Council of Blades (22 page)

"Um… look, Tekoriikii, I know what it says on the bot-tle, but I don't think it quite works the way you think."

"Aaaaaawk!"

Sighing unhappily, the artist took the bottle, read the label, and began vigorously shaking the pot of Old Pappa Floonbat's Patent Medicinal Hair Restorer. The bird, now miserably keeping an old gray military blanket draped across his rump, shuffled awkwardly about, then uncov-ered his plucked, bare backside.

Lorenzo liberally splashed hair restorer all over Tekoriikii's featherless regions, then began massaging the medicine into the poor bird's flesh. Tekoriikii whimpered and closed his eyes, slumped in apathy as he mourned the loss of his magnificent orange tail.

He could scarcely dare to look in the mirror to see if the tail feathers had begun to regrow; instead, the bird sat and stared miserably at the painting of Miliana leaning against the attic wall. He gave a soft, pathetic call deep in his throat and sadly closed his eyes.

Lorenzo turned his own face away from the painting. Bedraggled, demoralized, and crushed with guilt, the artist let his chin sink to his breast with a dull, unhappy sigh.

Tekoriikii curled his long neck around and placed his head in Lorenzo's lap. The artist scratched wearily at the bird's silly plumes while both creatures let their thoughts wander along the same sad paths.

Evicted from the palace, they now hid in cheap lodgings above a smelly old alchemist's shop-one of Lorenzo's main suppliers for esoteric chemicals. Terrified that Lady Ulia would silence them by the most obvious means, Lorenzo had managed a disappearing act and had lain low for many long, tedious days. … Leaving Lorenzo and Tekoriikii all the more time in which to contemplate their failings. They gazed through the broad, wide-open window across the city roofs, and together sank into despondent, guilty gloom.

In the distance, a crowd's shouting rose into a formless roar. Bedraggled and demoralized as they were, man and bird ignored the chaos and watched seeds spiral down from the sycamore tree that shaded the windowsill.

A bell rang as the door opened into the shop below; Lorenzo pricked up an ear in puzzlement as he heard the alchemist give out a single wild, despairing wail.

"I told you, we don't have any rings of water breath-ing!"

"Oh, please!" The customer seemed in a high state of anxiety. "An amulet then? Maybe a necklace?"

"No! I don't have anything…"

"Not even just a little one?" The customer's cultured voice wheedled mercilessly. "Maybe just some water breathing potions, then? Just two or three on account?"

"Look, why don't you just go away?"

"Just one potion? I can pay you tomorrow!"

Levering up the trapdoor in the attic floor, Lorenzo stuck his head through into the workshop, gasping in delight as he spied Luccio Irozzi. Luccio, now dressed in somewhat water-stained finery, shuffled on his knees as he pleaded with the shopkeeper. Luccio looked up and saw Lorenzo's dangling face; flung out his arms and shot up onto his feet in pure surprise.

"Lorenzo! Lorenzo, where in Umberlee's name have you been?"

"We've been in hiding." Luccio rapidly slid a ladder down through the trapdoor. "From Miliana's mother …"

"Her mother?" Luccio steadied the ladder, then swept his young friend into a hard embrace as he finally reached the ground. "You idiot-why didn't you tell me where you'd gone? I've had agents scouring the city streets for days!"

Tekoriikii hung his head down through the open trap-door; seeing his friend in conversation, the bird clamped claws onto the ladder staves and slid backward to the lower floor. His talons peeled great bright strips of wood shavings from the ladder as he fell.

"Onk gronk!"

Luccio eyed the bird in astonishment. Lorenzo bowed and performed introductions between his human com-panion and the bird.

"Luccio Irozzi, I present the firebird Tekoriikii; big on feathers and small on tact."

Luccio made a bewildered bow; Tekoriikii replied with a warble, and ruffled out what feathers he still had in regal pride. The blanket draped about his backside rather ruined the effect. It began to slip, forcing the firebird to frantically adjust his attire.

The group retired back up into the attic, a place taste-fully furnished with old crates and corn sacks stuffed with eiderdown. Tekoriikii turned himself about five or six times, treading himself a nest while the two humans settled themselves and uncorked a pewter jug of wine. Lorenzo nursed a tall, scorched, conical hat against his breast as he gazed in amazement at his friend.

"Luccio, what are you doing in an alchemist's shop?" The young artist sniffed at the air with a frown crossing his eyes. "Why are you in an alchemist's-and why do you smell of fish?"

"Never mind that!" Luccio snatched at his best friend's arm. "Now get your things. We have to leave the city-right now!"

"Why? Luccio, what's happening at the palace? Where did they take poor Miliana?"

"Oh-to the Velvet Gauntlet Finishing School for Wayward Young Ladies." Luccio dismissed the topic with a hasty wave. "She's safe enough-it's we who have to worry. The whole city is in revolt! Didn't you hear the riots outside?"

Riots! Lorenzo sat bolt upright, Miliana's image brand-ed hard upon his heart. He heard the firebird warble something to Luccio, and kept a vague track on his friend's reply.

"Prince Mannicci's dead. The noble houses are about to fight a civil war!"

Sycamore seeds came spiraling down past the open window-the tiny leaf-blades of the seedpods whirring around and around. Lorenzo leaned out and snatched one as it passed, then held it tight inside his hand as he stared blankly off into the sky.

"We have to rescue her!"

"What?"

"Miliana! Someone will hit on the idea of marrying her-or killing her-to control her father's men. We have to save her from this finishing school!

"Tekoriikii-we'll all escape from Sumbria together! She can finally be free!"

Tekoriikii roused himself, gaping wide his beak to give a keening scream of joy; the raucous sound set Luccio's teeth jangling. The firebird tried to flounder clean out of the window to instantly begin a rescue, but Lorenzo caught the bird and held him back, dragging him bodily across the floor.

"Luccio-we need a feather restorer. There must be something…?"

"The hippogriff stables will know of some kind of spell." The young courtier scratched one fish-scented hand against his brow. "I'm sure a veterinarian might be induced to make a house call."

"Fine-fine, that's great…" Lorenzo opened his hand and stared at the seed lying on his palm.

"Fantastic… all right-so, we just get Miliana out of this heavily guarded school, escape a rioting city, and all run off to Lomatra once and for all!"

"But, my dear Lorenzo-how can you get your lady love out past the school battlements?" Luccio seemed quite at a loss. "For that matter the whole city is locked in! How do any of us escape the town?"

"Tekoriikii and I will manage Miliana; you get ready and meet us by the city's water gate. I'll need probably-what-three hours?" Lorenzo turned to consult with the bird, who replied with a nod. "Three hours to prepare."

Lorenzo began gathering up charcoal, steel rulers, and an abacus. "Now, if I make us breathing tubes, do you think we can escape out by the river? We might need assistance-something to help us swim under the gate."

"Oh, yes! Yes, certainly!" The mere mention of water brought stars to Luccio's eyes. "But how do we finance the healing spell for the bird?"

"Tekoriikii-Tekoriikii, say 'aaaaaah'…"

Lorenzo wrenched open Tekoriikii's beak, dove his hand down into the astonished firebird's crop, and came up with an amber necklace and a silver whistle on a string. These rather shop-soiled items were slapped down into Luccio's disgusted hands.

"There! Sell those, and use the money to buy every-thing we need." Lorenzo paced rapidly back and forth, maniacally ticking items off against a list in his whirring mind. "We need a long rope, pulleys, ball bearings, a water barrel, four twenty-foot-long birchwood boards, a pole, woodworking tools, and the heaviest anvil in the city!"

"Right!" Luccio slung the loot into his pockets and made his way to the ladder. "When do you need it all by?"

"Twenty minutes." Watched by a fascinated Tekoriikii, Lorenzo had begun furiously sketching plans on the back of an old shopping list left in the shop by some local sor-cerer. "Meet me out front-in a wagon!"

Luccio made an exit, stage left. Tekoriikii the firebird waddled over and closed the trapdoor behind him; then leaned his neck across Lorenzo's work and cocked one yellow eye up to the page.

"Gronk-nonk?"

"What are we doing?" Lorenzo smudged a line of char-coal with his thumb, deftly shading his design.

"We, my friend, are going to rescue Miliana from the jaws of death! We are going to save her, give her back her hat, and make a new life all our own!" The inventor held his plans up against the light and gave a wild, triumphant smile.

"Now do be a good chap and see which way the wind is blowing. We'll be rescuing Miliana before the sun goes down."

The firebird eagerly floundered over to the window and stuck his head out into the breeze. Watched by bewil-dered crowds, the great bird lifted up his head, opened up his yellow beak, and shook the city rooftops with a ghast-ly hunting cry.

"Tekorii-kii-kii!

"Tekorii-kii-kii!"

The rescue party was on the way; Miliana's worries would soon be at an end!

The pillar also had a second use; disobedient girls were tethered to it through ice-cold nights. Since they acted like beasts, reason held that they should be treated as such. It served as a useful object lesson for the frightened girls.

Linked to the column by an iron chain, Miliana Mannicci stood stiffly in the dust and jammed a sewing needle through a highly incompetent piece of embroidery. Barefoot, dressed in a vile gray dress, and with her long hair stiffly braided back into a bun, Miliana bitterly kept her eyes fixed on the ground.

Needlepoint was just one more worthless female skill Miliana had never bothered to acquire; stealing a few bits and pieces from other girls had been enough to divert Lady Ulia's ire. Now well and truly under supervision, she had no choice but to stitch and sew while planning her revenge.

They had tried to beat her with a cane and had suf-fered the inevitable results. Watched over by a pair of female tutors, Miliana was now treated with hostility and caution. She had already managed to stab one woman with a sewing needle, and could hurtle the things with enough force to penetrate naked skin. Held tight by her chain, Miliana felt her eyes smarting with hidden tears. Her spectacles hid her eyes as she jammed the needle through her sewing cloth, twisting the tiny blade like a stiletto as she let her mind dwell on vengeance and escape.

From outside the school, there came a distant swirl of sound; crowds yelling, or possibly cheering-the dim crackle of spells, or more of the Shou fireworks. Miliana lifted her head to hunt down the sound; a tutor raised her cane and instantly advanced.

"Keep sewing! The outside world does not exist! Good can only be discovered when the distractions of worldli-ness and wilfulness are flensed away."

The teacher hissed with pleasure, keen to begin the flensing process anew. Miliana faced the creature like a wildcat and took a turn of her own chain between her hands-either to use as a garrote, a shield, or a flail. Her attacker balked, retreated, and began to stalk Miliana just out of reach of the deadly chain.

"Miliana Mannicci!"

The voice, which could have came from Lady Ulia's evil twin, pealed out across the courtyard like a fractured temple bell. Miliana kept her thin body facing her oppo-nents and flicked a glance at the stairs.

Standing up above the courtyard was the headmistress of the Velvet Gauntlet, a vast woman shaped like a cav-alry regiment in a skirt. The woman seared her gaze down into Miliana, then dismissed the tutors with one snap of her fingers.

"Mannicci-since you are obsessed with the offal of the outside world, then you may wallow in offal indeed." The woman stared at Miliana as though she were a particu-larly noisome form of garden slug.

"You are a disgrace to the discipline of home economics. To the kitchens with you! You can squat there and work until supper time."

Tutors edged closer, then decided that discretion was the better part of valor and simply tossed Miliana the keys to her chain. The girl unfastened the collar about her neck, let the chain, needles, and sewing drop into the dust, and walked under the headmistress's hostile eye and deep into the school's narrow corridors.

Miliana was frog-marched down the halls, then halted as locks, chains, and slide-bolts were duly wrenched aside.

The school kitchens were a true anteroom to the Abyss. Vats of hideous porridge boiled, while ranks of pans hung like dented battle helmets on the walls. The door was flung wide open, and Miliana found herself hurtled inside.

"My special provisions have arrived." The head-mistress's voice boomed like the slamming door of a tomb. "I want the meat gutted and dressed, the vegetables peeled, the wine barrels decanted into proper bottles-and get those jugs of cream whipped before it's time for my morning scones and tea!"

A trolley held a gigantic serving platter capped off with a silver chafing cover. Beside it stood a wine barrel almost six feet tall.

"It has all been thoroughly checked. The meat has been inspected, and the wine barrel has been pierced with a spear." The headmistress fixed Miliana beneath a violent, suspicious eye. "We perform the same checks on outgoing refuse-lest you think you can hide in the bins and be tossed out with the other garbage tomorrow morning…

"Now to work! And I want that meat sizzling within the hour!"

The door slammed, the locks snapped shut, and Miliana found herself alone in a wilderness of chopping boards and tethered cooking knives. She dejectedly wan-dered out into the room, noted that the fireplace chimney was blocked by an iron grate, and sank into a sad little bundle on the stairs.

Trapped in her own worst nightmare, the girl cradled her head in her hands. Pale and wan, she stared at the flagstones and silently mouthed a single, silent word.

Lorenzo…

In an hour, the headmistress would come to inspect the kitchens. Weary beyond all words, Miliana made her way to the giant platter, reached up to grab its handles, and hoisted the silver dome up into the air.

"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"

An explosion of brilliant feathers filled the room with life. Surrounded by vegetables on the massive serving dish, Tekoriikii spat the apple from his beak and whirred his wings in glee. The creature flung himself into Miliana's arms, madly twining his neck about her face. The princess crushed the bird against her heart and felt her whole world swirl with joy.

"Tekoriikii? Oh, Tekoriikii!" Miliana buried her face in the firebird's soft feather down. Words failed her as she snared fingers through her friend's silly feather crest. The bird gave a shuddering, keening song of purest joy.

Utterly careless of alerting the whole school, Tekoriikii leapt back onto the platter and began a raucous little dance. He bobbed his head over to the left and then over to the right-stuck his left foot into the air and waggled both his wings. He then proudly shook out a great mass of plumes and eagerly presented Miliana with his newly regrown tail.

The girl wept, still almost speechless, and ran the gor-geous length of tail feathers between adoring hands.

"Why, they're beautiful! Utterly beautiful!" Miliana held the velvet-soft feathers up against her face and smeared them with tears. "Tekoriikii-what are you doing here?"

The bird puffed out his breast and swaggered his head, flexing his stubby wings. Miliana blinked at him in sur-prise.

"A rescue?"

"Gronk nonk!"

"But how?"

The firebird strutted eagerly up and down beside the wine barrel, then made a twirling motion of his wingtip beside his brow.

Miliana scuttled forward in alarm.

"Lorenzo? In there?" The plug hole where a spear had been rammed into the barrel could quite clearly be seen. "How can he be in there? He must have drowned!"

"Nurgle-gurgle!"

The girl grabbed a crowbar, hastily climbed atop a chair and broke the wax seal about the barrel cap.

She wrenched the top of the barrel clean away and found her-self staring down into a pool of deep red wine.

"Tekoriikii… there's nothing there!"

The bird repeatedly tried to leap up and kick the bar-rel over; with his small weight, it was like trying to knock an elephant unconscious with a grapefruit. Miliana watched the bird, considered the consequences if she tried to help him tip over the barrel, then let her wits take the place of muscle power. She turned the tap at the barrel's base; scowling when it seemed not to work. Finally a heavy skewer managed to stab a hole into the wood, spilling a purple stream of wine across the floor.

The stinking pool of wine leaked clear across the flag-stones to lap against the kitchen door. Finally the torrent slowed; hitching up the skirts of her revolting smock, Miliana stepped back onto her stool and peered down into the barrel.

A smaller barrel lay within the first, anchored firmly to the big container's base. Miliana reached down to knock three times upon the barrel top; wax caulking splintered as the hatch began to rapidly revolve. With a pop, the little barrel top flipped open to reveal Lorenzo crouched inside with a breathing tube clamped in his mouth.

The tube ran out to the big barrel's fake tap-the last place anyone would have thought to check. The artist painfully arose from hiding, shakily reached his feet, then goggled as Miliana wildly crushed him in her arms.

"Lorenzo!"

He held her in his arms, feeling her thin body bore against him. Much to Lorenzo's surprise, he felt his neck running wet with her tears. The artist blinked and timid-ly ran a hand across her cheek.

"Is anything wrong? Why are you crying?"

"Don't be a fool!" Miliana helped the man clamber awk-wardly out from the reeking wine barrel. "What on Toril were you doing in there?"

"It's a rescue! You know… we've come to save our lady fair!" Lorenzo and Tekoriikii both puffed themselves with pride. "Well you are a princess. You have to come to expect this sort of thing."

"But the gates are closed! The walls are guarded!"

"All taken care of!" Lorenzo took a swift stock of the room, still holding Miliana in strong, adoring arms.

"Good! The box is here. Now all we have to do is get the thing outside." The man reached behind himself and pro-duced a large package from his hidey hole. "We brought this! Now get your notes and start looking for a feather fall spell!"

"Feather fall?" Miliana unwrapped the package and discovered her own dear pointy hat, a hat well stuffed with her own handwritten spells. "We can't jump from the walls! They're slick marble-there's no way up!"

"It's all taken care of… now just find the spell!"

Miliana clamped the hat across her head, and instant-ly felt her spirits soar! A grand princess once again, she flipped through her curling lists of spells, feeling sure that she could cobble together the spell effects required. She had never cast the spell before-but she was Miliana -Miliana the sorceress, mistress of her own destiny!

At this precise moment, the kitchen door burst open wide. The headmistress stood framed in the doorway, roaring in alarm.

"So! We have uncovered your perfidiousness at last!" The titanic woman somehow moved aside to reveal a squad of home economics tutors armed with rolling pins and knives.

"Slaughter the male, but keep the girl for punishment.

"Attack!"

With a bloodcurdling scream, a dozen shrieking female tutors charged in through the door, plunging through the lake of spilled red wine. Unconcerned, Lorenzo took the terrified Miliana and hoisted her up onto the table. Tekoriikii joined her, sitting atop a fruit bowl while Lorenzo dangled his own feet high above the ground.

"It's fascinating, isn't it? Magic creates natural forces, but it takes science to actually study them…" The artist touched his rapier to the pool of spilled wine, pulled the trigger, and watched as the teachers squealed, performed little somersaults, and crashed-unconscious-to the ground. "Electrical force, for instance.

Blue dragons have it, magicians make lightning bolts, but did anyone ever bother to study the phenomenon of conductivity?"

"Oh, shut up!" Miliana leapt down to the floor, treading on a weakly moving domestic skills tutor. "The head-mistress is still out there trying to fetch more help!"

By the shuddering and rumble of the floorboards, it seemed the massive headmistress had charged off into the academy's heart. Miliana and Lorenzo each took one end of his extremely heavy box, and with Tekoriikii help-fully perched in the middle singing songs, they struggled their burden out into the school's open courtyard.

Lorenzo flipped open the box and unshipped a pole, some boards, and a set of gigantic paddle blades. He began to busy himself unloading miles and miles of bun-dled rope, glancing briefly up the towering walls.

"A hundred feet tall, would you say?"

"One hundred and twenty-five… and faced with marble!" Miliana was almost making handstands with fear. "Will you just hurry up! There're teachers guarding this place night and day!"

"We're working on it as fast as we can-just prepare your feather fall spell!" Lorenzo began mounting a series of brackets down the courtyard's marble punishment post. "Tekoriikii? The pulleys, if you will?"

The bird flew off with a series of pulley wheels dan-gling from his claws. While Lorenzo happily tested his brackets and frames, the firebird fixed a pulley high atop the curtain wall.

Yells and screams rebounded from the school corridors. Up atop the battlements, a tutor with a crossbow took aim at Lorenzo's back. Tekoriikii swooped down, plucked the weapon from the woman's hands, and sent her tum-bling back in terror down the stairs.

A pole well wrapped with rope formed the centerpiece of Lorenzo's collection of parts and pieces.

Lorenzo slid the pole down into his brackets, then topped it off with a ring of gigantic birchwood propeller blades. He checked the fit of the rotor assembly, then attached a pair of free-moving rings to the pole to act as handholds and a sup-port for the passengers' feet.