Jinx On The Divide (11 page)

"Goodbody?"
said Squill, incredulous.

"I have brought you a gift from my people," said the

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brandee, bowing low and unrolling Nimby with a flick of his toe.

"Just the
one
gift?"

"Of course not, Your Excellency," said the secretary hurriedly. "He has a wonderful lamp for you, and a dagger."

"No, I haven't," said the brandee.

Fortunately, Squill didn't hear this remark. He prodded Nimby thoughtfully with his foot. "What does this do?"

"I'm not a
this,"
said Nimby indignantly. "My full name is Nimblenap. I'm a top-of-the-line carpet, and I can fly anywhere."

Squill laughed. "It almost sounds intelligent. Yes. I like it. How delightful to have something amusing to wipe my feet on. And the other gifts?"

"There are no other gifts," said the brandee, grinding his heel into Nimby to stifle the carpet's incandescent reaction to Squill's last remark. "To overwhelm you with presents would cheapen our meeting. In my land, you give one present only, but one beyond compare. And receive an equally magnificent one in return."

"I see," said Squill. "You want something."

"Your Excellency is as farsighted as a brazzle," gushed the brandee.

It was the wrong comparison. "What, precisely,
do
you want?" asked the thane coldly. "To talk to your scientist."

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"Come back next week. Professor Rheinhart's gone away for a couple of days."

The brandee's dark eyes suddenly glittered like black glass.
"Rheinhart?
This great scientist's name is Rheinhart?"

"That's right."

The brandee gave a short, harsh laugh. "That human boy is no scientist. I know him."

"And you're no prince," said Squill. He snapped his fingers at one of the guards. "Arrest him. Impersonating a member of royalty is a capital offense."

"It was / who brought Rheinhart to this world," said the brandee desperately, "inside my lamp ..." He stopped, appalled at what he had just revealed.

Squill turned abruptly to his secretary. "Did you search him?"

"Well ... yes," said the secretary nervously. "I thought..."

"And you found a lamp?"

"Yes."

Squill snapped his fingers again. The guard hurried across to the brandee, searched him, retrieved the knife and the lamp, and handed them over.

The thane withdrew the dagger from its sheath, and felt its edge. He nodded, and replaced it. Then he turned his attention to the lamp. "I've always wanted one of these," he said. "So tell me what you know of Rheinhart."

The brandee remained icily silent.

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Squill smiled faintly, although the smile never came close to reaching his eyes. "I've made a study of magical antiques," he said. "Little hobby of mine." He turned the lamp upside down and peered at the base. "I
command
you," he said, "in the name of K'Faddle, the one who cast you, to tell me about Rheinhart."

The brandee had no option but to comply. Reluctantly, he told the thane how he had kidnapped Rhino, and that Rhino was a perfectly ordinary human boy -- well, somewhat more violent than average -- but no budding science buff.

Squill, in turn, told him how Rheinhart's bomb had blown apart the ragamucky's shack. "The explosion even felled the birds from the sky and cracked a crystal ball," said the thane. "It was awesome. Are you sure he is just a nobody?"

Obviously, Squill must be exaggerating. "The boy used ready-made fireworks to produce this scientific phenomenon, Your Excellency," said the brandee, who had read the scorched label on Rhino's firecracker after he'd exploded it in the lamp. "They had been manufactured by someone else in the other world. I have witnessed the detonation of one myself, inside my lamp. The noise was indescribable."

"I'm surprised you're still here," said Squill. "I'd have expected it to kill everyone in such a confined space. The explosion / witnessed even split a crystal ball in two, and you know how indestructible they're supposed to be."

The brandee did, and he was puzzled by the differing force

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of the two explosions. Perhaps the second batch of fireworks had been more powerful. That wasn't the point, though. "I'm afraid Rheinhart doesn't have enough knowledge to make more of them," he said.

"But he told me the ingredients. I sent him off to get the sulfur."

"On your best fire-breather? I suspect you will see neither the fire-breather nor Professor Rheinhart again."

Squill knew that the form of address he had used had made it impossible for the brandee to lie. "Rheinhart has made a fool of me," he declared. "That's a capital offense, too; I've just decreed it. I'd be better off finding a way to get to his world, wouldn't I? Yes, I could get more fireworks --
and
the Royal Icing." He leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. "All right. I want you -- no, I
command you,
in the name of K'Faddle -- to follow the boy to the Spitfire Mountains and kill him. And use the carpet to bring back his body. I want to put it on display." He scribbled on a sheet of paper. "Here's an official death warrant, just in case there are any questions."

"I can't kill him with that," said the brandee sourly. He held out his hand. "I'll need my knife."

Squill gave him back his knife.

Without another word, the brandee rolled Nimby into a cylinder, picked him up, and left the room. It was turning into a really bad day.

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***

7

***

Ironclaw landed in a messy heap on the lawn outside the library in Andria, next to the statue of Flintfeather. He glared up at it for a moment or two, as though the statue of the brazzle had been directly responsible for his own small brazzilian lapse of concentration. Flintfeather had always been rather overrated, in his opinion. A number cruncher, like Bronzepinion. He stood up, quickly preened, which made little or no difference to his appearance, and walked up the steps to the main entrance. Thornbeak dashed out at precisely that moment, and they almost collided.

"About time," snapped Thornbeak. "Our daughter's missing. I want you to go look for her."

"But I just got here."

Thornbeak glared at him.

"She's not a hatchling anymore," said Ironclaw, in what he thought was a reasonable voice. "She's probably gone to some squawk club or something."

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"She's not into squawk music, Ironclaw; give her some credit. No. She wants to travel."

"What's wrong with that?"

"I think she's gone to Yergud."

"There's a good bookshop there."

"Oh,
beaks and bills,
Ironclaw, anything could happen to her. Yergud is hostile toward brazzles. I hear things. I live in the real world."

Ironclaw doubted that the library was much of an example of the real world, but just as he was about to point this out, he noticed a dangerous glint in Thornbeak's eye. He thought better of it and said, "So you want me to go flapping off there and bring her back?"

"Yes. But leave me the gold to pay for her chronicling course first."

Ironclaw started to empty his pouch. Every time he paused, thinking he had shelled out enough, Thornbeak would peck him. He continued removing the gold pieces, one at a time, until she finally nodded.

"Off you go, then," she said. Her fierce expression softened for a moment. "And when you get back, Grimspite's got a nice little number puzzle for you. He wants to isolate the stink factor in the Big Bang spell."

Ironclaw's eyes lit up.

"But I want Fuzzy back here first."

***

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Felix and Betony stood at the window of the general store, somewhere between Vattan and Yergud, wondering how much damage Rhino had already done, and watching the snow falling. They'd been waiting there for a considerable length of time, and they'd had to buy some fish turnovers for lunch. Felix thought his was horrible, but Betony made him eat it. When she'd watched him swallow the last glutinous mouthful, she said, "We may as well buy you a real cloak while we're here."

There were several to choose from. One of them was much more expensive than the others, and when Felix tried it on, he suddenly felt handsome and brave and as strong as a cuddyak. "I want this one," he said.

"Take it off," hissed Betony. "Didn't you look at the label? It's magic. For people with depression. And it costs a fortune."

"It's really warm," said Felix obstinately.

"Of course it is. And if you use it when you don't need it, it could have all kinds of unwelcome effects."

"Such as?" said Felix.

"It could make you really reckless, and endanger your life. Take it
off."

Reluctantly, Felix removed it and selected an oiled woolen garment like Betony's, which she paid for. He couldn't wear both it and his parka, so he opened his backpack to stow away the jacket -- and managed to spill everything else out onto the floor. Something clunked and rolled into a corner. It

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looked like a cylindrical pencil case made of gunmetal. Felix picked it up and opened it.

There was nothing inside, but a voice said, "Well, hi there."

"Hello," said Felix automatically.

Betony gave him a funny look. "Whom are you talking to?"

"The jinx box." He suddenly remembered that he'd thought about getting rid of it. He glanced around. He could just put it on the shelf, with the souvenirs, and leave it there.... He placed it next to a particularly horrible cross-eyed wooden fish.

"Don't leave me here," pleaded the jinx box. "They'll sell me to some illiterate who'll use me to store fishhooks. I'd much rather travel around with a mythical being. I could be really useful to you; I'm like one of your encyclopedias."

"Don't listen to it," said Betony.

But Felix couldn't help listening. The oily little voice managed to combine extreme smarminess with a seductive charm. Felix found himself thinking,
How does it
do
it? A politician would pay a fortune to learn a skill like that.

"You wouldn't have found out where Rhino was without me, now, would you?" continued the box, oozing charisma. "And now you've got to decide which way to go, and you can't agree. How can I help?" The blue-gray gunmetal had taken on an attractive pinkish sheen, like rose quartz.

"Well ..." said Felix. He had established earlier that there were public sleighs in both directions -- to Yergud

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("Stone Center of the North") and to Vattan ("Fantastic Freshwater Fish Award three years running"), but after an on-and-off argument with Betony that had lasted for hours, they still hadn't reached an agreement.

"You don't need that horrible box to advise you," said Betony. The pinkish sheen reminded her of fish roe, not rose quartz. "Once we've picked Nimby up from the Pink Harpoon, we can travel anywhere. You should ask yourself why a jinx box wants you to travel by sleigh rather than magic carpet."

"Because it's in your best interests," said the box quickly. "We all
know
Rhino's in Yergud. You'd be wasting time by backtracking. And what's more, the Yergud sleigh has just arrived."

Felix could just barely see it through the shifting veil of snowflakes. He started to walk toward the door.

"Please," said Betony, dodging in front of Felix in a last-ditch attempt to stop him from boarding the sleigh. "Nimby could be in trouble."

"I'm just trying to do what's best for
everyone"
said Felix miserably, snapping the box shut and absentmindedly putting it in his pocket.

Betony hesitated. Then her expression softened, and she stepped aside. "I know you are," she said.

They left the store, climbed into the sleigh, and tucked the thick woven blankets around themselves. "When we get back to my world, I promise you as many cities and movies and subways as you can take," said Felix. He glanced at the

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other passengers. There were six of them: five japegrins and a diggeluck. One of the japegrins had a harpoon. Felix looked at it with interest. The actual weapon was a small spear, which was launched by a crossbow. The spearhead itself was a pale cream, either bone or ivory, through which a couple of holes had been drilled. Through this ran a thin rope, the other end of which was attached to the bow. The rope was very long, and was carried coiled up.

"I hope we have a nice uneventful trip this time," said the diggeluck conversationally. "Not much hope of that, though."

The other passengers ignored him, tucking in their own blankets.

"Being as there's a full moon," the diggeluck continued, undeterred.

A couple of japegrins shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Felix couldn't help himself. "What happens then?" he asked. "There's a lot of howling." No one said anything.

"Let me tell you about something that happened to the daughter of a friend of mine," said the diggeluck. "She was sort of an oddball -- used to wear a red cloak. Went off to deliver a cake to her grandmother ..." and he told them a story. He followed this with another, and then another. To begin with, the japegrins reacted with a hostile silence, but gradually they mellowed and even allowed themselves an occasional laugh. There was nothing else to do -- no view to speak of, because of the snow.