by Unknown
He sighed. “I need a better hiding place.”
At least he sounded more like himself. Cluny tried to keep her own voice light. “You just need one that isn’t mine.” A realization struck her. “Is...is that it, Crocker? Do you need your own space? One you don’t share with—?”
“No!” His arms and legs shot out, and he tumbled forward, his scent spicy with panic. “We’re partners, Cluny—you, me, and the Teakettle—and I don’t want anything that isn’t yours, too! It’s just—” He waved a hand vaguely behind him. “Dad’s the architect who designed Pearlhome Palace, and Mom’s the dressage instructor to ev’ry high-born family between here and the Dove River! There’s no way they’d understand what you guys mean to me!” Sighing, he subsided against the willow again.
With a gust of steam, Shtasith swooped over, hovered in front of him, his front legs folded across his narrow chest. “I still find it inconceivable that you should be related to Sir Lawrence and Lady Miranda! The only child of theirs the tabloids ever mention is Lt. Lionel Crocker, second officer aboard Her Majesty’s frigate Undaunted and often seen keeping company with Crown Princess Alison!”
Scurrying to join her familiars, Cluny had to stop and stare. “Shtasith? You read the gossip rags?”
“Of course!” He settled across Crocker’s knees. “The first lesson one learns in the Realms of Fire, my Cluny, is the vital importance of minutiae where those in power are concerned. Such knowledge impresses should you meet them in peace and can often become a weapon should you meet them in battle.” He swiveled his head to glare at Crocker again. “That this simian of ours should be invited to the social event of the season, therefore, the party at which it is rumored the sovereign-designate will announce her formal courtship of Lt. Crocker—” His neck ridges folded open and closed like a tiny umbrella. “I find myself floundering in complete consternation!”
Crocker poked the firedrake’s side. “How d’you think I feel? I mean, my folks were as glad as me when Huxley took me in so we’d never hafta see each other again. But now—”
“Crocker!” Cluny grabbed the hem of his robes and scrambled up, Shtasith scooting to his right knee so she could stand on his left. “That’s a terrible thing to say about yourself! And about your parents, too!”
“And yet—” Shtasith made a little rumbling sound. “This behavior corresponds to the impression of the Crockers I’ve gathered from the popular press: they work very hard and are very good at what they do, but their lives are focused a great deal more on appearance than on reality.”
A smile touched Crocker’s lips. “The phrase you’re looking for, Shtasith, is ‘big fat phonies.’“ The sour smell of guilt wafted from him, and his smile sagged. “OK, that’s not fair. It’s more...more that they don’t ever cut anyone any slack, not even themselves, and I just never measured up.”
“But you do!” Cluny’s fur bristled. “I mean, you were instrumental in saving the lives of everyone on this campus last semester and my whole family just last month!” And for all that she wanted to start a storm cloud brewing, wanted to stoke its lightning with the grumbling in her gut, she instead took a slow breath, let it partway out. “Fine! If they’re gonna be that way about it, let’s not go!”
He shifted against the willow. “Thanks, Cluny, but—”
“Not go??” Shtasith burst into the air, all four legs flailing. “But the princess! The pageantry! The romance!”
Cluny did some more staring, and Crocker coughed a laugh. “And don’t forget the invitation! I mean, did you ever read anything more threatening in your life?”
That made Cluny laugh as well, and she sliced the air with her claws, opened a rift to their room, grabbed the note and pulled it to her, the parchment stiff and as big as a beach towel in her paws. “You mean how it says, ‘Your presence is expected’ rather than ‘requested?’“
“Yeah.” Crocker sighed. “So unless we can convince the Magisterium to declare me evil again and restrict us to campus, we...we’d better go. I mean, sure, my folks don’t like me much, but I don’t want them hating me...”
Opening her mouth to tell him it was entirely up to him, Cluny blinked at a sudden scent of roses wafting over her. Honey-colored light shimmered through the clearing, a sweet and familiar voice saying, “Well, here you all are!” And out onto the mossy bank of the stream stepped a golden-white unicorn, as small and delicate as a newborn gazelle. “And good morning!”
Still a little dazed around Hesper, Cluny managed to nod. One of only three unicorns active in the Mortal Realm, she was running Huxley’s School of Healing Arts now since Cluny had been forced to disable the previous dean, Hesper’s insane mistress. All in all, Cluny couldn’t quite understand why she continued to seek out their company.
Shtasith swooshed through the air to settle in front of her, his scales suddenly gleaming. “My Lady!” he bugled. “Only your presence could make this day more radiant!”
OK, so maybe Cluny could understand some of it....
Hesper’s smile became even more dazzling. “That’s ever so kind, Shtasith. I just hope my asking a rather large favor of you all won’t dampen the mood.”
Despite the unicorn’s breezy manner, Cluny caught the ozone scent of uneasiness about her. “Hesper? What’s wrong?”
Her horn flickered, and settling back onto her haunches, she seemed to deflate a bit, her next words coming out quiet but as cutting as a pair of hedge clippers. “Perhaps you know, Sophomore Cluny, how tenuous my position is here at Huxley? How a large percentage of the faculty opposes me succeeding Evantrue as dean of Healing Arts? How the thought of a mere familiar holding authority over humanoids has caused an outbreak of apoplexy the likes of which this campus has not seen in over a century?” Hesper shook her head. “Given the way you’re forced to hide your true nature, I mean....”
She sounded so tired, Cluny couldn’t keep her ears up, couldn’t think of a single thing to say; it was Crocker behind her who asked, “But Master Gollantz wants you to be in charge over there, doesn’t he?”
“He does.” Hesper’s smile sent light rippling through the grove again, but it faded just as quickly. “Unfortunately, the academic senate is beginning to rumble in ways that even the magister magistrorum might soon be unable to ignore. Which is why—” She took a breath, closed her eyes. “I was hoping you might allow me to accompany you this weekend.”
Even the trickling of the stream and the breeze in the branches overhead seemed to go silent. “Of course,” Shtasith muttered. He bowed to Hesper. “A bold move, my Lady, but more than justified under the circumstances.”
“What?” Cluny heard herself asking. “I...I don’t—”
“The Crown Princess.” Hesper looked like a statue in someone’s garden, her voice just as quiet but even harder than before. “If I can gain her patronage, these slack-jawed gray beards won’t dare throw me out.” She raised her head, her eyes shimmering. “I...it’s the only way I can think of.”
Cluny looked back at Crocker. He was nodding.
#
It took forty-five minutes of coaching, but Cluny finally got Crocker to cast a spell that connected to the aethercom at his parents’ house. “I know I should’ve checked in earlier,” he told the butler who answered. “But I wanted to let folks know I’ll be bringing Lady Hesper as my guest.”
The cloudy image of the butler floating over the desk seemed to shiver. “The unicorn, Master Terrence?”
His nod got them put on hold, Crocker muttering, “Mom’s gonna kill me for this...”
But when a female human voice burst from the spell, the face blonde and sharp and exactly everything Crocker’s face was not, she exclaimed, “Terrence, darling! I’ve been meaning to call, but with all the wonderful things we’ve been hearing about your progress, I didn’t want to disturb your studies! You and your familiars and Magistrix Hesper will be most welcome! Dinner’s at six tonight! Till then, darling!” And the clouds dispersed with an audible pop.
“
Well!” Cluny cleared her throat. “She seems...perky.”
Crocker nodded. “She’s that way with ev’ryone but horses.”
“Indeed?” Shtasith let out a chuckle. “One wonders if she will react to Lady Hesper as an equine or a non-equine?”
Cluny rolled her eyes. “We’re not conducting experiments.”
“I dunno, Cluny.” A little color had come back into Crocker’s face, but not much. “Seems to me we’re trying to see how much pressure it takes to pop my head off.”
And while that didn’t happen, Crocker did spend the rest of Friday packing and repacking his suitcase while Shtasith dusted every inch of the room in preparation for Hesper stopping by. Master Gollantz appeared to issue his usual dire warnings about how much damage it would cause if anyone should learn the truth of Cluny’s situation, but then he smiled thinly and hoped they would have a lovely weekend before vanishing.
For her part, Cluny spread Crocker’s new sophomore robes over the desk and spent the time sewing a pocket on the front with the kit her mother had given her. She could’ve used magic, of course, but she needed to keep her paws busy, especially when Crocker started fretting that the robes might be too formal. “Formal is good,” she told him, biting the thread instead of flying across the room to sink her teeth into his jugular vein. “Formal’s likely the only way we’re gonna survive this.”
So Cluny was more than ready when Hesper danced out of the air just as the clock tower across campus chimed five. “I’ve never had a chance to see actual horses close up!” she gushed.
That made Cluny smile, and she flared her claws, sent the robes sailing across to wrap around Crocker. “Alas.” Shtasith sighed a gust of steam. “I continue to hold that black leather and lace would be more in keeping with the ‘powerful but insane’ image we are attempting to create for our simian.”
Cluny leaped to the floor. “You were outvoted, Shtasith.”
“Thank the powers.” Crocker grabbed his suitcase, Cluny scrambling up him to her pocket, Shtasith settling across Crocker’s shoulders. “I’m not even gonna ask if I can teleport us: I already feel like I’m broken into pieces....”
A golden glow sprang from Hesper’s horn. “Never fear, Sophomore Crocker. As the faculty advisor here, I shall do the honors.” The light whooshed to surround them like mist, and when it cleared seconds later, Cluny almost forgot to make a note of the spell’s primary characteristics, she was so taken aback by the gatehouse in front of them, the ivy-covered stone walls on either side of it stretching out to be lost in the August evening shadows of the woods they were standing in.
It wasn’t that the gatehouse was huge or threatening, but it wasn’t warm and inviting, either: like an old soldier or a firmly-rooted tree, it gave her a feeling of strength in repose, of solidity and competence, the sort of gatehouse that would make a guest feel comfortable and an intruder feel nervous.
Crocker’s father, she realized, was a very good architect.
Movement at the gate itself drew her attention from the structure to the seven armed and armored humans lined up in front of it, the royal crest filigreed in gold over their cuirasses. One of them turned, folded his arms to display the silver chevrons along his gauntlets, and said, “I’m guessing you’re the son from the wizard school and his party.”
“We are, indeed!” Hesper trotted forward and literally beamed at the man, the air around her sparkling. “And thank you so much for being here to meet us, captain!”
Cluny heard a yearning sigh from one of the soldiers, and the captain smiled, bowed with a flourish, everything about him suddenly congenial. “Might I offer you an escort? Your Highness is touring Lady Crocker’s stables at the moment.”
Hesper tossed her mane, and Cluny almost sighed herself. No glamour spell ever devised could match a unicorn simply being a unicorn. “Quite all right, captain.” She glanced at Crocker. “Surely you’ll be able to guide us, Sophomore Crocker?”
Crocker’s head gave a spasmodic jerk that was nearly a nod.
“Good!” Hesper bowed to the captain. “Thank you again!” She cantered toward the line of soldiers, and the way they shrank away, Cluny imagined a bunch of kids staring at a soap bubble they were afraid of popping. “Come along, sophomore!”
For an instant, Cluny thought she might have to jab a claw into Crocker’s chest to shock him out of his stupor, but all at once he lurched to life and stumbled after Hesper. “Right!” he yelped. “Yes! Thanks, ev’ryone, y’know?” Then they were passing through the gate, crossing the stone floor of the gatehouse, and stepping out under the evening sky again on a tidy flagstone walkway that wound away through trees carefully tended, Cluny could tell, to look untended.
With a sigh, Crocker shook his head. “Royal guards at the front gate. I’ll bet Dad’s strutting around like one of Mom’s horses. Speaking of which—” He pointed to a grassy knoll ahead where the path split. “We bear right here, and that’ll take us back to the paddocks.”
Peering from her pocket as Crocker strolled along, Shtasith on his shoulder and Hesper trotting beside him, Cluny had to smile. A few low buildings showed between the trees and hills to their left, the air soft with jasmine and hyacinth, orange blossom, honeysuckle, and lavender, and Cluny felt Crocker’s jangled power smoothing, the flow of his magic more normal than it had been all day. “Ev’rything OK?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah.” He sounded surprised. “I mean, my folks are great when they’re able to control ev’rything and make it perfect. Like when Mom’s with her horses and when Dad’s doing—” He waved his hands. “Doing all this.”
“And it is perfect.” Hesper’s horn glowed. “The effort that’s gone into maintaining this place, it almost feels like magic.” She cocked her head at Crocker. “I begin to see where you get some of your more interesting qualities, sophomore.”
Crocker blushed, and they came around another hill to see several wooden corrals and a sprawling stable, the earthy scents and snorts of big animals washing over Cluny like a sudden mudslide. Hesper gasped, her head swiveling, one front hoof drawing up to her chest, and all the horse sounds coming from the stables cut off like someone had thrown a switch.
The air went slippery, Hesper flashing across the empty dirt to the nearest of the stable’s open windows, and Cluny could only stare as a big black horse peered out, a little white around his eyes, his nostrils flaring. Hesper didn’t make a sound, her whole body smaller than just the horse’s head, but she seemed to be vibrating like a struck gong. The horse looked down, andShtasith gasped, “My Lady!”
“It’s OK,” Crocker said. “Wanax is number one on all Mom’s teams, so he’s, like, the smartest horse in the world.”
Sure enough, the two just held each other’s gaze while Crocker hurried to the spot, Cluny not wanting to break the strange silence. But then Hesper whispered, not looking away from Wanax, “Of all hoofed folk—the horses, the antelopes, the pegasi, the gazelles, the zebras, the hippogriffs—we unicorns alone exhibit true sapience.” She stretched her neck, reached her horn up as far as she could, Wanax lowering his head—
“I will have answers, Jonah!” a female voice exclaimed inside, and Crocker froze: his mother, Cluny realized. “I’ve never seen them like this!” A large door a few yards away swung open, a half dozen humans stepping through. “And if I’ve not seen it,” the whip-thin blonde woman was saying to a taller man beside her, the man looking like he wanted to be anywhere else, “then it doesn’t happen to horses! So perhaps you could—!”
The two other women in the group, both of them dark-haired and younger than Crocker’s mother but dressed in the same sort of crisp black, beige, and crimson riding togs, gasped together. The unmistakable power flowing around the taller of them made Cluny sure she was Beatrice Elaro, top of her class at Huxley four years ago and now the princess’s personal sorceress and bodyguard. The shorter, of course, was Crown Princess Alison herself, Her Highness’s eyes wide with wonder and staring straight at Hesper. “Lady
Crocker?” Her Highness said. “I may have found the source of the disturbance.”
Lady Crocker turned, and a smile as sudden and phony as someone slipping on a mask blossomed forth. “Terrence! Darling! You’re here!”
The rest of the group was looking their way by now, the other two males bearing a slight resemblance to each other and to Crocker, the older man with gray sprinkling his dark curls, the younger tall and trim in a way Cluny couldn’t imagine Crocker ever would be. A smile curled this younger man’s moustache, too, and Cluny recognized the mix of humor and chagrin there: she often got that same look from her own brothers. “Always making an entrance, huh, Terry?” he asked.
Crocker shrugged. “I’m a born troublemaker.” He bowed to the princess before Cluny could jab him. “Your Royal Highness, Mom, Dad, Lionel, Jonah, lady I don’t know.” He gestured to the unicorn, still gazing up at the horse. “This is Lady Hesper, and these are Cluny and Shtasith. Sorry about the—”
“Oh, now, Terrence!” Lady Crocker laughed like she wanted the people back at the main gate to hear it. “I’m simply overjoyed that you and Magistrix Hesper could join us!”
“Magistrix?” Mistress Elaro bristled. “Lady Crocker, Hesper is no more a magistrix than the creature she’s nuzzling.”
Shtasith hissed, but Hesper’s laugh chimed through the air. “Quite right, Beatrice!” She did her half-trot, half-dance toward Lady Crocker. “I would certainly hate for anyone to dress me in borrowed robes, as they say.” She bowed to Crocker’s mother, the woman’s smile becoming almost genuine. “Lord and Lady Crocker, thank you for allowing me to escort your son here. Dressage fascinates me completely!”
Lord Crocker pulled himself up straighter, the greasy scent of a self-satisfied ego humming over Cluny’s whiskers. “You honor our humble abode, Lady Hesper,” he said, but Cluny could hear the sentiment behind the words: his house was the finest in the realm, and Hesper was only confirming it by her visit.
“Indeed!” Lady Crocker’s face lit up. “We were going for a turn before dinner, Lady Hesper, if you’d like to—” Her smile faltered. “Accompany us?”
