Chapter 82
A VAST NUMBER OF HEROES, THERE’S A CHANCE, AND THE NUANCES OF TRANSLATION
Sir Eustace’s “vast number of Heroes” turned out to be an army. There had to be at least a hundred soldiers, maybe two, marching across the desert in beige jerkins and pith helmets. Tawny camels dragged a massive contraption over the sand on a large sled.
“That’s a crossbow,” Millie whispered. “But I’ve never seen one so large.”
Beside her at the training room window, Sir Roger lowered his spyglass.
“That’s a Skybreaker, miss, armed with Damascus steel crossbolts.
Those’ll cut through dragonhide as easily as a fire tears through dry grass.
” The hedge knight cursed. “What is it doing here? It’s supposed to be headed north. And why isn’t it coated in oil?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that, miss. A few weeks before I was sent to rescue you, the castle was buzzing to fulfill an order for a Skybreaker and a dozen bolts for export. I thought I would be assigned to the escort team, but instead, I was sent to rescue you. That was months ago.”
Millie’s forehead crinkled with unease. “Whose insignia does the army wear?”
Sir Roger scanned the troops. “They bear the sigil of the crown and crystal. It’s Leighton.”
Prince Chandler Stonevein’s face appeared in her mind’s eye. Then her fist connecting with his smug smile.
“I don’t suppose that by-blow of a swamp witch is gracing us with his presence?”
Sir Roger choked back a laugh. “No, miss. Another’s leading his army. Oh, I recognize this fellow. Raleigh Flinthart. Calls himself a knight, but he’s a dog through and through.”
“Don’t insult dogs, Sir Roger. They’re wonderful creatures. Not as brilliant as cats, but there is something to be said for their enthusiasm.” She crossed her arms, fingers drumming in the crook of her elbow.
The hedge knight lowered his spyglass again. “This all seems a bit much for one princess, don’t you think?”
“It might not be me alone they’re after,” she muttered.
Did Chandler know what Dirk truly was, a luck dragon whose heart could cure his land?
“Miss?”
“Nothing.” She directed her gaze below. “It seems Sir Eustace would agree with you.”
The ministry official was one inconvenience away from a full meltdown.
Apparently no one had ever sent an army to reclaim a DDP princess before, and either he didn’t have the necessary legal code to guide him through it or it didn’t exist or it was so convoluted that it boggled even his brain.
At the very least, it would be a nightmare recording all their names for the history books.
Her hand dropped to her cutlass, smoothing over the shell guard with a familiar touch. “Well, we know our tasks. You’re in charge of the tower, Sir Roger.”
He nodded briskly. “Ma’am.”
Normally it would be very poor form indeed to leave her first command to another, but she was in the habit of shunning Propriety’s Way of Doing Things.
The hedge knight was the seasoned one who could guide the others in the tower’s defense, leaving her free to cause what mischief she wished—she’d found a crate in the armory labeled ‘grenades’ that she was excited to tinker with—as well as care for the ailing luck dragon.
Dirk the Dangerous’s condition had worsened dramatically, and his mood had soured to match.
The luck dragon had become quite bloated and grub like, his slinky length nowhere to be found.
Even his eyes had changed, darkening from their beautiful gold to a mottled mud brown.
He refused to fly—or couldn’t—and would have spent his days sleeping in his tub of treasure had Millie and Bradley not forcibly removed him to the dungeons.
There, he was confined until bathtime. At such a time, which had increased to four times a day, Millie scooped water out of the spring and into the laundry washtub.
Dirk became as frantic as an octopus on its way to the soup pot then, grabbing everything he could get his paws, tail, or teeth on to keep himself out of the water.
And how the little dragon would curse her.
He said the vilest things to her, things that would earn a man tea hurled at his feet or her cutlass in his stomach.
But she was the only one he would barely tolerate—she was his princess, and, somewhere deep down, that desire to keep her safe still burned.
Millie always prevailed in the Washtub Wars, love and desperation fueling her muscles in equal measure, and she would eventually stuff him into the washtub.
The water would sizzle, the dragon would howl, and then his thrashing would subside.
He would calm, his old self returning, and she would sit with him until the magical water lost its effectiveness.
Sometimes she regaled him with stories of her afternoon teas with the dragons, sometimes it was the little adventures she’d taken Duchess on when they were both younger.
After leaving Sir Roger in the training room, Millie paused on the landing to steel herself.
She loved the little dragon, but she found his behavior positively insufferable as of late.
Almost to the point of loathing. She had to remind herself, multiple times a day, that this wasn’t the real Dirk. The real Lung Shang.
He’d been an absolute horror to her earlier this morning, so much so that she decided she needed a large glass of Pocket’s mead before wrangling him again.
Leighton’s army wouldn’t arrive for another hour or so; her liver had plenty of time to burn it out of her system.
With a heavy sigh, she began her trudge up the stairs to the kitchen.
“Millie!”
“Bradley?”
The apprentice was practically charging down the stairs, robe and rope belt flapping madly.
The hermit crabs flashed a bioluminescent warning and scuttled out of his way.
She’d barely seen him since their return from Pierpont, though she’d heard him pacing about the tower like a man with an unhealthy obsession with fitness at all hours of the day and night.
When he wasn’t puzzling out the Tianzi Puzzle Box, he was searching for his next clue on how to break his curse.
Only then could he speak High Aetherial and use the renovatio spell on Dirk.
He practiced all the tongue-twisters Millie had ever given him, just in case improving his tongue dexterity jogged loose the lock on magic, but he had yet to be successful.
Now, as he bounded like a baby goat down the stairs, maybe he had.
“Did you have a breakthrough?” Crone’s Crooked Tits, her voice sounded so desperate for good news. “Or hear back from Master Excelsior?”
The night they’d had returned from Pierpont, the apprentice had sent his master a message through the enchanted blackboard in the kitchen. It could’ve taken his master a day or two to receive it, though, as the blackboard’s enchanted twin was in the College kitchens.
“Neither. But look.” He held an unfamiliar piece of papyrus in one hand and a whole sheet of rice paper in the other.
“I-is that—? How did you—?”
“Yes it is the revival spell, and Henri opened the scroll tube. That little frog apparently loves Tianzi Puzzle Boxes and got it open in, like, ten minutes. He is demanding a kiss from you as recompense.”
She waved that aside. “And the rice paper?”
Bradley’s face was bright and smiling, his blue eyes mildly crazed like a child who’d had their first taste of refined sugar. “If I can write Dirk enlargement and endurance spells, even that complicated one that gives him wings, why not a revival spell?”
Millie felt like her heart would burst like an overripe tomato. She snatched his wrist and darted down the stairs. “Come on then!”
Giggling like teenagers sneaking off to snog in the woods, the two raced down to the dungeons.
Slumped in the sand, the luck dragon eyed them balefully from behind the iron bars.
The gloom did a good job of hiding how many scales he had lost, but not good enough.
Where cerulean scales once glittered, thick dark skin covered him in large patches.
A bald nub was all he had left of a tail tuft, the pearlescent feathers skipping along the sand.
He’d stopped collecting his shed feathers and scales long ago.
“Well if it isn’t the Has-Been and the Deluded Ditz,” Dirk sneered. “Fuck off.”
Bradley didn’t take the bait but didn’t approach, either. The last time he’d tried to go anywhere near the luck dragon, sharp pointy teeth had narrowly missed his forearm. “I transferred the restoration spell to some rice paper for you.”
Some of the hate left Dirk’s eyes. There was a flash of the old Dirk, the hopeful Dirk.
“Here.” Millie eased the rice paper from Bradley’s tense grip. “Let’s give this a try, Dirk. Come on.”
Joints popped as Dirk rolled out of his slump onto all fours. The princess folded her skirt under her knees and knelt in the sand on the opposite side of the bars.
The dragon eyed the sheaf of rice paper, swiveled his gaze back to Bradley. “You couldn’t have written this on something smaller?”
The apprentice clenched his jaw to keep his retort to himself.
“Hn. And were you drunk off Pocket’s mead when you wrote this? Penmanship’s atrocious. Sloppy words mean sloppy results, or have you forgotten the pancakes? Feh, this’ll never work.”
“Give it a try anyway, Dirk.” Millie forced her tone to stay light and encouraging when what she really wanted to do was wrench open his jaws and shove it down his throat. She lifted her reticule and gave it an enticing wiggle. “Eat the spell and I’ll give you a lychee.”
“If it’ll get you off my back.” Dirk snatched the rice paper from her and made a show of placing it whole on his tongue. He struggled to swallow it down.
Bradley leaned forward onto the balls of his feet, heart rising like a bird about to take wing. This was it. He could forget all the hateful words and surly looks and attempted dismemberment if this worked.
Dirk smacked his lips and looked down at his belly, the cerulean scales now as infrequent as stars on a cloudy night. “Guess I was right about you being a Has-Been. Now where’s my lychee?”
The Kraken take him straight to the Locker.
Millie fished the fruit out of her reticule, as promised.
As Dirk tore into the lychee, muttering how sour it was, the princess murmured, “Please excuse us,” and guided Bradley out of the dragon’s line of sight.
“He’s lost his ability to fly, plus all sense of politeness, and now he can’t even manifest a spell into being.
” Bradley tore a hand through his hair, fingers snagging in the curls.
The physical pain compounded the one in his heart.
“It’s hopeless. I need Master Excelsior, but he—” The apprentice released his frustrations out on the sand with a vicious kick.
“Keep it together,” she hissed. “I’m already managing one male’s emotional state in addition to my own; do not add yourself to that list. Now let me see the spell.”
Bradley handed over the slip of papyrus and stood close to read over her shoulder, though he had the spell memorized by now. The tip of her finger slid beneath each word as she murmured them aloud in a soft voice. Then her finger hovered over one word in particular.
“This word isn’t just want,” she whispered to him.
“It denotes a bone-deep desire, a plea, even a repentance of sorts. Not only does Dirk need to want to be restored to his old self with his entire being, he needs to want to never make the same mistake again.” She tapped the papyrus against her palm.
“I don’t believe he’s in the mental state to do that. ”
The apprentice cursed.
Millie returned the papyrus. “Go write another spell. Dirk always returns to himself, at least partially, after he’s had a long soak in the tub. Maybe we need to be more aggressive, put him in the actual spring.”
“The groupers will come and eat him.”
“But not right away. We’ll have a few minutes before they sense him. A few minutes will be enough for him to eat the rice paper and want the spell to work.”
Bradley scoffed. “Will it?”
Mutineer Millie slapped him across the cheek much like one would a fly that had landed on her picnic blanket. With gusto.
His hand pressed to his stinging skin, and indignation burned in his blue eyes.
She thrust her finger into his face. “What did I say about forcing me to manage another male’s emotional state?
You do not get to lose hope, Bradley Donmarin.
Not until every scale and feather has left that dragon’s body.
I do not have time for your doubts, and neither does he.
That’s Leighton’s army out there, and they’ll be here within the hour.
Good luck writing nice and neat when they start assaulting the tower.
Now go before this finger becomes a hairpin. Or worse, my cutlass.”
From the way her face resembled a thundercloud, Bradley knew she meant business. He mumbled an apology and practically fled up the stairs for the rice paper.