His foot connected with something. He heard a squeak and glanced down. There was a fuzzy ball scampering by his foot. It was a scoot.
“Sorry, little fellow.” Neel scooped the creature up. He peered at it and recognized the white markings on its chest. “Oh, it’s you. The one who doesn’t want to fly.” He set the scoot carefully on the ground. “I don’t blame you.” Neel looked over the edge. He could see nothing in the black distance below the palace wall, but he knew it was a long way down. “You and me, we’ll just keep our feet on the ground, yeah?”
The scoot chirped, and Neel might have whistled in reply if someone hadn’t rammed into his back. Before Neel could react, unseen hands shoved him over the palace wall.
11
Sadie’s News
NEEL FORGOT TO SCREAM. He tumbled through the night, the wind pummeling his body as he sped down toward the trees and rocks. I’m dead. The thought paralyzed his brain, and for a moment he was grateful, because if his mind didn’t work he couldn’t think about how much it would hurt to smash against the bottom of the cliff.
He wouldn’t think about how, whatever choices Damara had made, she loved him.
Neel skimmed past the palace wall.
Yes, she loved him, and she was his mother. That was what mattered. This realization struck him with the full force of grief, and he choked on the rushing air that filled his mouth. It was unfair to understand this now, seconds before his death.
But Neel remembered something Petra had said a long time ago, about how people make their own luck. He remembered he wasn’t helpless. He flung out his ghost fingers as high as they would stretch, and slapped them against the palace wall.
Neel’s invisible nails raked over the stones, dragged down by his weight as he scrabbled for a grip. He tried to dig Danior’s Fingers into the wall, fumbling for a nook or cranny, but they skidded uselessly. Then he felt it: two fingers caught at something.
His body stopped falling. He swung, and smacked into the wall.
The pain was so intense Neel almost let go. He gritted his teeth and jammed as many invisible fingers as he could into the hole his right hand had found in the wall. His toes scraped against stone, but the wall beneath them was too smooth. His feet slipped, and slipped again.
Neel tipped back his head and stared up toward the spot he’d fallen from. So far away, he thought. Panicky sweat trickled past his temples as he realized he was going to have to pull himself up, hand over invisible hand, hundreds of feet to safety.
Safety, huh? a snide voice said inside him. What if whoever chucked you down the cliff’s still up there, waiting?
Neel swallowed. His heart hammered, and the tips of his real fingers burned as the ghosts stretched. Could the ghosts rip off? He had never demanded so much from his gift. How long would his magic bear his weight?
Neel had no choice. He braced his feet against the wall and pulled at his ghosts as if they were a rope. Carefully, he began to climb.
His arms were screaming hot hatred at him when he finally reached the hole his right hand had clawed into. With shuddering relief, he saw that not far below this hole was a small ledge. Neel wedged his feet onto it and rested. He pressed his face into a small, aromatic plant growing out of the jagged hole his hand gripped. He gasped for breath.
A ledge? Why was there a ledge in the palace wall?
Because, his slow, terrified brain said, the wall is just like the rest of the palace. It’s part man-made, and part natural. You’re on real rock now. You’re gripping the side of the mountain.
And the mountain, he realized, was bumpy and pocked with holes. He could climb this. He could find cracks for his hands and feet. He’d have to stay away from the smooth stones the Roma had built into a wall hundreds of years ago. He’d fall for sure if he tried to make his way up the slick, man-made surface.
But he couldn’t see much through the dark. He couldn’t see, beyond a few feet in front of him, which part of the wall was mountain and which part man-made.
He took a steadying breath and felt the prickle of the plant against his cheek. He inhaled its scent. What was that? Rosemary. He almost laughed. Too bad he didn’t have a pot to cook with. Rosemary was growing right out of holes in the wall.
Neel blinked sweat from his eyes. He stared at the shallow dirt in the pocket his fingers clutched. Of course. Plants grew where seeds had blown, and where there was enough dirt to take root. If there was enough dirt to take root …
There were holes in the rock to hold it, just like this one.
Right, then. He’d sniff his way to the top.
Neel began to climb again, following the scent of rosemary to find the next little bush growing out of a hole, and then the next one.
He was about fifteen feet from the balcony from which he’d fallen when he stopped. The rocky surface was gone. There was nothing between him and the top but perfectly smooth stones.
He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. Then, one ghostly hand clinging to the rock, Neel threw his other fingers high into the air. They snagged the top of the wall.
Neel hauled himself up.
When he tumbled over the lip of the wall to rest on the dusty floor of a terrace, he lay there, sweating and shaking. Safe. He was safe.
Was he?
He couldn’t bring himself to look, to see if his would-be assassin had stuck around long enough to watch him fall, and then climb.
Something small and cold and wet nudged his cheek. Neel opened his eyes.
It was the nose of the scoot, chittering worriedly. It held something in its mouth, which it dropped in front of Neel’s face.
It was a small, clear crystal bead.
Neel shoved himself up. His dazed eyes took in the furry animal and the bead lying on his palm, then swept across the terrace.
He was alone.
* * *
PETRA AND TOMIK studied a map spread across a table in Petra’s room as Astrophil strutted over the drawn continents and oceans. The spider pointed to various Loopholes, listing the advantages and disadvantages of each possible path they could take to Prague.
“What about this one?” Tomik tapped a Loophole not far off the Vatran coast.
Another Loophole glowed near the border between Bohemia and Austria.
“Austria…” Petra said thoughtfully.
“Oh, no,” said Astrophil. “That Loophole is in the mountains. Do you realize that it is January? It is winter in Europe. I do not mind the cold, but you two would turn into human-shaped icicles.”