Trapped

Impervia gave a disdainful sniff. "How hard is it to trick a sixteen-year-old?"

Before anyone could answer, our supper arrived: ale, tea, and five bowls of stew, brought from the kitchen by a tall woman in her twenties whose hair had already gone gray. The gray didn't seem to have come from stress-the woman appeared as relaxed and self-assured as a pampered housecat. After she'd passed around the bowls, she gave us an easy smile. "Anything else youse wanted?"

"Information," Impervia said. "Has anything unusual happened here in the past day?"

"No, sister, it's been some quiet. You're the first folks who weren't regulars."

"I wasn't asking about your tavern," Impervia said, making an obvious effort not to sound snippish. "Niagara Falls in general. Anything notable? Fires? Fights? Sorcerous explosions?"

"Oh, sister, nothing like that ever happens in Niffles."

Under her breath, the Caryatid said, "The night's still young."

The five of us ate in silence. I can't tell you if the stew was good, bad, or bland-the food made no impression because my mind was elsewhere, trying to reconstruct Sebastian's movements over the past day.

Sebastian and Jode caught a ride on the fishing boat Hoosegow. Hoosegow left Dover at 11:05 P.M. It would take at least ten hours to reach Crystal Bay or one of the other harbors on the Niagara frontier… possibly longer, since Hoosegow wasn't built for speed. Therefore our quarry landed no earlier than nine or ten in the morning-after which, they had to find overland passage from the lakeshore to Niagara Falls. That trip was another three hours.

So Sebastian and Jode reached "Niffles" no earlier than noon… and I was inclined to add a few hours onto the calculation, considering their boat was slow and they might have trouble arranging coach transport. No driver would be eager to make a special run into Niagara Falls for two teenagers who were obviously eloping. The kids would need to pay a lot of cash to overcome such reticence. Jode might indeed have a lot of cash, either stolen from the real Rosalind or procured some other way-a shapeshifter wouldn't have much trouble filling its pockets at other people's expense. Even so, money didn't guarantee instant service; teenagers with overflowing purses might get hauled in by some town constable who wanted to know how they acquired so much loot.

Many delays possible. Unless Sebastian used his powers.

If the boy wanted, he could ask a trillion nanites to lift him into the sky and fly him wherever he wanted to go. He and Jode-Rosalind could have lofted themselves straight off the school grounds and across the continent. But as far as we knew, they'd traveled by conventional methods, horseback and Hoosegow. That suggested Sebastian preferred not to use psionics unless he had to… which made sense, considering how much Myoko must have badgered him to keep a low profile. She would have told gruesome stories of psychics who were discovered and enslaved because they took even a tiny liberty with their powers; and Myoko had a knack for putting the scare into teenagers. Sebastian would stringently avoid showing anyone what he could do.

So assume no use of psionics. In that case, the boy's best bet would be telling the truth (as he saw it): "My sweetheart and I are eloping to Niagara Falls and we've scraped together a little money by selling our belongings. Please, Mr. Coach Driver, can't you give us a ride? We'll pay you everything we can afford."

Given a line like that, a lot of drivers would hide a smile and say something on the order of "I've got chores to do first, but I've been meaning to head into Niffles for supplies I can't get here in town…"

Suppose Sebastian and Jode could reach Niagara Falls by mid-afternoon. That wasn't unreasonable. Then what?

Sebastian would want to get married… and he could do that easily. When I'd visited Niagara on that class field trip, I'd seen a dozen chapels within ten minutes' walk of the Falls-Buddhist, Jewish, Magdalene, New Grace, Marymarch, Taozen, The Hundred, and several more. If those didn't suit Sebastian's taste, there were secular wedding halls too; I remembered one with a sign SINGLES IN, COUPLES OUT, HITCHED IN HALF AN HOUR OR YOUR MONEY BACK!

The boy would have no trouble tying the knot. Nor would he have difficulty finding a honeymoon suite immediately thereafter. Late winter/early spring must be a slow season for hotels-there'd be vacancies all over town, and whatever Sebastian's price range, he'd find plenty of rooms he could afford.

Then what?

Then Jode would let the boy consummate the marriage. I didn't want to dwell on that thought… but what else could Jode do? The demon had to play its role as Rosalind, at least in the short term. Eager fiancée; beaming bride; glowingly fulfilled newlywed. Jode had to go along.

After which…

Jode would say, "Oh darling, let's go see the sights."

"Oh darling, I've got a surprise for you."