Chapter 63
EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS, DUNE SURFING, A SUSPICIOUS WINK
In the weeks following Jaxson’s betrayal, the tower was a frenzy of activity:
Dirk refused to let the princess out of his sight.
It wasn’t lost on him that his escapades had left his friend dangerously vulnerable.
He became her shadow, leaving her side only to sleep or fend off a Hero, which were in short supply of late despite there being less than a month left on the DDP, because . . .
The height of sandstorm season had fully descended upon Ashburnum.
Storm after storm choked the sky with dust and whipped up sand to flesh-ripping speeds, delaying Miss Penelope’s sixth and last visit to the tower.
She managed to send word through the enchanted blackboard of her delay but could provide no new arrival time.
Bradley had assured her that he had enough supplies to stretch a few more weeks.
Which was true, if the girls would ever stop eating because . . .
Pocket was unaccustomed to two meals a day, let alone three, and had immediately embraced this new norm.
She helped herself to the salt barrel, preferring heavily seasoned food, and even took the liberty of refilling the salt cellar crock she kept in one of her raffia purses.
She offset her indulgence by collecting all the kitchen’s fruit scraps and some honey to start making a rough-and-ready mead for all to enjoy in a few weeks’ time.
While the pickpocket became acquainted with her new home, Millie trained with a fervor that had the tower residents questioning: one) if she’d been bitten by something rabid, and two) was it still loose in the tower somewhere?
She rose unconscionably early and went to bed long after the apprentice had doused the floating lanterns in the workroom. Jaxson Sloop, if that was his real name at all, had fooled her in more ways than one, and she never wanted to be found at such a disadvantage ever again.
Millie’s diligence and determination had impressed the hells out of Pocket, who’d been expecting Dirk’s princess to be a whiny bimbo always choking on the silver spoon lodged in her throat.
To her great surprise, she and the princess became fast friends.
Each absolutely adored the other’s sassiness, ambition, genuineness, and sense of fashion.
Millie was edgy aristocrat with her shortened hems and embellished corsets, and Pocket was Bohemian chic with flowing layers of lightweight fabric and that large tooth pendant strung from rawhide around her neck.
Society would’ve pitted them against each other, as they could not be further divided in terms of class and rank, but none of that mattered in the tower.
It was a marvelous time for both women—finding a peer who’d rather build you up than tear you down.
And, aided as she was by her own hag stone, Pocket became an invaluable asset to the Tianzi Toad Treasure Hunt.
She met up with Bradley every morning after breakfast and searched the myriad rooms with him in a surprisingly comfortable silence—broken only by Prince Henri’s singing as he kept watch from his birdcage on the northern skies for any sign of the griffin and her rider—until Millie and Dirk joined them in the afternoon for her pickpocket training.
Millie’s ongoing lesson was to attach a clothespin to her mark without getting caught, because if you couldn’t add something to someone’s pocket undetected, then how would you ever successfully remove something?
That was the difference between a pickpocket and a thief—subtlety.
Anyone was fair game: Bradley, Dirk, and Pocket herself.
Millie even practiced the clothespin prank on Sir Roger and Duncan, much to the former’s amusement and the latter’s confusion.
Millie never attempted to pin Bradley, choosing to avoid him entirely.
This afternoon, Millie knocked on the door of the room they were searching, but only stuck her head in.
Behind her, a Mini Red hovered like a mute bodyguard.
“Pocket? The sky is clear and the winds are doing something delightfully devious across the dunes and I would very much like to seize this opportunity with the skiff. Would you mind terribly if we postponed our lesson until this evening?”
“I would not mind in the least, Millie.”
“Thank you.” Her brown eyes flicked to Bradley. “Hmph.” She spun on her heel and left, Dirk swirling behind her.
Bradley opened his mouth, shut it with an irritated exhale, and resumed his search with a newly formed frown.
The princess had been like that for the last thirteen days, eighteen hours, and seventeen minutes: huffy.
She had no words to spare for him other than what was entirely necessary for them to complete whatever task needed their attention.
Though she had about the same amount of words for everyone else, their exchanges were accompanied by easy camaraderie and smiles that actually reached her brown eyes.
“In case you’re wondering,” Pocket drawled, “that’s what you get for not kissing a princess after you rescue her.”
Prince Henri immediately shut his mouth mid-chorus, and Bradley dropped the pewter snuff box he’d been examining, caught it, and hastily set it back down on the end table.
This room was the equivalent to three blocks of open-air flea markets all crammed into seven hundred square feet, and they’d been rooting through it for the past two days.
The pickpocket snatched up a handful of lavender sachets and lobbed them one after the other at him. Fink, who had adopted Pocket immediately as his preferred person, clung to her shoulders for dear life.
“Or after she gets you jealous and you dismiss one of her tutors,” Pocket yelled. “Or after you string her up like ham in the kitchen, which is funny, because I didn’t peg you for the kinky type.”
Bradley dodged one floral-scented missile and smacked the other out of the air. “Pocket!”
“Or after you rub little circles with your thumb on the back of her hand!” She hurled the rest at him, save one, which she slipped into one of her raffia purses.
The apprentice rose from where he’d taken cover behind a fainting couch. “Excuse me?”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with your ears, Lord of the Curls.”
Bradley’s gaze slitted. “You’re just jealous my hair’s prettier than yours.”
Pocket held up a lock of black hair, which was indeed less shiny than his, and flicked it over her shoulder. When it didn’t fully clear her shoulder, Fink quickly adjusted it for her and received a pat on the head that made his little eyes sparkle.
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and my bestie.” She lifted the reddish hag stone to her eye and gave this quarter of the room a sweep. “Over there, to your left.”
“All it took was a sleepover and a wardrobe makeover and you’re besties now?”
The princess had given the pickpocket her entire collection of headscarves, and Pocket had chucked her stocking hat into the wastebasket and never looked back.
Today she sported a headscarf with a paisley motif in jewel-toned colors, as well as one of the many blouses Millie insisted she adopt from her own collection.
The princess and the dragon had also insisted Bradley welcome their newest friend with an egg breakfast. They’d bullied him into that infested attic to face the pigeons, who, as per usual, went feral the moment he neared the southwest wedge.
His hands and neck were still healing from all the scratches and pecks.
Bradley stopped itching a scab and moved to where Pocket pointed—a set of stacked chairs—and sensed something in one of the fat damask cushions. Bradley unsheathed the knife he’d acquired for this exact purpose. “You’ve know each other, what, fourteen days?”
“Never met a princess who’d willing let me raid her closet before, nor share her room and sleep in her bed, nor pester me about my past.” She shrugged. “Sometimes that’s all you need to know about a person. And you’re oddly precise for someone who doesn’t seem to care.”
“I’m a sorcerer apprentice. Of course I’m precise.”
“Yeah? How long have the shark women of the Orca Archipelago been without a queen?”
“Thirty-nine years, two months, and six days.”
“And how many tumblers are in a Ryu Dynasty Tianzi Death Lock?”
“Fourteen.”
“And how long have you know you’ve been in love with Millie?”
“Si—” Bradley shut his mouth.
Pocket snapped her fingers. “Gotcha.”
Fink sniggered.
She swaggered over to where he worked on the cushion, her smile wider than a Cheshire cat’s.
“I’m a pickpocket, Spell Boy, but sometimes I steal secrets instead of trinkets.
So, now that we both know you want to kiss her, why haven’t you?
You’ve had every opportunity. That rescue in the stairwell, that day you taught her how to windsurf with the dune skiff, every morning after those ridiculous speech therapy lessons.
” She laughed. “Why not try a real feat of oral dexterity and wrap your tongue around hers?”
Bradley abandoned his delicate seam-ripping and turned his full attention on the pickpocket. “Because what good will come of me kissing her?”
It would only be confusing, for the both of them.
“What good?” Pocket echoed. “Hopefully something way better than ‘good.’ An orgasm, if you’re lucky.”
The apprentice rolled his eyes. “I can see why you two are besties—you’re both equally crass.”
“Never met a man in my life who’d turn down an orgasm.” She gave him an inquisitive look. “A healer’s probably got a potion for that—”
“Maybe I’m not like the lowlifes you’ve tumbled, Pocket.” He jabbed his blade straight into the cushion and ripped a big X across the seat. “Maybe I have standards. Maybe I have plans for my future that don’t include crotch rot.”
“Yeah?” Propping her elbow again a decrepit wardrobe, Pocket leaned her cheek against her hand. “What plans are those?”