Free The Pitchfork of Destiny by Jack Heckel Page B

eyes. “Well, how rude of me. I can’t leave you standing in the door. Come in, come in.”
    She took his arm and led him to the table in the kitchen, where she had set out her second-­best tea set. She moved her thankfully unused vomit bucket aside and grabbed a second cup. “Have a seat. I was just planning how I was going to track down Charming and Will when you arrived.”
    Tomas looked at her sideways with suspicion. “Oh, is that what you were doing? Well, if the speech I heard is any part of this plan, then I feel sorry for those fellows.”
    Liz ignored this barb and took a demure sip of tea. “Yes, well, now that you are here, we can decide on our next steps together.”
    â€œ ‘We’ and ‘our’ and ‘together,’ ” he repeated, emphasizing each word. “I am honored to be made part of your war council, Liz, but . . .”
    â€œNo buts, Tomas,” she interrupted sharply. “I am sick and tired of ‘buts.’ Besides, there’s nothing you can do to stop me from going after them unless you want to stay here in the cottage and sit on me, which, I would remind you, would require you to abandon your own search permanently, because as soon as you leave, I’ll follow, even if I have to do it alone and on foot.”
    â€œWhy . . . why . . . why . . . you’re blackmailing me,” Tomas spluttered. “This is extortion, plain and simple. You know I couldn’t let you go traipsing off into the wilderness all by yourself. Why the whole idea is . . . is . . .”
    Tomas seemed unable to come up with words strong enough to express what he thought the idea was, so he worked his mouth noiselessly and glowered at her. Liz took another, slightly less demure but infinitely smugger sip of tea and did her best to ignore his glares.
    Something about the set of her face or the way she held her teacup must have convinced Tomas that there was no use arguing the point because he eventually relented. After swearing that all women were mad as snakes and as aggravating as mules, and adding that Liz was the worst of the lot, he asked, “Fine. What’s the plan? Not that Charming ever had a plan to kill the first dragon. He would always just say something like, ‘My good man, we will away to her dark tower there to claim that measure of glory that is my due.’ Or some equally meaningless rubbish!”
    Liz was silent for a moment, her teacup frozen midway between saucer and lips. The fact was had Tomas asked his question without comment, she would have had no answer, but this last grouse by the man about his days squiring Charming had given her an idea, a most definite idea. She ran to the sitting room, pulled a large, leather-­bound volume down from a shelf, and, sweeping the tea to one side in a great clatter of china and silver, plopped it on the table between them. It was an atlas of Royaume, and she flipped to a well-­thumbed page near the back that showed a detailed map of the southern portion of the kingdom.
    She stabbed a finger down at a point in the mountains south of a small valley where a town labeled “Prosper” lay, and said, “We go there.”
    Tomas squinted hard at the map, and his face grew white and serious. “What, you mean to the old Dragon Tower? But that dragon is dead.”
    â€œExactly,” she replied, then stood and began bustling about the kitchen, filling cloth bags with odds of this and ends of that.
    Tomas stared at the map for a minute and then, scratching at the scruffy stubble on his neck, said, “I don’t understand.”
    Not slowing in her feverish packing, Liz asked, “What do we know for certain about this dragon?”
    He picked up a tart from among the spilled contents of the tea and said between bites, “Well, that it really hates Will.”
    â€œPerhaps,” she said, pausing for a moment, a