The Outsorcerer's Apprentice (11 page)

“Great. Can you do doughnuts?”

“Whatnuts?”

His face fell. “Bagels?”

“What’s a bagel?”

“Fried onion rings?”

A moment later, her hand hurt; a sort of stinging, burning sensation. She imagined it was worse for him, but she didn’t care. At least he’d shaved recently. Must be hell to slap stubble. “Ow,” he said. “Sorry.”

I just whacked my handsome prince across the face, she thought. My
rich
handsome prince. But there are limits. He was babbling apologies, something to do with not being from around here and not realising how strongly people felt. For pity’s sake, she thought; as though mere geography could make any difference. She grabbed her basket and was about to storm off when one of those annoying thoughts dropped into her mind, and she hesitated. She turned and looked at him.

“You don’t know, do you?” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t
know
. About—” She had to nerve herself to say it. “The O-R things.”

“Well, no. That’s what I just said. Clearly, I’m woefully out of touch with regional sensibilities.”

She made herself focus on the dear little gold discs in his purse, and took a deep breath. “Just so you won’t make the same mistake again,” she said. “We’re a pretty broad-minded lot around here, but food with a hole in the middle is
out
. Forbidden. Not something we even talk about. What’s the word I’m looking for? Taboo. OK?”

He looked curiously desolate, as if he’d just found out
that the pile of brown stuff he’d just stuck his finger in wasn’t chocolate blancmange. “Any sort of food with a—?”

She nodded quickly. “Yes,” she said. “It’s anathema and an abomination and all sorts of other really nasty things beginning with A, and if you don’t want to have a thoroughly unpleasant encounter with a pitchfork, you won’t mention it again, ever. Got that?”

He nodded sadly. “Yup.”

“That’s all right, then.” It wasn’t, of course, but still. “So, cooking. Yes, though I say so myself, I’m not bad at it. Roasts, stews, good strengthening soups—”

“No, that’s fine,” he said, turning away. “Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Scrambled eggs on toast?”

“Really.” He fumbled for his horse’s reins. “And I didn’t mean to upset you like that. See you around.”

His foot was in the stirrup. The thought of all that money, on the point of riding out of her life for ever, tore her heart like rotten cloth. “I do a stonking bread and butter pudding,” she called out, but he was already too far away to hear.

Fool
, she thought; and then,
meaning him, or me
? Both, she decided. Him, well, because he was one. Her, because she’d just belted a man with
all that money
and driven him away because of some arbitrary old taboo that made no sense at all when you came to think about it dispassionately—

Food with a hole in it. Yuck.

She made a massive effort and stopped the squirm in its tracks roughly halfway down her spine. Why, she asked herself,
why
does the very idea of food with a − let’s not go there − make me want to throw up and then scrub every inch of my skin with sandpaper? And was it possible that somewhere, in a faraway land of which she knew nothing, there were people who didn’t see it that way?

She felt something in her left hand and opened it; two
gold coins, five silver ones. Her running-away fund. For years, with every passing day, every slaughtered wolf, she’d dreamed about it, the moment when she’d have saved up enough money to leave, go away, go as far as she could get. Two florins; was there enough distance in the whole world to use up two florins? I can do it, she thought, I can go now.

And there was that voice again, nattering away in the vacant lot between her eyes and her ears; yes, but where? And what if you got there–Ultima Fule or Far-Distant Cathay–and it was
just like here
? Screwed up; weird; wrong. In Far-Distant Cathay, she had good reason to believe, there were great plantations where they grew tea for wolves, and where was the sense in that? And there seemed to be places–he came from one–where they did food with holes in, which was just gross. What if simply being somewhere else (being somewhere else without her two lovely florins, because she’d have spent them getting there) made no difference? That’s the problem with running away, said the little voice. No matter where you go, you have to take yourself with you; and if yourself is constitutionally incapable of leaving well alone and not worrying if the rest of the world is weirder than ferret ragout, where the hell is the point?

Get stuffed, little voice. You’ve done nothing but make trouble ever since I first heard you, and I’m not going to listen. I’ve worked really hard for this, and anywhere’s got to be better than here, and—

If anything could possibly be more annoying than the little voice talking, it was the little voice staying smugly silent. Inevitably, when that happened, she found herself making its case for it. Yes, all right, supposing I stay here instead, what do you suggest I do, marry a woodcutter? Well, no, not with two florins, I think we can safely say we’re way past woodcutters at this point. So, yes, just possibly, though it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it, I could marry my
handsome prince and help him spend
all that money
, and maybe, just possibly, nag and shame and force him into doing something about all the stuff that’s wrong around here; which he, apparently, might just possibly be capable of doing, since he’s not quite like all the other princes you hear about, like he might just possibly have slightly more in his brain than his trousers—

She counted on her fingers. Four just-possiblys. Make that five, because the handsome prince might just possibly want to marry
her
. But only if—

Doing
that
. With an
onion
. Oh my God.

And those other things he’d talked about, the ones she’d never even heard of. If he was into even weirder stuff than onion rings, she really didn’t want to know. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, butter wouldn’t melt, which only went to show that appearances deceive. Not a bad appearance, at that, or at least you wouldn’t mind terribly much having it around the house. Um. But that didn’t really count for anything as against the, er, culinary issues.

Purely out of interest, how
would
you go about frying a—?

She shuddered. How could anyone even think of it? But you don’t know, do you, what goes on behind the kitchen curtains. And where he came from—

Where
did
he come from?

She remembered the grey rectangular tile. It was his box, so it stood to reason it came from where he did. She resisted the temptation to take it out and look at it again, because you never knew who might be watching. The box. The first time she’d seen it, he’d been prodding at it with his fingertips; in a very methodical fashion, now she thought of it, so not just random poking. It had reminded her just a little bit of the time she’d snuck through the undergrowth to watch the Elven orchestra. But it wasn’t a musical instrument, because
it hadn’t made a noise. Unless it was a
silent
musical instrument, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but she was getting close to the point where nothing would surprise her about what people did ever again.

Whatever it was, there was a strong possibility that he’d like it back. Might even pay money for it; a florin? Two? She paused until her head stopped spinning and thought, Yes, but if we’re in this for the long game, that box could be worth a hell of a lot more than two florins. If only I knew what it
did
.

Her hand had stopped hurting at last. Two florins; two and two makes four, with four florins Dad could build a huge sawmill with a waterwheel and a buzz-saw, he could hire practically every able-bodied man in the district, they’d be rich inside a year. Or she could buy a farm, grow crops, raise livestock, and then the woodcutters wouldn’t have to buy their bread and cheese in the market, and
she’d
be rich inside a year. Or she could—

Me again, said the voice. You know perfectly well it’s not going to happen. Dad wouldn’t want to run a big sawmill, and if he did he’d be hopeless at it, and all the money would be gone. And the farm idea’s a non-starter, because who the hell around here knows about ploughing and harrowing and drilling and the three-field system and how to cure mastitis? Face it; you might as well drill holes in your pretty gold florins and hang them round your neck for all the good they’re going to do you. Things don’t change. They just don’t.

Something was different. The music had stopped. Odd, though by no means unwelcome. She shrugged, and started to walk home. She hadn’t gone far, though, when she was frozen in her tracks by a horrible scream and the noise of breaking branches. Before she knew it, she’d taken the hatchet from her basket and started to run.

Just a minute, she thought. I’m heading in the wrong
direction. I should be running
away
, not towards. This is all—

Something roared.

Oh hell, she thought, that’s not good. She stopped dead in her tracks, which proved to be a good choice, since a fraction of a second later she heard the distinctive cracking noise you learn to recognise if you live in a forest, and a tall maiden beech tree toppled and fell, hitting the ground with a soft, earth-shaking thump more or less exactly where she’d have got to if she hadn’t stopped.

Eek, she thought. Then she thought; it’s got very dark all of a sudden. Then she looked up.

She’d never seen a giant before, though of course her grandmother’s stories had been full of the things. Even without her rich cultural database to draw on, however, she wouldn’t have had any trouble making the connection. In a sense, he was perfectly ordinary; a middle-aged man, running slightly to fat, wearing the usual woodcutter’s ensemble of checked shirt, breeches, grubby red scarf and hobnailed boots. The only real difference was that he was
huge
. Also, she observed, he appeared to have taken the old saying about two heads being better than one just a bit too literally.

On the plus side, he didn’t seem to have noticed her. All his attention was focused on a slender oak tree about fifteen yards away, behind which a knight in shining armour was trying to hide, with indifferent success. He didn’t look very happy, maybe because he seemed to have lost all his weapons, and his helmet had jammed against his gorget at an angle of roughly fifteen degrees. As a result, he was having to peer round the side of it, and the tip of his nose stuck out.

He’s not going to make it, she thought. The giant’s already seen him, and all it’s got to do is push over that tree, and the knight’ll be squashed. Which would be a shame.

She took a long stride forward and deliberately trod on a twig. It didn’t snap. One of those days.

“Hey, you,” she shouted.

The giant straightened up a little. One of its heads craned round to look at her, studied her for a moment, dismissed her as a threat and went back to considering the geometry of falling trees.

She resented that. Not a threat, huh? Go tell that to any wolf between here and the Blue Hills, and see what they say. “Hey,” she yelled. “I’m talking to you.”

The giant made a grumpy noise in its throat. Rough translation: not now, I’m busy. A red veil seemed to come down over her eyes;
how dare you
, she thought, and somehow the hatchet was in her hand. The old familiar feel (the weight balanced forward, but not too far; the comfortable anchor of the hart’s foot on the end of the handle against the base of her thumb) sent messages to her brain that she would have found irresistible, had she been in any mood to resist them. Patronise me, would you, you bastard? I’ve been patronised by
Elves
. You’re nothing.

She couldn’t even see its heads, they were so high up. But, as the woodsmen knew so well, if you’re going to cut down a tree, the lower you cut, the harder they fall. She was dimly conscious of taking the swing, and then there was a deep, chunky sound and a shock that ran up through her wrist into the tendon of her elbow.

The giant hadn’t been expecting anything like that. It yelped, a weird, ear-splitting, high-pitched noise that startled the pigeons out of the trees all the way to Cair Danathros, and slewed round, neglecting to notice the stately old ash tree right beside it. The thunk as its nearside forehead hit the tree trunk made the ground shake, bringing dirt and small clumps of rock down on the heads of the goblins in Shaft 3/72. The giant swayed and wobbled, tried to restore balance
by moving its feet, lodged a toe against the trunk of the recently fallen beech, tripped and went over. A small stand of holly saplings broke its fall to a certain limited extent, but its offside head caught a fearful glancing blow from a hollow oak, which dissolved into dust and crumbs. As panic-stricken goblins rushed to evacuate the entire upper gallery on Level 2, and teacups rattled off occasional tables and smashed on the flagstones of a dozen derelict wolves’ cottages all across the Forest, the giant hit the ground and lay motionless, never to move again.

Buttercup stood quite still, the hatchet hanging forgotten from her hand. “Oh,” she said.

A creaking noise made her look round, and she saw that the knight had managed to wrestle the helmet off his head. His shoulder-length golden hair—

“You stupid bloody woman,” he roared. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

“
Y
ou poor darling,” said Yglaine’s mother, without looking up. “It must have been awful.”

“It was,” Yglaine replied to the back of her head. “It just suddenly appeared sort of out of nowhere and started trampling on people. It’s a miracle nobody was killed.”

“Mphm.” Mummy crossed out a word and wrote something in over the top. “How dreadful.”

“And it trod on my violin,” Yglaine said. “And it’s ruined.”

“What? Oh damn. Well,” Mummy went on, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her needle-pointed ear, “we’ll have to see about that. I’ll definitely say something about it in my column.”

Mummy was a columnist for
Sarcasm Now
(circulation 37,596), one of the top 30,000 most widely read lifestyle magazines in Elvenhome (population 37,602). “That’s wonderful, Mummy,” Yglaine said. “Um, what am I supposed to do about my violin? Only I need it for work, you see, and—”

Mummy frowned. “I suppose you’d better sue somebody,” she said. “Go and talk to your Uncle Glorion, he’ll know what to do.”

“Yes, but till then—”

“I don’t know, do I?” Mummy snapped. “You’ll have to buy a new one, or borrow one from somewhere. Now
please
go away, you’re ruining my concentration.”

So she went and asked her father, but he was busy with tomorrow’s lead editorial for
Sneer
and waved her away without speaking. She went and sat in her room for a while, but the empty violin case seemed to watch her every move, till she couldn’t stand it any longer. So she went to Uncle Glorion’s office, on the seventy-fifth platform on the tallest
miramar
tree in the Grove.

“He’s not here,” said the receptionist, looking past her as though she wasn’t there. “He’s in court, huge intellectual property case. He might be able to window you in six weeks’ time, but don’t hold your breath.”

“Oh. Is there anyone else I could see?”

“Without paying? No.” The receptionist gave her a bleak smile, then went back to correcting the proofs of her latest collection of essays. Yglaine gathered up the bits of her ruined violin and headed for the ladder, but her way was blocked by someone coming up. She stepped aside to let him pass, and suddenly caught her breath.

Round ears.

Don’t stare
, she ordered herself. The young man–young
human
–gave her a nice smile, and she remembered hearing something about Uncle’s firm taking on a human trainee, as part of the Inferior Species Encouragement Initiative. She looked at him; he was short, quite stout, hair already starting to get a bit thin on top, and his ears were entirely pointless. He tried to ease past her–she was blocking the top of the ladder–and, in doing so, knocked the broken violin out of her hands onto the floor.

“Sorry,” he said, and stooped to pick it up.

Yglaine froze. What she should have done, would have done if he’d been just another Elf, was make a disdainful
clicking noise with her tongue, snatch the violin and sweep past without a word. But there was something about the way he’d apologised–there was a word for it, began with S;
sincerity
–and she was afraid she’d hurt his feelings—

Hello? Get a
grip
.

“That’s a really nice violin,” he was saying. “What on earth happened to it?”

“A giant trod on it.”

“Dear God.” He looked genuinely shocked. “Where?”

“In the forest, just now. We were just sitting there as usual, playing
Four Seasons
, and it just sort of loomed up at us out of nowhere.”

“That’s awful. You must have been terrified.”

Another abstruse concept beginning with S. Sympathy. It was supposed to be a sign of weakness and moral decadence, but she found she rather liked it. “I was, a bit,” she said. “It stamped on all the violins and cellos, then crashed off into the trees. I suppose it’s still out there somewhere.”

He frowned and pursed his lips. “You ought to sue somebody,” he said.

“Yes, but Uncle’s busy and I can’t afford to pay anyone, so—”

A faint blue light seemed to glow in the young human’s eyes. “Come through to my office,” he said.

“Really?”

“Definitely. Just out of interest, have you ever come across the concept of the contingency fee?”

“The what?”

He smiled as he opened the door for her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t quite catch your name.”

It was the strangest lawyer’s office she’d ever been in. On the bookshelves, instead of double-banked rows of authors’ copies, there were law books with titles like
Irfangyl’s Personal Injury
and
Theory & Practice of Creative Billing
. The desk
was covered with blue, green and yellow folders, not galley proofs. There was a bit of wood with his name on–John the Lawyer–and also a little picture frame, with a black and white silhouette of a woman with a big nose. For some reason, she didn’t like that.

He must have seen her looking at it. “My mother,” he said, with a grin. “Please, sit down.”

That one began with a P. On the tip of her tongue. Politeness. Talk about your collector’s items. “Um, thanks,” she said. The chair was lovely and comfortable, and had little wheels instead of feet. “So, do you really think you can get me a new violin?”

John smiled. On the wall she noticed a little framed sign:
More Flies with Honey
. “No problem.”

“And I don’t have to pay any money?”

“That’s the sheer joy of it, you don’t. Whoever we end up suing pays the bill. Assuming we win, of course.”

“You think you’ll—”

“I always win.” His smile beamed, like sunlight reflected on polished armour.

She remembered how to sneer. “Really?”

“Oh yes.” He hadn’t noticed, or he was sneerproof. “Always. Partly because I only take cases I can’t lose, partly because I’m really rather good, but mostly because I’m human.” He paused, to let her say something. She didn’t. “Really,” John said. “It’s the most wonderful advantage. Elven judges always let me win because it makes them look liberal and caring about inferior species. And because I’m the only human lawyer in Elvenhome. While there’s just one of me, I’m chic. As soon as humans start pouring in and taking all the jobs, they’ll be down on us like a ton of bricks. But by then I’ll be rich and I’ll have retired. So,” he went on, his big puppy-dog smile revealing all his teeth, “I can give you a one hundred per cent guarantee of success. I love Elvenhome,” he
added happily. “Provided you’ve got a skin as thick as dragonhide, it’s a wonderful place to practise law. You’re so litigious, and your Elven lawyers are too busy reviewing each’s books other to prepare their cases properly. Now, then. You were playing your violin in the forest.”

So she told him all about it, while he made notes on a little yellow pad. When she’d finished, he didn’t speak for a while, just sat there looking thoughtful.

“Well?” she said. “Do you think I’ve got a case?”

“What? Oh, sorry. Yes, most definitely. In fact, the only problem’s deciding who we sue first.”

“Oh.”

John nodded vigorously. “I mean,” he said, “do we kick off with Prince Florizel, for breach of his statutory duty to maintain a safe, giant-free environment, or do we go after the orchestra, for multiple health and safety violations, or the Elvenhome Parks and Forestry Authority, or the Royal Highways Commission, or what? We’re so spoilt for choice, you wouldn’t believe it. I guess it all comes down to who’s got the most money.”

She frowned. It was all a bit hard to follow. “But I only want a new violin.”

He gave her a smile that was almost Elvish. “No, you don’t,” he said. “You want exemplary damages for mental trauma, anguish, personal injury, loss of earnings—”

“The orchestra doesn’t
pay
me.”

“Doesn’t it? Excellent, we’ll hit them for breach of implied duty to remunerate while we’re at it. All in, I’m looking at a minimum ballpark figure of twenty million florins. And a shilling and fourpence,” he added, “for the violin.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t think Prince Florizel’s got twenty million florins,” she said. “Or any of those others you mentioned. I don’t think there’s that much money in the whole—”

But John was nodding. “Exactly,” he said. “So we need to bring in King Mordak, and probably the dwarves as well. Maybe even,” he added, with a slightly dreamy note in his voice, “the wizard. Um, let me think. You know what, I’m no expert, but I’d be prepared to wager good money that the only reason the giant was roaming around loose in the forest was because it had been driven from its natural mountain habitat by environmental disruption caused by ecologically irresponsible mining operations. What d’you think?”

At last he’d said something she could relate to. Mummy and Daddy were always writing articles about how the mines were threatening the environment. It was the one issue that united the entire Elven Fourth Estate, and a topic they never seemed to tire of. In fact, when Mordak opened the new gallery under Dol Umfroth, the woodcutters had had to fell all the pines on the Frif escarpment to provide enough wood pulp for the special editions. “Can we sue the goblins?” she asked doubtfully. “They might not like it.”

He looked confused. “I’m a lawyer,” he said, “I can sue anybody. Besides, they’ll settle, they always do.”

“Even the wizard?”

A strange, faraway look glowed in his pale blue eyes. “As far as I know,” he said, “nobody’s started a lawsuit against the wizard before. Which is odd,” he went on, with a slight frown, “but absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t try. In fact, I think we should make him our number one target.”

“Do you?”

“Oh, I think so. After all, he’s got the most money.” He lifted his head and smiled sweetly. “For now, anyway,” he said. “Because if we can establish liability for your giant, I can confidently predict this is going to be
huge
. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term ‘opening the floodgates’, but that’s what we’ll be doing. We can make everything that
happens round here his fault. And then we take him for every penny he’s got.”

He looked so happy and bouncy that she caught herself looking round for a ball to throw for him. “Really? You think you could do that?”

“Absolutely. Everybody hates him. Well, maybe not the people who work for him, the miners and the woodcutters and all the other people who get money from him. But everybody else, the commentators and columnists and people on committees, the overwhelming majority of right-thinking people everywhere, they hate his guts. That’s what matters.” His smile broadened so much it was in danger of unzipping his face. “I’m so glad you happened to stop by, Ms Yglaine, because this is the start of something truly wonderful.” He clasped his hands together with a damp smack. “It’s going to be such an adventure, you’ll see.”

She could feel it, too. It was almost as though music was playing.

“Oh yes,” he said. “We’re off to sue the wizard. What could possibly be better than that?”