A Crystal of Time. Soman Chainani

Anadil seconded.

      “Or broken wand,” thirded Dot.

      “Do you even have your Quest Map?” Hort asked Dovey.

      “Probably broke that too,” Anadil snorted.

      “How dare you talk to her like that!” Beatrix blazed. “Professor Dovey has dedicated her life to her students. That’s why she’s in a cell to begin with. You know full well she’s been ill—gravely ill—and that Merlin ordered her to stay at school when the Snake attacked Camelot. But still she came to protect us. All of us, Good and Evil. She’s served the school for”—Beatrix glanced at Dovey’s silver hair and deep wrinkles—“who knows how long, and you speak to her like she owes you something? Would you speak to Lady Lesso that way? Lady Lesso, who died to protect Professor Dovey? She would have expected you to trust her best friend. And to help her. So if you respected Evil’s Dean, then you better respect Good’s Dean too.”

      Quiet stretched over the cell.

      “Come a long way from that Tedros-loving twit our first year,” Dot whispered to Anadil.

      “Shut up,” Hester mumbled.

      Professor Dovey, on the other hand, came alive at the mention of Lady Lesso’s name. Tightening her bun, she pushed through her cell bars to get closer to her students. “Hester, it’s natural to lash out when you feel helpless. All of us feel helpless right now. But listen to me. No matter how dark things seem, Rhian isn’t Rafal. He’s shown no evidence of sorcery, nor is he protected by an immortal spell like Rafal was. Rhian has only gotten this far because of lies. He lied to us about where he comes from. He lied to us about who he is. And I have no doubt he’s lying about his claim to the crown.”

      “Yet he managed to pull Excalibur from the stone,” Hester argued. “So either he’s telling the truth about being King Arthur’s son . . . or he’s a sorcerer after all.”

      Professor Dovey resisted this. “Even with him pulling the sword, my instinct tells me he’s neither Arthur’s son nor the true king. I haven’t proof, of course, but I believe there’s a reason Rhian’s file never crossed my desk or Lady Lesso’s as a prospective student, when every child, Good or Evil, has a file at school. He claims he went to the Foxwood School for Boys, but that could be a lie, like all his other lies. And lies will only take him so far without skills, discipline, and training, all of which my students possess in spades. If we stick to a plan, we can stay one step ahead of him. So listen carefully. First off, Anadil, your rats will be our spies. Send one to find Merlin, the second to find Tedros, and the third to find Agatha wherever she may be—”

      Anadil’s rats sprang out of her pockets, elated to finally be useful, but Anadil squashed them down again. “Don’t you think I thought of that already? You heard Willam. The dungeon is impenetrable. There’s no way for them to— Ow!”

      One of the rats had bitten her, and now all three were scampering through her fingers, sniffing and searching the cell walls, before they squeezed through three different cracks and disappeared.

      “Rats always find a way. That’s what makes them rats,” said Professor Dovey, craning to see a crack in a wall that one of the rodents had squeezed into and spotting a golden gleam coming through. “Nicola, what do you see in that hole?”

      Nicola pressed against the wall and put her eye to the crack. The first year probed at the hole with her thumbnail, feeling the mildewed stone crumble. Clearly the dungeons, like the rest of the run-down castle, hadn’t been fortified or maintained. With the tip of her hair clip, Nicola pulled away more dirt and stone, which widened the hole a smidge bigger, more light spearing through.

      “I see . . . sunlight . . . and the slope of a hill. . . .”

      “Sunlight?” Hort scoffed. “Nic, I know they do things differently in Reader World, but in our world, dungeons are below ground.”

      “Is that one of the perks of having a boyfriend? Having him explain things to me I already know?” said Nicola acidly, squinting through the hole. “Dungeons might be below ground, but we’re right up against the side of the hill. It’s the only explanation for why I can see the castle.” She scraped away more dirt with her clip. “I see people too. Lots of people packed uphill. They’re looking up at the Blue Tower. Must be watching Rhian . . .”

      The king’s voice echoed louder through the hole.

      “For as long as you’ve lived, you’ve served a pen. No one knows who controls this pen or what it wants and yet you worship it, praying it will write about you. But it never does. Thousands of years, it’s ruled these Woods. What do you have to show for it? Each new story, it chooses someone else for glory. The educated. The children of that school. And leaves scraps for you, the hardworking, the invisible. You, the real stories of the Endless Woods.”

      The crew could hear the people buzzing.

      “Never talked that much when he was with us,” Dot mused.

      “Give a boy a stage,” Anadil quipped.

      “Nicola, can you see the balcony where Rhian is?” Dovey asked.

      Nicola shook her head.

      Professor Dovey turned to Hester. “Have your demon chip at that hole. We need a view of the stage.”

      Hester frowned. “Maybe you can turn pumpkins into carriages, Professor, but if you think my demon can get us out by boring a tunnel through a wall—”

      “I didn’t say ‘get us out.’ I said ‘chip at that hole.’ But if you prefer to doubt me while we lose our chance at rescue, then by all means,” Professor Dovey snapped.

      Hester cursed under her breath as her demon tattoo swelled red on her neck, lifted clean off her skin, and flew towards the hole, jabbing its claws like pickaxes and garbling grunty gibberish: “Babayagababayagababayaga!”

      “Careful,” Hester mothered, “your claw is still wounded from Nottingham—”

      She froze, catching a black blur of movement through the hole. Her demon spotted it too and recoiled in fear . . . but it was already gone.

      “What is it?” said Anadil.

      Hester bent forward, inspecting the hole in the stone. “Looked like . . .”

      But it couldn’t have been, she thought.

      The Snake’s dead. Rhian killed him. We saw his body—

      “Wait a second. Did you say ‘rescue’?” Dot said, twirling to Dovey. “First of all, you heard Willam: there’s no way out of this prison. Second, even if there was and we summoned the League of Thirteen or anyone else, what would they do . . . storm Camelot? Rhian has guards. He has the whole Woods behind him. Who on the outside could possibly rescue us?”

      “I never said it’d be someone on the outside,” said Professor Dovey intently.

      The whole crew looked at her.

      “Sophie,” said Hort.

      “Rhian needs Sophie,” Good’s Dean explained. “Every King of Camelot needs a queen to consolidate his power, especially a king like Rhian who is so new to the people. Meanwhile, the Queen of Camelot is as vaunted a position as her counterpart. It’s why Rhian took careful steps to ensure Sophie—a legend and beloved face across the Woods—would be his queen. As the people see it, the best of Good is marrying the best of Evil, which raises Rhian above the politics of Evers and Nevers and makes him a convincing leader to both. Plus, having Sophie as queen will calm any doubts about having a mysterious stranger as king. So now that that king has his ring on Sophie’s finger, he will do everything he can to keep her loyalty . . . but in the end, she’s still on our side.”

      “Not necessarily,” said Reena. “The last time Sophie wore a boy’s ring, it was Rafal’s, and she sided with him against the