Trapped

I was saved by the arrival of Myoko, Pelinor, and Annah.

They'd been down on the docks when they saw the milky tube descend from the sky. Hard to miss on a dark silent night. So they'd left their fruitless questions about Sebastian-in a port full of smugglers, no one would divulge anything-and they hurried up the cliff-road to the mansions of the rich. Dreamsinger's travel-tube had vanished by the time they arrived; instead, they followed the howling of dogs and found us at the epicenter.

Myoko shook her head ruefully as she approached. "What did you do this time, Impervia?"

Impervia only sniffed.

Tales were quickly told. Myoko said she envied us for finding so much excitement. The Caryatid suggested where she could put that excitement… and much crude-mouthed banter ensued.

Annah, of course, did not take part-not quiet, doe-eyed Annah. She merely listened with a polite smile, glancing my way from time to time. I couldn't tell if those glances meant she was glad I'd survived or if she was having second thoughts about me, my friends, and this whole crisis-prone outing. Before I could draw her aside and ask, Impervia's voice cut through the chatter.

"Enough! We have to find a boat for Niagara Falls. A fast boat. Did you see any possibilities in the harbor?"

"Not among the fishing boats," Pelinor answered. "For speed, you'd want the marina; the expensive pleasure yachts that rich people keep here over winter."

"I'll bet," Myoko said, "we could find a yacht that wasn't securely locked up…"

"Don't even think it," Impervia growled.

Myoko pretended to be surprised. "We can't commandeer a boat in the service of God?"

Impervia only glared.

"I know people in town," Pelinor said. "Horse breeders with money. They probably own boats."

"If we're thinking of people with money," said the Caryatid, "there's always Gretchen Kinnderboom…"

Everyone turned toward me-even Annah, who I'd hoped might not have heard any gossip about me and Gretchen.

I sighed. "Yes, Gretchen has a boat-and she claims it's the fastest in Dover. That's likely just idle boasting, the way she always…" I stopped myself. "Gretchen has a boat. It's supposedly fast. Come on." Silently, I led the way forward.

Kinnderboom Cottage was thirty times the size of any cottage on Earth; but Gretchen reveled in twee diminutives, like calling her thoroughbred stallion "Prancy Pony" and the three-century oak in her side yard "Iddle-Widdle Acorn." (Gretchen had a habit of lapsing into baby talk at the least provocation. She was that kind of woman… and beautiful enough that I often didn't care.)

Like all houses in this part of Dover, the Kinnderboom mansion squatted in the midst of a pointlessly large estate overlooking the lake. The building itself was an up-and-down thing, equipped with so many gables it seemed more like a depot where carpenters stored their inventory than someplace people actually lived. Wherever you looked, there was an architectural feature. Each window had a curlicued metal railing; each door had a portico, an arch, or an assemblage of Corinthian columns. And everything changed on a regular basis: an army of construction crews, landscapers, and interior decorators passed through each year, ripping out the old, slapping up the new. I don't think Gretchen really cared what any of the workers did-she just hired them so she could have more underlings to boss around.

The workers were always men.

The grounds of Kinnderboom Cottage were surrounded by a wall; but I had a key to the gate, plus a good deal of practice sneaking in under cover of darkness. I let my friends enter, locked the gate behind us, then motioned everyone to stand still. Ten seconds… twenty… thirty… whereupon an unearthly creature appeared from the shadows, his stomach pincers clicking as he walked.

"Ahh," he said. "Baron Dhubhai."

Myoko turned toward me and mouthed the word Baron? I shrugged. I had no title in my native Sheba-no one did, except a few old men, indulgently allowed to call themselves princes-but Gretchen knew how rich my family was, and she fervently believed such money would make me at least a baron in any "civilized" province. Therefore, her household slaves were obliged to address me in that fashion.

As for this particular slave, he was the size of a full-grown bull but built like a lobster. Eight legs. Fan tail. Chitinous carapace-colored cherry red, though it looked nearly black in the darkness. His body angled up centaur-style to the height of a human, so his head was a hand's breadth higher than mine. He always had a light smell of vinegar, faint here in the open air but still quite noticeable. His face: flat and wide with dangling whiskers and a spike-nosed snout. His arms: two spindly ones almost always folded across his chest and two nasty pincer claws at waist level, jutting forward at just the right height to disembowel an adult human. He was still clicking those claws idly as he looked us up and down.