Chapter 68
THE CRUCIBLE, AN ANGRY WIFE . . . PERHAPS MITHRIL MIGHT SAVE YOU?
In the morning, Miss Penelope Shrewsbury discovered her husband’s apprentice sitting in the midst of the destroyed workroom, his arm in a sling across his chest. The sorcerous bits and bobs were everywhere, most of them broken or at the very least dented, and the hardwood floors, which were of a rare mahogany-ironwood hybrid, looked like they’d been attacked by a colony of griffins.
Zora, who usually only paid attention to her rider’s mood, was somber as she alighted on the northern balcony.
Her four kits, who had made the crossing with them, were not so emotionally mature.
Squealing, they bombarded the apprentice.
When they received no response, not even a swat to keep them from nipping his fingers or trying to make a nest out of his hair, they quickly flew off in search of something entertaining.
Miss Penelope entered the workroom on silent feet. “Bradley.”
The apprentice didn’t unfold from his hunch. “I failed.”
“I don’t understand, darling. What happened?”
He thrust his good arm out towards the stone frog, which the griffin kits were using as a jungle gym. “If I fed that Tianzi Toad enough magical artifacts, it would grant me a wish.”
“Oh.” Her mind flittered back to the discussion she’d had with Excelsior and his blackboard with the eighty different ways Bradley could break his curse.
“But I mistranslated the passage. I fed it something cursed, not enchanted, and it attacked.”
The Tianzi Twist Treasure Hunt had definitely twisted on him. I’m going to kill my husband, Penelope vowed.
He swallowed. “I didn’t get my wish.”
The leather of her riding boots creaked as she crouched in front of him, but she didn’t touch him. “Would you like me to take a look at your arm?”
“It’s fine. I dislocated my shoulder, but it’s back in now.”
“Ah.” She swallowed. “Darling, I’d still like to look at you.”
He said nothing, so she removed one of her riding gloves, leaned forward, and parted the curtain of long black hair. His handsome face was so drawn, his blue eyes so lifeless, that she instinctively recoiled.
“I-I’m sorry,” she immediately apologized.
Flushing, she opened a pouch on her belt and withdrew a small vial.
She broke off the wax seal with her teeth and offered it.
“Take this. It’s a healing potion we riders keep on hand if we or our mounts are injured in the field.
It’ll make short work of your recovery period, and it’ll numb the pain, too. This isn’t a request.”
Bradley sluiced the green liquid into the back of his throat, swallowed, let his hand fall limply into his lap.
Miss Penelope remained in her crouch, hands resting on her knees. “Bradley, what would you like to do?”
His dead blue eyes flicked up to hers, questioning.
“You have two weeks left—”
“Thirteen days and sixteen hours, give or take a minute.” His voice was flat, void of everything but despair.
“Of course. I-I could take you home now, or you could stay. I brought provisions, so at least you and Lung Shang would have nourishment. Where is the little luck dragon, by the way? I didn’t see him with his tornado outside today.”
“I don’t know.”
“But . . . he’s your Designated Sorcerer Companion.”
“I’m no sorcerer.” His eyes lowered, and he became unmoving and statuesque once more.
“Darling, I know you’re hurting, but this isn’t healthy.”
“Just leave me alone.”
The vehemence in his voice alerted Zora, and the griffin strode into the workroom with a hiss.
“Away, Zora,” Miss Penelope snapped.
The griffin grumbled and laid down in an alert sphinx pose instead of retreating.
“So you’ll stay,” Miss Penelope said, rising and planting her hands on her slim hips. “Very good. Now will you rise and accompany me on my inspection, or will you continue to just sit there on your ass and wallow? You have thirteen days left, Bradley, and that’s not nothing.”
He didn’t budge.
Miss Penelope’s heart cracked, and she dabbed at the corners of her eyes. This tower, The Crucible, had taken this wondrous gift of a young man and broken him. She didn’t know whether to tear her hair out and scream or break down and sob. She just knew whatever she chose, she couldn’t do it here.
“I see,” she said, voice strained. She sniffed once. “Well, I’ll go about my business and then I’ll be on my way.” She snapped her fingers at the kits rummaging around the ruins. “Zora, do be an active mother and mind your kits, would you? I’ll be right back.”
Striding to the trapdoor, she gave the room a careful, scrutinizing sweep.
The desk where the apprentice studied, and where the cherrywood box had lain, was broken to bits.
She couldn’t locate the box with this cursory glance, but Bradley’s eyes weren’t black, so hope remained that he hadn’t lost all of his.
In the kitchen, as Penelope took greater care than ever before to unload the supplies, she discovered two things: Bradley had baked some delicious, buttery, melt-in-the-mouth chai-spiced confections, and Lung Shang had sculpted the tower out of the block of brown sugar.
The detail was as amazing as it was imaginative—there were two women, one a pirate and the other a street urchin, joining Bradley and the luck dragon, plus an old hedge knight and a bookish gnome.
There was a frog, too, tanning itself upon dunes littered with weapons and knights in various poses of defeat.
“That Lung Shang really is the Great Reds’ biggest fan,” she murmured.
The luck dragon wasn’t in his room—which was oddly missing its door—and there was no whisper of him elsewhere, and she could not spare the time to search each and every room for him.
Pity, for he would have loved to meet Zora’s kits.
She was only mildly worried, assuming the two friends had had a spat.
Bradley’s despondent nature had probably driven the sensitive baby dragon into his own depression, but the two of them ought snap out of it in time. They had to.
The shrimp had finally spawned, which was delightful to see, and she selected one new crystal from the tower wall to bring back to her husband to examine before he met his untimely end.
When she returned to the workroom, she discovered the leopard jay kits doing their best to cheer up the apprentice.
Bluebell had crawled into his lap, belly up and looking impossibly adorable.
Mistral was draped across his shoulders, cuddling Bradley’s head with his whole body.
Iseult sat quietly and leaned against the apprentice’s unwounded side while Azura, the most rambunctious of the litter, batted at the tassel ends of his rope belt.
The apprentice was so unconscionably immune to the cuteness surrounding him that Miss Penelope wanted to shake him.
Instead, she returned to her crouch in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Squeezed. “Thank you for taking care of the shrimps. These new crystals will be a boon to another generation of sorcerers.”
“Glad I could help make someone else’s dreams come true,” he answered sourly.
“One of them is yours,” she said forcefully. She felt him wince under the power of her squeezing fingers. Her grip loosened only a fraction. “There is always hope, darling boy, if you choose to see it.”
When he didn’t reply, she leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on the top of his head.
Rising, she clicked her tongue at the griffin kits.
They left the apprentice, Azura giving the tassels one final pounce, and swarmed around her like oversized hornets.
In that moving cloud of fur and feather, she mounted her griffin and turned her north.
“Ta-ta, darling,” she murmured softly, and Zora leapt into the sky.
As he leaned back with his feet propped up upon the corner of his desk, Excelsior watched the hunched, unmoving figure of his apprentice through the abalone-framed mirror.
Off to the side in his office, Tianzi Twist Treasure Hunt had a line drawn through it, and the odds of the Path of Infernal Dealings had increased in possibility.
Excelsior’s drumming fingers left smudges of chalk against the desk’s polished surface that he’d eventually have to wipe away, but not now.
“Don’t give up, boy,” he whispered. “You’re not broken. You’re only knocked down.”
After a long sigh, the sorcerer rose and selected the winding path through his office’s warren of clutter that led him to the wooden mannequin that wore the mithril tunic.
He shrugged out of his blue robe and slipped the armor over his chest. He’d seen his wife’s face in the mirror—no doubt she would be in a stabby mood when she returned.
While his body could heal almost instantaneously, he still felt pain—which he felt more acutely now that he was approaching his three-hundred-and-eleventh birthday.
It was best to take precautions and hope the ride back to the College would cool her wrath.
When she arrived, perhaps he could distract her with an offer of a holiday to Lagunas? He’d heard the tangelo margaritas there were all the rage.
He supposed if the ride and the offer of a lovely holiday by the sea didn’t persuade her off her war path and she stormed his office like she would have in her prime as an elven warrior and started slinging accusations as well as her baton, he could argue that she had given his apprentice a hint without his permission—that little detail about the hag stone—and that this was all tit for tat.
But he knew his precious, beloved wife. She wouldn’t hear reason when her blood was up in defense of a noble cause.
No, they would have to fight this one out, then talk when one of them admitted defeat.
At least their disputes always concluded with understanding, forgiveness, and vigorous lovemaking.
It was just surviving to the lovemaking stage that had him a mite apprehensive.
With another sigh, he took the mithril helmet, too, and fitted it over his white head.