Dragon Removal Service Page 15

  "Nobody? Huh." Uncle Rattbone stiffened. "Then nobody is the reason I gotta leave."

  "So what? You're blaming me?"

  "Gulch, I don't want to tell you that you’re the reason, but yeah—you’re the reason," Uncle Rattbone said. "You messed up. Epically."

  "I did, huh. I really did mess up."

  She felt better saying the words out loud. Not a whole lot better, but slightly better. Like one-minute-after-a-bee-sting better.

  Gulchima started to giggle. "Oh, did I ever screw up. They're going to write songs about how bad I'm doing."

  "They're going to write epic poems about it," Uncle Rattbone said, smiling. "I heard the locals talking about making a statue in your dishonor."

  "Probably put it on a tapestry in the King's own fortress too," Gulchima said, giggling again. "Maybe hire a few dozen painters to record 'Gulchima's Greatest Flails and Fails'."

  "How your father will laugh when we tell him!" Uncle Rattbone said, suddenly animated. "I mean to say, he'll feel bad about it, sure. But he'll laugh his head right off when he hears about the dragon. And who knows, Gulch? The King invited me to help fight the Gutlanders. The King himself! Who knows? Maybe all of this happened for a reason."

  "Probably not," Gulchima said.

  "Probably not," Uncle Rattbone agreed. "But it's just a small war. If I help out against the Gutlanders, maybe ransom a prince or two, we'll make enough to pay for the damage the dragon fire caused. Maybe Brunhild will follow me there, and you'll have a few months of peace."

  "A few months?" Gulchima asked.

  "Look, we're behind on this job. We won't break even now, with all the money we have to spend on repairs. We're lucky they didn't get rid of us, to be honest. Jaroo wanted to—"

  "—And Lady Keyhide didn't," Gulchima added. She'd already had this argument with her sister.

  "Yeah, she didn't," Uncle Rattbone said. "But I haven't seen her around much, have you? Some say she's been replaced, and Jaroo is the new Burgher-Meister."

  "Maybe. But who knows? Since the night of the dragon fire, Lady Keyhide, Jaroo and the Fizz-Meister have been busy in that factory of theirs. They have it locked up tight. Hubward said nobody can enter."

  They were both silent. White apple blossoms, carried by a breeze across the lake, floated down around them, covering her hair, and Uncle Rattbone's scale armor.

  "I don't want to leave you either, to be honest," Uncle Rattbone said. His free hand covered hers, warm, softer than she expected, but with hard calluses just below his fingers. The hands of a skilled warrior. "Ah well," he said again, and this time the words were like weights on a fishing net, sinking her heart down, down, down to the bottom of the lake.

  "What should I do now, Uncle Rattbone?" Gulchima whispered. "Nobody wants my help, and I've ruined everything. I don't want to do nothing. But what should I do?"

  Uncle Rattbone pursed his lips. "Your back's against the wall. But sometimes, that's the best place to be."

  He toyed with the new bones tied in his beard. These were larger and older than the ones he normally wore. Battle bones? "I'll tell you what your Dad would do: he'd find a way. He'd find a way to get rid of that dragon, by himself, and he'd be the hero. Your Dad was terrible with money once it came in, but he was always good at finding more of it. He just . . . he just wouldn't ever quit."

  Gulchima started to speak, but Uncle Rattbone cut her off. "Look Gulch, here's what your Dad would say to you: So you screwed up! So what? That just makes your story more interesting. If you get rid of that dragon, people will believe in you again. If you do the impossible, you'll save the Outfit, you'll make the money, and then we can bribe the prison into letting us visit your parents. Maybe we find the right down-on-his-luck prison guard, and we bribe your parents right out of there. You know gold opens doors, right? Or did you forget the lesson of Rough Peter?"

  "So just the impossible. Nothing else." Gulchima's tears had dried up. Uncle Rattbone was right.

  "Gulch, you gotta find a way to move that dragon. And you gotta take care of the rest of the magical nimby stuff, to boot. And, you can't ask nobody for help."

  "Nobody?"

  "Well, Hubward of course. He's your best friend."

  "My only friend," Gulchima said.

  "Then that's how you know!" Uncle Rattbone said. "Your best friend isn't the one you like the best. Your best friend is the one that sticks by you, when everybody else walks away. Your best friend helps you wipe the ox poop off your boots."

  He was right. She had Hubward. She'd burned all her other bridges, so to speak.

  "You've been a good father to us," Gulchima said. "I understand. But I don't want you to leave."

  "Yeah, and I don't want to go. But what's that got to do with anything? Ah well. It's better than being married to Brunhild. She sent me a letter, did you know that, an actual letter. Sayin' she changed her ways."

  "Changed what? To a deeper shade of crazy?"

  "I don't know, I'm thinking about it," Uncle Rattbone said. "We'll see how this side-war goes."

  "Just be careful." Gulchima opened the sack she had brought.

  "I'm not worried about Gutlanders," Uncle Rattbone snorted. "I'm not about to be killed by men who put goat horns on their head and think it's scary."

  "Good," Gulchima said. "But just in case, 'Luck for Journey'." She tossed thirty-seven kroons into the water. The seven lumpy coins disappeared into the clear water of the lake.

  "Wastin' money," Uncle Rattbone muttered. "But I appreciate the gesture."

  Gulchima gave him the sack of hard boiled eggs, the dark Muhu bread, the honey.

  "Strength, for working," she said. Her hands trembled as she handed it over.

  Uncle Rattbone looked at her, his face suddenly grim.

  "Strength is needed," he said.

  For both of us.

  Chapter 26: Hubward Has a Plan for Butter

  "Want to hear a joke?" Hubward asked nobody in particular. He adjusted the false eyebrows he'd glued on.

  Gulchima grunted. She sat in front of a crackling fire, in the abandoned garden of a rundown cottage, halfway between Bayadev and the fizz factory.

  It was several weeks after her Uncle Rattbone had left, and she was still grumpy.

  "Nope," Gulchima said.

  Gulchima stared into the fire, her head resting on her arms. Her burned hand seemed healed now, though she kept a small bandage on her finger. She was roasting her lunch on an oak branch and her eyes were red and rimmed with tears. Maybe it was from the smoke?

  "What should you do with a green dragon?" Hubward asked, ignoring her.

  Gulchima pressed her lips together. "I really don't know, Hubward," she said in a quiet voice.

  "Wait until it gets ripe."

  Gulchima's lips twitched. "Tell me another."

  Hubward put down his spray bag of glacier water. Then he sat next to Gulchima by the fire, ignoring the afternoon heat. "Why is a dragon big and green and impossibly heavy?"

  "I don't know: Why is a dragon big, and green, and impossibly heavy?"

  "Because if it was small and yellow and easily squished, it would be a banana."

  Gulchima laughed, then covered her mouth in surprise. "Wait. What's a banana?"

  "A small fruit from the southern islands," Hubward said smoothly. "I saw them during one of my dragon flights in the war."

  Gulchima wiped her eyes with one ash covered hand.

  "Why do you have a bag sprayer full of glacier water?" Gulchima asked.

  "I don't know: Why do I have a bag sprayer full of glacier water?"

  "No. That's not a joke," Gulchima said, irritated. "I was just asking you. Are you working for Soltanabad now?"

  Hubward smiled. "Oh no, I'm working for Ninestone actually. I'm using the glacier water to make butter popsicles."

  "Butter popsicles, why?"

  What kind of question was that? Why wouldn't you want to make butter popsicles?

  "Because I tried bacon popsicles, and it didn't w
ork."

  Gulchima poked the fire. "Oh? Too crumbly?"

  Hubward threw some dried grass into the flames. "Just a fundamental law of bacon: Bacon disappears faster than you can cook it."

  Gulchima looked at him for the first time. "Explain."

  "See, it's impossible to look at bacon without eating at least three pieces. So first I cook it: that's three pieces eaten. Then I wait for it to cool: that’s another three pieces at least. I grind it up, three more. I forget what I was doing? That's three more. The wind blows . . . another three pieces. My pan only fits ten pieces, so—how many was that?"

  "I think you have negative bacon," Gulchima said.

  Good. She was being mean to him again, so that meant she was officially cheered up. Sometimes it was hard to be best friends with a grump.

  "So what are you doing, exactly?" Hubward asked, pointing at the fire.

  "Oh, you know. Just smashing these cute magical creatures with a hammer," Gulchima said. She pointed at the hundreds of small magical creatures swarming around the ruined cottage wall. "Of course, I burn the trangles first."

  Hubward stood up. "Trangles! Here?"

  Gulchima shrugged. "I couldn't find the salt quern. I was supposed to remove it, but the butcher keeps stealing it to salt the meat. So the only other thing in the contract I thought I couldn't screw up was: 'Remove Trangles from Gardens'."

  The trangles were everywhere, spread across the garden like angry ants. They knew a lot of bad words, apparently, because they were constantly calling each other names. Horrible names. Even worse than the ones Hubward's brothers had taught him, before he was orphaned.

  The trangles looked like gingerbread men cookies, except they were made of clay and animal poop and they were alive. They were only three inches high, and they had white buttons up the front of their bodies, but they used mouse droppings instead of icing. They were naked, not that it mattered, except for their sharp spiky hats constructed of broken snail shells and teacup shards.

  The trangles looked innocent enough, until you saw their mean red eyes. And if you got in their way, they'd swarm and poke you with bent nails or glass. Sometimes they could kill you.

  "Is it fun?" Hubward asked.

  Gulchima took one of the trangles out of the fire. She had skewered it on her stick, like a marshmallow, and the trangle was burned black and hung limply. The stabbing would only annoy it. You couldn't kill trangles, unfortunately. You could only move them to another location. Covering them with honey and throwing them on an ants nest was the best solution.

  "It was fun, at first," Gulchima said. "I grab one with these tongs I got from the blacksmith, then I put them into the fire. That's fun, but then they started squirming about, so I skewer them with the branch to keep them in place. After I roast them, they get hard as a rock, which I suppose they are, because they're just small clay monsters." She sniffed. "Then I smash them. With a hammer." She demonstrated.

  "Remarkable," Hubward said, as a piece of shattered trangle hit him in the forehead.

  "Yeah, but after I smash them into small pieces, they cool, go all soft and wiggly, and eventually come back together. It's not working! So now I just put them in a bag."

  "No, I mean it's remarkable that one person could make so many bad decisions in a row," Hubward said. "You are doing, literally, everything wrong at once. Do you know anything about magic?"

  Gulchima rounded on him, her hands on her hips. "Do you know anything about magic?"

  "I do actually. I was in the war remember? I rode with dragons."

  "Yes as a courier boy. You delivered packages."

  "Not only that," Hubward said. He crossed his arms. "I know a little about magic."

  "Yeah, you know how to spell it."

  Now Hubward really was mad. He'd been trying to cheer her up. Girls! Once they decided to be grumpy there was nothing you could do about it.

  "Actually, I used to do magic," Hubward said. Whoops. That had just slipped out.

  "You never did. I don't believe you. Do some now," Gulchima said.

  Hubward looked around. "Well I can't right now. I'm in disguise."

  "Disguised as what, a boy with no eyebrows?"

  Why not tell her? Hubward thought. They were best friends. He had to tell someone.

  "I'm in disguise because I'm hunting the Sorcerer," Hubward said. "And I need your help."

  "You can do magic. And you need my help? With the Sorcerer?" Gulchima snorted. "Is this part of that play you're writing? I've got enough problems without you joking around. Anyway, the Sorcerer's dead, so we can cross that one off the list."

  Hubward cracked his neck. "Okay team, remove the threat!" he yelled.

  Six blue-skinned strangers vaulted over the wall of the garden, then scooped up dozens of surprised trangles, before kicking and punching them into the air.

  Hubward did a backflip, swung his spray bag onto his shoulders, and then squirted the swarming pile of trangles in mid-air with a spray of icy water.

  The frozen trangles fell to the ground with a tinkle.

  Gulchima looked at him, her mouth agape. "You can do backflips!" she said.

  "And magic," Hubward reminded her.

  "And magic!" Gulchima said. She closed her mouth. "But now it makes sense. These were the people from the night of the fire, the same people who helped us in the fizz factory. But their skin. It's blue. That means they're . . . undead."

  "Yeah for now," Hubward said, rolling his eyes. "This is my magical team, or hand, as we were known. We were assassins."

  "For the Sorcerer or against?"

  "Both. I was a Gaunt in the Sorcerer's army for a while. Then we switched sides and fought against the Sorcerer." He nodded to another group of trangles. They had organized themselves into straight lines and were marching at him, bent nails in their hands like swords. Kelsa, one of the undead girls in his team, scooped them up in her hat, then tossed the trangles into the air. Hubward sprayed them and they froze.

  "A skinny little kid, doing magic," Gulchima shook her head. "I suppose you had to starve yourself."

  Hubward shrugged. "Sometimes. But everybody does a little magic when things get seriously bad. Magic is another word for luck. Being a Gaunt, starving yourself, that was just a way to trick your body into having good luck. It makes every moment a crisis." Hubward sighed. "I was lucky, because candy made me thin. I'm allergic to it, so I swell up with water and can't keep anything down. But all that starving and magic, makes you really tired to be honest. I'd rather not do that again. Excuse me one second."

  Hubward held both his arms up. Trumblebutt, the lone adult and former team leader, grabbed Hubward by his wrist and spun him around, just as several jagged teacup pieces slashed across the garden. They stuck in the wall behind him, vibrating slightly.

  Hubward ran across the top of the wall, spraying the trangles with glacier water. The oldest boy in his team, Daaniel, swept the frozen trangles into the fire with a pine branch. They exploded.

  "Anyway, not every team member did the same job," Hubward said from atop the wall. "I'm not much of a fighter. I was in charge of camouflage."

  "But how—"

  It was fun telling someone everything. You could interrupt them, just as they were starting to ask you a question. Maybe he wouldn't tell her everything-everything. Hubward would withhold one key piece of information. For instance, she couldn't know that his mother had been none other than—

  "Oh and in addition to camouflage, I was the one that rescued the hostages," Hubward said. He leapt down off of the wall. "I'd go and sit with them, and it was pretty boring and they were nervous, so I'd . . . entertain them. When my team got turned undead, that's what I was doing. Guarding the hostages."

  "That's why you’re writing—"

  —that play yes. I write plays now," Hubward said. "I suppose, in a way, the audience is my hostage. If I do it right, they can't leave no matter how terrible my work is."

  "Oh, how's that?"

  "Well you just lea
ve a few things unanswered until the very end. Withhold one piece of information, and then distract the audience."

  Just then Hertrude, the seventh member of the team, burst through the garden wall. She had a chicken stuck in her hair, and a loaf of bread on each foot. A small dog hung from her left arm, gnawing and growling. She spoke quickly, telling him the bad news. "PumpkinpumkinP'mkin! Pumppumppumpity, pumpkin!"

  "Pumpkin?" asked the lone adult, Trumblebutt, in his dry croaking voice.

  "Uh oh," Hubward said "We have a bog problem. Two bog problems actually."

  "A bog problem?" Gulchima asked.

  "Yeah, like a big problem, but harder to get out of."

  "What problem?" Gulchima asked.

  "One, my butter popsicles are melting."

  Gulchima threw a frozen trangle at him. "And two?"

  Hubward looked worried. "And two: They say the Sorcerer is coming. Right. Now."

  Chapter 27: Gulchima Finds the Sorcerer and Everything

  But it wasn't two problems, it was four that came walking down the path from the fizz factory towards Gulchima's hiding place. First came Lady Keyhide and the Fizz-Meister. Two other people followed behind them.

  "Which one is it?" Gulchima asked. "Is one of them the Sorcerer?"

  She peered at the figures, barely visible in the mist from the geysers. As if her life wasn't complicated enough, with Uncle Rattbone gone, and the company failing, and her sister mad at her. Now this.

  Still, if there ever was a valid excuse to cancel a bad construction contract, an all-powerful necromancer of unspeakable evil would probably do the trick. But Gulchima would have to prove the Sorcerer was actually here. Without being killed. Or turned into a toad. Or whatever.

  "Hubward, ask them which one is the Sorcerer," she whispered.

  "Can any of you talk?" Hubward asked his undead team. They seemed frozen in place. Now they were acting like the undead Gulchima had always heard about, just shuffling around, bumping into walls, staring at the ground vaguely. A minute ago they had been flying through the air, like magical assassins.