The Falcon Always Wings Twice

by Donna Andrews

  Either way it was blissfully peaceful. From behind the door to Cordelia’s office I heard a low hum of voices. Mostly her voice. Of course. She wouldn’t yell at him. She’d just make it absolutely clear that he had to shape up or ship out. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could imagine them. I didn’t ever want her that angry at me.

  I sat down on the lowest step of the stairs that led up to the main floor, far enough away that it wouldn’t look as if I were trying to eavesdrop if they came out and saw me. My brain was teeming with a million things I could be doing if I wasn’t here waiting to help deal with Terence. But this was important, too. I focused on taking the sort of calming yoga breaths Rose Noire would probably be nagging me to do if she were here, and watched the dust motes dance over a patch of sunlight that made a patch of gold on the oak floor of the hallway.

  After about fifteen minutes, Terence stepped out into the hall again. He was holding a sheet of paper and wore a dazed expression.

  Cordelia followed him out of her office, closing and locking the door behind her. Then she glanced up and saw me.

  “Mr. Cox has been notified that any further infractions on his part will result in the termination of his employment.” Her tone was crisp and businesslike. “If you become aware that he has caused any more problems, please take appropriate action on my behalf.”

  With that she strode down the hall and climbed briskly up the stairs. Terence’s gaze followed her, and if looks could kill, she’d never have made it to the main floor. The naked anger on his face shook me—did he not realize I was there, or just not care if I saw his expression? When she was out of sight he stood in the middle of the hallway for a few moments, glancing down at the piece of paper in his hand.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time.

  “Joust starts in fifteen minutes,” I said. “If you’re going.” The joust drew the biggest crowds of any event at the Faire, and we usually managed to set at least one scene in the Game there—today, presumably, a public clash between Michael and George. Terence would normally be a major player in that.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, not looking at me. “Give me a minute.”

  I nodded. As far as I was concerned, he could have an hour. In fact, if he decided to go and sulk in his tent for the rest of the day, I was fine with it. Michael and George could manage their confrontation without him. I turned and began climbing the stairs.

  About halfway up, I heard something downstairs—a shout? Several shouts. I headed back downstairs again, a lot more briskly than I’d gone up.

  The shouting came from the jewelry studio.

  “This is fabulous!” Terence was exclaiming. “You’ve got your whole little video studio set up here!”

  “Get out!” Tad shouted.

  I started running.

  When I burst into the room, I saw Terence preening in front of the green screen and admiring himself on the side monitor. Tad’s laptop screen was filled with the frowning face of a pudgy middle-aged man in a white shirt and red tie.

  “Tad?” came a voice from the computer. “Who is this person? What’s he doing in your office? And why he is wearing those weird clothes?”

  Tad didn’t answer. He was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.

  “Wow!” Terence said. “Tad, if I didn’t know better, I’d think we were in your office! Where is he—is he down the hall in another studio?” He pointed at the laptop.

  “What the hell is going on,” said the face on the laptop screen. The face that was looming closer to the camera in his own laptop, presumably with the misguided idea that if he got close enough he could see more of what was going on at the other end. “Tad? Where are you?”

  “You’re going to be amazed,” Terence said. “You thought Tad was back in his office, right? He’s not. He’s down here at the Riverton Renaissance Festival, and—”

  I’d started across the studio when I realized what was going on, and that was when I got close enough to hit the laptop’s power button and slam down the lid.

  “Why’d you do that?” Terence asked. “We were just having a little fun. I bet—”

  “Get out!” I pointed to the door.

  Tad’s phone was ringing. He was looking at it.

  “My boss,” he said.

  “Out!” I shouted again, right in Terence’s face.

  “Aw, come on,” Terence said. “I want to see—”

  I grabbed his arm, dragged him out of the studio, and slammed the door. Terence collapsed against the opposite wall, laughing. No, make that giggling.

  I pulled out my phone and called Horace.

  “What’s up, Meg? Aren’t you coming to the joust?”

  “I need you and your partner at Cordelia’s office ASAP.”

  “Roger.”

  He hung up. I put my phone away, crossed my arms, and stared at Terence.

  He went on laughing for a while. At first I assumed his over-the-top hilarity was a reaction to the stress of getting chewed out by Cordelia. But after a while I decided he was deliberately prolonging his laughter to avoid talking to me. It had begun to seem less natural. And he was sneaking in glances at me.

  Eventually his laughter trailed off. He wiped his eyes.

  “Sorry,” he said. “But I couldn’t help it. The look in his eyes when I stepped in front of his green screen and blew his cover.”

  I just kept staring. His smile gradually faded.

  “You think maybe I should go in and um … see if he’s okay?”

  I said nothing.

  “Maybe I should apologize?” Terence ventured.

  Just then I heard running steps on the stairs. Horace and Lenny, the Riverton deputy, came down the steps two at a time. Which wasn’t all that safe, since they were still carrying their bardiches. I’d take them to task about it later. Terence would probably be amused if I said anything like “haven’t I told you a million times not to run with bardiches?” And amusing Terence was not on the list of things I wanted to do right now.

  “Meg, what’s wrong?” Horace asked.

  “Seize that wretch and put him in the stocks.” I pointed to Terence.

  They hesitated, standing with their jaws open.

  “Oh, very funny,” Terence said.

  “Queen Cordelia’s orders.” I ignored him and focused on Horace and the other officer.

  “Nonsense,” Terence scoffed. “She’s not even here.”

  “No.” I turned back to him. “But before she left, she told me that if you caused any more problems, I should do whatever I thought we needed to do to handle the situation. What you just did to Tad is definitely a problem.”

  “But I was only kidding!” Terence protested. “I offered to apologize.”

  “You’re always kidding,” I said. “And you always apologize when we call you on it. That doesn’t make it okay.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Terence said. “I was only pranking him. I thought his whole setup was pretty ingenious. How was I supposed to know his boss has no sense of humor? And he was lying to his boss, right? So it’s not as if he’s innocent. You’re not going to put me in the stocks for that.” A sudden thought hit him. “And you’ve got no authority to lock me up.”

  “No.” My voice had gone very quiet, and realized I sounded a lot like Cordelia. “But we have the power to kick you off the premises. It’s either the stocks or the highway. You’ve been repeatedly harassing Dianne and deliberately causing as much trouble as you can for everyone else. I heard Cordelia tell you she wanted you on your best behavior, and what you did to Tad just now makes me wonder if you have any idea what that means. So you have a choice. You can sit in the stocks—you know perfectly well we don’t actually lock them, but we will have a guard to see that you stay put so we don’t have to worry about you causing any more problems today. Or you can pack up your stuff, collect your last paycheck, and leave right now.”

  “But—” He stopped, looking stricken, glanced at the palace guards, then blurt
ed out, “But where am I supposed to go?”

  I suddenly remembered what Michael had said about Terence after the first weekend of the Faire, when I’d asked him why he’d hired someone who was such a jerk.

  “He needs a break,” Michael had said. “His girlfriend just kicked him out of the apartment they’ve been sharing, and I’m sure she had good reason, but he can’t afford a new place at the moment because he just lost a lucrative commercial gig that’s been keeping him afloat the last couple of years. So yeah, he’s a bit of a jerk, but he’s in a jam, and he’s good at this kind of performing, and the fact that we’re rescuing him from sleeping in the streets might make him tone it down a bit.”

  Okay, the part about toning it down hadn’t worked out. But from the look of desperation on Terence’s face, I gathered Michael hadn’t exaggerated the rest of it.

  “For now, you go to the stocks.” I kept my tone gentle, but firm. “You’ll still be in the Game—still earning your pay. And anyone who wants to interact with you can drop by there.”

  “And after that?”

  “That’s ultimately up to Cordelia. We can’t very well thrash this out with hundreds of tourists eavesdropping. Behave yourself for the rest of the day, and after the Faire closes we’ll see what we can work out.”

  He nodded glumly.

  I gestured to Horace and the other palace guard. They stepped forward and arranged themselves on either side of him. Terence took a breath, then raised his chin and began to march toward the stairway. Anyone who saw him would think he was perfectly fine, unless they noticed how tightly he was clutching his snake-headed staff—so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  I actually felt a little sorry for him, but I kept my face stern. It would be just like Terence to look around to see if I was softening.

  When he and the guards had disappeared up the stairs, I slumped against the wall and let out a breath in relief.

  Behind me I heard slow clapping. I turned to see Tad.

  Chapter 14

  “Good riddance,” Tad said. “If you ask me, you should lock him in the stocks and throw away the key.”

  “Is your boss still furious?”

  “He’s now officially my ex-boss, and since he just now blocked my number, yeah, pretty sure he is.” He laughed humorlessly. “Blocking me. The swine! He wouldn’t even know how to do that if I hadn’t taught him.”

  “Give him the weekend to calm down.”

  “He won’t.” Tad was pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead as if feeling the onset of a headache. “He already had Human Resources call me with orders to drive up there right now to turn in my ID card and collect my stuff.”

  “Right now?” I pulled out my phone and checked the time. “That’d take two hours without traffic, and it’s almost four o’clock, which means it’s already rush hour. They’d be closed by the time you got there—or do they plan to stay there until you arrive?”

  “He ordered them to, but I told them don’t bother. He’s not my boss anymore, so he doesn’t get to tell me what to do with my weekend. Monday will be soon enough.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then opened them again. “I should go tell Faulk.”

  He straightened up and went back into the studio. I followed him and watched as he donned his red, green, and gold velvet robe, his white turban, and the jeweled belt that supported his scimitar—although since Tad wasn’t a qualified swordsman, it was actually only a fancy crescent-shaped leather scabbard with a fake scimitar hilt at the top. I wasn’t sure whether his outfit was all utterly authentic or whether Mother, who’d designed it, had allowed herself to be influenced by Tad ‘s vision of what the well-dressed Moorish ambassador to the court of Albion would wear. All I knew was that Tad looked quite striking in it, and normally he was one of the few players in the Game who could rival Michael in swashbuckling and drama. Today he seemed completely dispirited.

  “I’ve seen corpses livelier than you are right now,” I said aloud.

  “I blew it.” He fiddled with the sleeves of his robe in a pale echo of the preening he normally did when he put on his dramatic—and flattering—costume. “And I didn’t just blow it for me—I blew it for Faulk.”

  “You had some help from Terence,” I said. “Look—talk to Dad. See what he recommends.”

  If all Faulk needed was a therapist, I was sure we could solve this. Dad might know someone willing to do a little pro bono work. For that matter we probably had a few therapists in the family—I’d see if Mother could find one willing to give Faulk a steep family-friend discount. Not that I was going to say that to Tad until we had something lined up. And not that help from a family shrink could replace having health insurance in the long term. But I could reassure him a little.

  It didn’t seem to be working. He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  “Look, the problem’s not insoluble,” I said. “You’ve been trying to do it alone—well, just you and Faulk. Time you let your friends in on what’s happening. See what we can do to help.”

  “Thanks.” He smiled, ever so slightly. It was a grateful smile, but it didn’t look like a hopeful one.

  “I should go,” I said. “Put in at least a token appearance at the joust.”

  “Yeah.” He visibly straightened his spine. “I’ll go break the news to Faulk. You’ll probably see me hanging around your booth a lot—assuming he doesn’t tell me to go to hell.”

  He trudged out, shoulders drooping.

  I stayed behind long enough to turn off his equipment—at least the parts of it whose off buttons I could locate—and lock up the studio so everything would still be there when he returned.

  The jousting was over by the time I reached the edge of the large, open field where we held it, and I could see from afar that Cordelia was handing out large red and black rosettes to the winners. I found Grandfather ambling away from the field with a discontented look on his face.

  “Well, that was a disappointment,” he said. “Not real jousting at all.”

  “What do you mean, not real jousting?” I choked back a sudden surge of irritation—a little of it at him, but most of it at Terence, so it wasn’t fair to let fly at Grandfather.

  “They don’t actually aim at each other,” he grumbled. “They go one at a time and aim at this little ring dangling on a string.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard that is?” I couldn’t help it—my voice got louder. “How hard it is to ride so steadily and aim so exactly that you can spear something the size of an embroidery hoop—or maybe even a curtain ring—dangling on a string, when you’re going thirty miles per hour? Do you know how long it takes to train the horse to do that? To learn to do it yourself? But I suppose nothing will suit you unless there’s a chance you’ll see blood. Human predators, that’s all you want.”

  He cocked his head to one side.

  “What’s got you so upset?” he asked. “I know I annoy you sometimes, but I don’t think you can blame the mood you’re in right now on me. Haven’t seen you for an hour or so.”

  “Long story,” I said. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  He harrumphed and stalked off in the direction of the falcons. I was heading in the opposite direction, toward the area just inside the entrance that we’d defined as the town square—that was where we’d put the stocks. I was almost there when my phone rang. Vibrated, actually, since none of the sounds I could program it to make sounded like anything that would normally emanate from the wardrobe of a woman of the sixteenth century. The Muddy Beggar’s phone produced a variety of belches, farts, and raspberries, but I had no desire to emulate him.

  I ducked into a sheltered area behind Madame Destiny’s tent before pulling out my anachronism. It was Cordelia calling.

  “Where’s Terence?”

  “In the stocks.” I explained what he’d done to Tad.

  “Damn. Keeping him on is looking less and less doable. We’ll see if Mo Heedles can get through to him. She’s on her way. I’ll tell her wher
e to find the stocks.”

  “Roger.” I hung up and went around to the front of the tent, where the fortuneteller’s mother habitually sat knitting as she kept her eye on the cash box, the contents of the tent, and the immediate world. Granny Destiny—not her real name, but the only one she’d given anyone—wore a shapeless brown garment whose hood concealed the earbuds she used to listen to opera all day. She sat in an apparently random pile of brightly colored pillows and scarves that actually concealed a superbly comfortable chair, and fended off the occasional chatty tourist by uttering nothing but demented cackles and vaguely menacing prophecies.

  Across the square, Terence was hamming it up as Horace and Lenny made a show of pretending to lock him into the stocks. The seated stocks—after all, he’d be there a couple of hours. And the tourists seemed to like the standing stocks better for photo opportunities.

  “There goes the neighborhood.” Granny Destiny’s normal voice always sounded incongruous emerging from her shapeless costume. “What’s he done now?”

  “What hasn’t he done? He’s under orders to stay there till closing.”

  “Damn—does that mean you’re not firing him?”

  “No, it just means we’re not firing him before the end of the day. After that, all bets are off.”

  “Shall I let you know if he doesn’t stay put?”

  “Yes—me and the town watch.”

  “Uh-huh.” She nodded, and a contemptuous frown crossed her wrinkled brown face. “You should can him,” she added. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” She pulled the hood back over her earbud-clad ears and settled back to keep watch.

  On the far side of the stocks I could see the Muddy Beggar wallowing in his puddle, eyeing the crowd for someone to taunt, now that the crowds leaving the jousting were headed this way. I caught his eye, nodded in Terence’s direction, and got a nod in return.