Chapter thirty
Thecollectorscreamedrightback, and when Lux ran, barreling past him, he didn’t react until she was already lengths ahead.
“Death to the Devil! What is going on?”
“Ms. Thorn!”
“Is she all right?”
“Grab her!”
Lux ran up the steps—where the other two men stood stunned—and grabbed hold of their robes. One was Kent; she could tell by the size. “Get this devil out of my head!” she cried. “It tried to drown me!”
“That can’t be true. It wouldn’t—there she is! Ms. Otterbee!”
Artemis.
Lux was flung off by Kent and into the arms of the healer. She shoved him away. Cecily moved as quickly as she could, her gait made awkward and slow by the shackles. She ran for the gate.
When the collectors from the garden paths moved to chase her, Lux leapt down the steps and shrieked again.
If I must be mad, let me be mad.
The pair whipped backward to see the reason for her cries, and she knocked into them both. One went sprawling into the gravel. The other latched onto her upper arm.
“That’s enough of that!” he shouted.
Lux recognized his voice as Tobias, the one who had come to them with the cook’s injury. “It’s thedevil. It tells me you’ve done evil things.” She sneered at him. “It tells me you lock children away at night.”
She kicked him in the shin with all her strength. The man howled and dropped her arm while the other struggled up from the ground. Lux lifted her eyes to the gate. To see Cecily heave against it without success. The girl began to climb.
“Saints, no,” whispered Lux. The spires were many and so thin they glinted like they’d been layered in ice. No sane person would think of climbing over them. But there the girl was, scurrying up the gate anyway.
Cecily glanced back briefly, her eyes wide and panicked. Lux slipped through the collector’s grasping hand, but his next, she couldn’t dodge. The fallen one had risen to his feet, and now they both held onto her arms and would not let go. The girl reached the top.
“No, Ms. Otterbee! You don’t understand, the salt-sick has hold of you! You have to fight it!”
But Lux met Cecily’s eyes and shook her head. The girl ignored Artemis. She wedged her small foot in between the spires—and leapt.
The rip of fabric and a faint cry was all Lux heard before being dragged backward.
“Get your hands off me,” she yelled. “I’m a guest here!”
“You’re insane! You need to be medicated,” said the collector on her left, meanwhile the other reached down for a palm full of gravel. Lux hardly acknowledged his muttering into the rocks as Kent and Artemis sprinted for the gate.Please. Let her get free.
Suddenly, she choked.
The collector’s hand was over her mouth, gravel on her tongue, and it was tumbling down her throat.
Lux kicked and flailed. She saw shifting lights outside the gate. She heard a singular shout. The gate swung in at the same moment the man’s hand fell away, and Lux spat at once. Dirt and rocks. She heaved a breath and coughed until she tasted blood.
Her head began to spin.
A carriage. There was a carriage outside the gate. And there was a collector climbing down from it, hauling a body draped in a white nightgown toward the vehicle’s interior.
Lux’s chest grew heavy. In fact, every part of her did. Her legs, her arms, even her torso—all seemed like it weighed ten times as much.
“What did you do to me, you wretched old man!” she shouted, horrified.
