“Aren’t you worried about them? About whatever big magic they’ve got planned?”
Torville exhaled, and the blob of glop deflated. “What I have learned about Vivien and Elgin after all these years,” he said with care, “is that they can be postponed, hindered, deflected, and run away from, but they can’t be stopped. Not by me, even when I want to, and certainly not by you. All you can do is let them in and give them a nice party.” He looked out of the mirror with something like fondness or pity; Marigold wasn’t sure which. “If you’re lucky, you just might survive the night.”
For the next two days, Marigold worked harder than she’d ever been required to as a princess. She scrubbed the floors and polished all of Torville’s mismatched silver. She dusted cobwebs from the dining room rafters, swept dead beetles from the windowsills, and wiped away the thin layer of grime that had accumulated in the two weeks since Torville’s last dinner party. The grime was purplish and stank of magic. “Which is what happens when a person won’t use his own two legs to walk down a hallway,” Pettifog said, handing Marigold a fresh rag and a large bucket of vinegar. “The bathroom sink needs cleaning, too. And you’ll have to remind the toilet to keep its opinions to itself while we’ve got guests in the house.”
Marigold had tried to tell Collin that he didn’t have to stay at the fortress on her account, but he was starting to enjoy the idea of facing down a crowd of evil wizards. “I wonder if we’ll have to do battle with them in the middle of dinner,” he said, unloading the sacks of food Pettifog had brought home from the thieves’ market on the far side of the waste. “Don’t you think that would be exciting?”
“We’re supposed to entertain the wizards, not fight them,” Marigold reminded him. She watched as he pulled out an armload of things that looked like spiky pink lemons. “What are those?”
“I don’t have a clue,” said Collin. “The thieves must have stolen them out of someone’s field.” From the remaining sacks, he produced half a dozen hairy-bearded beets, an entire plucked turkey, and an enormous head of cauliflower. “Maybe we can find a way to repay the farmers for all of it. I’m sure they’d be grateful for the money.”
Pettifog, coming into the kitchen with a large bag of potatoes, clicked his tongue. “I hope you’re not planning to speak that way in front of our wicked guests,” he warned Collin. “And, Marigold, I hope you won’t do any more of that terrible yowling I heard this morning.”
Marigold had been trying a new exercise from Evil in Twenty-Three Minutes a Day. “I was vocalizing my spite!” she explained.
“Well, your spite sounds like an angry badger.” Pettifog handed her the potatoes. “For the sake of our ears, please don’t encourage it.”
All this time, Torville slid anxiously from side to side on his dinner plate while his mirror image paced back and forth across the reflected workroom. He became so annoyed at being left alone up there that the others eventually agreed to take him downstairs, and when Marigold set him next to a shiny silver platter, his reflection joined them, too. But this proved to be a mistake. The napkins hadn’t been washed properly, he announced, and the enchanted candlelight wasn’t green enough, and Marigold’s earnest attempt at dusting had displaced his favorite spider. “And the peach trees!” Torville’s reflection howled. “Why haven’t you cut them down yet?”
“We tried,” Marigold said glumly, “days ago. We think they’re uncuttable.”
“Then make them look wickeder. Pick all the fruits off and get the kitchen boy to bake some pies for dessert.”
Collin, who was busy wrestling the turkey into the oven, groaned when Marigold delivered him the first armload of peaches. “Can’t you take Torville away again?” he whispered. “I think we might be better off without him.”
Marigold agreed. So, to her surprise, did Pettifog, who was sore from Torville’s complaint about the napkins. Together, they carried Torville’s long mirror from the workroom to his bedroom, put Torville and his plate on the floor in front of it, and locked the door with Torville’s own key. “We’ll tell all the evil wizards that Torville is recovering in his room,” Pettifog said, pocketing the key, “and it will be perfectly true. Now come help me set the table. The guests will be here before long.”
The sun curved toward the wildwood, and the wizards arrived. Some came into the clearing on foot, while others appeared suddenly at the far edge of the moat, dusting traveling powder from their robes. There were wizards tall and short, round and reedy, young and old, from every cavern, marsh, and wasteland between the mountains and the sea. All of them looked terribly wicked.
From the kitchen window, Marigold watched them gather. For once, she wasn’t trying to look wicked at all: she wore the cleanest of Rosalind’s work dresses and had pulled her hair back, as the palace servants often did. Collin, keeping watch at the stove, had found an apron that was almost long enough to fit him. But Pettifog was resplendent in his second-best suit and a pocket square embroidered with delicate tongues of flame.
“Why aren’t the wizards coming in?” Marigold asked him. There were at least twenty of them by now — she thought she could see Elgin and Vivien lurking at the back of the crowd — but none of them made any attempt to cross the lowered drawbridge. “They can’t be worried about the Thing, can they?”
“They’re waiting for their elders,” said Pettifog. “Unlike certain princesses I could name, evil wizards know how to show respect. There, do you see?” He tapped a finger lightly on the window glass. “That’s the Twice-Times Witch.”
A very old woman in a carved wooden chair on wheels was making her way to the front of the group. At first Marigold thought the chair was moving of its own accord like a horseless carriage, but as it came closer to the fortress, she noticed two small, hunched imps walking behind it, pushing it forward. The woman in the chair pulled a shawl around her shoulders and nodded to the others, who bowed to her or moved aside to let her pass.
“That can’t be the Twice-Times Witch,” said Marigold, rubbing the window glass with a kitchen towel to get a cleaner view. “She’s not real, Pettifog! She’s only in storybooks.”
“She’s retired,” Pettifog corrected. “She hasn’t worked a public spell in at least two centuries, but she comes to Torville’s gatherings when her health allows it. So does Gentleman Northwinds, every now and then.” Pettifog pointed above the treetops. “It looks like he’ll be joining us tonight.”
In the light evening sky, Marigold could see the shape of a man in a long, billowing fur coat. The wind that seemed to be keeping him aloft had reached the fortress, too; the other wizards clutched their cloaks and hats, and little waves rippled along the moat. Slowly, grandly, as if he were making his way down a staircase without moving his feet an inch, Gentleman Northwinds descended from the sky. When his shoes alit on the ground by the drawbridge, the wind suddenly calmed, and all the billows went out of his coat.
“That’s how he usually arrives,” Pettifog remarked in a low voice. “A bit showy, if you ask me.”
Marigold didn’t even bother to protest that Gentleman Northwinds wasn’t supposed to exist, either. He was obviously real enough — and Marigold knew him. “I rode in his carriage!” she exclaimed to Pettifog. “He found me up in the mountains and brought me down to Blumontaine.”
Pettifog stared at her. “And you didn’t think to mention it?”
“I tried,” Marigold said, “but you were upset because I’d dumped you in the mud.” Outside, Gentleman Northwinds removed his top hat to bow to the Twice-Times Witch. “He told me a story about Torville, and he asked a lot of questions.”
“What kind of a story? What kinds of questions?” Pettifog wasn’t even bothering to watch the wizards anymore; his wings were quivering. “Polite questions? Friendly questions? Dull questions?”
Marigold wished they’d been dull. “He wanted to know,” she said, “if I’d noticed anything unusual about Torville. But I didn’t tell him anything!”
“I should hope not!” Pettifog cried. “He didn’t cross your path by accident, Princess. Gentleman Northwinds never lets anything happen by chance. What is he looking for? What should we do?”
“We should get in our places,” Collin called from across the room. “The wizards are crossing the drawbridge now.”
Still quivering, Pettifog made his way to the front door. It was his role, he’d explained earlier, to act as host in Torville’s absence. Marigold, stationed in the dining room, was supposed to pass around the plates of strawberries and cheese, pour the glasses of sparkling wine and the goblets of blackberry cordial, and, later on, help Collin serve the rest of the meal. “The wizards are likely to ignore you both,” Pettifog had told them, “as long as you’re cautious. Don’t leave your stations, don’t eavesdrop or sneak, and absolutely don’t engage anyone in conversation.” For once, Marigold had agreed to follow the rules, even though they sounded suspiciously similar to the rules of Imbervale Palace.
Now, from her spot against the dining room wall, Marigold could hear the guests arriving. There was the squeak of the Twice-Times Witch’s wheeled chair, the familiar notes of Gentleman Northwinds’ deep and charming voice murmuring something she couldn’t quite hear, and Pettifog welcoming them both very bravely, with only the slightest tremor in his words. Then the conversation grew to a rumble as the rest of the wizards pressed indoors. Their boots clomped, their cloaks flapped, and Pettifog announced in grave tones that Torville was still not free of his skin-crawling sickness and had taken to his bed. None of the wizards sounded particularly disappointed to hear this news. When they passed under the wide stone arch that led into the dining room, most of them were still cackling.
The hunched imps wheeled the Twice-Times Witch to a spot near the enchanted green fire, and Gentleman Northwinds took a seat by the tall, velvet-draped windows, but all the other wizards bustled about, clutching their goblets of cordial and shrieking with delight — at least Marigold hoped it was delight — at each of the twelve kinds of cheese. A wizard with long red hair that slithered in a snakelike braid down her back was asking a wizard with thorn-scratched arms about the best soil for growing poison vines; a younger wizard in glasses insisted on telling anyone who crossed his path about the journey he was planning to the demonic realms; and a group of older wizards traded tales about the spats they’d started, the romances they’d ruined, and the dreams they’d shredded to wisps. As Pettifog had predicted, none of them paid attention to Marigold. When she passed through the crowd with platters of strawberries, they helped themselves without a word of thanks. They strode into her path without warning, waved their billowing sleeves in her face, and only noticed her at all when they wanted to be rid of an empty glass or a soiled napkin.
“The wizards really are awful,” she told Collin as she brought an empty tray back to the kitchen. “I might as well be invisible to them! That short one in glasses splashed wine on my sleeve, and another one stepped on my toes.”
Collin began loading up the tray with the last of the strawberries. “I don’t know, Marigold,” he said. “They don’t sound much worse than the courtiers back at home.”
Marigold couldn’t imagine what he meant. “Of course they’re worse,” she said. “The wizards are wicked, and the courtiers are good!”
“Do you think no one in Imbervale ever steps on servants’ toes?” Collin looked really astonished. “It happens every day! And do you remember the time all the footmen were sick and I had to serve the soup at dinner? The third undersecretary spilled her bowl all over me, and then she shouted at me for making a mess.”
Marigold did remember how upset Collin had been that evening, although he’d never mentioned that one of her parents’ royal advisers had been to blame. He’d gotten an awful scolding from Cook. “But everyone in Imbervale is supposed to behave with decency,” she said. “Father is always saying so. No one should be allowed to treat you rudely!”
Collin shrugged and handed the tray back to Marigold. “That’s one reason I’ve got to be a hero,” he told her. “Heroes never get stepped on.”
