6. Sam A Fiffle #3
As she turned to walk away, Simeon reached out swiftly and caught her by the wrist. “I caught the little birdie!” he exclaimed, in mock delight.
Vera tried to shake him off, scrabbling against his grip, but soon enough Sikes had taken her free arm.
With a practiced air that boded very ill, the two of them began leading her into the shadows beside the Brig.
“This is a terrible idea,” she said, her voice icy. “My father is a constable.”
Sikes laughed aloud. “A constable! So is my cousin, birdie, but I never admit to it. People might think me low.” In the darkness beside the brick wall, the two men stepped back. They stood slightly apart from her, watching Vera shrink against the building.
There was nothing I could do now but bear witness.
Vera seemed to consider her situation. Then, after a moment’s calculation, she took a deep breath and screamed. The sound was piercing; it traveled upward, butting up against the noise of the fiffle, and was swallowed up by the night air as if it had never existed.
Simeon smiled. “That’s quite a whistle for such a small birdie.” Sikes laughed. “Do the honors, Sikes?”
Sikes’s laughter paused, his leer momentarily frozen as he concentrated his attention.
Some men close their eyes when casting an enchantment; others affect a stern glare.
Sikes, on the other hand, looked like he might have indigestion.
I’m sure, given what I’d seen of his intellect so far, even the smallest act of concentration would prove taxing for him.
He continued to squint at Vera for several seconds. Nothing happened.
“What are you waiting for?” Simeon asked impatiently.
“I can’t…” Sikes scowled.
Simeon sighed. “What are you using?”
Sikes reached into his pocket and withdrew a small ivory cameo. He held it out to Simeon like a child holding out his washed hands for inspection before dinner. “I tried three point one nine.”
“That’s off by almost a half a digit, you fool,” Simeon observed amiably. “Three point five six, at least.” He took the cameo and turned to look at Vera, who had begun to inch her way along the wall, perhaps intending to escape during the debate over dead worth. She did not have the chance.
Simeon smiled as he cast the enchantment. Vera’s beautiful blue gown, trimmed with white ribbon and rosettes, was abruptly sundered from neckline to hemline, as if torn in half by a giant. The rent fabric collapsed around her. “See,” Simeon said. “Three point five six.”
Vera gasped, crouching to the ground in her corset and petticoat. Frantically, she gathered up the torn dress in her arms. “No, no, no,” she wailed.
The men were silent, watching her despair with speculative amusement.
Suddenly a groan issued from nearby, and a figure stumbled around the corner of the building.
It was Quinn. He looked very, very sick.
For the space of several seconds he stood with his hand against the wall, bent over almost double, panting.
“Ugggghhh,” he groaned. Simeon and Sikes and Vera stood still, watching him.
Quinn’s presence had cut the atmosphere, like a toad flopping wetly onto a dining table: inconvenient, improbable, and unpleasant.
No one knew what to do. Then, abruptly, Quinn lunged forward as if propelled by some inner force.
He landed just in front of Simeon and Sikes on his hands and knees and vomited explosively onto their shoes.
There was a moment of shocked silence. Quinn sat back on his heels, panting.
“Aaaaaah,” Sikes gasped.
“You absolute ass,” Simeon said slowly, looking down at himself in dismay.
Quinn got to his feet shakily. “That was awful,” he groaned.
“Oh wow. Wow. What was that?” I had to wonder the same thing.
He’d barely been at the fiffle five minutes, and already he’d managed to fall into a state of stupefying drunkenness?
Evidently he had no prior experience with the stronger intoxicants so familiar to students at Commonwealth.
He stared, bleary-eyed, at Simeon and Sikes.
“Look at your shoes. And your pants. This is…this is terrible. I’m so sorry. ”
“It’s the weeze from Pebbles,” Simeon said quietly.
“That’s right,” Sikes said, looking at Quinn with new awareness.
“I can fix this,” Quinn said shakily. “Don’t worry. I can fix this. Stand back.”
“No—” Sikes said, waving his hands desperately.
“Don’t even—” Simeon began at the same moment.
But it was too late. Quinn had reached out and waved his arm, making a reeling, drunken circle in the air. “Purgar,” he said indistinctly. A popping sound echoed in the air above them, and suddenly Simeon’s and Sikes’s pants burst into flame.
“Whoa—whoops.” Quinn looked aghast. “Water!” he shouted.
He waved his arm again, but Simeon and Sikes had already dashed away toward the pitcher pump at the entrance of the Brig, the flames trailing off them in fiery streaks. The gurgling sound of water pumping and energetic splashing came distantly, muffled by the noise of the fiffle overhead.
Vera plucked at Quinn’s sleeve. “Leave them,” she said. “They’ll be fine.”
Quinn turned to her, looking somewhat more lucid than he had a moment earlier. “What? Do you think so?”
“I’m sure. Come on. This way.” She pulled his sleeve more urgently. “Listen, they’re going to come back any second and they’ll be furious.”
Still clutching her torn dress, Vera seized Quinn’s hand and pulled him along the dark edge of the building toward the back, away from Simeon and Sikes.
Quinn half stumbled along beside her. “My spectacles!” he suddenly exclaimed.
Vera swiveled, and for a desperate moment they both pawed at the ground in the darkness.
“Got them!” Vera gasped, scrambling to her feet again.
She grabbed Quinn by the elbow and hauled him up.
As they reached the back of the building, Vera fumbled in the pockets of the torn dress to retrieve a key and then, with shaking fingers, unlocked the nondescript door at the rear of Langford Hall.
They slid through the open door, and Vera shut it, locking it again from the inside, before leaning back against it with relief.
“We’re safe here,” she said, panting slightly from the exertion.
Quinn stood stooped over, his hands on his knees. Now he stood up, sweeping his hair back with a trembling hand.
Vera stared at him and her eyes grew wide. “Why, you’re only a child.”
Quinn straightened himself up. Now, finally, I could see him without the spectacles that had altered his appearance.
The hidden features were not what I’d expected: a soft, rounded face; smooth, faintly Spanish skin; no mustache or beard to speak of.
He did look very young. “May I have those back?” he asked quietly.
He seemed much less drunk now, as though the shock of having cast fire upon two men had somehow jolted him into sobriety.
“Of course.” Vera handed the spectacles back with alacrity.
“I didn’t mean…How old are you? Fourteen?
Fifteen?” Quinn took the spectacles without comment.
He tucked them into the outer pocket of his jacket, and his face once more took on its former aspect.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Vera went on carefully, “but surely you’re too young to enroll? ”
Quinn took a deep breath; he still looked rather unwell after all. “I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to anyone.”