10. The Search Reaches the Farm
The Search Reaches the Farm
Slade
Grimwald Acres has never seen this much panic in one afternoon.
From my hiding spot behind a stack of feed sacks in the barn, I have an excellent view of the chaos unfolding in the yard. Baron Grimwald is stomping around like a constipated bull in a powdered wig, face purple with fury.
"Hide them! Hide the farmhands! If that royal slut finds out our stable boys are the ones who defiled her..."
"Father, please," Brant interrupts, adjusting his codpiece for what I count as the fifteenth time today. "She's not here for the farmhands. She's here because she changed her mind about us.”
I exchange a glance with Ash, who's wedged into the shadows of an empty horse stall, his massive frame somehow folded into a space half his size. His expression says what we're both thinking: these idiots have no idea.
Garrick is doing something deeply uncomfortable near the horse trough, squatting, stretching, making small grunting noises that I wish I could unhear.
"I've been practicing," he announces to no one in particular. "Practicing the left curve. If I tuck it just right and think about sad things, it sort of... tilts."
"That's not how anatomy works," Brant hisses.
"It's working! Look!"
Garrick yanks down his trousers right there in the yard.
I look away. Not fast enough. That image is now seared into my memory forever.
"That's not a curve, that's a cramp," Brant says, covering his eyes. "Put it away before the pigs lose their appetites."
From the hayloft above us, the animals are having the time of their lives.
"Oh, this is beautiful," Squeak whispers, peering through a gap in the wood. "They're literally trying to reshape their dicks. I've never been more entertained."
"The big stupid one is still doing stretches," Nibbles reports. "I think he pulled something."
"Good," Twitch says viciously. "I hope it falls off."
Bastard is perched on a hay bale beside me, feathers ruffled with anticipation. He lets out a low, threatening honk, the kind that promises violence to the Grimwald bloodline specifically.
I put a hand on his neck. "Not yet. Let them humiliate themselves first."
Bastard honks again, softer. He understands. He's patient. He can wait.
Susan has positioned herself at the highest point of the barn, tiny body rigid, nose twitching toward the approaching carriage. She's been inconsolable since Gerald's capture. Wreck tried to comfort her, but ferret grief is apparently a powerful thing.
"Gerald's in that carriage," she chitters mournfully. "I can smell him. He smells like stolen jewelry and emotional trauma."
"Focus, Susan," I say. "We need to stay hidden until she leaves."
"She's not going to leave," Ash says from his stall. "She's hunting."
Through the barn slats, I watch the royal carriage roll to a stop in the muddy yard. The door opens.
Lady Cinder steps out.
Gods, she looks magnificent.
Crimson riding dress, hair pinned up in a style that says "I have been inspecting penises for four days and I am done playing nice," and Gerald perched on her shoulder like a furry familiar from hell.
I catalogue every detail automatically. The tension in her shoulders. The determination in her jaw. The way her eyes scan the farm with predatory focus.
She's not just searching. She's certain.
She knows we're here. She just doesn't know where.
Gerald's head swivels toward the barn. His body goes rigid.
"Oh shit," Wreck breathes from somewhere above us. "He knows. He KNOWS."
Gerald begins chittering, not his usual chaotic screaming, but something urgent and desperate. His tiny paws scrabble at Cinder's shoulder, trying to launch himself toward the barn.
"In a moment, you little monster," Cinder says, holding him in place. She surveys the farm with the calculating eye of a woman who has inspected eight hundred and forty-seven cocks and found them all wanting. "Baron Grimwald. What a pleasure to see you again."
The Baron bows so low his wig nearly falls into a mud puddle. "Your Ladyship! What an honor! An unexpected, completely surprising honor! We had no idea you were…"
"Save it." Cinder strides forward, her lady-in-waiting trailing behind with the boot, the glove, and a look of exhausted resignation. "I'm told you have farmhands. Working men. Men who might fit this boot."
"Farmhands? Here?" The Baron's laugh is approximately seventy percent panic. "No, no, Your Ladyship, we have no farmhands. Just my sons! My two wonderful sons who would be honored to try on the boot again and…"
"They already failed. At the castle." Cinder's smile is sharp. "But since I'm here, why not let them fail again? It'll be entertaining."
I can't help it. I grin.
This is going to be delicious.
Brant steps forward, chest puffed, confidence completely unearned. "My lady, I believe there may have been an error at the castle. The lighting was poor. The boot wasn't properly warmed. My foot was... temporarily shrunken from travel."
"Your foot was temporarily shrunken," Cinder repeats flatly.
"Yes! But now I'm certain it will fit perfectly." He grabs the boot from her lady-in-waiting before anyone can stop him and jams his foot in with the desperate energy of a man whose entire future depends on this moment.
The boot does not fit.
It didn't fit at the castle. It doesn't fit now. It will never fit because Brant's foot is a size ten and the boot is a size fourteen and no amount of desperation can change basic mathematics.
"It's... it's the mud," Brant stammers, foot rattling around inside the leather like a sad little bean in a very large pod. "The mud has expanded the boot since the castle. It's roomier now. If I just…"
"Stop talking."
From the loft, the animals can barely contain themselves.
"It's like watching a sausage try to cosplay as a horse," Squeak whispers gleefully.
"He's sweating through his doublet," Nibbles observes. "That's a lot of sweat. That's fear sweat."
"I hope he cries," Twitch adds. "I want to see him cry."
Cinder plucks the boot off Brant's pathetically small foot. "The boot does not fit. It did not fit at the castle. It will not fit if you try seventeen more times. Accept this."
"But my lady."
"Glove?"
Brant grabs it. Shoves his hand in. His stubby fingers stop two inches short of the fingertips.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
"The glove does not fit either. What a surprise."
"Perhaps if I stretched my fingers."
"Your fingers cannot grow on command." Cinder holds up Gerald, who is still straining toward the barn. "Ferret?"
Gerald is deposited in Brant's arms.
I hold my breath.
For one horrible second, nothing happens.
Then Gerald chooses violence.
The ferret sinks his teeth into Brant's left ear with the precision of a tiny, furry assassin. Brant screams, a high, undignified shriek, and stumbles backward, flailing. Gerald holds on, tiny body swinging like a furious earring.
"Get it off get it off get it off."
From the loft, Susan lets out a chitter of fierce approval. "That's my man. That's my husband."
"Gerald's not your husband," I point out quietly.
"He's my emotional support war criminal and I will not be corrected."
Two guards finally manage to pry Gerald off Brant's bleeding ear. The ferret is deposited back on Cinder's shoulder, looking immensely satisfied with himself.
"You," Cinder says to Brant's crumpled, bleeding form, "may leave. Garrick. Your turn."
Garrick approaches with significantly less confidence than his brother.
"Boot," Cinder says.
Garrick tries. The boot does not fit because Garrick's feet are somehow even smaller than Brant's, a genetic tragedy I'm only now appreciating.
"Glove."
Garrick tries. The glove does not fit because his fingers are shaped like undercooked breakfast sausages.
"Ferret."
"Could we... skip the ferret?"
"No."
Gerald is placed in Garrick's arms with all the ceremony of handing someone a live grenade.
The ferret stares at Garrick.
Garrick stares at the ferret.
Gerald opens his mouth, leans forward slowly, and lets out a single, high-pitched screech directly into Garrick's face, the kind of sound that suggests the ferret has looked into his soul and found it wanting.
Then he urinates on Garrick's doublet.
I have to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud.
"That's not a bite," Garrick says weakly, looking down at the spreading wet stain. "That's not a rejection, that's just…"
"That's a rejection," Cinder says. "Gerald has very particular ways of expressing disapproval. You've been eliminated. Also, you now smell like ferret piss. You're welcome."
She turns to the Baron, who looks like he wants the earth to swallow him whole. "Now. Your farmhands."
"We don't have farmhands."
"You have a working farm. You have pigs, chickens, fields that need plowing. Someone is doing that labor, and it's clearly not your useless sons. Bring. Me. Your. Workers."
Ash closes his eyes beside me. "This is it."
"We could run," Wreck suggests from above. "There's a back door. We could be three fields away before…"
"She has Gerald," I point out. "And Susan would never forgive us."
Susan chitters emphatically.
"Also," Ash adds heavily, "I don't think I want to run."
I look at him. "You don't?"
"I've been thinking about her for days. Every night. Every morning. Every time I close my eyes." His jaw tightens. "If she wants to find us, maybe she should find us."
"You're just horny," I say.
"Yes. And also serious."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"Exactly."
Outside, Baron Grimwald is making one last desperate attempt at deception. "The workers have fled! They heard you were coming and they ran away! Cowards, all of them! I have no men here except my sons."
Gerald launches himself off Cinder's shoulder.
One moment the ferret is perched there like a fuzzy gargoyle. The next, he's a streak of brown lightning, rocketing across the muddy yard, past the horrified Baron, straight toward the barn doors.
He hits them with his full body weight, which isn't much, but ferrets are nothing if not determined, and squeezes through a gap in the wood.