“You and I—two creatures almost from different worlds! Who knows what adventures might greet the explorer’s eyes? The pounding pulse—the alien touch of scents and dreams. We owe ourselves the experience—let us seize it while we may!”
One eye blackened, and the sharp mark of a woman’s handprint standing sharp and red across his cheek, Luccio Irozzi wandered disconsolately through the plazas of the Mannicci palace, reciting his little litany in puzzlement. His evening had somehow gone sadly astray. Now, with the firework display lighting up the world and shuddering every windowsill, the entire party population had crowded onto the balconies to marvel at the unprecedented show. Having been beaten nearly comatose by a dozen eligible females, Luccio decided to take a break and reassess his romantic strategies.
“You and me are two creatures almost from different worlds?” Luccio changed the timbre of his voice and tried again. “You and I? Yes—you and I are both inhabitants of far, far different worlds …”
It didn’t seem to work quite as well as it should. The daughter of Blade Captain Toporello had somehow managed to pour the contents of a flower vase into his tights, and it felt as though some of the rose stems might still be down there. Dejected and defeated, Luccio made his way into the deserted courtyard and sat himself down beside the bubbling waters of the ornate fountain.
A note written on mother-of-pearl had asked him for a tryst here at midnight; Luccio scanned the deserted courtyard and hung his head with a disappointed sigh.
Fireworks burst and blasted overhead like a war between the gods; crowds made “oohs” and “aaahs” of appreciation, sounding like the ebb and flow of distant seas. The rear courtyard suddenly dissolved into a noisy chaos of bellows, shouts, and screams, while the whole palace shuddered to an unseen blow.
Having lost the party mood, Luccio ignored it all and sadly trailed a fìnger into the cool water at his side.
A penniless father had left Luccio the heir to an empty house and a world of debt. Without funds, there were no mercenaries—without mercenaries, no votes, and without votes, a gentleman had no influence at all. Disinclined to don a metal suit and join the troops himself, Luccio normally faced his misfortunes with a flippant smile.
Heaving a sigh, Luccio laid himself back against a marble statue of a spouting dolphin and let his velvet cap fall to the ground. Spray from the fountain kissed his cheek as he closed his eyes to the flash and glitter of artificial stars.
“It’s true, really. I don’t really have anything to offer. Nothing but poor old Luccio—who, frankly, is not much of a prize. No fortune, no mansion, no votes, no ties; a simple promise of devotion doesn’t hold any water these days.”
A stream of ripples in the fountain drifted to a halt; the whole world seemed to draw a quiet breath.
“It never really seems to work out for me. There’s nothing to fall back on but myself—and I keep wondering if that’s anything to offer to a girl.
“But a real girl—someone just … different. Someone who could maybe see that there’s a prize here for the taking … now that’s a dream worth having!”
Behind Luccio, a pair of startling lavender eyes shone beneath the waters. Tall, delicate, fish-finned ears rose quietly up into the air.
With his back to the water, Luccio ran his hand across his brow.
“When I close my eyes, I can see you drifting there in front of me. You and I—two creatures almost from different worlds. Who knows what adventures might greet the explorer’s eyes? The pounding pulse—the alien touch of scents and dreams. We owe ourselves the experience. Let us seize it while we may!”
A figure erupted from the water with an excited squeal and clasped Luccio in its arms. A curvaceous, scaly body, bright eyes, and wild pink hair flashed briefly in the light of fireworks as the nixie locked Luccio in a passionate, soaking kiss. With a shout, the man spilled backward into the freezing waters while the nixie damsel drew a breath, crammed his face up against her impassioned breast and happily wrapped him against her scales.
Cool and quiet in the darkness, Lorenzo stated his case with an admirable degree of calm.
“Look—traditionally, all beauty is judged by ultimates; the perfect figures, the studied poise … you know the kind of thing.” Lorenzo sat cross-legged on the floor of a cupboard, trying to be the voice of sweet reason in the storm. “I merely determined that if I wanted to define the actual basics of beauty, I would have to try to discover the beautiful within a subject who exhibits absolutely none of the … ah … the actual … that is, none of the accepted attributes of feminine …” The artist stumbled, sensing himself sliding into even more trouble.
Lorenzo’s refuge shuddered as Miliana’s halberd blade viciously hacked its way in through the door.
“Come out of there, you—you suitor, you! Open that damned door!”
Inside the cupboard, Lorenzo watched his barricades and makeshift locks splinter one by one. He tried to keep himself adrift inside a sea of studied calm.
“I realize that I have behaved badly—nay, inexcusably. I can only say that what I did was done from the most pure of motivations, and that my respect for you is utterly sincere. Nor did I realize until last night that you were actually my … intended.
“Now perhaps we ought to get the nude painting of you back into hiding before it goes out on public display.”
“What?”
Miliana hurtled the halberd aside, rammed a fist through the broken door and undid the lock with one sharp tug of her hand. She dragged Lorenzo out into the light and shook him like a stick insect in her claws.
“What do you mean it’s going on display?”
“Well it’s … it’s the only painting that’s missing!” Lorenzo felt the words being squeezed bodily out of his throat by Miliana’s grasp. “Someone must ha-have taken the picture to put up for the ceremony!”
The girl released her victim, turning herself quite green with shock.
“Was it anything like those—those sketches?”
“Um …” Lorenzo tried to see a way to somehow escape with his life. “Um—no …”
Miliana felt a brilliant ray of hope. “No?”
“Well … yes.” Lorenzo felt the sweat pour off him as he glanced at the halberd leaning against a nearby wall. “Um—quite a lot like them actually.”
Scorched, torn, and wild, Miliana hoisted Lorenzo up to his feet, turned him about, and dragged him toward the ruins of his apartment.
“Come on! Get the painting of the sea goddess! It’s going to take both of us to carry it!”
Confused, Lorenzo felt himself being propelled across the rubble by a freckled amazon in skirts.
“Aren’t you going to kill me?”
“I’ll kill you later. Now help me get that painting back!”
Standing on a balcony that faced off across the Akanamere, Lady Ulia Mannicci stood in splendor, wearing a hat that would have done justice to the goddess Umberlee herself. Puffing out her indignant bosom, the lady watched the brilliant fireworks with an air of irritation and disdain.
“Miliana should be here to applaud this display! Cappa, my dear—where has your unruly daughter hidden herself now?”
Prince Cappa Mannicci scowled and scanned the crowds, then signaled for the services of an aide.
Standing proud and hostile amidst a crowd of haughty elves, the lady of the Yuirwood threw her cloak back from her pale shoulders and pushed free from the crowds to confront her awesome hostess.
Ulia turned to face the elf like a stone giant confronting a sprite. The two women met eye to eye in a strange fellowship of mutual anger and pride.
“I am called Lonereed Silverleaf, of the Clan of Wandering Spray.” The slim queen tilted her angry silver eyes. “I have come here as a guest to your house, and I claim a guest’s right of justice!”
Ulia’s bodice swelled like a galleon’s sails before a storm.
“Justice, you ask? Then my dear, it is justice you shall have!” The human woman gazed down from the celestial heights of her pride. “How have you been wronged within my city, and under my roof?”
“Theft!” The elf drew her robes tight against her narrow frame. “My most prized of jewels—a love gift from my people—has been stolen from me. Stolen! And the thief has the insolence to wear the necklace right here before my very eyes!”
“Then this outrage shall be dealt with at once.” Ulia took the elven woman by the arm and led her away from the thunderstorm of fireworks outside. “Tell me the identity of the thief.”
Lady Silverleaf raised a long index finger and summoned a figure from among her courtiers; Brightlightning Dragonsbane strode forth and knelt before his lady’s feet. Lady Silverleaf indicated the man with a wave of her hand.
“My bodyguard and boon companion has followed the thief to her lair.”
“Good.” Ulia settled her stomach in its spun-steel and adamantine girdle. “Then describe her to me.”
“My lady—it is the girl who stood beside you to welcome us into your home.” The elven bodyguard showed no small satisfaction in having completed his assigned task. “The short, speckled human female with eyepieces made of glass.”
Half expecting outraged denial, the elves swapped cool glances as Lady Ulia swelled up like a puffer fish in imminent danger of detonation. With a look of triumph in her eye, the woman felt all her worst—and, therefore, her most cherished—suspicions confirmed.
“Miliana! I knew the little wretch had two sides to her coin.” Sumbria’s first lady signed for two of her own guards and two ladies-in-waiting, then beckoned the elves to follow in her wake. “Lady Silverleaf—come! We shall take back your jewel and at last uncover the whys and wherefores of this city’s little cat burglar!”
“Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!”
Mad with panic, Tekoriikii fought a ferocious battle in the air. A lean black javelin of feathers had lashed upward from the palace stables, crashing into him like lightning out of a storm. Claws ripped through empty feathers—Tekoriikii beat wildly at a pair of snapping jaws, and then both combatants tumbled free into a sky shot through with brilliant falling stars.
Carrying the massive Sun Gem, and trailing a hundredweight of tail feathers at his rear, Tekoriikii’s flight was a thing more spectacular than speedy. Laboring his wings, the bird arced like a comet past the palace towers and nodded his head this way and that, wondering where his enemy might have gone.
“Awk!”
A black streak ripped out of the night and tried to disembowel Tekoriikii with its claws; the firebird tucked in his stomach, let his foe pass under him, then nimbly plucked a fistful of hairs from its tail.
In mating fights—the only combat most firebirds would ever know—the plucking of tail feathers was the coup de grâce. Tekoriikii had won a mighty victory! He swooped into a gleeful little victory roll, whirring out his wings in utter joy.
“Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!”
The air shuddered as a skyrocket exploded fifty yards away, the bright flash illuminating a frozen scene of running soldiers, fleeing bats, and broken walls. Having out-flown his opponent and snatched his precious prize, Tekoriikii folded his wings and sped away, crooning in smug self-satisfaction over being the cleverest bird in all Faerûn.
The sudden flicker of motion above him came as a surprise; his angry black opponent had returned for another round, quite against the usual rules of courtly war.
Combat between most birds is a purely ritual affair, a test of dominance with death and damage usually far from anyone’s mind. Tekoriikii chuffed in annoyance as his enemy streaked in from one side; then abruptly braked to a halt and watched his outraged foe miss its intended strike by a country mile.
The creature was extremely odd in its appearance; long eagle’s wings, and a slender feathered neck topped off with a cruel hooked beak. Most strangely of all, the entire rear quarters were sheathed in short, shining hair. Lacking Tekoriikii’s beautiful plumes; lacking his poise, his elegance, his brains and grace, it seemed no wonder that the creature fought with such anger in its heart. Tekoriikii powered himself upward in a giddy half-loop, tucked himself into a dive, and found himself racing head to head with his shrieking, frothing enemy. The firebird made to give vent to his deadly battle scream, drew in his breath—
—and looked straight into an astonishing pair of exotic, feminine eyes.
The bird froze, the hippogriff whipped past, and Tekoriikii gave a blink of astonishment as he felt a sudden breeze across his rear. He looked down between his legs, saw his bare naked rump grinning at him without a feather to its name, and moaned a pathetic, bleating little cry.
With his unlikely aerodynamics scattered to the winds, Tekoriikii abruptly made a crash landing straight into the courtyard rubble pile.
Rummaging through the ruins of Lorenzo’s apartments for his painting of the sea goddess, Miliana and Lorenzo rose and watched in bemusement as their feathery friend plunged into the ruins of an old eiderdown. Miliana adjusted her tall pointy hat—now scorched, dented, and with its veil torn all awry—and settled her grimy spectacles on her nose.
“Tekoriikii?”
Lorenzo emerged from the shards of his workroom holding a shrouded canvas in his hands.
“Who?”
“Tekoriikii? I think it’s Tekoriikii!” Miliana hitched up her skirts and wended her precarious way across the rubble. “Hey, old bird, are you all right?”
“Glub glubl Yonk-squonk glub glub!”
Tekoriikii’s high-plumed head appeared, swaying, dazed, and scarcely conscious. Miliana slithered toward him through a cloud of scorched duck down and frantically gathered the bird up in her arms. Tekoriikii flopped his wings and gave a croaking little cry before hanging like a limp rag against her breast.
Lorenzo fought his way through the ruins and took the firebird’s pulse, to be rewarded by Tekoriikii licking at his face. The man stared in astonishment at the bird’s plucked, naked backside, a parson’s nose utterly devoid of plumes.
“Where do you think all the other bits have gone?”
From the stables came the sound of running boots, rattling armor, and angry cries. Miliana stretched her small frame to its best possible height and tried to pierce the flash and flicker of the fireworks.
“Lorenzo? Lorenzo, I think we should get him out of sight.” The girl took a step in retreat as the approaching charge grew in noise. “Actually, I think we ought to move him rather quickly.”
Bursting into the yard from the stable gates, there came a wild-eyed Blade Captain Ilégo followed by a squat, savage troll of a man dressed all in black. Ilégo pointed at Tekoriikii and screamed out in bloodthirsty revenge.
“Kill that bird! A thousand ducats to the man who kills that bird!”
“Oh dear.” Miliana took one look at the horde of soldiers who rushed past Ilégo toward the semiconscious firebird, then ran clumsily through the hillocks of fallen stone. “Quick! We’ll have to carry him!”
“On what?”
“I don’t know—find something flat! Hurry!”
Lorenzo’s paintings had been daubed on canvas stretched tight over wooden frames; Lorenzo slammed the two paintings together face-to-face, rolled Tekoriikii onto the impromptu stretcher, and quickly hoisted up the stretcher’s rear.
“You take the lead!”
“Me?” Miliana lifted up the front end in surprise. “Why me?”
“Because you know where you’re damned-well going!”
They started off across the rubble, only to lose their balance as Tekoriikii suddenly surged back into life. The firebird flopped, lashed out with his neck, and plucked up a gigantic shiny object in his bill.
“The Sun Gem!”
Miliana and Lorenzo stared at the titanic jewel in shock. Before they could so much as move, Tekoriikii had thrown back his head and swallowed the jewel right down his throat. Miliana gave a scream of fright, wrenched open the astonished Tekoriikii’s beak and stared wildly down into the creature’s gullet.
“It’s down there! He’s swallowed the bloody thing!”
“What?”
“The Sun Gem! The Sun Gem!” Miliana shook the addled bird by the craw. “Cough it up! Come on—drop it—drop it now!”
The huge diamond shot out of Tekoriikii’s crop and landed on the ground. Fascinated, Lorenzo tilted his head over to one side.
“Actually, that’s an interesting thing; many birds are known to swallow rocks as an aid to their digestive—”
A soldier topped the rubble, gave a shriek of triumph, and clapped the stock of his crossbow under his arm. Taking rough aim on Tekoriikii, he stabbed a wicked looking bolt into the catch, laughing as he imagined a thousand golden ducats pouring through his hands.
The bow sprung with a rather disappointing twang, and the steel quarrel simply dropped off the tiller and bounced onto the ground. The soldier reversed the bow and stared down the stock in amazement, then squawked as the bow sprang the rest of the way, slapping across his nose like a whip. Nose bleeding, eyes watering, he dropped backward across the rubble pile like a falling tree.
Another soldier pounced on the Sun Gem and held it high above his head in victory. Suddenly, from the shadows, a black-clad figure stabbed the soldier from behind. The gem was snatched from dying hands; the black hippogriff appeared, and the black rider mounted and disappeared into the smoke-lit skies.
Soldiers opened fire on the retreating hippogriff, crossbows stabbing ineffective darts up into the air. In seconds they would change targets once again; stuffing Tekoriikii back onto the stretcher, Miliana and Lorenzo fled as fast as their frenzied legs could run.
Soldiers surged across the wreckage in pursuit; another group emerged from the broken gap in the palace wall, cutting off all access to the halls. Miliana changed course and sprinted to the gate that led into the palace fountain yard. Her long hair whipped back into Lorenzo’s eyes, blinding him from any view of where she meant to go.
They swept through a gate, and Lorenzo almost broke a rib as Miliana came to an unexpected halt; she wrenched the stretcher hard about, kicked angrily at a lever set into the wall, and brought a spiked portcullis crashing down to seal the door behind her.
“They’ll go back into the palace and find another way around. Come on—we’ll hide Tekoriikii in my rooms!”
“But what about the ceremony?” Lorenzo reeled and staggered in Miliana’s wake. “The painting! It’s about to be unveiled!”
“Oh, dear gods!”
In the palace fountain, something struggled, thrashed, and dove. Miliana pulled the stretcher to a halt; Lorenzo’s friend Luccio jerked up out of the water with a look of panicked innocence on his face. Dripping wet, breathless, and covered with some sort of welts, he stared in shock at Lorenzo, Princess Miliana, and the lolling firebird.
“I wasn’t doing anything! There’s no one in here!”
“Good!” Lorenzo, breathless, burnt, and businesslike pushed back his dusty hair. “Now, quickly, grab the bottom painting, get into the palace hall, and swap it for the one they’re about to put up on display!”
“What?” A flushed Luccio struggled up out of the fountain, streaming water from his tunic top. “In the name of Beshaba, why?”
“Because it’s the wrong damned painting! Now just do it, while we go and hide this bird!” Lorenzo, caught in the flow of panic, suddenly wrenched to a halt and stared more closely at his friend’s neck. “Is that some sort of bite mark—there on your neck?”
“It’s a rash!” Luccio hurriedly removed the bottom painting from under Tekoriikii. “It’s nothing.”
“A rash? Look … there’s a whole lot more of them all over your …”
“I’ll swap the paintings!” Hiding his love-bitten neck, Luccio hustled Lorenzo onward toward the palace halls. “Now—now just run along with your bird, and I’ll deal with everything.”
The sounds of doors bursting open came from every side. Miliana spied an open portal leading into the palace sculleries and charged off with her pointy hat tilted like a battering ram.
Luccio watched it all in bemusement and heaved a puzzled sigh. Quite suddenly, a slim, seductive shape emerged from the waters behind him and trapped him in its arms. With a brief squawk, Luccio disappeared beneath the foam as the nixie raised great passionate tidal waves with her webbed limbs.
Plunging through the sculleries with their towering stacks of copper pots and pans, Miliana collapsed in a heap to catch her breath. From her unique position under the canvas, she could see the painting staring her straight in the eye.
A slim sea-goddess riding a silvery dragon.
“It’s the wrong painting!”
“What?” Lorenzo pushed Tekoriikii’s plumes aside to meet Miliana eye-to-eye. “The wrong what?”
“This is the sea goddess! You’ve given Luccio the wrong one!”
“Damn!”
Lorenzo whipped the painting out from under Tekoriikii’s belly, dropping the creature onto Miliana with a thump. He ran outside, clutching at the painting, looked about himself, and saw no sign of Luccio.
The second painting leaned against the fountain, abandoned and forgotten. Lorenzo ducked frantically back inside.
“He’s gone off and left the painting out there!”
“What?” Miliana struggled out from under a great mass of limp red bird. “Well, well just have to do it ourselves then!” Skinny arms thrust ineffectually at Tekoriikii’s bulk. “Help get this dumb thing off me!”
A cheese trolley stood beside the kitchen door. Miliana emerged from under the firebird, spat feathers from her mouth, and peered through a curtain into the palace’s crowded great hall.
Up at the far end of the room, a covered canvas stood proudly on display. Courtiers, ambassadors, and Blade Captain Toporello had gathered about Prince Mannicci as he prepared to draw the cord and bare his daughter’s charms to a waiting world. Miliana gave a shriek of alarm and crowded back into Lorenzo’s arms.
“They’re going to pull the cord!”
Lorenzo took one look at the unwieldy firebird, the cheese trolley, and the cook’s hats hanging from hooks on the wall. He hoisted Tekoriikii up and slammed him atop the gurney, then jammed an apple into the creature’s open beak. Tekoriikii froze in shock as he was surrounded with wax fruit stolen from a mantelpiece display.
“Tekoriikii—just stay there!” Lorenzo jammed a chef’s hat across Miliana’s ruined headgear, then crammed another hat across his own brows and stuffed the painting into the trolley’s lower rack. “Stay there and hang on!”
The curtain was ripped aside; pushing the gurney wildly across the room, bashing aside crowds and ramming courtiers into the punch bowls, Miliana and Lorenzo clove a path across the hall. With Tekoriikii frozen in fright, the apple still gripped firmly in his mouth, they rumbled madly out into the room.
“Catering!” Lorenzo sent Toporello’s buxom daughter crashing into a dwarven tunnel baron. “Catering! Coming through—excuse me, pardon me—excuse me!” Lorenzo charged straight toward the painting at the far end of the hall. “Roast ostrich for the prince! Gangway!”
The whole ensemble whipped past an astonished crowd and cracked into the painting display. Firebird, trolley, wax fruit and all went sailing like shrapnel through the sky.
Lorenzo whipped the picture of the sea goddess—this time checking that it truly was the sea goddess—out of hiding and deftly swapped it for the painting of Miliana. He jammed the newly stolen painting into the relieved princess’s arms, threw Tekoriikii across his shoulders, and felt the creature croak and eject the apple in a shallow trajectory, far across the room.
“Sorry … this bird’s off. I’ll just get another!”
Leaping a hurdle of fallen men, Lorenzo led the way for Miliana through a swinging door. As outrage broke out behind them, the two thieves and their bird dropped the locking bar behind them and slumped in exhaustion against the wall.
“There, see? Now wasn’t that easy?” Lorenzo raggedly caught his breath, wiping sweat back from his eyes. He briskly uncovered the painting in Miliana’s hands and gazed at his creation with love.
“There—isn’t it beautiful?”
“It’s wonderful. Thank you so much for the compliment!” Behind Miliana, the swinging door was slowly being battered open. Miliana wrenched open a curtain to discover a room crowded with dwarves. “Free beer—that way!”
The effect was astonishing; with their war cry of “I’ll have another round!” the dwarves tried to cram their way through the swinging door, pushing frantically against the efforts of the angry mob inside the great hall. Miliana tugged Lorenzo away from the wall, forced the giddy Tekoriikii to his feet, and led a swift retreat into the deepest palace corridors.
Several cunning twists and turns soon lost all signs of pursuit. Slowing her pace, discarding her disguise, and restoring her pointy hat, Miliana took Lorenzo by the hand, and Tekoriikii by the wing, and led them wearily toward her tower home.
“Now, perhaps, we can get a little peace.” The girl mopped at her brow with a ragged little sigh. “And a few explanations. Tekoriikii, perhaps you might be so good as to tell me what you were doing with that jewel?”
“Glub glub!” The bird swallowed hard, put a wing up to his throat, and looked bemusedly around. “Squonky donky glub glub!”
“Yes, well, be that as it may …” Miliana creased her pretty freckled nose into a frown. “Do either of you have any idea what might have happened to you. Fiance or no fiance, they can behead people like you!” The girl fumbled open the latch of her apartment door. “At least the worst that can ever happen to me is to—”
The door had swung open to reveal Miliana’s rooms; standing facing her in a phalanx of poisonous frowns were Lady Ulia, her maidservants, a dozen angry elves, and a squad of palace guards.
The broken bathroom ceiling had been discovered; soldiers were carrying down basket after basket of gems. It was a veritable dragon’s hoard; a massive mound of glittering baubles worth a king’s ransom.
Tekoriikii withdrew his head timidly behind Miliana’s rump. The girl simply froze, goggling at the piles of loot in dumb despair.
Lady Ulia coldly extended her hand.
“And the pearl pendant too, I think.” Miliana’s stepmother snatched off the rose-pink pearl, then gazed upon her ward as though Miliana had slithered out from under a rotten log. “We, of course, await your explanation.”
“I …” Miliana stared in absolute bewilderment at the endless tide of gems. “I … I’ve never seen them before in my life!”
Tekoriikii shivered, transmitting terror right through Miliana’s back; suddenly the girl realized from whence the jewels had come.
Lady Ulia made a grand progress, moving a great, slow circle about the gathering treasure; clearly all of her worst, most cherished, most delicious matronly fears had come true.
“My emeralds, Lady Silverleaf’s pearl, and every other bauble stolen in these few weeks past. We found them up inside your loft, of course, half covered by straw. Perhaps you fancied you were making yourself a nest?” Ulia ponderously cruised herself back into Miliana’s view. “I believe we have found Sumbria’s secret cat burglar at last.”
Ulia’s eyes fell upon Lorenzo and Tekoriikii, and venom dripped out of her smile.
“Aaaah, the errant fiancé! Your mentor in crime, I presume? An inventor of … climbing tools? Of thievish plans?” Ulia flicked a glance across the boy and bird. “Meat for the headsman’s block. Take these two wretches away! They have led this poor girl, unwittingly, into a life of crime!” Ulia gave Miliana a pitying gaze rich with self-satisfaction. “Poor child. My poor, dear child.”
Soldiers clamped their hands onto Lorenzo and the bird. Lorenzo drained pale white, and Tekoriikii hid his face beneath one wing. Miliana—terrified and alone—gave them a dreadful gaze of despair, looking deep into Lorenzo’s eyes.
“Wait.”
Her voice, soft and husky, somehow carried through the room. The soldiers relaxed their grasp. Small, pale and frightened, Miliana dropped her gaze down to the floor.
“I did it. I am the cat burglar. It is my fault alone.”
Lorenzo simply stared. Miliana drew a breath and raised her face, tears streaming from her eyes.
“I wasn’t going to keep them; I wanted to steal all the jewels, then hang them from the city walls just to show what I could do. It was … It was simply out of pride.”
“Miliana?” Lorenzo stared as he felt the soldiers let him go. Beside him, Tekoriikii’s face emerged from hiding. “Miliana?”
“These two tried to stop me. Lorenzo Utrelli and his—his pet bird.” Miliana wearily raised a limp hand toward her two friends. “I wanted to take the Sun Gem, but they dissuaded me. Sir Utrelli is a scholar, and a perfect gentleman.”
Tekoriikii gave a soft trill of despair as he saw soldiers close about Miliana from behind.
The princess waited like a lamb tethered for the slaughter.
“I confess my crime. Do what you will with me.”
Lady Ulia swelled her breast behind a dangerous creak of bodice lace; power was her ultimate desire, and here were all her fantasies fulfilled.
“Well, my dear. It seems our efforts to raise you as a lady have failed.” The great horned hat assumed an air of absolute malevolence. “Since your crimes were motivated by pride and not by greed, I think we can apply a suitable corrective force; the owners of the gems will be pleased to cooperate now that they will have their goods returned.
“We shall return them, and we will say no more about this ‘thief’—forevermore. He shall disappear into oblivion.” Lady Ulia’s words brought a nod from all those around her; a forest of bribes would be little enough to pay for avoiding family scandal.
“As for you, my dear: finishing school shall teach you the meaning of obedience and humility. Perhaps in a few years you will have learned the error of your ways.” Ulia snapped her fingers at the guards. “Take her hence!”
Miliana needed to be half carried from the room. Her hat fell aside, and Lorenzo saw the coils of magical spell sheets hidden deep inside. He caught her hat up with a cry and tried to press it into Miliana’s hands.
“Your hat!” The artist couldn’t seem to make the girl take hold. “Miliana—you have to take your hat!”
“Apparently, I shan’t be needing it anymore.” The girl seemed as ashen as a corpse; her energy drained out before Lorenzo’s eyes. Leaning forward, she brushed at the artist’s cheek with a secret, tragic kiss.
“Thank you both for giving me a life—just for a little while …”
Her whisper left Lorenzo’s cheek stained wet with tears. Walking quietly between her guards, Miliana allowed herself to be led away. Behind her, Tekoriikii and Lorenzo could only stand locked within the shadows of her broken heart.
“A great tragedy. A catastrophe! But one we quite expected, I am sure.” Lady Ulia had found Miliana’s fall from grace utterly cathartic; even the flood of rumors that would escape her net of bribes were not too great a price to pay; she would dine out upon the story until the end of time.
The future couldn’t be more perfect!
Safely ensconced in the palace once more, and with her husband leading a wild hunt on the tail of Svarézi, Ulia looked forward to the continuance of the night’s ceremonies.
The gift painting from Lomatra was wheeled forward into place; the nobles and courtiers gathered admiringly around for the unveiling. If the young man trundling forth the painting was wet clean through and smelled of water weed, no one thought to comment aloud; it had, after all, been a most chaotic festival.
Luccio passed the unveiling cord into Lady Ulia’s hands and escaped out into the courtyard with his head held high. Sumbria’s first lady gazed out in triumph at her guests, and let her words peal forth across the waiting crowd.
“We have here the work of an unknown genius—but a man who has seen fit to encapsulate the very essence of our land.” The mighty lady let her bodice swell with pride. “My lords and ladies! I proudly unveil a new masterpiece entitled ‘The Sea Beast Rising from the Waves’!”
The cord tugged, silken shrouds swept down, and there before the nobles, allies, and peers of Sumbria shone the risqué portrait of the Lady Ulia herself.
It is said that in far nations, barbarians still speak in fear of the earthquakes caused by Lady Ulia falling to the ground in a dead faint.…