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“As you can see, I’m quite all right. I’ve never needed a rescuing I couldn’t whip up myself faster than the cavalry could get out of bed.”
“But the Redcaps…they’re horrible monsters holding you prisoner…”
“Oh, Sir Sanguine? She’s such a sweetheart! We get on famously. I’ve always had a way with red things, you know.”
Tamburlaine spoke up. “We came to rescue you so that you can come and rescue the King.”
“Now what,” the Spinster sighed, “does Charlie need rescuing from today?”
“He doesn’t want to be King anymore.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me. He’s never wanted to be King.”
“Well, he feels pretty confident that you can help him abdicate without having to be assassinated by Simon,” Hawthorn ventured.
“I see.”
“Can you?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then why’s he so bloody sure you’re the gran for the job?” cried Blunderbuss.
The Spinster smiled up at the wombat and her riders. The sun glinted on a mole on her left cheek.
“Because I’ve done it before,” she said. “Twice.”
A peal of indigo fire exploded through the air above them all, boiling and popping a trail through the sky. Something hurtled toward them at breakneck speed, something huge and bright and winged. A colossal red Wyvern beat his wings against a hundred rum-barrel moons. A man all of blue and black clung to his long crimson neck.
“Are we late?” the Wyvern called. “We came as soon as we heard footsteps but we are, aren’t we? Oh, I’m just hop
eless! Late begins with L!”
CHAPTER XVIII
SOMEONE COMES TO TOWN
In Which Much Is Revealed
“Want to know a secret?” the Spinster said, leaning forward in one of the plush red chairs. Red rum filled the red crystal glasses on a little carved table by her side, but she had not touched hers. None of them had. Her eyes twinkled in her sun-bright face, the tiniest of lines at her eyes crinkling as though she was about to play an extraordinary trick.
“Yes,” Hawthorn said. “I always want to know. If there is a choice between knowing and not knowing.”
“Well said.” She laid her finger against her lips like a librarian. Shhhh. The Spinster looked one way, then the other. “I’m fifteen years old,” she whispered, and giggled just like a schoolgirl.
“You’re not,” scoffed Blunderbuss.
“If I’m a day.”
The scarlet Wyverary nuzzled her with his scaly, bearded chin, which meant nuzzling most all of her armchair, too. If we are all very quiet, perhaps we can sneak in and nuzzle him a bit, too. How he has kept us waiting!
“It’s true,” the Wyverary haroomed. “You can’t lie once you’ve been to the Moon. That’s just a fact.”
The blue-and-black man, whose skin glowed like the ocean, all covered in swooping dark smoke-like tattoos, squeezed the Spinster’s hand. “It’s a funny thing,” he said. “I’m both older and younger than she is, and she’s both younger and older than I am. Time cannot bear boredom.”
“But how can you be fifteen?” Hawthorn said. “I don’t mean to offend you, ma’am, and I know we are only twelve, but we have both seen a number of Big Kids in our time, and few of them look like you.”
“I’d wager few of them have ever spent quality time with a Yeti,” the Spinster said quite proudly. The blue-and-black man whispered something to Sir Sanguine, who tipped her hat off her head and drew a large red box out of it, much, much larger than her hat.
