The first time Nick had carried Judy, it had been as venom burned through her body. He had barely noticed the burden then, he had been so focused on trying to keep her conscious and just getting far enough outside the anti-alchemy array that the Nopalayotl had created. But carrying her for the second time, it occurred to him that she really didn't weigh very much.
He had her head resting against his chest, delicately cradling it with one paw as he supported her legs with the other. It was almost like he was carrying a kit, and the similarity didn't end with just the way in which he held her. Like a very young kit, she didn't seem capable of supporting her own head, which bobbled against his paw with each of his steps.
That was worrying.
Even when Judy had been dying from the Ehecatl's bite, she had at least been aware. Barely, it was true, and watching the life drain slowly out of her had been horrifying. But she had still been aware nonetheless, capable of answering his questions and following the thread of the story he had told her. Now, though, she was completely limp and non-responsive. Externally, at least; she was fighting a battle for her mind on the inside.
Or so the copy of Nick's own mind had claimed. He still wasn't comfortable with that idea, but he knew when he had been outmaneuvered and the princess had thrown her support behind the plan his copy had proposed. The princess, Nick strongly suspected, liked Judy a lot more than she did him. Which was, he told himself, not a failure of his own remarkable charms or even the sort of anti-fox bias that a lot of mammals harbored.
It was that Judy was good in a way that he wasn't.
Maybe Judy would have scolded him for getting down on himself, had she been able to say anything and if he had spoken the thought aloud in the first place. As uncomfortable an idea it was that a copy of his mind was in Judy's head he didn't dare consider what it would be like to have a copy of her in his own. But his musings were just distractions from what he was really concerned about; Nick knew himself that well. It was, perhaps, the first lesson of being good at selling things: always be honest with yourself. Being honest with customers wasn't strictly necessary; his own parents' experience had taught him that. Years of running a scrupulously fair shop hadn't saved it when his father had gotten sick.
But he was doing it again.
Nick forced his gloomy distractions aside and thought about what was actually important. Namely, the rabbit he was holding as carefully he could as he and the princess tried putting as much distance between themselves and the crevasse outside Phoenix. Nicholas and Judy were otherwise occupied, the philosopher's stone that they had pried free of Judy's torc clutched tightly in her paw. That, at least, Nick tried to take as a good sign. Even as her head bounced freely and her feet swung against his chest, her right paw remained tightly clenched with only the faintest hint of a brilliant light emerging from between her fingers.
Considering that Nicholas was theoretically exactly as good at alchemy as Nick himself was, Nick had instantly grasped what his mental duplicate intended to do when he claimed that another transmutation was the only way to save Judy's mind. Healing Judy's arm through alchemy had been how the mental copy had been created, after all, and if that could noticeably impact her mind then surely another transmutation could do the same.
That was the theory, at least. Nick was more than a little skeptical of it; in his mind it was a bit like claiming that since a match could create fires that it must also be able to put them out. Maybe it would work—and he fervently hope that it would—but maybe it wouldn't. If he was honest with himself, though, he would have felt more confident about Judy's odds of recovery if she had been doing it alone. It wasn't that he doubted that Nicholas was a copy of himself or thought that he had some kind of ulterior motive. Nicholas's undeniable knowledge of things he had never told Judy, and the easy way he had extracted the philosopher's stone from Judy's torc had put any of those concerns to bed. It was, Nick had to admit, much simpler than that.
He didn't trust himself.
That was what it all came down to, really. Nicholas was, it seemed, a perfect copy of his own mind, and that meant he had all the same weaknesses. And those, Nick knew, were numerous. If push came to shove, would Nicholas save Judy or himself? Nick liked to believe that, if he had been in Nicholas's position, the answer would have been yes. Yes, without any kind of caveats or any amount of hedging. If saving Judy meant that he himself would die, Nick believed he would do it.
But was he lying to himself?
His own track record for doing the right thing wasn't exactly encouraging. And worst of all, there was absolutely nothing he could do. Since Nicholas had clutched the philosopher's stone and started a transmutation, going limp as he did, it had been almost four hours. Although Nick had paid attention to Judy's body as carefully as he could while still navigating the tunnels of the ruins under Phoenix, he hadn't seen a single sign of improvement. Not that he had any idea how long repairing Judy's mind would take. Or even if it was possible.
Nick heaved a sigh; no wonder other mammals so frequently didn't enjoy his company. He was getting irritated with Nicholas, which seemed to amount to being irritated with himself. Why couldn't he have been a better mammal so his copy would be, too?
"Is something wrong?"
Nick snapped his head to the side, taking in the princess's anxious face. She had spoken the words timidly, but they had completely cut through his concentration. For a princess, she seemed to shrink into the background more than he would have thought a royal was even capable of doing. Just about every noble it had been his misfortune to deal with had been full of the overwhelming need to make themselves the center of attention in as ostentatious a manner as was possible. But then, that wasn't quite fair. Judy was a noble, after all, even if she was a rather minor one.
Nick shot the princess an easy smile; he supposed he could have been on his deathbed and still managed the same. He had practiced it until it was second nature, as it kind of defeated the purpose of having a disarming smile if he couldn't call upon it whenever he needed it. "Just thinking," he said.
"What about you?" he added, "You've been quiet, your highness."
That was the unvarnished truth and not just a deflection; the princess had barely spoken a word in hours. Actually, unless Nick had been too deep in his own thoughts to notice her speaking—and he hoped he hadn't as being rude to a princess didn't seem like a good idea—she hadn't spoken at all as they plunged deeper and deeper into the tunnels. "Just thinking," she said, echoing his words.
Nick made a noncommittal noise of agreement and fell silent as they keep walking. She'd speak again, he knew. Some merchants spoke too much, filling the air with so many words that their clients got uncomfortable and left. Letting their clients be the ones to speak worked better, in his experience; pushing too hard would just make them decide against talking.
"I'm worried about my mother," the princess said abruptly, after a minute or two had passed with nothing interesting to see in the unremarkable corridor they were traveling down.
"I would be too, if I were in your place and it was my mother up there," Nick said.
The princess looked at him a bit oddly at that, as if it was occurring to her for the first time that foxes didn't simply spring into existence out of thin air. But then, that was the burden of the crown, Nick supposed. It was probably easier to think of a kingdom's subjects as just a sort of abstract concept rather than consider that each and every one of them had a mother and a father and their own hopes and dreams and fears. "It's just..." the princess began, and she paused, licking her lips.
Nick was happy to fall silent again, feeling the gentle rise and fall of Judy's chest against his own as she breathed slowly and evenly. "Why wasn't Cerdo after her?" Princess Isabel said at last.
That was a good question, and Nick considered it for a moment. Part of it was him wondering whether or not the princess was being rhetorical, and when he noticed she was looking at him expectantly he answered carefully. "Maybe he underestimated you," Nick said.
"Underestimated me?" the princess repeated.
She didn't sound quite skeptical, but rather as though she wanted to believe that his words were true but didn't quite see how. "Sure," Nick said, "He might be underestimating you. You're young, you're a chimera... Maybe he didn't think much of you."
"I can't help being young or a chimera!" the princess said, with surprising heat in her voice.
"Of course you can't," Nick said, and he would have raised his paws in a placating manner if he hadn't been holding Judy, "You can't change what you are. You can take advantage of it, though."
The princess fell silent again for a moment before speaking. "How do you do it?" she asked.
Nick chuckled. "Take advantage of being a fox?" he asked, "That's easy. Mammals expect me to try tricking them."
The princess frowned. "That doesn't seem like it'd be easy to take advantage of."
Nick shrugged carefully, making sure not to disturb Judy's still form. "The trick is making them think they're taking advantage of me. Make them think they're clever enough to see through a fox's trick and they'll be satisfied with whatever we agree to."
"Even if it's in your favor?"
"Especially if it's in my favor," Nick said, nodding.
"That's... Not too different from something my mother told me once," the princess said.
"I imagine it's a bit different if you're a queen, your majesty," Nick said agreeably, "But the principle's the same."
Neither one of them spoke for a long while after that, but Nick couldn't help but hope that he had been able to give the princess some comfort. Considering that, for the moment, she was the only company he had capable of holding a conversation—unless he got so desperate he tried puppeteering Judy's jaw and imitating her voice—he'd much rather they get along.
Also, the princess had a sword and his arms were full.
Still, the silence seemed positively companionable as they continued along, the tunnels slowly rising. Nick's unerring sense of direction—which was, he supposed, one of those other advantages of being a fox—told him they were headed toward Phoenix itself, which was exactly what they wanted. Cerdo clearly wanted something out of the settlement, and it was as good a place as any to set up an anti-alchemy array once Nicholas was done fixing Judy's mind and they were sure they wouldn't just make things worse.
But then Nick saw something that absolutely did not belong in the murky ruins under Phoenix and came to stop so suddenly that the princess walked a few more steps before noticing. "Captain Nick?" she asked, "What is it?"
Lacking any free paws with which to gesture, Nick jerked his chin toward where something was glowing off in the distance. "That's not an alchemical torch," he said, frowning.
Alchemical torches, at least, he could have understood. The long-dead builders of Quimichpatlan Barony had filled the place with all sorts of light sources, and although the calamity that had destroyed the underground city had ruined many of them—and generations of looters had removed most of the ones that remained—they were far from an unexpected sight. But what Nick had spotted didn't glow with the discolored and dim light of an ancient torch or the brighter and harsher glow of an unfiltered modern one. The light was, in fact, the same beautiful crimson color that the philosopher's stone clenched in Judy's fist was.
"Let me go first," the princess whispered, raising her sword and peering cautiously into the darkness.
Considering he was still holding Judy's inert form in his paws, Nick was happy to let her investigate. It wasn't as though he could do much otherwise; dropping Judy to draw a weapon or prepare to perform a transmutation didn't seem like a very good idea. He watched, straining his eyes against the darkness, as the princess slowly advanced toward that reddish glow. She stood, seemingly transfixed for a long while, and then motioned with her free arm for Nick to come to her. A bit uneasily, he did, and when he got closer he couldn't help but be amazed at what he saw.
There, carved into the floor of the tunnels underneath Phoenix was a segment of an alchemical array of incredible complexity; it made anything he had ever made look positively simple by comparison. Nick couldn't even tell how large the full array was; the visible segment was more than twenty feet long and nearly a foot wide, and it only disappeared from sight when it went behind walls. Elaborate curls and words wound their way through unusual patterns, all of them pulsing with that red light, and there was something oddly familiar about them.
And then it struck him where he had seen something similar. It was like the array etched into the torc Judy had been wearing, the one that had allowed Cerdo to control her mind. His mind all but reeling at the insight, the pieces fell into place for Nick. What he was looking at was something intended to exert control over a huge number of mammals all at once. And, from the mild curvature of the array, he suddenly realized that it could only be intended to cover all of Phoenix. "Don't cross the line," Nick said more sharply than he had intended as he looked to the princess, "This is how Cerdo got the mammals in Phoenix to do what he wanted."
The princess gaped at him for a moment, but then realization brightened her face. "And you and Commandant Totchli weren't affected because you were in an anti-alchemy cell!"
Nick nodded, his mind still racing. "If Cerdo can use this to control mammals," he began slowly, but the princess interrupted him.
"You could change it to free them?" she asked, her excitement evident in her voice and across her face.
"Maybe," Nick said, and he gently shifted Judy in his arms, "But..."
The princess took a long look at Judy's still motionless form and swallowed hard. He could tell she was thinking the same thing he was. Maybe breaking the circle would be enough. Maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it would all but kill the mammals currently in Phoenix above them, if there were any. "I..." the princess began, and she stopped before beginning again.
"I don't know what to do," she said softly.
"I think there's only one thing we can do," Nick said, as he looked down into Judy's face.
He desperately wanted to know what was going on in that little bunny brain of hers. Had Nicholas failed? Did he just need more time? "We wait," he said simply, and the princess nodded.