Green (21 page)

216

beneath, me, I found my footing and charged up out of the shallows.

"Run, Lilybet! Hurry!" Ludlow cried anxiously.

The slope between me and the cart was steep and slippery. Loose rocks spurted from beneath my shoes. Grabbing protruding roots, I pulled myself up over the bank's edge and belly flopped in the dirt at its top. Rolling to a crouch, I turned and braced for impact with Kylie.

To my amazement, he was dog-paddling back to the opposite shore, his own clan booing and jeering as he returned in soggy disgrace.

Fizz drove up alongside me. "Never made it halfway out," he reported. "Not a bit o' the swimmer you are, Lil."

"Aye, true enough," Balthazar said. "But there could still be sentries this side o' the water, so if you two don't mind gloating later ..."

I jumped into the wagon, sprawling on top of my stolen gold. "Go, Fizz! Go!" I cried. If I had learned anything, it was to listen to Balthazar.

I took one last look at Kylie's miserable silhouette as he hauled himself out of the river. Then the cart found the road, and we were off, riding full speed for the border.

Balthazar, Ludlow, and I watched tensely in all directions, holding our breath against a surprise attack from behind the rocks and trees crowding our winding path. Finally, the trees started to thin. We passed the last patch of rocks.

217

Nothing but clover spread out before us.

"Is this ... Are we over the border?" I asked hopefully.

"Not yet." Balthazar stared straight ahead as if we might still be ambushed from beneath a clump of clover.

"When?"

"You'll know."

I had no idea how I was supposed to know, in the dark, when the border wasn't even marked. I'd only been over it once, and I'd been a little preoccupied at the time.
If the sun were out, I'd be able to tell by the clover
, I thought.
Maroon on their side, green on ours
.

I squinted up at the moon, trying to gauge how much longer until daylight. Then I looked back down and gasped.

"My hands!" I cried, holding them up. Even by moonlight I could tell my right one was no longer red. They both looked completely normal.

Balthazar took one glance at me and smiled as if his birthday and Christmas had come on the same day. "Didn't I tell you you'd know? That's the amnesty, Lil!"

"You mean ...?"

"Aye, free and clear, every one o' us. Might as well o' never happened." His grin stretched impossibly wider. "Except for this," he added, thumping the nearest sack of gold.

218

Chapter 18

The sun was high and warm when we rolled back into the Meadows. The dogs pranced as they pulled our cart through town. Balthazar held a bag of stolen gold up over his head, and crowds of Greens ran out to meet us, cheering until they were hoarse. I sat tall in the wagon, my keeper key gleaming around my neck, and basked in their admiration.

I deserve this
, I thought happily.
I totally kicked Scarlet butt!

Mother Sosanna and her council were waiting on the dais in Green Field. I walked boldly into their presence accompanied by raucous cheers. Guards prodded a bare-chested Cain up

219

the stairs behind me, his wrists shackled and his wet mustache still tied through his mouth. His puffy pisky scar oozed nastiness in the sunshine, so inflamed as to be almost unrecognizable.

Hustling up between us, Balthazar bowed to the council. "Lilybet Green has passed her final test," he said. "She awaits your confirmation. Meanwhile, this weasel"--he kicked Cain behind one knee--"is a traitor to his clan. He tried to make Lilybet fail!"

Gasps ripped through the crowd. Sosanna looked alarmed.

"Why would he do that?" she asked me.

"I don't know, but he tried to run off with the dogs and get me caught with stolen gold. Maybe it's to do with that cold-succession thing, but if Cain and I are in the same line, I don't see how that works. Do you?"

Mother Sosanna looked absolutely stunned.

"It could be anything!" Balthazar put in nervously. "Look at him--he's pisky bit!"

The leprechauns packing the field babbled with shock and excitement, straining forward to see.

"Ungag the prisoner," Sosanna demanded.

A blade flashed in a guard's hand and Cain's knotted mustache fell to the ground, cut loose from his lip on both sides. A caterpillar's length of trembling whiskers was all that remained, making him look somehow smaller.

220

"Cain Green!" Sosanna said. "I will know your involvement in this. Explain immediately."

"He'll lie!" I whispered to Balthazar.

"Not to the chief, Lil. Pain o' death--and she'll know, believe me."

Cain shot Balthazar a nasty look, then bowed before the council. "Not much to tell, is there?" he rasped. "Had the key, got an itch, and caught myself a pisky."

"I'll have details!" Sosanna insisted.

Cain heaved an enormous sigh. "When our Maureen passed on and the key flashed its beacon home, I found it first, didn't I? I reclaimed eight bags o' Maureen's gold for the clan, and I won the honor o' guarding the key for our next keeper. I was the one who held it safe--until you chose
him
and his lads for delivery," Cain said with a disgusted nod toward Balthazar.

"Yes, yes," Sosanna said impatiently. "Everyone already knows that."

Not everyone
, I thought, fascinated. Eight "reclaimed" bags of gold could explain a lot about where Gigi's money had disappeared to!

"So I had the key, didn't I?" Cain went on. "The key to the whole inner keep in a wee pouch on my belt. But I couldn't use it."

"O' course you couldn't," Balthazar broke in. "You're a leprechaun!"

221

"Shh!" Sosanna hushed him.

Cain gave Balthazar a superior look. "Right," he said at last. "A
leprechaun
can't use the key. But a leprechaun with one bitty drop o' human blood could."

Horrified gasps ran through the crowd.

"No such creature exists!" Mother Sosanna objected. "That would be ... that would be a reverse lepling! How could such a thing even be possible?"

"The pisky bite," I said.

Cain grinned ruefully. "Aye," he admitted, "a scheming horror o' a pisky, wasn't it? Gave me a good nip too. But I caught it fair and square, and it had to give me a wish."

Balthazar looked ready to hurl. "You asked to have
human
blood in your veins?"

"Hey!" I protested. "Don't say that like it's an insult."

"Beg pardon, Lil, but--" Balthazar shuddered convulsively, along with the council and most of the crowd. "No sane leprechaun would dream o' doing that."

"Aye, and where's the leprechaun who could stay sane with that key in his hands?" Cain asked. "It called me out o' sleep! Tormented me every second o' seven days and nights. 'Keep me. Use me,' it begged. 'All the riches o' the clan will be yours.'"

"Can the key really talk?" I asked Balthazar.

"No!" he scoffed.

222

"It talked to
me!"
Cain insisted. "I heard it, didn't I? Over and over ... the gold!" He moaned. "All that gold."

The lust in his eyes was a fever, a sickness he couldn't control. Remembering my time in both keeps, I almost understood. I had felt that fever myself--and I was only the teensiest part leprechaun.

"So, you caught a pisky," I filled in for him. "And what did you ask it for?"

"Your exact words!" Sosanna admonished.

Cain sighed again, remembering. "I held that pisky tight and said, 'I wish I had the teeniest wee drop o' human blood in me veins, just enough to use the key.'"

The crowd recoiled in revulsion. Sosanna looked equally repulsed, but she sensed there must be more.

"Is that all?" she prodded.

"'Just enough to use the key'," Cain repeated unhappily, "'while the council makes the coming keeper tests so hard that Lil will fail one o' them, and every candidate behind her will fail too.' Without a new keeper, I could have gone on using the key for as long as it took me to steal all the gold."

Outraged shouts filled the field. The ladies of the council looked faint. Sosanna turned deathly pale as a sort of film evaporated off her eyes, a shadow of something so slight I couldn't see it until it had gone.

"Bepiskied!" she gasped. "Me! And my entire council?"

223

The furious crowd surged forward. In a flash, Cain's guards became his protectors, preventing a wave of angry leprechauns from mobbing the platform.

"Enough!" Sosanna roared.

Everyone froze in place. The shouts died into mutters.

"Can I ask a question?" I ventured. "Cain, wouldn't it have been easier to just ask the pisky to give you the gold?"

"Aye," he said, "but the magic protecting that gold is a leprechaun's, isn't it? No pisky can undo an existing spell, especially not one o' our spells on gold."

"True. Very true," Balthazar agreed, looking relieved.

"But with the key and the blood, I could help myself. At least I should o' been able to." Cain spat on his boots. "Piskies!"

I tried to figure out what had gone wrong with his wish. Which part had the pisky twisted? "Did you get the human blood?" I asked. "How did the pisky do that?"

"Why, took it from you, o' course."

"Me?"
It was my turn to be flabbergasted.

"Did I know it would be that way, Lil? I never asked for
your
blood."

"Be what way?" I asked suspiciously.

For the first time since he'd been caught, Cain hung his head. "The knife, the kitchen, that mark on your hand ..."

224

Flipping my left hand over, I stared at the scar on my palm. My accident after Gigi's memorial service hadn't been an accident at all? "I never saw a pisky," I said skeptically.

"Well you wouldn't, in Providence. Just took a quick sip, then back to me." Cain nodded down at his oozing scar. "Punched it right in there."

Balthazar turned a bilious shade of green. I felt a little sick myself.

"So let me get this straight. You're a lepling now?"

Cain grimaced. "I wouldn't say
that."

"Your blood is mixed, like mine," I insisted. "Your blood is mixed
with
mine."

"Just the teeniest bit. One bitty drop."

"That
drop
took eight stitches. I'm glad you didn't ask for a pint!"

"I didn't wish for you to cut yourself, did I? Maybe that was going to happen anyway."

"Right," I said skeptically.

"Piskies take advantage!" he maintained.

I looked to Balthazar and the council. They nodded grudgingly, conceding the possibility.

Sighing, I moved on. "I'd like to know how you took gold out of the inner keep without passing three keeper tests. And how did you carry it from the outer keep if you're not a full leprechaun anymore?"

Cain shook his head with obvious disgust.

225

"You couldn't!" I exclaimed.
"That's
how the pisky got you!"

"It didn't get me! Lying cheat o' a pisky! You were supposed to fail your tests, weren't you? And I was digging a tunnel out--all I needed was time. But that pisky went back on my wish, that's what, and that's against the rules!"

Despite their grievances against him, the council looked disturbed. "Piskies twist, but they don't lie," one of the ladies said. "Are you certain of your wish, Cain?"

"O' course I'm certain!" he shouted. "Would I foul up something so important? I wished for Lil and all the others to fail one o' their keeper tests."

The council conferred worriedly, but I felt myself starting to smile. "You said
tests
. I should fail a
test."

"Aye," Cain agreed.

"And I did. I messed up that gold theft big-time. And then I tried again. I
did
fail a test, Cain, but I passed my trial."

His bushy brows twisted as he followed that one. Then his face went slack. "O' all the ... Filthy piskies!"

"So all this time," I asked him, "when you were pretending to help me, you were really just there to make certain I failed?" A barely remembered scrap of conversation came back to me.
"You
convinced Maxwell to pack my key in fireworks! You said it would add flash!"

Cain's head dropped even lower. "Helped him too--then