Twist of the Blade (12 page)

“I guess the other three finally saw sense,” Ariane muttered.

“‘Sense’ isn’t something I associate with Shania, or...or the other two,” Wally said. “But maybe.”
I hope so
, he added silently.
For all their sakes.
He watched Ariane take a long swallow of milk.
And yours too.

And now that he thought about it, quite possibly
his
.

Dinner out of the way, they moved to the living room, where Ariane and Wally sat side by side on the couch and Aunt Phyllis in her favourite flowery chair. Ariane cleared her throat, then said, “Wally already knows this, Aunt Phyllis, but I haven’t had a chance to tell you. I’ve got a better idea where the second shard is.”

Aunt Phyllis, in the act of pouring tea from a silver teapot, paused and then resumed pouring. “And where is that, dear?” she said.

“Southern France, I think.”

Aunt Phyllis put down the teapot and picked up her cup. She frowned a little as she raised it to her lips. “You
think?”
she said, then sipped.

“I can’t pinpoint it without getting closer,” Ariane said. “There aren’t any freshwater streams between here and there, obviously, and I need them to sense it. It’s like rivers and lakes are...” She paused, frowning.

“Like the Internet,” Wally said helpfully. “You have to be able to route the information from server to server, or you get a 404 error.”

“Um...sure. Like that,” Ariane said, giving him a raised-eyebrow look that he had no trouble translating as “Geek!”

“So first you have to get to France, and then you’ll be able to home in on the second shard?” Aunt Phyllis picked up the plate of chocolate-chip cookies she’d brought into the living room and offered it to Wally. He grabbed two.
At last!
he thought. Aunt Phyllis smiled, then held the plate out to Ariane. “How do you plan to get there?”

Wally thought Ariane showed great self-restraint by picking up only a single cookie. She said, “I think I’ve got a way
I
can get there.” She turned the cookie over and over in her hands, not looking at either Wally or her aunt. “But I can’t take Wally with me,” she finished in a small voice.

Shock rippled through Wally. Unbidden, Rex Major’s words echoed in his head.
“She’ll toss you aside like a broken hammer. And that will be the end of your part in this quest.”

“I can’t travel through salt water,” Ariane continued, still sounding subdued. “But Wally suggested something else. The clouds are fresh water. So he wondered if I could use them to travel....”

Aunt Phyllis put the plate of cookies down suddenly and awkwardly, as though it had become too heavy to hold.
“Fly?”

“Kinda,” Ariane said. “I tried it. It worked. I...joined with the clouds. Sort of like I can do with water but...different.” She was silent for a moment, as though trying to figure out how to explain what she had felt. “It was scarier, that’s for sure. I felt enormous, like a giant, but as insubstantial as a ghost.”

“Ghost riders in the sky,” Wally sang under his breath. Ariane shot him a questioning look. He shook his head. “Go on,” he said. “Explain the part about not being able to take me with you.”

“I just can’t. I can feel it. You’d be...too heavy, I guess. I might get you up there, but I couldn’t hold you. You could materialize thousands of metres up. Or maybe you’d just...turn into mist.”

“And maybe
you
could, too,” Aunt Phyllis snapped. “Ariane, this sounds far more dangerous than...”

“Than dissolving into the sewers and washing up on the shores of Hudson Bay?” Ariane shot back. “Aunt Phyllis, I know it’s dangerous. But what choice do I have? I have to get the second shard. It’ll be far more dangerous...for all of us...if Rex Major gets it first.”

“Can’t we test it?” Wally said. “Safely somehow? To see if maybe you’re wrong. You haven’t had your powers long. Maybe you can do more than you think. And with the shard to draw on –”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Ariane said. Her voice sharpened. “In fact, I’m sure it’s not a good idea. No. We can’t test it. I’m just going to have to go on my own. End of argument.”

Wally blinked, taken aback. That sudden edge to Ariane’s voice – that hadn’t sounded like her at all.

“No, it isn’t,” Aunt Phyllis snapped. “You are
not
going on your own, and
that’s
final. If you hadn’t had Wally with you last time, Rex Major would have gotten the first shard. You need his help.”

You tell her
, Wally thought.

“But –” Ariane began.

“But nothing.” Aunt Phyllis paused, as if thinking, then seemed to make up her mind and leaned forward. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I have a paid-up credit card,” she said. “Enough to get you both to France. The old-fashioned way: on a 747.”

“No,” Ariane said. “I can’t let you use up your money to –”

“To save the world?” Aunt Phyllis said. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“I’m the one the Lady –”

“No!” Wally snapped, with more heat than he intended. He tried to soften his tone. “No. We were
both
given this quest by the Lady. Me as well as you.” He didn’t say anything about doubting whether they should believe what the Lady had told them. “If you’re going to obey the Lady, you’re supposed to take me with you.
Always
.”

Ariane pursed her lips but didn’t protest.

“Then it’s settled,” Aunt Phyllis said. “Wally, I’ll give you my credit card. Can you book the flights, please? I had our Internet service disconnected. You and Ariane can figure out where you need to get to. You’ll need to arrange a place to stay as well.”

“Um...no,” Wally said unhappily.

Aunt Phyllis and Ariane both stared at him. “Why not?” Aunt Phyllis said sharply.

“I can’t use your credit card to book our flights.
Over the Internet
.” He emphasized the last three words.

Ariane blinked. “Oh.”

Aunt Phyllis closed her eyes. “Oh. Of course.” She shook her head. “I should have thought...then how?”

“Maybe you could do it at the library?” Ariane ventured. “No way for him to know you’re the one using a public computer, right?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Wally said. “The trouble is that we don’t actually know just what Merlin’s magic lets him do with computers. Even if I buy the tickets over the phone, they’ll be entering information into a computer at the other end. What if Merlin’s magic picks up on
that?”

“At least there’s a chance it won’t,” Aunt Phyllis said. “There’s nothing you can do about that, anyway. There’s no way to get a ticket without it going into the airline’s computer system. You’ll have to show ID when you fly, too, so you can’t buy the tickets under fake names.”

Wally thought hard. “We’ll have to buy our tickets at the counter with cash, as close to flight time as we can,” he said at last. “Even if Major has set something up to spot our names showing up on the airline’s reservation system, at least he won’t have much time to react.”

Ariane suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. “No,” she said. “Name. Singular.”

Wally and Aunt Phyllis looked at her. “I'm sorry, Aunt Phyllis,” she said. “I really am. But Wally is the only one who can fly ‘the old-fashioned way.’” She spread her hands. “I’m wearing a sizeable piece of pointy metal strapped to my side under my clothes. Think security might be just a little freaked out about that?”

Wally winced. “I should have thought of that.”

“Then....” Aunt Phyllis looked pale. “Ariane, can you really do it? Fly through the clouds? All the way to Europe?”

“All I can do is try, Aunt Phyllis,” she said. “I just don’t see any other way.”

Aunt Phyllis was silent for a long moment. She ran a finger around the rim of her teacup. “I don’t either.” She shook her head. “I wish I could come with you, Wally, but my credit card won’t cover food and accommodation for three of us in France. The one thing I
can
do is book a room for you in Lyon. I doubt they’d let two teenagers check in anywhere you’d want to stay if you just walked in and tossed cash down on the desk.”

“But if you use the Internet –” Wally started, but subsided when Aunt Phyllis gave him a how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am? look.

“There’s a thing called a telephone, Wally,” she said. “And I can speak enough French to manage a hotel booking.” She frowned suddenly. “Um. French. Ariane’s grades are...not great in French.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Ariane muttered.

“I can speak it fairly well,” Wally said. “And I’ve been to France before.” He felt almost embarrassed by that: there’d been no talk of a shortage of money when his whole family had gone three years ago, when he and Flish were still friends and so were Mom and Dad.

“Good.”

Ariane was giving her aunt a strange look. “Aunt Phyllis, you’re really...okay...with the two of us going off to France together? Alone?”

Aunt Phyllis put her teacup down on the table a little too hard. “Of course I’m not okay! But I don’t see any choice. And besides...” She sighed. “Ariane, you can fly through the clouds, flow through rivers, and use water as a weapon. You both went to the Northwest Territories on your own and came back with a piece of King Arthur’s magical sword. You’re not a little girl anymore. I think you can manage France. Just...be careful.”

Ariane looked so solemn that for a second Wally thought she was going to start crying, but all she said was, “I will,” in that small voice again.

“There’s another reason I should stay here,” Aunt Phyllis went on. “Does Rex Major know yet where the second shard is?”

Ariane shook her head. “I have no idea.”

Wally said nothing. The topic of Rex Major was not a comfortable one.

“Well, we shouldn’t give him a clue, should we?” Aunt Phyllis continued. “He might find out when Wally buys his ticket...but he might not, especially if all of his spies are telling him you and Wally are somewhere else entirely....”

“Where?” Ariane said.

“Emma Lake.”

“Emma Lake? But that old cabin hasn’t been used in years!”

Aunt Phyllis shook her head. “
I
haven’t used it in years,” she said. “But I do rent it out. It supplements my pension. So it’s quite livable, although admittedly more so in the summer than in November.

“So here’s the plan: Wally
obviously
needs to rest after his concussion, so nobody will be expecting him at school for some time yet. His parents are away, and Mrs. Carson, from what Wally tells us, won’t mind if someone else looks after him for a few days.”

“Understatement of the year,” Wally added.

“The principal has already phoned me to express concern about Ariane’s health.” Ariane blinked at her aunt; this was obviously news to her. Aunt Phyllis chuckled at her expression. “Ariane, you’ve been falling asleep at your desk. Teachers
do
notice that sort of thing.”

“Especially if you snore,” Wally said. Ariane shot him a look, and he put up his hands. “I’m just sayin’...”

Aunt Phyllis continued. “So the principal will understand when I tell him I’m taking Ariane out of school for a week to recuperate from...I’ll call it a virus...”

“Mono?” Wally said without thinking, and then it was his turn to blush as Ariane gave him another withering look.

Aunt Phyllis smiled. “Maybe,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’ll tell Mrs. Carson that I’m taking both of you on a mini-vacation to Emma Lake. We’ll load up the car exactly as if we’re going to the cabin and we’ll head toward Saskatoon. But you’ll never get there.”

“That sounds ominous,” Wally couldn’t help saying.

Aunt Phyllis laughed. “You won’t get there because at Chamberlain you’ll get out and wait for the bus going the other way. Back in Regina you’ll go straight to the airport to catch your flight.”

“What if we’re followed?” Ariane said.

“On that road? If I drive the speed limit and a car stays behind us without passing, that’ll be a dead giveaway. We’ll be more at risk of being rear-ended for driving so slow.”

Wally grinned, but had to point out the obvious flaw. “If he’s smart he
will
pass us and then pick us up again in Chamberlain or Davidson.”

“So we take careful note of which cars pass us on the way to Chamberlain,” Aunt Phyllis countered. “And if we see one waiting, we’ll come up with a Plan B. There are other towns where you can catch the bus.”

“I just thought of something else,” Wally said. “We’ll need passports. I’ve got one.” He looked at Ariane questioningly.

She nodded. “I’ve got one, too. My mom took me to Mexico once, before she...” She trailed off.

Wally cleared his throat. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

And so it was settled. Aunt Phyllis would go to the bank and get a large cash advance on her credit card, then book a hotel in Lyon over the phone and pay for a week’s stay in advance. As he walked back to his own house through the cold night, Wally reflected on the comforting fact that Ariane hadn’t objected to his joining her in France, once they’d established she wouldn’t have to try to transport him through the clouds.