Page 102 of The Discount Damsel

Miss Penelope smiled and adjusted her riding hat, carefully tucking the loose hair back under the jeweled net. She adjusted the fit of her gloves and tugged her riding jacket to straighten it. She smoothed a hand over Zora’s head feathers. “Sweetie, wake up. It’s time to go home.”

The griffin opened one eye, the translucent nictitating membrane sliding away to reveal a sapphire iris. Her large black beak opened wide in a fearsome yawn, and she rose fluidly to her feet. Her rousing alerted the little ones, and four griffin kits chirped for food. There were no more field mice left to be regurgitated, so Zora flipped the lid and shut them, and their chirping, away.

“Do they have names yet?” Bradley asked as he hoisted the basket so Miss Penelope could thread her arms through the straps more easily. Under the watchful gaze of the mother griffin, of course.

“Not until the grow their primary feathers and have their first flight. When the full moon comes, Zora and I will take them to the snowy summit of their birth and she’ll name them then.”

Tightening down the straps, Miss Penelope bounced on the balls of her feet to test that the basket was secure. She mounted the griffin and adjusted her grip on her riding crop. There was a miscreant or two who would love to get their greedy hands on Zora’s kits. She swept that unpleasant thought from her mind and turned a smile towards the apprentice.

“You can do this, Bradley.”

“You’ll tell Master Excelsior that I’m trying? Please?”

“He knows, but of course I will.” She nudged the griffin with her heels, and the leopard jay took flight. “Ta-ta!”

CHAPTER 44

MANNERLESS BRUTES AND MISCONCEPTIONS

When Bradley thwacked her too hard across the buttocks during this morning’s harpoon training, Millie ignored it. When he glowered at her during speech therapy, she thought he was just concentrating. When he snapped at Dirk for showing up late to breakfast—again—she chalked it up to a poor night’s sleep or the unusually hot day or maybe he’d burned his mouth on his scone. The apprentice was rather prickly that he’d had to give up his beloved pottage for breakfast, relying on yogurt drizzled with honey and nuts and scones smeared with butter and strawberry jam studded with candied lemon peel for his morning sustenance, but Millie wasn’t.

Now, during Sir Beauregard’s lesson, he hunched over his sorcery book du jour like a covetous troll and flipped through its pages noisily. The crisp pages thwip-thwip-thwipped like linen sheets upon a clothesline in a brisk breeze. If that wasn’t distracting enough, the apprentice was muttering to himself. Millie could appreciate the occasional murmured outburst upon reading something fascinating or enlightening, but these were snide remarks about her lessons. Specifically the answers to the questions Sir Beauregard posed to her.

“And if tacking means turning the bow through the wind,” Sir Beauregard said, “then jibbing is?”

Millie scrunched up her nose. Memorizing the parts of a ship had been easier than mastering the terminology of how a ship moved through the water. In this case, she was a visual learner, and it wasn’t like they were on a dock watching the sailboats twisting and turning through the bay. “Turning the bow out of the wind?”

“Turning the stern through the wind,” Bradley muttered. “It’s not that difficult.”

She flung a glare over her shoulder, but his eyes were glued to the page in front of him.

“Turning the stern through the wind,” Sir Beauregard corrected her.

“I don’t see how you’d do that.”

The knight smiled apologetically and spread his hands. “It’s not like I have a ship to show you, Millie.”

From his post at the door, Sir Roger cleared his throat loudly.

“Miss Millie,” Sir Beauregard amended with a foul look at the hedge knight. “Let’s move on. Now, when I’m easing a sail, what am I doing?”

“I know that one! You’re letting out the sails, releasing the tension.”

“Why would you do this?”

“To—”

“Reduce power,” the apprentice snorted.

Millie shoved upright from where she sat on the floor and stormed over to his desk.

Bradley straightened out of his hunch and regarded her with a cool, unaffected expression, his hands flat on his thighs. “Yes?”

“Do you feel good about yourself?” she demanded. “Do you want a trophy for getting all the answers right? How about you focus on your own work instead of interfering with mine?”

His blue eyes narrowed.

“Well go on.” She shoved a finger at his open book. “Your expecto, indurus, and reparo spells are waiting for you.”