CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Queen Takes Knight

After dark, the narrow streets in the City of London quiet down. City workers have all gone home, and the twisting canyons hemmed in by high-rises are not on the way to anywhere. Traffic passing through the city blasts past on wider thoroughfares, and the narrow streets that are so busy by day become a ghost town.

The Red Queen drove her horses slowly along the road, the ancient design of the war chariot beneath her feet strikingly at odds with the shiny modern buildings towering over her on either side.

Her daughters flanked her, scouring each side street and alley as they passed, looking for Edie—or anything that might give a clue as to where she was.

Both daughters had the intense look of their mother. They were fierce, mostly silent, girls. But when they needed to move, they did so firmly and decisively. They had her fearlessness running in their veins, but whereas their mother allowed her fire to blaze freely, the girls chose to keep that fire banked up quietly.

The one on the left heard it before the others.

She touched her mother’s arm, and the Queen instantly reined in the horses.

Then they all heard it.

The sound of hooves, coming closer.

The Queen gripped her spear. The source of the noise came slowly around a corner. The three women stood stock still.

It was the Last Knight. He rode at a slow, funereal pace, his lance lowered in mourning, his head bent forward in sadness. Across the saddle in front of him was draped the limp golden body of Ariel.

The Queen and her daughters watched the Knight move toward them, as still as if frozen in a pocket in time. When it became apparent that he was going to pass without acknowledging them, the Queen spoke tightly.

“Sir Knight. A word, if you please.”

He just carried on past.

The Queen nodded at her daughters. Without the need for words, they leaped nimbly from the chariot and ran toward the Knight, soundless on their bare feet. The Queen threw her spear to one of them, who caught it almost without looking and ran ahead of the Knight. As the Queen snapped the reins on her chariot and turned, the daughter with the spear stood foursquare in front of the warhorse and armored man towering above her, and jabbed the spear warningly at his throat. He stopped the horse. The other daughter grabbed the bridle reins and held them as the Queen trotted up.

She looked at the golden girl lying across the horse’s neck. Then up at the Knight.

“What is this?”

There was a pause as the Knight slowly looked around at her.

“An accident.”

“And what are you doing with her?”

He nodded ahead. “I had thought to scale the building and put her on her plinth before turn o’day. I would not have her die on my account.”

The Queen looked at her girls. “Was it on your account that the accident happened?”

“It was,” replied the Knight.

The Queen nodded at her daughters. The one holding the reins pulled Ariel off the horse and onto her shoulders.

“It is my obligation . . .” began the Knight in protest.

“You have done enough,” said the Queen, seeing the large hole in Ariel’s side. “If you had done but a fraction more, I could have ridden my chariot through the wound you have put in this poor girl.”

“It was not meant,” he protested.

“It never is,” she snorted.

“Go back to your guild, Knight. And play your sword games with each other. That is all you are good for. We will take care of her from here and make sure she is on her plinth by turn o’day.”

The Knight looked at her, then bowed his head and backed his horse into a turn and rode slowly away.

The Queen watched him as her daughter carefully laid Ariel on the back of their chariot.

“See, girls. It’s as I always tell you. It never does to send a man to do a woman’s job.”