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“Fine. The only way you’ll get those on me is on my dead body.”
“Well, what then? You’ll just promise not to use magic until the duel starts?”
“I agree.”
“Hmm. That was easy, pretty Gwynnie.” He flicked a hand and the gremlin raced off again. Walt laid the staff across his lap, caressing the crystal globe in a way that seemed almost obscene and leering at me. “You’re so pretty.” His gray eyes wandered with affection over the group. “All of you. Pretty little flowers for my garden.”
Oh great. Totally insane too.
“I’m so looking forward to your hot cocoa,” Lady Blackbird fluttered at him, as if we were honored guests. “It’s quite famous throughout the realm. Lord Falcon will be so jealous that I had the opportunity to try it.”
Walter beamed at her and I took advantage of the distraction to touch the crystal globe with the barest brush of my thoughts. It felt like the crystal in the cave had, resonant and clear. He didn’t seem to notice my poking around, though he’d been unusually sensitive to any more overt magic.
“Falcon is crazy for my cocoa—and my dragons. He shall have neither!”
“I’m impressed that you control them.” I used my best suck-up-to-the-eccentric-senior-scientist attitude and Walter laughed.
“See, at the Western Keep, here there be dragons.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Gwynnie gets the joke.”
Though he’d been speaking in the fae tongue—or one of them, since I sometimes suspected there were different dialects for the various tribes and species—I finally got the clue.
“You’re another immigrant. Like me.”
And another sorcerer.
Walter belly laughed and pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t know. You’re such a babe in the woods.” He fell to the side in the too-big throne, laughing hysterically.
“Nuttier than a drunk pig in a henhouse,” Starling whispered sideways to me. One of Puck’s many sayings that never made a bit of sense.
“The ‘mighty sorceress Gwynn.’” Walter made air quotes with his fingers and pounded his feet against the throne, he was laughing so hard.
“When and where are you from?” I had to raise my voice so he could hear me and he abruptly sobered, sitting up straight.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he crooned, taunting. “But you don’t get to. No. No, you don’t.”
“Why did you bring us here, if not to talk?”
“I only meant to bring you, Gwynnie sweet. Your companions were unexpected.”
“Then send them back. Sounds like this is just between you and me.”
“No!” Starling whirled on me, but Blackbird put a restraining hand on her arm. Darling vowed his protection. And apologized that the floor was too hot for his paws. I did feel a little bit like Dorothy, holding Toto in my arms while facing the great and terrible Wizard of Oz.
Who turned out to be a humbug.
Important insight.
Walter was drumming his fingers on the crystal globe. “What’s in the box?”
Starling clutched it to her chest. “Nothing.”
“Show me.”
She opened the lid to show him the empty interior and he snorted. “You people are nuts! But maybe I want to keep all of you.”
“Maybe we don’t want to be kept.”
“No?” He waved the staff at the empty room. “Do you expect to be rescued? Nobody knows you’re here. Not even your precious Lord Rogue. But he is, ah, otherwise occupied, isn’t that right?”
