Page 224 of The Discount Damsel

Heat pricked the backs of his eyes; his throat tightened like the buckling braces of a mine shaft about to collapse. It hurt to know his master had let him suffer. It hurt more to differentiate the fact that letting him struggle and suffer and rip his hair out wasn’t the same as causing it. And if he hadn’t been brought to the brink of desperation, stripped down to his very essence, could he have saved Dirk? Himself? Millie?

His voice shook. “You have no idea what I went through to keep my soul.”

“Don’t I?” The archmaster waded through the sorcerous clutter until he was beside the abalone-framed mirror. He gave the center a little tap-tap of his index finger, and the reflective surface shimmered as if made of water instead of glass. “I saw everything. Those hermit crabs? They were my eyes and ears of this place—except those ones you fed to the frog and the ferret. When their shells glowed, that was them transmitting to this mirror, and I watched from its twin in my office. I saw every failure, every discovery, and I could not share in them for your sake. Transformation is an ugly business and must be done by one’s own merit. But you were never abandoned, my dear boy, not in the way you think you were.”

A ragged sob tore free from Bradley’s chest. Pressure burst like an egg gripped too tightly in a fist, and tears streamed down his face. Bradley smacked his spectacles up against his topknot and mashed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

When the sorcerer pulled the apprentice into his arms, the young man went willingly. His fingers fisted in the blue robe, clung so he wouldn’t fall. The release of his grief, the reassurance that he’d never been truly discarded and alone, was so cathartic, it made him weak.

Dirk perched on Bradley’s shoulder and rubbed his snout against his head, a calming technique he’d learned from Duchess.

“You’re a good man, Bradley Donmarin,” Master Excelsior murmured, stroking his back. “You’ll make an incredible sorcerer. But only if you stop leaking into my robe and we get to the exam chamber in time.”

Bradley released a strangled laugh and lifted his face from his master’s shoulder. The old man’s smile was kind, a twinkling in his eyes.

“I get my staff and I get a break.” He righted his spectacles and shook the lingering webs of tension from his shoulders. “I need a few days to . . . process.”

“You’ll have them.”

The apprentice fished the hag stone out of his pocket.

“Don’t you want to say good-bye?”

Bradley froze.

A knowing smile crept across the archmaster’s face. “I told you I saw everything that happened in my tower.”

Bradley and Dirk shared a panicked look; the apprentice paled and the little dragon gulped.

“Mm-hmm,” Master Excelsior said smugly. “Dirk the Dangerous, the Discount Damsel Protocol, all the Heroes attacking my tower, that mess of a Tianzi Treasure Hunt, your glorious transformations . . . I suppose I should be thankful that princess always shooed the hermit crabs out of the bedroom, particularly last night, right, Bradley?”

The Kraken take him down to the Locker.

His master rubbed his hands together. “Now that all has been revealed, and you’re not a dark apprentice, I’m not a dark master, and we’ve all forgiven each other for the hubbub of the last three months, why don’t you introduce me to that lovely girl, Princess Millie of Amberly? Just a quick hello—we really must get you to that exam chamber. And if we hurry, I might be able to try one of those delicious-looking teacakes before they’re all gone.”

CHAPTER 90

TEACAKES, MORE LIMP NOODLES, AND ANOTHER LOOPHOLE

By the time the tower residents heard footsteps in the stairwell, it was too late to flee the kitchen and hide elsewhere, specifically somewhere with doors. So, in the way of children about to be discovered in the pantry stuffing their mouths with sweets before supper, they froze, hoping through stillness to be overlooked.

Master Excelsior strode right into the kitchen, smiling. “Sir Roger, Miss Pocket, Mr. Boekhouwer, Prince Henri des Marais, Fink, such a pleasure to make your acquaintances after all this time of spying on you through the mirror.”

“What?” Pocket gasped.

Sir Roger gave her a mildly patronizing look over the rim of the Lip Cutter, whose chip he had angled far away from him. “Surely you’re not still surprised about all the strangeness that surrounds this place, are you, girl?” He snorted, took his sip, and rose to offer his seat—the salt barrel—to the sorcerer. “Oh the naivety of youth.”

Master Excelsior smiled at the proffered barrel but didn’t accept it. Instead, he presented himself in front of Millie, who had risen out of Bradley’s chair. Smiling softly, he clasped his hands against his stomach and bowed low to Millie in the way of court sorcerers before their regents. “Princess Mildred Angelique Tisane, it is an honor.”

A pirate wouldn’t curtsy, but Mutineer Millie wasn’t any pirate. She had manners, and she knew full well she was in another man’s home without his permission. While she didn’t lower her eyes as propriety demanded, she did bob a polite curtsy.

Master Excelsior grinned. “Truly a pirate the likes the world has never seen, aren’t you? So sorry you lost your cutlass to that grouper in defense of my apprentice’s companion. Wretched creatures, but they do serve a purpose. Please help yourself to a replacement in the armory. And to whatever else you might need now that the Discount Damsel Protocol is no longer in effect.”

Having grown up with Olabeus, Millie had learned from a very young age never to question how a sorcerer knew the things he did. It was easier to accept them and get on with your life instead of checking the walls for spying holes or burning sage in the hallways to dispel any eavesdropping imps (she knew, she’d wasted an entire day doing exactly that when she was seven). And yet . . .

“It was the hermit crabs, wasn’t it?” she hedged. “They were your spies, weren’t they?” Only a fool would dismiss a crab with a glowing shell.

“Olabeus always said you were as smart as a whip.”