Chapter 93
DIRK HAS A PLAN, A PRINCESS BECOMES A PIRATE, A QUICK SIDE QUEST
Voices rose like a symphony’s crescendo and rolled into thunder against the kitchen ceiling. Dirk retreated to the beams and flattened his ears to dampen the sound. He concentrated on his luck, ripples of white light pulsing from his horns across his scales down to his feathered tail tuft.
“Amberly is hundreds of leagues away,” Pocket whispered. “How are we supposed to get there?”
“How are we supposed to get inside the castle and stop the wedding?” Sir Roger asked. “That place will be crawling with Leightonian guards. They’ll make sure to snatch up Miss Millie before anyone in Amberly can recognize her.”
“What about Dirk?” Duncan said. “He wasn’t always blue and puny. Can he get big and red again? Fly them over?”
“What about all those portals that kept popping up?” Prince Henri suggested.
Mutineer Millie tried to rally, but she had no answers to these questions.
Dirk could never use one of those rice paper spells ever again, and Bradley had returned the hag stone to Master Excelsior.
There was the griffin on the balcony, but not even that magical creature could cover that distance in so short a time, and certainly not when carrying more than one rider.
In six hours, her sister was going to marry a monster, and her kingdom would be thrown into a war with the dragons.
“Can we rig the dune skiff to travel over land?”
“What about attaching it to that griffin on the balcony?”
“Griffins aren’t cart mules!”
Millie cradled her head in her hands. All those wildflower meadows, all those ancient forests, those tea farms, the beautiful creeks that threaded through her country like lace. They would never survive the dragons’ fire.
Her spine crunched as she dropped down onto the salt barrel, numb.
Bradley was kneeling in front of her in the next second, hands perching on her knees. “Tula,” he began.
“Please don’t call me that right now.” She trembled with the effort to stay strong. “That little creature had endless ideas and I’m afraid I’ve run rather dry.”
She wasn’t going to give up, but Crone’s Crooked Tits, she couldn’t think with all this noise.
One hand moved to her cheek, steadying her. The blue of his robe made his eyes shine like sapphires. “I have every spell in the directories memorized, Millie. Give me an hour, and I’ll figure something ou—”
A flash of light burst above them. “I’ve got it!” Dirk shouted.
The little luck dragon with his cerulean scales and pearly horns all a-twinkle whooshed down from the beams. “Bradley, I need you. Millie, pack your things. Someone raid the pantry. We’re gonna need snacks!”
Without asking permission, Dirk ensnared Bradley with his wind and flew out of the kitchen.
“No wonder Sir Roger hates this,” Bradley fussed as he twisted about midair. “Dirk, you’re flying me down the tower ass-first!”
“We’re almost there.” He swooped into his bedroom and dropped Bradley on the bathmat in the adjoining bathroom. “Do you remember that day at the lake, when you created that playmate for me out of the water?”
Bradley rubbed the ache out of his bruised tailbone. “I used configuration magic.”
Dirk whizzed into his bedroom and collected all the fabric bolts and every odd and end he had ever extorted.
The only thing he removed from the tub was the velvet purse with the princess’s kidnap money inside.
He stuffed it into his satchel for safekeeping.
“This is your water. Now configure me a ship with sails.”
Bradley caught on immediately. “We’re going to have to move this outside.”
The bathroom window burst open with a sweep of Dirk’s tail. “Let’s do it.”
An hour later, hoots and hollers encouraged the tower residents to abandon their tasks and seek out the nearest window.
Millie had just finished securing the latches on her eighth and final travel trunk and bolted out of her walk-in closet.
Her thoughts had been spinning ever since she’d relinquished command of rescuing her sister and country to the baby luck dragon.
She trusted Dirk, and her stomach had still churned as if she’d eaten one too many egg sandwiches that had spent an unhealthy amount of time in the sun.
Now, she thrust open the shutters to either cry with relief or vomit down the side of the tower.
Instead, she flung her hand up with a shout as a lance of sunlight seared across her eyes.
“Sorry,” came Dirk’s faraway voice. “Just a moment!”
A moment passed with Millie’s smarting eyes firmly shut and both hands layered over them.
“You can look now!”
She spread her fingers and cautiously lifted one lid. Then she gripped the windowsill with a gasp.
A copper ship floated above the sand. It had all the features of a fine, three-deck galleon, but compact so it could be managed by a small crew.
Windows dotted a fat raised aftcastle, jewels sparkled along the gunwales, cannons loomed in their ports, and the figurehead was someone very much like herself, hair unbound and cutlass raised.
Yellow sails billowed from the masts, and from the crow’s nest, her sigil flag flapped in the desert breeze: a green cutlass crossed with a pink tulip.
In the shade below the floating ship, a figure in blue lay stretched upon the sand, exhausted. Sir Roger stood beside the supine sorcerer, waving at her.
“Millie, Millie, Millie!” Dirk zoomed up to where she craned out of her window.
“Isn’t it wonderful? Bradley and Sir Roger designed it from all my treasure and bits from the armory.
It’ll work just like the dune skiff so you won’t get seasick!
Bradley imbedded a levitas inperpetuita spell or something like that into the metal itself so it’ll never touch the ground!
The lowest it’ll get is that hover you see there.
You just catch the wind to move it or change altitude.
Or”—he fluffed out his mane and shimmered his blue scales—“you could ask a very talented master of the wind and rain to lend his magic and blow you about.”
The princess pirate slowly lowered the hands that had covered her mouth. “Master Dirk, it’s . . . it’s perfect.”
The luck dragon’s feathered mane swished with pleasure.
“I was hoping you’d think so. I didn’t get a chance to truly thank you after the renovatio spell, or even Pierpont.
I don’t suppose I can ever thank you enough, b-but I hope this shows that.
My gratitude. M-my—” Bottom lip trembling, he shielded misty golden eyes with his claws.
Millie grabbed hold of his tail and pulled him in for tight embrace. “I love you, little dragon.”
A shudder rippled down his serpentine body. “I love you, too, Princess. My princess.”
When they parted, Millie stole a moment to just cup her cheeks in her palms and lean out over the windowsill to gaze at the dragon’s wondrous gift. “This is absolutely brilliant, Master Dirk, truly. What’s her name?”
“That’s for you to decide.” He slid around her into her bedroom. “All packed, yes? Let’s load ’er up!”
While Dirk busied himself outfitting and provisioning the ship, the tower residents assembled themselves upon the shady sand beneath the galleon. A steeply angled gangway lead into the belly of the ship. With its sails furled, a chain and anchor kept the galleon relatively still for boarding.
“I have to go save my sister,” Millie said without preamble. “You are welcome to join me. In fact, there is a place for each and every one of you in my court, should you wish.”
“As co-regent?” Prince Henri asked.
Fink hissed at him, and the frog harrumphed from the safety of his birdcage.
“There is no time to do it now, but I can also return you to your homes. Sir Roger? I know your wife must be missing you terribly.”
“Not just her.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.
“But I will help you finish this first. Gotta train you how to use those cannons, after all. And, perhaps Tabitha could join us after? Seems like this ship could use a cook and a laundress, and no one can season a stew or starch a collar like my Tabby.”
“And I’m not going back to my father,” Duncan said vehemently. “It’s time I made a good person rich. Just point me to my bunk.” The gnome hoisted the books he’d brought with him from Calumbria under his arm and began boarding.
“Fink and I are sticking with you, bestie, obviously.” Pocket followed after Duncan. She brought the birdcage with her, telling the frog that he could either accompany them or be left in the sand to shrivel up like a green prune.
That left only the sorcerer, who had finally recovered and stood a few paces away, the desert breeze playing with the hem of his blue robe and teasing his black curls. A proud smile tugged at his lips.
“Whose idea was the flag?” she asked.
“Do you like it? I can change it if—”
“Don’t you dare.” Millie crossed the sand and slid her arms around his waist. She propped her chin against his chest and smiled up at him. “I absolutely love it.”
Bradley’s pulse danced at the sight of those freckled cheeks and mischievous brown eyes. “I noticed out of all the flowers at that vendor in Pierpont, you bought the tulips. And since you didn’t ever comment on the desert rose furnishings in your bedroom, I made an educated guess.”
“If I didn’t already have a favorite flower, the desert rose would’ve been it because you chose it for me.”
“Stop that.”
She startled. “Stop what?”
“Stop saying things that make me want to carry you to someplace soft and private when we have your sister to save.” He ducked his head to plant a kiss on her lips that threatened to muddle her thoughts like an expertly crafted mint julep.
She moaned a little protest when he pulled back.
His eyes twinkled. “Have you thought of a name for your ship? It’s bad luck to start a maiden voyage without a name. ”
She’d thought up a dozen names already and discarded all but one of them. “Tula.”
Bradley cocked an eyebrow.
“What? The name grew on me. And doesn’t it embody everything I am and hope to inspire in others?”
He kissed her again, soft and quick. “I’ll inscribe it right now.” The crystal glowed as he used the staff to write Tula in glowing script in the air in front of him, then pushed it towards the bare nameplate at the stern of the ship. This final task complete, he offered her his hand. “All aboard?”
She took it, not because she needed its steadiness to ascend the gangway, but simply because she wanted to be near him.
The Mutineer Millie of months ago never would’ve let a man undercut her independence in any way, perceived or actual, but that Mutineer Millie didn’t have a Bradley Donmarin at her side.
When she stepped onto the deck of her vessel, nothing but the jitters of the upcoming adventure flittered about her stomach. There was no flush of heat across her skin, no churn of nausea in her gut. Her seasickness didn’t exist in the sky.
Millie sighed so deeply, her knees almost buckled.
Then she scurried up the stairs to the quarter deck and the helm.
Perched upon the bowsprit, Festus gave an impatient caw.
Sir Roger led the others in weighing anchor, and the slinky blue luck dragon zipped about unfurling the sails and filling them with wind. Tula leaned forward, eager to be off.
“What’s the plan, Captain?” Bradley took the mainline in hand with a practiced grip, preparing to put her command into action. “Straight to Amberly?”
Millie secured her hat to her head against the wind and shook out her shoulders.
Her gloved hands roamed fondly over the helm’s spokes.
“Not quite. We’re going to need a distraction if we’re going to get past the Leightonian guard.
Someone to keep that Skybreaker from shooting us out of the sky. And I know just where to find him.”