"Oh yeah?" Baylen stopped, scowling, while he tried to come up with a better answer. "Oh yeah?"
Deanna stamped her foot. "Baylen! Leonard!"
"Anyway," Baylen lied, "she told me what ingredients this alchemy spell needs for the watch to work, and she entrusted me to gather those materials."
"So how come you came crawling to me for help?" Leonard sneered.
Deanna could read Baylen's emotional struggle on his face: the conflicting desires to prove his superiority to Leonard or to pacify him so that he would help. "Well," Baylen admitted, "there was one thing I couldn't get, which I knew you could."
Amazing. What was going on?
Leonard beamed at her. "See? Helpless without me. Pray tell me, Baylen—" He made a sweeping bow. "—how can I help you?"
Don't overdo it,
Deanna thought, estimating that Baylen would make him pay later for each squirm he caused now.
Baylen said, "One thing I couldn't get. Uncle Algernon is waiting at the gallows crossroads for the final ingredient which we're hoping you can get."
"Which is?"
"Seawater."
"
Seawater?
" Leonard said.
"
Seawater?
" Deanna said.
"Seawater," Baylen said.
Oh, good grief. They weren't anywhere near the sea.
"Now you might be thinking that we aren't anywhere near the sea," Baylen said.
"No," Leonard proclaimed in sarcastic disbelief that Deanna mentally echoed.
"But we are closer than you think."
Oliver looked at Deanna with raised eyebrows.
How did I let myself get talked into this?
she asked herself. Couldn't Baylen have come up with something more sensible?
"There is an underground stream," Baylen told them, "that leads from the sea to the pond in serf Guillaume's holding."
"The pond has seawater?" Leonard asked incredulously.
"You see, that was the problem—"
"
The pond has seawater?
" Leonard interrupted.
"—Lady Deanna knew that she needed seawater, but didn't know where to get any near here—"
"The pond has
seawater
?" Leonard persisted.
"Will you shut up and let me finish?"
Between clenched teeth, Leonard said, "There is no such thing as a stream, underground or not, leading from the sea to Guillaume's pond."
"Uncle Algernon found it," Baylen said smugly.
"How?"
"Uncle Algernon has his ways."
"Hmmm." Apparently that wasn't something Leonard was going to argue with. He looked at Deanna, who looked at Oliver, who looked as though everything they were saying was perfectly reasonable. Leonard snorted. "So we get some water from the pond. So what?"
"No, no, no, no," Baylen said in that condescending way that set Deanna's teeth on edge. "We don't get some water from the pond. We get some water from the stream."
"
So,
" Leonard repeated, "
what?
"
"It's an underground stream. You need to go to the mouth of the stream, at the bottom of the pond."
"Ah," Leonard said. "That's one deep pond."
"That's why we need you," Baylen told him. "You're the best swimmer in the family."
"Yes, I am, though I'm surprised you finally admit it. But how will I know where this seawater comes in?"
"Uncle Algernon says it's in the middle of the pond. He says the water's warmer there. You'll be able to tell."
"I don't know," Leonard said thoughtfully.
"Please, Leonard," Deanna begged, for although she resented getting caught up in Baylen's intrigues, obviously he was set on this. "We can't even start unless you say yes."
"Well," Leonard said slowly, basking in all the attention. "All right. Yes."
The pond Baylen had chosen was, of course, in the opposite direction from the crossroads he had chosen. It was about the size and shape of a soccer field and, according to the brothers, about five times as deep as a man was tall. It was surrounded by small cultivated fields belonging to various serfs who owed allegiance to Sir Henri—holdings, Baylen and Leonard called them. Baylen and Leonard had fought with and teased each other all the way there, and Deanna was ready to pull her hair out.
"Well," said Baylen, "we're here."
"Thank you for pointing that out for us," Leonard said, standing at the edge of the pond. "We're so lucky to have an expert with us."
Baylen smirked. "Do you plan on actually entering the water, or do you intend to stand here and tell us how good you're going to be at it?" He held out the stoppered vial Leonard was supposed to fill with seawater. But then, as though on second thought, he said, "Come to think of it, you'd probably do better to get undressed. You don't want to be walking around in wet clothes for the rest of the night."
Leonard glanced at Deanna.
"You don't mind waiting behind those bushes, do you, Deanna? To spare our Leonard's modesty?"
Deanna shrugged helplessly and went behind the bushes that separated two of the holdings. She sat down wearily and rested her head against her knees. Someone had planted mint among the bushes. The biting scent was so pungent that, had she more energy, Deanna would have moved away. "I can't believe we're doing this," she told Oliver.
He stooped down beside her and asked, "What exactly are we doing?"
Deanna shook her head. "I wish I knew."
They were close enough that she could hear the splash as Leonard entered the water, then the
slap-slap
sound of his swimming out to the center of the pond.
She sat listening to that, and to the crickets, until Baylen came around the bushes and grinned. He held his finger to his lips to caution silence and asked in hushed tones, "Ready to go?"
It was only then that she noticed Leonard's clothes tucked under his arm. "Oh, that's common, Baylen," Deanna snapped. "Common and nasty and juvenile."
Again he made the shushing gesture. "Yes, I'm rather pleased with it myself."
"Baylen—"
"Shh. If he hears you, he'll come out. If he comes out, he'll ruin the plan. If he ruins the plan, you'll never get your watch back."
"But..." She couldn't see how abandoning Leonard out in the middle of nowhere without any clothes was going to get her the watch back. This was pure be-rotten-to-Leonard nastiness on Baylen's part.
"Listen, we can call this off now," Baylen offered. "Do you want to do this or not?"
Actually not. But Baylen was her best choice. In the dark, she couldn't even tell where they
were, much less how to get to wherever Algernon had left the watch.
If
Baylen had gotten him to leave the watch.
If
Baylen had ever even talked to him about the watch. She had to admit—despite the fact that she hated the trite sound of it—that her fate was in Baylen's hands. Baylen wasn't her best chance, he was her only chance.
Deanna sighed and got to her feet. If she was lucky, she thought, they'd be out of hearing range by the time Leonard discovered he'd been abandoned.
She wasn't lucky.
They were walking across a field planted with some sort of grain—barley, possibly—when his voice caught up with them, hardly more than a whisper of wind in the leaves. "Baylen!" They had covered quite a distance and Leonard must have been shouting with all his might for the sound to reach them at all. She had never done anything so low, she thought. But, after all, what could she do? Baylen had the clothes. What was her alternative? To tackle him, grab Leonard's pants, bring them back to him, and cease to exist by noon?
"Bay-len!"
And Baylen only grinned.
Oliver had glanced at her once, at the first call, as though to check whether her ears could pick out the sound, but his expression told her nothing.
Deanna set her face—this was none of her business, she told herself—and put one foot ahead of the other. "Bayyyy-lennnn!" she heard again, fainter than before. Perhaps Leonard's voice was giving out, or he was realizing the fruitlessness of it all. And then she thought she heard it one more time, but that may have been a breeze rattling the leaves; and after that they continued to the crossroads in silence.
Baylen's plan better be worth it,
she thought. It'd better have convinced Algernon to leave the watch untended. Otherwise she'd have to face Leonard again, and how could she do that?
She knew they were close when Baylen put his finger to his lips although nobody had said anything since the pond. Silently he pointed to a wooded area, then made a curlicue gesture that she assumed meant they'd circle into the woods and come up onto the crossroads from behind—longer but safer. She nodded.
The woods were dark, with exposed roots to trip her up, and twigs that hung down and snagged in her hair. No telling how many insects were nesting in there by now. The night was hot
and humid and her hair and her clothes stuck to her.
There was no path that Deanna could see. Baylen stuffed Leonard's clothes underneath a bush and began to pick his way with a self-assurance that Deanna figured would in no time either get them exactly where he wanted or have them hopelessly lost. She kept turning around to make sure Oliver was still there, because he never made a sound.
Finally—it must have been four o'clock where people had clocks—Baylen turned around to once more place finger to lips. Then he got down on his hands and knees and very, very stealthily crawled forward.
Deanna and Oliver followed, and in a few moments were at the edge of the trees. They had come out in the angle where the two roads intersected, and were maybe a hundred yards away; it was hard for Deanna to judge: perhaps the distance from her front yard to that of her best friend Lynn, two houses away. Two houses, and about nine hundred years. There was no cover at all—nothing to hide behind—just wild grass and weeds between them, crouching at the edge of the woods, and the cauldron, sitting by itself in the middle of the road.
But there was nobody else there. Apparently Algernon had believed the story Baylen had invented about the watch and the gold and the "let no human eye..." Apparently.
Deanna squinted into the shadows up and down the lengths of the two roads, same as Baylen and Oliver were doing. Crickets chirped, mosquitoes whined, but nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be stirring tonight.
Don't forget you're stirring,
Deanna told herself. But even with a cynical outlook she could find nothing suspicious in the colorless landscape she surveyed.
Baylen started to get up and Oliver tugged on his sleeve. He pointed to the left, where there were some bushes across the road.
"What?" Baylen asked in a barely audible whisper.
"Someone sitting there," Oliver whispered back.
Deanna and Baylen tried to pick a shape out of the shadows. "I see nothing," Baylen said. Deanna's thought exactly.
"Two men," Oliver described to them. "The one on the right has light curly hair and a sleeveless leather tunic. The other has longer, darker hair and a short-sleeved shirt. I can't make out the color in this light They have their backs to us and appear to be asleep, although it's hard to say for certain."
It took Baylen a good second to remember to shut his mouth. He glanced from Oliver to the shadows across the road. He gave a low, appreciative whistle and said, "You must have the eyes of a cat."
"Yes," Oliver said.
"If there're two, there may be more," Deanna whispered.
"With instructions
not
to look at the cauldron," Baylen reminded them. "Uncle Algernon believed every word I told him. He thinks he's making gold. He'll have told his people
not
to look at the cauldron. They'll be facing away from us. If they're awake—which they probably won't be. If there's more than the two sleepers to begin with."
Deanna looked at Oliver, who appeared none too pleased by all this. "What is it?" she asked.
He seemed to be listening to the night sounds. He shook his head. "Something's not right."
Baylen sighed impatiently, as though to say,
Amateurs always get cold feet.
"We can't back out now. What would you say to Uncle Algernon?"
What would she say to Leonard? "Surely there has to be another way," she said. "There's always more than one way to skin a cat."
Oliver looked up sharply.
"Sorry. I meant—"
"This is safe," Baylen interrupted. "My lady, trust me ... Nothing is wrong. This is just last-moment jitters."
Oliver didn't get last-moment jitters, Deanna was willing to bet. But Baylen was right about one thing: this wouldn't get any easier by postponing it. By tomorrow afternoon she wouldn't even be a memory unless the fair folk were wrong, and she had stopped believing that long ago. "All right. We'll do it," she said, figuring if the situation were that dangerous, Oliver would object.
He didn't.
"All right," Baylen said. "We'll wait a bit to make sure nobody's stirring."
The "bit" stretched out agonizingly. At least an hour of nothing.
The darkness.
The croaking frogs.
The smell of grass.
The sweat drying on her back, prickling like a hundred creepy-crawlers.
She shifted position and tried to ease a cramp out of her leg. Which way was east? Was that the first hint of dawn in the sky?
Finally Baylen asked, "Are the guards still there?"
Oliver nodded.
"Do they still look asleep?"
Again Oliver nodded.
"Then we'll go now. We'll approach together, just in case there is trouble. Deanna, you seize the watch. Oliver, you stand to her left, keeping a special eye on those guards. I'll protect her right."
Deanna's heart was beating harder than it had when she'd been fighting through the underbrush in the woods. Could the others see how scared she was? She hoped not: they both looked so calm.
"Ready?" Baylen asked. "Keep low. Forced-march pace."
What's forced-march pace? Deanna was about to ask, but didn't have the chance. Just short of a run, she saw, panting already to keep up. There was no breeze to cool the hot, sticky air. And Baylen moved them forward in a weaving pattern, which took them three times as long to cover the distance.
Any more excitement and they're going to have to pick me up and carry me,
she thought as they reached the cauldron.