Chapter 30
ONE IN TEN AND PROFESSIONAL BIKINIS
If only her words on transformation had the ability to sustain her like freshly baked baguette slathered with butter and jam. Millie hated training. And it was only Day One.
After finishing his breakfast, Sir Roger had instructed Millie how to lunge and told her to maintain the position as he chased after the little magenta dragon with his rattan cane.
“If you can’t dodge this while in your natural slinky state,” the hedge knight said, swinging madly, “then you’ll never be able to maneuver your bulk as a behemoth.”
“Are you trying to kill me?” Dirk shrieked, serving hard to the right to avoid the cane. He nearly collided into the blackboard, adjusted course with a flare of his tail feathers, and bounced off the ceiling instead.
Still lunging, Millie threw up her hands over her head to protect against errant claws or the flailing of a whip-like tail as the luck dragon careened towards the floor before he caught himself.
In the corner closest to the door, the very same one where Sir Roger’s sword nestled, the sorcerer apprentice watched with a hawkish gaze from his seat at a small folding table.
He had a book spread across the table and guarded by an environmental force field formed by four pink crystals.
He’d appeared shortly after their warm-up and had spent more time watching them from lower lashes than reading the text in front of him.
Sir Roger refused to be intimidated by the dragon’s bodyguard and continued to chase after Dirk like a mosquito after a particularly succulent host.
“It is not skill that often wins the day, but endurance,” the hedge knight said. The insufferable man wasn’t even breathing hard. “Nine times out of ten, it is the fighter who can move that survives the fight.”
“And the one out of ten?” The baby dragon yelped and tucked his body in tight to dodge the swipe of the cane.
“Skill. A highly skilled fighter can end a match in a single dagger throw. You don’t want to get put up against one of those.”
Mutineer Millie decided she would be that one in ten if it meant never running laps, climbing stairs, or doing push-ups ever again.
She would learn how to throw daggers with such deadly speed and accuracy that merchant captains would immediately throw up the white flag and her enemies would rather turn sail than duel her over a prize.
But first she’d have to master a fencer’s lunge.
“Arm up, girl. And lunge deeper,” Sir Roger corrected with an accompanying thwack of his cane. “Knee over ankle. Your lead thigh must be flat enough to balance a tea tray! I’ve told you—”
“And I’ve told you, I can’t do that in this dress!”
“Then choose your sacrifice, girl. Your fashion sense or your stance. Only one of those will keep you alive when you’re faced with a sword.”
“Ugh!” Millie straightened out of her lunge and attacked the laces of her dress.
“M-my lady,” Sir Roger began, turning his head away. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh stop it,” she chided. “Like you’ve never seen a woman in a state of partial undress, married man that you are with two daughters. And I’m not ruining the only dress to—”
She didn’t finish the sentence, for she didn’t know exactly how to form her thoughts into words.
Yes, she had shunned the life of a princess to become a pirate, but did that mean she had to give up nice clothes?
Or colors? She loved that part of being a princess.
There had to be a compromise. Why couldn’t she be known as the best-dressed pirate, anyway?
Surely that was a niche of the piracy spectrum that had yet to be fulfilled.
Besides, who decided that pirates all had to wear black or red with big chunky boots and headscarves and heavy gold hoops in their ears that gave them headaches, anyway? The fairy tales?
Well that settles it, she thought as she shimmied. My pirate sails will be pink with a white sigil and my captain garb lemon yellow with a dazzling blue sash. With beads! And no more headscarves. This wretched things are only cooking my head. And I want to wear pearls instead of hoops, dammit!
The pink taffeta dress soon joined the pink pointy shoes by the door (where Sir Roger had stowed them after she’d kicked them off), and Millie was left in her chemise, corset, and a pair of dark cotton shorts.
The sorcerer apprentice erupted from his seat, the crystals toppling over and exposing his precious book to the heat of the room.
“Are those Bradley’s boxer briefs?” Dirk swung a look between his two friends and burst out laughing. “If he doesn’t think you were tula enough, he will now after you raided his underwear drawer!”
Ignoring the murderous look of the apprentice in the corner, Millie turned this way and that to show off her new training shorts as she twirled up her hair and secured it with her hairpin.
“I don’t see what the fuss is all about.
The man has dozens of them, and I sacrificed my only pair to distract that barbarian because someone wouldn’t let me pack a suitcase before kidnapping me.
Besides, pirates are known for commandeering things upon occasion, aren’t they? ”
“Usually not a man’s underwear,” Sir Roger said, a ruddy blush upon his cheeks.
“Well we all have to start somewhere, don’t we?”
“Indeed.” He cleared his throat, cast a tense glance at the fuming apprentice. Bradley slowly sat back down in his seat. “Is that a hilt I see sticking out of your, um, front?”
Millie glanced down at her cleavage. “Yes!” She withdrew her cinquedea letter opener from its makeshift sheath in her corset. “Since my dress pockets were full of snacks, and I’m not wearing a belt, this seemed the logical place to keep it. A lady must be prepared for anything, you know.”
“Agreed. Now lunge.”
While the princess returned to her training without a second thought, the apprentice continued to stew.
He couldn’t believe the breach in privacy.
Picking the lock to his bedroom door and hogging the bed and using up all his bath bubbles was one thing (or three), but stealing his underwear?
She was worse than a tula. She was a raccoon!
And not an ounce of remorse when confronted about it.
No, no, she was owed use of his personal effects because she had sacrificed hers in defense of the dragon.
While it made sense, Bradley refused to acknowledge it. So he brooded as he glared down at Small Magicks. The entry told him something about something that he couldn’t concentrate on because that princess was sweating in his underwear. Sweet mother of pearl, he’d have to burn that pair.
Was nothing sacred to pirates?!
Bradley flipped the page and tried to focus on anything but what was happening in his periphery.
Thinking about how a princess was currently filling out a certain pair of boxer briefs in all the right places was certainly not conducive to lifting his curse and thus not worth his time.
Besides, he loathed her. And someone he loathed should not look that—
The apprentice slapped himself across the cheek, earning a startled look from the other occupants in the room.
“Fly,” he grumbled and hunched further over his book.
When Millie’s posture started to wobble, and Dirk was just a worm slithering pathetically across the floor, the hedge knight called for a halt. According to the hourglass, they’d lasted only twenty minutes.
“Tomorrow, you’ll make it thirty,” Sir Roger announced. “Now let’s stretch and then we’re done for the day.”
“You’re not going to teach us any fighting techniques?” Millie looked up from where she slumped on the floor like a fallen soufflé. “Any strategy?”
“How many fingers am I holding up, girl?”
“Uhhh . . .” She had to blink three times for Sir Roger’s hand to come into focus.
“Exactly. Like your brain would retain anything I taught you. And I’m not one for wasting my breath.”
“Not even one little technique? Sir Roger, please, this day has done nothing but laugh in my face. I need one little win.”
He scratched at the white stubble on his chin, thinking. “Fine. One little technique. Or a three-in-one, I suppose. If you’re ever restrained by someone and want to get free, stomp on his instep, bash him in the groin, and throw an elbow into his nose.” He mimed the strikes for her.
“Should I aim for the tip or the bridge of the nose?”
“Girl, no matter where on the nose you hit, it’s going to hurt. The point is to injure or startle your captor enough for you to get free and then run away.”
“But—”
“Shush. We’re stretching now.”
Millie, who had never stretched a day in her life other than reaching above her head upon waking after a long night’s rest, found the practice diabolical.
There was no reason why her muscles, which were already on fire, had to then sting.
Or her joints to pop like jubilee fireworks.
It was a Herculean effort indeed to haul herself up off the floor, but she managed and brushed the sand from her bottom and knees.
“Sir Roger, if you are not otherwise occupied for the remainder of the day, would you accompany me in my search for more appropriate training attire? Something that would dissuade sand from discovering the most inconvenient places? After experiencing the rigorousness of your training, I do believe my current outfit is a touch too avant-garde—”
“That’s not an outfit,” he was quick to clarify. “Those are a lady’s unmentionables. Even the shark women of the Orca Archipelago don’t go about their spearing and decapitating in such a state of undress. They train in leathers. Bikini-style, to be sure, but professional bikinis.”
Millie had no idea what a bikini was and was immediately intrigued. “Do you think there are some bikinis in the tower?”
“I hope not, but I’m sure we’ll find something suitable. That blouse and wool skirt you wore yesterday could suffice, except you’ll be sweltering in it mid-morning, and the work ahead of you is hard enough. You need silk or linen.”
He dug the Anti-Fainting Noshables out of her dress pockets and handed her the waterskin. “Like I used to tell my girls before they married and moved out”—he paused to sigh—“let’s go shopping.”