“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Fifer asked. She sniffed at her plate and wrinkled her nose before bravely taking a bite. “I mean, he basically said he tricked us into having him guide us here so he could collect a reward. If that doesn’t make him more evil than good, I don’t know what does.”
“I’m not sure, but I’m not leaving here without you,” said Seth. “Even if they let me go free.”
“It’s not like you have anywhere to go,” Fifer pointed out.
“Unless they let a dragon take me home, and then maybe I could get help.”
“True. You’d have to leave us, then, though.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I would.”
Fifer ate the prison food without really tasting it. She was hungry enough to eat sticks, so she didn’t really notice how terrible it was. She broke off a hunk of stale bread and nibbled on it while trying not to freak out about their circumstances. But she could feel a familiar worry welling up inside her that had been all too common lately. She set the bread down. “So what are we going to do? Just pretend like we don’t know they’re going to keep Thisbe and me hostage?”
Seth shrugged.
Fifer stewed about it some more, and then she sat up, suddenly angry. “And who cares if our eyes are black! Why does that make us valuable slaves?”
“No idea. Probably just because it’s so rare.”
“Well, that’s a really stupid reason.”
“Shh,” said Seth, looking over his shoulder. But the guards had remained a short distance up the ramp and weren’t paying much attention to the two of them. It wasn’t like they could escape.
They finished their meal. Both were exhausted, and they began fretting more and more about the situation. “We’ll figure something out,” said Seth, trying to be brave. “We have to. Once the dragons have the ability to fly again, we’ll bust out of here—all of us.” His voice pitched higher. “And we’ll go back to Artimé, and everything will be normal like before.”
Fifer felt a lump rise to her throat. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. And she caught Hux’s eye. Hux seemed to nod slightly too, as if he agreed with the plan.
“I wish you didn’t have these stupid muzzles so could tell us how to get you out of here,” Fifer muttered to the dragons. She pushed her tray away and pulled Seth aside. “I’m going to ask the guards a question so I can look for where they might keep their keys.”
Seth raised an eyebrow. “Suit yourself. Though I really don’t think we have any way of getting our hands on a set.”
“At least I’m trying something.” Fifer sniffed and went over to the guards. Seth climbed up the makeshift ladder next to Arabis’s stall and looked carefully at the dragon’s muzzle, trying to see if he could figure out how to take it off. “Does someone come to remove your muzzles so you can eat?” he asked her.
Arabis shook her head as much as she could, then jerked her snout toward the ceiling.
Seth looked up. There was a strange contraption he hadn’t paid attention to before. It was a trapdoor with bits of hay sticking out, and a small clock attached to the door with wires. Arabis’s clock was set for seven in the morning. Seth puzzled over it, then slid along the doors to Yarbeck’s stall and checked the trapdoor above her. That clock was set for quarter past seven.
Seth frowned and continued awkwardly across the stables, checking each of the five clocks that were attached to the trapdoors. They were all set fifteen minutes apart.
Then he took a closer look at the muzzles. Those, too, had an unusual wire attachment that didn’t seem necessary. Seth couldn’t figure it out.
Soon Fifer returned carrying a pitcher of water, which she apparently had asked for as her excuse to check out the soldiers. “I couldn’t find where they keep their keys,” she whispered. “I didn’t see them, hear them—nothing. They must be inside their jackets.”
Seth pointed to the trapdoors in the ceiling above the dragons’ heads. “Check this out. I think the dragons are fed on a timer system. And somehow when their little timer goes off, it signals the muzzle to open far enough so the dragons can eat. They’re timed so only one dragon’s mouth is free at a time.”
The two dragons in earshot nodded profusely, confirming Seth’s guess.
“Wow,” said Fifer. “Can you make it so the timers all go off at once?”
“That’s exactly what I was planning to try. Do you think you’ll have all the wing magic done by seven in the morning?”
Fifer felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach. “Sure, I guess.” She glanced out the high window, trying to figure out what time it was. The sky was still black, but did she see a faint orange tinge? “Better make that eight, just to be safe. Then it’ll be nice and light outside too.”
“You got it,” said Seth. He started to adjust all of the timers for eight o’clock, happy to be doing something useful. “Just remember that if the soldiers find out we’ve been messing with the timers, we’ll end up in the dungeon like Thisbe.”
Fifer grimaced, but her expression soon cleared. “Speaking of Thisbe, did you hear what Dev said? It sounds to me like even though they dragged Thisbe up the ramp, we can actually get to her part of the dungeon through that little doorway where Dev came out of. He said he started on the other side.”
“Yeah, I caught that. I don’t think he knew he gave anything away. I wonder how he got that bloody nose. I hope Thisbe punched him.”
Fifer smiled. “I hope we’ll be able to ask her soon. When I went to get the water, I peeked down that hallway again. It’s lined with guards, one for every few prison chambers. I’m not sure they’re going to be too keen on you and me just sauntering through there to find her.”
Seth sighed. “This is so frustrating. It’s like there are always five new problems for every solution we come up with.”
“Yeah.” Fifer took a deep breath, then started climbing into Arabis’s stable. “Let’s get to work solving this one first.”
Stupid Magic
While Thisbe slept in the dungeon, Fifer wearily recounted to Seth everything she knew about what Alex had done with the dragon wings back in Artimé. And then she narrowed her eyes and studied the wings, feeling very unsure of herself and her ability to do the magic necessary to make the wings come alive. It had been Thisbe who’d brought the prison grid to life down in the village. It seemed like more of a Thisbe type of spell—beautiful, yet kind of tough and big in a theatrical way. Whereas the spells that appealed to Fifer were more musical and nature based. Fifer had barely been paying attention, what with keeping an eye on the ostrich statue and thinking she’d never have to be the one to perform it. “Do you want to try first?” she asked Seth.
“Me?” Seth looked horrified. “No stinking way. I’ll just mess it up. I can barely handle scatterclips—the nonlethal kind. Besides, you’re the naturally magical one here. You’re the heir to the throne. Kind of.”
“Throne of destruction, maybe.” Fifer pursed her lips. She was trying to bolster her confidence and talk herself into being able to do it. She muttered something unintelligible under her breath, then guided one of Arabis’s wings up into the air so she could reach the end of it, and stood up on her back. Seth helped Fifer hold the wing steady, and then she closed her eyes and laid her hand on the seam where the new part connected. She took an uneven breath, and then said, “Alive.”
The word hung in the air, and Fifer opened one eye to see what had happened.
“Is that it?” asked Seth. “Isn’t it supposed to look better now?”
Fifer gave him the side eye.
“Different, I mean,” Seth said weakly.
“It didn’t work.” She stared stonily at what she now realized were hideous-looking wings, feeling like a failure. “I . . . I can’t do it.”
Seth’s eyes widened. “But you have to.” He thought for a moment. “In Samheed’s plays, the hero never gets it right the first time.”
“That has nothing to do with real life,” said Fifer, who
was more upset with her failure than she had been with anything in quite some time. “This is much harder.”
“Well,” said Seth, growing frustrated too, “at least try again.”
“Why? It’s obvious I can’t do it.”
Seth shook his head slowly. “I don’t think that’s how it works for most people.”
“That’s how it works for me.” And it was true. Fifer and Thisbe hadn’t experienced failure with learned spells. Granted, their internal magic generally came out by accident, and they often surprised themselves when something happened. But whenever they actually learned a spell by watching, they almost always got it right the first time. It was sneaking around to get the knowledge that had been the hard part. “I’m mad at myself for not paying more attention. I usually do, but I was distracted. Besides, Thiz was really into this one, and I knew she was watching closely. So I figured I didn’t need to. That was stupid.” Admitting that was almost as hard as failing.
“Look,” said Seth, who was accustomed to frequent failure, “you’re special and all that. Whatever. But normal people fail at magic all the time. You should see my class in Warrior Training. We all have to try a few times.”
“I’m not like normal people.”
Seth rolled his eyes. “I really can’t stand you sometimes.”
Fifer sat up and glared at him. “I can’t stand you, either.”
“I don’t care! Just try the stupid spell again, will you?”
Fifer wanted to wring Seth’s neck. Instead she expelled a hot breath and went through the motions just to get him off her back. She closed her eyes, waited a second, and then said, “Alive.”
“Of course nothing’s going to happen if you do it like that,” said Seth.
“Then you do it if you know so much.”
Seth was mad enough to take her up on it. “Fine. Don’t talk to me.”
“I’m not!”
“Shh!” Seth closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. His mom often told him that he and Fifer were a lot alike, though he personally didn’t see it. But she said that was why he got along with Thisbe a little better. And even though he and Fifer got along fine most of the time, it was when things became intense that Seth usually backed down for the sake of survival. That left him stewing, which made their relationship start to unravel. This was definitely not a good time for that to happen.
He blew out a sharp breath and tried to stop thinking about that. Instead he filled his mind with thoughts about wings and flying. He pictured the new, hideously ugly wing tip turning beautiful like the rest of the wing as it became one with it. He imagined the dragon soaring through the air and gliding over the sea near Artimé, and thought about how cool it would be if he were the one to say, “I did that.”
I can do this, Seth told himself. I can do this. He kept the calm dragon images in mind, and then took in a deep breath. “Alive,” he whispered.
He opened his eyes. The wing looked exactly the same.
“I can’t do this,” Seth muttered, and turned his back on Fifer because he couldn’t stand seeing the look on her face. “Are you sure that’s the right word?”
“Oh, I see how it is. Now that you can’t do it either, you think I got the word wrong.” Fifer might have laughed if the situation weren’t so dire. “Hard to admit you can’t do it, isn’t it.”
“I just did admit it! Ugh!” Seth’s face turned dark red as he tried to hold his frustration in check. But it was getting harder. He was exhausted and uncomfortable, and now he was expected to do a kind of spell even his mother had never tried—and she was amazing. He grabbed the stable post and slid down it, falling the last few feet onto his bottom on the cold, wet floor. “I’m taking a break.”
Fifer watched him and let out a huff of annoyance. “There’s nowhere to go for that,” she said.
But Seth didn’t care. He walked toward the ramp, at the very least wanting to get out of Fifer’s sight for a few minutes.
The four soldiers nearest him were sitting propped up against the walls, asleep, though Seth could hear the murmur of voices around the first turn of the ramp. He crept up, sneaking past the sleeping ones, his hands automatically going for his vest pockets in case he needed to fight before he remembered they were completely empty. He slid along the wall as far as he dared, thinking if there were only two soldiers around the bend, maybe he could make a break for it and escape.
Part of him knew he couldn’t do that to Fifer. But he was mad enough now to consider it. His nefarious plan was soon cast aside when he could make out at least four different voices.
“They’re cartin’ ’em to Dragonsmarche in the morning,” said a woman. “Gonna sell ’em. They’ll bring a fortune.”
“Who, the Revinir?” said another.
“Nah. The king’s not telling the Revinir we got ’em, else they’ll be snatched away in a hot minute. Keeping it on the down low. It’s the king who’s offerin’ them up. Word is spreading underground.”
“I thought the king would want to keep them here,” said a voice sounding suspiciously like Dev. He almost seemed disappointed.
“Nah. The pirates heard word of the auction, and they’re willin’ ta pay a shiny ton.”
“There’ll be a biddin’ war for sure,” said a man’s voice. “Mebbe they’ll throw you in the mix, Dev. The lot of you are worth a fortune!” The man roared with laughter, startling the sleeping soldiers.
Seth jumped back, his heart in his throat, and ran past the waking soldiers toward Fifer before they could see how far he’d ventured out of the dungeon. But the head soldier was awake in a flash and caught Seth sneaking back. He stuck out his leg, tripping the boy. Seth went sprawling hands first and landed on his stomach. The head soldier grabbed him by the back of his vest and brought him to his feet, then pulled his dagger and held the point to Seth’s neck. Seth’s eyes widened. He couldn’t breathe. Dev and the soldiers from higher up the ramp came running down to see what the ruckus was.
“Where’ve you been, boy?” asked the head soldier. His rancid breath was hot and moist in Seth’s ear.
Seth, awash in fear, could feel himself slipping away.
Expelled
Don’t faint, don’t faint,” Seth whispered under his breath. He hated fainting, but he did it sometimes. He wasn’t sure why, and basically he didn’t care—he just hated that it happened. This time he was successful in willing it away, and slowly his vision returned.
“Let him go,” said the woman who’d been talking earlier. “I was comin’ down to take him out anyway.”
Seth didn’t dare turn his head to look for Fifer for fear of the dagger slicing his neck. The head soldier tightened his grip, and then he shoved the boy to the floor. Seth landed hard on his already bruised hands and knees, which made them sting horribly.
“Get up,” said the woman. “You’re comin’ with me.”
Seth pushed himself up to his feet, feeling like he was probably going to be killed any second. He started shaking. Take him out? That wasn’t a comforting phrase. He fought off the blackness again and stumbled toward the soldier, who gripped his arm tighter than a shackle spell. She pulled him up the ramp past all the soldiers. Only Dev followed them.
“Why are you taking him out?” Dev asked.
“Princess ordered it. Said it wasn’t humane to keep him locked up when he ain’t got the black eyes, you see.”
Dev was quiet. He saw, all right.
Seth chanced a look and saw Dev’s head was down. He was still wearing the same rags as he’d worn on their journey. And his nose was still bloody. The inner corners of his eyes were puffy and turning black-and-blue. He’d been hit hard. Had Dev been up working all night too, like he and Fifer had been?
Dev glanced at Seth as they went into the entryway and past the spot where the bejeweled tigers were tied up. The two boys held each other’s gaze for a moment. Seth was too scared to try to read Dev’s look. He could only plead for help with his own.
<
br /> Dev turned away.
The entry soldier stationed at the controls called for the portcullis to be raised and the drawbridge dropped.
“I’ll see to it he finds the proper road,” Dev said. “I’ve got to go out and get caught up on my chores anyway.”
The woman laughed harshly. “No sleep for you again, I see.”
“No. Got in a little trouble for sneaking away.”
“Well, serves you right, letting Princess make you carry out all her whims.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Dev. He didn’t regret it. Not much, anyway. They came to a stop as the drawbridge landed with a thud on the far side of the moat.
The woman shoved Seth. “Go on, then. You’re free.”
Seth froze. He told his feet to walk. And his feet wouldn’t listen.
“Is he stupid?” the woman asked Dev.
“Only a little. Come on,” Dev said. He pulled Seth by the arm and didn’t let go until they were across the moat and on the path leading toward the forest.
When the drawbridge had gone back up, Dev stopped and faced Seth as darts of pink and orange tinged the eastern sky. “You all right now?” he said, his voice much softer when he was away from the soldiers. “Have you got a way home?”
“N-no,” Seth answered, still bewildered at the strange turn of events and feeling utterly lost and alone. “I—I—I . . . ,” he stammered, and looked back at the castle. “What’s Fifer going to think? That I just left her there?”
Dev’s face grew hard. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Tell her I’m sorry—we had a fight. Will you tell her? And that I didn’t . . . I mean, I’ll wait for her and Thisbe. They’ve got to escape.” He slammed his mouth shut, feeling like he said too much to the enemy but hardly being able to help it in his current state. He dropped to his haunches and put his head in his hands, agonizing over what was just becoming real to him. He was out here, Fifer was trapped with the dragons and unable to fix their wings, and Thisbe was . . . where? “Where’s Thisbe?” Seth demanded, standing up again and grabbing Dev’s torn shirt. It tore a little more.