Chapter 13
IGNORAMUSES, TOWER SECRETS, A COLLAPSE OF TAFFETA
“The man is an intolerable, juvenile, belligerent—” Millie paused to throw up her hand and cough into a handkerchief.
It was the kind of cough common to those suffering from consumption in its violence, though hers was wholly dry and non-life-threatening.
But by golly, how those dust particles tore through her lungs like children’s fingernails through wrapping paper on Yulemas morning. Vicious.
With vision blurred by the same dust motes that assaulted her lungs, Millie stubbed her toes stumbling over this and that in her hurry to get to the closest window.
She’d long ago abandoned her shoes—cute pink heels that matched her taffeta dress perfectly—citing cramped toes and terrible arch support.
Throwing open the shutters, she sucked in a blisteringly hot yet dust-free breath and hacked into the open air.
They were still high up enough in the tower that there was no sand to inhale.
At least, not until the next sandstorm decided to grace itself with their presence, which, Dirk informed her, happened approximately once a month.
Lungs clear and searing, she flapped out her handkerchief and tied it about her face in the semblance of a masked brigand before turning away from the window.
“You can swear,” Dirk offered. “I called him an asshole earlier today.”
He hovered with the barest flicks of his tail to remain aloft, lest he disturb the dust that coated the abandoned bedroom like rancid icing sugar.
“Ignoramus,” she hurled through the handkerchief mask, though it provided less satisfaction than if she’d called him a fuckwit.
She should’ve just cursed him out, but her etiquette tutors had taught her a vast vocabulary with which to express herself, and some habits died harder than others. Besides, she couldn’t be profane all the time lest her expletives lose their poetry and potency.
Tomorrow, she vowed. Tomorrow I will call him a fuckwit if the situation calls for it.
The room remained gloomy despite the open window, layering a depressive air to Millie’s already foul mood, so the aspiring pirate stumbled over this and that again to another window for a cross breeze to clear out the stuffiness.
“I can see why Duchess didn’t want to join us. Seems the previous tenants were a little untidy,” Dirk observed.
“Untidy?” Millie squinted through the swirling dust and flapping cobwebs debris and tightened the knot on her handkerchief mask. “My little sister is untidy, Master Dirk. These rooms are abominations.”
“Sorcerers prefer to spend their time on other pursuits.”
“Like being obstinate blockheads?”
With an exasperated growl, Millie decided she’d take out her frustrations with the sorcerer apprentice on the trunk at the foot of the four-poster bed, both revealed now by the twin shafts of afternoon sunlight from the open windows.
She plucked the hairpin from her auburn locks, knelt, and began fiddling with the lock.
After leaving that beast of a sorcerer apprentice alone in the workroom, un-speech-therapized, she’d thrown herself into the task of finding her own suite amongst the tower’s many rooms. Under no circumstances was she sharing a room, much less a bed, with that impertinent sod ever again.
Besides, she had her own goals of becoming the world’s first lady pirate, and she couldn’t very well do that if she were stewing about how some handsome scoundrel had offended her.
It was time to put on some big girl panties and buck up.
There was a room separating his from Dirk’s, but she left it un-investigated on principle—she would rather go frolicking in a sandstorm naked than listen to that curmudgeonly sorcerer apprentice pace across her ceiling in the middle of the night, or listen to him bemoan his victimhood to the stars while he deliberately shunned the assistance of others, or suffer through him practicing his penny whistle, or whatever the deranged did when sensible people were asleep.
Millie didn’t care and didn’t want to know.
Of the rooms they’d investigated so far, one had been entirely inhabited by tarantulas the size of rabbits (Dirk suggested they lock that one and throw away the key, to which Millie heartily agreed, as she hated spiders ever since one had decided to nest in her hair after she’d walked into its web during one of her forays into the forest with Duchess); another was covered in what looked like brown tar (though it could have been maple syrup); still another seemed to have been a cleaning closet that had experienced an apocalyptic chemical spill.
Most were just dusty, but that assessment was hardly heartening.
The dust was so thick it had condensed into a grime that only the most aggressive solvents could cut through.
Those dusty rooms were still worth exploring, because sometimes the previous tenants had been smart enough to toss a lump or two of cedar into the trunks and wardrobes to ward off the moths and beetles.
She found a frayed carpet bag that still had some good stitching in it to tote around her salvaged items: a metal flask, a lightweight wool skirt in navy-and-green plaid, a small bottle of orange water perfume, a blouse that was a smidge tight across the bust, but a few strategically placed safety pins could help with that.
Had there been such a thing as Pirate School and she enrolled as a student, these very activities would’ve been the curriculum of Plundering 101.
Millie found this good practice for raiding her first coastal village: you never knew what you would find, thus you had to make the best of every opportunity.
But the joy of discovery and looting was overshadowed by her thoughts constantly returning to the sorcerer apprentice.
Bradley Donmarin had gotten under her skin, and she couldn’t itch him away like she could the dust. Not even the baby dragon’s jokes or diversions could lighten her mood for long.
Not even his favorite interactive feature of the tower: the silly stones.
Cracks in the mortar around certain stones emitted strange noises when blown against, such as roars, high-pitched screams, and the noise beloved by all juveniles regardless of species: the fart.
“He threw my tea on the floor, Master Dirk!” She jabbed the hairpin murderously into the trunk keyhole like a bayonet.
Which was also good practice for becoming a pirate—Stabbing a Yellow-Bellied Cad in the Guts with a Cutlass, for Beginners.
“Threw it! I could tolerate his chauvinism and jealousy, but the tea? The tea?”
Granted, she’d done the very same thing to Prince Chandler just earlier that week, but the rotten man had deserved every drop. She hadn’t.
The lock on the trunk sprang open and was violently removed and tossed across the room. Dirk swerved out of the way.
“Maybe he’s not familiar with Amberlian custom,” the baby dragon hedged.
Millie whipped a murderous look over her shoulder.
Dirk flung up his paws in surrender. “Sorry. That was stupid of me to suggest. Of course he is; he’s a student of the Prestigious College of Sorcerers. Court Customs is part of the core curriculum there—everybody takes it.”
She waved him off and returned to the contents of the trunk. “You’re his friend,” she grumped. “Of course you’d defend him. And rightly so. Even if he is being stubborn and stupid.”
“But you’re my princess, too. Perhaps you two can try again tomorrow?”
“The only way that brute is getting any help from me is if he rescinds his declaration, brews me a pot of tea, and apologizes, as is the custom. Until then, I hope, for your sake, that he is turning that workroom inside and out for an alternative to that rice paper.”
“The DDP was just announced this morning. I’m sure it’ll take longer than a day for the first Hero to hear the news and make the crossing.” The little luck dragon hovered close when Millie leaned back onto her heels. “Anything?”
The princess pulled an ivory comb out of the trunk.
“Jubilations!” Dirk clapped.
It truly was a little victory—she could finally get a handle on the mane of frizz that had become her hair. It had dried out considerably even after one day in the desert, zapping her with static electricity whenever she touched something.
The princess and the dragon searched the room for more treasures and found none worth the pilfering, so they retreated to the landing for some fresher, albeit much hotter, air and a water break.
The luck dragon twirled his white claws around and around like he was miming a tornado, and water condensed from the air into a thin rivulet that followed the sinuous trail of his claws.
Millie held open her flask, capping it when it was full, and consumed the rest of the rivulet drip by drop against her tongue.
She wiped her mouth with her wrist in true pirate fashion. Then the sweat from her brow. “Thank you, Master Dirk.”
He grinned and swirled to fan her with his feathered tail tuft. “Keep going?”
“Indubitably. It’s not fair for the only acceptable room in this tower to belong to that knave. But are you sure you don’t need another ‘snack break’ to report on me, little spy?”
The princess, no novice to political intrigue, had figured out almost immediately that Dirk was operating more than just as her tower tour guide when he’d claimed he needed a snack, or a potty break, or a chance to stretch his slinky length to its fullest via a brisk flight, or simply “forgot something” every fifteen minutes.
Apparently each of these things could be addressed in the workroom, since he’d disappeared through that trapdoor each time.
From what she’d gleaned of Bradley Donmarin, Mister Prim, Proper, Pole Up His Ass, he was not in the habit of keeping snacks up there or allowing the dragon to fly willy nilly and risk breaking his master’s sorcerous bits and bobs, and he certainly wouldn’t let Dirk use a scrying bowl for a chamber pot, no matter how dire the circumstances.
He was, apparently, in the habit of employing the little dragon as his spy, though.
Not that she blamed Dirk in the least. That, she reserved entirely for the sorcerer apprentice.
“Pfft.” Dirk flicked his tail and floated down to the next landing.
“I think we can keep the discovery of the ivory comb between us. Now, if you happen to unearth another plaid skirt, then I will be ratting you out immediately. He seemed quite envious over that one. Mentioned something about missing kilts. Millie?”
Though she’d chuckled at his joke, she hadn’t followed him to the next room. In fact, she leaned against the tower wall and clutched the guide rope.
“I-I think I might be the one in need of a break,” she admitted and wiped at her brow again. Her fingers came away equally crusty and damp. “It’s come on quite suddenly, but I’m rather light-headed.”
And very hot. Her vision was a mite fuzzy around the edges, too. Dimly, she wondered if she’d stumbled so frequently in the last room as a result of the gloom or decreased motor function. Also dimly, she wondered if it wasn’t only her anger that had been making her so blasted hot.
The baby dragon was at her side in a moment, golden eyes wavering over her face. “You look really pale. We should get you upstairs. Bradley will know what to do.”
She meant to wave that awful suggestion away and pitched forward instead, her hand slipping free of the guide rope.
Dirk caught her, just barely, and manhandled her into the alcove of the nearest door. Then he flew up the tower as fast as he could, hollering, “Bradley! There’s something wrong with my princess!”