The last bit was said snappishly. That was all right. He could live with snappish. He could live with anything but seeing that blinding misery in her eyes. “Sorry.”
She turned. “So. We’re in a pickle. Don’t suppose you’ve got any bright ideas about how we’re going to get out of it, do you?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But first things first. We can’t do anything while we’re stuck behind locked doors.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” said Reg. “Get out to the foyer and unlock them, Mr. Markham!”
But that was a whole lot easier said than done.
One touch to the apartment doors’ binding incant and he broke into a cold and sickly sweat. Snatching his hand back from the polished timber, he shook his head.
Oh, bloody hell. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.
“You’re right. They’re hexed. But Gerald didn’t do it.”
Standing off to one side, the princess glared. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Markham. Of course he did.”
No. No. I’ve got a first name. You can use it.
“Call me Monk,” he said, then pressed his palm flat to the doors a second time. For her, not for him. He already had his answer. The same sickly surge of thaumic energy roiled through him, tangled and twisted and hideous. Bile rose in his throat, burning.
“Well?” Reg demanded, perched on the back of a book-laden chair. There were books on the floor, too. There were books
everywhere
. Her Royal Highness Princess Melissande doos Meliswas as big a book fiend as he was.
Bloody hell. She’s perfect.
Distracted, he looked at Reg. “Well what?”
“Well can you get us out of here or can’t you?”
With an effort he focused on the job at hand. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s the most powerful barrier hex I’ve ever come across.”
“Then it
has
to be Gerald’s,” Melissande insisted. “Because there isn’t anybody else in New Ottosland who could’ve put it there.”
“Mel—Your Highness—I wish that were true,” he said. “It’d make my life a whole lot easier if it was.”
Melissande started tapping her toes. “Fine. Then who was it if it wasn’t Gerald? And
don’t
say Lional, because he’s not a wizard.”
Bloody hell. I don’t want to tell her.
Except he had to. Not only was she ranking royalty and had the right to know… he had no right to protect her. And if he tried she’d probably smack him.
“Look. Your Highness. I know this is going to sound crazy, but—”
“Then it must be true,” said Reg, snippy. “
Everything
in this cockeyed kingdom is crazy.”
“Thank you,” Melissande said coldly. “Mr. Markham?”
“The doors were hexed by a single wizard,” he said quietly. “But there are five First Grade thaumic signatures in the hex.”
“So?” said Melissande, her arms folded tight and her chin lifted, as though she could hold the terrible truth at bay.
“So we have five missing First Grade wizards, all of whom reported to your brother the king—and who all disappeared before Gerald got here.”
She didn’t want to believe him, couldn’t bear the
thought of her brother murdering five innocent men and stealing their
potentias
. So he made her prove it to herself using a thaumically-charged gift the missing wizard Bondaningo Greenfeather had given her.
It was the cruelest thing he’d ever done.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice.
Giving her a moment to compose herself, he turned to Reg. “A non-wizard stealing
potentias
? I’ve never come across anything like it.”
“You wouldn’t have,” the bird said darkly. “Seeing as you’re a nice young man who doesn’t read that kind of grimoire. But I’ve known men who do, Monk. Crazy or not, you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s true that mad bugger Lional’s not a wizard, but all it takes is one tiny thaumaturgical spark to start the fire. Now get us out of here so we can rescue Gerald before he becomes victim number six.”
Breaking the mad king’s filthy hex nearly finished him. Sick and shaking he forced himself inside its intricate workings. Tried not to hear the faint, terrible screade erriblems of those five dying wizards as he unraveled the incant strand by dirty, stinking strand.
The power of its final unbinding blew him clear across the foyer.
Melissande rushed to his side. “Monk—
Monk
! Are you all right?”
And suddenly the blinding headache and nausea were worth it.
He groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Not in my foyer you’re not, Mr. Markham! Just you pull yourself together!”
She put her arm around his shoulders and helped him sit up. The urge to collapse into her practical embrace
was almost overwhelming. But Gerald needed him, so…
“I will,” he mumbled. “I promise.” Blearily he blinked around him. “Reg?”
Lalapinda’s former queen was hovering between the splintered remains of the foyer doors, wings flapping up a hurricane. “Yes, that’s me! Now get off your skinny ass and let’s
go
, Mr. Markham!”
Melissande’s fingertips brushed against his cheek. “Are you really all right? Are you sure you can do this? Find Gerald, stop Lional? Save my kingdom?”
Mesmerized by her stern and steady gaze, Monk nodded. Cleared his throat. “Yes. I think so.”
“Good,” she said, with the swiftest, sweetest smile. “I think so too. Now you heard the bird, Mr. Markham. Get up off your skinny ass. You and I have work to do.”
The warm glow of her touch, and her smile, carried him through the fear that he’d not be able to locate Gerald—fed into the ebullient joy when his best locating incant did find him—and lasted right up to the moment they saw the dragon.
On the other side of a palace skylight’s sparkling glass, lazily floating on an updraft like an enormous crimson and emerald striped seagull—with teeth and talons—the fantastic creature opened its massive jaws and belched a fearsome plume of fire.
Staring astonished at the impossible beast, Monk felt a fresh wave of sickness crash over him—because here was the explanation for that enormous thaumic spike.
Gerald, Gerald. What have you done?
Because it had to be Gerald. It couldn’t be anyone else.
“Oy. Madam,” said Reg, perched piratically on his shoulder. “You know who that’s supposed to be, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Melissande whispered, with tears in her voice. “Grimthak.”
“Grimthak?” he said. He couldn’t tear his gaze from Gerald’s impossible creation. “And who the bloody hell is Grimthak?”
“A Kallarapi god,” said Melissande. “Monk—Mr. Markham—get us out of here. Now.”
With Gerald’s location set into the portable portal’s destination node, there came one n">
Come on, come on, Markham, you pillocking plonker. Are you a genius or aren’t you? Pull your finger out. Get it done.
“Ha!” said Reg, as his rejigging of the portal’s matrix finally took and a pinpoint of light in the air before them began to blossom. “About time, sunshine. What took you so long?”
Bloody hell, Gerald. How do you stand it?
“Sorry,” he said curtly. “But I assumed you’d want to reach the other side in one piece.”
Perched on Melissande’s shoulder now, the bird sniffed. “Let’s leave the witty banter for when we don’t have a dragon on top of us, shall we?” She bounced a little. “Come on, Your Highness. Giddyup. Let’s go.”
“Don’t look at me,” he told Melissande. “I’m not the one who rescued her from the wilderness.” Then he held out his hand. “To be on the safe side.”
Her lips twitched, just a little. “All right. Provided you don’t try making a habit of it.” Her fingers closed around his, cool and ever so slightly trembling. “On three?”
The brilliant portal shimmered like a lake in bright sunshine. He nodded. “Why not? On three. One—two—”
They leaped through it on three.
A dizzying rush… a wrenching unreality… and then they ripped through the air on the other side of the thaumaturgical conduit and landed with a bone-rattling thud onto cold dirt in the sudden dark.
“
Ow
! That’s my
face
!”
Hastily he snatched his hand away. “Sorry, Melissande. Gerald, are you in here?” And then he winced and froze. “Um, Your Highness, not to complain or anything but your elbow’s in a very precarious part of my anato—”
“Monk?” said a disbelieving voice. It sounded small and frightened. “Is that you?”
Gerald
? Since when was Gerald small and frightened? But before he could speak, the bird rattled her tail. “Oh, yes, fine, ask about Markham first why don’t you? When I’m the one sitting here faded to a mere shadow of my former glory after flying
and
hitching from here to Ottosland then convincing Markham and his idiot colleagues that your life was in danger and then risking my life
again
to get back to this ether-forsaken kingdom using Markham’s highly illegal and practically untested portable portal! And why is it so
dark
in here? Why doesn’t somebody turn on the lights?”
Oh. Right. He snapped his fingers. “
Illuminato
.”
And just like that, there was light.
“Reg!” cried Gerald, and fell to his knees. “Oh my God,
Reg
, you’re
alive
!”
And then Reg was saying something, scolding again, she was always scolding. But Monk didn’t pay any and n’t payttention. He could hardly make sense of the words. Because Gerald—Gerald—
Bloody hell. Gerald. What happened to you?
There wasn’t a mark on him. Not a scrape. Not a bruise. But his face had gone so
thin
and there were smeared shadows beneath his eyes and his eyes—his
eyes
—
Oh, Gerald. What have you seen?
His friend was clutching Reg so tightly the bird could hardly breathe. “Lional said you were dead, he said he’d killed you!” He was practically babbling. But Gerald
never
babbled. “He
did
kill you,
look
, there’s your body! Over there!”
Feeling sick again, Monk stared as Gerald and Reg fussed at each other over some trick with a dead chicken. He could feel his heatbeat’s dull thudding in his ears.
This is bad. This is very bad. Something very bad’s happened to Gerald.
“Mr. Markham?”
He turned at the light touch on his arm. “Your Highness?”
“What’s wrong?”
So she’d been watching him. She could feel his dismay.
I wonder if that means she’s ass over teakettle too?
It’d be nice if it did. He was feeling horribly alone.
“Nothing,” he said, because whatever Gerald
had been through her brother was behind it and he wanted to spare her that pain for as long as he could. “Sorry. I just—”
And then Gerald was asking him about how they’d found him and the portable portal. He explained everything, quickly, but instead of being pleased about it Gerald suddenly looked sick. Said something about a lodestone and how he’d forgotten Lional didn’t reactivate it but before they could sort that out—and before he could stop her—the love of his life was shouting at his horribly altered best friend.
“What the hell were you
thinking
, Gerald? Making a
dragon
?”
Gerald flinched. “I’m sorry.”
But Melissande wasn’t in the mood for apologies—and it seemed that Gerald had no intention of defending himself. So he tried to stop her—and the look she gave him was like being stabbed.
Reg flapped from the cave floor to his shoulder. “Don’t,” she said softly. “With Lional off his rocker and the Butterfly Prince disqualified on grounds of mental health, as in not having any, she’s New Ottosland’s ruler now. She’s got a right to ask.”
Maybe she did, but he didn’t have to like it. Gerald’s face was scaring him.
“So what did Lional promise you in return for his dragon?” Her Royal Highness demanded, magnificent in her anger. “Gold? Jewels? Land?
What did he promise you
?”
Silence. And then Gerald lifted his sad, shadowed eyes. “You don’t want to know what he promised me, Melissande.”
Oh God. Oh God. Here it comes. This is the bad part. This is the part I don’t want to know.
Except he couldn’t turn away from it. Gerald was his best friend. Gerald was here because he’d shown him that advertisement. Whatever had happened, he was partly to blame. So he couldn’t stay silent. He had to speak up.
“Lional tortured you, Gerald. Didn’t he?”
On his shoulder, Reg gasped.
And Melissande, oh Melissande, she didn’t want to hear it either. She didn’t want to be the sister of a man who could do something like that. So she tried to blame Gerald and even though it had been love at first sight he was angry with her, so angry, because Gerald didn’t lie. Was she
blind
, not to see it? Couldn’t she see he’d been hurt? But when he tried to defend his best friend she turned on him. It was all a mess, such a terrible mess, and he had no idea how to clean any of it up.