Thrice Upon a Marigold (15 page)

In the deepest part of the night, Boris snored so loudly he woke himself up. He turned over and peered down to see Vlad, outlined by the light from the wall torches, sitting peacefully on the floor, his back against the wall.

“Oh,” Vlad said, getting to his feet. “You're awake. Just in time.”

“Time for what?” Boris scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to wake up.

“Time to go,” Vlad whispered.

“You're kidding, right?”

Vlad shook his head. “I'm going to blast the lock off this door, then I'm going to blow my sleeping powder on the guards. But you're going to stand by to bang their heads together, just in case the powder doesn't work fast enough. And then we're going out the disposal tunnel, where I'll blast out the door that opens onto the riverbank.”

“Hey! I'd forgotten about that tunnel. They used to dump the torture victims through there, out into the river.” Boris rubbed his hands together. “What are we waiting for?” He jumped off the upper bunk with enough of a crash that Vlad flinched.

“Quiet, you oaf!” he hissed. “We don't want to wake those guards until we have to. And we don't want to wake up Emlyn and Fogarty, either. They're not coming with us.”

That was fine with Boris. He'd never really liked either of them—probably because he didn't really like anybody—and trying to escape with four would be more than twice as hard as trying to escape with two.

They held still for a moment but heard nothing more than heavy, sleepy breathing coming from both guards and the prisoners in the other cell.

Vlad began packing something squishy around the lock in the cell door. He whispered, “Interestingly, this is the same stuff King Christian used to get out of the dungeon years back, in those crazy days before he married the princess. I learned the formula for it after I found out he'd used it. You never know when an odd bit of knowledge like that will come in handy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Boris said. “Get on with it.”

So Vlad did. And with a loud
pop!
the lock on the cell door blew off and the door swung open. The
pop!
was enough to wake the guards, who scrambled up and came running. As soon as they were in range, Vlad dipped a hand into his pocket and blew powder into their faces. The guards came to a sudden stop, rubbing their eyes. They probably would have fallen of their own accord, but Boris couldn't resist. It had been too long since he'd been able to do damage to anyone. He took their heads into his large, meaty hands, and banged them together. The impact made the sound of a bowling ball striking pins, and the guards went down in a heap. Boris thought he could almost see stars circling their heads, and he felt better than he had in a long time.

By that time, Emlyn and Fogarty were on their feet, standing at the door to their cell. “Hurry up!” Emlyn called. “Get our door open, too.”

“Sorry,” Vlad said, moving swiftly by. “Not this time.”

“What do you mean,
this
time?” Fogarty asked. “There's not going to be any other time.”

“Oh,” said Vlad, halting for a moment. “You're right. So sorry. And goodbye.”

“Hey!” yelled Emlyn. Fogarty joined her, but yelling was futile. Vlad and Boris had disappeared into the mouth of the disposal tunnel.

Emlyn and Fogarty yelled for a while longer, just on principle. Finally, Emlyn, whose throat was getting sore, flopped down on the lower bunk. “We should have known we couldn't trust them,” she said. “After all, they did have the worst reputations in the kingdom.”

“I feel like an idiot,” Fogarty said. “And a dupe. And a failure.”

“Well, you are!” Emlyn assured him. She didn't want to say that she was thinking the same thing about herself. She curled up, determined to go back to sleep. Might as well. All the excitement was over, and it hadn't included her.

 

Sebastian selected a book at random from the library shelf. What he'd really wanted was to spend a few more minutes with Phoebe, but that wasn't working out so well. He had thought he felt her gaze on him as he perused the stacks, but when he darted a peek in her direction, she was sitting at her desk paying no attention at all to him. He cleared his throat and she raised her head.

“I guess I'll take this one, then,” he said, holding out a book.

“
Ancient Agrarian Practices
? Really? Well, it ought to do the job of putting you to sleep.” She wrote the title in her ledger and handed it back to him.

“Well. Good night, then,” he said.

She avoided his eyes. What was the point? They'd shared an adventure that was now over. She would go back to being the daughter of Boris, the reviled torturer-in-chief, whose grisly reputation would now be resurrected just as it had begun to fade a little. And her own name would be unfavorably linked to his all over again.

“Good night,” she said to Sebastian.

He had no choice but to leave, even though her voice had had a trace of something curious in it. Regret? Resignation? Loneliness?

Instead of going back to his cramped room over the blacksmith shop, Sebastian went up to the broad terrace that spanned the width of the castle and looked down over the river. A lot of dramatic things had occurred on that terrace, Sebastian thought as he leaned on the parapet. But to other people. Nothing was going to happen to him now. He would live out his life as an isolated blacksmith's assistant, entertaining himself by making faithful models of King Arthur's exploits, not having any adventures of his own.

Now that Vlad was back in the limelight, Sebastian was sure he would never escape the pall that his father's reputation continued to cast over him. This kidnapping episode would be merely a blip in his life—a blip connected to his father, just like everything always was.

Sighing, he gazed down at the river flowing past in the darkness. He could hear the gurgle of the water as it passed over rocks, and see the light from the security torches around the castle sparkling on the surface.

This idyllic view was interrupted by the sound of a blast. Sebastian leaned farther over the parapet to see what was happening. To his amazement, the flickering torchlight revealed his father, followed by Boris, tumbling out of a doorway in the castle wall and onto the riverbank. They stood there for a moment, apparently arguing, and then headed off along the river's edge toward the Zandelphia-Beaurivage Bridge.

T
HE
T
ERRIBLE
T
WOS HAD
escaped! They were loose again, ready to do more harm—if not in Zandelphia-Beaurivage, then in some other innocent kingdom. He should have known they'd find a way to get out, Sebastian thought. They never gave up.

But they had done enough damage. Sebastian braced his shoulders and vowed he would not allow that to continue.

He didn't want to wake the king. And if he went for Rollo and the guards, by the time he made the necessary explanations, the Terrible Twos would be well on their way. The only solution was to go after them now, on his own. He wasn't sure what he would do when he caught up with them, but he would think of something before it happened. He wasn't going to let those two ruin any more lives than they already had.

Sebastian tore down the winding staircase from the terrace, erupted into the passageway, and blasted out into the village square just in time to collide with Phoebe, on her way to her chambers after closing up the library. He grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him as he ran.

“Your father and mine have escaped! We have to stop them! They can't be allowed to wreak any more havoc!”

“
Wreak
!” she said, running along with him. “
Havoc
! What wonderful words! Wait—what? The Terrible Twos have escaped? What can
we
do about it? Shouldn't we get the guards?”

“It would take too much time. Vlad and Boris are probably already on the bridge. We can't let them get away!”

It was crazy, she knew it was, to think that the two of them could do anything about the Terrible Twos, but Sebastian seemed so determined, and so certain, that he was irresistible. She kept running.

They sped out of the village and tore to the Zandelphia-Beaurivage Bridge, just in time to see the Terrible Twos reach the other end.

“Watch which way they go,” Sebastian panted. “We can still catch them. And we'll have the element of surprise. They don't know we're after them.”

It helped that Phoebe and Sebastian were young and fit, and that Boris was fat and slow. Though Vlad had kept himself in good shape, he had already had a strenuous few days and he wasn't as young as he used to be, in spite of the concoctions he formulated to make himself feel younger. You can't really fool Mother Nature, no matter how hard you try.

The moonless night helped hide Phoebe and Sebastian, though it made keeping the escapees in sight more difficult. Fortunately, Boris made a lot of noise, crashing through the brush.

Soon Phoebe and Sebastian were close enough to hear Boris say, “We gotta stop. I'm all out of breath.”

“Soon,” Vlad said. “We're going to need some help, and I know where we're going to get it.”

“What does he mean?” Phoebe whispered to Sebastian. “Who would help them?”

“I can't imagine,” Sebastian replied. “The king and queen have rooted out all the troublemakers. And I haven't heard about any of them, except the Terrible Twos, staying in the vicinity.”

Vicinity,
Phoebe thought. He could have said
neighborhood
or
area,
but he said
vicinity.
“Did you know that nothing rhymes with
orange
?” she said. “Or with
purple, silver,
or
window
?”

“I didn't know that,” he said. “I guess I haven't given much thought to poetry.”

“I have a lot of poetry books in the library. I could show you,” she offered.

“I'd like that.”

They stood looking at each other for a moment before Sebastian said, “We should keep going. We don't want to lose them.”

“Right. You're right, of course. Let's go.” Phoebe refused to think about how preposterous it was to believe they could stop the nastiest, scariest, most dangerous brutes the kingdom had ever known. All she wanted was to be with Sebastian for as long as she could, before their adventure—and her excuse for being near him—was over for good.

They followed on through the forest until Phoebe said, “This looks familiar. Isn't this near the dragon's lair?”

“Yes, I recognize it, too. They can't seem to escape their fascination with that dragon.”

“But she's never seemed to like them. It's a little late for them to try to make friends, don't you think?”

“Maybe they intend to threaten her into helping them. Or maybe they have some sort of leverage they can use on her.”

“I wouldn't want to be threatening a dragon. Would you?”

“Doesn't seem very smart to me. But one thing I know for sure about my father is that he's very smart. So that means he has a plan.”
I wish I had one,
Sebastian thought.

Vlad and Boris crossed the charred clearing and paused at the lair's opening, where a campfire was burning low. Phoebe and Sebastian hid nearby, tense and silent, holding each other's hands as they waited to see what would happen.

After a while, the dragon appeared at the mouth of her lair. In the faint light of the campfire, her glittering scales gave off a pearly light. She stood, looking at the Terrible Twos as a stream of gray smoke came from her nostrils.

“We're here to make you an offer you can't refuse,” Vlad said. “We're leaving the kingdom for good, and you're coming with us. We'll be so much more in demand in a new location if we bring not only our own well-honed talents, but also our very own dragon.” For Boris's benefit, he was saying
we,
but he didn't mean it. He intended to have this dragon all to himself.

The smoke from the dragon's nostrils darkened.

“Oh, I know you've rejected our offers many times in the past,” Vlad went on. “But this time we have quite an inducement. His name is Hannibal.”

The dragon took a step forward, her gold eyes glowing.

“Yes, indeed. I heard the guards talking about you and the elephant. It's all over the kingdom, thanks to that old blabbermouth, Wendell the wizard. So here's the offer: you come with us and nothing happens to the big guy. You say no again, and we send a p-mail back to our cohort in the stables to put a little something extra in Hannibal's dinner. A little something extra I concocted especially for him in my laboratory. And you know the kind of things that come out of my laboratory.”

A look of distress and uncertainty came across the dragon's face.

“Do you think it's true?” Phoebe whispered to Sebastian.

“I don't see how it can be,” he whispered back. “He must have made something from all that stuff he always carries in his pockets to allow them to break out of the dungeon, but there's no way he could have left something in the stables. He was taken straight to the dungeon when he arrived, and escaped straight out of the tunnel. He never went to the stables. And he doesn't have a cohort there—at least not anymore. And with all the bad guys banished, he couldn't have planned this while he still had access to a laboratory, since he didn't know he'd be in this situation. He's bluffing all over the place, trying to scare her into coming with them.”

“We can't let that happen,” Phoebe said. “We can't let them keep doing their terrible deeds.” And with that, she stepped forward into the clearing. She was behind the Terrible Twos, but the dragon could see her and issued a stream of white smoke in the shape of a question mark.

“You have questions?” Vlad said. “Well, I have the answers. Don't make a stupid mistake.”