11: Sunshine, Lollipops, and RainbowsWedged in a tight vent where he was positive he wouldn’t be found, Eagle rolled to his stomach and y there. It was quiet all around, which he needed, but there was nothing like the space he’d want to do this. Still, it would have to do. At least it was more or less stable here; a wall with a curve on either side jutted beneath and held the vent.

  Eagle let a faint sigh out of his nose and started to push. His elbows brushed the curving sides of whiteness. Fox was hating every second, that was for sure, so Eagle let himself hate it too, for a few moments at least. As if it hadn’t been enough to kidnap his whole heart, they had Fox in a pce he would loathe.

  The feeling rolled over Eagle, drowning him. He let it pass, but it was hard to ignore. His arms and shoulders started to feel it. He kept pressing and loosening, pressing and loosening. He couldn’t think of any other way or pce to do this, and it had to be done, because otherwise, he wasn’t getting Fox out.

  He hitched in motion, then stopped. I’ll get him out. I’ll make it all right. That’s why I’m doing this.

  More pushups. Eagle broke out in a sweat. He wrenched at the cloak that had showed up with the knapsack, then almost flung it aside before he remembered he was being quiet.

  I’ll get him out and help that girl too while I’m at it. She was a Chosen. That made it Eagle’s job to get her back where she was supposed to be, and fast. Unless he missed his guess, she was starting to bloom. While they repced the machine, they wouldn’t be stealing magic from her or anyone else.

  He let himself rex again. They’d made the mistake of leaving their machine alone, and why not? There were no guards in the crew’s portion of the ship, not even on the vast promenade. These inter-universe immortal beings were damn careless. Then again, maybe it was because no one had bothered to challenge them in so long they’d forgotten what it was like.

  Eagle grinned savagely. The whole way through this, he’d caused as much trouble as possible for as many immortal sphincters as possible. He’d like to taint a reservoir or two if he could find them—but that could hurt Fox and the girl, too, so maybe not. Never mind the others, who the aliens dressed in white and probably tapped with their machine.

  Well, not after Eagle had five minutes alone with it. He’d personally jammed the thing with Johnston’s Boom-Boom, a magical mining explosive from the Prime that stuck to itself like partly dried boogers. Then he whispered “bangarang” to an empty hallway and ran hell for leather away from the spectacur bst.

  Chuckling, Eagle shook his head and started pushups again. Magic was everywhere on this ship, so he couldn’t always be sure who was and who wasn’t Chosen. If his nose was right every time, most of them were. He didn’t know where to begin on that one, but Fox and the girl were a good start.

  I’ll have to come back. I can’t let the Matil do this. Whatever else, Eagle felt the pull of the Chosen like the gravity of his own body: almost inescapable. He’d rather die than let a single of his beloved ones stay here. Some magic or another had Chosen them; fine and good. Eagle chose them too, and he wanted good things for them, even if it meant he’d never find them to help them again. They weren’t supposed to be here. They deserved a shot like everyone else, and whatever their ultimate fate, it wasn’t like they asked to have the shot stolen from them before they took it.

  That, more than anything else, followed him into no-mind. It was a blessed relief when he bnked out; when he sank into the physical exertion of the pushups, he didn’t think at all, or notice the fairies that came first by ones and twos, then by clusters, then by streams up and down the vents. Most of them were white as snow, but plenty were other colors: bright green, bzing blue, pitch bck. They anointed Eagle with their offerings of sparkling dust and danced away praising his name. In the middle of the heavens, they caressed him and marked him, writing upon him: this is a thing of beauty.

  They must have told him something more than that, because when after half an hour Eagle’s arms ached too badly and he slipped back into thinking, he flopped into a pile of colorful glitter, white and green and blue and pitch, pitch bck.

  With a muffled groan, he picked himself up. Heaps of glimmering fairy dust stacked around him and lined the passageways. Already, the breeze down the vents blew the fine substance into drifts. Seeing that, Eagle cackled again, a straight-up evil cackle. While all the glitter sifted through their vents, the Matil would have to chase it down and clean it up for weeks. Giving up the pretense of quiet—not like the subtle approach was an option anymore—he rolled gleefully in the dust. It smelled of ozone and sugar, and it was all fine-grained as flour. By the time he’d finished, he was frosted from head to toe, except two eyes, two nostrils, and a ssh of mouth beneath his clogged mustache.

  Then he searched out his cloak and knapsack, humming off-key to himself, The Marriage of Figaro, which he had heard once and never quite forgotten. The delicacy of the sound—and the power of the music—were written in indelible style on his soul.

  Despite knowing—what he’d learned from the fairies somehow, some way—that he couldn’t take Fox through any of the Doors attached to this ship, Eagle almost smiled as he rumbled down the vent, making as much noise as a tiny man with a lot of muscle could make, smashing into things and flinging fairy dust with every move. Some of it already filtered out of the vents through the cracks between sections. Since he’d have to find out how to get these fuckers dead, and he couldn’t do that here, chaos would have to make up for it somehow. He did his best to leave a dusty trail behind him, not that it was hard with literal heaps still scattered around the pce, one or two feet high.

  None of the Doors in this whole pce were stable enough to take Fox through. Vengefully, he swept a pile of glitter through a downward-facing vent opening, then a couple more, but when he stopped to listen to the howls of dismay below, he could hear his objective whipping the air in the distance.

  Eagle wriggled through the sparkles on the floor until he looked down on the fan from above. You’d think a vent would have more room (or maybe not). When he climbed out to the fan and stood full, he was already shedding in a zy cloud. They’d never get it out of the carpets.

  Now he did smile, and it was just as evil as the snicker he let out to join it. He’d make everyone sorry—everyone but Fox, who would know Eagle was trying with everything he had.

  Then he’d have to make Fox the sorriest fucker of them all. Eagle cursed again as he shuffled over to the fan, which faced down and blew up. What could he do about that? Not a damn thing. He just hoped Fox would have an idea about the immortality, because otherwise he’d have to go looking. He was almost sure somebody was banned from the Divine Arms for killing gods, but that was a long shot for a variety of reasons, mostly that Eagle wasn’t quite comfortable there and never had been.

  He’d rattle his saber until someone turned up, but that could take years. Eagle clicked his tongue as he maneuvered into pce. Glitter boiled off him in a pluming gust, sparkling in the light from the juncture beneath. He was pretty sure it would end up in the whole system one way or another. It was only a matter of time.

  He let his face fp in the breeze while a storm of glitter blew from his hair, beard, and clothes. Every time he thought he was almost dust-free on one side and turned in pce, more sparkled out.

  This was going to be incredible. If he had to leave the field to win, Eagle would do it in style.