Chapter Five Too Much Information
I brushed Peanut Butter out well. He hadn’t wanted to leave the sheltered ruins any more than I did, but the ride to camp that night was pleasant enough.
The afternoon sun filtered lazily through the trees.
Peanut Butter got more than a few mouthfuls of straw he wasn’t supposed to. Every time Draw met my eye, he blushed.
Draw and I arrived at camp to find it well into set up and I convinced a stewardess to hold the reins while I changed back into my maroon dress, then took Peanut Butter to the makeshift stable myself.
Around me, most horses were hobbled or tied to tree trunks, settled in to rest for the night.
There was some invisible rule about which horse could stand by which horse that only the Master of Horse understood, and Peanut Butter’s chosen place was alongside a short chestnut.
They seemed friendly with each other, the chestnut nickering to Peanut Butter when we first approached and now the two horses were eating side by side.
I hummed as dislodged dust swept up around Peanut Butter as I groomed him, the air speckled with remnants of our trip.
My hands felt silty, but Peanut Butter’s tan coat was finally cleaned of road dust.
“Good boy.” I patted his shoulder.
He was head down, nose to the grass as if he expected to produce a croquet-ready lawn within the hour. I patted him again. “Night, buddy.”
I deposited the thick bristly brush in one of the tack buckets. There were a number of other instruments inside I didn’t care to know the use of, but back when Ariana was still collegial with me, she had suggested I do some of the grooming myself to forge my bond with Peanut Butter.
A man stepped from under the trees as if he had been looking for me.
The late evening sun was golden around him, the moment between late afternoon and twilight.
He was tall with light skin and medium brown hair and wore a gray doublet with a fine chain around his neck.
Definitely had a bit of the Landsome cover look to him.
He was recognizable as a member of the camp, but I didn’t know his role or name.
“A letter for you, Lady Mayfair.” He held out a small scroll.
My world narrowed to that letter. There was only one person who would be sending me a message—Sorrel.
I took it eagerly but as the man made to leave, I caught up to him. His strides were long, and I felt like one of the goats that grazed among the horses as I trotted at his side. “Are you a messenger? Where did you get this?”
He looked at the letter in my hand, lips slightly pinched, but didn’t stop walking. “Amelia the armorer asked me to deliver this, but no—” He sighed. “I’m not a messenger. When I refused to run her errand, she threatened to trim the fletching off my arrows. Now, if you’ll excuse—”
“Do you know where Amelia got the letter?” I held it up, as if that would clarify things.
My insistence too much to politely ignore, the man did an abrupt about-face and folded his hands behind his back as if he could imagine nothing better than to stand on the edge of the pasture answering to the witch’s apprentice. “I couldn’t say, my lady.”
“Why did Amelia ask you to deliver it?” I knew I was being a pest, but the arrival of the letter opened up a big question: Where did it come from? Not just as in “from Sorrel”, but as in how did this letter take physical form in Landsome? Did she come and deliver it? Magic it out of thin air?
The not-messenger raised his brows. “I don’t know. Perhaps my luck dried up. Perhaps I was cursed by a bog witch. Perhaps our armorer simply sought to try my patience.”
His words were out of sorts with his overly patient demeanor.
“But, I mean: Who are you?”
“Lord Pierce of Alton.”
Oh. Well, that didn’t clear up anything. I didn’t know who Lord Pierce of Alton was and this wasn’t answering any of my questions about Sorrel’s magic.
“Okay, thanks for your help, Lord Pierce.”
He inclined his head slightly at my dismissal, then resumed his path away from me with vigor.
I sank to a step stool and cracked the golden wax seal with relish.
––––––––
DEAREST DOTTIE,
You’re making so much progress! You not only eased that awful ghostwriter’s addiction to violent battle campaigns, but you now have your very own book boyfriend.
Frankly, I’m quite amazed you haven’t used your second summoning. It seems you cannot only survive in Landsome but are thriving!
You must not even recognize the Dottie of last week.
Wow, speaking of last week, there’s a little thing I want to confess that’s been weighing on me—it’s not exactly within protocol if you know what I mean.
Here it is: I’m the one that made your phone call Sara the night you were getting into the spirit of Landsome Roads, you know...the TV debacle.
Sorrel? It was Sorrel who called Sara?
I had opened the letter with a bit of trepidation as to what Sorrel would reveal, but I was no longer scared. I was pissed. Sorrel, my magical Fairy Bookmother called my coworker while I was repeating the sexy dialogue of a TV show.
With all her powers, couldn’t Sorrel have just...rung my doorbell and explained who she was? Even if my world was paused while I was here—or I was zapped back moments after leaving—that phone call was going to have ramifications on my job at Tempo.
You’re probably wondering why I made that call. Well, Dottie, you can summon me anytime in Landsome, but Earth doesn’t have much foundational magic. I needed you to open a book at the library and I’d been waiting for a month before I decided to take matters into my own hands.
With the TV show in production, we almost ran out of time! We wouldn’t have been able to change the story unless another film adaptation was made and that could have been decades. You’d have spent all that time a sad, loveless lady!
You see why my hand was forced to action.
I’m sure you’re not mad because you’re enjoying yourself so much.
As a fan of the series myself, may I make one suggestion?
MORE ROMANCE, please.
Magically,
Your Fairy Bookmother,
The Wondrous Sorrel
That’s what was so important that Sorrel had to send a letter through an interdimensional boundary? To remind me I was as good as fired when I got back, all thanks to her?
My cheeks were warm, and I felt the secondhand embarrassment again of that phone call, of Sara’s directive that I not come to work until she talked to her uncle, our boss. I’d done a good job compartmentalizing my work faux pas and being magically teleported to another world, but this was too much.
I wished I was in bed. Not the thin mat and blanket inside my tent but a real bed.
Maybe not my bed at home because I wasn’t ready to leave Landsome, but the appeal of camping had been slight to begin with and was now suddenly wearing thin.
I needed a real bed so I could pull a blanket over my head and try to drown out the memory of Sara interrogating me over the phone.
More romance, please.
Like I was running around Landsome for her own enjoyment. If Sorrel had wanted me to strew romance across the queendom like a bookish cupid, she shouldn’t have dropped me in the middle of a war.
I reread the letter, fuming when a voice spoke at my neck.
“What’s that?”
I startled.
Ironclaw.
He was bent at the waist to read over my shoulder. I jerked the letter with my Fairy Bookmother’s confession to my chest.
“That’s private,” I snarled and tucked it in my pocket. I hadn’t spoken to him since the stream on our way to Sage Ravine, and I was completely unprepared to talk to him now, especially with no warning.
“Private,” Ironclaw repeated. “I believe you were going to pass on private information to me.”
He came around to stand in front of me, his crotch level with my face.
I bolted up from the stool.
He only looked back, waiting for a response.
I tried to tamp down my frustration with him. It wasn’t Ironclaw’s fault I hadn’t shown that night in Sage Ravine. Or that I’d given him certain impressions...because I totally had.
“I’m sorry I didn’t meet you that night. I grew busy with something else.”
Ironclaw was still closer than comfortable, so I angled the stool between us as naturally as I could.
His hair was tied back, long strands loose from riding.
Instead of looking disheveled, he was easily as handsome as if he’d been in hair and makeup all day.
Queen Elthra’s beauty was extraordinary, but Ironclaw’s handsome eyes, well-sculpted jaw, and pristine stubble could hold their own.
His rugged look did nothing to dispel the tension in his stance though.
He was looking at me as if I were an untrustworthy weasel. A miscreant.
His voice was low. “You mean you grew busy with someone else.”
I frowned. “That’s not any of your business.”
“It’s my business if that snake-tongue solicitor has turned you against me.”
My eyes went wide, and I instinctively put my hands out in front of me. Where was this vitriol for Draw coming from? If anything, he should be mad at me. “Whoa—”
“It’s one thing if you’re going to distract the queen’s solicitor from his work, another if you’re going to plot with him against issues of interest to the crown.”
I had been ready to apologize, diffuse his anger, but my own, already tempered high from Sorrel’s letter, was ready to ignite.
“Don’t be an idiot,” I spat. “Why do you think I came all this way—to help the queen and, duh, that includes you by extension. If you wanted to talk more about your sister, you could have calmly approached me anytime on the road in the past two days.”
“So, you do have more information about Bianca.”
His hand snapped out so fast I didn’t see it coming. He tore Sorrel’s letter out of my hand, nearly ripping it.
I have to get that back. He wouldn’t understand all the references, but it was definitely the kind of suspicious evidence the queen loved to hold trials over.