so tired and so overwrought that his eyes filled with tears. “Do you think I haven’t thought of it? That I haven’t racked my mind for every possible thing I could do? Goddamn it, Weyland, I can’t shift tons of rubble on my own, either with my hands or with my power, and…and, Jesus Christ! There is nothing I can do!”
Noah shook her head slowly from side to side, then sank down to the ground, head lowering into her hands. “Grace…” she whispered. “I can’t reach her. Always before this I could feel her, touch her. Now there’s nothing but darkness.”
None of them could…Under normal circumstances any one of the three could easily have communicated with Grace with their abilities, but now, nothing. They’d tried desperately hard, but nothing.
Like Matilda, they all knew what that meant.
Unlike Matilda, none of them were willing to admit it, even to themselves.
Jack dropped to his haunches beside her. “Noah, we need to talk about what Catling said. What she threatened! Ecub and Erith are dead, and Matilda is dying. Grace is suffering gods know what and probably wishes she were dead. Jesus, she is crushed under rubble! She—”
Noah grabbed at one of his hands. “What will hurt worst, Jack? Completing the Troy Game, or watching Grace suffer?”
“May I make a suggestion?”
Jack and Noah looked up. Malcolm had appeared, carrying a tray on which rested a plate of sandwiches and three steaming cups of tea.
“Not now, Malcolm,” Jack said tiredly.
“Yes, now,” said Malcolm, setting the tray down on the ground before Jack, Noah and Weyland. “I have been speaking with the king,” he continued, and none of the others wondered at that. Malcolm had the air of someone who would damn well talk to whomever he wished whenever he wished. “George is making an effort to come view the situation for himself. Harry is also on his way. May I suggest that you commit to nothing until both those men arrive? Between them they head the mortal and Faerie worlds, and their input is not only needed, it is required.”
Jack resented Malcolm’s lecturing tone, but knew he spoke sense. “Grace suffers,” he said, and Malcolm rested a hand on his shoulder.
“I know,” he said gently.
“Matilda? Are you still there?”
That was such a silly thing to say, Matilda thought. Where would she go? But, oh, Grace’s voice. So lost and alone. So desperate.
“Yes,” she said, “I am still here.”
“How are you, Matilda?”
Well, I’m buried beneath tons of rubble. My shoulder and arm and abdomen and pelvis are crushed. My legs scream.
“My feet are wet,” Matilda said. It was the least troublesome of her burdens at present.
Grace took in a hiccupy breath, and Matilda realised she was trying hard not to cry. Oh, how I wish I could touch her. Reach out to her.
“I wish Jack were here,” Grace said.
“Me too,” said Matilda, unable to keep the desperate longing out of her voice. Oh, to have Jack here one last time. To have him hold me one last time.
“What was he like as a husband, Matilda?”
Matilda thought about laughing, but knew it would crucify her with agony. “He was a trouble,” she said, and there was enough humour in her voice for Grace to give a short, breathless laugh.
“I’m a little scared of him, Matilda.”
Matilda thought about that. “Not of him, you’re not. Of life, maybe.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Grace spoke in a whisper. “What should I do, Matilda?”
“Take a damn risk,” said Matilda. “That’s what I did. I never regretted it.”
“But you lost him.”
“Grace?”
“Yes?”
“I am dying, do you know that?”
Grace began to weep. “Yes.”
“Then hear me out, for I speak with the clarity of death. If you do not take the risk, then you will lose him. If you risk all for him, who knows?”
Grace didn’t answer.
“Grace…risk it all.”
At eleven a.m. the king and his queen arrived. Word had spread around London about the tragedy at Coronation Avenue, and crowds had been gathering since dawn. The site swarmed with rescue workers, but no matter how much rubble they shifted, they had still not even got near the stairwells leading down to the shelter, let alone started to clear them.
The area was cordoned off by police. To one side the Red Cross had erected a tent, and in that tent sat the relatives of those trapped.
Among them waited Noah, Weyland and Jack. Harry and Stella had joined them after dawn, and now all five sat slightly apart from the other ashen-faced relatives. Malcolm was still there, but spent his time helping the Red Cross distribute tea and sandwiches.
Harry brought the news that the Faerie had not been troubled during the previous night’s bombing. Catling had reserved all her ire for Grace, it appeared.
Jack’s face was less ashen than it was grey. “I can’t believe it has all come to this,” he said. “Sitting huddled in a tent by a mountain of rubble, being fed tea and sandwiches by charity workers. I’m sick to death of it. It has to stop somehow. Gods, Stella, where did we go wrong? What did we start?”
Stella sighed. “I don’t want to spend my time revisiting the sins of the past, Jack. Brutus and Genvissa simply don’t matter any more. I’m just grateful that now it isn’t my decision.”
Jack was about to say something more, but just then Harry looked out the tent flap at a convoy of cars arriving and straightened from where he was leaning against a table. “George is here,” he said. “Thank the gods.”
They all rose to their feet, huddling together but staying in the tent as the other relatives and members of the Red Cross went outside to watch the king and queen.
“He’ll come in to see us,” said Harry. “He knows we’re here. Wait.”
Matilda wished she could die. Her pain was growing too intense for her to ignore, or wish away, or to be able to concentrate on thinking of something else. To make matters worse, icy water was creeping slowly up her body. The coldness intensified and clarified the pain, and Matilda wondered if Catling had fated her to die, not from her crushing injuries, but from a slow drowning.
She thought this very likely. It would be just what Catling would do. The effect on Matilda was nothing—the effect it would have on Grace was everything. For hours Grace had tried all she could, tried to summon every particle of power she had, in order to help Matilda.
Grace had not been able to achieve anything. She was so terribly injured that all her abilities as either Darkwitch or Mistress of the Labyrinth were as nothing.
Even had Grace been able to use her power, Matilda doubted she could do much.
After all, what was the power of gods when compared to the unmoveable force of hundreds of tons of masonry?
The king and queen talked quietly among the relief workers for twenty minutes, then they split up, Queen Elizabeth to talk to the relatives standing huddled in a teary-eyed, haggard-faced group to one side of the Red Cross tent, the king to duck inside the tent, waving back his courtiers and minders as he did so.
George VI stopped immediately inside the tent, his face lined with months of care, and looked at the group standing a few feet away.
“Who is in there?” he asked.
“Our daughter,” Weyland said. “And Matilda, Ecub and Erith. Ecub and Erith are dead, Matilda is dying, and Grace…” He couldn’t go on.
“Dear God,” George said, then went to Noah and hugged her tight. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, cradling her head against his shoulder.
Then he looked over the top of her head to where Jack and Weyland stood. “What has happened?”
Weyland motioned for Jack to answer. Jack gave a sigh, then briefly told George VI of what had happened over the past night.
“What do I do, George?” In his exhausted emotional state Jack didn’t even care about the appropriate honorifics. “Catling has the power to murder this city, this entire country, if she doesn’t get her way. But if Noah and I do what she asks…”
“Ah, God…” The king let Noah go and rubbed a hand over his face. “Harry?”
“The last thing I want is to see the land tied by the Troy Game,” he said. “I am opposed to Jack and Noah completing the Game.”
But what about Grace? Jack wanted to scream at him. In the end he spoke mildly. “Catling is only going to get worse. The idea of what she might do after this appals me.”