by Paul Kidd
"My bodyguard and boon companion has followed the thief to her lair."
"Good." Ulia settled her stomach in its spun-steel and adamantine girdle. "Then describe her to me."
"My lady-it is the girl who stood beside you to welcome us into your home." The elven bodyguard showed no small satisfaction in having completed his assigned task. "The short, speckled human female with eyepieces made of glass."
Half expecting outraged denial, the elves swapped cool glances as Lady Ulia swelled up like a puffer fish in imminent danger of detonation. With a look of triumph in her eye, the woman felt all her worst-and, therefore, her most cherished-suspicions confirmed.
"Miliana! I knew the little wretch had two sides to her coin." Sumbria's first lady signed for two of her own guards and two ladies-in-waiting, then beckoned the elves to follow in her wake. "Lady Silverleaf-come! We shall take back your jewel and at last uncover the whys and wherefores of this city's little cat burglar!"
"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"
Mad with panic, Tekoriikii fought a ferocious battle in the air. A lean black javelin of feathers had lashed upward from the palace stables, crashing into him like lightning out of a storm. Claws ripped through empty feathers-Tekoriikii beat wildly at a pair of snapping jaws, and then both combatants tumbled free into a sky shot through with brilliant falling stars.
Carrying the massive Sun Gem, and trailing a hundredweight of tail feathers at his rear, Tekoriikii's flight was a thing more spectacular than speedy. Laboring his wings, the bird arced like a comet past the palace towers and nodded his head this way and that, wondering where his enemy might have gone.
"Awk!"
A black streak ripped out of the night and tried to disembowel Tekoriikii with its claws; the firebird tucked in his stomach, let his foe pass under him, then nimbly plucked a fistful of hairs from its tail.
In mating fights-the only combat most firebirds would ever know-the plucking of tail feathers was the coup de grace. Tekoriikii had won a mighty victory! He swooped into a gleeful little victory roll, whirring out his wings in utter joy.
"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!''
The air shuddered as a skyrocket exploded fifty yards away, the bright flash illuminating a frozen scene of running soldiers, fleeing bats, and broken walls. Having out-flown his opponent and snatched his precious prize, Tekoriikii folded his wings and sped away, crooning in smug self-satisfaction over being the cleverest bird in all Faerun.
The sudden flicker of motion above him came as a surprise; his angry black opponent had returned for another round, quite against the usual rules of courtly war.
Combat between most birds is a purely ritual affair, a test of dominance with death and damage usually far from anyone's mind. Tekoriikii chuffed in annoyance as his enemy streaked in from one side; then abruptly braked to a halt and watched his outraged foe miss its intended strike by a country mile.
The creature was extremely odd in its appearance; long eagle's wings, and a slender feathered neck topped off with a cruel hooked beak. Most strangely of all, the entire rear quarters were sheathed in short, shining hair. Lacking Tekoriikii's beautiful plumes; lacking his poise, his elegance, his brains and grace, it seemed no wonder that the creature fought with such anger in its heart. Tekoriikii powered himself upward in a giddy half-loop, tucked himself into a dive, and found himself racing head to head with his shrieking, frothing enemy. The firebird made to give vent to his deadly battle scream, drew in his breath-
— and looked straight into an astonishing pair of exotic, feminine eyes.
The bird froze, the hippogriff whipped past, and Tekoriikii gave a blink of astonishment as he felt a sudden breeze across his rear. He looked down between his legs, saw his bare naked rump grinning at him without a feather to its name, and moaned a pathetic, bleating little cry.
With his unlikely aerodynamics scattered to the winds, Tekoriikii abruptly made a crash landing straight into the courtyard rubble pile.
Rummaging through the ruins of Lorenzo's apartments for his painting of the sea goddess, Miliana and Lorenzo rose and watched in bemusement as their feathery friend plunged into the ruins of an old eiderdown. Miliana adjusted her tall pointy hat-now scorched, dented, and with its veil torn all awry-and settled her grimy spectacles on her nose.
"Tekoriikii?"
Lorenzo emerged from the shards of his workroom holding a shrouded canvas in his hands.
"Who?"
"Tekoriikii? I think it's Tekoriikii!" Miliana hitched up her skirts and wended her precarious way across the rubble. "Hey, old bird, are you all right?"
"Glub glub! Yonk-squonk glub glub!"
Tekoriikii's high-plumed head appeared, swaying, dazed, and scarcely conscious. Miliana slithered toward him through a cloud of scorched duck down and frantically gathered the bird up in her arms. Tekoriikii flopped his wings and gave a croaking little cry before hanging like a limp rag against her breast.
Lorenzo fought his way through the ruins and took the firebird's pulse, to be rewarded by Tekoriikii licking at his face. The man stared in astonishment at the bird's plucked, naked backside, a parson's nose utterly devoid of plumes.
"Where do you think all the other bits have gone?"
From the stables came the sound of running boots, rattling armor, and angry cries. Miliana stretched her small frame to its best possible height and tried to pierce the flash and flicker of the fireworks.
"Lorenzo? Lorenzo, I think we should get him out of sight." The girl took a step in retreat as the approaching charge grew in noise. "Actually, I think we ought to move him rather quickly."
Bursting into the yard from the stable gates, there came a wild-eyed Blade Captain Ilego followed by a squat, savage troll of a man dressed all in black. Ilego pointed at Tekoriikii and screamed out in bloodthirsty revenge.
"Kill that bird! A thousand ducats to the man who kills that bird!"
"Oh dear." Miliana took one look at the horde of soldiers who rushed past Ilego toward the semiconscious firebird, then ran clumsily through the hillocks of fallen stone. "Quick! We'll have to carry him!"
"On what?"
"I don't know-find something flat! Hurry!"
Lorenzo's paintings had been daubed on canvas stretched tight over wooden frames; Lorenzo slammed the two paintings together face-to-face, rolled Tekoriikii onto the impromptu stretcher, and quickly hoisted up the stretcher's rear.
"You take the lead!"
"Me?" Miliana lifted up the front end in surprise. "Why me?"
"Because you know where you're damned-well going!"
They started off across the rubble, only to lose their balance as Tekoriikii suddenly surged back into life. The firebird flopped, lashed out with his neck, and plucked up a gigantic shiny object in his bill.
"The Sun Gem!"
Miliana and Lorenzo stared at the titanic jewel in shock. Before they could so much as move, Tekoriikii had thrown back his head and swallowed the jewel right down his throat. Miliana gave a scream of fright, wrenched open the astonished Tekoriikii's beak and stared wildly down into the creature's gullet.
"It's down there! He's swallowed the bloody thing!"
"What?"
"The Sun Gem! The Sun Gem!" Miliana shook the addled bird by the craw. "Cough it up! Come on-drop it-drop it now!"
The huge diamond shot out of Tekoriikii's crop and landed on the ground. Fascinated, Lorenzo tilted his head over to one side.
"Actually, that's an interesting thing; many birds are known to swallow rocks as an aid to their digestive-"
A soldier topped the rubble, gave a shriek of triumph, and clapped the stock of his crossbow under his arm. Taking rough aim on Tekoriikii, he stabbed a wicked looking bolt into the catch, laughing as he imagined a thousand golden ducats pouring through his hands.
The bow sprung with a rather disappointing twang, and the steel quarrel simply dropped off the tiller and bounced onto the ground. The soldier reversed the bow and stared down the stock in amazemen
t, then squawked as the bow sprang the rest of the way, slapping across his nose like a whip. Nose bleeding, eyes watering, he dropped backward across the rubble pile like a falling tree.
Another soldier pounced on the Sun Gem and held it high above his head in victory. Suddenly, from the shadows, a black-clad figure stabbed the soldier from behind. The gem was snatched from dying hands; the black hippogriff appeared, and the black rider mounted and disappeared into the smoke-lit skies.
Soldiers opened fire on the retreating hippogriff, crossbows stabbing ineffective darts up into the air. In seconds they would change targets once again; stuffing Tekoriikii back onto the stretcher, Miliana and Lorenzo fled as fast as their frenzied legs could run.
Soldiers surged across the wreckage in pursuit; another group emerged from the broken gap in the palace wall, cutting off all access to the halls. Miliana changed course and sprinted to the gate that led into the palace fountain yard. Her long hair whipped back into Lorenzo's eyes, blinding him from any view of where she meant to go.
They swept through a gate, and Lorenzo almost broke a rib as Miliana came to an unexpected halt; she wrenched the stretcher hard about, kicked angrily at a lever set into the wall, and brought a spiked portcullis crashing down to seal the door behind her.
"They'll go back into the palace and find another way around. Come on-we'll hide Tekoriikii in my rooms!"
"But what about the ceremony?" Lorenzo reeled and staggered in Miliana's wake. "The painting! It's about to be unveiled!"
"Oh, dear gods!"
In the palace fountain, something struggled, thrashed, and dove. Miliana pulled the stretcher to a halt; Lorenzo's friend Luccio jerked up out of the water with a look of panicked innocence on his face. Dripping wet, breathless, and covered with some sort of welts, he stared in shock at Lorenzo, Princess Miliana, and the lolling firebird.
"I wasn't doing anything! There's no one in here!"
"Good!" Lorenzo, breathless, burnt, and businesslike pushed back his dusty hair. "Now, quickly, grab the bottom painting, get into the palace hall, and swap it for the one they're about to put up on display!"
"What?" A flushed Luccio struggled up out of the fountain, streaming water from his tunic top. "In the name of Beshaba, why?"
"Because it's the wrong damned painting! Now just do it, while we go and hide this bird!" Lorenzo, caught in the flow of panic, suddenly wrenched to a halt and stared more closely at his friend's neck. "Is that some sort of bite mark-there on your neck?"
"It's a rash!" Luccio hurriedly removed the bottom painting from under Tekoriikii. "It's nothing."
"A rash? Look… there's a whole lot more of them all over your…"
"I'll swap the paintings!" Hiding his love-bitten neck, Luccio hustled Lorenzo onward toward the palace halls. "Now-now just run along with your bird, and I'll deal with everything."
The sounds of doors bursting open came from every side. Miliana spied an open portal leading into the palace sculleries and charged off with her pointy hat tilted like a battering ram.
Luccio watched it all in bemusement and heaved a puzzled sigh. Quite suddenly, a slim, seductive shape emerged from the waters behind him and trapped him in its arms. With a brief squawk, Luccio disappeared beneath the foam as the nixie raised great passionate tidal waves with her webbed limbs.
Plunging through the sculleries with their towering stacks of copper pots and pans, Miliana collapsed in a heap to catch her breath. From her unique position under the canvas, she could see the painting staring her straight in the eye.
A slim sea-goddess riding a silvery dragon.
"It's the wrong painting!"
"What?" Lorenzo pushed Tekoriikii's plumes aside to meet Miliana eye-to-eye. "The wrong what?"
"This is the sea goddess! You've given Luccio the wrong one!"
"Damn!"
Lorenzo whipped the painting out from under Tekoriikii's belly, dropping the creature onto Miliana with a thump. He ran outside, clutching at the painting, looked about himself, and saw no sign of Luccio.
The second painting leaned against the fountain, abandoned and forgotten. Lorenzo ducked frantically back inside.
"He's gone off and left the painting out there!"
"What?" Miliana struggled out from under a great mass of limp red bird. "Well, we'll just have to do it ourselves then!" Skinny arms thrust ineffectually at Tekoriikii's bulk. "Help get this dumb thing off me!"
A cheese trolley stood beside the kitchen door. Miliana emerged from under the firebird, spat feathers from her mouth, and peered through a curtain into the palace's crowded great hall.
Up at the far end of the room, a covered canvas stood proudly on display. Courtiers, ambassadors, and Blade Captain Toporello had gathered about Prince Mannicci as he prepared to draw the cord and bare his daughter's charms to a waiting world. Miliana gave a shriek of alarm and crowded back into Lorenzo's arms.
"They're going to pull the cord!"
Lorenzo took one look at the unwieldy firebird, the cheese trolley, and the cook's hats hanging from hooks on the wall. He hoisted Tekoriikii up and slammed him atop the gurney, then jammed an apple into the creature's open beak. Tekoriikii froze in shock as he was surrounded with wax fruit stolen from a mantelpiece display.
"Tekoriikii-just stay there!" Lorenzo jammed a chef's hat across Miliana's ruined headgear, then crammed another hat across his own brows and stuffed the painting into the trolley's lower rack. "Stay there and hang on!"
The curtain was ripped aside; pushing the gurney wildly across the room, bashing aside crowds and ramming courtiers into the punch bowls, Miliana and Lorenzo clove a path across the hall. With Tekoriikii frozen in fright, the apple still gripped firmly in his mouth, they rumbled madly out into the room.
"Catering!" Lorenzo sent Toporello's buxom daughter crashing into a dwarven tunnel baron. "Catering! Coming through-excuse me, pardon me-excuse me!" Lorenzo charged straight toward the painting at the far end of the hall. "Roast ostrich for the prince! Gangway!"
The whole ensemble whipped past an astonished crowd and cracked into the painting display. Firebird, trolley, wax fruit and all went sailing like shrapnel through the sky.
Lorenzo whipped the picture of the sea goddess-this time checking that it truly was the sea goddess-out of hiding and deftly swapped it for the painting of Miliana. He jammed the newly stolen painting into the relieved princess's arms, threw Tekoriikii across his shoulders, and felt the creature croak and eject the apple in a shallow trajectory, far across the room.
"Sorry… this bird's off. I'll just get another!"
Leaping a hurdle of fallen men, Lorenzo led the way for Miliana through a swinging door. As outrage broke out behind them, the two thieves and their bird dropped the locking bar behind them and slumped in exhaustion against the wall.
"There, see? Now wasn't that easy?" Lorenzo raggedly caught his breath, wiping sweat back from his eyes. He briskly uncovered the painting in Miliana's hands and gazed at his creation with love.
"There-isn't it beautiful?"
"It's wonderful. Thank you so much for the compliment!" Behind Miliana, the swinging door was slowly being battered open. Miliana wrenched open a curtain to discover a room crowded with dwarves. "Free beer-that way!"
The effect was astonishing; with their war cry of "I'll have another round!" the dwarves tried to cram their way through the swinging door, pushing frantically against the efforts of the angry mob inside the great hall. Miliana tugged Lorenzo away from the wall, forced the giddy Tekoriikii to his feet, and led a swift retreat into the deepest palace corridors.
Several cunning twists and turns soon lost all signs of pursuit. Slowing her pace, discarding her disguise, and restoring her pointy hat, Miliana took Lorenzo by the hand, and Tekoriikii by the wing, and led them wearily toward her tower home.
"Now, perhaps, we can get a little peace." The girl mopped at her brow with a ragged little sigh. "And a few explanations. Tekoriikii, perhaps you might be so good as to tell me what y
ou were doing with that jewel?"
"Glub glub!" The bird swallowed hard, put a wing up to his throat, and looked bemusedly around. "Squonky donky glub glub!"
"Yes, well, be that as it may…" Miliana creased her pretty freckled nose into a frown. "Do either of you have any idea what might have happened to you. Fiance or no fiance, they can behead people like you!" The girl fumbled open the latch of her apartment door. "At least the worst that can ever happen to me is to-"
The door had swung open to reveal Miliana's rooms; standing facing her in a phalanx of poisonous frowns were Lady Ulia, her maidservants, a dozen angry elves, and a squad of palace guards.
The broken bathroom ceiling had been discovered; soldiers were carrying down basket after basket of gems. It was a veritable dragon's hoard; a massive mound of glittering baubles worth a king's ransom.
Tekoriikii withdrew his head timidly behind Miliana's rump. The girl simply froze, goggling at the piles of loot in dumb despair.
Lady Ulia coldly extended her hand.
"And the pearl pendant too, I think." Miliana's stepmother snatched off the rose-pink pearl, then gazed upon her ward as though Miliana had slithered out from under a rotten log. "We, of course, await your explanation."
"I…" Miliana stared in absolute bewilderment at the endless tide of gems. "I… I've never seen them before in my life!"
Tekoriikii shivered, transmitting terror right through Miliana's back; suddenly the girl realized from whence the jewels had come.
Lady Ulia made a grand progress, moving a great, slow circle about the gathering treasure; clearly all of her worst, most cherished, most delicious matronly fears had come true.
"My emeralds, Lady Silverleaf's pearl, and every other bauble stolen in these few weeks past. We found them up inside your loft, of course, half covered by straw. Perhaps you fancied you were making yourself a nest?" Ulia ponderously cruised herself back into Miliana's view. "I believe we have found Sumbria's secret cat burglar at last."
Ulia's eyes fell upon Lorenzo and Tekoriikii, and venom dripped out of her smile.