Chapter 9
TINY PINK OCTOPI, A PSYCHOLOGICAL CRUTCH, AND BLIGHTED VIOLETS
Millie surveyed the unkempt sorcerer apprentice with an arched eyebrow.
Olabeus never would’ve left his suite in such rumpled estate, nor would any other sorcerer.
They were as precise about their presentation as they were about their spells.
So not only was this apprentice an affront to her eyes, he was at risk of endangering the reputation of sorcerers as a whole.
As Millie was rather fond of the Amberly court sorcerer, this was something she could not abide.
“You look positively dreadful.”
Sometimes a blunt turn of phrase was more effective than a bucket of cold water to the face.
And a little public shaming to prevent the collapse of baseline societal standards never hurt anyone long term.
Though he was indeed clean under all those wild curls, smudged spectacles, and wrinkled robe, and perhaps a smidge ruggedly handsome because of it, she wouldn’t mention one word about it lest he think she was excusing his appalling presentation.
She might be a scallywag in training, but she still had standards.
Bradley jabbed his finger at her again. “Tula.”
He had no trouble whatsoever pronouncing those two syllables.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked tartly, hands perching on her hips.
Bradley took a staggering step into the kitchen like he was drunk. Or a recently animated corpse. Or just incredibly sleep-deprived. “Tula,” he hissed.
“Yes, I heard you the first time. I just don’t know what that means, and from your expression and tone, I do believe you’re insulting me. If I were further along in my pirate studies, I’d challenge you to duel. But since I am not, I demand that you explain yourself.”
“It’s a tiny pink saltwater octopus,” Dirk explained. “A nuisance creature. Because of their size and inquisitiveness, they’re known to get into all these places they don’t belong and their tentacles go everywh— Ohhhh. You’re calling Millie a tula because she hogged the bed all night, didn’t she?”
Dirk glided out from under Millie’s skirt and resumed his seat at the breakfast table. “Whew. And I thought you were mad at me. Now that you’re up, we’d all very much appreciate some breakfast. How about some scrambled eggs to welcome our new guest?”
Bradley ignored the little dragon, striding into the kitchen and coming so close to Millie, Miss Cordelia, her fourth etiquette tutor, would’ve fainted from the scandal their proximity would’ve caused.
Mutineer Millie stood her ground and tilted her head back to look the sorcerer apprentice in the eye.
A pirate wouldn’t apologize, and neither would she.
“You nearly suffocated me in my sleep.” The wind created by his sharp gestures caused the wisps of auburn hair by her ears to twirl like ballerinas. “Arms and legs everywhere!”
“You clearly survived, though, didn’t you?” was her unfazed reply.
His blue eyes ignited like freshly struck matches. “You kneed me in the groin. I woke up three times—THREE—in a chokehold. You drooled into my hair!”
“I have no recollection of that.”
“Would you like to see the bruises?”
In the bright light of day, his scandalous suggestion did not yield the strange zing it would have had they been alone in his suite at night.
It was easy to assume a nonchalant attitude.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr. Donmarin.
I offered you the floor and you chose the bed. You only have yourself to blame.”
His whole body jerked towards Dirk. “How does she know my name?”
Dirk choked on his oolong.
“I know that and all about Gladstone’s curse,” Millie told him, earning the return of his attention.
He truly had the most expressive blue eyes she’d ever seen, even if their range only oscillated between irritated and irate.
“And how your master basically banished you to this tower because he was worried that your stuttered spells would cause more than just that one classroom at the College to explode. Oh, and the forty-three failed potion trials! You must be commended for your persistence. But I wonder if you’re going about solving your problem the wrong way. ”
The sorcerer apprentice’s expression sharpened.
Suddenly he was all hard angles from the slant of his eyebrows to the cut of his clenched jaw to the stark relief of the bulging tendons in his neck as he loomed over her.
“The wrong way?” he signed with the same calmness a sand viper feels before it pins an unsuspecting lark.
Mutineer Millie wouldn’t be intimidated, though the young man in front of her was very strapping and imposing indeed. Pirates took on storm-whipped seas, krakens, and well-fortified port cities, after all.
“Olabeus told me that curses and hexes aren’t ever-lasting,” she said.
“Their effects fade. One can reason that Gladstone—whom Master Dirk assures me is less than a cut-rate apprentice—only wanted to sabotage you long enough for you to fail your Master’s exam.
The longevity of the curse would only be a few hours, days at best. He couldn’t have known the College Board would give you an extension.
Thus, one could argue that the effects you’re experiencing now are purely psychological and you’re using sign language as a crutch. ”
Bradley trembled so violently the tasseled ends of his rope belt began to dance.
This princess had just overstepped in the most abominable way possible.
Who was she to tell a sorcerer’s apprentice his business?
Purely psychological? The notion was too infuriating to take seriously.
It was ludicrous. It was laughable. It would be absolutely damning if it were true.
“And if that is the case,” she continued cheerily, “well, you’re looking at a former princess who can speak thirteen languages.
One can’t do that without mastering the arts of pronunciation and articulation.
So, to promote amicability between us, as we will be sharing the tower for quite some time, I propose you do the cooking, starting with those scrambled eggs Master Dirk mentioned, and maybe some bacon and a spot of toast with butter and marmalade, and I can help you—”
“You presume much, Tula.”
At mention of the tiny bothersome octopus, her lips puckered to resemble a rosebud.
With barely controlled movements, he signed, “You help me? What can a fish offer a bird? You think you know anything about magic just because you talked to a court sorcerer that one time you were bored because you didn’t have a party to go to?
That makes you a subject matter expert, does it?
Did it ever cross your mind that Gladstone could’ve cursed me to fail my Master’s exam no matter when it was scheduled, or were you too busy basking in your inflated sense of brilliance? ”
Well at least he’d grown a backbone and was insulting her to her face now. Ah, so the man could be taught. Millie remained infuriatingly unflustered (by Bradley’s opinion) and countered, “Perhaps, but is he really that clever and that devious?”
She let the question hang for a second or two.
Despite his pride, the sorcerer apprentice was an active listener and was giving her idea at least some consideration.
That, or she had shocked him into a senseless state.
She decided not to give him the opportunity to refute her point and added, “If Master Dirk says this Gladstone fellow is an idiot, I believe him.”
Bradley tsked. “He calls me an idiot daily, and I’m no fool.”
“Debatable.” She flicked her fingers as if shooing away a fly. “Jabs aside, it’s awfully hard to hoodwink a dragon’s intuition about a person’s character or one’s magical prowess. Especially a luck dragon’s. They have a sixth sense about these things.”
“He’s just a baby dragon.”
“Hey!” The teacup slipped from Dirk’s paws. Oolong tea soaked into the tablecloth, staining the linen brown and blighting the little violets embroidered along its edge to black.
The baby dragon rose from his seat, feathered mane lying flush against his sinuous neck. “What are you saying, Bradley? That my luck and intuition don’t matter because I haven’t grown out my barbels yet?”
“Dirk, that’s not what—”
“Use your words!”
Bradley gulped in a breath as his friend began to hyperventilate. The baby dragon’s chest pumped like a bellows, his golden eyes leaked at the corners, his lips were peeled back to show the glint of his fangs. The cerulean of his scales had turned a deep navy with his anger.
“Dirk,” he began. “P-p-please—”
“From what I recall,” the baby dragon shouted, “my luck made you blow out the back of your trousers instead of a hole in this tower—more than once. It made those potions burn like whiskey instead of literally dissolving your esophageal lining. It helped keep you going after every failure. And if it weren’t for me, you’d never have any fish to eat.
All those big muscles you have would be gone and you’d be a stick like Master Excelsior, or dead. ”
That last part was a bit of an exaggeration, as Bradley had a fully stocked larder and icebox thanks to Miss Penelope Shrewsbury and her griffin, but he didn’t mention it.
The fish definitely brought some joy and nostalgia to his mealtimes, especially when he heard Dirk’s happy humming of “Yummy, yummy, yummy” whenever the dragon tucked into his own portion of grouper almondine.
“You asshole!” Dirk concluded.
Bradley flinched. “Dirk—”
“I know my own name! Got anything else to say to me?”
Whatever the sorcerer apprentice might’ve said was drowned out by the blast of a bugle.
The three combatants froze in the kitchen, ears pricking.
The feathers of the little luck dragon’s mane rose in anticipation.
Nothing but the swip-fwish of the lace curtain blowing in the morning breeze and the low hum of stones heating under a desert sun.
Could it have been a shared moment of imagination?
The fraught silence was torn asunder by a second blast, then a faraway, “Hear ye, hear ye!”
“That’s close by.” Millie snatched up the carving knife from its block left of the stove. “At the base of the tower, perhaps?”
Their argument was momentarily forgotten as all three made a mad dash for the stairwell to discover just who had wandered all the way out here in the middle of the desert to make an announcement.