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“Think so?” She sounded so wistful.
“I know so.”
The gremlins came to fetch us not long after and we all trooped down together, nobody wearing their new Walt outfits, which had all turned out to be either obscene or humiliating or both. Particularly the pink bunny ears for Darling that now lay shredded on the floor.
Instead of taking us to the great hall, our insectile escort led us upward, not as high as our original landing pad, but into a great bowl in the center of the circling towers. I had to hand it to Walt, it was an impressive arena. We walked out from a tunnel like Roman gladiators of old. Two pedestals faced each other across the center. A festive audience of fae nobles filled a grandstand box at one end, the languid preying-mantis length of their limbs setting them apart from all the lower fae ranged in tiers behind them.
“Not exactly a full house,” Starling observed and Blackbird sent her a quelling look. It was true, though—many of the seats were empty. Either all of Walter’s guests hadn’t arrived or the turnout disappointed expectations.
I suspected the latter, confirmed by the disgruntled look on Walt’s face as he trotted across the sand to meet us. He wore flowing crimson robes, tall platform boots and a towering headdress.
“You’re not wearing your costumes,” he complained.
I just shrugged. “We forgot. Oops.”
He dug the blunt end of the staff in the sand, the crystal globe on top catching the sun and sending rays of light in blinding shards, and squinted at me.
“You don’t seem very concerned that you’re about to suffer a horrible death at my hands.”
“It’s a good day to die.” I replied, with Klingon gravity.
Walter grinned, the sincere pleasure making his homely face almost attractive. “Yes—exactly! Okay, your, um, guests have special seats over there. I don’t know what you want to do about your Familiar. Do you need a kennel for it?”
Darling sent me an image of Walt on his back, disemboweled. I frowned to keep from smiling. “The cat stays with me.”
“Well, I don’t know if that’s fair…”
“Okay, then you can give up the staff.”
His shrewd gaze fixed on Darling, who started cleaning his toes. “What does it do for you?”
“Darling?” I looked at him as if I wasn’t sure. “Mostly he gets underfoot. But he sulks if I send him away.” Darling swiped his freshly cleaned claws at my ankle and I yelped. “See?”
Walt chortled. “He’ll learn manners when he’s my Familiar. I think he’ll look good riding with me on a dragon.”
Darling, drat his egotistical soul, had the gall to look really interested in that. I reminded him how he’d reverted into a regular cat in proximity to the dragon and it deflated him so much that I felt sorry. Not the direction we needed to go. Time to start psyching up the troops. I reminded Darling of the plan and he perked right up. And let me know that the time for the duel approached.
“Is it noon yet?”
Excitement shivered over Walt and he drew himself up. “Nearly. Wait for the trumpets to signal—and then we duel until one of us is dead. Do you wish to say goodbye to your friends?”
“Bye, guys. See you in a bit.”
They strolled off with casual waves. Walt scowled after them. “None of you has much sense of ceremony. And something happened to that girl’s hair.”
I smothered a fake yawn. “Yeah, she’s like that.”
He turned the black look on me and thumped the staff in the sand again. “You’re not taking this seriously, Gwynnie. I don’t think you have any idea of what terrible magics I can wreak upon you!”
“Guess you’ll show me, huh?”
I stoked my anger now, carefully brewing it up, letting the silver-white feline stir and stretch. This was really the only part I wasn’t sure of—if I could keep her contained. Well, that and whether Walter’s dragons would come to his rescue. That was my biggest gamble, that they wouldn’t. I resisted touching the dragon’s egg in my pocket, hoping I wouldn’t need to use it.
Five topazes, Darling let me know.
“All welcome!” A page with a booming voice entirely out of proportion with his body stepped out onto the sand. The crowd—clearly bored and never tremendously noisy to begin with—settled. “All welcome to the Grand Duel between the Wizard of the Western Keep and the Most Powerful Lady Sorceress Gwynn!”
A polite smattering of golf claps.
