Page 77 of Once a Villain
“Is Aaron in place?” Nick asked.
Joan strained, trying to get a glimpse of him. The Oliver mermaid was directly opposite them, the banner waving in the breeze: gold against green. She spotted the ripple of interest first, flowing through the stand. Andtherewas Aaron, walking down the stairs in the wake of that interest, his blond hair unmistakable. He sat in the front row of the Oliver section, in the seat of honor.
His counterpart must have sat in the same seat—or maybe the one beside it, back when Edmund had been the head of family. How many times had he seen Nick’s counterpart in the arena, forced to fight and kill?
Beside her, Nick had shifted his gaze from Aaron and waswatching the stands fill with grim revulsion. Joan imaginedhiscounterpart looking up from the arena in the same way. He’d been an Oliver gladiator himself. Was that how he and Aaron had met in this timeline?
She pictured Aaron strolling down to the gladiator stalls, listening to Carvel point out Nick’s features, just as he’d described the Bull.Strong thighs and shoulders. Good reflexes. He’ll bring honor to the Olivers.
“All right,” Jamie said, breaking through her thoughts. “Let’s do this.” He knelt quickly and used a pencil to dig a dot in the packed-dirt floor. “We’re here. And the imperial box has a chamber beneath it.” He drew an oval, ending a few inches from their dot. “Between us and the chamber, there’s a brick wall”—he nodded at the wall ahead of them—“about three feet thick. Then there’s a large cavity and another wall. We break through both walls, and we’ll be right below her.”
Joan craned now, trying to see the visible section of the box. It was about a hundred paces from here—not as close as Jamie’s drawing implied.
Eleanor wasn’t there yet, but the executions would start soon.
Joan’s stomach turned over at the thought. Eleanor had arranged for hundreds—maybe thousands—of people to be murdered gruesomely today. Those deaths were never supposed to happen, and each of them would weaken the timeline a little more as it tried and failed to repair itself.
When the timeline reached the edge of collapse, Eleanor would attempt to lock it down. But even at its weakest, the timelinewould fight her, and Eleanor would be completely distracted as she attempted to cage it.Thatwould be their moment—when Eleanor would be at her most vulnerable.
“You can do this,” Nick said to Joan softly.
Joan tried to smile at him. “AllIhave to do is break through the wall.”
Nick would have the far more difficult task. He was the only one of them with the skill to fight off Eleanor’s guards. And—detached from the timeline—he was the only one who could kill her, just as he’d been the only one who could kill the King.
One step at a time, though. Joan took a deep breath.
She was still new to her Grave power, but she’d been practicing all week on piles of bricks with the same basic makeup as the ones in front of them. She placed both hands on the brick wall now. She didn’t try to calm herself—she’d found that her power worked best when her emotions were elevated.
Be unmade, she told the brick.
Nothing happened.
Joan reached deep inside herself, for the well of her power. She drew a slow breath in, and then out.
Be unmade.
Power surged through her—physical and mental, a wild emotion that she couldn’t define—and under her fingers, the brick softened, her fingers sinking into the wall as the brick turned to wet clay. There was grit in it too—the mortar was crumbling to fine ash and crushed limestone and sand. Water trickled between her fingers. This was the Grave power of unmaking—she’d broken down the brick and mortar into its constituent parts.
She shifted her hands to increase the size of the hole. It had to be big enough for them all to climb through. Then she forced another surge.
She quickly found a rhythm with Tom, who periodically stepped forward to trowel away clay and sand and ash so that she could continue. As she worked, she wondered—not for the first time—how Aaron’s counterpart had planned to get to Eleanor today. Joan and the others hadn’t managed to break the cipher—although they’d tested it against what had seemed like every book in the city.
You can get to her. You have what you need, Nick’s counterpart had said.
Joan bit her lip now. Whatever Aaron’s counterpart had planned had died with him. Joan could only hope their own plan worked.
She stepped back again now, so Tom could clear more clay. She was boring through the first wall faster than she’d practiced. She’d be done in about ten minutes, she guessed.
“You know—” Tom started to say, but he was cut off by an excited roar from the crowd that made them all jump.
Through the room’s five viewing slots, Joan could see that the stadium was packed now. As she watched, the roar died down into near-complete silence—eerie from such a huge crowd.
Joan held her breath, unable to look away. A beat passed, and then another beat, and then a caged wagon slowly emerged from beneath the arena. It was full of people—twenty at least.
The wagon sat in the middle of the battleground, seeming small and fragile in the huge space. The people inside moaned infear, begging the crowd for help. Still others rattled at the bars, furious.
Don’t look, Joan told herself. But she couldn’t force her gaze away as the caged walls of the wagon fell to the ground, the thud dampened by the sand. Around them, the noise of the crowd began to rise as more platforms ascended from below—a dozen of them, carrying lions and leopards and bears.Theyweren’t caged. They prowled from their platforms, snarling and growling.
