by Unknown
Mistress Elaro snorted, and when Hesper laughed this time, Cluny could hear her teeth grinding. “It’s true, Beatrice, that my current duties seldom allow me time to stretch out and run, but I’m fairly certain I can keep up.”
“Lovely!” Lady Crocker turned to her husband. “Lawrence, you and the boys head back to the house and get Terrence and his familiars settled, then we’ll see you all at dinner!” She started into the stables. “ Your Highness? Magistrix Elaro? Lady Hesper? This way, please!”
The stableman trooped after her, and the princess followed, Mistress Elaro ignoring Hesper so pointedly, Cluny was surprised she didn’t draw blood. The unicorn, though, fell in easily between the two and began chatting about what a lovely day it had been, the princess gazing down at her with the enraptured smile Hesper always seemed to cause.
Lord Crocker waved a hand. “Well, you heard your mother. You boys get back to the house and get ready for supper. I’ve a bit of landscaping I need to see to.” And he moved off toward the path back to the main gate.
Crocker’s brother snickered. “I’m remembering how we used to race to the kitchen garden from here.”
“You used to race.” Crocker started along the side of the stable. “I used to stumble over rocks and crash into trees.”
That snicker again, Lionel falling in beside Crocker, and they reached another flagstone path. The man was in his mid 20s, Cluny guessed, a good five or six years older than Crocker. Was that usual between human siblings? Or—?
“So.” Lionel’s eyes darted sideways, met Cluny’s gaze, blinked, moved away. “I hear you saved your school from the queen of the Ifriti or something.”
Shtasith’s intake of breath made Cluny glance up at him, but Crocker spoke before the firedrake could: “It wasn’t like that exactly.” He poked his brother’s arm. “I hear you’re gonna marry the princess or something.”
Lionel nodded. “Though I must say, if I’d known what hoops I’d have to jump through when Ali gave me my diploma and that smile of hers at the commendation ceremony...” He stopped, shook his head. “Aw, who’m I kidding? The way we clicked at the dance afterwards, no way I was letting her go, y’know?”
“Yeah,” Crocker said, and Cluny felt the warmth of his magic snuggle around her. “So how’s life afloat?”
“Terry?” Lionel pressed a hand to his chest. “The stories I could tell you!” He proceeded then to tell some—pretty funny ones, too—while they walked through more of the estate’s wooded hills, a pool house visible through the trees at one point, a nicely-rolled tennis court at another, and Cluny found herself liking him more and more.
The path wound around one last hill, and Cluny had to gasp at the house, big and rambling as a glacial moraine, perfectly situated in the landscape but still stately enough that she felt somehow underdressed wearing just her regular old fur.
“Wait,” Lionel said, interrupting his account of running across a school of flying cuttlefish. “We’ve got most of high society stacked up in there noshing their way through as many hors d’oeuvres as Rhys and Patrin can crank out.” He nodded toward a low hedge running along some tumbled rocks that Cluny suddenly realized were a wall. “So unless you’re dying to hob-nob with the big-wigs...”
Crocker shook his head and moved to the hedge. “May I?”
Lionel folded his arms. “You never could before.”
“That was a long time ago.” Crocker flared his fingers, the pattern of pale violet fire in the air telling her he was trying a lifting spell. Not sure he knew any of those, she tucked her paws into her pocket so they wouldn’t show and reached out with her spatial senses to see what Crocker was—
“Ah!” Shtasith rose from Crocker’s shoulders, his wings drafting a cool breeze down over her. “A secret passage!” He sliced through the air to where the hedge began, and Cluny saw it, then: a handle in the stone work half hidden by branches.
“Froth and foam!” Lionel stared at Shtasith. “It talks??”
“‘He,’ not ‘it.’“ The strain of the casting barely touched Crocker’s voice. “Cluny can talk, too, but she’s kinda shy.” He flicked his fingers. “Outta the way, Shtasith: that thing swings right up where you’re hovering.”
Cluny stifled her smile and aimed a lift spell at the door they’d so nicely pointed out to her. The false front of the rock rose silently, and Lionel gave a low whistle. “So they really are teaching you things at that school.”
“More than I can say.” He grinned. “Like how a firedrake’s handy when you’re heading into the dark.”
The glow of Shtasith’s eyes cast swirling puddles of light into the rough tunnel beyond, stairs carved unevenly into the floor. Lionel snorted. “Takes a bit of the fun out when you’re not barking a shin every other damn step...”
Two solid minutes of climbing, then: “Hold up, Shtasith.” Crocker pointed to a hole in the wall. “This is the library.”
Lionel reached through the hole and pushed something, dusty air touching Cluny’s whiskers. “The coast is clear,” he said, and he pushed the wall open, Cluny again amazed at how well the seams were concealed. “You’ll be in your old room upstairs, Terry, and Lady Hesper’s in mine across the hall.”
Crocker moved after him. “Then where’re you gonna be?”
“East wing guard quarters.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Just outside Ali’s suite, oddly enough...”
The library was large and well-kept, the summer evening fading at the windows; peering over Crocker’s shoulder, Cluny watched a portion of bookcase swinging shut. “Just like in the romance novels,” she said, smiling up at Crocker.
A laugh from Lionel. “Wait. Squirrel romance novels?”
Cluny felt her ears heat up, and she slid down the front of Crocker’s robes into her pocket. “No, sir.” She put as much shiver into it as she could, playing the nervous little rodent. “They’re just the regular human kind.”
His moustache quirked sideways. “You should talk to Ali; she’s addicted to the damn things.”
“Tell me about it,” a voice drawled from across the room: a black-and-white cat giving them a half-lidded look from a table. “My mistress can’t abide the things, so I’m forced to lead Her Highness’s private book group when she wishes to discuss them.”
“Ah!” Lionel snapped his fingers. “Terry, this is Beatrice’s familiar Lorn. Lorn, this is—”
“No need, Lt. Crocker.” The cat rose in one fluid motion and bowed. “I had the privilege of attending the council session where the truth about Sophomore Crocker, his familiar, and his companion was first made known.”
Blinking, Crocker bowed back, and Cluny said, “It’s an honor, Lorn. You’re a constant example to all of us.”
Lorn’s ears folded. “Yes, well, as the mistress delights in reminding me, I’d be nothing but a rat-crunching farm animal if she hadn’t—” The fur sprang up all over his body, the cat suddenly on all fours, his eyes wide. “Something’s upset the—”
Magic crashed over Cluny, the sloppiest transport spell she’d ever felt, and Lorn was on the carpet racing for the door. “Mistress!” he yowled, the door flying open at the touch of his spell, and he shot through into a hallway beyond.
“C’mon!” Crocker took off after the cat, Cluny grabbing the rim of her pocket, Shtasith whooshing along beside, the muffled thud-thud-thud of Lionel’s boots changing to a clattering as they hit the slate floor of the hall.
Down a short flight of fern-lined stairs, and Cluny could hear raised voices echoing ahead. “The gall!” Mistress Elaro was shouting. “That you would dare suggest such a thing to Her Royal Highness! It borders on the contemptible! You should—!”
“I??” And Cluny’s jaw dropped: this second voice belonged to Hesper. “You’re the one soaking in contempt, Beatrice!”
They rounded a corner and came into a vaulted reception hall, windows looking out over the grounds, a good forty or fifty formally dressed humans in various stages of bowing at the group that Cluny could te
ll had just appeared beside the little bandstand at the far end of the room, Crocker’s mother and Crown Princess Alison staring, Mistress Elaro pointing a shaking finger at Hesper. “I’ll not have the princess spoken to in that way! Unicorn or not, you need to know your place!”
Cluny had never imagined Hesper could look frightening, but right then, her front hoofs spread and planted, her horn lowered, her anger sparking the air around her—”You miserable little snip!” she growled. “If your mind were any more closed, you’d need a warning sign on your forehead!”
Mistress Elaro blinked. “That doesn’t even make sense!”
“Enough!” Princess Alison didn’t raise her voice, but Cluny could feel the power of her royal privilege, saw the rest of the room reacting to it as well, Mistress Elaro and Hesper both pulling their mouths closed and snapping their heads in the princess’s direction. “This is not a matter to be decided lightly or in the heat of the moment.” She fixed her eyes on each of the two in turn. “Lady Hesper, I have heard your request. Mistress Elaro, I have heard your comments. Now!” She turned a smile toward Crocker’s mother. “Perhaps we should get ourselves cleaned up for Lady Miranda’s lovely dinner.”
Crocker had stopped at the edge of the crowd, Shtasith on his shoulder, Cluny craning her neck to get a view between the milling guests, but now she saw Lionel moving through them toward the princess. Mistress Elaro stood with her arms folded, her frown as heavy as an ice storm, while Hesper whirled and started for the nearest doorway, the humans stepping aside, their fear and wonder stroking Cluny’s whiskers as the unicorn passed, sparks still crackling up from her.
Giving Crocker a nod, Cluny heard him sigh; he slid along the wall, reached the doorway at the same time as Hesper. “This leads back to the billiard rooms, Lady Hesper,” he murmured.
“Good!” She continued stomping through and into the hall beyond though her hoofs in the carpet didn’t actually make any noise. “A pool cue to the head’s sure to make me feel better!”
Cluny couldn’t think of a delicate way to ask. “I take it Mistress Elaro didn’t support your petition.”
Hesper snorted. “Mistress Elaro can kiss my unshorn fetlocks! And now she’ll be whispering nothing but poison against me to Her Highness all night!”
Shtasith drifted down to hover beside her. “Fear not, my Lady. For we, too, have an agent in Her Highness’s camp.”
“Lionel!” Crocker snapped his fingers. “Yeah!”
“You—” Hesper’s eyes shimmered. “You’d do that?”
Laughing, Cluny spread her paws. “After everything you’ve done for us, how could we not?”
#
It proved more difficult than Cluny had thought, though. After teleporting with Hesper back to the library for Crocker’s suitcase, then upstairs to their rooms, not even Crocker’s status got them any closer to Lionel than a third of the way down the head table. Afterwards, too, the crowds around the happy couple proved too thick, the realm’s highest and mightiest all trying to get a word with Her Highness and the young naval officer scheduled to be named her consort Sunday night.
Upstairs in the deserted library, Hesper gestured with her horn, the royal party down on the deck, the lanterns flickering in the warm night breeze. “Yes, sending Shtasith would a bad idea with Beatrice standing right there.”
“Ha!” Shtasith struck a claw against his narrow chest. “I would fly swifter than the swiftest arrow!”
“Exactly.” Cluny shook her head. “Firedrakes are still considered weapons, y’know.” She tapped her snout. “Crocker? Does that secret passage go near where Lionel’s staying?”
He blinked, then smiled. “Hey, yeah! After ev’ryone’s turned in tonight, we can just head over there!”
Moods lifting, they joined the party till Cluny’s face went numb from holding her ‘woodland creature’ look and Crocker had blushed and stammered his way out of every conversation anyone tried to strike up with him. In their room, he collapsed into snores almost immediately, and Cluny found herself being wakened she didn’t know how long afterwards by Shtasith: “The house has fallen silent, my Cluny. Now is the time to strike!”
Hopping onto the bed, she poked Crocker; he sat up, nodded, was lacing his boots when he asked, “Is Hesper coming?”
Cluny blinked. “Let’s see if she’s awake.”
Out in the hallway, moonlight drifting from the skylights, Cluny tapped Hesper’s door. Hearing nothing, she extended her spatial senses, felt the cabinets, the desk, the bed, but—
“She’s not in there.” She looked up at Crocker, Shtasith across his shoulders, her neck fur crawling. “Did either of you actually see her after we went down to the party?”
Crocker shook his head, the worried swirl of Shtasith’s eyes showing his answer. Without another word, Cluny scrambled up Crocker’s robes, and they headed down to the library.
The passage opened with the manipulation of a few books, and Crocker carried them up several flights, then off through a side passage and down a similar number of steps. He stopped at a section of tunnel that looked no different from the rest to Cluny till he knelt and swung one of the stairs up to reveal a maid’s cupboard beneath. Dropping into it, he listened at the door, then slipped out into a darkened hallway. A few steps brought them around a corner to another door, and Crocker nodded at it.
Taking a breath, Cluny sensed around the space beyond, her little tingle growing. “It’s empty, too!”
Shtasith hissed. “I mistrust this immensely! We must—!”
Sudden vertigo swept over Cluny, a burst so violent and horrible, she had to shriek. Death magic! Somewhere nearby! Crocker cried her name, then his power was stiffening around her like a plaster cast, straightening her perceptions, Shtasith’s more energetic force blasting the dizziness from her head; a much weaker shockwave—from a lock picking spell of some sort?—then the feedback of that sloppy transport spell.
“Hang on!” she shouted, and flexing her own power, she snapped them through the spaces between space to the reception hall, Beatrice Elaro collapsed panting on the carpet, her dark hair a mop, her clothes mud-stained, Lorn sprawled beside her.
The magistrix struggled onto her side, brought her hands together with a crash, and her cracking voice echoed. “Guards! To the main house! Everyone! That thrice-damned unicorn attacked me, and I think she’s taken the princess!”
“What??” Cluny’s fur went as rigid as toothpicks.
Mistress Elaro’s wild gaze shifted in their direction. “Sophomore Crocker! We haven’t a moment to lose! I think I disrupted her teleportation spell before she could get the princess away from the estate, but—”
“That’s crazy!” Crocker yelled, his magic jagged as pins and needles pressing into Cluny. “Hesper wouldn’t do that!”
“She appeared in my room!” Mistress Elaro pushed herself into her knees, the sound of running feet coming to Cluny’s ears, Crocker’s mother and father and a few guests and servants rushing into the hall. “She told me she’d curse the princess if I didn’t support her ridiculous request! We fought, and as she fled, I felt her power reach into Her Highness’s room!”
“Fought?” Cluny tried to shake the residual stuffiness from her head. “I’ve felt nothing all night till right now!”
Fear and disdain mixed over Mistress Elaro’s face. “A familiar and a mere sophomore student could never hope to sense the subtle energies we true magi wield!”
Cluny stared her straight in the eye. “Subtle?? Are you kidding?? Every time you transport anywhere, it feels like someone kicking me in the head! That unlocking spell and death magic were just as blatant, too!”
The magistrix’s eyes flared. “How dare you??”
A clanging started then, distant and audible, Crocker and his parents startling violently. “The stables!” Lady Crocker rushed for the glass doors overlooking the back patio. “Johan would only ring the alarm in case of fire or—”
Something rattled above them; Cluny looked up, the c
handeliers quivering, a rumble in the air. “Stampede,” Lady Crocker finished, her face going ashen. Shapes flowed out of the moonlit trees, streamed over the low patio wall, and Cluny spun out the largest shield spell she could think of as the dozens of horses crashed into the room, the glass doors shattering. Whinnies, screams, and shrieks bounced everywhere, the stink of mud and fear and sweat plastering Cluny’s whiskers.
But all she could see was Wanax, the big black horse stepping in behind those who’d led the charge, a tiny slip of white gold draped over his back, blood dripping from the several holes in Hesper’s flanks.
“My Lady!” Shtasith cried, leaping into the air.
“Froth and foam!” came another voice, the wall sliding open to reveal Lionel and the princess dressed in hiking clothes.
“No!” Mistress Elaro screeched, and feeling the ragged pulse of her transport spell, Cluny prayed everyone would be looking elsewhere before blasting her strongest disruption magic right into the sorceress’s chest.
#
“Thank you,” Hesper murmured, lowering her head back onto the pillow. “Next time you mix this potion, however, sophomore, a little more honeysuckle.” She winced. “Certain forms of magic need more sweetening than others...”
Crocker nodded, set the bowl on the nightstand beside Cluny, and she made a mental note.
Princess Alison shifted in her chair. “We can continue this later if you’d like, Lady Hesper.”
“Thank you, Your Highness, but there’s little more to tell. After cornering me at the party and apologizing for her earlier outburst, Beatrice asked me to meet her at the stables at 2 AM so we could discuss my petition. I arrived, and she stabbed me with an iron spike hastily ensorcelled with death magic.”
Shtasith hissed from Crocker’s shoulders, and Cluny wished she could manage the sound as well. “All because you wanted to become dean of Healing Arts at Huxley??” she asked instead.
Hesper fixed her gaze on Cluny. “The thought of someone she considered an animal running a school at her alma mater must’ve pushed Beatrice over some sort of edge.”