Cameron To Candy

Marcus and Candy found themselves out in the street with everyone else. The air had changed. The same yellow pulse that lit the restaurant windows now flared all along the street as household mirrors, crystal balls, shards and beads and public relay stones caught the signal in sequence. Shopkeepers were locking doors. People were pouring from side streets and joining the flow toward the center of town.

The chime rolled over them again.

Diiiiinnng.

The atmosphere wasn’t panicked. Paddlewickians didn’t do panicked ¹Though they came awfully close months earlier when “The March of Sir Resolute”, the Stonehorn Turtle, had been interrupted at the Capital Zoo. The people LOVED that old turtle..

Candy and Marcus fell into step with the crowd heading toward the projection square. More people joined with every corner they passed. A woman in a house dress was still carrying a half-folded towel. A man had one boot unlaced. A child was crying because children knew when adults were afraid, even if they didn’t know why.

The nearest public viewing station in the district was not a mirror at all, but a cluster of tall relay crystals mounted on black iron posts. By day they looked decorative in a Ministry sort of way, but by night, under signal, they could throw an image high enough for several squares to see, brighter and cleaner than any hand mirror. That was where everyone was headed.

As they walked, the auto-message began looping between chimes in Queen Isadora’s level, controlled voice:

“Please remain calm. Proceed in an orderly fashion to your nearest royal viewing station. The announcement shall begin shortly.”

Then the chime again.

DIIIIINNNG.

Families pressed closer together. Husbands put their hands at the small of their wives’ backs; mothers counted children, while boys old enough to understand tried hard not to look scared and mostly failed. A little girl near the front of the crowd had both fists twisted in her father’s coat and was crying openly now. He bent, lifted her without breaking stride, and kept moving.

As they moved with the crowd, officers appeared every so often along the route, posted at corners and lane mouths, guiding people forward with low, steady instructions. “This way. Thank you. Keep moving. Slow and steady now.” A little girl near the curb dropped a stuffed rabbit and burst into tears when the people around her carried her past it. A moment later an officer jogged back against the flow, scooped it up, moved hurriedly towards the family, and handed it to her. She stopped crying instantly, hugging the stuffie in a big embrace. Candy only caught a glimpse of him in the yellow light, but she knew that face; Officer Ramsbottom, the same man who had shoved her clear of the reckless rider months earlier. He gave the girl a quick nod and a reassuring smile before moving off again. Her mother had barely even finished thanking him.

Farther ahead, Marcus spotted another familiar figure near the mouth of the square. Sergeant Strapforth stood with two wardens at his side, shoulders square, expression set, directing people in with one hand and speaking in that deep, gravelly voice of his. “Keep the children to the inside. Good. Nice and slow.” Marcus almost gawked. It was the most he had ever heard the man say at one time. Had Candy been paying attention, she might have thought the same, but she was elsewhere, tense and pale beside him, her eyes fixed ahead as the yellow light pulsed over the crowd.

Candy’s skin prickled. That feeling was back. No, it had never really left. It had been there since she woke; she just hadn’t realized it. Now it was getting worse, threading through her chest and stomach in a way she hated. She was not used to being this nervous. Angry, yes. Embarrassed, daily. Bitter, sure, but this was different in a way she'd never be able to discribe.

She missed half a step. She tried to call for Marcus but the words didn’t come. “Ma- Mar… Uh. K, K… K…”

Marcus looked over and did a double-take. Candy didn’t notice. Her eyes were darting ahead, her mouth still sputtering. He thought for half a second before wrapping an arm around her perfect hourglass waist.

“Hey,” he said, looking down at her. She barely managed to look back at him. “Looks like a lot of the husbands are holding their wives.” Candy stared at him, as if from a distance. Marcus kept his tone careful. “I'm just going to do the same, you know, for appearance. But move my arm off if you can’t stand it there. It’s okay.”

She didn’t say anything. Normally she would have rebuffed him so hard it would have sprained his elbow. This time, she just nodded. That was unusual enough to make him more worried, but still, he guided her in a little closer as they walked on. In the back of her mind she vaguely suspected she might be embarrassed about this later, but right now she needed him. They continued moving with the crowd toward the projection square.

Similar scenes played out across Paddlewick.

In Stiltmere, where Mona Lasso had been vacationing with her family among the brackish walkways and stilt-houses, people made their way toward the dry central island where the largest mirrors in that district stood. Planks rattled under hurried feet, and lanterns swung. Mr. Lasso, seventy years old and broad as an oak door, already had an arm around Mrs. Lasso. He bent and scooped his granddaughter up in one arm as if she weighed nothing and nodded to his son, who wrapped his own arm around Mona, urging them forward through the press.

In Beltforge, the hot smithing town where ash never quite left the air and the whole place smelled faintly of sulfur and worked iron, Alyssa Halberdine and her brother silently joined the orderly stream of workers trudging toward the amphitheater. Miners came straight from the metal works with soot still on their faces. Smiths in leather aprons filed into the stone benches. Above them, the town’s relay devices pulsed yellow while the queen’s recorded voice repeated across the carved bowl of the theater, asking for calm and promising the announcement shortly.

In Bailiwick, Beatrix Thimblewhip and her father had been jogging together when the first chime hit. They looked at each other once, changed direction without a word, and headed for the town center. Beatrix arrived without tripping, stumbling, colliding, slipping, or accidentally injuring any innocent bystanders. It was a minor miracle by local standards. When they reached the edge of the gathered crowd, her father put a hand on her shoulder and complimented her, “Well done, soldier.” Beatrix looked at him, startled and pleased all at once, and nodded.

In Petalik, Carver Leigh kept one arm firmly around Miribelle Tansy’s waist as they moved toward the fountain in the town square. She tended to wander off, and this was not the time for that. The fountain itself had already lit, bright water turning silver-blue as it prepared to project the royal relay across its own spray.

Miribelle looked up at him with wide brown eyes. “Carver, I’m scared!”

He pulled her closer as they walked. “I know Peach, but it’ll be ok.”

“Is this bad?”

“It's probably not good, but it’s just a yellow alert,” he answered. “We’re not in immediate danger.”

She nodded, but it didn’t quite take. “Yellow is supposed to be happy. I wear the yellow sash when I feel bright. This doesn’t feel bright.”

“Well Peach, I imagine colors can mean different things at different times.”

“Oh,” she said, face scrunched in thought. A moment later, she asked, “Is this because of Sir Gaggingham?²Her former oral devotion dummy. Long Story.”

“I rather doubt it. This is a little too big for that.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she considered for another moment. “I’m still scared.”

“That’s ok, you can be scared, I’ve still got you,” he assured her, tightening his arms around her. Then a shadow passed over them from above, big and familiar, followed by another and another. Carver didn’t even look up. He just smiled and added lower into her ear. “And besides, your guardians are here.” Her face lit up as only Miribelle’s could. As she leaned into him he felt her shoulders relax. A second later she spotted her friend Electra across the path and waved, though her friend missed it as her silver eyes were focused on the fountain.

In Plumalume, families, bird-keepers and other workers from the lower streets filed into the broad cliffside shelter chambers cut into the rock. The air inside was stale but warm. Marilyn Monrope and her husband each held a daughter’s hand as they took their place among neighbors and cousins and other fellow citizens, all of them facing the largest installed mirror in the chamber mouth.

Greg Hemble was in Reedmere when the yellow alert hit. He had been down by the lakeside, near the best tea stall in town by the public dock, with one boot up on a low rail and a paper-wrapped supper in his hand. The evening had gone still in that particular way lake towns sometimes did, the reeds hushing down all at once as the light drained out of the water. The gentle lapping of waves had been soothing. A few little boats were still coming in. A woman on the far boardwalk was shaking out a mat. Two boys were arguing over a fish basket and trying to sound older than they were.

Then every scry device in sight lit up yellow: the lantern crystal hanging outside the tea stall, the little mirror charm inside the ferryman’s booth, the relay stone fixed to the boathouse wall. Even the polished bead on a woman’s wrist farther up the dock. All of them began to pulse together, slow and grave, with that sickly yellow color, while that deep official chime rolled across the water.

DIIIIINNNG.

Greg straightened at once. No one screamed or ran. This was Paddlewick. People just stopped what they were doing and turned toward the center of it. Boatmen poled in hard and tied off fast. Mothers gathered their children by the shoulder. A reed-cutter coming off shift shifted his bundle to one arm and took his wife’s hand with the other. The whole town began filing toward the boathouse square, because that was Reedmere’s viewing point, a line of mounted relay crystals set beside the broad whitewashed wall so the king’s image could be thrown out over the lake for half the town to see at once.

Greg crumpled the paper around the rest of his supper and shoved it into his pocket. Then he fell in with the others, boots thudding softly on the dock planks as Reedmere moved in one body toward the water-facing square. By the time he got there, the crowd had already thickened. Families stood shoulder to shoulder. The lake caught the yellow light and broke it into long, shaking lines. Above the boathouse, the relay crystals were gathering brightness, preparing to cast the King’s face up into the evening air. For once, Greg said nothing. He just folded his arms and waited with everyone else.

In Paddlewick Minor, Lord and Lady Elwood sat already assembled in the parlor before their old black-and-white magic mirror, which flickered and hummed but still held a signal better than some of the newer devices in less stingy homes. Servants had been called in from the corridors and kitchens.

“Come everyone, come, sit,” Lord Elwood called, waving away rank and propriety for once. “Formality is suspended.”

This was protocol. When Paddlewick was called to assemble, you found the closest viewing device and stayed there. No one argued with it.

At the Paddlewick Prime Wives Academy, the students were taught where to go in the event of invasion, where to go in the event of natural disaster, and where to go in the event of a royal announcement, all before most of them had finished learning how to pour tea without trembling. So when the wall crystal in Lennie Spankswell’s room gave its low, official tone and flared to life between classes, neither she nor her two roommates screamed. They all looked up at once, skirts half-ironed, ribbons half-tied, and listened as the announcement chime repeated through the hall. Lennie was already on her feet before the second pulse faded. “Auditorium 5B” she said.

By the time they stepped into the corridor, other girls were doing the same, emerging from rooms and side halls in a steady, orderly stream, some pale, some whispering, all moving quickly without quite running. Instructors stood at the junctions with the stiff calm of women who’d practiced this a hundred times and still meant every one of them. The grand auditorium waited at the heart of the academy, tiered in polished wood and brass, with a projection crystal mounted above the stage large enough to throw the royal seal as big as a carriage wheel. Lennie and her roommates slipped into their row as the room settled around them, hundreds of girls going quiet in ripples.

Out on the plains that ringed the Forest of Voices, the yellow alert found Josh with his supper half-finished in the canteen. He and the other soldiers there stood and walked to their assigned relay station. The camp had been set in a wide broken arc around the tree line, one of several long-standing field postings meant to keep the forest hemmed in from all sides. It was not a fort, not exactly. More like a chain of islands laid across the land, but comprised of tents, supply wagons, fire pits and ward posts. There were paths warn into the ground by rotating patrol routes, comprised of enough men and light and order to make it hard for anything dangerous in the woods to drift too far into the outer plains, and then gods forbid, a city.

In daylight, the Forest of Voices looked almost ordinary from a distance, dense, dark and full of old-growth trees. By dusk, however, it became something else. The trees stood too close together, their tops knitting into one black mass against the fading sky. When the wind passed through them, the sound it made was wrong. Not loud or dramatic; just wrong enough to make a man check whether somebody had spoken beside him. The soldiers stationed there learned early not to answer if they hadn’t seen a person's lips move. Josh had learned that in his first week.

Now the evening was settling in cool and dry over the grasslands, with cook smoke drifting low and flat across the camp, when the nearest field crystal began to pulse.

DIIIIINNNG.

Josh straightened before he fully meant to. So did everyone else. Another scry device answered farther down the line, then another. Inside the command tent, a larger sphere mounted on its brass stand flared yellow. Outside, the smaller field balls fixed on crates, posts, and folding tables lit in turn until the camp looked strung through with slow, solemn stars.

A pair of soldiers came out of the mess tent still chewing. A card game ended without argument, the cards left face-up on a crate. A man halfway through oiling his crossbow wiped his hands on a rag and rose at once. Those posted nearest the perimeter gave the woods one more long look, then fell back toward the crystal stations in orderly groups, while the designated watch line stayed in place with spears and lanterns and eyes fixed on the dark fringe of trees.

Even Paddlewickians beyond the kingdom’s own borders stopped what they were doing.

In Cleavendale’s therian city Velvet Tailwind, Penny Spankswell had been hurrying toward the Gilded Gaggle filming studio set, her notes in one hand, her tracking crystal snug in her chocker, as usual. She giggled at a joke her coworker Marjean had made, though in all honesty she didn't fully get it, but Penny found most things she said funny due to her accent. Then the crystal began chiming in the same grave yellow rhythm as every alarm crystal back home.

DIIIIINNNG.

Penny stopped dead. “Oh. Oh no. No, no, no, no!”

Studio hands were still guiding people into place. Sylvie was saying something rapid and sarcastic to a wardrobe assistant. Marjean had a pastry in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other and was now starring at the crystal. Marionette was adjusting an earring in a mirror and Fiona wasn’t in sight yet.

Penny looked down at her bracelet, then up at the others. “I, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“But Sug, the show's about to start,” Marjean reminded her.

“I’m, I'm so sorry. But, but, the king demands it!” And before anyone could quite stop her, she turned and hurried off set toward the inn she stayed at to get her magic hand mirror, nearly tripping over a cable but somehow catching herself.

Marjean stared after her. “King? Did y’all’s queen get married?” she asked, turning to Sylive.

Sylvie glanced up with her large brown cow eyes, “Pretty sure she means the Paddlewick king, hun.”

Marjean’s brows rose. “Oh, Right. That makes more sense. I’m a bit slow today. Must be hungry.” She looked toward the doorway Penny had vanished through. “Well anywho, she looked stressed. She’ll probably need a doughnut when she gets back.”

And so it went, from every outpost, berg, farmstead, hamlet, village, town and city across the kingdom and beyond.

Back in Paddlewick Prime, Candy and Marcus reached the projection square just as the relay crystals flared brighter. The square was full, yet strangely disciplined. Families arranged themselves in orderly pockets rather than crowds. Men stood forward-facing and rigid while wives remained close beside them with practiced composure, hands clasped low or folded neatly behind their backs. Earlier, when the first alarm had sounded, there had been gasps, hurried movement, and scattered panic. But now everyone had arrived, and there was nothing left to do except wait. Paddlewickians were good at waiting and at forcing nerves down beneath ritual posture and controlled breathing. Even the children sensed it and were staying unusually quiet beneath the glow of the relay crystals.

Said crystals, mounted in a ring around the square, threw their light upward. At first it was only light, yellow-white and dappled, almost trembling. Then the image began to gather itself above the crowd, lines of brightness sketching out the shape of a man high in the air where more technologically advanced places might have called it a hologram.

The queen’s recorded message stopped. The whole square seemed to hold its breath. Candy, still struggling with a horrid feeling she couldn't identify, waited, gently pressed against Marcus as he lightly held her in one arm. At last, the image resolved. The face of King Rodrik appeared above them, stern and grave and larger than life. His voice rolled out over the square.

“People of Paddlewick,” it boomed, “hear me.”