Strike Pin sniggered. "That curse worked good, huh?"

Tick Tick and Tock Tock, both looking the worse for wear, sniggered too.

Nikifor's cheeks burned. For a split second it occurred to him the fairies could be left in there. But the thought made him feel horrible. It was the kind of thing the Tormentor would have demanded. He dropped Shazza, yanked the pole away and wrenched open the doors.

The Freakin Fairies scrambled out of the cage. Nikifor lifted Shazza and shut her in there, before Fitz replaced the pole and set to work making a salt circle around the rim.

The Freakin Fairies watched in puzzlement.

"Look, what's going on?" Tick Tick finally asked. "Why aren't you looking for the Silver clan?"

"The Silver clan are locked in their mine under heavy guard," Nikifor said. "We're on our way to fetch someone who can help us free them."

Tock Tock scoffed. "A likely story from a muse."

"Why were you locked up?" Nikifor looked again at the state of them. Their faces were pinched and blue. They probably hadn't even eaten in days.

The three glanced at each other.

"The Moon Troopers came and demanded we hand over every drop of quicksilver," Strike Pin said. "We tried to stop them, so they put us in the cage there and said we had to go to Shadow City to stand trial for treason."

"Where is the rest of your clan?"

"Probably locked up like the Silvers," Tock Tock said.

Strike Pin studied Nikifor closely. "You're not crazy anymore."

Nikifor shook his head.

A big grin broke out on Strike Pin's face. "That curse did work good! I'll tell Coalfire."

The three fairies began to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Nikifor said.

"Back to get everyone out of the mine." Strike Pin gave a cheery wave. "You don't expect us to hang about with a pack of Bloomin Fairies?"

"I'll be back with help," Nikifor said. "I swear it."

"You can swear as much as you like mate, you'll still be a muse in a pack of Bloomin Fairies."

Nikifor watched them go. Fitz chanted unfamiliar words in a low voice while walking around the prison cart. Behind him, the Bloomin Fairies noise level escalated. The stench of dead fetches lingered in the air. He thought about the Moon Troopers imprisoning entire clans of Freakin Fairies to make them drag more and more quicksilver out of the reservoirs to feed a machine strung together by the keys of missing muses. A machine built, if Mudface was correct, to kill him.

For the first time Nikifor wondered what he'd done to merit such a fate from someone he didn't even remember. Surely, when this was all over and he and Flower found the king, he would have all the answers.

Oddly, the thought held little comfort.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Flower snatched a teetering child off the edge of a wagon before she fell bodily into the silver. That was the tenth one. It was the bigger kids who'd tugged the coverings loose, and she'd been frantic trying to keep them all out of it ever since. Pumpkinhead and Carrots had gone back up the slope to fetch the Lord of the Gourd, Fitz and Nikifor were busy with Shazza and the adult fairies were just as bad as their horrible children. She deposited the squirming child firmly on the ground, only to have her bolt straight back to the wagon, leap onto the wheel and climb up again.

Flower pushed her hair out of her face. It was damp and sweaty like the rest of her and she was very, very close to screaming. She grit her teeth, dashed back down to the next wagon and hauled a full-grown fairy who should have known better away from the silver by the hair.

He set up a yell. "Ow! Ow! Ow! What'd you do that for you great big giant dead freakin muse?"

"Because that stuff will kill you!" Flower exploded. "You're a full-grown fairy, what are you thinking?" A shape flashed past her peripheral vision. She reached out and grabbed a toddler away from the edge without even looking and dumped her in the fairy's arms. "Grow up!"

The fairy sneered at her. "Oh, grow up is it? Typical muse attitude that is."

Flower turned her back on him. "Hey! Hey you lot!" She grabbed a giggling fairy out of the uplifted arms of another fairy preparing to throw her into the silver. "Would you quit it? Even the Freakin Fairies aren't this stupid!"

Dead silence. Every pair of eyes glared at her. A middle-aged woman with a greying topknot pointed a bony finger at her. "Take that back! Freakin Fairies are so stupider than us!"

Flower closed her eyes and counted to ten. She should have known better. Of course she should have, she'd studied fairy customs for years to avoid making mistakes like this, but the creatures were justso Fitz laid a hand on her shoulder. "Everything okay?"

"She called us stupid!" yelled a kid no higher than her knee.

All of the fairies burst into babble and shouting.

"Honestly I've had it with them, I'm ready to hand them over to the Guild." Flower pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temples. "I was just trying to stop them all jumping in the quicksilver!"

"It's probably best if we get them moving to keep busy," Fitz said.

"Moving where? Back into the forest?"

"No. We're taking the wagons into Shadow City."

"We're doing what?" Flower grabbed his sleeve, horrified. "You can't be serious!"

"Unfortunately it's a necessity." He ran a hand over his beard and cast a regretful look over the babbling pack. "That's where the door into Dream we need is."

"You didn't tell me that!"

"No. I thought you'd probably yell at me. Go and keep an eye on Shazza, I'll deal with the fairies until we can figure out a way to get rid of all this silver. Then we can hide them in the wagons."

Flower turned on her heel and marched back to the prison cart, muttering under her breath all the way. Really, this was just too much. She and Nikifor had been doing perfectly fine on their own, joining up with a dissident and a pack of Bloomin Fairies had been a terrible idea. Fitz was going to get them all killed, if the fairies didn't manage it first. This had to be the most insane thing she'd ever done. She just hoped the king would understand when it was all over. He wasn't exactly known for understanding treason, but surely the circumstances in this case were exceptional.

Mudface and Nikifor were on the ledge at the back of the silver wagon that was hitched to the prison cart. Flower sat down next to them. "Impossible," she said. "Just impossible."

Mudface looked at her, shrugged and returned to her book, which she was poring over between puzzled glances at Shazza.

Nikifor muttered something about helping Fitz and hurried away. Flower scowled after him and wondered what made Fitz's company so much better than hers.

"He your boyfriend? Cos if he is I think he's scared of you."

Flower transferred her scowl to Shazza, who sat behind the bars watching Nikifor's retreat with intense interest. "Not that it's any of your business, but he's not my boyfriend, and you're going to learn to be scared of me too if you don't shut up."

"Scared of a has-been muse? Just you wait till I get out of here."

Flower looked pointedly at the swollen, livid bruising on Shazza's nose. "I'm counting the seconds. Perhaps while we wait I could give you a black eye to match your big ugly broken nose."

Shazza's lower lip trembled. "I'm not ugly!"

A small hand curled around Flower's arm. She turned her attention to Mudface, glad of the distraction.

Mudface pushed her book onto Flower's lap. "Look."

"What am I looking at?" The question died on Flower's lips almost as soon as she'd spoken it. There on the page in front of her was a chalk drawing of Shazza. "Did you draw this Mudface? It's incredibly good."

Mudface nodded. "I drew it." She paused and counted on her fingers. "Three pumpkin harvests ago."

"What?" Flower glanced from Mudface to Shazza. "Has she been in your village before?"

Mudface shook her head.

"Then how did you know what she looked like?"

Mudface shrugged. "I know lots of things since I was dead." She pointed at the opposite page. "You read."

Flower studied the pictograms, but they didn't make any sense. "What do you mean, an experiment on a human went wrong? What human? What experiment?"

Mudface tilted her head toward Shazza and spoke in patient tones. "Her. She was first, she went wrong."

Shazza shifted forward, paying close attention to the conversation. "What's that little troll saying?"

"She's not a troll, she's a Bloomin Fairy. Now be quiet." Flower returned her attention to the book. "I still don't understand, Mudface. What are you trying to say? What kind of book is this you've written?"

"All the things I know since I was dead," Mudface said.

Flower turned the page and looked at a picture of a machine that appeared to be strung together with muse keys. She froze in horror. "What's this?"

"Bad machine. Looking for you and Nikifor."

Flower quickly turned the page again. She didn't like the way Mudface made the very hairs on her arms stand on end sometimes. She leafed through several more pages of pictures of people she didn't recognise, then stopped and bit her lip. She brushed her fingers over a picture of Krysta, perfect in detail except for the green hair, right down to the hockey stick over her shoulder and the scowl on her face. She looked at the pictograms. "Girl with weird hair starts a revolution. Might save Shadow." She mouthed the words silently, acutely aware of Shazza's attention on her. She looked sidelong at Mudface, but the girl just sat there, perfectly composed, waiting expectantly for her to say something.

Flower looked back at the picture of Krysta. "Her? Really?" She had trouble articulating anything else, because she couldn't quite get past the fact the Bloomin Fairy sitting next to her apparently really did know things. Things that could get her killed.

"Can I see?" Shazza's voice was plaintive. "Please?"

Flower frowned at her. "No."

"But I'm in it. I want to see!"

That was a good point. Flower turned her attention to thinking about a problem she could comprehend. She levelled her gaze at Shazza. "If Mudface gives her permission, I will allow you to see," she said. "But first you must answer some questions for me."

Shazza's mouth settled into its accustomed sulky lines. "I'm not saying where the quicksilver's going. That hoof man already tried that one on me."

"No." Flower kept her voice low, calm and musical, like she always did when diplomacy was called for. "It's you I want to know about. Is that alright?"

Shazza inched forward again. "I s'pose."

"What's your name?"

"Shazza, I told you that."

"Shazza is not a name. What's your proper name?"

Shazza frowned and bit her lip. "Hang on, I know this one. I just have to remember. It'sit's Shno wait! I've got it!" She looked triumphant. "Sharon Brown."

"Sharon Brown." Flower felt a flicker of excitement. She hadn't encountered false muses in Shadow City, whether because they kept away from her or not she didn't know, but discovering their existence had been a very personal affront. The opportunity to talk to one like this was unprecedented. She wanted to know all she could. "Sharon have you always been a false muse?"

Shazza narrowed her eyes. "I'm a real muse."

Flower made an impatient noise. "No you're not, but never mind all that. I want to know what you were before."

"Before what?"

"Before you started coming and going in puffs of smoke. Were you a fairy?"

"Fairy!" Shazza sneered. "I was human, stupid."

So Mudface's book was right. Not only that, there had to be much more to this story. "If you were a human you must have lived in Dream."

"Of course I did."

"What happened? How'd you end up here?"

Shazza curled her hands around the bars and pressed her face to them, oddly wistful. "I ran away from home," she said. "It was dumb really, but I was pretty hammered that day."

Flower wasn't sure what she meant by hammered, but she didn't interrupt.

A smile curved Shazza's lips. "That's when I met him. See, I went to this party with my boyfriend Davo, but then he tried to swap me for a carton of beer. So I smashed an empty beer bottle on his head, took all the smokes and his car and I pissed right off. Of course then the radiator blew in the middle of the freeway, so there I was walking down this stupid freeway trying to find an exit, everyone's beeping at me, and then suddenly there he was."

"There who was?" Flower couldn't help but be both wildly curious and apprehensive.

Shazza gave her an incredulous look. "The king, who do you think it was? He just appeared out of nowhere and asked if I wanted a whole new life in a world where I could be important and respected."

"What? No wait." Flower held up her hands. "The king? The muse king?"

"No, the king of the Bloody Fairies, you idiot, of course it was the muse king! Who else makes the muses?"

"King Pierus does not make muses." Flower forced the outraged words through stiff lips. "He guides us and lights our way. We are born, not made."