Paul Kidd - The Council of Blades

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 Ilego followed by a squat, savage troll of a man dressed all in black. Ilego 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 Ilego 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, we'll just have to do it ourselves then!" Skinny arms thrust ineffectually at Tekoriikii's bulk. "Help get this dumb thing off me!"