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“Nice line and it all sounds terribly heroic, but how exactly do you plan to get into the castle?”
His russet hair glinted with gold when he tossed it and a handsome smile in my direction. “I have my ways.”
And with that, he ran up the trail and out of sight.
“So much for him being helpful.”
“I can’t believe he did that.” Starling gazed after him, then held up a hand at my incredulous look. “Okay, I can. But still…”
“The one advantage,” I speculated, staring up the narrow trail, envisioning what stood at the top, “is that anyone watching the trail or guarding the gates might be distracted by his arrival. Could we sneak in after him?”
Athena laughed outright. “You really think you can sneak into Titania’s palace? When she knows exactly who you are? She’ll know you the moment you walk inside her doors. Fergus is not enough of a distraction, especially if he gets himself captured right away. We need a diversion. An inside man.”
“We have an inside man,” I pointed out, “except I can’t really assess whose side he’s on at the moment. If what you say about possession is true…”
“We need someone to talk to him and find out,” Athena agreed. “I can do it.”
“No,” Starling interrupted. “I can.”
“You?” Athena sounded dubious, but I stopped her.
“You’re right. You’re perfect for it.”
Starling nodded, looking oddly pleased for someone taking on a potentially dangerous mission. “If I know how to do anything, it’s visit the fancy folk and suck up to them.”
“I can wish you a gown, jewels.”
“And I’ll be your brainless servant girl,” Athena added in an admiring tone. “Well thought out, Starling.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Starling replied, a bit too tartly but Athena just grinned at her.
I scratched Darling Hercules’s back and he complained about being cold. “Take Hercules with you. I’ll change his coat, just in case anyone recognizes him. He can take messages back and forth, if it comes to that.”
I made Starling’s traveling gown into a party dress of bronze that flattered her shining hair and soft brown eyes. With plenty of jewels lying about, I wished her up dazzling necklaces and earrings. With a grimace of resignation, Athena let me restore her long, powder blue ringlets and insisted that I “dress” her again in the typical dragonfly girl outfit of a sheer little dress and nothing else. When I worried about her getting cold, she wryly noted that no one worried about her sort being uncomfortable and it would be out of character for Starling to have dressed her any other way.
Darling Hercules grumbled, but agreed to the plan, letting me give him an elegant fluffy white coat and blue eyes. He looked rather magnificent, we all thought.
“No,” I told him, “you do not look like a girl. There are plenty of white male cats. And you do not wantherattention, do you?”
It was a low blow, but he stopped complaining. Even Darling Hercules had the sense to be very afraid of Titania.
With that, they stood poised at the bottom of the path, ready to go.
“Tell Rogue…if you can get close enough to talk to him, find out if—”
“I know what to say, Gwynn.”
“I know you do. I just worry that he won’t believe you. Wait. Larch, do you have that dragon’s egg still?”
He bowed with grave courtesy and dug it out of his tunic, from who knows where, since the thing had no pockets.
“May I borrow it for a moment?”
“Anything that is mine is yours, my lady sorceress.”
I ignored that one and took the egg, holding it up to my ears. As I’d hoped, the lily earrings fell off, releasing my flesh with small sighs. I handed them to Starling and she nodded solemnly and tucked them into her dress.
I hugged them both goodbye. Darling Hercules, still sulking, wouldn’t let me, and I felt more than a little bereft, watching them go up the hill without me. Larch and I took the horses back down the trail a ways, to a wider, semi-more comfortable spot.
