Freka tilted her head to one side, very wolf-like. “Take mountains, mix in dark forests, sprinkle with vampires, werewolves, giant spiders, and the occasional dragon. Bake for at least a few generations with insane people who kill their siblings so often that it could be declared the national sport, and that will give you a nice recipe for my home country. Oh, but we do have some of the deepest, richest mines in the world.”
“Sounds utterly lovely!” Rachel said, “Except for the killing your family bit, of course. That’s rather sad. Isn’t there some way to encourage everyone to get along?”
Freka’s smile took on a brittle quality. “If you think of one, please let me know.”
“I’ll work on it,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “Though to solve the problem, one might have to study the inheritance rules for your kingdom. You probably know that England put in the rule of primogeniture particularly to stop that very kind of behavior. Not that it works as well as one might have liked.”
As she spoke, another thought came to her. Nastasia had touched Freka’s younger brother Wulfgang and had seen a vision of a frozen landscape—so they were definitely originally Metaplutonians. If Nastasia touched one of the other Starkadders, was there a chance that she might have a vision that would reveal some clue about their family curse?
“I…don’t think my father would approve of that. He likes to hold the throne up as a prize to encourage us to compete. He says it brings out the best in us.” Freka scowled. “Which is ridiculous, because we all know it’s going to be Romulus.” Then, she sighed. “Please, let’s discuss things that do not have to do with my family.”
“Certainly,” Rachel said quickly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. What do princesses do when they graduate? I’ve asked Nastasia, but she just says, ‘go wherever I’m needed’, which isn’t much of a basis for a study plan.”
“Nastasia is correct,” Freka sighed again. “We go where our father tells us. I haven’t been given an assignment yet. My father or whomever has the Kadder Star.” She gestured in the direction of her eldest brother and the purple stone he wore in a ring. “Traditionally, in Transylvania, my uncles would also hold positions of power, but all of my father’s siblings are dead. Our line bottlenecked with him. That’s why he’s had so many children. You probably know we have two siblings who are not at school yet, right? Wulfgar and Ulrika. Wulfgar’s very goofy and sweet. Ulrika’s a bit of a tomboy. I worry about them left at home, though maybe not so much now…”
“Yes, I know. I look forward to meeting them. I’m sure if they’re your brother and sister, they’ll be delightful,” Rachel said politely. She felt rather charmed by the older girl’s spunk and cheer.
Tears began streaming down Freka’s cheeks. She blinked and wiped at them in an impatient manner that reminded Rachel very much of what her own reaction would have been under the circumstance.
“Excuse me. I…need to take a break. It was nice speaking to you, Rachel. I hope you’re not planning to poison me, so Gaius can win. If the election’s that important, please tell me and I’ll withdraw instead, okay?” Freka gave Rachel one last smile and rushed out of the room.
“No. It isn’t that important,” murmured Rachel. She watched sadly as the other girl departed. Her own eyes felt a little teary.
So much for asking for a translation of the plaque.
What had she said?
What was going on? Was Freka really so upset? Or was it some kind of trick? A stratagem by a Machiavellian princess? And where was she going?
Rachel ran across the room and grabbed Sigfried by the arm, dragging him away from where he was about to duel upper school sophomore Carl Iscariot. “Sorry! Emergency. I’ll bring him back!”
“What’s up? Do you need somebody eviscerated? Burnt? Skunked?”
“Actually, I do need somebody skunked, but not right now. Right now, I need somebody spied on.”
“Ah, I can do that, too,” replied Sigfried, but he looked less enthused. “Who.”
“Freka Starkadder.”
“Who?”
“That girl who just went into the hallway.”
“Can’t see her. My amulet can’t see through the walls of the magic rooms in the gym.”
“Oh…well…” She grabbed him and dragged him into the hall. “Can you see her now?”
He was quiet a moment. “Straight hair? Smart-looking and pretty?”
“Yes. That’s her.”
“Yeah, she’s…oh no!” Sigfried threw up his hands, as if to block his view of something. Then he grabbed his head and staggered in a circle, shouting, “Kryptonite! She went into the PLACE THAT IS NOT!!!”
Rachel gawked at him. “Crypto night? What place is not?”
“The place I can’t look! Oh, my eyes!”
“Oh. Good gracious, Sigfried! Can’t you just say, ‘She went to the loo?’”
“I could, but I won’t. What is the point of life without drama? What fun would that be?”
“Yeah,” Lucky swooped through the air, circling his master. “Don’t cramp the boss’s style.”
“Er…sorry.” Rachel blinked. “Could you make an exception this once? Not if she’s in a stall, of course, but if she’s just standing at the sink, or talking on a calling card or something?”
“How do I make sure she’s not…doing something unmentionable? If I saw so much as a glimpse of her underwear, even by mistake, I would be a cad, a caitiff, for as long as I lived! And no caitiff ever sat at the Table Round!”
“Just look by the sink. Please! Double please?”
“Look, Racks—may I call you Racks?—”
“Racks?” Rachel interrupted. She resisted the temptation to look down at her lack of anything impressive—or existent—in the way of a chest.
“As in short for Rachel.”
“Ooooo.”
“What did you think it meant? Anyway, I am willing to help out the Inner Circle of Way Cool Demon Prattkickers and Flaming Skunklaunchers, as I like to call our little group, but it has to be something related to a threat. Or Metaplutonians. What crimes do you think Freka’s committed? Is she planning on poisoning someone? Is she withholding information about the greater world beyond our solar system?”
“This isn’t about threats, Siggy, though she did ask if I planned to poison her…”
“Do you?”
“No!”
“Look, Grif—may I call you Grif?—I am not going to use my vast yet privacy-invading powers for politics or soap opera. If you like, I will give you a supply of chameleon potion, and you can follow your victims around unseen and eavesdrop on them, but I cannot help you look into the girls’ loo. If you want me to look through the teacher’s desks to find the answers for test and such, so we can cheat, that I can do. Especially for true-hissy-fit class. But anything else? No way.”
“Please, Sigfried? I can’t figure out what just happened. I want to know if she’s serious? Angry? Playing me? What is she doing?”
“I’ll make you an offer,” Sigfried said. “I will help you out—if you say the word Sheepsmoocher!”
“That’s ramsmoocher,” Rachel shot back. She sighed. “Isn’t there something I could do for you to make it worth your while?”
“Yeah, write my True-Hisss-story essay. Try to impersonate my handwriting.”
She hesitated for only a moment. “Okay. Done.” She paused and then added fiercely, “But don’t you tell anybody that I’m doing this for you! Ever!”
“Great.” He held his hand out to Lucky, who did a fly-by high-five. “Look at your calling card, Griffin-Rack.”
Rachel pulled out her card. In it, she could see an unoccupied area of floor with a counter, three sinks, and a mirror. After a moment, a stall door opened in the reflection, and then Freka walked up to the sink and washed her hands. She wiped the tears from her eyes and stuck out her tongue at her reflection. She said out loud to her reflection, “‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ are not worth your tears. Remember, Romulus says
, they aren’t worth it! Keep your chin up!”
Tears threatened to well up in Freka’s eyes again. She wet a paper towel and pressed the cool damp surface against her face. Then, she shook her arms, checked her hair, and put on a small amount of lip gloss. Returning to the meeting, she passed Siggy and Rachel, who were facing the other way, their shoulders hunched over their mirrors. Rachel kept her expression calm, but inside, there was a sharp pain brought on by the thought that she had accidentally said something that hurt this spunky girl, so much so that the young woman had felt it necessary to declare Rachel not “worth it.”
As soon as Freka passed, Rachel and Sigfried surreptitiously moved back into the Knight’s room, still watching the mirror, as Siggy’s amulet viewpoint followed the Transylvanian princess. In the image on the calling card, Freka crossed the room and asked her brother Beowulf if he’d like to continue their duel.
Beowulf was taciturn and sardonic. Rachel might have thought of him as dark and broody, if she did not have his younger brother Wulfgang in her core group. Wulfgang took the gold in dark and brooding, leaving his older brother a distant bronze.
“What was that all about?” grunted Beowulf.
“Gaius’s, um, girlfriend…was scoping me out about what I wanted to do with the Knights, if I beat Valiant for the assistant position. She seems nice.”
“If you truly want to win, get the cat familiars to spy on their masters for you.”
A mischievous pixy-grin danced across Freka’s features. She scolded, “You know I hate doing that.”
“You going to make a show of it, or not? You know Romulus thinks all this participation in the democratic process is beneath you.”
“I’ll talk to people.” Freka shrugged her shoulders prettily. “I dunno, if it were someone I didn’t like so much, I’d be much more interested in winning. But it’s cutie-pie Valiant. He might be a better choice. Some people seem intimidated when they talk to me. Don’t know if it is the title thing or the wolf thing. Everyone gets along with him. The girls adore him—or they did, before he started dating a kindergartener—and the guys respect him for his dueling skills. I’m just one princess among many, and I’m not all Goth like Luperca, or super-beautiful like that little Romanov girl.”
Beowulf actually smiled. Rachel had never seen him do that before. “You’re the best of them. I know that, even if no one else does.”
His sister smiled, mollified.
He leaned forward, his voice gruff. “Think Rom’s having the nightmares, too.”
The smile fled from her face. She glanced over at her oldest brother, her lips bloodless.
“I just wish Father hadn’t made us come home to watch,” she whispered.
Beowulf squeezed her arm gently. “The nightmares’ll pass…eventually. Or…we’ll learn to live with them.”
She nodded grimly. Without a word, they started practicing again.
“Aw!” murmured Rachel, over by the doorway of the Knight’s chamber. She now felt very fond of Freka, ever since she had heard the older girl say “she seems nice.” It made her feel slightly less bad about having been so upsetting as to be not “worth it.” Laying her hand on Sigfried’s arm, she said, “I know enough. You can go now.”
“I wonder what their nightmares are like?” Siggy’s eyes glinted with maniacal interest.
Rachel frowned at him. “We know exactly what their nightmares are like. We were standing in them.”
“Wha…oooh! You mean the guys who were swinging by their neck!”
“Their father must have made them watch a hanging.” Rachel shuddered.
“I’d have nightmares, too,” Siggy nodded stoutly. “I’ve had nightmares just from seeing their nightmares.”
Rachel nodded and patted his arm. “Thanks again. You can go back to dueling now.”
“Woohoo!” Sigfried ran off whooping. “Get ready, Lucky, we’re gonna fry us some sophomores!”
• • •
Rachel stood a moment watching the duelists and their glinting gems. Then she went off into an empty corner and recalled her duels with the sneering, sarcastic Ethan Warhol. She played the events of the duels over and over, noting each glint of his wand. Each time, at the split second that she recalled the spark of light, she performed the Word of Ending. This was extremely difficult, because the moment his cantrip triggered, young Mr. Warhol moved so quickly, she could hardly see him.
Rachel slowed down her memory, calling it back to her millisecond by millisecond. When she saw the flash of the gem, she performed the cantrip. She did this ten times. Then, she increased the memory’s speed. She continued for over an hour, until she could do it in real time.
Then, she went looking for the scornful Mr. Warhol.
Ethan leaned casually against one of the separating posts, leering down at his curvaceous girlfriend who was giving him smoldering looks through her overly-long lashes. The son of a flamboyant American Senator, Ethan was an indecently-handsome bad boy with sandy blond hair. Unlike most of the young men here, who were in robes, he wore perfectly-tailored subfusc—black slacks, white shirt, black jacket, white bowtie, black thigh-length half-cape.
When Rachel walked up to him, he flashed her a crooked smile, giving her a look that made her feel uncomfortable, as if she were too skimpily attired—this despite that she was garbed in full-academic robes.
“Come back for more punishment, Shrimp?” Ethan smirked.
Rachel bowed, as duelists were supposed to do before a match.
“Okay. If you’re a glutton for punishment, no skin off my knee.” He tossed his half-cape over the post and came out onto the dueling strip in his shirt sleeves. “It’s your life.”
Rachel and Ethan squared off. Salome cheered them both on with the same enthusiasm that she did everything that did not bore her to tears. This drew the attention of some others. Next thing Rachel knew, they had an audience—including Sigfried, Nastasia, Gaius, and Vladimir Von Dread, who observed them with his arms crossed and his expression inscrutable.
“Speedy Gonzales coming at ya! Prepare to be boarded,” leered the arrogant sophomore.
Rachel turned sideways like a fencer, as Gaius had taught her, and held her right hand out, ready to perform the cantrip.
“Go!” shouted Salome, clapping her hands with their overly-long strawberry nails.
Ethan bounced on the balls of his feet. Rachel kept her eyes trained on the tip of his wand. It was an emerald, apparently Mr. Warhol favored cantrips.
Nothing happened, and then…
“Obé!” Rachel shouted, moving the index finger of her right hand horizontally.
The blur that was Ethan Warhol lost its supernatural speed. With a loud cry, he windmilled his arms before tripping and falling face first on the mat.
Rachel shrieked with joy and jumped up and down. She was still jumping when a stream of blue sparks came from Ethan’s wand and struck her, paralyzing her limbs. She, too, would have fallen on her face, if Gaius had not called the match in Ethan’s favor and freed her before she hit the mat.
“Never rest on your laurels,” Gaius told her seriously. “The match isn’t over until one person cannot continue to cast.”
Rachel acknowledged the wisdom of his words and filed them away for later reference. But her loss of the match did not dim her enthusiasm. She had stopped the arrogant git, and he would not be able to baffle her with his extra speed again. And he knew it.
As she turned away, she noticed Vladimir Von Dread watching her, a hint of approval in his gaze. Rachel risked shooting him a shy smile.
This time, he definitely winked at her.
Chapter Seventeen:
Beautiful Children of the Immortals
Over the next couple of weeks, the weather grew colder, and students buckled down to their studies in earnest. Rachel and her friends spent more time studying and less time in frivolous pursuits, except for Sigfried, who aced every practical exam but seldom handed in homework assignments. As promised, Rachel wrote
out his paper on Shaman of the World, carefully inventing errors she thought Sigfried might make to help it look authentic. She did a passable job, but it made her feel tremendously uncomfortable. She swore that she would never again agree to do this.
Next time she wanted a favor from Sigfried, she would find something less dishonest to offer him.
As the days progressed in to weeks, Rachel did not get to spend as much time with Gaius as she might have liked. He was studying hard to make up for the time he had lost while he was working on restoring his wand, and she had to spend her Saturdays in detention—cleaning and polishing equipment for Mr. Chanson. However, Gaius did come by their hallway and help her put some paralyzing hexes, tiathelu cantrips, and wind blasts into her wand. He even cast a few Glepnir bonds for her and put those in as well. He also took her down to the Roanoke Alchemical Shoppe, underneath Raleigh Hall, and helped her pick out her own cinqfoil. Eventually, he asked to borrow her wand so he and William could examine it and let her know more about what it could do. Rachel agreed.
She searched the news glass she had subscribed to for anything that might be a hint of the actions of the demon Morax but could find nothing. Did that mean that the demon had been caught and stopped? Or that it was still at large? It was at times like this that she wished that she actually had the Wisecraft contacts that Von Dread believed her to have. Of course, Von Dread did have such contacts, and Gaius insisted that they had not heard anything either.
She longed for the time when her father would arrive. He might not be willing to share sensitive information, but surely he would at least let her know if the problem had been resolved. Meantime, Gaius assured her that Dread had shared the information they had discovered in the library with the appropriate authorities, and the princess had as well. Hopefully, no news meant that all was well. Yet, whenever she thought about the demon—about the dark, shadowy shape of Moloch coalescing in the tower—an odd pain formed in her chest and refused to go away.
Thinking of her father often sparked the number one conflict troubling her. She knew secrets no one should know and secrets she had promised not to tell. The question of whom she should share this knowledge with weighed on her thoughts constantly.
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 22