Spoiler looked up at the circle of astounded faces looming above him. His lips trembled. ‘Saved!’ he croaked, and burst into tears.
‘Stop that!’ snapped Freda, looking disgusted.
‘But you don’t know,’ Spoiler blubbered, pressing hands encased in dainty lace mittens over his eyes. ‘You can’t imagine what I’ve been through! That witch is out of her mind! I thought I’d never get out of that tower. Oh, thank you! Thank you!’ Tears leaked through his fingers and dribbled down his cheeks and neck to soak into the collar of his dainty spotted blouse.
‘We’d better get him out of here,’ Leo muttered to Conker, who was still staring at Spoiler as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘The witch might come back any minute.’
They managed to haul the weeping man to his feet, and hustled him out of the field. He stumbled along between them, his bonnet askew, his feet repeatedly tangling in his voluminous skirts.
‘Where now?’ Bertha asked nervously when they reached the road. ‘We don’t dare take him back through Brewer’s Gap. We might meet Crabclaw halfway through.’
Spoiler moaned at the sound of the witch’s name.
‘We need the flying rug we used the last time we were here,’ Mimi said.
‘The rug’s on cloud-watch patrol.’ Conker frowned, tugging at his beard, then nodded decisively. ‘We’ll make for the Crystal Palace. It’s the nearest shelter, and we’ll be safe there.’ He took Spoiler by the arm, turned him to face the shining towers, and began urging him along the road. Glancing at one another, Freda, Bertha, Mimi and Leo followed.
‘Taking Spoiler to the Crystal Palace is like smuggling a dot into a bakery,’ Freda objected. ‘He’ll steal everything that isn’t nailed down.’
‘Not in his present state, he won’t,’ said Conker grimly. ‘Anyway, we’ll be there to keep him in order. Leo, take his other arm, will you? I can’t manage him on my own.’
Leo hurried to do as he was asked. As he took Spoiler’s meaty arm, crammed into purple satin as tight as a sausage skin, he looked into the tear-stained face framed by the ruffles of the ridiculous bonnet and felt an unwelcome stab of pity.
This is the man who caused the Dark Time, he reminded himself fiercely. This is the Langlander who didn’t have the imagination to use the Key to Rondo himself, so let the queen use it to murder and destroy in return for her keeping him in luxury. Because of Spoiler the Terlamaines were slaughtered and the people of Rondo had years of fear and misery. If Hal hadn’t stolen the Key back from him, and hidden it in our world, the Dark Time would never have ended.
But still he couldn’t take pleasure in seeing Spoiler so broken, so wretched.
He glanced at Mimi. She was looking at Spoiler too, but her face was filled with simple loathing. Mimi didn’t feel a spark of pity for George Langlander, the great-great-uncle who had once tried to kidnap her and turn her over to the Blue Queen.
‘Where did you get those clothes, Spoiler?’ she asked harshly.
‘I found them in a bedroom at the Tavern of No Return,’ Spoiler snivelled. ‘Grim and Misery Merk had locked me in. I got to the tavern just after midnight last night. I’d walked all the way from Hobnob, travelling at night and hiding during the day. I thought the Merks would help me for old time’s sake, but… they attacked me!’
Tears of self-pity welled up in his bloodshot eyes. ‘I was too weak to fight them off. They took my rings, my money, my clothes, my golden egg –’
‘Your golden egg!’ Bertha cried indignantly. ‘It wasn’t yours. You stole it from –’
Spoiler’s lips trembled. ‘The Merks were even worse than I remembered. Grim stank. Misery had this huge boil on the end of her nose. It was hideous!’ He shuddered.
Leo resisted the urge to glance at Mimi. Only he knew that Mimi had lost her temper and used the Key to Rondo to make a pimple appear on Misery Merk’s nose. No doubt Mimi was delighted to hear that the pimple had not disappeared over time, but grown even bigger!
‘All the time they were arguing about whether it would be better to sell me to you, or to the Blue Queen,’ Spoiler blubbered. ‘It was a nightmare! I couldn’t risk falling into the queen’s hands again. I had to get away. So I put on these clothes – I thought they’d be a good disguise – and I knotted some sheets together, and –’
‘We know, we know,’ Conker growled. ‘Then the witch got you, I suppose.’
Spoiler sniffed horribly and nodded. ‘I ran for hours, back the way I’d come. It was dark. I kept tripping on this stupid skirt. All I could think of was that if I could get to the Crystal Palace I’d be safe. But the last time I fell over, I just couldn’t get up again. I must have gone to sleep, because the next thing I knew, that crazy witch had me in a freeze curse, and was flying me up to her tower.’
His knees buckled, and Leo and Conker groaned as they struggled to hold him upright. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he babbled pathetically, and Leo felt his whole body shaking as he made a huge effort to recover himself.
The bulk of the Crystal Palace was now clearly visible through the trees, and the mouth of the road that led to it was just ahead.
‘Not far to go now,’ Leo murmured. He must have sounded more sympathetic than he had meant to, because Mimi looked down her nose at him and Spoiler turned to him with tearful gratitude.
‘You’re a good, kind boy,’ Spoiler quavered. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’m a rotter and a scoundrel.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Freda.
‘A rotter,’ Spoiler repeated, tears spilling from his eyes and running down his cheeks. ‘You all despise me, and so you should. I traded my self-respect for an easy life, and now I’ve lost everything. I’m an outcast! I haven’t got a friend in the world. Even the squirrels are against me.’
Leo gave a start. He saw Conker’s eyes bulge.
‘Squirrels?’ Bertha squeaked.
Spoiler hung his head. ‘A gang of them mugged me, just before I got to the Tavern of No Return. Jumped out of a tree onto my head and knocked me down. It was like they were waiting for me, in ambush. Their eyes were mad.’
‘They knocked you down,’ Leo said slowly, ‘but they didn’t take the golden egg, or your rings or…’
Spoiler sniffled and shook his head. ‘All they took was a silver trinket box.’
Everyone stopped dead, taking him by surprise so that he stumbled and nearly fell. He blinked around at them.
‘It was just a little trinket box I’d – um – picked up, in Hobnob,’ he said feebly. ‘I was saving it to bribe the Merks. Not that it would have done any good, as it turned out. They would just have stolen it along with everything –’
‘Take cover!’ Freda squawked.
The order was so loud and urgent that everyone obeyed it instantly, diving for the grassy ditch at the side of the road.
‘Is it Crabclaw?’ Spoiler whimpered.
‘Dragon!’ Freda panted. ‘Flying this way, fast!’
They lay motionless and sweating, flattening themselves into the grass. A long minute passed. Then suddenly, terrifyingly, a chorus of shrieks rose from the direction of the Crystal Palace. There was a thunderous roar, a clanking crash and finally, more terrible than any of the other sounds, a single high-pitched scream.
Leo had to know what was happening. He lifted his head. He looked up. And there, soaring over the tips of the crystal towers, was the green dragon, its talons grasping a struggling figure with streaming yellow hair and a long white dress that whipped in the wind like tattered cloud.
‘Oh, my aching eyeballs, it’s got one of the princesses!’ hissed Conker.
The dragon wheeled and sped away to the north, quickly shrinking to a black speck in the blue. The screams of the princess echoed thinly after it, becoming fainter and fainter until at last they could be heard no more.
The quest team climbed from the ditch in shocked silence, Conker and Leo pulling Spoiler behind them.
‘That poor girl,’ Bertha wailed. ‘Oh, this is terrible, terrible! Conker, do you think we could have something to eat? I feel quite faint.’
‘Me too,’ said Freda. ‘It’s way past lunchtime, anyway.’
Conker dug into his pack and soon a brown paper bag bulging with nuts and dried fruit was being passed around.
Ignoring Mimi’s disapproving look, Leo offered the bag to Spoiler, but Spoiler shook his head. His teeth were chattering. His face was grey, and slick with sweat. ‘D-did you see that?’ he babbled. ‘It carried her off! What’s going on? Dragons don’t – they don’t usually…’
‘This one does,’ Conker said.
‘It’s another one of your ex-boss’s little ideas, Spoiler,’ drawled Freda. ‘That’s the third victim today. Haven’t you heard?’
‘I haven’t heard anything!’ Spoiler moaned. ‘I’ve been locked up in that tower for hours.’ He shuddered violently. ‘Dragons! I hate d-dragons! She knows that. She’s probably told it to look for me. She’s after me, I know it! The Merks said her butterflies had been thick around the tavern for days.’
Suddenly he flung himself to his knees in front of them. ‘Oh, please don’t let the dragon get me!’ he implored, clasping his hands beseechingly and rolling his red-rimmed eyes. ‘Don’t let her get me! She’ll feed me to it, piece by piece! You’ve got to protect me!’
‘We’ll think about it,’ Conker grunted, glancing at Freda, Bertha, Mimi and Leo meaningfully. ‘It depends on how well you answer our questions.’
Spoiler’s lips quivered. ‘What questions?’ he asked, climbing unsteadily to his feet.
Leo rushed in before anyone else could speak. ‘For a start, tell us what you stole – what you took with you – when you escaped from the Blue Queen’s castle on the night that – that you and she had your fight, and the Key to Rondo was destroyed.’
‘Why do you want to know that?’ Spoiler asked, looking utterly bewildered.
‘Shut up, you!’ growled Conker. He turned a little away and leaned towards Leo. ‘Why do we want to know that?’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth.
‘Well, you can’t imagine Spoiler running away from the castle empty-handed, can you?’ Leo answered softly. ‘He didn’t have much time, but on his way out he would have taken anything he could see that looked valuable, to sell later on.’
‘So?’ hissed Bertha, who was listening intently, along with Mimi and Freda.
‘So,’ said Leo, ‘I think the queen’s discovered that one of the things Spoiler took was something she needs now – very urgently. And I think it’s a silver box.’
‘How do you work that out?’ Conker shook his head dazedly.
‘Enchanted squirrels mugged Spoiler last night, right?’ Leo whispered. ‘All they took from him was a silver trinket box. But that box was from Hobnob. It was the wrong box! So then the queen sent the squirrels to burgle Winkle’s warehouse. We know that Spoiler went straight to Innes-Trule after he escaped. And we know that Winkle was at Innes-Trule at the same time, on his buying trip. Spoiler could have sold Winkle some of the stuff he’d taken from the palace. I think the Blue Queen suspected he had, anyway. She thought that if Spoiler didn’t have the box she needed, then it would be with Winkle.’
Freda snapped her beak appreciatively. Bertha exclaimed in astonishment.
Spoiler was staring at them blearily. His shoulders were slumped. His big hands hung loose in their flimsy lace mittens. He looked frightened and exhausted.
‘Was a silver box one of the things you stole from the castle, Spoiler?’ Leo coaxed.
Spoiler hesitated, then nodded. ‘It was heart-shaped,’ he croaked. ‘She always kept it in her bedroom, but I’d never seen her open it. I grabbed it as I was leaving. I didn’t think she’d even notice it was gone.’
‘Where is it now?’ Mimi asked urgently. ‘Did you sell it to Winkle?’
‘Winkle wouldn’t buy it,’ Spoiler said sulkily. ‘It was full of sticky brown stuff, and he said it would be too hard to clean up for sale. No one in Hobnob would buy it either. In the end I just gave it to the Crystal Palace fishmonger in return for a couple of fish, when I was on my way to the Merks. I was starving!’
‘Did anyone see you do this trade?’ Conker asked urgently. ‘Blue butterflies? Anyone?’
Spoiler shook his head. ‘The fisherman and I were in the Crystal Palace tool shed at the time,’ he mumbled. ‘I was hiding, trying to get a few winks of sleep. He was on his way home – a Gap that leads to the coast starts in that tool shed.’
‘I’ve never heard of that,’ said Freda suspiciously. ‘The only Gap I know of at the Crystal Palace is the one linking it to the police station.’
‘They keep their Coast Gap quiet,’ Spoiler retorted. ‘They don’t want crowds of people traipsing through the grounds every school holidays, do they? It leads to a part of the coast that’s practically deserted, apparently. The fisherman said he’s the only one who uses it.’
Bertha turned to Conker imperiously. ‘Our way is clear,’ she announced, tossing back her ribbons. ‘We must proceed immediately to the Crystal Palace tool shed!’
‘You’re right!’ Conker rubbed his hands enthusiastically. ‘We’ll trace that fisherman and get the silver box back. Then we’ll get Brewer to analyse whatever’s inside it, and that will give us a clue about what the Blue Queen’s up to.’
‘You’re mad!’ Spoiler shook his head again. ‘You’re mad if you think you can cross her.’
Conker bristled. ‘You keep quiet and brush your frock!’ he ordered. ‘You’re all over dead grass, and we can’t take you to the Crystal Palace looking like that.’
Spoiler opened his mouth to say something, then glanced at Leo and seemed to think better of it. He straightened his shoulders and wiped his face. He brushed the grass from his skirts, and put his bonnet straight. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to Conker with a weird sort of dignity, ‘Dame Dally won’t let the team down.’