Page 99 of The Sun King's Noon
“Take them and go.”
“You cannot fight a whole cottage, you fool?—”
“I do not have to win.” Kaelen adjusted his stance. “I have only to stall it long enough for you to reach thicker trees.”
“I will not leave you.”
“Will you do as you’re told for once?” Kaelen yelled. “Go!”
Richard dropped Pip to the ground. “Children, run into the trees!”
The triplets ran instead to Richard’s trousers, anchoring him in place despite his repeated shouts at them to run. Jeya planted herself next to Kaelen, her sword held up.
“I ain’t leavin’!” Tears slid down Jeya’s face as she faced down the cottage only three steps away. “I ain’t no coward! I’ll fight to death, I will?—”
Kaelen wrested her back as the cottage reared, one chicken leg lifting, talons spread wide, the entire bulk of the hut tipping back. Yelka shrieked her glee from the doorway, and Richard held his breath as the talons came down upon Kaelen, whose sword—small, far too small against such a large claw—was aimed to slash?—
BOOM!
A tower rammed into the cottage’s side.
Richard gawked. Truly, it was a tower. He had no other name for it. A walking tower, easily forty feet of riveted iron and stone, square-shouldered, faceless, with no arms and only two columned legs of bricks that cratered the soil.
The cottage crumpled from the hit. Thatch exploded, and beams cracked. One of the chicken legs sheared off at the knee and pinwheeled away. The other leg buckled under the cottage’s weight, and the whole structure came down in a roaring heap of splinters.
Yelka tumbled out of the wreckage, her shawl flapping and her bun unspooling. Her left arm was broken, dangling, but she raised her right fist at the tower.
“OLD YELKA WILL HAVE HER REVENGE?—”
The giant stomped. Yelka’s shriek cut off with a loud squelch. The giant hefted its foot up, and brought it down again, and a third time, and a fourth, and by the fourth, there was no longer anything recognisable in the smear of red and grey and tattered shawl beneath its sole.
Seemingly satisfied, the tower pivoted towards the clearing’s edge. Richard followed its gaze and found Flint standing on a few willow trees away. His right arm was raised high above his head, and between two fingers was a single tarot card that Richard recognised.
The Tower.
The iron giant inclined its head—its conical roof bowing. Then it collapsed into a streak of white light that arced across the clearing and vanished into the card’s face.
Flint tucked the card into his sleeve, his legs seeming ready to buckle.
“Apologies for my tardiness,” Flint drawled. “I was in the middle of drinking milk, you see, and simply had to finish.”
CHAPTER 36
The walk to camp was long. Though Richard carried Pip, and Kaelen carried the other two boys, Jeya refused to let herself be piggybacked. Her shackles caught on brambles and almost tripped her more than once, so the whole party had to slow their pace to match.
Richard did not mind. Indeed, it was the perfect way to corner Flint.
“And the card itself, then, is merely the conduit? Or is it the actual tether by which the Tower is held in our physical world? Because it seemed to return to the card, did it not, as though the card were its house. But surely the card is far too small to contain a creature of such greatness?”
Pip slept against his shoulder, drooling into Richard’s collar. Richard scarcely noticed the weight, trying to keep close to Flint’s elbow.
“I only wish to understand—does each card hold a single entity? Is it only the one Tower, or can you summon others?—”
“For fuck’s sake.” Flint sidestepped a root, and Richard sidestepped with him. “I’d never have placed you as a yapper. Those are my secrets. The Arcana are not summoned from their world so easily. Every card, every summoning, demands a cost.The Tower’s one of the gentler ones, as it happens. It likes me well enough. Others—” He grimaced. “Others do not.”
“A cost.” Richard breathed. “What manner of cost? Blood? Years? Is that why you looked so weary when you?—”
“Handsome,” Flint gritted out. “I’d thank you to stay out of?—”
