“I will not have you using that accursed word about my realm,” he thundered.
“You mean ‘rathole,’ Daddy?” she said with sickeningly sweet mock innocence. “Whyever would you dislike that word?”
“Silence!”
“You can’t close your eyes forever to the outside world, King.” That last word was spat. “There are wonderful and beautiful things to be seen there. There are marvels you haven’t even dreamed of. Travelers like Sagandran and especially Sir Tombin have so much they can tell us. I want to be like them. I want to have adventures like they do. I don’t want to end up being like you.”
“That’s enough! I forbid you under pain of the royal dungeons to have anything more to do with those despicable vagrants. They fill your empty little head with their stupid ideas. You are to remain in your room, under guard, until they are far gone from this kingdom. Is that clearly understood?”
“What I clearly understand, dear father of mine,” replied Perima in a voice that chilled his spine. It was the sound of a cobra coiled ready to strike. “What I clearly understand is that very soon, this pathetic little junk pile kingdom of yours will see the last of me. The next time I flee your tinpot tyranny, it will be forever.”
“Guard!” bellowed Fungfari.
In an instant there was a burly man at the door, a hand on the pommel of his sword. He had arrived so swiftly that he must have been close nearby, close enough to have heard everything Perima said to her father; but King Fungfari didn’t think about that until much later, when he was lying in his imperial bed struggling to sleep.
“Guard,” he said, “take this snivelling wench to her room and keep her incarcerated there until this time tomorrow. Get her out of my sight.”
“Sire,” said the soldier, snapping to attention.
Shrugging off the man’s restraining hand, Perima laughed in her father’s face. He could hear the echoes of her voice slowly fading as she walked carelessly in front of the guard back along the passageways to her chambers.
And he could still, however hard he clamped his pillow over his ears, hear those echoes now.
CHAPTER 9
MAGIC BUTTONS
id-morning the next day, Sagandran, Flip and Sir Tombin were far from the city. While the sun was struggling to rise above the horizon, one of the King’s tight-lipped guards had given them a horse, carriage and provisions for a few days, and told them to be on their way. Sagandran had noticed that, while the guard was making a great show of loading several sackfuls of food, there was very little in each sack. When questioned about the whereabouts of Perima, the man had maintained a stolid silence until finally, in a few terse words, he told them the Princess had been confined to her quarters by her father, the King. Sagandran was worried about this, but Sir Tombin reassured him once they were out of the guard’s earshot.
“King Fungfari may be a … conservative kind of man, but he’d never allow a hair on his elder daughter’s head to be harmed. She’s one of his possessions, you see, and he values his possessions highly, does Fungfari.”
So the horse’s hooves and the carriage wheels squelched on through the mud that followed the rain earlier that morning. The rain had cleared up fairly quickly, though, and a watery sun had broken through clouds that looked like pieces of dirty, wet muslin.
Now it was turning into a fairly nice day, and Flip and Sagandran agreed enthusiastically when Sir Tombin, acting as coachdriver, suggested that they stop for a belated breakfast. The ground was still too wet for them to make a proper picnic of it, but the three of them sat contentedly on the carriage’s high driving seat munching on the coarse bread and dried fruit that they’d found in King Fungfari’s meager provisions sacks. In front of them, the horse munched on roadside grass.
“I wish Perima were with us,” said Sagandran sadly through a mouthful of bread.
“So do I, my boy,” said Sir Tombin. “Thirsty?”
Sagandran nodded.
Sir Tombin dropped down to the roadway, landing with a splotch, then made for the carriage’s rear doors and the two big barrels of water that the guard had loaded aboard.
A sneeze came out of nowhere.
“Bless you,” said Sagandran to Flip.
“What?” said Flip in a squelchy voice. He was trying to fit a whole date into his mouth, and not succeeding.
“Didn’t you just sneeze?”
“Nope.”
“Must have been Sir Tombin.”
They heard the rear door open and then another, louder sneeze.
“Sir Tombin must have caught himself a cold,” observed Flip. “I know country remedies for colds, but I don’t know if they work on frogs.”
Then they heard Sir Tombin calling to them. “Does one of you have a cold or something?”
“No,” cried Sagandran. Flip had finally given up attempting to fit a whole date in his mouth and was tackling it piecemeal.
“Well, somebody has been sneezing and it wasn’t the horse,” Sir Tombin called. “I’d rather not have someone skulking around, but it sounds like we have.”
Sagandran looked around them nervously. Could this be an ambush? There were only a few straggly trees near the road, and he couldn’t see anywhere else that armed attackers might be hiding. Perhaps King Fungfari was playing a double game – sending them off with provisions as if he wished them well on their quest, then secretly despatching a party of his soldiers to kill them once they were clear of the city and public gaze. It didn’t seem likely, though. Sagandran was realistic enough to recognize that they weren’t important enough, at least in Fungfari’s eyes, to be worth the effort.
“Come here,” commanded Sir Tombin from inside the carriage.
Sagandran jumped down, landing with a very similar splotch to the one Sir Tombin had made. “What’s up?”
“That sneeze,” the man-frog replied as Sagandran appeared in the open doorway. “It seemed to be coming from in here.”
Sagandran looked around the carriage’s interior for the first time. It had once been splendid, but that was many, many years ago. The upholstered diamonds of velvet on the sides and ceiling that must have once looked luxurious were now mostly torn and all of them filthy. There were tears in the cushioned leather seats, with tufts of grimy padding sticking up like an old man’s hair. Between the two bench seats, the provisions had been carelessly stacked – three or four deflated-looking sacks and a couple of large wooden barrels.
At least Fungfari, for all he stinted on the food, was more generous with the water, thought Sagandran absently as he ran his gaze for a second time around the carriage’s inside. Unless the barrels are just about empty, like the food sacks.
There was another loud, echoing sneeze.
Sir Tombin had been right – it definitely sounded as if the noise were coming from inside the carriage.
“Sagandran, do me a favour, will you, dear boy?”
“What?”
“Climb in and give each of those water barrels a good kick; would you be so kind?”
Sagandran grinned. He had a sudden theory about the sneezing.
“Certainly, Sir Tombin. It will be my pleasure.”
He stopped grinning the moment he kicked the barrel. It was full of water.
“What does that word you used mean?” asked Flip, who’d climbed up on the roof, prized back the edge of the hatch, and poked his head interestedly through the gap.
“It means I’m in the mood to spifflicate all mouse-like creatures I notice,” said Sagandran grimly.
Flip’s head disappeared from view with a squeak.
“You haven’t broken a toe or anything, have you?” said Sir Tombin anxiously.
“No. I don’t think so.”
Sagandran looked at the other barrel. “Your turn,” he said to it.
This time his kick – done with the other foot – was more cautious.
“Ouch!” said the barrel.
“I’ve never in all my travels encountered a talking barrel before,” pron
ounced Sir Tombin with mock gravity.
“Neither have I,” agreed Sagandran. “Shall I give it another kick?”
“No!” yelled the barrel.
The voice was Perima’s.
“I thought as much,” said Sir Tombin, breaking into laughter. “I thought it was unlikely that you’d just let us leave without you. You can come out now.”
There was a vexed silence from the barrel.
“Come on, Perima,” said Sagandran with a chuckle of his own.
“I … I can’t.”
“Oh.”
“I’m stuck is the problem, Master Oh-This-Is-All-So-Hilarious Sagandran.”
“You were able to get in, so …” he began as he examined the barrel’s lid. It had obviously been set securely in place. He didn’t think the crack around the rim was wide enough for him to get his fingernails in.
“I bribed one of the serving wenches to put me in here so that the guard would think I was a second barrel of water, but it was a tight squeeze and the blasted girl hammered the end on far harder than she was supposed to. I’m folded up in here like a concertina, and I would very much like to powder my nose.”
Sir Tombin’s face wrinkled, as much as that smooth surface ever could wrinkle, in bewilderment.
“Powdering her nose,” Sagandran explained, “is what my mom says when she needs to use the bathroom.”
“Ah,” said the frog sagely. “And I’ll wager that your kick didn’t help matters any.”
Perima said something from inside the barrel.
“There goes that word again,” said Flip, who’d summoned enough courage to pop his head back through the hatch.
Using the tip of Sir Tombin’s sword, they were able to lever the barrel open. Extracting Perima took a while longer – she wasn’t exaggerating when she’d described herself as being contorted like a concertina. With a muttered “I’ll explain things later,” she leaped out of the carriage and scrambled as fast as she could for the shelter of one of the miserable-looking trees.
Sagandran watched her go. She’d abandoned the skirt she’d been wearing when they met her (about time too, because it had gone past bedragglement to terminal ruin), and had instead accoutered herself in a pair of khaki trousers. They were slightly too big for her, so she’d had to tie a rope around the waist to keep them up. She must have persuaded one of her father’s stable boys to lend them to her.
By the time Perima returned, they’d laid out some bread and fruit for her on top of the unopened water barrel. She looked at the offering with affected distaste for a few seconds and then tucked in eagerly. In between mouthfuls, she told them of the conversation she had had with her father the night before, and of her determination to be a part of their quest to Spectram.
“My royal father might think the fate of Sagaria is something that doesn’t concern him, and that he can tuck himself away in Mattani and hope for the best, but I don’t. This bread’s a bit stale – what a mean old sausage he is. So I told him flat out I was coming with you whether he liked it or not. Just because I’m a girl he thinks that all I’m good for is crochet and empty-headed prattle about the weather. He didn’t believe me, of course, but I had the last laugh. Are there any more of these raisins? They’re jolly good. Serves him right.”
“Your Highness,” said Sir Tombin with a deep bow, “have you ever encountered the word ‘headstrong’ used in conjunction with your royal personage?”
“Only about a dozen times a day,” said Perima with a contented smile, patting her lips with her fingers to make sure that no crumbs were stuck there. She reached out for the handful of raisins Sagandran was proffering.
Sir Tombin’s face became serious. “Of course, this is not all a matter of high jinks,” he mused.
Sagandran regarded him. “What makes you say that?”
“Perima is a Princess of the Blood Royal, as she’s so fond of reminding us, and she’s also one of King Fungfari’s valued possessions. He’s already showed his, ahem, disapprobation when she ran away the first time and he didn’t know that she was on the run. But this time, I’m fairly certain – though it is hard to probe His Majesty’s somewhat, ah … eccentric mind – that he’ll think she’s been abducted, either by us or someone else.”
Perima gave out a loud snort at this, showering Flip with crumbs.
Sir Tombin drew in a whistle of breath. “I warrant you that as soon as the king discovers his loss, he’ll be sending out search parties to recover it—her. Armed search parties, with orders to kill.”
Perima, looking worried, glanced from one face to the other. “Do you really think he’d do that, Sir Tombin?”
“I know so,” the Frogly Knight replied. “It’s also a matter of saving face.
“Not that he actually believed I went with you on purpose?” Perima asked. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because he’s a paranoid oaf and totally off his rocker,” Flip said bluntly. Then he quickly added, “Oops, sorry, I didn’t quite mean it that way, Perima.”
Perima shrugged. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
Sir Tombin harrumphed. “Well, not to put a too fine a point on your remark, Master Flip, but I must confess that your description of the king’s, ah, mental condition is somewhat accurate. Perima has been disobedient for the last time if I know King Fungfari at all. In his mind, he can probably already hear people laughing at him. The monarch who couldn’t even control his own girl.”
“A royal wimp?” said Sagandran.
“Exactly!”
“Then we’d better make ourselves scarce,” announced Flip.
“You should be safe enough,” Sir Tombin told him. “You’re so small, you can always hide in a tussock of grass and no one would ever be able to tell you were there. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about.” He gazed up at the pale sky as if it could tell him something. “The difficulty is that there’s no other road we can take. He knows we intend to make for Spectram, and no one but an idiot would think to take any route save the main highway.”
“Then let’s be idiots, shall we?” said Sagandran lightly. He reckoned that Sir Tombin was exaggerating the gravity of their situation. Mounting search parties cost money, and it had been obvious back in the city how reluctant Fungfari was to spend money unless it was on himself. “Surely there must be a lesser road we could use?”
“He’ll send seekers along those too, Sagandran. We could abandon the carriage,” Sir Tombin continued thoughtfully, “and make the best speed possible on foot across country, but I’m reluctant to do that unless we have to. No, let’s continue as we are for the moment. We already have a good start on any pursuers and, from what we know, it might be days before the king discovers his possession has gone missing. But let’s not waste any more time idly chattering. Let’s get moving.”
The carriage’s driving seat was wide enough to hold all four of them side by side, and for a few miles they sloshed along happily this way. Every now and then, at Sir Tombin’s behest, Sagandran would stand up and twist around to see if he could spot any sign of pursuit, but there was none. Then the clouds seemed to gather up their courage again, congregating into big heavy-looking gray masses. The rain started, first in dribbles and then in an increasingly relentless downpour. Sir Tombin sent Perima, Flip and a loudly protesting Sagandran inside, out of the wet.
“I’m a frog, remember? I like this sort of weather, but Perima’s already sneezing and I don’t want you two to start.”
There were holes in the carriage roof and every now and then a drop of rain would land on someone when they were least expecting it, but all in all, it was soon fairly snug inside the carriage. Perima efficiently put all the food into a single sack (which still seemed more empty than full) and bundled up the others to serve as cushions. Flip immediately appropriated one of these and curled up on it. Within moments, his little snores were clearly audible over the sound of the carriage wheels straining through the mud.
“It’s good to have you with u
s, Perima,” said Sagandran, regarding her appreciatively once he was certain Flip was soundly asleep. He wondered when (if) she’d choose to kiss him again.
“Good to be here,” she replied with a bright smile, her eyes sparkling with excitement. It was obvious that kissing wasn’t on her agenda right now. “I’ve always wanted to go on a knightly quest, and now I’ve got my chance. Do you think I’ll be very fierce if we meet any dragons, Sagandran?”
At that moment, she looked about as fierce as a dormouse, but he didn’t like to say that. “I’m certain you will be,” he replied smoothly.
“I was in that barrel most of the night, do you know?” she announced airily after a short pause. “Didn’t get a wink of sleep – not one wink. I do believe our good friend Flip has the right idea.” Her eyes might gleam, but the lids were inexorably closing over them. “Do be a dear and watch over me, Sagandran.”
With that, she went out like a light. Sagandran watched her sleeping, her head resting on a folded sack she’d jammed into a corner of the seat. In slumber she looked much younger than she did when she was awake, and somehow much more vulnerable – not at all like the girl who was ever ready to fend off criticism or adversity with a waspish retort. He wished her father could see her like this. Perhaps even Fungfari’s mercenary, self-interested old heart would melt a little at the sight of the daughter he’d never really let himself look at. At the thought of Fungfari, Sagandran unconsciously clenched his fists. Perima’s father may be the King, but that was only technically the truth. From what she’d told them, she’d never really had a father at all. She’d been an orphan canary in a jewel-encrusted cage. No wonder she’d done her best to escape that cage.
He peered through the streaky window. There was nothing but rain out there, it seemed, with faint gray smears of scenery just visible every now and then, before a new gust of wind thickened the swirling rain once more. It was rather like one’s memories of a dull dream, he thought, the details always dodging just beyond one’s reach. They seemed to be making very slow progress, what with the sludge of the road gripping the carriage’s wheels as if it didn’t want to let them go. He wondered how the horse was faring; it must be having trouble finding its footing in all this slipperiness.
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