'No… I didn't quite catch that. Actually, languages don't really seem to be my strong point.' The girl scowled in concentration. 'I will keep trying, though. See here? I think I've managed to assign sounds to the first three ideographs on page seventeen…'
The princess had been hard at work over her puzzling collection of toadskin scrolls. Tekoriikii helpfully came over to inspect the results of her day's labor, darting his head erratically this way and that as he examined the pages with their absurd calligraphy and diagrams. Miliana spread the pages open for him, pleased to at last have someone with whom to discuss her ideas.
'It's not orcish, and it's not elven. It looks like a southern language-sort of an early dialect of Akalan, maybe- but it isn't.' The girl paused, then waved a finger over the cryptic texts. 'I'm trying to turn them all into something I can understand. Some of them are magic chants, but others are mental images I have to frame in my mind if I'm going to cast the spell… maybe spell ingredients, or possibly phases of the moon…' Miliana flipped a clammy page of her collection and gave a frustrated sigh. 'I just can't find the key! I have to stare and stare at a page for hours and hours. Sometimes I seem to understand, and sometimes I just can't.'
'Glub glub?' The bird flipped a toadskin over with his beak, scanning the page beneath. 'Onk honk?'
'No, I thought of that. If I hired someone to cast a spell which would allow me to understand the scrolls, he'd tell my father. There's nothing for it but to break the code myself.'
Tekoriikii coiled his head back on his neck to look the girl in the face with his astonishing golden eyes.
'Krrrrrrrk?' Wings wagged, and a foot spread its toes into a complex little sign. 'Grook awk?'
'Well, yes-if they find out I'm doing it, it's all over. They'll burn the books and toss me out to some finishing school somewhere; no more Miliana.' The girl hissed a sharp sigh for the injustices of her world. She then brightened up, pulled out her pointiest of hats, and held it open to the bird.
'Aaaah-but see? Even in finishing school, I'd still bring my pointy hat! So what I'm doing is copying the scrolls in miniature and hiding them inside the hat lining. You see? Always anticipate disaster, birdie my friend. That's what makes a great thinker a great thinker!'
It had been a long, frustrating evening of close-written work. Miliana reached fingers under the frames of her spectacles and wearily rubbed her eyes. Stifling a yawn, she leaned back in her chair and absently scratched the warm, soft feathers of the giant bird.
'Ooooort ooor! Ooooort ooor!'
Proud, pleased, and pampered, Tekoriikii began a song-a melody that started like the nighttime murmur of priceless, winsome hummingbirds, then changed into something reminiscent of a live narwhal being fed backward through a sausage machine. The awful row set bats starting up out of the eaves, caused nearby flowers to wilt, and set guard dogs howling for miles around. Feeling her hair loosen at the roots, Miliana gave a squawk of panic and frantically clamped the bird's beak shut with her hands. Tekoriikii's throat pouch bulged, and his eyes almost burst out of his head.
'Miliaaaa-naaaaaa! Miliana, what's that noise?'
The imperious summons cut through solid stone to stick right into Miliana's heart. Tekoriikii flattened himself against a wall, his chest panting and his eyes mad with fear-the usual reaction to one's first encounter with Lady Ulia's voice. Miliana sped to the door and frantically ran her eyes across the room.
The door pounded to a hammering fist.
'Miliana! Miliana! Open up this door and speak to me at once!'
Tekoriikii began to flap madly about the room, rebounding off the ceiling, cupboards, walls and floors in panic as Ulia's voice pealed through the air. Miliana stuffed her toadskin scrolls inside her pointy hat; then helplessly tried to latch her hands onto the bird.
'Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!'
'Miliana! Miliana, what's that sound?'
The princess managed to grab Tekoriikii's yellow feet and anchor him to the floor. Her clothing whipped backward in the breeze of frantic wings.
'It's-it's just me looking for clothes!'
'Clothes? What do you mean clothes?'
'I can't open the door!' Miliana hurtled her arms around Tekoriikii and wrestled his writhing bulk to the ground. 'I–I'm unsuitably dressed!'
'Not dressed? Sooth, girl! I am your stepmother, not your sweetheart!' Ulia's fist pounded at the door until the tower foundations began to quake. 'Now open this door!'
Miliana stuffed the firebird under the covers of her bed and pathetically tried to smooth the blankets down. It was a little like hiding a landshark in a china teacup. Backing frantically toward the door, the girl tried to motion Tekoriikii to stay hidden, then whirled about and ripped open the door locks.
'Ulia! Stepmother, what a surprise to find you up at this late hour.'
'And when can I be expected to sleep?' Ulia sniffed in indignation. 'The palace has over thirty guests. Thirty!' Pulling up her hems to reveal ankles like oak trunks, Lady Ulia Mannicci stepped across the threshold. 'This festival shall be the death of me yet. Now, what was all this chaos and cacophony I heard from the corridor just now?'
Miliana twittered her fingers in the air with a devil-may-care wave.
'A sneeze… it was just a sneeze.'
'A sneeze?' Ulia swelled like a mushroom after a summer rain. 'What made you sneeze?'
'Um…' Not dust! Dust would make Ulia send for the cleaners. Miliana desperately tried to wrench inspiration out of thin air. 'It was… feathers!'
Eyes narrowing in sharp suspicion, Ulia swept about the room. Miliana tried to guard the way into her bathroom, feeling a sweat of fear break out all along her spine.
Disorder attracted Lady Ulia like honey drew flies. She spied Miliana's disheveled bed, and before the girl could even squeak, her stepmother had whipped away the covers. There, sitting on the mattress for all the world to see, was a giant peacock/rooster/phoenix creature with giddy golden eyes.
Tekoriikii had frozen in pure fright, rooted to the spot by his first face-to-face encounter with Sumbria's most notorious secret weapon. Lady Ulia turned her back, waved an imperious hand over the paralyzed bird, and glared her stepdaughter straight in the eye.
'Well? I trust there is an explanation for the presence of this…this…thing?'
Tekoriikii went from mere paralysis into a boneless state of limp, abject terror. Miliana picked up his neck and felt it hang like boiled spaghetti in her hands.
Her thoughts came very, very slowly-dragged through a thick curtain of dismay.
'It's… a… costume.'
Lady Ulia slowly raised an eyebrow.
'Yes?'
'For the ball tomorrow night.' Miliana's lie finally found its feet. She shook out the comatose Tekoriikii like an old blanket across her bed. 'I thought I'd wear it for the masque.'
'But my dear, I though you'd wear your little fairy costume. I did so like the wings.' Lady Ulia picked up Tekoriikii's head. 'What an amazingly stupid face! You operate it as a sort of puppet, I suppose?' Miliana's stepmother hoisted up Tekoriikii's tail. 'Do you put your hand up here?'
'No!' Miliana lunged forward in alarm. 'No… it's… the glue's still drying.'
'Oh, of course. Please don't mind me, child. The evening has me so very, very tired.' Ulia rolled her eyes and sighed. 'Thirty guests. Did I tell you? We have thirty guests!'
'Have we really?'
'Yes-now what did I come in here for?' Lady Ulia bustled herself out into the palace corridors. 'Now do get some sleep, child. The ball is tomorrow night. There's the Sun Gem to receive, elven ambassadors to welcome, and I still have no idea where I shall show this silly painting from Lomatra…'
The great lady cruised off into the darkness in a confused babble of her own woes, and Miliana gratefully slammed the door shut behind her. Miliana wearily wiped sweat back from her eyes and prayed that Ulia had been mollified for yet another day.
From beneath Miliana's pillow, a muffled voice nervously explored the air.
'Glub glub?'
'Yes, she's gone.' Miliana peeled herself away from the wall. 'You can come out now.'
Tekoriikii had hidden himself by the simple ruse of stuffing his head under the eiderdown. Inch by inch the
