Chicks - The Chick Is In The Mail Part 13

Whatthat was, was the sound of Ethelberthina beginning to recite the Prayer for a Prosperous Husband.

Garth gasped. "Sunrise! Quick, Porfirio, toss your cloak over the bursar!"

"Yes, at once, I-" The wizard reached for the clasp of his cloak. A sickly green came over his face as he realized he hadn't bothered to put one on. Neither had Garth or Zoli.

"For the love of mica, set me free! I'll run back under the bridge!" the troll bellowed.

"Of course, of course!" Dean Porfirio hastened to draw his wand once more. Unfortunately, in his agitated state the wizard went all b.u.t.terfingers. He jerked the wand from his belt, promptly lost hold of it, and watched in horror as it flew off to sink beneath the current of the Iron River.

"Here, Zoli, we can s.h.i.+ft him under the bridge," Garth said. "You take his head, I'll take his feet, and-" "Look there!" Zoli wasn't listening. Her eyes were wide, her face pale, her hand shaking as she gestured across the river to where Ethelberthina stood performing the most hangdog recitation imaginable of the Prayer for a Prosperous Husband. The girl's apathy was beyond the power of mortal man to measure.

Horse thieves had gone to the gallows with more eagerness, hemorrhoid sufferers had greeted a recurrence of their affliction with more zest. If youthful exuberance had a direct opposite, Ethelberthina Eyebright was its personification.

In other words, she was putting so much effort into behaving churlishly, just to show her mother what was what, that she failed to notice the scrawny, oily-pelted young man who was slinking down to the water's edge, a look of intense concentration on his sallow face. Only once did he pause and cast a questioning look over one shoulder. A brawny, stern-faced woman in the crowd jerked her chin at him brusquely, silently urging him on.

"That's Ludlow Pennywhistle," Garth observed.

"Oh no, it couldn't be." Dean Porfirio shook his head rapidly. "Not even the most vengeance-crazed creature alive would willingly bind her child to a malicious good-for-nothing like Ludlow. He's a beast, a coward, and a scoundrel. I had him in my Introductory Invocation cla.s.s. We had to expel him for demoralizing the demons. He must be in his twenties by now, and I hear he does nothing with his days but loaf about the taverns until they boot him out for toughing up the barmaids."

"Maybe Goodwife Eyebright doesn't realize what she's doing to her daughter," Garth offered.

Bursar Tailings had another opinion: "Maybe she does. She's a Pennywhistle by birth, you know; Ludlow's ma is her second cousin. This way she gets to shackle Ethelberthina with a husband, break her spirit, and keep the girl's money in the family at the same time."

"But that- that's not to be stood for!" Zoli sputtered. "It's atrocious! It's cruel! It's- it's- it's got to be stopped!" Her hand dropped to her belt and found only belt. "d.a.m.n it, Garth, why didn't you remind me to wear my dagger?" she shouted.

"And risk having you throw it at someone? Darling, I know you too well: In situations like these you tend to over-"

Across the water, Ethelberthina let the last word of the Prayer for a Prosperous Husband fall from her tongue as though it were a slime-smeared toad. The instant he heard it, Ludlow's lips twisted into a gloating look as he leaped from the riverbank. The girl turned in time to see him but too late to do anything about it, for her cloak was so sodden it weighted her to the spot. Instantly she knew whose hand was behind her plight. She raised her fists to the heavens and wailed in helpless rage, "Motherrr!"

Zoli threw the troll.

"-react," said Garth.

Duke Janifer slowly paced the width of the great hall for the twenty-third time. Before him stood a row of plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses in one of the biggest lawsuit pileups he had ever been called upon to judge. It was all that his men-at-arms could do to hold back the throng that had come to gawk at and gabble over the proceedings. Most of Overford and half of the Academy was there. They filled the hall, overflowed into the pa.s.sageway beyond, and all but dangled from the rafters. "Now let me see if I've got this straight," he said. "You'rechargingher with a.s.sault with a deadly weapon?" He pointed first at Ludlow, then at Zoli. Ludlow nodded and tugged his forelock deferentially.

His fingers came away dripping sheep fat.

"Andyou are charging her with reckless endangerment of your person?" This was directed at Bursar Tailings.

"Potentially fatalreckless endangerment," the troll corrected. "That's worse."

"I should say so. Nowyou are charging her with creating a disturbance?" He gave Goodwife Eyebright an inquiring look.

"It was the best I could do, Your Gracious Eminence." Ethelberthina's mother made cow eyes at the duke. "That's what my dear husband told me to do. He said it's the closest we could come to finding a legal term to describe the way that hussy broke up our Ethelberthina's lovely Maiden Morn. I'm just a weak, ignorant woman with very little knowledge of things that don't concern me. I always say we ought to leave law and such confusing stuff to the men who've got the brains for it. Like yourself, Your Unspeakable Wiseness."

"Of course you are." Duke Janifer was not really listening. He continued to pace the hall. Unlike his forefathers, he never sat upon the intricately carved and gilded Siege of Justice when hearing a case.

Some said it was because he was a true friend of the people and disliked setting himself too far above his subjects. Others, including his old nurse Wylalie, said it was because he was a fidget, born with that condition commonly referred to as "shrews in your trews."

The duke paused in his peregrinations, coming to a halt before Ethelberthina. The girl stood between Ludlow and Bursar Tailings, with a look on her face even stonier than the troll's calcified countenance.

"You're a little young to be in court, my dear," Duke Janifer said kindly. "I take it you're a witness in your mother's case?"

"The Netherrealm I am!" Ethelberthina snapped. Her mother clapped a hand to her bounteous bosom and gasped loudly. "I'm here as a complainant. I wish to file suit against Goodwife Eyebright for Conspiracy to Coerce Matrimony, which you'll find in the Scrolls of Sardor, Volume 23, Section 5, Column B, Paragraph 16, first tried before Duke Merriam the Bizarre in the case of Vila Grubneck vs.

Rittana, the Landlord's Beautiful Daughter. Oh, and I also want a divorce."

Duke Janifer stared at the girl, an unreadable expression on his face. "Er, yes," he said. It was something many grownups found themselves replying to Ethelberthina because they simplycould not think of anything else to say.

"Actually, I believe the correct term is anunfasting , since Bursar Tailings and I have only entered into a state of betrothal rather than an actual marriage. I suppose we could ignore it, but I don't want some silly little legality messing up my life at a future time when I might actuallywant to wed."

"Er, yes," said the duke again. "And Bursar Tailings would be-?"

"Me, Your Grace," said the troll.

The duke peered at the bursar of Overford Academy as if hoping to thus convert him into something other than a troll. "How old are you, my good fellow?" he finally asked. "Two hundred eighty-seven come next Sandpit Day," the troll replied.

"And the girl is-?"

"Thirteen!" Ethelberthina stamped her foot. "As if you had to ask! I just had my Maiden Morn, remember? Which is how this whole muddle got started, and it's all her fault." She thrust a finger at her mother. "Oh. And hers." She pointed again, but no one was at the other end of her finger.

Garth clicked his tongue. "Zoli, my dear," he called into the vast s.p.a.ces of the duke's great hall. "Come back, please. We can't settle most of these cases without you."

"Keep your codpiece on, I'm coming." Zoli's voice arose from where she had wandered off to enjoy a long, satisfying, mother-daughter visit with her Lily, the la.s.s who had outshone so many of her male counterparts while at Overford Academy and risen to the enviable post of Duke Janifer's senior resident alchemist. The two ladies were snugged up in a cozy niche below one of the lancet windows, chatting and sharing the contents of a br.i.m.m.i.n.g fruit bowl.

By this time the duke was entirely fl.u.s.tered. "How can one woman be responsible for so much chaos?"

"I say she practices," said Dean Porfirio. Like Garth, he was in the duke's court solely in the capacity of witness. "But her husband here a.s.sures me it's purely a natural talent."

Something whizzed through the air and hit the wizard at the back of the head, knocking his conical cap off. "My Garth never said any such thing about me," Zoli announced, hefting a second peach. "He knows better." She sauntered back to the ranks of her accusers while Dean Porfirio recovered his hat and plucked bits of fruit out of his hair.

"Didyou disrupt this girl's Maiden Morn?" Janifer quizzed her.

"Yes," Zoli admitted freely. "You'd've done the same, in the circ.u.mstances." She explained the details of Goodwife Eyebright's plot against Ethelberthina.

The good duke was appalled, but compelled to press on with his examination: "Then you admit to a.s.saulting Ludlow Pennywhistle with the flung body of Bursar Tailings?"

"Sometimes I don't know my own strength." Zoli giggled. "Sometimes I do."

"And did you thereby recklessly endanger the life of this troll?"

"I wouldn't saythat . I recked plenty. I knew Ethelberthina wouldn't let him come to harm. She knows what sunlight does to trolls, so she swept her cloak over him the instant he hit the water. None of ushad cloaks whoclaimed we did." She gave the wizard a nasty look.

"Yes, but when she threw her cloak over him, that betrothed them, according to the laws governing Maiden Morns."

"What do you want, law or justice? If Ihadn't tossed the troll, then by the same laws, she'd be hogtied tothat piece of work instead." She nodded at Ludlow. "The troll's a better deal."

"But it's notlegal for trolls and humans to marry!" the duke exclaimed. "Well, they're not married; they're only betrothed." Zoli shrugged. "You're the duke;un betroth them."

"I don't have that authority."

"But youdo have the authority to bother me with all of these silly lawsuits, don't you?" Zoli challenged. "Is this what we pay our taxes for? Especially Ethelberthina."

The duke's moustache began to twitch in an unsettling manner. "You . . . pay . . . taxes, child?" he asked the girl.

"Ever since the Swordsisters' Union bought up most of my stock of Mama Ethina's Elixir of Equality,"

she replied. "It turns dragon-scale armor so brittle that it shatters on contact with a feather."

"Nothingcan do that to dragon-scale armor!" the duke objected. "That's why the king's men all wear it."

"Nothingcould ," Lily said, stepping forward, her alchemist's robes rustling softly over the stones. "But now somethingcan ; something Ethelberthina invented, andthat's why she's independently wealthy." She patted the girl on one shoulder and added, "It's not turning lead into gold, but close. Fellow alchemist, I salute you."

"Fellow alchemist, do you have anything that might shatter my stupid betrothal?" Ethelberthina asked.

Lily smiled. She was a beautiful young woman, with her mother's dark coloring and her father's home-loving nature. When she first entered Duke Janifer's service, many court gossips hissed that he had not hired her for her brains. The whispers stopped when Lily demonstrated that she had also inherited her mother's elementary yet effective way of dealing with rumormongers.

"As a matter of fact," she said, "I do. And it will settle all of these silly lawsuits besides."

"Willit?" Duke Janifer gazed at Lily in awe. "Huzzah! Tell us what it is, I beg you!"

"Nothing fancy; just trial by combat. Oh! To the death. It must be to the death. You can't get anything really settled unless someone dies."

The hall fell silent, including the spectators.

The sound of Zoli's sword rasping from its sheath broke the quiet. "Suits me," she said amiably.

"It would." Bursar Tailings huffed like an overweight dragon. "Me fight a retired swordsister? Might as well ram a chisel through my throat and save time."

"Do wehave to?" Ludlow whined.

"Not if you drop the charges," Lily said. "No charges, no case; no case, no need for any sort of trial."

"Good enough for me," said the troll. "Consider 'em dropped."

"Me, too," Ludlow said eagerly.

"After what she did to us?" Goodwife Eyebright snapped. Her hand, grown strong and swift in theministering of domestic justice to her helpless brood, shot out and grabbed him by the ear. "If it weren't for her and her prodigal troll-flinging, we'd both have what we wanted by now."

"I don't care." Ludlow squealed and squirmed. "What good's a dowry if I'm dead? You want your kid married off so bad,you fight the tin-plated b.i.t.c.h!"

"All right," said Goodwife Eyebright. "I will."

"Did I miss anything?" Garth Justi's-son asked Dean Porfirio as he sidled along the row of benches ringing the duke's arena. Normally the sand-covered enclosure was reserved for riding exhibitions, but today it had been hastily judged the best site for the upcoming trial-at-arms.

"Not a thing." The wizard reached into a paper cone filled with salted nuts and munched primly. It was amazing how fast word of the combat had spread, fetching still more people to the ducal palace grounds.

With the crowds came hucksters of every stripe. They seemed to swarm out of the ground, like maggots in meat, which coincidentally was what some of them were selling.

"Sorry I took so long," Garth muttered, sitting down. "I had to teach Ludlow some manners. Hemight be walking normally by next Market Day, if he finds an ice pack. No whelp calls my Zoli a b.i.t.c.h and gets away with it."

The wizard stuck the paper poke under Garth's nose. "Nuts?"

"Fair enough, sheis that. But only a little, and I think our Lily caught it from her. Trial by combat to the death, no less! Whatwas going through that girl's head?"

"Probably the notion that she could save you a lot of legal woes. She believed they'dall drop their cases because no one would be fool enough to fight Zoli." The wizard ate some more nuts. "Never underestimate fools."

In the center of the sand-strewn ring, Duke Janifer stood between the two combatants and nervously asked, "Ladies, are you certain you wouldn't like to reconsider?"

"Iwould," Zoli said. "It's not combat, it's b.l.o.o.d.y murder. I've eaten seafood that had more hope of killing me thanthis idiot." She gestured scornfully at Goodwife Eyebright. "Plus, she looks ready to drop her calf any second now. One needless death on my hands is bad enough, but two?"

"w.i.l.l.you withdraw?" Duke Janifer turned to Goodwife Eyebright, entreating her with his eyes.

"Pleeease?"

Ethelberthina's mother stood herself up a bit taller and held the sword she'd been given as though it were a carpet beater. "I'd sooner die."

"I was afraid you'd say that." The duke sighed, shrugged, and tossed a bright orange kerchief high into the air. As he dashed from the arena he called back over one shoulder, "When it hits the ground, start fighting!"

The audience gasped and held its breath. Zoli went into her preferred fighting stance, grim and silent, eyes fixed on the floating kerchief. Goodwife Eyebright, on the other hand, began jabbering the instant the bit of cloth left the duke's hand. "My gracious, aren't you in a hurry? I'm sure it's not going to take you long to kill me, but don't you worry about that. Nor about the poor, innocent, unborn babe I'm carrying that never did anyone a bit of harm. Nor about all my poor little lambkins that'll be left orphaned and helpless, oh no, don't you give any of them a second thought! Mayor Eyebright will probably remarry quick enough, and then they'll have a stepmother, and who knows what she'll be like? But don't you fret over it, you've done your duty, you don't have to bother your head about whether they'll be decently clothed and fed and who'll tuck them into their cold, lonesome little beds of a winter's night with not even the comfort of a loving mother's kiss on their tiny, tear-stained faces, no. Don't you concern yourself over their bitter tears or their heartbreaking sobs or their-"

"Gnut save us, what's the wretch doing?" Garth exclaimed.

"What she does best." Dean Porfirio sounded glum. "What she did to force Ethelberthina to undergo a Maiden Morn. And it's working again. Just look at Zoli now."

It was true: Under Goodwife Eyebright's verbal barrage, Zoli's sword drooped by degrees, leaving a hole in her defensive posture fit to drive an oxcart through. Her shoulders trembled and, as Goodwife Eyebright expanded upon the tragic fate awaiting her soon-to-be-motherless babies, she sniffled. Just as the orange cloth touched the ground, she burst into tears, dropped her blade completely and pounced on the kerchief in order to wipe her streaming nose and eyes.

Goodwife Eyebright had been a homemaker long enough to recognize something ripe for the plucking.

While Zoli howled her heart out, the mayor's wife swung her own sword back, ready to strike. It was not an elegant attack, but with Zoli thus disabled, elegance was unnecessary. The blade swept straight for the former swordsister's head.

A second blade shot out and blocked Goodwife Eyebright's swing with a clang. Panting hard, holding the hilt of Zoli's discarded weapon with both hands, Ethelberthina glowered at her mother.

"Drop the charges," she ordered. "Andthe sword."

"Young lady, you go to your room," her mother said. "This is no place for a child."

"Says you." Ethelberthina lifted her chin impudently. "I've had my Maiden Morn rite: I'm not a child any more."

"Then this is no place foryou ," Goodwife Eyebright countered. "This case concerns only me and that Zoli person." She nodded at the crumpled swordswoman who was still blubbering on the sand, occasionally wailing something about the poor, comfortless little orphans.

"And my case concerns you andme . Or have you forgotten? I've simply decided to move it ahead on the duke's docket."

Goodwife Eyebright laughed in a condescending manner. "You can't be serious, darling.You fightme to the death? You'd kill your own mother? Not that you haven't tried to do that ever since the day you were born. ButI don't mind. A good mother doesn't care if her child-who has been givenevery advantage at great personal sacrifice -turns out to be a little viper. I love you anyway."