Robbi came into his arms and gave him a long squeeze. “Please don’t get yourself killed.”
“I won’t.” He tipped up her chin and kissed her, long and deep, the kind of kiss a man might go to war for. “Promise me, if things go wrong, you won’t put yourself in harm’s way.”
She pulled away. “You mean don’t do what you’re doing? Mal, I’m not promising you that.”
Guy said, “I’ll keep her safe. You have my word. It’s the least I can do.”
“You guys,” Robbi said. “Let’s just all agree to look out for each other.”
Mal nodded. “You know what to do. You’ll keep Scarlett and Tuck here. If someone runs out of the mill, take them down and restrain them until we can get the sheriff out here. If someone comes up, let them go in. Then wait for them to come out and implement plan A.”
He studied the mill. It looked dark and brooding, canted to one side as if a strong wind might turn it into kindling. Behind it, he could see the river, black and rushing, churning with whitecaps. It looked like the Midgard serpent.
He pulled up his hood and tucked a crutch under each arm. Then he gave Robbi another reassuring smile. “Here we go.”
Tuck and Miss Scarlett would be dead giveaways that Mal is an imposter, but on a darkish night, a sleek black cat can slink inside an unlit building without being seen. Mal doesn’t notice me creeping along behind him, or if he does, he doesn’t acknowledge me. He hesitates outside the door, then pushes it open and steps inside.
The millhouse has the feel of a long-empty building. No breath moves the air; there is no sense of living energy. The room is dark, but shafts of moonlight stream through chinks in the walls, revealing hulking shapes and shadows. My eyes are sharp, adjusting more quickly to the dark than my human companion. Ropes, pulled taut, run around and through the rafters and pillars. Blades of all kinds seem suspended from the walls, part of some intricate network of cogs and ropes and levers. The whole place is held together by nothing but a web of pressure and tension.
One fact shines bright and clear: This is a trap.
I give a warning yowl just as Mal steps toward the center of the room. I hear the click of a pressure plate beneath his boot. Then a heavy panel slams down, blocking the door. Gears begin to grind. A shadow swoops toward him, a glint of sharp steel in the moonlight, and he drops flat on his stomach as the blade of a battle axe grazes his hood.
“Oh, no,” he groans. “Elinore.”
Robbi checked her watch again. Eleven fifty-eight. Maybe whoever had sent the message had somehow figured out their ploy and decided not to come. Or maybe they were already inside, and Mal was busy teasing out a confession. She couldn’t hear voices over the tumbling river.
Then running footsteps sounded on the path, and a figure dressed in white burst into the clearing, a mane of wild hair flowing behind her.
Elinore?
The woman raced past their hiding place without a sideways glance, fully focused on the millhouse. “Mal!” Her voice rose higher, panicked. “Mal, stop!”
Robbi flashed an open palm toward Scarlett—“Stay!”—and bolted from the trees in time to snag the back of Elinore’s nightgown. Scarlett shot past her, racing toward the mill, but there was nothing Robbi could do about that. She couldn’t stop them both. She could hear Guy picking his way through the undergrowth with Mal’s walking stick.
Elinore tried to jerk free, and when that failed, flung a wild blow at Robbi’s head. “Let me go. I’ve got to—”
“Hold on, hold on. It’s all right, he’s all right.” Wrangling the distraught woman was like trying to wrestle an eel.
“It’s not all right, you stupid little tart!” Elinore shrieked. “I’ve got to get him out of there!”
Robbi held on tight. “Elinore, stop. He knows what he’s doing.”
Elinore spun around and clapped a hand to each of Robbi’s cheeks. “What don’t you understand? The mill is booby trapped!”
Robbi blinked. “What? How do you know?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Elinore said. She spun on Guy as he finally hobbled onto the trail behind them. “This is all your fault!”
The trap is sprung. The axe blade thunks through a central rope. Both ends snap back, and the web of ropes and cables begins to unravel. Every hair on my body raises as the air fills with the creak and snap of breaking wood. All four walls shift and sway. I hear the monstrous shriek of heavy beams under impossible stress, then a roar like thunder as one beam, then another, topples in a rain of rubble.
A shard of moonlight widens, a gap opening in the wall beside me. I leap through it to safety as a blur of red—Miss Scarlett!—hurtles past me in the opposite direction. Faithful, foolish dog.
Glancing back, I catch a glimpse of her plume-like tail. Then the millhouse collapses like a house of oversized pickup sticks.
Chapter Eighteen
Elinore let out a banshee wail as Robbi stared aghast at what was left of the old mill. Her body felt frozen, but her mind was racing. If this was a movie, Mal would have seen it coming and dived out of a window or taken shelter under a conveniently arranged pile of old grindstones. But this wasn’t a movie, and no one was guaranteed a happy ending.
She couldn’t just give up, though. She’d watched enough movies to know that no one was dead until you actually saw the body. With a little sob of laughter, she recalled how she and Laura used to call that old trope Schrodinger’s corpse.
She shoved Elinore out of her way and pelted toward the mill, tears mixing with the haze of dust and sawdust falling on her face.
Then she was clawing at the rubble, flinging away shards of wood and shingle, barely noticing the splinters in her palms.
Mal, you stupid, gallant idiot, you promised me you wouldn’t die.
A hand fell on her shoulder. Elinore, her panic replaced by a deathly calm, said, “There’s still a chance. He could still be all right.”
“What?” Robbi wiped sweat and sawdust from her eyes. “How could anyone survive that?”
“Because.” Elinore looked at the ruined building with a hint of a smile. “It was a very elaborate trap.”
I find Tuck grieving near the tree line, and teeter on the edge of decision. Send the pig for help or go myself? I’m faster, but I’m also lighter and more nimble. My skills may be of better use here.
I reassure him there may still be hope—after all, earthquake survivors have been found days after having been buried in a building collapse. Surely Mal stands a chance under a pile of rotting wood.
And swords and circular saws and axes, my mind reminds me, but I don’t share this with Tuck. Instead, I tell him to bring Joanne, Freyja, Falcor, and a stout rope. Fast.
He doesn’t think Falcor will come, but I suggest he tell the kestrel Robbi needs him. He may or may not be of use. Birds of prey are still essentially barbarians.
I hurry back to what’s left of the old mill and leap onto the fallen beams, listening for sounds of life and searching for a way in. I’m finally at the river’s edge beside the ruined water wheel when I hear the unmistakable whimper of a dog.
His mind swam out of darkness into a world that was wet and freezing. Something kept tugging at him, something dangerous; but someone he loved was there beside him, a comforting presence. It whimpered near his ear. Slowly, a name came to him. Scarlett.
Awareness came back gradually. He was in some kind of cage, submerged, or mostly submerged, in water cold enough to make his teeth chatter and rough enough to pitch the cage from side to side. It was like being rocked to sleep by a giant toddler in a state of mania. He tried to touch bottom, but he couldn’t feel his legs. His arms were useless too, floating beside him like a pair of pool noodles.
God, no.
A wave washed across his face. He coughed and sputtered, and was lifted. Scarlett, he thought again, and realized that the only thing keeping his head above water was his dog. She paddled steadily beside him, the front of his shirt clenched in her teeth. H
er eyes were determined but exhausted, and he could tell the current and his extra weight were slowly wearing her down.
What the hell had happened?
While Guy and Elinore help Robbi try to clear a path to Mal, I find a small hole that gives me a glimpse of him. He’s conscious, but barely. There’s an ugly gash on his forehead. I realize he’s in some kind of cage. There must have been a trap door of some sort that kept him from being caught in the collapse.
I can’t help but feel a smidge of admiration for Elinore. Only a true Moriarty could have dreamed up such a scheme.
The cavalry begins to arrive, first Joanne with Freyja and the rope, then Falcor, who takes up a position in the trees. Tuck scurries off again, returning with Cara in a man’s long shirt and leggings, Dale in jeans and a pajama shirt, and even little Miller, his bald head shining in the moonlight.
Robbi gives one end of the rope to Joanne and takes the other for herself. She puts a hand on the rubble, but when she starts to climb, the beams beneath her shift and teeter. The mass is too unstable, even for a human of her size. She tries another place and then another, now sobbing in frustration.
I pick my way back to her and look into her face, voicing a tiny meow.
I can do it, my meow says. Let me help you save him.
Humans are difficult to communicate with. Typically, they’re not good listeners, and they never understand how to speak cat, but she did trust me to help her cook the fish, and even though she doesn’t know if Mal is alive or dead, or how even a clever cat might be of help, I’m hoping she’ll trust me now.
She bends close and kisses the top of my head. “Bring him back to me,” she says, and offers the rope.
I take it in my mouth, and before you can say Bob’s your uncle, I’m back in position, snaking the rope down through the hole toward Mal.
Feeling returned to his fingers, first a tingle, then the sting of a thousand needles. He welcomed the pain. He welcomed it all, as his body slowly came back to life.
When he’d regained enough mobility, he explored the cage and found no way out. The latch and lock were high-quality and tamper-proof, and the seams where the sides met were firmly attached. In time, if he didn’t die of exposure first, he was sure he’d find a solution. For now, it was his turn to support Scarlett, holding onto the cage with one hand and cradling her in the other arm. His lower back felt like someone had smashed him from behind with a sledgehammer, but he needed to help her save her strength. Who knew how long they’d have to tread water before someone figured out how to rescue them?
Robbi’s plaintive voice came back to him: Promise me you won’t get yourself killed. He had to get back to her.
A stern meow came from overhead, and a moment later, the end of a rope dropped onto the cage.
Trouble?
Mal fumbled with the rope one-handed, looping it through the bars where the top met the corner of the cage and knotting it. It took three tries—he seemed to have lost much of his dexterity—but at last he had it. He gave it a tug to test its strength. It felt fine. Then he gave the rope another tug to tell whoever was on the other end that he was ready.
Robbi half-sobbed, half-laughed. That tug on the rope was like a message from Heaven. It meant Mal was alive. Not only alive, but conscious. It meant he might come back to her whole.
Joanne tied the rope to Freyja’s harness, and now she asked the big mare to back up. The rope went taut. Then the rubble around Mal’s end of the rope began to shift. Something emerged from the debris, a rectangular box with bars and mesh on the sides. Was that Mal inside? And was that Scarlett? Why did it have to be so dark?
Slowly, the cage rose out of the rubble. Then Freyja jerked to a halt.
“Back,” Joanne said, pressing two fingers to the horse’s chest. The mare strained to step backward, but the cage didn’t move. “It’s stuck on something.”
Robbi picked a spot in front of Freyja and grabbed the rope with both hands. She couldn’t add much weight, but she was strong. “We’ve almost got it,” she called to the Troupe. “Come on!”
They all piled on, in a deadly serious tug-of-war. Even Guy was pulling, standing on one leg, using the other for balance. The muscles in Robbi’s arms begin to tremble. Then, with a sharp crack, the rubble shifted. Her spirits rose, then fell, as the cage slid out of its hole and caught again. It hung, half-suspended, between the rope and whatever had caught it by one edge.
“One more time!” Dale yelled. “Pull!”
With a shriek of metal, the cage separated into two pieces, one wall held firmly by the remains of the ruined mill. The rest of the cage jerked free. It bounced hard against the jumble of debris with a force that sent Scarlett tumbling from the open side. With a little yelp, she splashed into the water below.
Mal, of course, dived in after.
The Troupe breaks into pandemonium. Joanne rushes to unknot the rope. The others stumble along the shoreline, calling out to Mal in panicked voices.
Tuck follows, his sad little oinks almost lost in the din.
Only I see the small bald man, so consumed by terror he can barely walk, totter to the bank and, every muscle in his body quivering, leap in.
Mal was in the belly of the serpent. The current tugged and tumbled him, battering his bruised body until he’d lost all sense of where he was. One shoulder smashed against a rock. A jolt of pain shot through him, and the current drove him down and sent him spinning.
He came up coughing, then found his breath and finally his rhythm. It was a little like body surfing, which he’d done a few times in Europe as a boy, though never with his body so close to exhaustion. He caught a flash of Scarlett’s white muzzle and swam for that until his fingers closed around her ruff and her collar. Then he adjusted his trajectory and aimed for shore, swimming one-armed and at a diagonal, not fighting the current, but slowly making his way across it.
He grabbed for a sapling and missed. The next, he caught for half a second before it slipped from his grasp. Not far ahead, he spied a fallen tree, its moonlit branches spreading out into the water. This time, he grabbed and held.
It took all his strength to push Scarlett up onto the bank. Then he dug deep and summoned a little more, pouring the effort into the fist clenched tight around a branch. Time disappeared. There was only water and darkness, the clenched fist, and his promise to Robbi.
As if from far away, he heard Robbi’s voice, and Elinore’s. Then a host of familiar hands pried his fingers from the branch and pulled him from the water.
I race along the shoreline, watching Miller bounce and flail, his voice no more than a petrified squeak above the roar of the river. No one knows he’s there.
Around a bend, I see the others pulling Mal onto dry land. Miss Scarlett is already on shore. Her head droops, but her tail is wagging, albeit in slow motion. I launch myself into the middle of the group and bat at the rope looped around Joanne’s shoulder.
“Hey, stop that!” she yells, but Robbi asks, “What? Trouble, what is it?”
I yowl to tell her Miller is in need of rescue, but she doesn’t understand.
I hear a whoosh of air behind me. Then a blur of feathers swoops past Joanne’s shoulder. Falcor snatches up the free end of the rope, then sails up and over the river, where he drops it squarely into Miller’s grasping hand.
Chapter Nineteen
“Miller, you idiot!” Joanne hauled the little man out of the water by his shirt and dumped him on the bank. “How did you end up in the river?”
Miller flushed, twisting his hands together as if he were working dough. “I kn…kn…know how you feel about him. I thought if I s…saved him…” He lowered his head onto his knees and mumbled, “I l…l…love you.”
Robbi’s mouth dropped open.
Joanne roared, “You what?”
“I said I…love you, Joanne.” Now that the dam was open, the flood of words poured out. “I’ve always loved you. I was n…never looking at Laura. I was looking at you. You’re…you’re m�
��m….m…magnificent!”
“Miller….” Joanne shook her head as if in disbelief. “Are you saying you jumped in the river on purpose? To save Mal? For me?”
Before Miller could answer, Dale raised his hand as if he were in grade school. “Um. This is nice and all, but...what the heck just happened? What was all that stuff with the mill?”
“That,” said Elinore, “was justice. And it was brilliant.” She punched Mal gently on the arm. “It was my piece de resistance, until you ruined it. I almost lost you!”
“El,” he said, in a voice full of hurt, “you almost killed me.”
“I know. But it wasn’t meant for you. You shouldn’t have even been there.” She shot Robbi a sour look. “Did she put you up to it?”
Mal laid a protective hand on Robbi’s arm. “I put myself up to it. Guy may have made mistakes, but he doesn’t deserve to die.”
“So you say.” She looked at Guy. “Are you going to tell them? Because if you aren’t, I will.”
“Tell us what?” Robbi asked. “Guy, what’s going on?”
“It was an accident,” he said. He scanned the group with pleading eyes, then turned to Robbi. “I didn’t even know she was there.”
She. It took a moment for that to sink in. Was he talking about Laura? A chill spread through her body. Oh, ye gods and goddesses, he was.
He couldn’t meet her gaze. “I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks. We kept getting interrupted.”
“But you didn’t.” Would it have mattered if he had? He’d taken her best friend from her, a wrong that could never be righted. In a dull voice, she said, “How did it happen?”
His shoulders slumped. “You know I liked to practice at the old mill. I was working on a spinning sword strike. I had my earbuds in and didn’t even hear her come up behind me. I did the move and there she was. My sword caught her in the head, and she went down in a heap. I tried to do CPR, but…” His voice broke. “She was already gone.”
Trouble Most Faire Page 18
