Daggar screamed and ducked back behind the bushes. When he steeled himself to look up, it was to see that the tree had split perfectly and the two halves had fallen in such a way as to block Singespitter the sheep’s escape route.
The sheep, his wings tucked out of sight, stood docilely while Sparrow grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. “Next time, I suggest you use a leash.”
The Sultan of Zibria was not actually insane, although he was the only person who honestly believed that the streets of his city were paved with gold. Quite a bit of the city had been gilded once upon a time, but that was during his father’s reign, and most of it had long since worn away.
Lord Marmaduc XV was a spindly young man with black hair, dramatic eyebrows and a habit of sneezing in the presence of beautiful young women. This combined with the fact that any woman daft enough to marry him would have to take the silly title of ‘Sultana’ meant that he had remained a bachelor.
The only girl whom he had ever formed a deep attachment to was his second cousin Talle (or Toadface to her friends), who had grown from a manipulative little girl with a cute mop of blonde hair into the devastatingly devious Lady Emperor of Mocklore.
Lord Marmaduc kept Talle’s picture in his treasury (being noble, he never carried a wallet) and mooned droopily over it when he remembered to, which wasn’t very often these days.
He was not supposed to be the Sultan. His father, Lord Marmaduc XIV and his mother, Lady Polynesie of Chiantrio, had produced two brilliantly talented princes. Rodrigo and Xerzes were powerful athletes, ingenious diplomats, talented artists, consummate politicians and handsome bastards. And then there was Marmie, the youngest, who wasn’t really good at anything. He spent his childhood indoors, fiddling with his chemistry set and building model ships.
The old Sultan had made the mistake of sending all three of his boys off on a quest when they came of age. It doesn’t really matter how brilliant your eldest sons are; the rule of Fate (and storytelling) is that the youngest will prevail. And so it was. Young Marmaduc hadn’t actually succeeded in his quest, but Fate had seen to it that his brothers did much worse. Rodrigo was currently a marble statue in the Queen Mother’s rock garden, and Xerzes lived above the stables, occasionally flying out and cawing at anyone who came into range.
So Marmaduc XV was the Sultan. He didn’t mind really. It didn’t matter how bad you were at your job as long as you had enough money to throw at every problem that came along, and the Sultan of Zibria had an awful lot of money (even if he wasn’t exactly sure where most of it was).
He was not exactly insane. But some days he came quite close to it.
The very short High Priest of Raglah the Golden entered the Lordling’s throne room with a swish of brocade and sequined silk. Raglah the Golden liked his priests to look good. “Eminence,” he said loudly, barely preventing himself from tripping over his trailing silk hem, “I have a message from your mobile agent.”
“Oh, really?” said Marmaduc, his eyes gleaming. Recent forays into espionage had excited him immensely. He now had three secret agents working within his information network: one in Dreadnought, one in Axgaard and one everywhere else. “Do tell.”
The High Priest puffed himself up, obviously resenting being used as a messenger for common spies, but also not one to miss an opportunity. “All hail Raglah the Golden, Father of the Sun and Brother of the Night. To our mighty Lord all hail!”
“I’ll write you a cheque for the temple,” sighed Marmaduc. “What is the message?”
The High Priest deflated slightly and pulled a strip of parchment from his sleeve. “It reads, Eminence (ahem): Got the gold. See you soon. Keep your side of the bargain.”
“Is there anything else?” Marmaduc demanded greedily.
“There appears to be a signature of some kind scrawled at the bottom, Eminence,” the High Priest admitted. “The message was winged to you by a sacred ibis, symbol of our mighty Overlord, Raglah the Golden, all glory to his Name.”
The Sultan’s eyes gleamed maniacally. “Not a sparrow?”
The High Priest sighed at this failure to solicit a second donation. “Quite possibly, Eminence, quite possibly.”
“So,” murmured Marmaduc, Sultan of Zibria, stroking his tapering black beard (which had never really grown in properly). “The little bird comes home to roost. We must prepare for her, priest. Have the dungeons been cleaned recently?”
“This is a stupid, dustsucking sheep,” grumbled Sparrow as they walked past the recently-ruined temple. “It could not even run in the right direction. We have lost much valuable travelling time.” She was wondering already why she had followed the impulse to take Daggar on as a travelling companion. True, it would make her less conspicuous than if she went on alone to Zibria, but was it worth it?
Singespitter the sheep was now sporting a strap of leather around his neck, attached to a length of rope which Daggar gripped firmly.
“Which is the right direction?” asked Daggar, whose mood had swung from being resigned to spending his time with this evidently dangerous woman, to being eager about the whole enterprise.
“We are going to Zibria,” she said matter-of-factly.
Daggar perked up even more. “Zibria, eh? I’ve never been there. They say the streets are paved with gold.”
“Really?” Sparrow replied in a disinterested tone. “In my language, the word for ‘gold’ is almost indistinguishable from the word meaning ‘shit.’”
“Ah,” said Daggar. “Still, a new city is always interesting. Things to see, lunches to do, profits to make.” He rubbed his hands together. “Is that where you’re from, then? Zibria?”
“No, I was born over there.” Sparrow waved vaguely to the south, where a crown of rocky, orange mountains loomed. It wasn’t home. It hadn’t been home for a long time. But it was where her roots were. Someday she would go back…
“But,” said Daggar. “That’s the Troll Triangle, isn’t it?” A nasty, evil-looking collection of plains and peaks inhabited by monstrous creatures, a landscape from which no human traveller ever emerged alive…
“Home sweet home,” said Sparrow, the familiar phrase twisted by her remarkably alien accent. She glanced around quickly. “Where have you gone this time?”
Daggar’s voice emerged, ghost-like, from behind a couple of trees. “You’re not a troll,” he babbled hopefully. “I’ve met female trolls, and you’re not like them at all.”
“No,” said Sparrow exasperatedly. “I am not a troll. If you stop hiding behind things, I will promise not to hit you. Is it a deal?”
Daggar emerged. “So you’re not a troll?” he said cautiously.
“I was raised by trolls. I am an honorary troll, you might say. This is why I am able drink their brandy without falling over. I was trained well. Now if you do not mind, it is nearly dark and I would like to make camp. Can you cope with that?”
“I think so,” said Daggar bravely.
Something fell out of the sky, dropping like a stone through the layers of atmosphere. After a moment, Officer Finnley realised that it was him. “Aaahhh!”
“Oh, shush,” said Mistress Opia. “Don’t be silly, dear. We’re just landing.”
“Falling,” he corrected wildly. “Falling!”
“Stop being so hysterical,” she chided. “I’m sure we’ll slow down sooner or later. Take a leaf out of Hobbs’ book, he’s not behaving like a big ninny.”
Gripping on to the carpet fringe, Finnley risked a look at Hobbs. The gnome was indeed very calm, peering over the edge of the plummeting carpet with great interest. “Great view,” he muttered finally. “Wonder how you could sell something like that…”
Exactly half a minute before they plunged to their deaths, the carpet twitched slightly and caught an updraught. It skimmed lightly across the grass and stopped, tumbling them all on to the ground.
Officer Finnley jumped up, brushing the dust off his uniform and resolving to go no further. Heroes in epic poetry didn’t go thr
ough this kind of haphazard stress—all their adventures were carefully choreographed. “This is stupid!” he yelled. “We’re on the other side of the Skullcaps. How do you expect this woman to have even got this far in a single day?”
“According to the Soothsayer’s Pool of Wonder, the woman came this way several days ago,” replied Mistress Opia.
Finnley just stared at her. “What’s that got to do with anything? That was before the theft.”
“She stole the extract of Time!” Mistress Opia declared, pushing her little horn-rimmed spectacles further up her nose and popping her knitting back into her big black bag. “She evidently used a drop or two to aid her escape, the silly mitten, going back where she came from before she even arrived in Dreadnought.”
“Right,” said Officer Finnley, his eyes as dazed as they had been by the lady thief’s lipstick. This was his first solo investigation (actually his first investigation of any kind) and it was time he took charge of things. “Right. What we should do then is—”
“Hobbs,” barked Mistress Opia. “Start sniffing.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Officer Finnley, not sure if he had heard right.
“This is bloody undignified, this is,” complained the gnome, getting down on all fours. “I should complain to my union.”
“Don’t be such a goose,” said Mistress Opia. She waggled a stray knitting needle at him. “I need your superior sense of smell.”
The gnome crawled around for a while, sniffing noisily. Eventually he got to his feet, brushed off his overalls and came back. “Right smelly forest, this,” he commented.
“Well?” Mistress Opia commanded.
“She came this way,” he confirmed. “The blonde. Headin’ north. Smells like she was headin’ to go round the Troll Triangle and up to Zibria, but I could be wrong.”
“Do you know the path she took?” Mistress Opia asked.
The gnome shrugged. “Reckon so, more or less. Somethin’s not right, though. She smells sorta…decayed.” He produced a handful of pale dandelions. “For some reason, these seem to be growin’ wherever she’s bin walking lately.”
Mistress Opia nodded, her placid face unusually grim. “That’s what she gets for using a potion without reading the instructions.”
“What do you mean?” asked Officer Finnley, pulling out his notebook. “I thought you said that the substance was a perfectly distilled extract of Time.”
“Perfectly distilled it may have been, but ready for consumption it most certainly was not,” replied Mistress Opia, settling her floral hat more neatly on her head. “Back on the carpet, my dears. We have work to do.”
Finnley and Hobbs resumed their places on the carpet, which flicked its fringe at them impatiently. Mistress Opia followed, settling herself. “Onwards,” she said imperiously, and the carpet rose.
“So what will happen to the woman?” asked Officer Finnley. He had no reason to stick up for the tawny-haired thief, but couldn’t help remembering that kiss which had sent him into oblivion. “It won’t harm her, will it? Using the time essence?”
“It makes no difference,” replied Mistress Opia, pulling her knitting out again and flicking her needles into action with a dazzling blur of clicks and purls. “She will not live long enough to regret taking Time without a prescription. Hobbs, get the canary.”
Hobbs the gnome looked at Mistress Opia with undisguised horror. “Not the canary!”
“Oh, yes,” said Mistress Opia with her sweet, grandmotherly smile. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, my dearies. No one steals from a Brewer and gets away with it.”
Daggar emerged from sleep in the manner he usually did, bleary-eyed and still half-snoring. He pulled his heavy eyelids open to see a fully dressed (and armoured) Sparrow staring down at him. “What time is it?” he muttered.
“Past dawn,” she said.
Daggar lifted his head and stared up at the sky. “Not by more than a minute!”
“Time we were moving.”
Daggar pulled himself slowly to his feet and started lacing up his boots. “So who’s following you, then?”
Sparrow raised an eyebrow. “If you think I am being followed, why are you not hiding behind something?”
He yawned, pulling a hand through his rumpled brown hair. “Maybe I’m running out of things to hide behind. Anyway, why else would you team up with me, except to cover your tracks? You want someone to think you vanished back there in that pile of ex-temple.” He grinned suddenly. “It was you blew it up, wasn’t it?”
Sparrow’s mouth was a thin line. She obviously didn’t like people guessing her secrets, which made Daggar resolve to do it more often. “If you know trolls, you know all about thunderdust,” he elaborated. “My mad cousin Kassa used to come across that stuff all the time…” His voice trailed away, and he looked suddenly very glum.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Anyway, that’s why you want me around, isn’t it? You’re using me to cover your tracks.”
“Possibly,” she replied in a cool voice. “What is it you want, Daggar? Why are you so willing to go along with this?”
He grinned. “Maybe I felt like some amiable company. I’ve always had bad taste in travelling companions.”
Sparrow shook her hair out of her face and picked up her leather satchel, hauling it over her shoulder. “So we go on to Zibria?”
“Zibria,” Daggar agreed. “And then we can see about offloading whatever it is that you’re keeping in the second secret compartment behind your breastplate.” He smiled innocently at her and picked up Singespitter’s leash, leading the way towards the network of canals which in turn led the way to Zibria.
Sparrow stared after him, her jade-green eyes nothing but narrow slits. And then she followed, catching him up easily with her long military stride.
They hiked for several hours—the north west lands of Mocklore were notorious for a lack of anything resembling a road, and the canal-paths were specifically designed to encourage people to travel by boat rather than on foot.
Daggar regarded his walking companion curiously. “Are you all right?”
“I am well,” snapped Sparrow. Her stride had not faltered, but her face was looking decidedly yellowish.
“You look a bit peaky, is all,” he continued.
Her teeth gritted, she opened her mouth as if to snarl a sharp rebuke at him, and promptly collapsed.
Daggar knelt beside her, and took the opportunity to take hold of her hand. He couldn’t help noticing how unnaturally cool her skin was. “What exactly is it that you have under that breastplate of yours?” Something in the air seemed funny—not quite right. He couldn’t help thinking back to the various magical explosions and misfortunes which he had witnessed in the last year or so. He touched Sparrow’s armour briefly, and stared at the soft yellow dust which came off on his hand.
“That is none of your business,” snapped Sparrow. “Help me up, or leave me here. Either way, I will answer no questions.”
Daggar rocked back on his heels, staring at her. She returned his stare until, no longer quite able to meet his big brown eyes, she turned her head sharply aside, hiding her expression behind a veil of tawny-blonde hair.
No need to tell him that this wasn’t the first time this had happened—or that she was just as worried about it. Why should she tell him anything? After a moment, Sparrow straightened her shoulders. “I will stand now,” she said curtly. “I must be in Zibria by nightfall.”
Daggar extended a hand in a vaguely courtly gesture which was interrupted when his other arm jerked high into the air. Singespitter’s wings had unfolded, and only the leash attached to Daggar’s wrist had stopped the sheep from flying off into the horizon again. “Oi!” Daggar yelped.
Sparrow drew her sword with a nasty snick sound, and pulled herself to her feet.
“He usually only does this at times of severe stress and/or imminent peril!” Daggar yelled at her above the noise of fluttering
sheep wings.
“Then danger is coming.” Sparrow had already guessed as much. She squinted into the distance. “Dust and crag-veins!”
Daggar steeled himself, and then looked. What he saw gave him no cause for alarm. “You mean the bird? That can’t be it, Singespitter likes birds.”
“Tell me it is a wren,” said Sparrow in a voice of unnatural calm. “A small yellow pigeon, yes?”
“Don’t be daft,” said Daggar. “It’s a canary.”
Sparrow nodded slowly. “Then we are dead.”
Officer Finnley was quite sure by now that they were all completely mad, himself included. “What makes you think this ‘death canary’ of yours has even half a chance of tracking the girl down?”
“If, as I suspect,” replied Mistress Opia coldly, “the girl, as you so quaintly describe her, has used the liquid gold without correct safety precautions, she is now a walking time-explosion waiting to happen. She must be giving off vibrations that even an uneducated squirrel could distinguish. My highly trained death canary will be able to recognise, isolate and possibly even annihilate her. Meanwhile, the Soothsayer can track the canary in her Pool of Wonder and give us more explicit directions.”
“Ah,” said Officer Finnley, sure now that he had spotted the flaw in her plan. “How will she do that, then? We’re miles from Dreadnought.”
Mistress Opia smiled her sugary smile, and produced a small portable crystal ball from her large black bag. “As you can see, Officer McHagrty,” she said calmly. “I have considered every possibility.”
The canary zoomed in for the kill.
“Duck!” yelled Sparrow.
“It’s just a bird,” protested Daggar, throwing himself to the ground anyway. His whole personality was programmed to respond to non-existent threats, no matter what common sense had to say about it. “What harm can it—ow!”
The swooping canary neatly clipped his ear as it zipped past his head.
Sparrow lunged at the bird with her sword, gaining its attention. “Have you never heard of death canaries?”
Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles) Page 32
