Thrice Upon a Marigold (14 page)

Phoebe could see that Sebastian was upset and worried, and as usual, she couldn't think of the right thing to say about that. So she said, “Did you know that grasshoppers are three times as nutritious as beefsteak?”

Sebastian refocused on her. “No, I didn't. But at this moment, I'd settle for either. Are you as hungry as I am?”

“I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, but now I'm ravenous. I have apples in my knapsack. And some cheese. Would you like some?”

He nodded. “And I have crackers.”

Boris continued bellowing his innocence and his outrage, Vlad maintained an icy silence, and Christian conferred with the doctor about Poppy.

Eventually Chris said, “We need to start back. I want to get these miscreants into the dungeon as fast as I can. But let them walk. Phoebe and Sebastian deserve the horses.”

Miscreants,
Phoebe thought.
Perfect.

Tenderly Chris picked up the laundry basket. “I'll carry this,” he said.

P
HOEBE COULDN'T SEE
V
LAD
and Boris behind her, but she could hear her father grumbling and cursing and stumbling as they went. In spite of this racket, she began to doze as her horse plodded along. After all, it had been a long, strange, difficult night.

So she missed seeing the flames that leaped above the treetops ahead of them. What woke her was Sebastian's voice saying, “There's the dragon. And she seems to still be upset about something, judging from those flames.”

“We're going to the lair while Rollo and his guards take the Terrible Twos back to the castle dungeon. Now that we have Poppy, I'm not going back without my Marigold,” Chris said.

When the smaller party arrived at the clearing in front of the lair, they found the dragon there, belching blasts of flame while the two guards who had been left to try to rescue Marigold cowered just out of reach of the conflagration. They both started talking at once when they saw the king.

“Your Highness! We tried, honestly . . .”

“Sire, it's not our fault the queen is still . . .”

“Please, Your Majesty. We're not fireproof . . .”

“Highness, that dragon seems to like having the queen there . . .”

Chris held up a hand to silence them after he noticed three women sitting on tree stumps, holding out sticks with weenies stuck on them for the dragon to roast . . . and one of the women was Queen Marigold.

“Marigold!” Christian shouted. He thrust the laundry basket at the court doctor and dismounted. “Are you all right?” He hesitated to rush directly to her, considering the unpredictability of the dragon's flame-shooting propensities.

Instead, Marigold dropped her stick and ran into his arms. “Oh, Chris!” she cried. “I knew you'd come back for me. What about Poppy? Have you found her?”

“Yes. I have her. Are you all right? Have you been harmed?” He held her face in his hands and looked down into her eyes as if no one else even existed.

Phoebe looked on with awe and envy. No one had ever looked at her quite that way.

“No, no, I'm fine,” Marigold said. “I could even have enjoyed myself if I hadn't been so worried about you and Poppy. Is she all right?”

“Yes.” He didn't elaborate.

“Just
yes
?” Her voice wavered. “What aren't you telling me?”

“Doctor,” Chris said, turning back. “Hand me down the basket.” He had learned not to keep the truth from her, however distressing.

Marigold bent over the basket. “It
is
Poppy!” she cried, picking the baby up and looking down into her peaceful, unconscious face. “But what's wrong with her? Did they do something to her? Did they hurt her?” Her voice rose. “Where are they? Did you catch them?”

“I got them. They're on their way to the dungeon. But Poppy has been the victim of one of Vlad's sleeping potions.” Chris refrained from telling her that the Terrible Twos hadn't bothered to keep feeding Poppy. There was such a thing as too much information—especially if the time when the information would have mattered was over. He could tell her later—much later—when the impact would, with luck, be less.

“I know this is awful to say,” Marigold said, clutching Poppy close to her chest. “But right now I would like to do every single thing to them that they ever did to any of their victims.”

“See?” Sebastian whispered to Phoebe. “Everybody thinks awful thoughts sometimes, even Queen Marigold. But only bad people actually do them. So she won't.”

“We need to get back to the castle,” Chris said. “I want to make sure those vermin are locked up tight, and I want the court doctor to make Poppy comfortable. And I want to get you away from this beast.” He'd lowered his voice, just in case the dragon took offense in an incendiary way. “How hard will it be? The guards said the dragon wants to keep you here.”

“Oh, you have that all wrong,” Marigold said. “She's not a beast. Oh, well, yes, she is a beast. She's a dragon, after all. But she's not
bad.
She's just unhappy. And misunderstood. And she has a medical problem, too. But she took very good care of me. And she did like having me as a guest. And Anabel and Twyla, too.”

“Who?”

“Them.” Marigold pointed to the two women sitting in the shadows near the entrance to the lair, their weenie sticks dangling forgotten in their hands as they watched. “They've lived with her for a long time.”

“Lived with the dragon? You mean, in the lair?” Chris's eyebrows had climbed up quite high on his forehead.

“I'm incredulous,” Sebastian whispered to Phoebe. “So is the king.”

Incredulous,
thought Phoebe.
I'm incredulous that he used that wonderful word
.

“Yes,” Marigold said. “They feel very safe in there. They'll all understand I have to leave now, but I do have to say goodbye.” Still carrying Poppy, she went to Anabel and Twyla, showing them the sleeping baby before they hugged her goodbye.

Then, to everyone's surprise, Marigold did the same with the dragon, first showing her the baby and then draping her arm around the shimmering scaly neck. She pressed her forehead against the forehead of the dragon—who lowered her eyelashes in what could have been a bashful way—for a moment, before she went to join Christian.

Then the dragon blinked her long lashes in the direction of the waiting group and sent a series of white, heart-shaped puffs of smoke at them.

Uneasily they headed for home, the two singed guards bringing up the rear. Marigold held the baby and rode in front of Christian, who was happy to have them safe in his arms. But there was something he didn't understand.

“Marigold,” he said. “I have to ask you something.”

“Of course,” she said. “Anything.”

“If you insist that the dragon is simply unhappy and misunderstood, but not bad, why didn't you escape? It sounds like you could have just walked away.”

“I was so desperate when I first ran in there, I wasn't thinking straight. But when I calmed down and saw that there was no danger, I realized that if I left, I would just make things worse by getting lost in the woods. You know I have no sense of direction. Then, when the guards showed up, I thought I could leave, but by then, Winnie was feeling very protective of me, the same way she feels about Twyla and Anabel, and didn't trust them to take good care of me. I know she was overreacting, but it's hard to argue with someone who keeps erupting. So I figured the smartest thing I could do was to wait for you to come back, after you'd found Poppy and caught the Terrible Twos. I know it was rash of me to rush into Winnie's lair, but I was nearly out of my mind about Poppy.”

“Winnie?”

“The dragon.”

Christian was touched by her confidence in him, at how certain she was that he could find Poppy, capture the Terrible Twos, and wrest her from the dragon. But he also worried. “Will you promise me that next time you'll think first before rushing off somewhere that seems dangerous? It worked out all right this time, but . . .”

“I know,” Marigold said, abashed. “You're right. But what do you mean
next time
? How many times do you think something like this is going to happen?”

He shrugged. “Maybe not just like this, but
something
will happen. That's just life. Something always happens. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good, but we need to have cool heads for whatever it is.”

“I know that's good advice,” she said. “But it's so hard to do.”

“I know,” he said. “But we have a whole kingdom to think about, not only ourselves and Poppy. We have to try harder than anyone, and be good examples.”

Marigold considered how easy that was to forget, since she'd never expected to be a queen. But Chris had never expected to be a king, either. “You're a good example to me, too,” she said. “Thank you.”

Nobody ever gets enough appreciation, even kings, so it warmed Chris's heart to hear those words. “You inspire me to do my best,” he said. “So I thank you, too.”

They rode the rest of the way home grateful to be together once again.

 

Back at the castle, Marigold hustled off to the nursery with Poppy and the doctor, and Christian went to the dungeon.

“I want double guards down here all the time,” Chris told Rollo. “They're staying put right here until the trial.”

The king knew how eager a prisoner could be to escape. And how hard one could try to do so. And how it was not impossible.

 

With the excitement over for a while, Phoebe headed back to the library. She doubted anyone had tried to check out a book while she was gone, but she had left a note saying she'd get their books to them if they would leave their names and the titles on a slip of p-mail paper.

To her surprise, Sebastian tagged along. “Do you mind?” he asked. “I thought I'd get a book to help me fall asleep tonight. I'm a little too wound up to go to sleep easily.”

Phoebe didn't like the idea of someone using a book as a sleeping pill, but she supposed she should be happy about anything that got someone reading. There was always the chance that he would like the book enough that it would keep him awake.

“Of course,” she said, noting with disappointment that no requests for books waited at the door.

As always when she returned to the library, she felt as if she had come back to the only thing close to a home she had ever known. It was quiet, and safe, and pretty—something her childhood home never had been, what with her father always noisily building some ugly torture device. Or using it.

“It's nice in here,” Sebastian said. “Quiet. Pretty.” And after a long pause, he sighed and added, “Safe.” Part of what made the place feel safe to him was her—her competence, her calmness, her radiance.

Phoebe stared at him. “I was just thinking that.”

He gave a little nod and wandered over to the shelves, looking for his bedtime book, while Phoebe gazed after him. How was it possible, she wondered, that he shared any genes with Vlad?

D
OWN IN THE DUNGEON
, Vlad at last broke his silence. He waited until the two guards had wandered over by the stairs and were having a chat about the new upstairs chambermaid. Then he began rummaging through his pockets, pulling out little bits of this and that, things that didn't look like anything but lint or strips of p-mail paper or string or sand. He laid them all out on the bottom bunk in the cell he shared with Boris.

“What do you say we get out of here?” Vlad whispered.

“Yeah, right. Have you noticed we're behind bars? And that there are two guards over there carrying so many weapons, it's a surprise they can still stand up?”

“Not a problem.” Vlad fiddled with his little pile of things.

“Right,” said Boris again, and lay back on the upper bunk. “I'm beat. That was a long walk. We didn't even have a chance for that dragon to help us! You'd think she would be more friendly, considering I named a torture instrument after her—a very effective one, too, I have to say. And you named your best poison after her, too.”

“I didn't expect her to help us. She's spurned every overture we ever made to her—usually with lots of fireworks, too. You were living in a dream world if you thought she would come to our aid. The only one you can really depend on is yourself,” Vlad murmured as he continued fiddling. “It pays to always be prepared.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Boris muttered, thinking what a know-it-all Vlad was. Thought he knew better than anybody about
everything.
Boris wished he'd insisted on separate cells, even if the guards thought they'd be easier to watch if they were locked up together the way Emlyn and Fogarty were. The guards over there in the corner, gossiping, weren't even watching, Boris noted.

Soon Boris was snoring, while Vlad continued with his project. So the kidnapping hadn't been a success, he thought. True, that was a disappointment, but not everything worked out the way one wanted it to. One had to be willing and able to roll with the punches, to survive to fight again another day. Naturally, it meant he would have to go far away, but he'd planned to do that, anyway—maybe just not as far away as would now be necessary. So there was no great loss—aside from all those ducats, of course. But there were opportunities elsewhere, other places where his talents would be appreciated, where there would be chances to make more ducats. The important thing was to escape. Until that happened, his possibilities were seriously limited.

Taking Boris with him wasn't ideal, but there were times when having a big, strong, rather dim brute with you could be useful. In his experience, a lot of women seemed to feel that way, too. Vlad hummed a little as he worked.

The afternoon passed into evening, and then into the dead of night.