poot,” said the second.
They dropped their bags and charged at her.
Facing five hundred pounds of rabid slime, Agatha plunged into the mob and shoved people in the goblins’ way like shields but the goblins rammed past them, the two creatures reaching out with stubby arms and grabbing on to Dovey’s bag—
Agatha spun around and overturned a vendor’s cart of fake crystal balls in their path, the rubber balls parroting “I see Agatha! I see Agatha!” in off-synch yelps and tripping up the goblins and half the crowd. Panting in relief, Agatha slid behind a newsstand, watching the goblins flop all over the slippery balls, while a female vendor beat them mercilessly with her shoe.
Suddenly, Agatha noticed the headlines of the Gillikin Gazette, clipped to the front of the stall:
LION SETS EXECUTION FOR “KING” TEDROS; WEDDING FESTIVITIES BEGIN TOMORROW
Agatha leaned closer, reading the article’s details about how Sophie handpicked the axe and executioner for Tedros’ beheading (a lie, thought Agatha) . . . about King Rhian’s new pen, Lionsmane, that was more trustworthy than the Storian . . .
An even bigger lie, Agatha scorned, remembering the cheap gold pens people were snapping up in the booth. The Storian told stories the Woods needed. The Storian kept the Woods alive. But if people were suddenly doubting the enchanted pen and favoring a fake one . . . then she wasn’t just fighting Rhian. She was fighting the countless minds he’d corrupted too. How was she supposed to do that?
Only there was more in this Gillikin article, Agatha realized, reading on . . . this time about Rhian’s brother, who’d supposedly been named the liege of the king . . .
Agatha studied a painting of this liege, included on the front page. Japeth, it said his name was—
Her eyes bulged.
Not just Rhian’s brother.
Rhian’s twin.
She thought back to the Lady of the Lake’s drawing.
Now she understood everything.
It wasn’t Rhian in the Snake’s mask who the Lady had kissed. It was Japeth.
There were two of them all along.
One the Lion, one the Snake.
That’s how they tricked both the Lady and Excalibur. They shared the same blood.
And yet, both the Lady and Excalibur believed that blood to be the blood of Arthur’s heir.
But even if they were twins, wouldn’t one of them have been born first? Agatha wondered. Meaning only one of them is the true heir—
Agatha shook her head. What am I saying? Those two monsters can’t possibly be Arthur’s sons. They can’t be Tedros’ brothers.
She could feel herself holding her breath . . .
A shadow swept over her.
Agatha swiveled and saw the two goblins glowering at her, their bodies covered in welts.
The female vendor who’d beaten them was with the goblins too, staring at Agatha.
So were a hundred other people behind them, who clearly knew who she was.
“Oh. Hullo,” Agatha said.
She dashed for her life, hurtling through the crowd, but more and more people ahead were hearing the cries of the people pursuing her and started chasing her too. Trapped on the yellow road between booths, there was nowhere for her to go—
Then she saw the stall next to her.
TAMIMA’S TADPOLES!
Best Frog Breeder in the Everlands
Tadpoles. She knew a spell about tadpoles. She’d learned it at school, reading Sophie’s Evil textbooks . . .
Instantly, she veered towards the booth, diving under the fabric skirting the bottom of it and accosting the vendor, who was stewing a vat of the squiggling critters. Before the vendor could grasp what was happening, Agatha shoved her out of the way, snatched the tub of tadpoles with both hands, felt her fingerglow burn gold—
“Pustula morphica!” she gasped.
She dunked her face in.
When the goblins and other bounty hunters came rushing by, they couldn’t find Agatha in the crowd—only a soggy girl covered in red boils, stumbling away from a tadpole booth.
A few moments later, itching at her red, oozing sores, this boil-covered girl shambled up to Gilly’s Ticket Hub and its handsome young barker.
“Flight to Beauty and the Feast, please,” she said.
The man jerked back in disgust.
“Forty silver pieces,” he groused, reflexively touching his smooth cheek. “Or rather, forty silver pieces your pestilent fingers haven’t touched.”
“I don’t have any silver,” Agatha replied.
“Then give me whatever is in that bag,” he said, eyeing Dovey’s sack on her shoulder.
“Soiled diapers?” Agatha replied with a straight face.
The barker scowled. “Out of my sight before I call the Wizard Guard.”
Agatha glanced over her shoulder and saw a commotion at the tadpole booth, the vendor pointing her way—
She whipped back to the barker.
“I could pay you with a good strong sneeze, though,” she said coolly. “Feel one coming as a matter of fact. Right at your pretty little face.”
The barker raised his eyes, taking in her pocked cheeks.
“Diseased hag. You want to fly? Be my guest,” he sneered, shining a green-flamed torch into the sky, illuminating a cloud of invisible fairies, suddenly seeable in the green light. “One look at you in Sherwood Forest and they’ll put an arrow through your skull.”
As the fairies soared down on the barker’s command and scooped Agatha high into the sky, she grinned at him and the crowd of Agatha hunters rushing his booth.
“I’ll take my chances,” she said.
“YOU SHOULD HAVE come here straightaway instead of messing about in Fairyland,” Robin Hood grouched, dabbing Agatha’s boils with beer he’d soaked onto a napkin.
“It was too far to get here on foot and I wanted to find news of my friends,” said Agatha, now itching with boils and beer. “Besides, last time I was here,
