Chapter Thirty

When he saw Bran and Brech at the citadel doorway, Sparrow took from beneath his bedding the piece he had made in anticipation.

"Hey!" cried Platt in alarm. "Nobody's supposed to come here unless the king brings them himself."

"Here, boys," Sparrow called from his cell. "You want me to make something for you. Isn't that right?"

King Hermann might or might not be trailing a few meters behind his sons. Even if the king was present and Sparrow's plan could go no further forward for the moment, a hint of wonderful toys would bring the twins back like dogs scenting a bitch in heat.

"Shut up, you!" snarled Platt.

The attendant snatched up his half-full slops bucket. He went on in a voice compounded of fear, hatred, and a horrible oily subservience, "Now, boys, you know your father wouldn't want you to be up here with this nasty man, would he?"

Light danced on Sparrow's right palm, within the cage of his fingers.

"Oh!" said Bran and kicked Platt on the ankle.

The attendant yelped. The bucket swung on its handle, splashing out a little of its contents.

The twins ran up to the bars. "He threw shit on us!" Brech caroled. "We'll tell Daddy he threw shit on us!"

The crippled dog edged back against the stone wall. It bared its teeth and growled at so deep a level that only a hand on the beast's chest would have disclosed the vibration.

"Yes . . ." Sparrow said. He rose to his knees and stumped a little closer to the bars. The barrier was still a hand's breadth beyond his reach. "Look what I made for you boys."

The smith opened his fingers. Two beads of yellow light began to rotate in separate figure-eight patterns around a common center.

Sparrow cupped his hand behind them as if to give the insubstantial display a push. The speed of rotation increased, and the beads drifted toward the twins.

"Ooh, no, please . . ." the attendant moaned. He clutched the bucket to his chest as if it were treasure being snatched from a holocaust.

"Ooh . . . ," said the twins together.

The spinning beads reached the barrier. Part of the diameter of the circle they described passed through a gap between bars, but the rest of their motion took them into the iron itself. The light vanished while the beads were within solid matter, but they reappeared unchanged on the other side of the bars. They continued to slide forward.

"Please," whimpered Platt. "Please, please. . . ."

Bran and Brech snatched simultaneously at Sparrow's creation. Neither of the twins quite touched it, though their hands collided where the thing of light had been a moment before. The object bounced a meter into the air and continued in roughly its previous direction, sinking slowly.

"There . . ." murmured Sparrow in satisfaction. "Isn't that a wonder, boys? Isn't that a marvel for you?"

The twins ignored him as they squealed in pursuit of the gleaming construct. Brech leaped high to grab the object. He only succeeded in swatting it toward Platt.

The attendant stutter-stepped to the right, then the left, and finally threw up one of his hands with a shriek. At the moment the spinning lights should have touched Platt's splayed fingers, the object's rotation increased to a blur and it shot straight up.

The lights vanished into the high wooden ceiling.

"He broke it!" Bran cried in genuine fury. "He broke it!"

Wailing in anger, both the young princes began to kick and pummel Platt. The terrified attendant yelped and broke for the outside door.

"I'll get it!" he called, instinctively reaching for an explanatory lie even in a moment of panic.

The slops bucket hit the doorframe and spilled half its contents. Platt dropped the container onto his bedding and continued to run. The children started to follow him.

"Here, boys!" Sparrow called.

Brech turned. His face was screwed into an expression of inhuman rage. Bran took another step and looked back also.

"I have things much lovelier than that, my royal darlings," the smith said. His husky whisper was as terrible as the arc ripping from a battlesuit.

"Show me!" Brech cried. He ran to the barrier and hammered at the gate with his bare hands. Iron rang on iron, nearly drowning out the boy's repeated, "Show me now!"

Sparrow's dog began to howl. The beast's eyes were slits; it thrashed its tail against the stone.

"Hush, lad," the smith said. He stepped forward on his knees, over a pile of brass and pewter scrap, and stroked Brech's head.

"Don't touch us, you slave!" Bran shrieked. He jumped to the barrier and clawed at Sparrow's hand where it lay on Brech's fine, fair hair.

"Ah, my error, darling boys," Sparrow said, snatching his hand away and raising it, palm outward in token of submission.

"Show us, then!" Bran demanded. "The toy!"

"Shh . . . ," Sparrow warned, gesturing toward the outer door with an index finger as solid as a pick handle. "Don't let him hear or he'll break the new toys too, don't you see?"

"My daddy will fix that dirty slavebastard," Brech said with grim certainty.

"No, we'll do better than that," the smith warned. The light in his eyes would have chilled any adult who saw it; but there were no adults to watch, only a dog and two young boys . . . and the crippled dog lolled its tongue out like that of a wolf closing on fawns.

"If you come back tonight, boys," Sparrow continued, "Platt will be asleep, and I'll show you things that not even your father and mother can yet imagine. But you'll have to do something for me, all right?"

Though he spoke without haste, Sparrow glanced frequently toward the door, afraid that his attendant would return at any moment.

"We don't have to do anything!" Bran announced shrilly.

"He wants us to let him out," his brother said. "He wants us to take the key from that old slavebastard."

"No, no-no, my lads," the smith said. "Where would I go—" he gestured toward his feet, as loose as the tongue of his dog "—a cripple like me?"

"We could make Platt give us the key," Bran said to his brother. "We could have Daddy beat him if he didn't."

"Not the key, lads," Sparrow said with a face like vengeance become a god. "Only wine, only a little skin of wine, that you can hide in the kitchen midden at dusk, is that not so? You can steal a skin of wine and hide it?"

Brech sniffed with simulated maturity. "Sure," he said. "We can get through the ventilator into the buttery. We do it lots of times."

"Oh, I thought you might, lad," the smith whispered. "It was a thing I thought you might do. And then—"

There was shadow on the doorjamb. Platt was returning.

"—come to me at midnight," Sparrow concluded quickly. "Not before, but at midnight, and you'll see wonders."

Platt peeked around the jamb. "What are you doing?" he demanded. "You get away from those boys, you cripple!"

"Run along, lads," Sparrow said in a voice as bright as the sun on a glacier. "And remember what I told you."

"What?" the attendant demanded in renewed panic. "What did you tell them?"

The twins darted past him, gurgling their delight at a plot and the promise. Bran kicked at Platt as he went by, but the little boot only brushed the attendant's jerkin.

"What . . . ?" Platt repeated, looking out the door after the twins' disappearing forms.

"Oh, they're lovely lads, Platt," Sparrow said. "And so generous. Would you believe that they offered to me a skin of wine?"

Platt's head snapped around. "What?"

"Yes, a skin of wine," the smith continued. He spoke in nearly a falsetto, so high and thin was his voice. "They'll hide it at dusk in the kitchen midden, so that when you go to fetch my supper tonight you can bring that as well."

He gave the attendant a great, twisted smile. "Is that not generous, Platt?" he said. "To offer wine to a crippled slave like me?"

Platt laughed; first a sharp hark of sound, then cackling, echoing peels of mirth.

"Did the gods make you such a fool, Sparrow?" the attendant said after he regained control of his merriment. "Don't you know that stolen goods have no owner but the one who holds them?"

"Ah, but the lads mean the wine for me to drink, Platt," the smith said softly as his eyes gleamed with his own hellish laughter.

"Maybe they do," Platt announced. "But I mean it for my own throat!"

He began to bellow his amusement again.

"If that's what you really want, my deserving friend," Sparrow whispered as his hand stroked the ears of his crippled dog, "then I'll see that you get it."