The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards Read Free Page A

he fell into fading daylight. Blinking,Henry lay on his back, a small gapped roof above him. The view was cut off by a face, dark and serious, and two eyes looked down at him from around a blunt horn. A coarse tongue licked Henry’s nose and swabbed his lip.
    “Sick,” Henry said, and both his calves cramped. “Ow!” He jerked up, banged into a rickety wall, knocked over a heavy clay pot, and grabbed his toes. The raggant staggered and bellowed, offended. Then the fat animal flared its wings, restoring its dignity, and walked away.
    When his calves relented, Henry climbed to his feet. He was standing in a tiny shed, smaller than an outhouse. Old pots leaned in stacked towers in one corner. A spade with a cracked handle leaned in another. Behind him, a rotten bench hunkered over Number 49, the simple-looking cupboard that Henry had freed from the old farmhouse. Its door was open. Henry kicked it shut and wobbled out of the shed, onto the upper roof of his mother’s house. Hylfing, pale in places with new cut stone, charred in others, spread out beneath him. He could see the walls, framed up with scaffolding. He could see the bridge, straddling the river where Eli FitzFaeren had died to save him. Where Darius, the tall, insecure wizard of Byzanthamum, the witch’s pawn, had fallen with the Arrow of Chance in his throat. He could see the harbor, purpled in the early twilight, and he could hear the pounding sea beyond it.
    Henry hurried to the little stairs that would take him down to the lower roof, and then down again into the upper sun rooms of the house. But at the top of the stairs he stopped, suddenly dizzy. Leaning against the parapet,breathing slowly, he tried to calm the storm in his body. His stomach was churning from the violent world shift, and his joints felt loose. His left eyelid twitched spastically.
    “Henry?”
    Henry turned and blinked, trying to focus. But his eyes felt abused, and they refused to cooperate. The world was nothing but purple, and then a shape walked up the stairs toward him.
    “Henry?” The voice was his cousin’s. “Where did you come from?” Henrietta asked. “I was just up there, and then I heard something break when I was going back inside. Your nose is bleeding. It’s smeared all over your cheek. What happened?”
    “Is my dad back?” Henry asked. “Have they started?”
    “No. But Uncle Caleb is. He said your dad would be late. Something about Franklin Fat-Faerie. And—” Henrietta stopped. She was slowly blinking into focus. Her curls were loose around her shoulders, held back by some kind of band. She was wearing a white linen shirt, or maybe a dress, all embroidered and gathered at her waist. Not a dress. There were tan trousers underneath.
    Henry normally would have smiled and made some kind of comment about becoming a lady, or looking lovely, but he wasn’t interested in getting a reaction right now. Or in getting slapped. Henrietta grabbed Henry’s hands and pulled him to his feet.
    “You need to clean up.”
    Henry nodded and began working his way down the stairs. “And?” he asked.
    “And what?” Henrietta was following behind him.
    “You said
and
. And?”
    “Oh. Right.” Henry heard her sniff. She was trying to be casual. “And your brother’s here. That’s his ship in the harbor. That huge galley.”
    Henry looked up. He hadn’t noticed a new ship when he’d first tumbled out of the shed, but there it was, anchored farther out than any of the others. Henrietta was right. It was huge. Five masts—three towering—five rows of oar banks. A flag he didn’t recognize rippled slowly above the stern—white with a red emblem, long, and three-pronged at the fly.
    “James?” Henry asked. James was the sixth son, one up from Henry, one of the four still alive. Nervousness forced away the last of Henry’s dizziness, giving his stomach a new reason to burble. He had been an only child for twelve years. He didn’t know how to be with siblings, how