“You can’t frighten us. We’re immune to magic,” the off-white griffin said unconvincingly.
Blade raised his eyebrows. “Ten,” he said.
And Kit came hurtling down past the Observatory tower and over the parapet like a diving black demon, shouting thunderously. “GET AWAY FROM MY SISTER, YOU GODFORSAKEN REJECTS!” Fire blasted up from the courtyard where the invading griffins stood. Blade grinned and added his magic to Kit’s. The result was that all four griffins were shot into the air as if a bomb were under them. Kit flung a further sheet of fire beneath them as they rose, causing them to scream as one griffin and flap their singeing wings desperately. Blade sped them on their way with another blast of magic. They clapped their tails between their legs and flew madly to get away.
“BLASTED RIFFRAFF!” Kit thundered over his shoulder at them as he landed.
That was neat, Elda thought. You don’t magic them, because it doesn’t take, so you magic the air underneath them. Then she had a moment when she thought, Only four griffins? And what message? But she forgot those questions in her total delight at seeing her brothers again. She raised both wings, letting a rather overheated-looking Ruskin tumble out, and wrapped Blade in her pinions. “Love you, Blade!”
“Me, too,” Blade said, butting her with his head, griffin fashion. He slapped her flank. “You had a good shout, didn’t you? Those gangsters were looking almost respectful when I got here.”
Elda chuckled as she galloped over to Kit. Kit was so glad to see her that he actually twined his neck with Elda’s, which was a thing he very rarely did. Elda rejoiced in the well-known clean smell of his feathers and the sleek shine of his pantherlike sides. The only pale part of Kit was his great buff-colored beak. And his yellow eyes, of course, which were just now returning from
angry black to ordinary gold. But she had forgotten how huge he was, bigger than Callette, bigger than Jessak by some way. He made her feel as small as Ruskin.
“Are all the griffins on the other continent as nasty as those ones?” she asked Kit, with a worried thought about Lydda.
“Lords, no!” Kit paced toward Blade, looking rather satisfied, and Elda trotted beside him, wondering why Kit did not seem to notice that there was still one foreign griffin left, the plain brown one, crouched in the opposite corner of the courtyard in the shadow of the refectory steps. “Most of the griffins there are nice people,” Kit said. “Those lot were the dregs. Outlaws. But don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll come back in a hurry.”
“What did they get outlawed for?” Elda asked, flicking an anxious glance at the motionless brown griffin in the corner.
“Not just for stalking Callette, I can tell you!” Kit said as they reached Blade. “They enjoy tearing humans and griffins apart. They had themselves real fun during the war.”
“And everyone over there is far too civilized to get rid of them properly,” Blade told Elda. She could see he was disgusted about it. “Jessak’s family got lawyers, and the lawyers argued that they were throwbacks to primitive griffins and couldn’t help themselves. So they exiled them instead. We ran into them just before that, when Jessak got a thing about Callette.”
“Lawyers!” snorted Kit. “Where is Callette, anyway? She said she—”
Kit said this at the precise moment that he walked into the invisible Callette. Callette surged and squawked. Kit reared up and back, hugely astonished.
“What the—”
“You trod on me!” Callette said out of nowhere. “Clumsy oaf!”
Elda and Ruskin became helpless with laughter. So did Claudia. She had been getting up, clutching the cloakrack for support for her very shaky legs. Now she clung to it and giggled.
“Where are you?” Kit demanded of the air.
“How do I know? I can’t see myself to tell you!” Callette retorted.
“She asked us to make her invisible because she didn’t want Jessak to see her,” Claudia explained, as well as she could for laughing.
“Fair enough,” said Blade. He was grinning, too.
Kit was not amused. “Trust you to do something really stupid, Callette! Where are you, for goodness’ sake?” He scythed at the air with both front sets of talons, walking cautiously forward on two legs like somebody playing blindman’s buff. “How can I turn you back if I don’t know where you are?”
“But I don’t know—Now you trod on my tail!” Callette howled. There was an invisible turmoil. Kit canted sideways, carried by an unseen body almost as big as he was, and tried to save himself falling by wrapping his talons around the statue of Wizard Policant. There was a sharp crack. Wizard Policant swayed, broke off at the ankles, and fell, first with a padded whump—“OUCH!” cried Callette. “Now look what you’ve done, you fool!”—and then with a stony crash, when he rolled on the ground by Kit’s feet. Kit, like a giant-size startled cat, skittered away sideways and stood in an affronted arch.
Claudia whooped and pointed.
“What’s the matter?” Blade asked her anxiously.
“His.” Claudia swallowed. “His.” She managed to get the rest out between laughs in a hurried, chesty drone. “His feet. In pointy shoes. Oh!” She gave a whine of laughter and slid down the cloakrack, shaking.
Blade looked at Wizard Policant’s feet standing all by themselves on the plinth and collapsed, too. The lights around the courtyard came on just then, showing the wide space full of people again. Everyone who had run away from Jessak and his friends was now outside once more, very curious to see two of the world’s strongest wizards, and most of them were laughing at Wizard Policant’s feet, too. After a moment even Kit saw the funny side of it.
“Hey, look!” someone called out. “You can see Callette’s shadow!”
This was true. The shadow was large and ruffled and spread in several directions. Its heads swung about as Callette realized she could see it as well and then raised blurred multiple wings and waved a forefoot or so.