All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [71]
The chuckles from the White Knights died.
Eliot took Lady Dawn out. That Queen of Spades playing card was tucked inside the case. He’d put his father’s gift there for safekeeping.
He retrieved it and scanned the notes written on it. “The March of the Suicide Queen,” Louis had called it.
Eliot hadn’t had a chance to play it yet, but the song nonetheless came unbidden to his mind: a fanfare of horns, a swell of strings, and bass kettledrums. It was a military march. He imagined troops gathered upon a field of battle, soldiers with bayoneted rifles and horse-drawn cannon.
He unthinkingly plucked Lady Dawn’s strings.
The Ludus Magnus and the rest of the world fell away, and Eliot was alone in the darkness of his imagination, a single spot light illuminating him. A choir of baritone men joined, singing:
Off we go and march to war
sing our song to bloody chore
shoot and stab and rend and kill
Live to march o’er one more hill
Eliot stilled the strings, and the world came back into focus.
The gym structure swayed to the march’s rhythm, and then the entire thing leaned toward him as if it wanted him to play more.
Eliot wouldn’t, though. That song was too dark. It was about war and killing . . . and while he was certain it could help Team Scarab, it’d be like using artillery at a game of darts.
Everyone stood speechless, staring at him.
The White Knight boy with the shaven head whispered to his teammates, and they nodded—all of them watching Eliot like he was the most dangerous thing they’d ever seen.
Eliot had a bad feeling about that.
Jezebel had held out one hand to Eliot. She retracted the gesture, curling her fingers inward to her chest, and she quickly looked away—but not before Eliot saw her eyes. They were now blue, the color of clear water. Like Julie Marks’s had been.
“Team Knight and Team Scarab, ready yourselves,” Mr. Ma said. He took out his stopwatch. “Get set. Go!”
19
TEAM SCARAB’S FIRST MATCH
Team Knight and Team Scarab ran for the jungle gym.
Adrenaline pulsed and pounded through Fiona’s blood. She raced ahead, and she easily outdistanced them all, except Robert.
He got to the obstacle course first, clambered up a ladder, and turned to make sure she was right behind him.
Fiona grabbed the ladder, but then looked back.
Jeremy and Sarah Covington, Jezebel, Mitch Stephenson, Eliot, and Amanda Lane had scattered across the field. It was total chaos. Eliot had a hard time running with that stupid pack of his.
Team Knight was different. They ran in formation—two four-person teams. One angled left, and one split off to the right side. They had a plan.
“Come on,” Robert said. “We need to get up as fast as we can.” He scrambled up the ladder.
Sarah and Jeremy ran up to her but ignored the ladder. Instead they tromped along the adjacent spiral that went up a ways and then wormed into the center of the structure.
“Hey!” Fiona said. “Stick together!”
“Middle path, me dearie,” Jeremy called back. “Hurry. Knights be taking the high and low paths.”
Fiona saw the Knights had done precisely that. One group ran up along a zigzag of stairs—almost as high as Robert now despite his head start. The other team—she just caught a glimpse of them in the lower portion of the course, and then lost them in a tangle of hanging chains.
Jezebel, Mitch, then Eliot, and finally Amanda caught up to her.
“It’s a maze,” Jezebel said, scrutinizing the structure. “Not all paths lead to our goal, I bet.”
“Then which way?” Mitch asked, looking up and squinting.
Amanda was so out of breath, she couldn’t speak. She knelt and panted.
Eliot hefted Lady Dawn, and said, “I’ve got an idea.”
Fiona’s gut reaction was to tell him to stop playing with that silly violin, that they didn’t have time. But with everything she’d seen Eliot do with his music, she figured it was worth the gamble of a few seconds to see what he had in mind.
Jezebel didn’t wait, however. She found a knotted rope and pulled herself up hand over hand.
Mitch glanced at her and then to Fiona, indecisive which way to go. He smiled and took a