“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.”
The wheels of the
wyrm-drawn carriage crunched over the gravel path, drawing Bedlam further and
further toward an unknown future.
It had been an hour
since they had left his hometown, Raina practically dragging him to the
carriage, and so far they had not said one word to each other. Raina lay
sideways on the seat across from him, facing into the back cushion, so that he
could not tell if she was crying, fuming, or plotting his death in the most
painful manner, all of which seemed equally likely, given what had transpired
at their wedding feast. Bedlam, for his part, had decided not to try striking
up a conversation, because any topics worth discussing seemed likely to result
in injury.
When Bedlam had
previously thought about Styxians—which was a rare phenomenon on the moor—he
had assumed that living next to a continent of weak and pacifistic humans would
have dampened any goblins natural bellicose tendencies, but in Raina’s case, it
appeared to have instead given her an Empire-sized chip on her shoulder that
manifested in unbridled rage. Ordinarily, any goblin would be honored to marry
such a woman, but sitting across from her, after she had nearly dispatched his
brother, was nerve-racking, especially now, as she sat up, turned, and glared
at Bedlam as if he were next on her hit list.
“I have been
contemplating your family’s act of duplicity,” she said evenly. “It seems like
a rather ill-thought-out plan on all your parts, but if I’m to explain things
properly to my Maiden Aunt, I must understand how it all came about. Explain.”
Bedlam weighed what
to say next. Lies may have worked during their brief, hour long engagement, but
now that she knew the truth about the situation, he’d have to come clean.
“We needed resources.”
“Well,” she
scoffed, “you’re out of luck there. We won’t be giving you so much as a rusty
can from the Wastes.”
“But… but
the whole point of getting married—”
“We did not get
married, Bedlam. I went to the moor to marry my agreed-upon betrothed, not
some… interloper who couldn’t be bothered to at least change the
marriage contract so as not to give away his deception. That whole ceremony was
a sham. A sham ceremony for a sham marriage… a sheremony for what I am certain
is an invalid non-union. And this nonion of ours—if we can even call anything
‘ours’—will be declared invalid when we get to Styx. Auntie has studied up on
marriage law, you know? When you—or your brother, rather—never wrote me
back, she was convinced something was amiss with the engagement. And to think,
I thought she was being silly.”
Having spent the
first part of their journey in silence, it seemed that Raina was now making up
for lost time, which spared Bedlam the trouble of trying to find the least
dangerous reply to what she was saying.
“I’ve been thinking
it all over,” she continued, “and there’s no way it will hold up. First, there
is the matter of the marriage contract itself. One cannot just cross off one
name and write another, nor sign for a name which isn’t theirs. The very idea
is laughable. Secondly, as far as our countries are concerned, the arrangement
was resources in exchange for the hand of the first born son, not the
second. I was just going to waive that fact when I thought the error was on our
end, but now it shall become one more arrow in my quiver of invalidating
evidence. So there’s the contract and your non-primogeniture, and… hmm…”
She counted on her
index and ring fingers just to be sure, but had clearly run out of reasons.
“I’m sure Auntie
will be able to come up with more. It’s totally invalid. I’m ninety percent
sure. And even if it isn’t, it’s surely dissolvable, all things considered. I
mean, it’s not as if we’ve… you know… done anything… un-take-backable,” she
mumbled, then snapped, “and we aren’t going to!”
She glared at him
as if he had been about to suggest that they should. He felt it was wiser—not
to mention safer—at this juncture to stay silent instead of informing her that
that particular aspect of married bliss had been the farthest from his mind.
“Once we get to Styx,
you shall explain your role in your family’s plot and Auntie shall take the
proper legal channels, but first you’re going to explain it to me. I
think I deserve that much.”
She crossed her
arms, squinting down her nose at him.
She did, indeed,
deserve an explanation, but Bedlam was sure that anything he said would be
useless. She’d understandably made up her mind to hate him, which meant—if her
assessment of the legal matters was correct—that the marriage was off, and that
the moor would be left destitute. Even through the gloom of the night outside,
Bedlam could see the flat, grassy expanse of Catawampus rolling past them,
devoid of almost any magical flora or fauna thanks to the straits the moor
found itself in.
“We… really did need
resources,” he said lamely, turning back to Raina.
“So you have said,
but that explains nothing. If you were so hard up, Mayhem simply could have
married me as he had promised.”
“Right… Well,
Mayhem backed out of it because… um… well, you’re Styxian, so…”
She balled her hand
into a fist, and said, through gritted teeth, “So?”
“So he thought—I
mean I don’t agree with him or anything—but he thought that meant you wouldn’t
make a very good wife, since you… you know, live so close… to the…”
He trailed off, as
her other hand had also transformed into a fist, doubling the likelihood of his
being punched.
“Well,” Raina said,
“I’m sorry you all find us Styxians so terribly humane. I shall endeavor in the
future to prove otherwise. But getting back to the matter at hand, Bedlam, what
exactly was in it for you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Your
wretched moor would have gotten what you wanted whether I married you or your
brother, and yet you were the one who did the deed. What did you get out of
this exchange? Prestige? Prowess? Some dark deal struck between you and Mayhem
in the shadows of twilight?”
“Uh… I don’t
really…”
“What I am asking
is, why did you want to marry me?”
“I… I… didn’t,” he
admitted, and certain that she really was gearing up to do him bodily harm,
added, “Mayhem made me!”
Raina sat back,
genuinely shocked. She even unballed her fists a little.
“Made you? How?”
“He started by
ruining some of my specimens, and he probably would have moved on to my
inventions from there. He’s always been like that. He just showed up this
morning, telling me I had to switch places with him.”
“This morning!”
He nodded. “I’m
sorry for lying to you, but you really have to understand that by not marrying
Mayhem, you’re the one who dodged a bullet. After spending my whole life
with him, I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone else.”
“Oh.”
“Still, I’m sorry…
about all of this.”
Raina opened her
mouth to say something else, but took a deep breath and closed it, then
proceeded to stare out the window, her snake-pupil eyes wide, her green eyebrows
furrowed. She absent-mindedly fiddled with the invisible watch between her
fingers for a moment, then finally said, “Um, I, uh, I really ought to let
Sedgely rest for the night, so…”
“Right! There
should be some boulders up ahead that we can camp next to.”
She nodded, opened
the carriage door, and floated out to direct her wyrm. It was not until the
carriage came to a halt ten minutes later that she returned, looking into the
window, upside-down, from the top of the carriage.
“I think this will
do. Have a look.”
Bedlam stepped out
onto the ground as Raina floated down next to him, trunk in hand. She had
already loosed Sedgely from his harness, and he had curled up against some of
the round, mossy boulders that surrounded them, thin streams of smoke coming
from his snout.
“Um, Bedlam…” Raina said, setting her trunk on the
ground. “I… I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For your having to marry me.”
“Oh… well… I’m sorry you had to marry me.”
“And… sorry about accusing you of all those things.”
“At least some of
them were true, so…”
“True. Hmm… I
suppose we’ve just had the first fight of our sharriage.”
“Sharriage?”
“Sham marriage.”
This was an
especially weak portmanteau, but as there was no real point to bringing that to
her attention, Bedlam let it slide. Raina had unpacked a sleeping bag and
pillow from her trunk and already snuggled down into it before lurching back
up.
“Oh, my! We didn’t
bring your luggage!”
“I didn’t have any
packed,” Bedlm said, removing his leather coat and throwing it over himself,
“but it’s all right for now. I’m used to sleeping out here like this from my
specimen hunts. Plus, it’s pretty warm next to Sedgely.”
“But don’t you want
a pillow?”
“I still have
this,” he said, pulling out her scarf from one of his pockets; he had managed
to untie it and shove it in there while being dragged away from the reception.
“If it’s all right with you?”
Raina seemed
shocked to see it again, but nodded her approval. He wadded it up under his
head while Raina cocooned herself in her sleeping bag once more.
Aside from
Sedgely’s body heat and Raina’s soft breathing nearby, Bedlam felt just as he
had when scrounging up magical creatures and minerals. The starry sky above was
endless, and the winds of the moor seemed to sing of possibilities and untapped
potential. Though he had no idea what was going to happen in Styx, especially
if the queen was as dangerous as Raina described her, Bedlam was at least free
from Mayhem for as many weeks as it would take to sort everything out. Maybe
even longer…
“Bedlam?” Raina
said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“If you really
didn’t want to marry me… if you were forced into it, why didn’t you say
something when the shaman asked if you had reservations? If you were coming at
it wholeheartedly and such?”
“I did… or I
didn’t… I just panicked and dropped all those tea pots.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
“Well, that settles
it, doesn’t it? If you didn’t actually agree to it, then it’s certainly not a
valid union. Just a sharriage.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, goodnight,
Bedlam.”
“Goodnight, Raina,”
he said, and stared up at the stars.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
The next morning
was filled with somewhat stilted pleasantries, as Raina started a fire to brew
some Camellia tea, Sedgely wandered off to hunt, and Bedlam offered to go
scrounge up something to eat, returning shortly with an armful of mushrooms and
a large, dead lizard.
“That was fast,”
Raina said, pouring him a cup of tea as he skewered his findings and stuck them
over the fire.
“I’ve been here
dozens of times. It’s easier to live off the land than bring a lot of stuff
with you, especially when you’re trying to collect a lot more stuff as you go.”
“Hmm,” she said,
taking a sip. “Magical stuff?”
Bedlam nodded.
“How can you tell
if something is magical or not?”
“You can’t; not
until you try to do something with it. It takes a lot of experimentation with
unknown materials, but with common things—singing crystals, curse mushrooms,
things like that—everyone knows how their magic works so it’s easier to imbue
it into objects.”
“Hmm. So all those
specimens in your room…?”
“I wasn’t sure what
was magical and what wasn’t. It’s fairly easy to tell if something is glowing
bright orange in the middle of the night, but with other things, it might just
be a matter of poking and prodding and coaxing something magical out. You never
know when the next great discovery might happen. After all, it was centuries
before anyone knew that humans were magical, and when they finally discovered
it, it ended up changing everything between the Empire and Ataxia.”
“True, though they
of course had help,” Raina said proudly. She knew that other goblins viewed
Styx’s hand in training humans in the magical arts as a great insult, but she,
for one, felt pride in being part of the family that had unlocked such a vast
amount of magic. Not only had the alliance with the Empire proved to be a huge
boon for their country economically, it also prevented other goblins from
constantly traipsing across their border, willy-nilly, in order to play tricks
on the humans, since most goblins wanted nothing to do with the now
magic-wielding Empire.
“So you’ve actually
seen one, right, a human?” Bedlam asked.
“I’ve seen
hundreds. I’ve even been to the Empire.”
Bedlam made an
impressed noise, which pleased her. Apparently, he did not share his wretched
brother’s misplaced disgust at her southern neighbors.
“That’s across the
Forest of Infinite Horrors, right?” he asked, getting an excited glint in his
eye. “I’ve heard about that place. It’s crawling with magical creatures!
Wil-o-wisps, grudges, screaming serpents—with animals like that, I could bring
the moor back to its Golden Age of mechano-magical invention!”
He grinned widely
at her, then ran his hand through his spiky pink hair.
“Or, well,
I mean…”
“I suppose I could
let you have a couple of creatures,” she said, “once we sort all this out.”
“Really?”
“Why not? It’s not
as if you were completely committed to your family’s plot, and the forest
really is brimming with the things. That’s where I found Sedgely, you know?”
She jutted her chin
at the wyrm, who had made his return and stood obediently in front of the
carriage, waiting to be hooked up to his harness.
“He’d been in a
fight with something or other and had a badly tattered wing. I nursed him back
to health, but he still can’t fly, poor thing. Speaking of which…” She floated
up to the wyrm’s long neck and fastened the harness around it. “You know your
way around this place. Is there any bridge across the Babble River? Sedgely
almost drowned trying to cross it; he was laid up in bed for a week.”
“If we head east of
here, to where the Hubbub, Babble, and Hogwash meet, at Caterwaul Junction,
there’s a whole slew of bridges. It’s a little out of our way, though.”
“Well,
then, we’d best get going. I’m all packed, and you, well…”
“All packed,” he
said, looping the scarf around his neck and tossing the end over his shoulder.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
The journey to
Caterwaul Junction became less and less awkward as the days passed. Nights were
spent camping outside or lodging at one of the rickety inns scattered across
Catawampus’s stark landscape (the term “roughing it” applied more to these
establishments than the evenings under the stars), and days were spent cooped
up in the carriage, where there was not much to do besides talk.
Raina had plenty to
say about her upbringing in Styx, from her childhood spent playing beside her
father as he worked in his laboratory to meeting her first magician to
attempting to study politics alongside her maiden aunt. Bedlam regaled her with
explanations of mechano-magical theory, which she found quite fascinating, as
it reminded her not only of her father’s experiments, but of the trial and
error method with which the human students at Melieh’s Academy went about
learning the ways of magic. In the midst of these forays into magic and
science, Bedlam seemed to forget the disadvantage brought on by his family
situation and their own ersatz marriage and became swept up in the moment,
leaning forward in in his seat to explain something to her while punctuating
his statements with animated movements of his hands. Raina had read human
novels about mad scientists, but they never captured quite how endearing such
madness could be.
Along with their
own experiences, they swapped stories about the larger world of their
respective countries. Bedlam brought up peculiarities of Catawampian living
that boggled Raina’s mind—the terrifying, rule-obsessed, bureaucrats with whom
he had had to contend when filing for mechanical patents, or the Labyrinth of
Infinite Knowledge, a huge library wherein he had studied the clockwork
mechanisms of Din and the combustible formulas of Greml—while seeming impressed
by the most ordinary aspects of Styx: the hedge maze in the garden that had
been bred, rather than enchanted, to respond to the royal family’s commands;
the network of kitchens, catacombs, and dungeons that lay under the castle; and
the mountains of discarded rubbish that Styxians dumped into the Wastes.
According to Bedlam, Lesserians used and reused items until they virtually
disintegrated, then burned the remnants for warmth on winter nights.
By the time they arrived
at Caterwaul Junction—called such because of the roar of the three rivers which
met there—they had become friendly enough to again broach the subject of their
sharriage (as Raina insisted on calling it).
“So were you really
rejected twenty-two times?” Bedlam asked, as they crossed one of several stone
bridges stretching between the tower-like islands that had been carved by the
rushing Hogwash and Hubbub Rivers.
“Twenty-one, before Mayhem,” Raina admitted. “The
Bombastian Prince even made a national joke of our letter to him, passing it
around all their towns for a bit of a laugh. That’s why Auntie was so adamant
about going to war with them. Most of the other countries simply ignored us,
and Din and the K’nic-k’nack tribe were at least polite enough to write back and
refuse.”
“Sorry,” Bedlam said, as he often did when they discussed
anything concerning marriage.
“I should have expected as much. My father faced dozens
of rejections in his youth. Luckily, he eventually discovered a very distant
cousin living in the Forest of Infinite Horrors—the last of the Styxian Forest
Clan—and married her.”
“What I want to know,” Bedlam said, “is why you were so
set on marrying royalty. My family’s never cared about that.”
“At any other time period, I wouldn’t, but Auntie Giselle
and I are the last of the Styx royal family, at least with any connection to
the country—everyone else moved away generations ago. And though my aunt is in
perfect health, she won’t be around forever, and I… Well, I’m not sure I can
run the country all by myself.”
“But you’ve studied politics.”
“Studying and real life are not always the same, Bedlam.
What if I have to wage war? Or if there were a rebellion, or an earthquake? I
need someone by my side who has experience in such things, who has my back.”
“I don’t think a Lesserian could help you there,” Bedlam
said, scratching his head. “We’ve managed to squander what little political
power we had, and it’s been hundreds of years since any of us fought in battle.
And anyway, I think you’ll do fine on your own, if that spell you used on
Mayhem is any indication.”
“You mean this?” she said, summoning a small glowing ball
of energy between her hands. It hummed softly, occasionally giving off a
crackle. “Despite its looks, it’s really not that dangerous.”
“But you cut Mayhem’s ear with it at the reception.”
“No, I smacked his ear with it. This spell can bludgeon
well enough, but not slice. It makes a handy shield…” She pulled her hands
apart, making her spell into a wide yellow disk, before letting it fizzle out
and disappear. “…but that’s about it. Not to mention that it’s incredibly
draining, like taking all of the magic inside you and pulling it out.”
“Even so, given your performance at the reception, I
think any country would be crazy to try and attack you.”
“Why, thank you, Bedlam!” she said, blushing at the
compliment.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
The bridges of Caterwaul Junction led gradually down into
a sandy canyon through which the Babble River flowed. Raina had become absorbed
in knitting a pair of wing-warmers for Sedgely, while Bedlam eagerly leaned out
the carriage window, as this was the farthest south he had ever been.
“Nothing much yet,” he said, disappointed.
He had taken to insisting that they stop whenever they
passed something with even the remotest magical potential, and had amassed a
pile of oddities on the seat beside him. Raina was grateful that the sparse
canyon had put a few hour’s end to their stop-and-start journey.
“Why don’t you try eking out some magic from the things
you’ve already collected, dear?”
He leaned back into the body of the carriage and appeared
to be looking at her, though it was hard to tell, as his face was mostly just a
blur of orange and pink above his brown coat.
“Hmm?”
“Uh… nothing,” he said, and leaned back out the window.
She wondered what had gotten into him, if it perhaps was
something she said. After a moment’s thought, she dropped her knitting needles
in embarrassment, but hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“I, uh, I call everyone dear, after a while,” she
explained. “And since we’re friends now, I just thought… I mean, we are
friends, right Bedlam? Bedlam?”
“Stop the carriage!”
She called for Sedgely to do so, sighing in relief and
exasperation as Bedlam hopped out the door.
“What is it this time?” she called.
“I don’t know. A new species? Some kind of gem? Maybe a…
oh. It’s just money.”
“Ooh! Where from?” She joined him, bending over to
inspect the pile of coins gathered on the sand. “I’ve taken up coin collecting
in my free time, you know?”
“It has gears on it. Must be from Greml.”
“Greml? This far north?”
No sooner had she spoken these words than an orange flare
soared over their heads, and twenty real live Gremlins rappelled down from the
canyon walls above them; one actually popped up from the ground below their
feet and grabbed hold of Bedlam’s legs. He kicked him off—Gremlins were only a
few feet tall, and this one had the disadvantage of spitting sand out of his
bulldog-like mouth—but was then jumped on by two more.
Raina summoned her energy spell and began swinging left
and right to keep the wave of Gremlins at bay, but then something shot past her
face. She turned to see a short blurry object get jumped on by Bedlam’s mass of
brown and pink. Something rolled toward her, and she reached down to find it
was a gun.
“Oh dear, I hope none of the rest of them have firearms!”
She looked around, but couldn’t tell much except that they were surrounded. At
least Sedgely seemed to be putting up a good fight, blasting flames at their
attackers, several of whom were racing around on fire.
“Use your tail, dear,” she called to the wyrm.
“Use the gun!” Bedlam said.
He was grappling with at least three Gremlins, but was
too far away to tell for sure. Raina aimed at the lot of them.
“Um, if you could just hold still for a bit,” she said,
smacking another Gremlin away with her spell while trying to decide which brown
shapes were part of Bedlam and which weren’t.
“Just shoot at the ones coming toward me!”
Sure enough, several other blurs were heading in his
direction. One was at least standing still, so she fired directly at it,
hearing a metallic ping as her bullet hit rock.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said, shooting a moving target this
time, and was briefly horrified to see its head fly free while its body kept
running before hearing Bedlam cry, “Why are you aiming for his hat? Aim for the
head!”
“I thought I was,” she mumbled, trying to take aim once
more before hearing a screech from her wyrm, who was flailing on the ground.
“Sedgely!”
She ran to him, finding that he was encased in a net, his
snout tied shut with a bola. “Hold on, I’ll get you out of there.”
She dropped the gun and placed her spell into an opening
in the net and tried to widen it as much as possible, but rather than breaking
at the strain, the rest of the net tightened around the wyrm, causing him to
whimper in pain. Thinking that perhaps she could blow a hole in it instead, she
reached toward her gun only to have it blasted away from her by someone else’s
bullet.
“If you value your life,” a Gremiln said from atop
Sedlegy’s back, “you better stop what you’re doing. Anti-dragon nets were
specially designed by Gremlin technicians not to allow any escape.”
“He can’t fly,” Bedlam said from under a pile of
Gremlins. “He’s no use to you.”
“No use? We’ll see about that. I think he might be able
to deliver a message for us, if he knows his way home.”
“You leave him out of this,” Raina said. “Whatever this
is, you… you… Who exactly are you, anyway?”
“Gutlap Bleggart,” the Gremlin said, hopping to the
ground in front of her. He was the tallest of his band, but was still only
three feet high. “Captain of the Greml Air Pirates.”
“Well… we don’t
have any valuables, so if you’ll untie my wyrm and unhand Bedlam, we’ll just be
on our way.”
“Oh,
you’ve got valuables,” he said, pointing his blunderbuss into her face. “I’ll
bet the Styxian heir will fetch a high ransom, as will her newly-wed husband.”
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
“Air pirates, my foot,” Raina huffed.
She and Bedlam had been tied up, back to back, and placed
in a circular basket full of other loot that the Gremlins had stashed in the
canyon. This basket was then attached via a network of harnesses to twenty
giant bats, upon which the Gremlins rode to make the journey over the sea to
Greml.
“Just because they happen to fly to and from their raids
hardly makes them ‘air’ anything, or pirates, for that matter,” she continued.
“Pirates attack ships, and we are not a ship. They’re nothing but common land
bandits, or if you wanna get technical, landits.”
“True, but Gremlins
have always aspired to build flying machines, so I suppose they just wanted to
corner the market on the name and get ahead of the game, should they ever end
up inventing a flying machine.”
“Well, that’s just
stupid.”
“Hmm… On the bright
side,” Bedlam mused, “I’ve always wanted to see Gremlin technology. I wouldn’t
have chosen this particular means of getting there, but…”
“Technology? More
like torture devices that tighten around defenseless wyrms, or broken guns that
can’t shoot straight. If they had worked properly, we’d be riddled with bullets
by now.”
“Speaking of
which...,” Bedlam said, choosing his words carefully. “Might it be possible that you are, maybe, just the
slightest, slightest bit near-sighted?”
He felt Raina go rigid behind him, but she did not reply.
“I ask because you actually hit a rock dead on, and you
seemed to be aiming at it… though I was facing an onslaught of Gremlins at the
time, so maybe I saw wrong… but then you took off that other gremlin’s hat like
a pro…”
“I can see perfectly well, thank you. It was just their
wretched guns that misfired, was all.”
“Hmm… So then, you can tell how many buckles that Gremlin
riding on the gray bat—my right, your left—is wearing?”
After a moment, in which he felt certain that she was
squinting with all her might, she said, “I suppose that really depends on how
we define a buckle.”
“It doesn’t really matter, since he’s bare-foot.”
“Ohhhh, well if you meant that Gremlin you should
have specified.”
“Okay, we’ll try something easier. How many piercings do
I have?”
“You must be flattering yourself to think I would have
noticed such an inconsequential detail about someone I barely know.”
“This morning you said we were friends, and anyway, we’ve
been staring at each other for weeks in that carriage.”
“Hmph. I don’t recall how many piercings you have. Around
five, I suppose.”
“Thirteen. What color are my eyes?”
“I—well that’s… What color are my eyes, if you’re
so smart?”
“Yours are yellow. Wow, you really are blind.”
“I am not,” she said, bashing the back of her head
into his.
“Ow! It’s not an insult. I’m just wondering why you don’t
do something about it. Wear glasses or something.”
“I would sooner die.”
“Why?”
He heard nothing but the constant whir of bat wings
around them for a moment, until Raina finally sighed, slumping over.
“They make me look very civilized and demure and, well…”
“Human?”
“Mmm…You won’t tell anyone will you?”
“Of course not,” he said, fairly certain that no one else
would care.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
They reached Greml by the dawn of the next day (the bats
took a brief rest on a wooded island off the coast of Poppycock). Assuming that
Raina couldn’t see a thing, and letting his enthusiasm get the better of him,
Bedlam took to narrating their journey over the increasingly industrialized
rock spires that made up the islands of Greml.
“There’re smoke stacks everywhere! And gears just
sticking out from all over. I wonder if they do anything, like maybe keep the
island from sinking? And is that—chaos’ sake! It’s a dragon furnace! They have
an actual dragon-fire furnace for smelting!!”
“Do you think that’s a portmanteau, Bedlam? ‘Smelting’?”
“Well, it does involve melting, but I don’t know about…
Agh!” he cried, as a propeller loosed itself from a contraption below—probably
a failed prototype for a flying machine, for which Greml was famous—and
careened past them, sending the bats into a panic that would have dumped them
out of the basket if they hadn’t been tied down. The air pirates yelled at the
Gremlins below to be more careful, and were met with much fist shaking and
cursing and admonishments to not get in the way of progress.
Finally, Gutlap let off a flare from his blunderbuss and
they began to descend into a large damp cavern, where the bats allowed
themselves to be unharnessed—a long, cumbersome process performed by a crew of
two-dozen Gremlins on walkways along the ceiling—before flying off to
underground roosts. Bedlam and Raina where untied from each other, though their
hands where still bound, and marched to a stone stairway spiraling up along the
cavern wall.
Gutlap and several other pirates kept their guns trained
on the captives the whole time, even when they entered an arena-like room
surrounded by low metal walls, behind which were several rows of benches. The
domed roof, like the walls, was made of riveted-together panels of brassy
metal, with a single hole at the top letting in a cone of sunlight. The rest of
the room was lit only by gas lamps and lanterns, so that it was difficult to
see whether anyone was sitting in the bleachers, save for two Gremlins standing
on a low balcony overlooking the arena.
“Foreman Snittany, Foreman Gull,” Gutlap said, addressing
them with a salute, “I have brought you the spoils of my piratical ventures.”
“Let’s hope it’s better than last time,” Snittany said.
She wore dozens of shining nuts, bolts, and gears on chains around her neck,
and sported not one, but two pairs of goggles on her hat.
“Doesn’t look like loot,” said Gull, who was dressed
similarly to Snittany, though he wore a single goggle—Bedlam supposed Raina
would call it a monoggle—over one eye.
“The loot’s still in the cave below. These are prisoners,
to be ransomed for a hefty sum from Styx.”
“But that one’s not Styxian.”
“He’s her husband. Should fetch the same ransom as her.”
“Excuse me,” Raina said, stepping forward to
address the Gremlins on the balcony. “First of all, don’t talk about us like we
aren’t even here. Secondly, Bedlam is not my husband— ”
“Fiancé, whatever—”
“He’s not my fiancé, either. He’s nobody who will fetch
any sort of ransom at all.”
“Hey!” Bedlam said, slightly offended, even though it was
true. Raina raised an eyebrow at him, glanced briefly at her bound-together
hands, then looked back to him. True, if he was worthless to them, they might
just let him go.
“If the rumors flying around Poppycock and Catawampus are
to be believed,” Gutlap said, scratching his chin with his trotter-like hand,
“you’re the Lesserian potentate’s first son. Even if you aren’t married to this
Styxian, surely your father will pay to get your freedom.”
“He would, if we had anything worth paying with.
The moor has never been rich, and there’s been this drought recently, so even
most of our mud has dried up…”
“I’ve heard they even live in wooden huts,” Gull said in
a loud whisper to the other foreman, “and only build two stories high. Poor
benighted savages.”
“In that case,”
said the other, “you won’t be worth the food it would take to keep you. You’re
free to go. Just don’t expect any help getting to the mainland.”
Looking disappointed, Gutlap cut Bedlam’s bonds and
thrust his hand out to the side, gesturing towards the exit. Bedlam looked back
at Raina, who was still bound. Even if she wanted him to leave, maybe to try
and get help, it seemed like an especially raw deal, after being lied to and
married to the wrong person and kidnapped, that she should also then be
abandoned by her one companion.
“I’m not leaving without her,” he said, causing looks of
wide-eyed surprise from both Raina and Gutlap.
“Then pay her ransom,” Snittany said, twirling one of her
necklaces in her hand.
“I… uh, I only meant, I’ll stay here, in Greml, until her
aunt pays the ransom. I’ve always wanted to visit your island, so…”
The foremen looked at each other and shrugged their
stocky shoulders, but Gutlap was having none of it.
“Distinguished Foremen, are you seriously going to let
him have free rein of the island? What if he tries to help her escape?”
“What? I would never! I couldn’t! There’s nothing magical
here I could use for inventions.”
“Then there’s no point in you staying.”
“B-but Raina and I, I mean… we aren’t married but… but…
we were trying to elope.”
The foremen leaned forward, clearly interested by this
development, but, again, Gutlap was unimpressed. Raina was completely
dumbfounded, so Bedlam continued.
“See, the rumors were true. Raina was supposed to marry
the potentate’s first son, my brother, but when she came to the moor… we
instantly fell in love and decided to run away together.” He tried to give her
a reassuring grin, but was fairly sure it came across as more of a nervous
grimace. “And that’s why Raina’s aunt will only pay for her ransom and not
mine. We were on our way to Styx to plead our case when you all captured us. So
even if you won’t let Raina go, I’m going to stay here with her.
The foremen beckoned Gutlap forward and leaned over the
railing of their balcony to converse with him. There was much sneering,
scoffing, and side-long glances from the pirate and intrigued glances from the
other two, but since they had shifted into speaking the local language of
Greml, Bedlam couldn’t tell what they had decided on until Gull straightened
up.
“We may be piratically minded mechanical geniuses,” he
said, “but even we are not so unfeeling as to get in the way of true love. You
may stay here and visit the Styxian in her cell, but must provide for your own
food and lodging. Should we find that you are trying to help her escape, you
will be immediately executed.”
“Sounds good,” Bedlam said, giving them a thumbs up.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
They were led up yet another stairway, this one made of
iron, that led out of the arena and wrapped around the exterior of a large
tower from which many large cages hung. Raina was relieved to find that she was
not going to be kept in one of these—they appeared to already be inhabited by a
number of halcyon birds—but instead in a cell inside one of the rooms of the
tower. Though Gutlap had given strict orders to the Gremlin guarding them not
to take his eyes off them, they begged him to have just one short moment alone.
“All right,” he grumbled, “just don’t get up to any funny
business.”
He shut the door with a wink, and Raina could feel
herself go scarlet.
“That was quite the story, Bedlam,” she said, sitting
demurely on the floor of her cell and looking down her nose at him through the
bars.
“Well, I didn’t want to leave you here to wait all
alone.”
“Wait? Whatever for?”
“Your aunt to pay the ransom.”
“There will be no ransom! Styx does not negotiate with
landits, and while I’m sure Auntie would spring into action at a moment’s
notice to retrieve me and rain down death on this island, she’s likely still
tied up with the war in Bombast. No, you are going to rescue me.”
“What? But they said if I try, I’ll be executed.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s your duty as my… shusband to protect
my honor, especially after claiming that we were eloping! You will write to my
auntie and tell her to delay payment at all costs, no matter what Greml says,
and that you have the situation firmly in hand.”
“But I don’t!”
“We’ll worry about
that later. Besides, aren’t Lesserians supposed to be mechanical geniuses?
Surely you can find something on this island to devise some sort of—”
The guard knocked
and she fell silent, hoping that Bedlam would not let her down.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
The following day, Raina requested that the Gremlins
bring her yarn so that she could start Sedley’s wing-warmers once again, as her
first attempt had been left in the carriage along with a ransom note, which was
on its way to Styx to be delivered by the wyrm. They gave her some yarn, but no
needles, so she made do with her fingers and passed the hours knitting and
contemplating ways to make the Gremlins pay for the indignity they had foisted
upon her.
Around sunset, Bedlam finally showed back up at the
prison door and was let in by the guard, who this time stayed in the room to
keep an eye on them.
“It’s amazing, Raina! The best place in the world. I’ve
visited the mechanical quarter of Catawampus, but it has nothing on Greml.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, dear.” She would have
asked about any progress towards their escape attempt, but couldn’t risk the
guard hearing.
“I visited the forge and they let me pet the dragon. And
I got to see them melt down a whole flying machine—or an unsuccessful attempt
at flying machine, but they’re the same thing in Greml—and then I got to visit
a glass-blower who makes the lenses for goggles. I bought a pair, look…”
He dropped two large parcels on the floor and untied
them. One was full of springs, screws, plates of metal, gears, and other
sundries, while the other held the afore-mentioned goggles, some sort of gage,
and a large, leathery umbrella.
“And I also borrowed these,” he said, holding up an
object so thin and delicate that Raina had to lean forward and squint to see
it. It turned out to be a pair of spectacles.
“Those better not be for me.”
“Not permanently. They’re reading glasses from one of the
Gremlins who draws blueprints. I just wanna see if you really look as…” He held
up his hand and whispered “‘human’ as you think you do.”
“You wouldn’t know anyway, never having seen one.”
“Come on. I said I won’t tell anyone. Here, I’ll even
block his view.”
He opened the umbrella so the guard couldn’t see, and
fearing he might get suspicious if they kept arguing, Raina hastily shoved the
spectacles on, stared at the still-blurry Bedlam, then whipped them off. Bedlam
closed the umbrella and the guard coughed and turned around, seemingly to give
them some measure of apparently-much-needed privacy.
“Well?” Raina asked.
“I… I don’t know what humans look like, but you’re right.
You should never wear those again. You looked like… a bureaucrat,” he said,
with a tremor in his voice.
“Those horrid goblins who actually like rule-keeping?”
“I’ve seen enough of them for one lifetime. No, glasses
definitely aren’t for you. But what about goggles?”
“I tried some for a few months, but they were so
dreadfully stuffy, and I had no peripheral vision to speak of.”
“Hmm…” he said, clearly trying to think up some other
solution to her problem. She, for her part, had given up on finding one long
ago, and decided to change the subject.
“So what about that other thing? And that umbrella?”
“This thing is an altimeter. It measures altitude. And as
for the umbrella, I was walking through the market and saw the sign for them
and thought of you.”
“Me?”
“Or your portmanteaus. The sign said ‘genuine bat-wing
umbrella’, so I thought of bat umbrella, which you would call…?”
“A bumbrellat!” she said proudly.
“Orrr… a batbrella?”
“Oh. I suppose so. A batbrella then. Quite. Speaking of,
how did you manage to afford all this? Aren’t they making you pay for your own
lodgings and such?”
“I got a job! Several, actually. Doing manual labor in
some of the workshops. Literally.” He wiggled his fingers in front of her.
“Having thumbs is a major advantage here, so I’ve been making money dexterous-hand
over fist. I’ve already found an inn that overlooks the lagoon, and a great
restaurant that serves bat potpie! I can bring you one sometime… or we could go
after your aunt pays the ransom.”
He leaned very far forward so that she could see him
winking—it turned out his eyes were magenta, like his hair—and pointed down at
the pile of machine parts lying on the ground. So he had remembered to
work on the escape plan, she thought, feeling slightly disappointed when he
leaned back and started gathering up his things to go.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
In the coming
weeks, Bedlam continued working in Greml. He had hired himself out to half a
dozen workshops, tightening screws, threading wire through miniscule openings,
and doing anything else for which thumbs offered an advantage. He had never in
his life had so much money to his name, and never had so much to spend it on.
Greml’s markets were brimming with more scrap metal than he had ever laid eyes
on, and its food stalls were bursting with delicacies from the sea: pickled sea
cucumber, fur-bearing trout roe, seared sea-eel fillet (not to be confused with
eared-seal cheese soufflé, which he also encountered but was hesitant to try).
Bedlam was sure he would have gained twenty pounds if he allowed himself to eat
to his heart’s content, but he had a job to do and was attempting to save money
for it.
Despite having
plenty of funds, he had a dearth of inspiration. He’d filled his room at the
inn with piles of rubber hoses and gaskets and springs, but had thus far only
been able to create a handful of useless gadgets. If he was being honest with
himself—and the long hours when he wasn’t allowed to visit Raina afforded him
much time to do so—he had always been like this, even on the moor. Back then, he collected everything
that might possibly be magical, done years of research, and what did he have to
show for it? Several clocks that emitted a low hum on the hour—the product
of experiments with crystals; Some anti-vermin food jars coated in
tongue’s bane extract, and the invisible watch (or invisiwatch). He had
always been better at gathering materials than doing anything worthwhile with
them, and now that supplies were plentiful, at least in the mechanical area of
mechano-magical invention, he still could not come up with anything that might
be remotely helpful to their situation.
Raina was incredibly patient with him, all things
considered, and didn't seem at all bothered by his lack of progress, although
she may not have understood how little he was actually getting done, since they
could not speak openly about their plan in front of the guard. She often asked
how his inventions were going, and he told her about those that he had managed
to rig together, while trying to convey his overall lack of progress.
"I made a new kind of propeller today," he told
her. "Sort of like an egg-beater; hand operated. It won't spin fast enough
to do much in terms of flight, but if I could just find something to use as a
motor."
"Perhaps one of the halcyons?" Raina asked,
referring to the ever present birds that kept the seas around Greml as calm as
an inland lake.
"Tried it. Turns out that halcyon magic has he
opposite effect, and ends up slowing machinery down."
"Ooh! That might be useful. For impressing Auntie,
you know?”
They had begun using references to her aunt or paying the
ransom as a means of covertly discussing their escape. This had become
especially important now, because Gutlap seemed to suspect that they were up to
something. Bedlam had seen the air pirate skulking around several of the
workshops where he was employed, and Raina had received a few visits from him
as well.
“Maybe… I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his now
goggle-adorned hair. “It feels like I’m in a rut.”
“That’s just because this grubby little island has
nothing to work with. No offense,” she said to the guard.
“None taken,” he replied through a mouthful of bat
potpie.
“After we get to Styx, you'll have access to all
kinds of magic. Just the snakes in the forest alone could probably provide you
with years of study. That is… if we manage to convince auntie to let you stay…”
“True,” he said, then thought about what she said for a
moment longer. “Wait, you mean I can really stay there, Raina?”
“What an absurd question, dear!” she said, somehow
managing to gesture towards the guard with only her mouth and one squinty eye.
“Oh, uh, I meant, you think that your aunt will really
let me—let us stay together?”
“I would sooner die that live without you. Plus, auntie
will have to accept you when she sees all the lovely things you’ve invented
here. Just keep doing what you do best,” she said, running her fingers over the
invisiwatch, “and we’ll be in Styx, together, in no time.”
They heard a grunt from behind them, and the guard
announced that visiting hours were over and escorted Bedlam out the door. As
Bedlam started down the stairs, the guard caught him by the sleeve, and he
jumped, sure they had been found out.
“Don’t give up,” the Gremlin said. “I’m rooting for you
two.”
“Oh, h-heh. Thanks,” Bedlam said, and ran down the
stairs.
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
Keep doing what you do best. In the following days, Bedlam continued to roll these
words over in his head like a mantra to bring him luck. She really believed
that he could do it: invent something worthy of an escape. And though it may
have been sweet nothings meant to convince the guard of their love for each
other, he still held out hope that maybe Raina really would let him stay in
Styx to experiment with their magical flora and fauna. She even said that he
might have years of study, which meant years away from Mayhem.
And, though he knew it was probably not worth thinking
about, after everything that had happened, he also had to admit that the
prospect of becoming Raina’s actual husband was growing on him. The first time
she called him dear, he was touched, even if it was only meant as a platonic
gesture. And hadn’t his parent’s marriage started out as friendship, and his
grandparents before that? He liked spending time with her, and talking with
her, and plotting together about escape right under the nose of their Gremlin
guard. He liked Raina, and he was becoming more and more convinced that he
could probably love her, if she would have it.
Romantically or otherwise, Bedlam wanted to show her how
much he cared about her. While he still had the scarf she had made—she’d said
he might as well keep it—he had never given her anything but the invisiwatch,
which was a pretty sorry present. Though he had found nothing magical in Greml
except for the halcyons, some florescent mold, and an old factory full of
phantasmal jellyfish, this was one invention for which he needed no magic, but
rather the artistic skills of a glassblower.
The present was ready in no time, and it was with a
spring in his step that Bedlam walked home with it carefully folded in a bundle
of cloth. He just needed to drop a few pieces of scrap metal in his room before
visiting Raina, and would have been on his way, but for the fact that as soon
as he pushed the door open and stepped inside, he found the muzzle of a
blunderbuss in his face.
“Not a word,” Gutlap said, gesturing for him to close the
door and then sit on the bed.
From the look of things, the pirate had already rifled
through his things, or at least through half of them; his few inventions were
dumped off the table and onto the floor, and a few of his clothes had been
picked up and tossed aside.
“What’s in the package?” Gutlap asked.
“A present.” Bedlam carefully opened it—he wouldn’t risk
the pirate manhandling it—and handed it to Gutlap, who inspected it for a
minute, then handed it back.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here,” the Gremlin
said, returning to the work of looking through Bedlam’s things.
“I figured you were burglarizing the place, and I walked
in on you.”
“Pfff, pirates don’t burgle, and even if we did, your
paltry belongings wouldn’t be worth it anyway. No, I’m onto you.”
“Onto? Me?”
“Don’t play dumb. I know you’re planning to escape with
that Styxian. You have been ever since the foremen let you go. You were
probably blissfully unaware of it, but I’ve been dogging your steps—”
“No, I was pretty aware of it.”
“—and I saw how desperate you were for supplies, buying
every bit of scrap you could get your hands on. I wasn’t too worried, because,
as you said, Lesserians need magic to make proper inventions, unlike Gremlins,
who fashion mechanical wonders without even the use of thumbs. But where was I?
Ah, yes, you were having a tough time until a few days ago, when everything
changed. Like a Malarkeyan fox hunting an arctic jackalope, I have become aware
of your slightest changes in mood and manner, and this one was hardly slight.
You seemed downright giddy, which could only mean a major breakthrough in your
escape plan.”
By the end of this monologue, Gutlap had finished his
search through the room and faced Bedlam once again, as if expecting a reply.
“Um…”
“Well, where is it?”
“It?”
“Your invention. The thing you’re going to use to escape.
Is it a bomb? A rope ladder? Some kind of robot?”
“I haven’t made anything like that. Honest.” This was met
with another shove of the blunderbuss into his face. “If I had, you would have
found it by now.”
Admittedly, Bedlam could turn machines invisible,
but that would hardly help the situation at hand. And Gutlap would probably
have tripped over them anyway.
“Oh, I don’t think so. Maybe you have some sort of tiny
lock pick for the prison break, but you and I both know that you’ll need some
means of escape to get off the island. Something big! A weather balloon. A
mechanical bat.” He glared at Bedlam’s thumbs, as if certain that they had been
used to create all manner of working flying machines hidden around the city.
“But I’ll be watching the skies, waiting for you to slip up, and when you do,
I’ll send my entire crew after you.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just for a
little money.”
“Don’t be stupid, Lesserian. This is all about piratical
honor. When the Styxian queen pays the ransom I asked for, that will be the
greatest haul ever pulled off by a single band of pirates. As captain, my cut
of the pie will be huge, enough for an early retirement, maybe even enough to
make me a foreman.”
“You can just buy a spot in the government here?”
“Don’t be daft. We’re a meritocracy. Foreman Snittany
perfected the bat harness, bringing Greml closer to our dreams of flight than
ever before, and Foreman Gull tamed the dragon we use for our furnace. When the
queen pays off the ransom, it could usher in a new era of riches for Greml, and
a whole new brand of piracy: the kidnapping variety.”
“And the foremen are all right with that?”
“They have had their misgivings,” Gutlap said, examining
his stubby fingers, “particularly concerning the expense of feeding the Styxian
heir, but I’ve assured them it will all pay off. Staked everything I have on
this. And I’m not going to let some mud-grubbing Lesserian ruin it all.”
“But I really, really, really haven’t made
anything escape worthy. Really.”
“We’ll see about that,” Gutlap said, backing to the door
while keeping his gun trained on Bedlam. “Or rather, I’ll see. Don’t forget
that I’m watching you. You can’t keep this up forever, and when you’re finally
found out, well, let’s say I’ll be looking forward to your execution.”
He closed the door and Bedlam felt a wave of relief. Who
knew that failing utterly in his efforts at an escape attempt would actually
pay off? He was tempted to give them up entirely, tell Raina that they would
need to write back to her aunt and ask her to pay the ransom after all. That
was the safest thing to do, since the alternative would most likely result in
Bedlam’s death.
And yet, what Gutlap had said had triggered a something in
Bedlam’s brain.
When he was a child, Bedlam's father had once taken
him to the city of Catawampus to see a Dinnian clockmaker at work. They watched
as each spring and gear and cog was added, layer by layer and bit by bit. It
looked like a mechanical mess to Bedlam’s young eyes, until he started to see
connections, how one gear turned another, how winding the key sent the pendulum
swinging. Everything he had seen and experienced since the wedding, everything
Raina and Gutlap had said to him, fit together: the Styxian heir, piratical
honor, the cave full of phantasmal jellyfish, I would sooner die,
his execution, watching the skies, his propeller, Raina’s energy spell—
Keep doing what you do best.
It all fit. For the first time in his life, he could see
it all laid out like clockwork. Not just a plan, but a scheme, not just inventions,
but contraptions worthy of a
descendent of Duplicity Jinx.
Keep doing what you do best.
No, he was going to start doing
his best.
He let out a maniacal laugh, then stifled it, peering out
the door way to make sure Gutlap wasn't still around. It didn't look like it,
but just to be safe, he allowed himself only a maniacal chuckle and then ran
off to tell Raina, allowing his plan to percolate through his mind on the way.
He'd have to hide most of the materials in the shops where he worked so that
Gutlap wouldn't stumble across them if he searched his room again. That would
be easy enough. Then they would need supplies, and blood. A lot of blood. That
could be obtained from some of the butcheries, surely. And then bait, but that
was easy. The only thing left was to tell Raina all about it.
He pounded on the door to her prison and burst through as
soon as it was unlocked, oblivious to the guard he bowled over
"Raina!" he cried, running to her cell,
thrusting his arms through the bars and grabbing her by the
shoulders. "What are your measurements?"
Raina froze, gape mouthed, holding a cat's cradle of yarn
between her fingers. The guard came to her rescue, oddly enough.
"You can't ask a lady that, even if you are in love
with her!"
"Oh, you're still here. Right." He fiddled with
his goggles, thinking about how to get around this obstacle. "I… need them
for a wedding dress."
“I… oh, um… well…” Raina said, shaking like a leaf,
“i-i-is this about… my aunt?”
“I don’t care about your aunt! I love you, and I can’t
stand being apart from you any longer!” he cried, pulling her to him, then
whispered as quietly as he could into her ear, “I have a scheme.”
Raina nodded, then wrapped her arms around him to throw
off the guard, as if that were even necessary at this point.
“We're going to get married,” Bedlam continued.
“What?
“And then, we're going die."
♠♦♣♥♣♦♠
He’d told her as much as could before the guard cleared
his throat with more and more gusto until they really had to let go so as not
to embarrass the poor fellow any further. Bedlam vowed that they would be
married before the week was out, and the guard even said he would put a good
word for them with the foremen, leaving Raina to wonder if this insane scheme
might have any chance of success.
As the week went on, Bedlam managed to leak more and more
of it to her, bit by bit, embrace by embrace. Raina had to admit, he really had
thought of everything. The only obstacle in their way was the actual marriage,
which everything hinged on, but by the fifth day after Bedlam’s declaration of
love, the guard proudly informed them that the foremen had granted their
request. Now they just had to wait for their wedding garments.
On the day that the foremen had set aside for the
ceremony, Raina still had misgivings, the largest of which was what would
happen if the guard refused to step out of the room for an extended period of
time to let her change, but like a true gentleman, he acquiesced. Raina
reached into the bundle Bedlam had brought earlier that day—which had of course
been inspected, lest it contain weapons of any sort—and pulled out the dress.
Bedlam had commissioned it, and it showed, from the multiple rows of buttons
running down to the skirt to the crisscrossing buckles keeping the back
together. It was a peculiar color of gray, and had a sandpapery feel; sharkskin
was what Bedlam had called it. She set this aside, along with a pair of button-up
fingerless gloves and some similarly buttoned leggings, and focused instead on
the pieces of armor that Bedlam had been smuggling to her each day before the
dress was ready, all of which had been turned invisible like her watch. It was
lucky that Lesserian garments were so tight fitting, as it had allowed her
to give Bedlam the exact measurements for the length and width of her torso and
limbs, which he needed in order to create shin guards, braces, and back
and breast plates. Her helmet would of course cause her hair to look flattened,
but Bedlam had though to disguise this by ordering an extravagantly spiky
headdress, which he had already attached to the invisi-helmet... invishelmet?
She'd have to ask his opinion on that one later. For now, she had to squeeze
into her dragon-molt long johns, which were fashioned so that they wouldn't
cause a single bulge in her visible dress.
The entire suiting-up process took quite a long time,
especially because of the difficulty of identifying left from right pieces of
invisible armor, but she was ready by the time the guard knocked back on the
door and allowed Bedlam to step into the room. He was wearing a fancier coat
than normal—made so by numerous panels and seams in different shades of
grey—and a so-called ‘aviator’ hat to hide the fact that he wore a sturdier
metal helmet underneath.
“You look great!” he said.
“You sound surprised.”
“Heh, well… I
designed that dress myself. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out.”
“Hmm, well, I’m
sure you look fetching as well,” she said, taking his arm.
Their guard led
them back down to the arena where they had stood when they first arrived in
Greml, which was darker than it had been before, since the marriage was set to
happen at night. Unlike the pomp and circumstance of their original sheremony,
this one was only going to be attended by the foremen, several guards, and a
Gremlin shaman. Unfortunately, Raina only now realized, this meant that it was
to be a modest ceremony, with only one tea pot and no juggling, which would not
be a problem, except that one vital piece of the plan had not arrived yet, and
they would need the ceremony to last until it did. With only the vows and scarf-binding,
they would need to stall for time.
“It’s very sweet of you to arrange this just for us,”
Raina said to the foremen, hoping to make small talk.
“Think nothing of it,” said Snittany. “Once you’re
married, your aunt will have no choice but to pay a ransom for both of you,
thus doubling our earnings.”
“Ah.”
That didn’t explain the formality of it all, but Raina
supposed that their guard’s influence might have had something to do with that,
even though, as he explained earlier, he was on patrol duty that night and
couldn’t stay for the festivities. Considering some of the stickier aspects of
Bedlam’s plan, that was probably for the best.
“As we said earlier, we’re not ones to stand in the way
of true love,” Gull said.
“Right,” Bedlam said, giving Raina’s hand a nervous
squeeze. Perhaps he could set the plan in motion anyway, she thought, though it
would certainly look suspicious if it happened out of the blue.
“Shall we begin?” the shaman said, adjusting his goggles
and examining an official looking document.
“W-what about the banns?” Raina asked.
“Bands?”
“Not bands. Banns. You know, asking if anyone objects to
the marriage for any reason, to make sure everything is above board.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Oh, well it’s a… a… a human tradition.” She flushed in
embarrassment, but it was all she could think of to stretch things out.
Granted, proper banns were meant to be posted weeks in advance, but several of
her human romances crammed them right onto the front of the ceremony, so she
didn’t see why she couldn’t do the same.
“Right,” Bedlam said again. “A human tradition, and one I
completely support. If it’s important to Raina, then it’s important to me.”
This came dangerously close to suggesting that she
was the human in question, but she could not worry about that now.
The shaman’s lip curled. “Well, I suppose we can try it.
Does anyone have any objections?”
“Not like that,” Raina said. “You have to say the
formal speech, and then pause for dramatic effect.”
“And what is
the formal speech?”
“Ahem: ‘Should
anyone know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in matrimony,
speak now, or forever hold your peace’.”
Everyone present
looked around at each other, curious to see if this bann would produce any
effect. It obviously didn’t, but just to make sure Raina was thoroughly
satisfied, the shaman, somewhat sarcastically, said, “Any objections?”
“Just one!” cried a
familiar voice, as a coil of rope fell from the hole in the roof and Gutlap
Bleggart propelled down it. “You can’t marry a corpse, and the groom is a dead
man walking.”
“You’ve already
told us of your misgivings, Gutlap, to no avail,” Snittany said dismissively.
“And I suppose that
my misgivings are responsible for that flying machine up there on the roof? Or
maybe you didn’t see it because you’re all down here throwing a party for
prisoners.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Evidence needs no
explanation. Up on the roof, there are two sets of artificial wings, far too
big to fit a Gremlin’s body. They look pretty complicated too. That kind of
articulation would take at least twenty of us to hold onto all the parts—or
just one goblin with thumbs.”
“Lies,” Bedlam said, though the guards had already run
off to go see if what the landit said was true. “He’s just trying to keep us
apart—”
“I couldn’t care less abou—”
“—because he wants to take Raina for himself!”
His words had the desired effect. Gutlap sputtered something
unintelligible in Gremlin while the foremen turned to each other to discuss
this latest news.
“It’s true,” Bedlam continued. “He’s visited her in her
room too many times to count, trying to win her away from me.”
“You say one more word…” Gutlap growled, pulling his
blunderbuss from the holster on his back.
“But you’re too late. She loves me, and the only way for
you to win her hand is to defeat me in a duel to the—”
Gutlap fired, and Raina let out a scream as the bullet
hit Bedlam square in the chest, splattering blood everywhere.
She thought the landit might at least have waited for a
proper duel-to-the-death declaration…deathclaration… since Bedlam had prepared
a speech and everything, but it seemed the prospect of being in love with a
Styxian was simply too much to bear. She had been the one to suggest the love
triangle bit as a means of goading Gutlap into violence if the shoddy winged-backpacks
didn’t do the job, but even so, she couldn’t help being offended.
Now was not the time to worry about slights against her
heritage, however, for she had to see if Bedlam’s armor had held. Blood still
erupted everywhere—he had filled the squibs along the seams of his coat with a truly
excessive amount—and Raina made sure to get some on her hands so she could hold
them up in the most melodramatic fashion after making sure he was all right.
“Raina.” He coughed, popping another squib in his mouth
as he did so, braving the taste of raw bat blood for the sake of the show. At
least he was all right; they had agreed ahead of time that his saying her name
would mean everything was working. If not, he would just scream in agony.
“What have you done?” Raina said, hoping she was the
picture of heartbroken despair. “What have you done!”
“What have you done, Gutlap,” Snittany snapped.
“You may have just cost us half our ransom money!”
“You would have lost all of it if it hadn’t been for me,”
he said. “He was planning to escape with that disgusting Styxian after the
wedding.”
“He couldn’t when we’d locked them up, you twit! That was
the agreement. They got to be married, but he would lose his
running-around-Greml privileges. Even if he had invented flying wings, he
couldn’t have got to them.”
“Someone check if he’s alive,” Gull said. He alone sounded
slightly concerned about Bedlam’s fate, but Raina couldn’t risk any of them
feeling his invisible armor, or his pulse, for that matter.
“Don’t you touch him!” she screeched, throwing herself
over him. The fun of overacting almost made up for the vile smell. “He was my
happiness, and you took him from me!”
“Get a grip.” Gutlap leveled his gun at her. “And get
back to your cell.”
But Raina had already summoned her energy spell. She had
originally planned to simply beat the Gremlins to a pulp once they had let her
out of the cell, but Bedlam wisely pointed out that even if she managed to do
so, they would have the rest of the island’s population to contend with while
trying to make their escape. This was the only way to distract everyone long
enough to allow them a decent head start at their getaway.
“The world would be my cell without him!”
Shoving her spell into her chest, while shortening it so
as not to hurt herself, she doubled over, producing what she hoped sounded like
a death rattle.
“What in the bloody blue blazes is that!” Snittany asked,
too shocked to complain about their shrinking ransom payments.
Now would come the most difficult part of the plan, the
part that would make or break everything. Raina widened her spell into a
shield, blocking her and Bedlam from view, then enlarged it even further to
surround them. While this would give them the cover they needed, it also meant
that, beyond the humming, crackling dome of light, the Gremlins might have them
surrounded.
“Amazing!” Bedlam said, sitting up.
“Quite,” Raina said, taking a shallow breath. She had
never made her spell this large before, and it took an exhausting amount of
energy.
Thankfully, Bedlam had already set to work, pulling off
her elaborate headdress and breaking open six of the spikes, which were full of
glowing goo that he had concocted out of seal fat, blood, and singed hide and
the luminescence from some of Greml’s mold. He splattered this around at
random, then pulled his goggles over his eyes, took the remaining spike, and
swiped its tip across the floor, igniting the tip.
“What’s that?”
“Flash grenade. I could only smuggle enough powder out
for one, but it’ll do. Close your eyes and cancel your spell on three. One,
Two, Three!”
She did so, hearing a loud bang as Bedlam threw his arm
around her and half carried her out of the room. They could just hear Gutlap
yell “Chaos! They exploded!” before Snittany took to berating him in Gremlin.
They continued up
the exterior staircase that led up to the prison, and Bedlam stopped in a nook
against the wall, giving Raina a chance to breath.
“You all right?”
“Mmhmm. That spell took a bit out of me, but I’ll be
fine.”
“Good, because we’re gonna have to jump.”
“Jump! From here?”
“Just hold onto to
me and don’t let go,” he said, moving his hands as if he were drawing an arrow.
“Is that the
bumbrellat? That’ll never hold our weight!”
“Trust me. We’ll be
fine.”
Figuring that he
wouldn’t try such a dangerous stunt without having tested it first, she threw
her arms around him, he grabbed her with one arm, and they leapt into the open
air together—and fell.
The batbrella did
nothing to slow their speed and Raina just had time to see Bedlam’s manic
expression turn to one of wild panic before she decided to take matters into
her own hands. She attempted to float, which was second nature to a Styxian,
and thankfully found that it worked much the same when hurtling through the air
as when starting from the ground. They slowed to a halt mere inches from the
ground, and Bedlam, who had thrown his legs around her in the course of their
fall, untangled himself from her.
“S-s-see,” he said,
drawing the batbrella closed with trembling hands. “N-nothing to it.”
“You know we would
be stone dead right now if not for me.” Raina brushed an imaginary piece of
dust off her dress, is if their brush with death hadn’t rattled her in the
slightest. “It would have been quite a shame, what with all that scheming.”
He nodded, took a
breath, then grabbed her hand. “It still will be, if we don’t get out of here.”
They ran to a wharf
where dozens of ships, submarines, and sailboats were docked close together.
Hardly noticeable among these was a small lifeboat that looked as if it had
fallen loose from some larger vessel. Bedlam climbed into this while Raina
floated down, accidentally upending an invisible basket full pastries and
fruit.
“All right Raina,
it’s now or never.”
“It won’t hurt,
will it?”
“It shouldn’t. All
the animals I’ve extracted magic from seemed all right. And they never lose
their magic abilities.”
She was still
unsure, but reminded herself that not only would Bedlam be executed if he were
captured again, but Styx would be humiliated twice over. Her ancestors had made
sacrifices to preserve their country’s honor, so she could do the same...
maybe.
She held out her
hand, still nervous, and Bedlam gently took it in his.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
He touched her hand
to the cold steel surface of his egg-beater propeller, and she felt just a
modicum of power leave her, almost as if she were casting her energy spell, but
not quite. Just as she was about to ask if it worked, she heard a buzz as the
machine sprang to life, blowing air into their faces.
“We did it!” he
said. “We really pulled it off!”
Raina was struck by
a sudden desire to lean forward and kiss him, but she refrained. They weren’t
really a “we”, after all. They were not eloping, and they weren’t really
married. All the things they had said to each other in Greml were elaborate
lies meant to fool the Gremlins. And even if her heart had pounded whenever he
embraced her in the cell, and even if she felt a twinge of longing when he let
go of her hand to deal with the propeller, she knew that it was one-sided.
Bedlam loved magic and inventing, but he didn’t love her. Everything between
them was a sham, and she had to remember that.
Bedlam stuck the
propeller halfway in the water, and their boat surged to life, bumping its way
through the other watercraft. When they got onto the open ocean, he lowered the
device deeper and they picked up speed.
Soon, they would be
in Styx, and the sham would have to come to an end.
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