The Indigo King - James A. Owen [118]
“That’s right.” Jack got to his feet and grabbed his coat. “It’s at that new place that Bert discovered, isn’t it? What was the name again?” he said, scratching his head. “The Eagle and Child?”
“That’s the real name,” Charles said as he closed the door behind them. “But everyone who’s a regular there just calls it the Bird and Baby.”
The fog had settled thickly around Oxford, hanging low and dense in the air. Usually that meant there would be weather—but on this particular Thursday, the Caretakers knew it meant someone needed cover to land an airship.
“I have to say,” Jack commented, “the White Dragon being an airship instead of a sailing vessel makes it a hell of a lot more versatile. I wonder if any of the other Dragonships would be amenable to making the conversion?”
“I think Ordo Maas went along with Bert’s suggestion just to give him a countermeasure to the Indigo Dragon,” John said, wincing at having mentioned their long-missing stolen ship as he checked his watch again.
“You really like that thing, don’t you?” said Charles. “What did Pris say when you told her you’d lost the other one?”
“She started to get upset,” John answered, “but I managed to distract her by telling her a story from the new book. She loves the parts with the elves.”
“Oh no,” a familiar voice moaned. “Not elves. Give me anything but elves!”
“Well met, Hugo,” John called as the professor and his adopted niece rounded the corner in front of them. “Hello, Rose.”
“Hello, Uncle John,” Rose said, kissing him on the cheek. “Hello, Uncle Jack.”
“Oh my stars and garters,” declared Charles, stunned. “You must be Rose.”
“Hello, Uncle Chaz,” Rose said as she kissed him.
Charles touched his cheek and blushed. “I, ah, I’m not Chaz, you know.”
“It’s hard to tell,” she said, looking at him appraisingly. “I only met him once, but he is the reason I could come here. In many ways, he was you, and I think, in all the best ways, you are him. I think he was the bravest knight I’ve ever known.”
“So are you an apprentice Caretaker now, Hugo?” Charles asked, trying to change the subject before he blushed again. “Now that you know where all the bodies are buried, so to speak.”
Hugo frowned, then raised his eyebrows. “I rather expect I am, at that,” he said. “Do I get some sort of certificate or something?”
“Maybe we’ll get you a dragon watch,” John said, “as long as it’s exactly like the one Verne left for me.”
“What does it do?” asked Hugo.
“It tells me the time,” John replied, “and nothing else.”
“Oh, drat,” said Hugo.
At the tavern, Hugo and Rose went inside to secure a table in a private room, where the group could talk relatively undisturbed, while the Caretakers went to the back to retrieve the last member of the party.
They waited only a few seconds before the rope ladder dropped down from the ship hidden somewhere above in the fog. “Dratted ladders,” Bert grumbled as he climbed down from the very patient White Dragon. “We can build a ship that flies but can’t manage a way to get off it that doesn’t involve self-strangulation.”
“We’re already a bit late,” said John, “but we can spare a few minutes to unwind you, I think.”
“Remember,” Bert noted, half upside down, “in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Chaucer said that, I think.”
The companions laughed and helped their mentor untangle himself from the ropes. Jack was rather less animated than the others and acted as if he didn’t want to miss a second of conversation with the Far Traveler, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and marching him to the door of the tavern. Bert went in first, and Jack held the door for the others.
“Chaucer?” said John quizzically. “He must be mistaken. I’ve never read that quote.”
“You know,” Charles said to John, holding him back at the door, “it used to really intimidate me how frequently Bert could quote even the most obscure lines from great works of literature.”
“Yes,” John said with a smirk. “Jack does it too, and for the same reason—to show up his