The Vanishing Sculptor (27 page)

The bird turned to the young emerlindian. “Go. Be sure you are not followed. We’ll join you after dark.”

Tipper looked into the prince’s startling blue eyes and saw a flicker of sympathy. He lowered his voice to just above a whisper, and his tone undermined her resentment. “I’ll do anything I can to assure his safety.”

She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. Tears she’d kept at bay fell down her cheeks.

“First woman I’ve kissed, and she cries.” He winked and left, melding into the crowd of people.

The afternoon took forever to pass. They congregated in the largest suite of the hotel, which had a sitting room attached. Bealomondore sketched. Beccaroon sat on the arm of a chair with a large book on the table beside him. He turned the pages with his beak and seemed perfectly content to forget for the moment that her father was in dire straits. Tipper waged a campaign to be allowed to go with the men when they stormed Bamataub’s mansion.

“We’re not storming a fort,” said Fenworth, settled in a comfortable chair with a strange cube in his hand. He twisted the parts of the puzzle in different directions. “Our attack will be genteel, quietly orchestrated, and an operation of finesse. No storming.”

“I can do all those things.”

“No, you can’t.” Fenworth leaned back again in his chair.

“I can.”

“Can’t.”

“Can.”

“Genteel. Quiet. Finesse. It’s the middle one of which you’re incapable.”

Tipper opened her mouth to argue the point and slammed it shut. If she continued to bombard the wizard with her reasoning, she proved his point. She crossed her arms over her chest and paced to the window. On the street below, many city dwellers hurried hither and yon. One man looked out of place. He stood at a corner of an alleyway, leaning in a shadow, hardly moving at all. Tipper stepped back from the window and motioned to Bealomondore to come join her.

“See that man?” She hung back to the side, hiding behind the curtains.

“Which man?” Bealomondore looked back and forth.

She pulled him back. “Be careful. He’ll see you and know we know he’s watching us.”

Bealomondore approached the window more cautiously. “What man?”

“Across the way, in the alley. He’s wearing a black hat.”

“I see him.” He sighed. “And I’ve seen him before.”

“Where?”

“Driving a carriage in which Master Bamataub and Madam Orphelian rode.”

Fenworth snored.

Bealomondore turned to Librettowit. “We shall have to plan more thoroughly how to leave the hotel tonight and reach our destination unseen.”

Librettowit pulled his beard. “Perhaps we should take a walk.”

A look of delight came to the younger tumanhofer’s face.

Beccaroon pushed the book he was reading aside. “An excellent plan.” He hopped down from the arm of the chair.

“What?” cried Tipper. “What plan? Where are you going? Why?”

Fenworth snorted. “Does she ever maintain silence?” He shifted and returned to the heavy breathing that rattled his nasal passages.

“I’m going too,” she whispered.

The men moved toward the door. Tipper grabbed her light cape and started after them.

“No,” said Beccaroon. “This might be dangerous.”

She forgot the sleeping wizard and shrieked.
“What
might be dangerous?”

“No,” said Fenworth, “she doesn’t.” The sentence hardly disturbed the resonance of his sleep.

Tipper rolled her eyes and swung the cape over her shoulders. “I’m going.”

Beccaroon stepped closer. “You are not, Tipper.”

She looked into his serious eyes, sighed, and took the cape off.

Bealomondore clapped his hat on his head. “We’ll be back as soon as we have something to tell you.”

She nodded and watched them leave. She eyed the snoozing wizard for a moment, then went to peek out the window.

Her three friends walked across the uncovered portion of the sidewalk and crossed the street. The two tumanhofers were taller than the grand parrot by a head. Each dressed differently. Librettowit wore robes, a tunic, soft leather boots, and a hood that covered his grizzled head. He had a leather pouch slung under his arm.

Bealomondore wore what Tipper called “town clothes.” His tailored fawn trousers hung over polished boots. His shirt ruffled at the chest and stuck out of a close-cut maroon jacket with tails. Of course, Beccaroon’s tail was more impressive. The younger tumanhofer carried a cane, though he didn’t need it, and wore a fancy felt hat with a feather in the band. Tipper wondered what Bec thought of that. Bec had his own glorious plumage, and Tipper caught people giving him a second look, although her bird friend never acknowledged the unwanted interest.

She straightened as she saw the suspicious marione come out of his corner and follow discreetly behind the three men. Was that their plan? To lure him away, then lose him? They had succeeded in luring him away, and that left the coast clear for her to slip out.

Tipper tiptoed to her cape and draped it over her arm. With her eye on Fenworth, she reached the door, turned the knob, and eased it open. Her skirts swished as she moved too quickly through. She froze, but apparently she hadn’t awakened the wizard. She stepped into the hall and pulled the door softly into the frame. The latch scratched shut.

Fenworth whispered. “Do tell the prince we’ll be there about a half hour after dark.”

She pushed the door open and stared at the old man. He snored. But she’d heard him. She closed the door again without as much care, shook out her cape, and flung it around her shoulders.

Going to Bamataub’s manor was a great idea. Staying in that room, just waiting, would have driven her mad.

In the lobby, Tipper asked the concierge to find a taxi for her. The man hailed one of the waiting vehicles, and a small carriage, pulled by a very old nag, jostled up to the hotel entry. The concierge opened the hack’s door and assisted Tipper as she climbed the two narrow steps.

“May I tell the driver your destination, miss?”

Tipper had a mental picture of the concierge telling her destination to Beccaroon and decided not to reveal that information. “I’m going shopping. I’d prefer an outlying district instead of the middle of town.”

“Just as you wish, miss.” He relayed the information to the coachman, and the carriage jolted as the horse responded to the driver’s voice.

After a few blocks, Tipper knocked on the front of the cab. A little door opened, and the driver peeked through. “Yes, miss?”

“I’ve decided I’d like to shop in the northwest part of Fayetopolis.”

“Aye, miss. That’s a nice part of town. I know just the street—”

“I don’t have much money. Do you know of a reasonable marketplace?”

“I do. Have a sister who works out a ways, in one of the big houses, and I know where she does her own shopping. Lean back and relax, miss. It’ll be a while before we get there.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He winked, and she thought that such a familiarity was perhaps not acceptable, but she didn’t know for sure. She smiled instead of frowning at him.

As they passed into the more residential streets, a nanny pushing a baby in a perambulator gave Tipper an excellent idea. She rapped on the front again, and when the driver opened the little door, she asked him to take her to a secondhand shop. He nodded his agreement and continued on.

She’d have to be careful not to overspend on her disguise. But walking down that long lane to Bamataub’s house in the lovely cloak Verrin Schope had purchased for her would be foolhardy. She smoothed her hand over the soft, peach velvet cape and sighed. The serviceable blue or brown of a nanny would not be so conspicuous and would be so much better for hiding at night in the shrubs. The thrill of participating in the venture gave her goose bumps, and she couldn’t help the smile on her face. Then the thought of her father suffering wiped both the smile and the giddy anticipation away.

At the row of shops, Tipper dismissed the driver, giving him some of her precious Chiril coins. One shop had odds and ends in the way of household items. She asked for a baby carriage and was told they’d sold three last week but didn’t have one at present. In the next little store, hardly bigger than her mother’s closet, she found a used nanny’s cape, a pair of breeches for her to wear when they climbed the wall, a shirt, and better shoes for walking. The clerk glanced oddly at Tipper as she totaled the cost.

Tipper smiled. “Boys are so rough on their clothing, aren’t they?”

That seemed to satisfy the woman. Tipper spotted a man’s tunic and thought of Jayrus in his princely garments made from kimen cloth. She added a rough pair of trousers and a larger tunic, both dark and very ugly. As soon as the clerk had the garments wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string, Tipper realized her mistake. She couldn’t carry the load.

“May I leave the package here and pick it up in a little bit? I have more shopping to do.”

Again the clerk gave her a suspicious look but agreed.

“Phew,” Tipper exclaimed under her breath as she closed the shop door behind her. She could imagine that woman being Queen Gossip of the lane, probably relating in detail everything Tipper had said and done in her shop to the very next person who entered.

She visited three of the open-air booths but refrained from buying anything, even though she saw a little reticule that would go well with her new cape. At last she found a perambulator that hadn’t sold yet because the price was too dear. She haggled the price down and pushed it back to the used clothing shop to retrieve her parcel.

The next part of her plan proved difficult. None of the taxis that sat idle around the hotel district moved up and down this market street. She finally paid a delivery man to allow her to ride along as he went in her direction.

She sat on the back of the open cart, dangling her feet and counting herself well off. A taxi would have been five times what the ride in this conveyance cost her. She allowed herself to be “delivered” with her baby carriage and bundle to the back of one of the mansions on the lane to Bamataub’s. The man had no idea she wasn’t a guest at the home.

“May I take your purchases to the front door or the kitchen door, miss?”

“No, I’m fine. Someone inside will be more than willing to help me,” she said and added under her breath, “if I were to ask them.”

She doled out the coins and gave him an extra since she felt very pleased with herself. He waved farewell, and she stepped inside the back gate until he turned at the end of the alley. Then she hopped back into the narrow drive and looked down at her purchases.

“Almost there,” she congratulated herself. “And almost no snags in my plan at all. I think I’m quite good at adventuring.”

31
Clam before the storm

Tipper longed for Beccaroon’s thick forest of tropical foliage. The sparse accumulation of trees behind the house where she had been dropped off provided little cover. She changed quickly in the densest stand of trees she could find. With her dress, shoes, and cape rolled up and placed in the baby buggy on top of the clothes for Jayrus, she strolled down the lane with the dark blue nanny’s cape covering her breeches and shirt. The hood covered her hair and allowed her to pull it forward to hide her face. Her sensible walking shoes felt good, and she thought that all her purchases showed her aptitude for scheming and subterfuge. She would be useful in helping her father escape.

The walk to the last house on the lane seemed longer than the ride in the carriage. She finally reached the forbidding manor and walked right past the gate. Jayrus was nowhere in sight.

She chastised herself for thinking she would spot him right away. After all, he wouldn’t be standing in the road, waiting for one of Bamataub’s henchmen to jump on him and drag him inside.

The thought of the villains lurking around made her scurry down the lane. The road went on into the countryside, and she had no desire to walk to whatever village sprang up next. After turning around, she ambled back the way she had come. Her legs complained by the time she had passed the fortified mansion again and two houses farther on.

Where could she go? Where was Jayrus? What should she do until the others came?

“Walk this confounded baby until nap time is over,” she answered herself and turned around once more.

Tipper admitted that her preparation hadn’t been complete since she didn’t have any water. Then she thought of dinner and wondered how long it would be until the others came and if they would bring something for Jayrus to eat. And if they did, would they remember her? If they didn’t remember her, would Jayrus share?

The heavy nanny’s cape locked in her own heat and absorbed the heat of the afternoon sun. Her arms went through slits in the front to hold on to the perambulator’s handle. The cape parted, however, when she lifted her sleeve to wipe her brow.

She pulled the cape closed in front of her. “Oh, dribbling drummerbugs!” She’d exposed her very improper and not nannylike outfit beneath. Looking up and down the lane, she couldn’t see that she had done any harm. No one walked, rode, or drove down the lane. She passed the mansion once more.

This time she walked farther into the countryside. At one point, a bridge passed over a large stream. Tipper peered over the wooden rail and thought the water looked cool and clear. Then a turtle plopped off his log and into the slow current.

Tipper wrinkled her nose and gave up the thought of taking a sip. Bees buzzed around a flowering casting bush. The blooms looked like tiny lures on the end of a leafless stem, much like a fishing rod. She picked one and sucked out the nectar. Several blooms provided enough to make her want more, but the bees became territorial, and she decided to move on.

Before she reached Bamataub’s manor, one patch of road passed under some trees. From here, no one would be able to see her from the distant mansion. Tipper pushed the hood off her head and slowed down to savor the shade. A movement above made her look up just as the prince dropped off a branch onto the road beside her.