“Where ya going, doll face?” Chip sneered. The ’gator at his feet hissed as he stooped to regard her. Mr. Darcy looked up into the black velvet sky and regarded the pinpricks of diamond shaped stars. Wings, all it would take would be a good gulp of air and some tattered breeches and he’d have them both betwixt his jaws. Jane could practically feel his bones shifting beneath his human frame, his pride as a dragon too great to allow him to be captured by wizard vagabonds.
“You bloody prig! Let me go!” Fae kicked in her bonds, ivory hair falling over her face as the wizard chuckled over her.
Jane stared into the hard eyes of Benedict Uovo, watching as the many components on his arm rotated and turned like the cogs in a pocket watch.
Blue lightning crackled, disappearing into the brick and mortar of the buildings around them. It arched overhead in an attempt to dome them in. Chip stood, turning to regard him as the cage of energy closed and Mr. Darcy, respectively, straightened up, deciding after a rather quick succession of thought that composure was indeed key.
“Alright,” the dragon in disguise said, righting his cravat and running a hand through his tarnished, yellow hair. “I surrender.”
Chip grinned, walking forward and in front of the older man. He had a pale face and fierce reptilian eyes that somehow reminded Jane of his own. “Good,” he said, looking back to Miss Hershal. “See sweetcheeks, no need to lick pavement if you cooperate.” Snapping his fingers the shadows around them began to stretch long, away from the barrels of pitch and oblong buildings. Jane was quiet as long panes of darkness roped along the road, sweeping up along his limbs to bind his arms and legs together.
The arm on the older gentleman rattled as Jane looked about himself, his limbs confined by the Spellcraft of the shadowmancer.
“That Storm Weed is potent,” Chip observed, bending over the struggling young girl and hoisting her over one shoulder. “Really adds the right amount of fuel to that arm of yours.” The man called Benedict nodded, turning his wrist until one of the bottles inserted into the gears of the arm popped out.
He threw it, paying no mind as it shattered on the cobbles. “There’s two left,” he said, digging into his mantel until he found another to replace it.
“Ah, we can get more when we get back to the tower.”
Fae was still shouting.
Jane couldn’t help but be relieved when the red-haired mage withdrew from his coat a long wooden wand and waved it over her head.
“Geez, quiet down will ya?” he said, a shower of what appeared to be sand falling into her eyes from its tip. “Some dames…” he muttered, looking towards the quiet scholar and gesturing to his companion. “Let’s pitch these two off on someone else and head towards the Milkbath.”
How did they know about the Milkbath, Jane thought? “Hopefully Miss B will be in the bath when we catch her.” The young man laughed.
Benedict Uovo, throwing his cloak about his shoulders again, frowned, removing a blue crystal from his pocket as he went to the wall and began drawing what appeared to be a door.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Chip continued, regarding Mr. Darcy from behind his newly acquired rose colored spectacles. “Someone will come for you in a bit.” Magical runes glowed in the dark as they were drawn upon the brick. A hastily scrawled handle turned as ‘Benny’ grasped and pulled on it, revealing a room of darkness. “Until then, we’ll have to stick you in the broom closet.” He threw the hapless Miss Hershal inside with the same regard for her comfort as a load of laundry.
Jane Darcy, walking inside and snorting as they closed the door and the sounds of Fallfield grew quiet, huffed over the sounds of his sleeping companion. His eyes, blanketed thankfully by the obsidian of magical darkness, closed as he lost himself in thought.
Gambling, as it turned out, was a rather rambunctious sport. He could understand now why it was so villainized in his choice of literature.
“There is only one way to throw a dice, and that is to throw them fast and thoughtfully into the rubbish,” he quoted. He spoke to no one in particular, though in truth he had hoped that he was looking in the direction of the now sleeping young lady.
Chapter 18
If First You Don’t Succeed, Chai, Chai Again
Simon had spent an hour of his day in the bath, waiting for his clothes to be laundered as he picked apart a few of the record books and tally sheets of the Hershal loan office located in Fallfield. He had been pleasantly pleased when he was given the books without much hassle, and even more so by the neat and orderly way in which the office housed all their accounting information.
The young man who claimed management at the Hershal Bank of Fallfield, one Rupert Cline, had been more than committed to aid Simon Todd in his quest of mathematics and bookkeeping. Mr. Cline had readily accepted his forms of documentation outlying Mr. Todd’s position and authority, with the utmost professionalism.
“If there could only be more young lads dedicated to their profession in the world,” Simon mused, stepping from the porcelain basin to wrap a towel about himself.
Though he wasn’t entirely sure the crowns they had paid for the place were within their budget, Mr. Todd had to admit the Milkbath did seem a lot more like home than the menagerie or the open plains ever did. Soft linens, pressed and cleaned with care, overtop feathered mattresses that boasted several large pillows, were just the start. Even the brass doorknobs were polished, and the clawed feet of the bath sparkled in the lamplight without so much as a smudge between each delicately carved talon.
I wonder how my silverware is doing, Simon thought absently, thinking of Darlington and his quaint little home beside Miss Baxter’s farm. It had been awhile since the valued utensils had been polished, and he regretted not taking the set with him. His mother would have been cross had she ever found out. Those small forks, knives and spoons had belonged to his great grandmother, who painstakingly polished them three times a week when she was alive. As it was, he only got to it twice a month when he remembered them. Hopefully, Simon thought, he wouldn’t be away from his home for very much longer.
“Mr. Todd?” A knock came on the door. Simon perked up, throwing one of the closed ledgers upon his bed. He was almost done his recordkeeping for the day. In truth, he had rushed through a bit of it, his mind preoccupied on Molly Stein and her missing sister. Occasionally however, if he were forced to admit, Simon also entertained thoughts of Miss Baxter and her associations with the wizard mafia of Grimguild.
“Who is it?” he called, standing next to the door with his towel still wrapped about his hips.
“It’s housekeeping. I’ve your laundry all in order.” Simon nodded, moving away from the door and towards the privacy screen on the other side of the room.
“Come inside,” he said, poking his head out from around the screen. “You may leave them on the bed.” There was a shuffle outside the door and a long silence that he didn’t quite realize as he bent to dry his hair within the towel. “I just got out of the bath I’m afraid,” he called from beyond the screen, feeling quite secure behind the thick leather paintings of the E-DAC sky troops framed within golden gilded boarders.
Popping his head out again as he heard the door shut, the color waned from his face as he glanced towards Miss Baxter in the heart of his room.
“Ah!” he yelped, hurrying back to the other side of the screen, holding his towel against his hips. “M-Miss Baxter I thought…”
“I saw the housekeeper in the hallway,” she explained, “I’m a bit bored being cooped up all day. I hope you don’t mind a bit of company.”
Never, Simon thought. Though presently, without any clothes on, he felt more than a bit awkward. Lovely Miss Baxter with her sunny hair and innocent, cherub face, was in his room right now, and he was as naked as the day he was born.
“Uh, company?” he said a bit clumsily, biting down on his bottom lip. “N-not at all.”
He was just wondering about the polite way to go about asking for his clothes when they wer
e offered to him from the other side of the screen. “Oh, thank you,” he called, feeling oddly vulnerable at the sight of her thin, pale wrists in his present state of dishabille.
“You’re welcome.”
Simon began to dress quickly as he listened to her soft footfalls walk back to the other side of the room. “Mr. Dashing’s been off all day,” she said. “Mr. Kim, the alchemist in town, must be augmenting his rifle.”
Mr. Todd pulled up the waistline of his trousers, stooping a moment later to grab his shirt. “You both have been to Fallfield before?” The thought made his chest tighten unexpectedly, but Miss Baxter nodded and began to reply, which thankfully derailed Mr. Todd’s anxiety about his current undress.
“Not at the same time,” she said. “Mr. Kim is a mutual acquaintance. You can’t expect a gentleman like Mr. Dashing who has travelled all over, not to at least know some of the storeowners of Fallfield. It is practically a magical city after all.”
Simon supposed that was true, what with it being so close to the Wizard’s University. “How did you meet Mr. Dashing?” he asked, buttoning up his shirt. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“He came to speak at our school about the importance of magical relics and martial warfare. He’s always been very charismatic, with the ladies especially. I hired him to return me to Darlington on a few occasions.”
No wonder the world’s most lucrative entertainers were buffoons, Simon thought. “Is that why he follows you now?”
The young woman laughed. “It probably has more to do with the promise of dragon’s gold.”
Right, Simon thought. With all the commotion with the mages, he had half forgotten.
“When I last met Mr. Dashing at Grimguild, he was trying to convince me to accompany him. He was all in a kerfuffle about the magical wards he had encountered in the dragon’s lair and wanted me to help. I suppose,” she maintained, “that it was all good timing considering I had just had the falling out with Heironymous.”
Simon stepped out from beyond the screen, adjusting his tie. Miss Baxter was seated upon his bed, hands folded gently in her lap as she regarded him. His socks and garters were beside the young lady. He felt a little silly without socks, and more than a bit conscious of her position on his bed. “So you decided to help him for a portion of the gold?”
Miss Baxter looked up at him. The salmon pink bonnet she was wearing framed her face most fetchingly. “Yes.” She smiled.
Simon sensed there was something quite awry with the whole story. “Then, if you started this whole adventure here initially, why did you backtrack all the way to Darlington in the first place?”
“Well,” she began, regarding his tie then his bare feet, “we needed your help, Mr. Todd.”
“My—” The door opened before he could continue, and Mr. Dashing, brandishing a blunderbuss like a madman, barreled in overtop of the conversation.
“Simon, my good man!” he declared, moustache bristling with excitement. “No one’s around and I’m in need of target practice.”
Simon had just sat down on the bed, folding one leg over the other in an effort to put on his socks.
Dick raised an eyebrow when he saw the two sitting close together on the mattress, one in a state of undress. “Mr. Todd, you ol’ dog!” He smiled, leaning his gun over his left shoulder. “And here I thought it was safe to leave good Miss Baxter in your care.”
Simon had looked up through his eyelashes as Dick barged into the room, but as soon as the gun-toting vagabond smiled, Simon’s response was to grimace, stomping his bare foot back on the ground in exacerbation. “She came to visit me,” he insisted, flushing red despite himself. He sat back to grab his remaining sock and hopefully evade the conversation.
“With your clothes off?”
Mr. Todd may have been a bit of a ninny on most occasions, but he was quite aware when someone was making fun of him. Standing up and rather grumpy all of a sudden, the young Frelander, feeling rather slighted, strode to a large chair on the other side of the room and sat down, not before taking his sock garters with him.
Miss Baxter, who had been giggling at his expense, shook her head, and wagged a finger at Mr. Dashing. “You ought not to antagonize Mr. Todd,” she said good-humoredly. “He’s never been anything but a complete gentleman.”
Mr. Todd bit the inside of his cheek at the remark, looking up as she was regarding the young gunslinger. The white column of her neck, rising from her lace bodice, was enough to remind him of that unfortunate discovery he had made at her bedroom window. Smooth pale skin, blushing red from the touch of the bath’s hot water. Perhaps Mr. Dashing knew more about him than Mr. Todd was willing to admit about himself.
“Anyway,” he said, deciding he could try and at least not be a hypocrite as well as an ornery, old man, “what’s this about target practice? I’m not a bullseye you know.”
Dick laughed and Simon was glad for the change in subject. “You can hold one well enough, I bet.”
“Are you mad?”
“Only enough to make it interesting,” Dick paused, “but have no worry, Mr. Todd, I wouldn’t suggest anything of the sort. I only thought you may benefit from a bit of education. If there’s a chance we’ll be running into any kind of wizard highwaymen along the road to Ebonguard, you ought to know how to hold a pistol, eh?” He smiled, looking at the young lady sidelong and winking. “It would certainly help me if there was someone else who knew how to shoot a firearm.”
Simon stuttered, fishing for a reply but finding nothing that could replace the phrase I’m scared of guns in any sort of dignified way. The gap in conversation meanwhile, proved to be enough to strengthen Dick’s resolve.
“Ah! I knew you’d see the logic in it!” he said, laughing heartily as he strode across the room to clap the tongue-tied gentleman on the back. “And there’s no time like the present, am I right?”
Mr. Todd looked to the side, watching Miss Baxter and jumping on the idea as it came to him. “W-what about Miss Baxter?” he said, trying to step away from Dick’s arm as he threw it about his shoulders. “She’s been cooped up here all day,” he said, reiterating her concerns. “Perhaps she may be in want of company?”
“She’ll have all sorts of company tonight and tomorrow.”
Simon saw Mr. Dashing look over his shoulder, and the suggestive glance he gave the young woman made him suddenly furious. “What is that supposed to mean?” he said madly under his breath.
“Why,” Dashing responded with laugh, “whatever she wants it to mean, old chap!”
“You ought not to be so forward,” he said, trying to look back over Mr. Dashing’s arm as they left his room. He could just see Miss Baxter’s lovely smile and her soft hand waving goodbye as the door closed behind them, leaving her behind in his chambers.
“You ought not to be so passive, Mr. Todd. No one ever got a cup of sugar by waiting for it to fill itself.”
“Uh,” Simon stammered, waiting for his brain to ascertain whether Dick’s comment was crude or not.
“Besides, like I said before, you aren’t going to protect good, little Miss Baxter without some kind of weapon in your arsenal. Math and numbers and being organized is all well and good, but it’s not going to help you much against wizards or demons.”
It helped against a Reaper, Simon thought, thinking back to Manny and his undead menagerie. He hadn’t yet gotten around to telling the others about that, however, it always seemed like an awful lot to explain.
“Fine!” he said at last, looking down to the floor and the nicely cleaned rugs scattered about the Milkbath’s corridors. “But let’s not take the entire day. I really don’t think it’s polite, or smart, to leave Miss Baxter by herself.”
“You’d be surprised what she can do by herself. She’d got a better chance of fighting off mages than most.” Mr. Dashing was pulling on the end of his moustache, which was, as usual, very nicely trimmed to look like handlebars.
“I’m not saying she isn’t.” In fact
, Simon knew first hand that he’d only get in the way, but he really was wishing for some time alone with her. There was also something rather peculiar about the way she insisted they had returned to Darlington for the sole purpose of obtaining his company. As much as he would like to believe he was a necessary part to their party, he was quite certain that contrary to what the young lady said, Simon Todd was a very easily replaceable fop and certainly not worth several days journey in an opposite direction.
“I just feel guilty she has no one to keep her company.”
“Ah!” Dick waved his hand dismissively, pulling his forearm closer to his chest which in turn, also hugged Mr. Todd closer. “An hour or two,” he promised, letting him go as Simon began to struggle against his arm. “Won’t be much more than that.”
But it was. Though Simon had gotten his work done in the early afternoon, had taken a bath afterwards and was accosted by Mr. Dashing at about three thirty, both gentleman did not make their way home to the inn until nighttime. Not only that, but despite Dick’s promise to make Simon a better sharp shooter, the majority of his time had been spent close to the E-DAC military hangar watching the duster-wearing gunslinger shoot at targets and chatting up soldiers.
Mr. Dashing, it turned out, was rather friendly with a few of the Ebonguard Dirigible Air troops stationed at Fallfield. Though most of the Ebony Zeppelins were, in fact, in the capital, there were a few soldiers lofting about the air decks at the very peak of the Fallfield mountain.
Simon to his credit, had in fact for the first hour or so, been quite eager to see the dirigibles from such a close spot. Though he had been less enthused about climbing for an hour to see them. Fallfield, being mostly built at the base of a mountain, did climb upwards when it came to the airfields of the E-DAC hangars. So, as a result, the two young men were forced to traverse stairs covered in the encroaching flora that decorated the town. These stone steps, that sometimes expanded into long wet bridges that extended over the many sparkling waterfalls of Fallfield, were very steep and too far apart. When the couple finally made it to the top, Simon was more than a bit out of breath, and it was already more than an hour after they had first departed the Milkbath.
The Curious Case of Simon Todd Page 20
