Кейт Новак - The Wyvern's Spur

The wyvern shape wavered and shrunk until it was Giogi.

“Uncle Drone! You’re alive!” the young nobleman shouted.

“Shhh! Not so loud,” the wizard whispered. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

Thomas tapped Drone on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir, but perhaps we should go back inside, just in case—”

Drone shot a glance up at the sky. “You’re right, Thomas. Come on, everyone.”

Drone and Thomas hustled Giogi and Olive back into the townhouse. Drone motioned to the parlor doors, and they all trooped into Giogi’s parlor.

Drone shoved some books off the couch and flopped down. “It’s nice and warm in here. You should get a fireplace in your attic, Giogi. It’s cold up there.”

“What were you doing in my attic?” Giogi asked. “We all thought you were dead. Uncle Drone, how could you let us think that? What were you trying to do?”

“Sit down, Giogi,” the old wizard said, patting the cushion beside him.

Giogi sat down with a huff. Olive took a seat on the footstool by the fire. Thomas remained standing by the parlor doors and explained that Cat had ridden to Redstone.

“I’m sorry for any grief I caused you,” Drone said to Giogi.

“Well, you should be,” Giogi said. “I thought Flattery had killed you.”

“He tried,” Drone said. “Sent a wight to do the job, but I disintegrated it.”

“Then you left an extra set of robes and hat over the ashes of the wight, didn’t you?” Olive asked.

Drone nodded.

“But why?” Giogi asked.

“I needed to throw my would-be killer off my trail. It was important that you all believe I was dead so Flattery would believe so, too. Then I could work at searching for the spur and trying to discover more about Flattery without having to look over my shoulder for other undead assassins.”

“You told Thomas, though,” Olive said.

“Well, Thomas is the soul of discretion, and I needed a base of operations and somewhere to sleep.”

Giogi let out a groan and hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. “The lilac room! That’s why you didn’t want me to put Cat in there,” Giogi accused Thomas.

“I’m sorry, sir. Your uncle preferred the bed in the lilac room. I did prepare the red room for Mistress Cat, but you never told me you’d held firm on the lilac room.”

“Uncle Drone, why did you try to smother Cat?” Giogi asked crossly.

“I didn’t try to smother the girl. In the dark, I didn’t know she was there. My night vision’s not what it was, you know. I fluffed a pillow and dropped it in the bed; the next thing I know, I’ve got a hysterical woman shrieking in my ear.”

“But Cat thought it was Flattery.”

“Without the beard, he looks like Flattery in a dark room or an attic,” Olive said.

“Without the—Uncle Drone,” Giogi exclaimed, “you shaved off your beard.”

“I needed a disguise. Makes me look younger, don’t you think?”

Giogi bit his tongue.

“Did you really get Mistress Ruskettle’s partner, Jade, to steal the spur for you?” Giogi asked.

“Well, no. I gave her my key and asked her to bring it out for me. Wyvernspurs have that right, after all.”

“Then why didn’t you do it yourself?” Olive asked.

“Well, Dorath would ask me right off if I took it. If I got someone else to do it for me, I could say I didn’t without lying. Then, of course, Jade had the most remarkable undetectability. If she held the spur for me, Steele and Dorath wouldn’t be able to locate it. Or Flattery, as it turns out. Of course, neither could I. When she didn’t rendezvous with Thomas at the Fish the evening after she stole it, I—well, I thought she’d betrayed me, to be honest.”

“She was murdered,” Olive said coolly.

“Yes,” Drone said softly, looking down at his hands. “Thomas told me. I’m very sorry, Ruskettle. I knew how close the two of you were.”

Olive looked down at the floor and fought back her tears.

“We owe you a debt of gratitude for returning the spur to us safely,” Drone said.

Olive looked up at the wizard, her eyes burning with vengeance. “Get Flattery for me,” she demanded.

“Oh, I intend to,” Drone assured her.

“As do I,” Giogi added.

Olive smiled with a cold satisfaction.

“You didn’t think I’d let my daughter’s murderer go unpunished, did you?” Drone asked.

“Your daughter?” Giogi asked. “What are you talking about, Uncle Drone?”

“Your uncle adopted Jade,” Olive explained. “He didn’t know she was already a relative.”

“She was?” Drone asked with surprise.

“Yes,” Olive said. “She and Cat are related to the Nameless Bard, and Flattery probably is, too. He said to Cole, “My father will remain nameless.” I think he was making his idea of a joke. The Nameless Bard was a Wyvernspur named Finder.”

“There isn’t anyone named Finder in our family tree,” Drone said.

“I’ll bet if you check your family tree,” Olive predicted, “you’ll find a name blotted out somewhere. That would be Finder. The Harpers would have gotten your family to wipe out all traces of his name. See, Finder was pretty callous once. He performed this experiment that got some people killed and—well the Harpers wiped his name from the Realms.”

“We shall do more than that to Flattery,” Drone said. “I suggest we start planning our strategy over a hot supper.”

“There may not be time, sir,” Thomas said, his eyes widening with fear.

“Eh?” the wizard queried.

The servant pointed through the townhouse’s large parlor windows, which looked south over the Wyvernspur lands and Redstone Castle.

Giogi, Olive, and Drone lined up at the window to look at what had upset Thomas.

In the last ray of sunlight, the cut stone of the castle’s west wall shone as red as blood against an indigo sky. The vision’s loveliness was marred only by a blot of darkness that drifted above the keep. The blot’s lower surface also shone red, but its surface consisted of jutting edges and jagged crevices, like a boulder torn from the earth by some monstrous cataclysm. Only magic could have raised the stone, though. It was so large, it would crush half of Immersea if it fell to the earth. At the top of the massive rock were walls that rose so high that they disappeared into the darkness of the twilight sky.

“What is it?” Giogi gasped.

“Flattery’s desert fortress,” Drone said grimly. “It appears he did more than reclaim it. He’s brought it with him.”

Very quietly Cat snuck back out of Drone’s lab. She had received Lord Frefford’s permission to be there, but there was, after all, no reason to disturb Aunt Dorath. Cat crept down the outer staircase, clutching her sack of scrolls.

In the excitement of Steele’s leap from the tower and her recovery of the spur, she’d forgotten about the magic she’d so painstakingly collected. She remembered the sack after Giogi had left for the crypt and decided she could fetch it and be back at the townhouse before Giogi returned.

She had to hurry now, or Giogi would worry. It had only taken a moment to retrieve the sack, but getting to Redstone had been another matter. She might have tried galloping Poppy across the fields, but she’d ridden the mare along the roads, keeping her at a walk all the way. She had no intention of riding her back to Giogi’s townhouse. Cat felt safer on foot.

The tower’s outer stairs brought her down to the second level of the castle. She stood on the balcony overlooking the two curved grand staircases leading to the entrance hall below. To the northwest and northeast stretched hallways leading to the family living quarters.