Gerald watched them head back to the palace, his crimson gaze amused. “So funny,” he murmured.
“What is?” said Melissande, crouched beside Lional and dabbing his forehead with a surprisingly frilly, feminine hanky.
“Sir Alec, of course,” said Gerald, his eyes wide. “Thinking that I don’t know he’s going to try and contact the Department. Warn them about me.” He pretended to shiver with fear. “Take precautions.”
Monk exchanged a look with Reg, who raised one wing in a tiny, tiny shrug. The gesture was eloquent. You fix this, sunshine. I’m all out of ideas.
“I don’t know, Gerald,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I mean-”
“I do,” said Gerald, the contemptuous amusement dying out of his face, leaving it cold and remote, the face of a stranger. “But that’s all right. Trust me, I have everything under control. You’ve got nothing to worry about, Monk. The world will never have to fear a Lional of New Ottosland again.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ottosland, nearly three months after the Wycliffe Airship Company affair
Come on, Reg, flap harder! ”
“Harder? Harder? If I flap any harder my bloody wings are going to fall off!”
“Then I’ll hex them back on again, all right? Just flap! ”
“Y’know,” Melissande said to Bibbie, leaning sideways on her stationary pushbike, “this would actually be funny if it wasn’t so ridiculous.”
“Hey!” said Monk, turning on her. “If you’ve got breath to talk you’re not pedaling fast enough! Mush! ”
She glared at her improbable and wild-eyed young man, beads of unladylike sweat dripping off her nose and chin. “I beg your pardon? What did you say?”
“You heard me!” Monk retorted, dancing around the experiment-crowded attic like a demented dervish with ants in his pants. “Come on, Mel, this is important. Pedal!”
“Why don’t you pedal, you lazy plonker!” panted Bibbie, madly pumping the pedals of her own stationary bike. “Why are we the ones doing all the work?”
“Good question,” said Gerald, who was busily plunging an etheretic agitator up and down in its housing, by hand. “I wouldn’t mind an answer to that myself.”
Monk dashed along the row of thaumatic containers that he’d crammed up against the attic’s windowless wall, checking each one’s fluctuating capacity gauge.
“You know why! Come on everyone, this is important.”
It was Gerald’s turn to mop sweat from his face. “Well, yes, Monk, we know it’s important to you. But explain again why it’s important to us?”
“ Why?” Abandoning the slowly-filling containers, Monk gaped at him. “Well-because it’s important to me, of course! Gerald, how can you even ask me that?”
“He can ask,” said Bibbie, only half-heartedly pedaling now, “because if anyone finds out about this it’ll be our necks in the noose alongside yours!”
“Oh, Bibbie, stop being such an alarmist,” said Monk, and held up an etheretic pressure gauge to the attic’s fitful light. “Nobody’s going to find out.”
Still flapping in front of the pedestal fan Monk had converted into a thaumaturgic generator, Reg hooted breathlessly. “You keep saying that, sunshine,” she panted, “but so far your Department watchdogs have found out about the portable portal, the tetrathaumic compressor, the etheretic particle slicer and the go-lightly hex.”
“Yes, but not the interdimensional portal opener!” said Monk, triumphant. “Or the bits and pieces I’ve got going in here. So you see? We’re all perfectly safe.”
“From everything except heart failure; said Bibbie, and collapsed over the handlebars of her pushbike. “That’s it. I’m done.”
“And so am I,” added Reg. She swooped away from the fan, landed heavily on the nearest thaumic container and skewered Monk with a smoldering glare. “Flapped to skin and bone, I am. So mark my words, you bloody young reprobate. There’d better be some prime beef mince in my very near future or there’ll be prime trouble. Savvy?”
Monk ran at her, hands waving. “Reg, Reg, what are you doing? Get off there, get off! I’ve nearly killed myself building up enough thaumic charge to last the week and you’re going to tip that container over and waste it!”
“ You’ve nearly- you have-” Reg gobbled incoherently, tail rattling. “Right. That’s it. Gerald Dunwoody, get him out of my sight, quick, before I forget I’m a lady!”
“Now, now, everybody, just calm down,” said Gerald, abandoning the agitator and staggering between Reg and Monk, both arms outstretched. “There’s no need for violence.”
“Speak for yourself, sunshine!” Reg screeched. “Right now my need is bloody overwhelming!”
“ Reg…” He wiped his shirt-sleeve across his sweating face. “Look, I know he’s irritating but fair’s fair. I mean, we did agree to this, didn’t we? We did promise we’d help him out of his temporary difficulty. So I don’t think it’s right to start complaining now.”
“When it comes to difficulties there’s nothing temporary about your muggins of a friend!” Reg retorted. “He lurches from one crisis to the next dragging us in his wake! And don’t try to deny it because we both know it’s true!”
“Well, sometimes it’s true,” said Gerald, fighting a grin. “But then you could say the same about me, couldn’t you? In fact, I seem to recall that you do. Quite often.”
“That’s different,” said Reg, sniffing.
Aggrieved, Monk stared at her. “Why?”
“Because he’s my Gerald, that’s why. And you, Monk Markham, are trouble with a capital T on two bandy legs!”
Melissande sighed and let her feet slip off her own pushbike’s pedals. Time for the voice of reason to speak up. “I’m not going to say he isn’t, Reg, but he’s my trouble on two legs. Which aren’t bandy at all, if you don’t mind. So leave him alone.”
“And get off that container, Reg, please,” Monk added. “It’s not designed to take your weight.”
Gerald snatched her up before she could launch herself at Monk with beak and talons. “Settle down, Reg. He didn’t mean it that way.”
“I’m parched,” said Bibbie, still draped over her handlebars. Still managing to look beautiful, of course, even when pink-cheeked from exertion and damp with perspiration. “And famished. What’s in the pantry?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Monk, eagerly rechecking the thaumatic containers capacity gauges. “When did you last go shopping?”
“When did I- ” Bibbie straightened, her vivid blue eyes lighting up with temper. “It’s your turn this week. It was your turn last week, too, and the week before that but you never go. You’ve always got some pathetic excuse. Monk-”
“Gotcha,” said Monk, with his crazy, anarchic grin. “Honestly, Bibbie. It’s like stealing sweeties from a baby.”
Bibbie glowered. “Monk Markham, I loathe you.”
“No, you don’t,” he said cheerfully. “You love me.”
“Believe me, Monk, I loathe you,” she retorted. “Reg is right. You’re nothing but a walking talking disaster, brother of mine. If you hadn’t gone and upset Uncle Ralph- again — we wouldn’t have to be panicking about the levels of ambient thaumic energy usage around here and that means we wouldn’t be nearly killing ourselves trying to generate enough of it to store and power your ridiculous experiments.”
“Hey!” said Monk. “Do you mind? They’re your ridiculous experiments too!”
Bibbie slid off her stationary pushbike and marched towards him, hands fisted on her slender, muslin- swathed hips. “For your information, Monk, my experiments aren’t ridiculous,” she said, halting in front of him. “ My experiments are adding invaluable knowledge to the field of sympathetic ethergenics. And most importantly,
