Over The Sea (21 page)

So. Clair: “I have to get that antidote.”

Me. “But you can't risk going to Kwenz's castle with him there.”

Girls: “Nononono!”

Me: “So I say we use PJ's handy-dandy alliance and decoy Kwenz back to the Squashed Wedding Cake.”

Clair grinned. “Interesting idea. I really don't like the sound of this alliance, or the plan to teach PJ magic, I have to confess.”

“Oh, he'll never stick to it,” I declared, sure after only a few encounters that he hadn't half the self-discipline that I had. Not that I had much. But I was quite sure he had less. “First, let's make Kwenz so sick of PJ and Fobo that he thinks twice about an alliance.”

Clair: “How?”

Me: “Leave that to me and the girls!”

Clair, rubbing her thumbnail over her lips: “I think that will work. At the same time, I can try out a new invisibility spell that I discovered.”

Me: “Won't that one be warded?” I knew which spell she meant: the one that makes others' eyes slide away from you, if you hold very still.

“Yes,” Clair said. “But this one is different, and very dangerous. The idea is that one unbodies, so to speak. My body will stay hidden near the border of the black magic protective ward, and my essence wafts into Kwenz's land, in spirit form. It's risky because it's not good to remain in that form long, and of course magic might interfere. Or the Chwahir find my self lying there. And also, once one is inside the ward, one can't actually touch anything. But if he left his workroom as you say, and went to lie down, then if we hurry, he might not have gone back yet, and the book will be on the table. And if his habits with magic spells are like most, the antidote will be right there on the same page with the spell.”

Me: “You take Hreealdar, who can guard you. You'll be in the biggest danger.”

Clair nodded once. “All right, if you think you can do without. But first I will transfer you girls directly to the Squashed Wedding Cake.”

I nodded, rubbing my hands. “And there, I can take over, and maybe buy you some time.”

Small I was, but I still had my magic! And so I outlined my plan.

And it was magic that was on my mind when we transferred, one by one, to the street outside the Squashed Wedding Cake. We'd stopped only for me to get something to eat and drink, which I hadn't had all day. Marveling and shaking her head, Janil gave me water and apple juice in a thimble, and tiny bits of fresh bread with crumbles of cheese.

Then Clair sent us off, me first because I could picture a destination, and then the others, picturing me in their minds.

It was still night, of course. Fobo's palace was lit in every window, giving us something to see by. The streets weren't lit, except by windows. Fobo was too cheap for glowglobes or even magic-burning torches for anyone but herself. And the servants had leddas-oil candles, and only she had beeswax in her rooms, which was a prettier light for her mirrors. And in her drawing rooms and ballrooms, glow globes.

Anyway, as soon as we'd gotten over the transfer-ickies, I said through Seshe, “Now remember, we have to be an army. Much as we'd love for PJ to know that it's us, we can't let them see it's only us on Clair's side.”

“Discover us, you mean,” Dhana said. “We're not turning invisible, are we?”

“I can put the regular spell on anyone who wants it. You just have to be very still if anyone enters a room, make sure they don't touch you, and don't stare right into their face.”

The girls all looked at one another, and only Diana and Seshe opted for the spell. Dhana could disguise herself if there were any water nearby. Irene had an idea for her own disguise, and from the gloating expression in her face, lit by those golden windows, we could tell she'd made up some persona to play-act. Faline just looked vacant, which was kind of odd, but I was distracted by Sherry's grin when she said, “Nobody ever pays attention to anyone in the kitchens.”

So we all dispersed, Seshe carrying me inside and then searching the second floor until she found what had to be PJ's rooms, which were down the hall from Fobo's gigantic suite. PJ had a bedroom maybe forty feet square, with a canopied bed surmounted by a giant silver crown. The walls were hung with twenty-foot tapestries depicting Mumsie and PJ standing in royal clothing, looking important as they did something representing each season. In one of the anterooms he had a huge collection of jeweled and beautifully made swords and the room beyond was jam-packed with clothes, a bathroom beyond with a tiled tub big as a swimming pool, with a kind of waterfall pouring in, the water heated by magic. My opinion of PJ went up (from minus zero to zero) when I saw that. A couple of parlors finished off his chambers, ending with his own private dining room.

“Here you go,” Seshe said, setting me down on the bed, and then laying down the dress-pins I'd asked her to bring along.

I waved, knowing she couldn't hear me, and she departed on her own errands. I got right to work. Coming up the grand staircase from across from PJ's doors came the scrape of violins. The Auknuges were having a formal ball. From time to time “spontaneous” cheers of admiration carried up through the open windows, and I figured either Fobo, or PJ, or both, had to be dancing. Of course they would require applause from their court just like they required those smiles on cue, and all the bowing.

I finished sticking pins in that bed just as the music played the last dance. I was yawning fiercely. It had been a long day, but it wasn't going to end yet. Oh, no. We had to keep it going all night, if the plan was to work.

I scrambled up one of the silken bell-pulls next to the bed, climbed up (my feet tucked easily into the braid), and landed on the canopy a few minutes before PJ came stomping through.

“... and I'm
hungry
,” he whined. “I want something to eat before I sleep, or I'll toss and turn all night. I don't know why Mumsie had to end dinner so soon, just for that stupid dancing, as if that boring old geezer would actually dance with her. Does she really think he'd want to get married?”

“Couldn't say, Your Royal Highness,” answered the valet in a very wooden voice.

They passed through to the dressing room. I heard PJ complaining on and on as he splashed about in the bath. For a kid devoted to Mumsie, he sure groaned a lot! She'd made him dance with the stupidest girls ... she never gave him enough dessert ... she was always complaining about how he ought to practice drilling the guard, when everyone
knows
how much he
loathes
getting sweaty.

He reentered his bedroom, nightshirt billowing (his nightcap with a crown stitched onto it!), “And anyway, all I have to do is command. A commander just has to say, ‘Get in there and defeat them,' and it's up to the underlings to do the dirty work. Everyone knows that, except Mumsie. But of course she's just a female, so she doesn't know the military mind like I do — -AWWWWWK!”

Aha, I thought, sitting above. He seemeth to have discovered the pins!

“WHAT'S THIS?” he shrieked. “OWWWWW! Pins! I'll have you thrashed! I'll have
everyone
thrashed! Who
did
that?” He leaped out of bed and ran out the door, screeching. The poor valet followed, twittering protests in a bewildered voice.

Their voices were echoing at the other end by the time I'd swung down the bellpull, landing on his big pile of down pillows. Then I got to work, grabbing all my pins and shoving them in the bellpull. Carefully I climbed up again, pulled up the silken cord (that really strained my already tired arms) and I'd just finished unloading the pins onto the canopy and dropped the bellpull again when I heard voices coming.

“...
all over
the bed, I tell you. The servants shall
all
be thrashed! Who could
do
that? Someone's not showing me proper respect! They all need to be punished!”

“Now, Jonnicake, our servants do not leave pins lying about,” Fobo said. “Show me these thousands of pins.”

PJ stalked to the bed, threw back the covers, and said, in triumph, “There!”

Fobo looked down. Her face under its heavy paint puckered in perplexity, and then in ill humor. “Jonnicake, dearest, I never thought you would descend to fooling Mumsie. You know my nerves are extremely delicate, and you must take great care not to jolt them, or I might become deathly ill. You don't want that, do you?”

I peered down through the ruffles, shaking with laughter at the expression on PJ's face. His eyes bugged, his jaw dropped, as he stared at the bed.

Not a pin in sight. “No, Mumsie,” he whimpered.

“Go to sleep,” Fobo said a little crossly. “We have much to do tomorrow, if we are to royally entertain our guest.” Fobo looked around, now frowning. “Why is this room filled with people? Get about your business, all of you! Except you.” She pointed a fat finger with a gigantic ruby on it. “You guards. Stand outside His Royal Highness's room this night.”

Servants had naturally crowded in, some of them probably worried about the wild threats of thrashings. Now they bowed low (I heard someone's knees crackle and pop like cereal) and then withdrew in haste, but I distinctly saw some covert smiles exchanged. The two guards looked resigned as they clumped out and took up their station on either side of the door. The valet shut them all out.

Muttering and whining, PJ climbed — carefully — into his bed. The valet withdrew.

PJ hopped back out of bed and ran to whatever it was that Kwenz had given him, and muttered something.

For a time all I could hear was his snorting breathing, and then light flashed, air whooshed into the room (smelling briefly of mildew) and Kwenz was there. “What is it?” he asked, sounding both breathless and cross.

“Pins,” PJ said sulkily. “I think those girls did a magic spell and put invisible pins in my bed. It has to be them. No one else would do it.”

Kwenz sighed. “If those stupid children know enough magic to fashion invisible pins — something I have never heard of — then you and I are doomed.”

PJ snuffled once, but subsided as Kwenz felt over the bed. “If there are pins, they are intangible as well as invisible.”

“I
felt
'em,” PJ whined. “Royal persons feel pain more than commoners, Mumsie says so. Our nerves are
extremely
delicate. Only commoners are clods and dolts and don't feel anything.
Pins!
They
almost
made me
bleed
!”

“Go to sleep. We will talk in the morning.”

Kwenz vanished, more air whirled around the room. PJ climbed into his bed, blew out the light, tossed and sniffed and sighed for what seemed hours, and then finally buried his head in the pillows. I took a chance and climbed down the bell pull, then toiled across the miles of his room to the wardrobe, where I busied myself knotting every ribbon, bit of lace, and frill. I was tired after a while — clothes are heavy as big quilts when you are that tiny — but the result looked so spectacular it gave me energy.

A shadow moved across the floor, briefly barring the light under the wardrobe door. Stealthy feet tiptoed in — one of the girls!

Seshe spotted me. She bent down, and soon I was perched on her shoulder.

“I helped Diana and Irene in Fobo's wardrobe,” Seshe said, laughing silently. She'd found one of the liveries of the upper servants — a frilly pink apron over gray. It actually was less offensive to look at than the nobles' clothes. “She was downstairs haranguing the servants about entertaining Kwenz tomorr — “

A shriek tortured every ear within fifty miles!

Everyone converged on Fobo's suite. Here I had to blink to make sense of proportion and shape because there was so much decoration it was hard to take everything in. The colors were mainly orange and pink together, with beige and yellow highlights, and
everything
in that room was begemmed and belaced and ribboned. I mean everything. Except all the mirrors on the walls, in corners, and especially on the gigantic doors — nothing could get in the way of Fobo admiring herself, even decorations. But all those mirrors made up for their plain flatness by being topped with huge crowns all beribboned with swoops and festoons of tassels and lace.

In the center of the huge parlor Fobo, still in her ball gown with its huge satin flounces and diamonds and emeralds, stood screeching at cowering maids as she pointed at two mirrored doors standing open. She stamped her feet, sending the thousands of silk pompons on her gown bobbling and jouncing — it looked like she was encased in thousands of electrified bees.

“Loook!” she foghorned, pointing her scarlet fingernails at the wardrobe.

Seshe couldn't get too close for the crowd, but the glimpse I got from her shoulder showed a giant pile of silk and velvet and lace fabric of yellow and pink and orange and purple — sometimes in the same outfit — all covered by mud, with weeds tastefully planted round the top.

Irene sidled up next to us. She too was wearing one of the maids' uniforms. “You'd think,” she whispered, “Fobo would be delighted for the excuse to get new clothes. I mean, we picked the ugliest ones. Honest.”

“Ugliest to you,” Seshe said. She was smiling. “I'm afraid those are her favorites.”

Irene's eyes rounded. “I didn't think of that.”

Fobo's voice had risen. She threatened her quaking servants (most of them were in tears) then realized she had an audience. She turned and shrieked, “Get out! Get out! You have work to do — do it!”

PJ stood in the doorway, wearing a brocade dressing gown almost as fancy as his throne room clothes. She glowered at him and shrieked, “Go to bed!”

“I think we need helllllllp,” PJ whined — and I smacked my hands, rubbing them.

Fobo wasn't listening. She stomped to the wardrobe, snapped her fingers, and a maid nipped a lace-and-pompom nightie off a hook. Then Fobo marched across the room toward one of the sets of doors, which gave onto a bathroom. A servant scuttled ahead to open the door, and just in time. It was clear that she never, ever opened a door herself — she would have marched right into it.