“You’re having fun,” Simon accuses.
“Fie!”
21
SIMON
Renaissance Faires are brilliant.
I had a turkey leg and a big sticky Coke and then something called funnel cake, which is just a mess of fried dough with powdered sugar, and is A-plus-plus in my book. The woman who sold it to me gave me free chocolate sauce. “Angels get upgrades,” she said.
Everyone here issofriendly. I don’t know if that’s a Nebraska thing or just a part of their Olde English act.
Penelope has decided to take umbrage at all the bad English accents. (And bad Scottish accents and bad Irish accents and some that sound like very bad Australian accents.) But Baz has taken to it like a fish to water. He can out-thine the best of them.
I beg them both to walk around for a bit. “You’re not supposed to stay in the car the whole time on a road trip,” I say. “You’re supposed to get out and see things, meet strange people—lotus-eaters and sirens.”
“That’s not a road trip,” Baz says, “that’s theOdyssey.When did you read theOdyssey,Snow?”
“The Mage made me read it—I think he wanted it to rub off on me—and it is so a road trip!”
Baz smiles at me. Like he hasn’t in a while. Like he almost never has, in public—like it’s easy. “You’re right, Snow. Better tie you to the mast.”
He’s wearing a shirt with a whole field of flowers on it. I didn’t know how to dress once we didn’t have to wear uniforms every day, but Baz was apparently spoiling for it. He almost never wears the same thing, the same way, twice.
He’s coming into himself. And I’m coming apart.
But not today. Today I’m someone else entirely. Today I’m just a bloke with fake red wings.
There’s a shop selling crystals and magickal artefacts down the way. Penny wants to stop and make sure nothing actually magickal has snuck in. Across the path is a sword shop—so many people are selling swords here!
Baz follows me into the sword tent. (LONG & BROAD, the sign says.) “You can’t pick up every sword, Snow.”
“I can’t hear you,” I say, trying out a poorly balanced sabre.
“Pray, my lord, my light—thy cannot test every blade in the kingdom.”
That makes me laugh, and him, too. I toss him the sabre, and he catches it.
“I don’t know anything about swords,” he says.
“More’s the pity,” I say. “We could spar.” I look back at the racks. “We could have, I mean.” I suppose I don’t have a sword of my own anymore. The Sword of Mages used to hang at my hip, there whenever I called it. I can’t call it now. I can’t say the spell to summon it. Or—I can say it, but nothing happens.
Baz tried once—held his wand over my left hip and said the incantation:“In justice. In courage. In defence of the weak. In the face of the mighty. Through magic and wisdom and good.”
It didn’t appear.
“I suppose it only works for the Mage’s Heir,”he’d said.
“That’s nobody anymore,”I said back.
Baz throws another sword at me. I scramble to catch it. It’s lighter than I expect, made of foam. He’s holding up one just like it. “This is more my speed,” he says.
“That’s the Master Sword,” I say.
“Perfect for me then.”
“FromThe Legend of Zelda?”
