Chapter 34 #2
“Heh.” He quickly picked up the remaining wicker basket saddlebags and followed her down to the kitchen.
There, the griffin rider helped him unload the provisions. She’d come to understand his organizational style, and any miscellaneous items she wasn’t sure about she just left on the counter. “I noticed the unusually large request for rice paper.”
Bradley spun around from where he’d set the milk in the icebox, the door whumping shut behind him. He found her attention mercifully directed at Dirk’s brown sugar sculpture. “Uh—”
“Is Lung Shang homesick?”
“Oh! No. J-j-just likes s-s-spring r-r-rolls.”
“Are you homesick, Bradley?” She removed her glove and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead. “You are acting a little more squirrelly than usual. Is that why you asked for another toothbrush? Because infection contaminated the other one?”
One could argue that the princess had done exactly that when she’d used his toothbrush, but he answered, a bit too chipper, “Nope!”
Miss Penelope gave him a skeptical look, shrugged, and indicated she would like to continue her inspection in his suite. They set the saddle bags just inside the kitchen archway to retrieve on their way back to the workroom and descended the stairs.
“W-we’re here,” Bradley announced loudly as he opened the door.
He hurried inside first to confirm that the closet doors, while bulging slightly against their hinges and lock, were still firmly shut. Bradley hid his sigh of relief by setting the replacement robe and extra toiletries in a neat pile on the bed.
“Indeed,” Miss Penelope said, striding in with a questioning glance. Like she had in the workroom, she linked her hands behind her back and snooped politely. “Where is your quilted bedspread, Bradley?”
“Wash.”
She moved into the bathroom and out again in less than ten seconds. “You’re always so clean and tidy, Bradley, but I daresay that tub could use a good scrub. And you never leave your towel anywhere but on its rack. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“Uh-huh,” he insisted.
“Uh-huh,” she echoed, not convinced. “Are you using a new bath oil? I daresay I’ve never smelled jasmine in here before.”
Bradley paled.
“It’s alright.” Miss Penelope laughed lightly. “It’s a nice change. On to the spring?”
She left the suite, expecting him to follow. No sooner had she left than the princess stuffed in the closet sneezed. While the sound was smothered by hand, quilt-sack, and one inch of hardy oak, it still resembled the blast of a firecracker.
Sweet mother of pearl, the lungs on this princess. Bradley supposed she, like all princesses, had been born with extra lung capacity for all the incessant chatter and gossiping she would partake in over the course of her life. How inconvenient for everyone with ears.
Miss Penelope paused on the stair. “Bradley?”
“Here.” He made a show of wiping his nose and yanked the suite door shut behind him, leaving the princess exactly where she was, locked in his closet.
“Are you sure you’re not coming down with something?”
He shook his head and offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
Miss Penelope didn’t buy it, but she didn’t push the matter either, for there really was no other explanation to be had.
Bradley Donmarin was a rule-follower to a fault.
She must have mistaken the femininity in that sneeze, for it would’ve been more probable for a tiger to change its stripes than for Bradley to have a girl hidden away in his closet.
And where would he have met one all the way out here, anyway?
Miss Penelope dismissed the matter from her mind and continued the trek to the spring below.
As they descended the tower, she divulged a month’s worth of College gossip.
Zora was pregnant, which he already knew, but it was still delightful news to be shared again.
Master Vesuvius was in anger management therapy for the second time this trimester (a personal record), and only three freshmen had almost blown themselves up with an ill-pronounced oblivatus spell.
Master Xamira had gotten herself turned into living diamond during her research trip to the Singing Crystal Chasms when she’d offended the local golem population by singing an A-flat instead of an A-sharp.
The grand masters of the College Board were confident they could restore her to her normal flesh-and-blood self by the end of the week.
The head cook had begun a secret tryst with the postman and would sneak him cream puffs, which wouldn’t be any news at all except there was a cream shortage at the moment after some traveling barbarian nutjob had scattered the region’s dairy cows.
“And did you know the elder Amberlian princess has been taken hostage by a rogue Great Red and a Discount Damsel Protocol is now in place?”
Bradley stumbled on a step and caught himself with the guard rope.
“And his tower is in this same desert, can you imagine?” Miss Penelope exclaimed. “I would’ve diverted to find it, except Zora can’t manage any detours. Such a pity. Princess Mildred could be rescued by the time I make it out here again.”
With a sigh, she leaned over the hip-high wall to gaze into the glowing waters of the spring. “Hello, shrimpy darlings! Ooo, it looks like we’ve entered the preparatory stages of spawning, haven’t we?” She pulled a gold pocket watch from her tailcoat. “And right on schedule. Marvelous.”
Bradley joined her on the cool sand at the bottom of the tower and cast a furtive glance towards the dungeons. Silent as tombs, they were, as was the hedge knight, who was nowhere to be seen.
Miss Penelope’s smile grew as she gazed down at all the white motes circling ever so slowly towards the surface. Then she sobered, straightening. “The grouper haven’t been giving Lung Shang any difficulty, have they?”
Bradley shook his head, not bothering to explain that they actually used the baby luck dragon as a lure to catch the grouper and eat them.
“Oh! I missed inspecting his suite. Still sleeping in the bathtub, is he?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll never understand that habit of his. Though, I suppose clouds are scarce in the desert. You’d think he’d opt for the feather bed then, but who am I to say? My business is with griffins.” She gestured that they should begin their climb back to the top.
The griffin rider had no trouble managing the stairs, her legs lean and strong from decades of aerial riding.
The silence between them was pensive and a mite strained, as if Miss Penelope was teetering upon a precipitous ledge of asking him something but never quite mustering the will to throw herself over the side and commit to her query.
“Ah, here we are,” she murmured when they reached the landing whose door was marked with a slashed D. She knocked out of habit, though the dragon was still outside with his tornado, and stepped inside.
Bradley stayed on the landing, as it was very rude indeed to enter another’s private sanctuary without permission. Something the princess needed reminded of after that fiasco in the tub. His fingers worried the tassels of his rope belt so they’d stop thinking how soft her skin had been.
Miss Penelope reappeared and shut the door behind her. “According to Lung Shang’s definition of the word, I suppose I find his suite in an acceptable state.”
She hadn’t remarked on the coins and jewels Bradley knew to be in Dirk’s bathtub, or the enchanted warhammer, so where had the little dragon hidden his budding treasure hoard? He kept the confusion off his face and hurried after Miss Penelope.
“Zora, sweetie,” she called when they reentered the workroom, “were you able to enjoy a sprinkle bath? Oh, I see Lung Shang is still at it. Marvelous stamina.” Miss Penelope spun around to snatch Bradley up for a farewell kiss on each cheek.
“Well, we’re off, darling. Lovely to see you again. Keep up the good work.”
He followed her out onto the southern balcony, or rather to the archway, as Zora took up most of the balcony herself. “A-a-and M-M-Master?” he asked.
Miss Penelope paused, her hands on either side of the saddle, and turned a small, kind smile towards him. “He’s always delighted to know you’re working hard and that you haven’t given up, Bradley.”
That wasn’t exactly what he’d been asking, but he knew this answer was the only one he would be given. His master never sent a message, verbal or written. It was hard not to think he’d been abandoned, but Miss Penelope’s monthly visits proved otherwise.
“Now wish us luck that Zora doesn’t go into labor midflight.” The griffin rider swung up into the saddle, and the griffin launched into the sky. “Ta-ta, darling!”