September’s eyes filled with tears. Why did I not just say no? She thought wretchedly. But her own voice answered her back: To save him, so that he could say no if he liked. Glue cannot say yes or no. I did the right thing, I did.
Iago shrugged his furry shoulders. “As you like. Saves me the work of picking the lock with my incisor.”
His almond-shaped eyes fixed suddenly on Saturday and narrowed. The Panther padded over to Saturday and sniffed at him. With slinky deliberateness, he licked the boy’s face. “Keep in touch, blueberry-boy. And if you should see my sister again, September, lick her cheek for me.”
Iago strode away, tail held high. The three of them, Ell, September, and Saturday, leaning on September for strength, tried to look as though they belonged and were not doing a thing wrong as they walked quickly to the gate of the Briary, never looking back, not once.
“September,” said the Wyverary wonderingly when the brambles and golden flowers and babbling moat were behind them at last, “where did you get those shoes?”
CHAPTER X
THE GREAT VELOCIPEDE MIGRATION
In Which September, the Wyverary, and Saturday Leave Pandemonium and Make Their Way Across Fairyland by Means of Several Large Bicycles
“Well,” said A-Through-L, sniffing hugely through his scarlet nostrils, “we had better be on our way. Autumn begins with A, you know. The Provinces are very far away.”
September stopped in a shadowy alley. On one side of the street rose the toasty-brown woolen wall of a bakery; on the other, the gold lamé of a bank. A Switchpoint on the corner readied its hands, flexing and cracking its hundred bronze fingers.
“Ell, aren’t you ashamed of me?” cried September miserably. “Aren’t you going to tell me I’m awful?”
The Wyverary scrunched up his face uncomfortably and hurried on. “Do you remember where I found you? By the sea? Well, the Autumn Provinces are all the way over by the other sea, on the other side of Fairyland. If I ran dead fast, stopping only to nap and drink, I might make it in something like good time. But you wouldn’t. You’d fly right off, or break your bones on my spine as I bounced you!”
“Ell! I’m working for the Marquess! I didn’t even stand up to her a little bit! I met the villain-surely, it’s obvious she’s a villain-and I wasn’t brave; I wasn’t!”
Ell nuzzled her gently with his enormous head. “Well, no one expected you to, love. She’s a Queen, and Queens have to be obeyed, and even the very bravest aren’t brave at all when a Queen tells them they ought to do something. When the lions came to put on my chains, I just sort of lay there and cried. At least you stood on your feet, wee as they are. You said no once-that’s more than I’ve ever done! And for me! To save me! A silly half-library lizard. What kind of friend would I be if I scolded you for saving me?” He made a little, weird, wild sound deep in his throat, something like cluork. “When I am weak, when I am poorly, I cannot bear to be scolded. But if it will make you feel loved, I will scold you right proper, I will.”
“And you broke my cage,” added Saturday. “You didn’t have to.” His voice was strange and slushing, as if a crashing wave had stood up and asked after tea. “The Marquess likes it best when you don’t want to do as she says, but you have to do it anyway. That’s like… a big bowl of soft cream and jam to her.”
“Besides, what’s the difference, really, between fetching a Spoon for the witch and fetching a sword for the Marquess? Not much, I’d say.”
September thought about it. “I suppose it’s because I offered to get Goodbye’s Spoon for her. I wanted to do it. To make her happy and to do something grand, so that maybe I could be a little grand, too. But the Marquess demanded that I do it, and then she said she’d kill you if I didn’t-and me if I didn’t do it fast enough. That’s not the same thing at all.”
“It’s service, though, either way,” said Saturday softly.
“It’s slavery when you can’t say no,” said September, quite sure she was right.
“It’s still very far away,” insisted the Wyverary. “And we haven’t any more time than we did a moment ago, indeed, a fair bit less.”
“Why do you keep speaking as if you are coming, Ell? You’re here, in Pandemonium! You ought to go to your grandfather and be happy and learned and careful of your fiery breath!”
“Don’t be silly, September. I am coming. How could I face my grandfather if he knew I had let a small one go off into dangerous places alone?”
“Not alone,” whispered Saturday.
“How much more lovely would it be to enter the Library with laurels, having accomplished a great deed involving a sword? My grandfather must have hundreds of books praising the deeds of such knights. And we shall all be knights, all three of us! And not punished at all!”
September looked dubiously at him. She neatly tucked her long dark hair behind her ears.
“Please, small friend. Now that I’m here, so close I can smell the glue of his bindings, I am not sure. I am afraid he will not love me. I should feel much better if I had a dashing story to tell him. I should feel much better if I knew you were safe and not crowning the topiaries in the Marquess’s garden. I should feel much better if no one could call me a coward. I don’t want to be a coward. It is not a nice thing to be.”
September reached up, and the Wyverary dropped his long, curved snout into her hands. She kissed it gently.
“I shall be ever so much more glad if you are with me, Ell.”
Saturday looked away from them, to give them privacy. You could not ask for a more polite Marid, even then, when he was so feral he could only remember to breathe every third breath, polite, and eager to be helpful.
“You’re right, of course, the velocipedes are running,” he said meekly, as though someone else had suggested it. He was still too shy to suggest anything without wrapping it up tight to keep it safe.
“What a funny, old-fashioned word!” said September, placing her hand on the hilt of the Spoon stuck into her belt. She felt stronger just holding onto it.
“I’m sure you know it means bicycle.” Saturday shifted from one foot to another. September had not thought to find someone more unsure of the world than she. “I didn’t mean to say you didn’t know.”
“Oh!” cried Ell. “Bicycle! Yes, well, now we’re in my section of the alphabet! It’s high summer, September! That means the running of the bicycles, and that means Lickety-Split Transportation!”
September looked uncertainly at her denuded sceptre, hanging sadly from Ell’s bronze chain. “I don’t think I’ve anything like enough rubies left to buy bicycles for both of us.”
“Pish! We don’t buy; we catch! September, the bicycle herds, well, I suppose they’re called voleries, not herds, right, Saturday? Voleries. Anyhow, their migration path runs though the Meadowflats just east of the City, and if we are lucky and have a bit of rope with us, we can hitch on with them all the way to the Provinces. Or nearly all the way. It’s difficult: They’re wild beasts, you know. And if I run just as hard as I can, I shall be able to keep up with you, and no one’s bones need be smashed or jangled. It goes without saying, I think, that it would be a bit ridiculous for me to ride a highwheel, even a big, brawny bull. Let us go now, right away! I shouldn’t want to miss it; we would feel much chagrined, and stuck.”