Page 111 of Suffer No Fools
"How many of us can fit on Nola's airship?" Tovey asked. "Surprise is still our best offense."
Yvette grinned and shook her head. "It's ready, Tovey. Relax."
"Relax?" He couldn't breathe. There wasn't enough breathable air in the hold. He was dying. He sank to the floor.
"Deep breaths." Vadim leaned over him and placed his hand on his shoulder. "It's going to be all right."
Tovey wanted to ask how he could say such a thing, but he couldn't get enough air in his lungs to talk. All that came out was a squeak.
Suddenly, Stan was there, hoisting him over his shoulder and carrying him up the ladder into the mess like he weighed nothing. Tim offered Stan a handful of something, and then they were moving again, through the hold and up the stairs onto the main deck, and then up the stairs again to the aft deck.
Stan hauled him off his shoulder and propped him against the railing to the main deck. "Eat these." He handed him some dried paradise fruit.
Hugo bounded up the stairs with a ladle of water. "Drink this."
"I'm fine." Tovey had caught his breath, but he did as they asked, starting with the water. Hugo rushed to refill the ladle while he tossed back the handful of fruit and chewed. The automatic motion took his focus off his breath. By the time he swallowed, he felt better.
"They probably won't wake until late this evening." Stan sat beside him with a hand on his knee. "Whatever you want to ask them, it'll be too late."
Tovey knew Stan was right, but he had to hope. "If we can jump through space like that, can we go back in time?"
"Thinking like that will only break your brain even more than it already is."
"We could go back before Coryn, before this artifact, before anything with this stone was crafted by weavers. I think we can all agree now that we did this to ourselves." Tovey had heard more than one voice at the monolith. The object had shared its history with him. The weavers of old had thought it would be a shining beacon of their success, all eight weaves usedto create it, but the tree didn't want to be stone. It wanted to be a tree.
"We fixed it," Stan said. "We restored the tree to its original form."
"But why?" Tovey asked. "Why did they turn it to stone?"
Stan pulled Tovey to his side and kissed the top of his head. "I didn't ask."
Tovey studied Stan's face. "Did you hear it, too?"
He nodded. "We're bonded. Hugo and I heard it, same as you, though It doesn't matter why they did it. All that matters now is we keep Coryn from doing it again."
Tovey snuggled against Stan's side, feeling like a traitor for enjoying comfort when the rest of the crew was working. When Hugo snuggled against his other side and offered another drink of water, he accepted his fate. If anyone aboard could stop Coryn from building another monolith with the scales, it was Hugo. He and Stan were only along for the ride.
Chapter 17
Hugo
When they reached Hearthstone, Hannah gave Hugo a spare scope they'd made and a hug. They were takingStarlight Specterback into the fray with the rest of the crew, including Roy, Ray, and Trin. Hannah and Olivia planned to destroy the naval ships in port before taking the fight to any ships patrolling the shores.
Wildfirewas already docked in port with sails furled. Hugo pulled Yvette, Efren, Niall, Vadim, Klaus, Tovey, and Stan with him to the air ship on her main deck, where Nola and Fanidra waited.
"Does everyone have their enchantments?" Fanidra asked. She and Allora had worked on the silver jewelry for months, finally perfecting it.
Hugo's suppression amulet rested above his heart and now also protected him from death weaves and siphons. He added his confirmation to everyone else's. They were ready.
Tovey and Stan lifted them into the fog bank, and they landed atop the academy tower under Klaus's direction. Once Efren shoved it away, Hugo pulled out the scope Hannah had given him. Even with the scope, Hugo couldn't see Coryn anywhere in the crowd on the academy grounds.
"I told you, she's not here," Klaus said. "She's that way." He pointed toward the palace.
"We need to go down there." Hugo pointed to the group surrounding the academy tower. "Coryn left them here for a reason."
They still needed to travel to Vadim's former dormitory for quick access to the tunnels beneath the palace, but first, they needed those earth weavers. It had taken all eight elements to craft the stone used to build the monolith on Stony Eel Island, but it would be a simple weave for an earth weaver to duplicate the stone itself, especially if Coryn had the scales with her. The statue was made from the same element.
"They can duplicate the stone," Stan agreed, "but it won't have the same power. She'll never convert that tower into a working monolith with earth weavers alone."
