Beak. Big beak! The thing had to be a predator. Miliana flicked an eye toward the bedroom door, planning a very slow, very cautious retreat into the palace halls. Nervously wrapping herself inside a soggy towel, she began to edge her way toward her bedroom door.
'Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!'
A great, giddy head-all feathers, dust, and daze, shot out from around the doorframe behind her and gave a hoot of glee. The girl gave a rabbit-squeak of fright, lunged into cover behind the bathtub, and crouched, peering at the intruder across the enamel rim.
Flapping ridiculously stubby wings, the huge bird waddled out onto the open floor; the creature seemed to be constructed mostly of tail, which dragged behind it like the train of an empress's wedding gown. It ducked its head up and down, left and right in mindless eagerness to inspect Miliana from all sides.
Entrenched behind her bathtub, Miliana tried her best to keep the beast away.
'I'm a sorceress! Oh boy-a really powerful sorceress!' The girl raised a hand and tried to encourage a blaze of power to swirl about her fingers. Unfortunately, whatever small store of magical energy Miliana possessed seemed to have spent itself in ejecting her bathwater.
Delighted by Miliana's feeble sparks, the bird vaulted up onto the edge of the bathtub. Fixing Miliana with a giddy smile, it flapped its wings, hurtled back its head, and set the rafters ringing with a ghastly, raucous cry.
'Tekorii-kii-kii!
'Tekorii-kii-kii!'
Gaping its beak open in joy, the bird beat itself in the chest with one wingtip and proudly struck a pose.
'Tekoriikii!'
Sitting on her rump in a pile of debris, Miliana heaved a weary sigh. She reached out a hand to the bird and solemnly shook the outstretched wing.
'Miliana,' said the disheveled princess. 'Terribly glad to meet you.'
A suspicious burbling sound in the iron boilers at the far end of the apartment made Luccio Irozzi look up from his reading with a frown. The untidy mass of tubes and spheres shuddered, bulged, then leaked out a cloud of fragrant purple steam.
'Lorenzo? Lorenzo, come and see to your toys.'
Nothing could be heard except the excited scratching of a pen somewhere in the adjoining room.
'Lorenzo?'
Luccio set aside his parchments and glided bonelessly over to the door.
'Lorenzo-if that contraption explodes and slaughters me, I must warn you that my will names you as inheritor of all my debts.'
Lost to the world, Luccio's companion sat at a table covered with pieces of thick yellow paper.
'Lorenzo?'
The youth kissed charcoal across the pages with bold, brilliant sweeps of his hand, outlining curves and shadows in an almost random array. Luccio crept closer, watching in fascination as the random lines crept together into pattern, shape, and form, and finally meshed to make the figure of a slim, exquisite maid combing out great sheets of silken hair.
Sitting quietly on the edge of the table, Luccio gave a wry smile and drew the sketch into his hands.
'Drawn from memory?'
'What?' Lorenzo half-surfaced from his artistic frenzy, drawing with his left hand while scribbling notes mirror-wise with his right. 'No no-observed. It's all live-drawn.'
'Well she must be most accommodating. Either that or stark raving mad.' Luccio held aloft a frontal study and raised an incredulous brow. 'Are you sure she's a suitable model?'
'Why?' Lorenzo looked up at his friend in utter incomprehension. 'What's wrong with her?'
'Um… she does lack… aaah… That is, she seems to have a certain sparsity of…'
'Of what?'
'Nothing.' Luccio let the subject die a hasty death. 'I'm sure this look will come into fashion someday soon.'
Thrilled by a good afternoon of work, Lorenzo tossed aside his charcoal and began to briskly wipe his hands on a rag, somehow managing to actually make himself dirtier. His eyes never once left the intricate array of figure drawings on his tabletop: sketches of hands, of elbows and ankles, necks and feet, and all the numerous bits of terrain held in between. The youth picked up one heavy sheet and held it up to the light to admire the best, most subtle portraiture he had ever done.
'She's fabulous! If only you knew, Luccio, just how remarkable she is. Look at the cleanliness of that line.'
'Quite.' Luccio gave a shake of his head and let the drawings slide, mumbling: 'It's certainly a rather straight line… Lorenzo, O scholar of mine, my dearest and truest of friends, I must now ask you to leave this paradise of artistic forgiveness, and answer for me four questions. That is-four questions of the simplest kind.'
Lorenzo squared a velvet cap across his brows, and adjusted the rapier that fashion dictated he wear at all times.
'Do ask. You know I am ever at your disposal.'
'In which case…' Luccio opened up the connecting door and waved a languid hand in the direction of the tables with their maze of liquids, tubes, and spheres. 'At what point in your ancestry was a gnome involved? Should this device be leaking? Is it dangerous? And why does it smell of cherry fondue?'
Lorenzo gave a sharp wail of dismay. He flung himself through the door and frantically began twirling valves and beating out braziers with his hat. Luccio watched the process from the safety of the door and drew his brows into a genteel frown.
'Well?'
'Well what?' Lorenzo burned fingertips as he rescued a pot of foaming liquid from the top of an oil burner.
'What are the answers to my four questions?'
'To the first-none of your business. No, it should not be leaking. And no, it isn't dangerous.'
A metal sphere burst with a thunderous bang; chemicals lashed across the room, chewing into the stonework wherever they chanced to land. Luccio shook pieces of smoking shrapnel from the crown of his hat, and used a rapier blade to clear himself space upon a chair.
'I see. And the cherry smell?'
Emerging from the wreckage with a heavy sigh, Lorenzo glumly contemplated the ruin of his pipes and tubes, vats and valves.
'It's from over there. The igniter chemicals for the experiment.' The young scientist propped his cheek on his chin. 'They don't want me using chemicals in the guest rooms, so I disguised the volatiles with the essence of cherry.'
Luccio leaned back in his chair with comprehension dawning in his eyes.
'Aaaaah. And might local vermin have… eaten this concoction?'
'I suppose they may have.' Lorenzo swept broken plumbing from his tabletop with a great, almighty clang. 'Why do you ask?'
'Just curious.'
There was a brisk rap at the door and Luccio, stepping through smoldering debris, swept the portal open with a bow.
'The volcanology emporium… may we help you?'
Bent almost in two, Luccio found himself eye to eye with a petite, freckle-spattered girl. She replied with a hurried little curtsy and a nervous glance left and right along the empty palace hall.
'Greetings, my lord.' The girl's spectacles were blank sheets of reflected window light. 'I'm looking for a Lomatran.'
'Faith, then you have found one.' Luccio made his most elaborate of genuflections. 'Did madam have anything particular in mind?'
'An idiot with a big drawing pad?'
'Madam, I do believe we can help you.' The lanky nobleman ushered his guest in through the door. 'Lorenzo-
