He sighed and raised his hand. A barely perceptible curl of dark smoke shimmering with green slipped from his fingers and sank into the pale feathers.
The drezmur raised her head and crouched.
The sound of hoofbeats came from the shadows. A man walked out of them, leading a big stallion. The horse was the color of smoke, and its face was pure white.
Hello, Villain. We meet again.
The drezmur let out that high-pitched purr again.
Villain stopped and blew air out of his nose. The man pulled on the lead. The stallion snapped at him.
“Foul temper,” Solentine told me. “Like his master.”
Everard walked over to his horse, took the reins from the man, petted the stallion’s face, and walked him to the side, where a narrow wooden crate waited. I hadn’t even noticed it until now.
Everard pulled the blinders over Villain’s eyes. The stallion stopped again.
“Come on. We’ve done this before,” Everard told him.
Villain huffed, stepped from foot to foot, and then walked into the crate. Everard secured the ropes leading from the harness, tying them down inside the crate, and shut the door, locking the big horse inside. There was a chain attached to the crate, looping under it, and another on top . . .
“Are you going to fly him to Selva?”
Everard looked at me and grinned. “How else would he get there in time?”
“But he’s so heavy, and the crate and the chain must weigh so much . . .”
“I once saw a drezmur pick up a trader boat fully loaded with cargo,” Everard said. “Trust me, this is nothing.”
He strode to the drezmur, then turned.
“Will you give me a kiss for luck, my lady?”
“Absolutely not,” Solentine said.
“I didn’t ask you,” Everard told him.
He was pulling out all the stops, huh.
“Come back safe, without getting poisoned, and you will get one.”
Ramond turned and stepped on the drezmur’s forepaw. The beast raised it, and he climbed onto her back.
“Wait for me,” he called out.
“Maybe,” I told him.
The drezmur reared. Her wings snapped open, blocking half of the sky. She thrust her beak into the loop of the chain on top of Villain’s crate. It slid over her head onto her neck, the crate dangling from it like a locket. The giant beast spun toward the cliff, sprinted, leaped, and soared into the night.
“Thank you, Divine.” Solentine exhaled. “Finally.”
CHAPTER35
REDBERRY5
Ican’t smell it.” Shana sniffed the small block of soap and put it back on the kitchen table, next to the other six bars.
“We can’t put any more in there,” Clover said. “The soap won’t hold.” “That settles it. No honey.” I crossed honey off the soap additives list. It had been a long shot anyway. In our world, I would have used honey fragrance oil, but there was none to be had here.
