CHAPTER THREE

  The Voice in the Teacup

  III

  Oddly, Gramma’s loss of composure corresponded to a restrengthening of Ez’s. We can’t both panic, she thought. So she stopped doing so. An icy pragmatism took over, and when she next spoke, her tone was determinedly calm. “Come on,” she said, striding past Thoralf to the trapdoor that led down to the root cellar. She kicked it open and descended the short staircase into the shadows. Gramma followed. The long, narrow cellar was cramped with stored goods. Ez lay the still-vibrating Wilburn gently on the hard dirt between two heavy sacks of flour, turning him onto his side in case he vomited, and shifted the sacks to prop him in that position. Then she pointed out the flimsy posts and beams that held the floor up overhead. “Can you turn these into steel?”

  “It would take all the magic I’ve got left,” Gramma said, “and it would only slow them down. They’d break through before long, then we’d be trapped.”

  “We’re trapped anyway,” Ez said. “But you and I aren’t staying down here. We’re going back up there to kill as many vexpids as we can.”

  There was a pause in which Ez knew they were both thinking the same thing.

  “It’s much easier to transmogrify organic materials into elemental metals than alloys,” Gramma said. “I can save a little magic for the fight that way. How about iron?”

  “Titanium has a better strength-to-weight ratio,” Ez said.

  Gramma nodded. She picked her way around the room, rapping her cane against each post and beam and plank, murmuring all the while words that wouldn’t stick in Ez’s mind. And there it was again—the sync—that strange sensation of a vast, invisible wheel turning, stronger, more vivid than Ez had yet experienced. When Gramma finished, the cellar had become a solid metal cube, save for the floor, on which Gramma sat heavily, then lay. “Food,” she gasped, “and water. Quick.”

  Ez seized a bag of walnuts off a nearby shelf and tossed it into Gramma’s lap. “I’d have to go get water from the rain barrel,” she said, “but here—” she thrust an earthenware jug into Gramma’s hand. “That’s cider. You can turn it into water.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Gramma groaned. “No more transmogrify…” Propping herself up on an elbow, she slammed a fistful of walnuts in her mouth, then, before Ez could stop her, yanked the cork out of the jug and gulped down the entire quart of cider.

  “That was hard…” Ez said weakly.

  Gramma smacked her lips. “You told me there was nothing but cooking sherry,” she said, sounding alarmingly cheerful. She belched.

  “I lied.” It was too late to take it back. Ez went to Wilburn and planted a kiss on his quivering brow. “I love you,” she said. Then she marched up the stairs, with Gramma sagging after her. As they emerged into the light, Ez saw that Gramma looked not merely older, but old, truly old—haggard, spent. Ez felt a pang of gratitude. Gramma could probably have escaped on Thoralf if she had chosen to abandon them. It was Wilburn the vexpids were after, not her—and besides, Gramma had magic. But she’d used it to forge Wilburn’s bunker, rather than to save herself, and now, weakened and exhausted, she was preparing to fight, and probably get killed, at Ez’s side. “Thank you,” Ez said, raising her voice to be heard over the oppressive hum. She had never meant it more.

  “Just to be clear,” Gramma said, “I’m doing this for Wilburn, not you.”

  “I know,” Ez said. “Thank you.”

  Gramma grunted. Then she clucked her tongue and shook her head and said, “Well, at least I get to die drunk.”

  It took both of them working together to flip the titanium trapdoor, which fell shut with an earsplitting clang. Ez drew the bolt. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d just sealed Wilburn in a tomb. “Will he be able to get out of there?” she asked. “I mean, if we’re not…?”

  “If we’re not in a condition to assist him?” Gramma finished grimly. “Yeah. One good kineturgic shove should do it.” She was patting Thoralf’s shoulder in an all-too-obvious gesture of farewell.

  “Let’s set him free,” Ez said suddenly. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? “Without a rider, I bet Thoralf can outrun vexpids. He could get away! There’s no need for him to—”

  Thoralf chuffed and tossed his shiny black head. And damned if it didn’t look as if the one eye Ez could see was glaring at her.

  “Thoralf has always been free,” Gramma said. “I’m not his master. We’re partners. He chooses to stay and fight with us, because he has a warrior’s honor.”

  Thoralf stamped his hoof once as if to confirm these words.

  “You understand?” Ez asked him, more bemused than surprised at this point.

  Thoralf stamped his hoof again—but the thump came half a second late, and much too loudly—and from overhead. And then there was a second thump, though Thoralf hadn’t stamped, and then a third thump, and a fourth, and then a fifth and sixth and seventh—and then all hell broke loose.