Derk spun in his chair and saw Mara standing there, glowing with a glamour and looking absolutely delighted. She doesn’t need the glamour, he thought. She’s still beautiful. So this was what she had been working on.
“You agree?” asked Mr. Chesney, and before Derk could say a word, he turned to Querida. “You will be standing down from the post this year.”
“Glad to,” Querida said dryly. But Derk kept his eye on her, and on Mara, and saw Querida was truly pleased. She and Mara were exchanging looks and all but hugging themselves.
What’s going on? Derk wondered angrily.
He was taken by surprise to find that Mr. Chesney and the others were actually leaving. They went clattering down the terrace steps, with Mr. Chesney in front again. This time the orchids cringed away as the four strode off down the driveway. Derk started after them, but not very fast. He was not sure if he should show them politely to the gate, as he would have done for normal people. He was only halfway down the drive when they reached the gate.
And Kit was suddenly there, several tons of him, parked in the gateway, sitting like a cat and blocking the way entirely. He towered over Mr. Chesney and his three helpers. From where Derk was, he could have sworn Kit was as tall as the house. Funny, he thought. I didn’t think even Kit was that big.
“Out of my way, creature,” Mr. Chesney said in his flat, colorless voice.
Kit’s answer was to spread his wings, which made him look even larger. As Kit was mainly black these days and his wing feathers were jetty, the effect was very menacing indeed. Even Mr. Chesney took half a step backward. As soon as he did, Kit bent forward and peered very intently into Mr. Chesney’s face.
Mr. Chesney stared at that wickedly large, sharp, buff-colored beak pointing between his eyes. “I said get out of my way, creature,” he said, his voice grating a little. “If you don’t, you’ll regret it.”
At this, Mr. Addis and Mr. Bennet each dropped their briefcases and reached under their coats in a way that looked meaningful. The girl threw down her board and fumbled at her waist. Derk broke into a run, with the starry cloak billowing behind and holding him back. “Kit!” he yelled. “Stop it, Kit!”
But as soon as Mr. Chesney’s followers mov
ed, Kit leaped into the air. His enormous wings clapped once, twice, causing a wind that made the four people stagger about, and then he was sailing above them, uttering squawks of sheer derision. He sailed low above Derk, almost burying Derk in the windblown cloak. “Kit!” Derk bawled angrily.
“Squa-squa-squiii-squa-squa!” Kit said, and sailed on, up into the dip in the roof, where the pigs erupted again in a frenzy of flapping and squealing, trying to get out of Kit’s way before he landed on them.
Most of them made it, Derk thought. He felt the thump of Kit’s landing even from beside the gate. “I do apologize,” he said to Mr. Chesney. “Kit’s only fifteen—”
“Consider yourself fined a hundred gold, Wizard,” Mr. Chesney said coldly, and marched away to his horseless carriage.
FOUR
AFTER THAT DERK BADLY wanted to be alone. He wanted to visit his animals, scratch backs and rub noses in peace. But he knew he must talk to Querida, much as he disliked her. “Would you like me to show you my animals?” he asked her, by way of doing both things at once.
Querida looked along the table. Most of the wizards were still there, eating and drinking and chatting cheerfully. She nodded and stood up. She barely came up to Derk’s elbow. “On the understanding that I don’t offer to embalm any of the creatures, I suppose,” she said. “Although I think I’d hesitate before I tried embalming a griffin.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the roof. All that could be seen there was a ruffled lump of black feathers where Kit was, after a fashion, lying low.
“I’ll talk to you when I come back!” Derk shouted up at the lump. “If I have to get on a ladder to do it!”
Kit gave no sign that he had heard. Derk gave up on him and led Querida across the terrace and around to the back of the house. She remarked as they went, “Dealing with an adolescent griffin must be even worse than dealing with an adolescent human.”
“Hmm,” said Derk. Remembering some of the things Blade had said to him yesterday, he was not sure that was true. But there was no doubt that Kit had been very difficult lately. He sighed, because he had sudden piercing, overwhelming memories of Kit when he was first hatched, memories of a small, scrawny, golden bundle of down and fine fur; of his own pride in his very first successfully hatched griffin; of himself and Mara lovingly bundling Kit from one to the other; of two-year-old Shona and Kit rolling on the floor together, rubbing beak to nose and laughing. Kit had been so small and thin and fluffy that they had called him their Kitten. No one had expected him to grow so very big. Or so difficult.
They came around the back of the house where the pens and plantations stretched away uphill. “What a lot of space you have here!” Querida exclaimed.
“The whole end of the valley,” Derk said. The animals knew Derk was there. Most of them came rushing toward the ends of their pens to meet him. Derk fed Big Hen a corncob—she was about the size of an ostrich, and he had used the shells of her eggs as eggs for the griffins—and then suffered himself to be slobbered on and gazed at by the Friendly Cows. He began to feel soothed. Bother ants! he thought. He had done bees, after all. What he needed was an animal that no one had thought of before.
“Cows?” asked Querida, looking up at the big, sticky noses and the great, moony eyes.
“Er, sort of,” Derk admitted. “I bred them to be very stupid. Animals know, you see—you saw the pigs’ opinion of that blood—and I wanted a cow that wouldn’t know when we needed her for the griffins to eat. But they turned out so very friendly that it’s quite difficult at times.”
“Indeed.” Querida moved on to the next pen, full of very small sheep. “What’s your opinion of the great Mr. Chesney?”
“If I ever bred a piranha with a hyena, I’d call it a Chesney,” Derk said.
“That’s right,” said Querida. “We’re just like your Friendly Cows to him, you know.”
“I know,” said Derk.
“And he means every word he says. You did understand that, did you?”