Thursdays with the Crown (11 page)

“We have to,” Ethan protested, taking a step back but not releasing the rock. “Who's going to take care of it? Its mother is dead; we can't stay here until it hatches! It's just going to die!”

Celie reached around Rolf and patted the egg to reassure it. Then she stepped out of the nest, facing Ethan squarely. He didn't know where to look: at Pogue, who still held him; at Lulath, who had half drawn his belt knife; or at Celie, who was so beyond anger that she felt almost numb.

“Who shot the mother?” Celie asked him.

“I've been in the mountain for days,” Ethan said, his eyes rolling. Pogue had let go of his wrist but was now pinning Ethan against a tree with his calloused hands, gripping the slighter youth's shoulders.

“That isn't what I asked,” Celie said. Her voice was soft and she was pleased at how much it sounded like her father's, right before he unleashed the royal temper, as Rolf always termed it. “I asked you who shot her.”

“I don't know,” Ethan said.

Pogue's hands tightened on his shoulders, and Ethan squeaked.

“You're so clearly lying,” Pogue snarled.

“I'm not! I don't know!” Ethan said, and then he whimpered a little as Pogue pressed harder.

Celie disliked lying, but she had had to do it on occasion in the past. To Prince Khelsh and the Council, when they tried to take over the Castle. To her parents and her tutor, when she'd been hiding a griffin in her rooms. Whenever possible, she tried to tell some of the truth, to make her lies seem more believable and to feel less awful about lying in the first place. She thought she saw that same look on Ethan's face that she had felt on her own when she told a “half lie.”

“So, you don't know the exact person who did it,” she said, squinting at him. “But you know about them. Or others like them. You know something. Tell us!”

“Who told you to break the egg?” Lilah wanted to know. She looked as though she was about to pick up a rock of her own to throw. “Why would you do something like that unless someone had ordered you to?”

Ethan looked away from them all and mumbled.

“What was that?” Rolf straightened up, adjusting his tunic. “I don't think I caught that,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Tharkower,” Ethan muttered.

“Speak up,” Lilah snapped.

“He said the Arkower, didn't he, Pogue?” Celie said.

Pogue nodded, but Celie didn't need him to confirm it. She'd known that was what Ethan was going to say.

“The Arkower?” Lilah put her hands on her hips. “Why would he tell you to destroy any eggs you find?”

“I have never — not ever — broken an egg, I swear,” Ethan hurried to say. “But he says that if you find eggs that cannot be brought back to the mountain, you should destroy them. If it hatches all alone, it will starve to death. And … well … you saw that we're trying to bond with them. But the mothers … don't like it.”

“Someone killed the mother so they could take the egg to the Arkower, didn't they?” Lilah still sounded as though she might be sick.

“Yes,” Ethan whispered.

“Then why didn't they take the egg?”

“I don't know,” he said. His face was burning with shame, and he couldn't look in any of their eyes. “I guess something happened to them.”

“Good,” Celie said. “I hope the father griffin ate them.”

“Celie!” But then Lilah shook her head, unable to pretend shock. “No, you're right, I hope something horrible happened to them.” She put both hands to her head and started to pace around the nest. “What will we do? We simply can't leave the egg here to die!”

“You know,” Rolf said, “you read stories when you're little, and you think it would be so amazing to have adventures happen to you. Then you actually go on one, and find out that it's awful. Nothing but bad food, sleeping cold on the hard ground, and treachery.”

Pogue snorted.

“Well, if this is to be our very adventure, then we must be taking him hostages,” Lulath said. He calmly began removing the decorative laces that ran down the side of his right trouser leg. “Hold him for only the moment more, friend Pogue! I will be tying his hands with this!”

“What? Why? I haven't done anything,” Ethan protested.

“Except lie, and try to smash that poor egg,” Celie retorted.

“I haven't! I only …” Ethan sagged. “Please,” he whispered. “Please forgive me. Please take me with you.”

All of Celie's anger left her. He looked so
broken
. And she couldn't imagine what his life had been like living all those years with the Arkower, always being told you would get a griffin, and then having griffins reject you.

“I can see what you're thinking,” Rolf said softly.

“He helped you escape,” Celie pointed out.

“This is being true,” Lulath said.

“I don't trust him,” Pogue argued.

“We don't need to trust him,” Rolf said, ever practical. “We just need to keep him with us to make sure he doesn't go running to the Arkower. And I suppose he doesn't need to be tied up for that.”

Celie squinted at Ethan. “You're a terrible liar,” she told him. “So I want you to look me in the eye and promise me that you will not go running to the Arkower. That you want nothing more than to return to Sleyne with us.”

Ethan looked Celie straight in the eyes and said, “I
swear that I will not betray you. I only want to go to Sleyne, and be where the Castle is.”

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the rasping sound of Lorcan scraping his beak on one of the silver buttons on Lulath's tunic. Finally Rolf clapped his hands.

“Good enough for me, then,” he said.

“As easy as can it be,” Lulath said, slapping Pogue on the back as Pogue released Ethan with a faint growl. “Now, what are we to be doing with that poor sad egg?”

“Er,” said Rolf. “Well. I know what I'd
like
to do.”

“What's that?” Pogue had taken a few steps away from Ethan but was still watching him carefully.

“I want to take it with us,” Rolf said.

This was greeted with more silence, a stunned silence.

“What if it breaks?” Lilah demanded. “What if the father comes after us? What if it
hatches
?”

Rolf poked at a hole in his tunic in thought. “If a griffin comes after us, and we think it's the father or aunt or uncle or grandmother, we can just give them the egg,” he said reasonably. “It seems pretty thick shelled, and I bet we could make a sling for it from our tunics.”

“And if it hatches?” Pogue's voice had an edge to it. “I know what you're thinking, Rolf!”

“What? What is he thinking?” Then Lilah answered her own question.
“You want to keep it?”

“Why not?” Rolf said to Lilah. “Celie has a griffin, and
now Lulath has a griffin! And if Celie can raise a griffin practically by herself … no offense, Cel, but you are younger than I am … then why can't I?”

“None taken,” Celie murmured. “You'd be a fine griffin rider,” she told Rolf in a louder voice.

It was quickly decided. While Celie woke Rufus and his father, whom she had started calling Lord Griffin in her head, Rolf and Pogue took off their outer tunics, wrapped the egg up, and tied it to Rolf's back with Lilah's sash. Celie and Ethan kept watch on the lake, nervously waiting for any sign of the Arkower.

“We can be doing this,” Lulath said with enthusiasm. “An egg to hatch! A new griffin! Such the adventure for us, we must be writing it down when we are returned to the Castle!”

Celie smiled. She felt the pouch at her waist and wondered what it would be like when they returned to the Castle triumphantly bearing an egg, a baby griffin, and a crown and ring for her father.

If only they could find the missing piece of the Eye. Celie was sure it wasn't in the Castle back in Sleyne, but she had a definite hunch that it was in the ruins somewhere. That was where the griffins lived, after all. And that was why, she suspected, the Castle had become more capricious and started moving more rooms to Sleyne. It had started waking up long before she and Rolf began collecting evidence of griffins being real and putting it in the holiday feasting hall.

The Arkower's nephew, Wizard Arkwright, had scolded Rolf and Celie for “distressing” the Castle by reminding it of its past. He had protested their putting tapestries, maps, and books with depictions of griffins in the feasting hall, which was actually the Heart of the Castle, and tried to hide the Eye from them as well. But now the Eye was in its place, and Celie was sure that if its missing piece was anywhere in Sleyne, the Castle would have found a way to tell her father by now.

“Ethan,” Celie said as Pogue made some final adjustments to Rolf's burden. “You stole the piece of the Eye, right?”

“Yes,” he said, looking uncomfortable. “I thought I was doing the right thing!”

She waved aside his protest. “It's not that … You know what it looks like!”

“Well, yes,” he admitted.

“Good, you can help me find it.”

They kept to the thin trees at the start of the forest and made remarkably good time back to the Castle ruins, considering their exhaustion and the unwieldy bundle that Rolf was carrying. At the base of the hatching tower, Rufus's father left them, and they all took a moment to catch their breath and look around.

“I can't believe the Arkower didn't beat us here,” Rolf said. He stretched to ease his back. “Do you think that Rufus could take this up there for me?” he asked Celie. “I don't think I can face all those stairs.”

“I'm sure,” Celie said. “He's anxious to fly.”

Rufus had followed his father a little ways across the broken courtyard, but at the sound of his name he came romping back. Celie chirruped at him and he butted his head into her middle. She led him over to Rolf, but the egg was fastened so tightly that he couldn't get it off his back.

“Just fly up with Rufus and the egg,” Lilah said in frustration, after breaking a nail trying to pick apart one of the knots. Pogue glanced over, but he and Lulath were busy asking Ethan about where they could find food.

“Oh, right,” Rolf said.

“Here, boy,” Celie said. “Take Rolf up to the tower.”

“What is that you have, Crown Prince Rolf?” the Arkower called out as he sauntered out of the trees. “An egg? We must bring it back to my cavern, where it can hatch in peace and safety.” He smiled at them, looking like a kindly grandfather.

Rufus hissed. He slammed his body into Celie and she fell across his back. Lilah screamed, and Lulath shouted something in Grathian that Celie didn't catch. She was too busy hanging on as Rufus took off into the air. She grabbed his harness, nearly slipping backward and landing on her head as Rufus shot toward the open windows of the tower. She shouted for him to take her back, but he ignored her and dropped her on the floor.

Celie leaped to her feet and ran for the window, but Rufus blocked her way. She wrestled with him, trying to shove him aside so that she could see what was happening below, but he wouldn't budge. She yanked on the harness and shouted at him, but he just kept squawking and batting his wings at her. The pouch at her waist came loose, and the ring dropped out.

“What are you doing?” Celie yelled. She clapped her
hands, trying to shoo him away, and he lashed out with one talon, scratching her palm. “Ouch!”

Rufus cowered at her feet, frightened. Celie flapped her hand and then sucked at the cut. She stomped her foot against the pain, and Rufus backed into a corner, crying. She felt the crown at her hip slipping out of the pouch and grabbed it. One of the prongs dug into her cut and she shrieked again, reflexively tossing the crown across the room.

The clang it made when it hit the wall rang in Celie's head. She felt the strange sensation that meant the Castle had changed something. But that was impossible! This tower was—

“It's alive!”

Celie slapped her hands against the floor, listening with her whole body, and there was no mistaking the warmth and faint hum of the living Castle. She jumped up and ran to one of the windows, and this time Rufus didn't stop her. Her elation was short-lived as she looked down to the courtyard and saw … nothing.

The others were all gone.

“Lilah,” Celie screamed. “Rolf! Pogue! Lulath!”

No one answered.

From the distance, she heard another griffin cry, and she saw a form she thought was Rufus's mother circling over the trees, but she couldn't be sure. She shouted until she was hoarse, but they were all gone, even Ethan and the Arkower.

Slumping back onto the tower floor, Celie looked at her griffin. Suitably contrite, he crept over and laid his head in her lap. She stroked his feathers absently.

“We have a living tower,” she said to him. “But I'm afraid to ask the Castle to take us home. What if it never brings back the others?”

Rufus carked.

“Exactly,” she said. “I suppose they ran off when the Arkower came. I'll just bet your father helped Rolf get the egg out of sight, and they're hiding in the forest now.” She was trying to give herself courage, and she almost succeeded.

“I'm not going to just sit here until they come back,” she decided aloud after a moment. “There are things to do: find the Eye, get back to Sleyne. We have one live tower, why not two?” She gently pushed Rufus off her lap and stood up.

He cocked his head at her and preened for a moment before standing. He shook out his wings while Celie gathered up the crown, checking it carefully to make certain that it hadn't sustained any damage when she threw it. It appeared to be unharmed, so she tucked it back into the pouch, snatched up the ring and dropped it into the pouch as well, and climbed on Rufus's back.