Chapter 34
GRUNGE, HORMONES, AND GOSSIP
No sooner had the apprentice shut the trapdoor behind him than the griffin rider seized him by the shoulders and yanked him close for a familial kiss on each cheek.
Miss Penelope Shrewsbury then checked those cheeks for any lipstick stains before holding him at arm’s length and beaming a smile at him.
“So good to see you again, darling. Have you been eating well?”
He nodded.
“Bowel movements and urination all standard and regular?”
Months ago, when she’d first asked him that question, he had flushed vermillion in embarrassment, but now he answered her with one of his well-practiced eye rolls.
“Good, good. Now flex.” She tested his biceps and nodded approvingly. “No muscle atrophy. Excellent. Let’s see your eyes.”
Miss Penelope also inspected his teeth, his fingernails, checked his pulse, had him remove his boots and socks so she could verify no fungus or gangrene had taken root there and that he was maintaining the bare minimum of hygiene expected of sorcerers and their apprentices.
She teased a few of his black curls with her fingers. “Would you like me to trim your hair while I’m here?”
Normally he would agree, but the more Miss Penelope lingered, the chances increased of her discovering the princess, the hedge knight, and the ministry official. He shook his head.
She cocked a sculpted eyebrow at that. “I understand chaos is part of the process, Bradley, but I urge you to reconsider the grunge look before returning to the College, alright?”
He nodded, his long dark curls swishing into his eyes. He smacked them aside.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, and whisked herself away to the western balcony, coattails flapping.
Miss Penelope Shrewsbury was the very picture of a progressive-thinking aristocrat and walked like one, too.
Tall and lithe like all griffin riders, she wore a blue embroidered tailcoat and black riding breeches in the same colors of her griffin’s feathers.
A little hat sat at a jaunty angle upon her head, and an attached hair net, which sparkled with tiny sapphires, neatly clustered her ash-blonde hair against the nape of her neck.
At the railing, Miss Penelope guided his attention below with a sweep of her riding crop, which was actually a baton in disguise used for fending off airborne ruffians. “Young Lung Shang seemed quite lost to the process when I first arrived, so perhaps you could tell me what he’s doing?”
The luck dragon had created a tornado with Sir Eustace’s camp smack dab in the center. A churning wall of orange sand blocked the ministry official and all his equipment from sight and drowned out his shouts (or screams) of protest, too.
“Uhhh,” Bradley trailed off.
“Good morning, Miss Penelope, Zora,” Dirk shouted up from the sand.
Now that he wasn’t panicking anymore, the baby dragon could finally spare Miss Penelope a mote of his attention.
His heart had been like a hatchling trying to break free of its egg, that is to say, determined to bust loose from his chest and leave a gaping hole behind.
Dirk had had to wait for the precise moment Sir Eustace had his back turned to land in the sand behind him (as the ministry official only knew him as red dragon) and raise the whirlwind.
Presently, it was hard work keeping all this sand churning without sucking Sir Eustace up into the funnel and spinning him senseless.
“Pardon me, but this is the biggest dervish I’ve been able to create yet,” he said. “I need to test its limits!”
Dirk chased along the circumference of his dervish to keep the winds carefully contained, and, to his delight, it was working.
The luck dragon had never tried something on such a grand scale, but the fear of discovery had sharpened his focus and will.
And after his training with Sir Roger, he’d found his flexibility and general maneuverability better suited to the task.
He was actually enjoying himself, but he reined in the effervescent emotion lest it overcome him and scatter his concentration along with the sand.
Miss Penelope was content to watch him a few moments more before she remarked, “It seems young Lung Shang has come a long way from that rainy afternoon by the lake, wouldn’t you say? He’s finally flourishing under your encouragement, as the grand master had hoped.”
Bradley wasn’t worthy of such praise and masked his wince with the same masterfulness of an experienced husband when sampling the very worst of his mother-in-law’s cooking.
“Yes,” Miss Penelope mused to herself, giving the railing a smart tap with her gloved hand, “Master Excelsior will be very pleased.” She turned to the apprentice. “Shall we, Bradley?”
He gulped, realizing the true inspection was about to begin. He hoped Dirk’s luck could extend past the tornado into the tower and keep Miss Penelope from finding out they had unauthorized guests. “Yes.”
“Righto.” With crisp clicks of her riding boots, Miss Penelope returned to the workroom.
“Zora, sweetie, why don’t you retire to the balcony?
Yes, I know it’s cooler inside, but remember Master Excelsior’s environmental wards?
All those babies are pushing on your bladder and if you relieve yourself in here, they will activate and not only clean up the filth, but barbecue the offender.
And if you’re turned into barbecue, your mate and I will have to duel Master Excelsior to the death, and we all know that sorcerer doesn’t even have to be awake to defeat us.
So off you go, sweetie. Maybe when Lung Shang is finished with his tornado, you can persuade him to give you a sprinkle bath? You do love a good sprinkle.”
Grumbling, but not nearly as loudly as she would have because there was the chance of a sprinkle bath in her future, the griffin stalked out onto the shaded southern balcony.
She flopped down onto her side to take the pressure off her belly and flicked the tip of her tail from side to side.
The caw she gave her rider needed no interpreter: Hurry up.
And the quieter, peevish caw that followed: I’m hungry.
Miss Penelope knew better than to touch a sorcerer’s bits and bobs without permission, even those of Master Excelsior, despite their closeness, so she linked her hands against the small of her back as she stalked a circle around the workroom.
“Seems you’ve broken some of the potions glassware. Do you need replacements?”
“No.”
“And the potions ingredients? I notice some jars are low, especially the cochineal shells. Need any of those?”
He gave that question a moment’s pause, then shook his head. They only disguised Dirk’s coloration, which was a weak ruse to begin with. The rice paper would solve their problems, so long as Miss Penelope had packed it with the groceries.
“Seems you’ve decided to take a break from earth magic, yes? That’s good. Sometimes another avenue of thinking is just what you need to make a breakthrough.” Miss Penelope nodded to herself and strode over to another area of the workroom.
Normally, Bradley enjoyed her visits. She made him feel normal, unpressured, the way a treasured aunt would.
Since she couldn’t understand sign language, she made sure the majority of her questions could be answered with a simple yes or no.
She also took no offense to his clipped responses, nor expected an honorific “ma’am” with any of his answers, as most ladies of gentle breeding would.
But now, he watched her like a goose when a serpent slithers too close to the eggs in his nest.
A gloved hand glided across the desk until it reached the cherrywood box. Sweet mother of pearl, how could he have forgotten about that?
Miss Penelope tapped it twice. “Not like you to let the desk amass clutter.”
His blood turned to an icy sludge in his veins.
Would she thumb open the brass latch and look inside?
Would she recognize the parchment for what it was?
And, if so, how would she react? Was she more than a griffin rider, but a dark sorceress in disguise?
And if she didn’t know what it was, how could he ask her if her beloved friend dabbled in the dark arts?
Upon the parchment’s discovery, he’d promised himself to confront Miss Penelope about it, but now that she was here .
. . Bradley couldn’t bear the thought that his, well, they weren’t exactly his friends, since they were his superiors, but he couldn’t bear the thought that his amicable superiors had deceived him.
His world, not to mention his routine, had already been upended and shook about.
He couldn’t withstand another blow so soon.
A shove from behind startled him from his spiraling thoughts.
Zora cocked her head to the side to examine him with one glossy dark eye, her black beak poised to nudge him again.
He was holding up the inspection by not providing a quick answer to a simple question, and as she had stated before: She.
Was. Hungry. Honestly, this sorcerer apprentice had no idea what it was like to have four kits shoving her internal organs about and playing merry with her hormones.
She should take his arm as a snack for her and a lesson for him for trying a pregnant griffin’s patience.
Noticing an unsettling predatory gleam come to the griffin’s eye, Bradley took one large step further into the workroom. “S-sorry?” he asked when he realized Miss Penelope was looking at him expectantly. She’d asked him a question.
“Is that OCD of yours finally taking a day off?” she repeated with a teasing smile. She had moved away from the desk and was now on her way to the trapdoor with a pair of wicker basket saddlebags slung over her shoulders.
Behind her, the gap in the bookshelves stood out like a missing tooth in a child’s grin, at least to him, but she hadn’t mentioned it. Either she hadn’t noticed it or she was chalking it up to the break in Bradley’s neurosis.