I turned to Gretchen and Waffles, shocked. I hadn’t been separated from Eve since the
day I met her.
Gretchen embraced me, her nose close to my ear. “Don’t worry. Eve can take care of
herself. She drowned a pixie, remember?” She pulled away, smiling.
I wiped my eyes. “Okay, okay. She said to get help from Gombree. We mice can’t carry
the glasses ourselves…”
Gretchen nodded. “And Magnitrude might put them somewhere Waffles can’t get at
them. We need to move fast.”
I beckoned Waffles with my paw. “Come on, we have to go follow Gombree before he
gets too far.”
Whimpering, the dog crawled out from under the bed and shook himself. I got on top.
Gretchen hadn’t followed. “You coming?”
“I’m going to stay around here and use Emerson to see where the glasses get put. Eve
will know, but she’ll have no way to communicate with us.”
“Right.” I activated my veilring. “Vivian, thank you for not giving us away. I have to go.
Come on, Waffles.”
Vivian just looked at us, a slight scowl on her face.
Gretchen put her paw in Waffles’s fur and looked up at me. Emerson, on her shoulder,
looked up at me, too. “Good luck, you two.”
Waffles nosed the door open a little more and we started making our way down the tower
again.
“I’ve caught the scent of Magnitrude…” Waffles sniffed the air and pointed his nose at a
door. “I think she’s in there.”
“Yes,” I sniffed too. “I got it. Good, we’ve passed her by. Let’s get out of here!”
As we’d been through the tower only a few minutes ago, we were pretty sure it was
empty, and Waffles hustled down without worrying too much about being seen. Around and around we corkscrewed on the inside of the wall, under the influence of the tower’s strange gravity. The smell of Gombree got slightly stronger as we did.
At the bottom of the tower the entrance ramp twisted ninety degrees and we were righted
with normal gravity again. A humanoid figure walked in front of us, looking down at Waffles, blinking fuchsia eyes and moving on, going wherever it was going.
“Let’s get out of sight.”
Waffles nodded. “Thinking the same thing.”
We found our way into a back alley. I looked behind us and noticed with dismay dog
footprints in the snow behind us. Somebody could track us if they had a mind to.
Waffles sniffed the air and smelled the direction where it was stronger. “We’re going to
try to get Gombree to help us, is that the plan?”
“Yes. I don’t like it, but somebody’s going to have to help carry those heavy glasses.”
Waffles looked both ways on a road, waited for a buggy to pass. It was pulled by a six-
legged horse. “You think you can turn him against his mistress, eh? How do you know he won’t just give us away?”
“I don’t. I’ll just have to use my instincts when I talk to him.”
Waffles shook his head as he darted across the wide street into another alley. “I’ve seen
how you look at me. Now it’s just you and me, let’s get it out in the open. Yeah, I worked with a faerie. That was years ago, and I paid for it with my eye. That was the punishment determined by the Oversight Parliament. It was a mistake. But people can change. I did.”
I gritted my teeth and said nothing.
“What do you think I’m going to do, Dichall, lead you to some faerie trap? Lead Vivian?
Think what you want about my past, but also think about what you know about dogs. I’m not some cat or lizard you’re dealing with. Do you seriously doubt that I have Vivian’s best interests at heart?”
He had a point. “No.”
We came to a bridge over a small stream. Waffles sniffed at a footprint. “That’s him.” He
scampered across. We were getting close. “We have the same goal, here, you Councilmice and me. Just trust me, at least for this mission.”
We were in a different part of the town. We walked along a deserted street, following
footprints and Gombree’s prodigious scent. Along the walls were chains with shackles on the ends of them, and fettered in the shackles were children’s dolls. Many of them didn’t have eyes.
I wrestled with what Waffles had said. It did seem incongruous that I was about to put a
lot of trust into something that was much less trustworthy than this dog. “All right, Waffles
Ribeye. I’ve got your back for this. I’ll give you a chance.”
I felt his tail wag as we came to a small hut. Strange purple smoke came from its
chimney, and a dull grinding sound came from inside.
Waffles sniffed at the doorway. “He’s here.”
I smell him, too.
