“Of course.”
The glance she cast him—he had experienced a great deal of her displeasure of late, but this time she was not angry or averse. Instead she looked . . . pained, almost.
“Are you all right? I promise you it is safe. You know I would never let any harm come to you and—”
“I’m fine.” She took the potion from him and drained it. “Why am I not a canary yet?”
He poured a vial of bright red powder into a glass of water. The water turned vermilion, then clear again. “You need to also drink this.”
She did. Then she glanced at the empty birdcage. “Is it going to be painful?”
“Yes.”
“You could have lied here, too.” She smiled slightly, not looking at him. “I’m ready.”
He pulled out his wand and pointed it at her. “Verte in avem.”
The transformation was sudden and wrenching. He knew it well, having gone through it five times. She flailed. He caught her. A moment later he was holding only a bundle of clothes.
A canary, chirping, almost wailing, streaked about the room, its wings flapping madly.
“Come to me, Fairfax.”
She flew straight into him. He barely caught her.
She lay still and stunned in his palms. He passed his fingers over her wings. “You did well, nothing broken. The first time I tried this, I gave myself a concussion and fractured my elbow.”
He placed her in the cage, atop layers of clean newspaper. “Rest for a few minutes, then we need to go.”
He went around the room gathering what he needed. She wobbled toward the water cup.
“Drink the water if you are thirsty, but do not eat anything from the feed cup. You may look like a bird, but you are not one. You cannot fly very well, and you most certainly cannot digest raw seeds.”
She dipped her beak into the water, drank, and hopped around a little more in her cage.
The door of the cage was still open. He held out his hand. “Come here.”
Her little bird head cocked to one side, looking almost as suspicious as her human self. But she hopped onto his palm. He raised her to his lips and kissed the top of her downy head.
“It will be you and me against the world, Fairfax,” he murmured. “You and me.”
Dalbert was on time, as always.
“Your Highness.” Dalbert bowed from the waist.
He held open the door of the private rail coach. Titus nodded, gave his satchel to the valet, and mounted the steps into the coach with the birdcage in his hand.
Dalbert brought Titus a glass of hippocras and tipped some waterose seeds into Fairfax’s feed cup.
“Hullo there, Miss Buttercup.”
Titus watched her. She dipped her beak into the feed cup and took out a seed. But when Dalbert had smiled in satisfaction and turned to putter elsewhere in the coach, she dropped the seed back into the feed cup.
Titus breathed again. All the literature had insisted that a mage in a transmogrified state clearly understands language and instructions, but this was the first time he had been able to test the claim for himself.
The train’s whistle shrieked. Its wheels ground against the tracks. They were on their way.
They remained on the rails for only a few minutes. The prince used the time to throw on a tunic and change into a pair of knee-high boots. Then Iolanthe was no longer looking at the English countryside, but at distant mountain peaks.
Which turned out not to be real mountain peaks, but a large mural that adorned the circular room in which the private rail coach now stood.
The prince rose from his seat. In her current size, he appeared immense, his hand the size of a door. He lifted her cage and alit, followed by his manservant.
A set of heavy, tall double doors swung open. She’d anticipated a great room of some sort on the other side, but it was only the stairwell, lit by sconces that emitted a remarkably pure white light.
They descended a long flight of circular stairs—the rail coach was parked at the top of a tower. Another set of doors opened, and they walked down a wide corridor with open arches, looking out to a garden terrace that hung several hundred feet above the courtyard below.
The corridor turned, split, turned again. Now there were attendants everywhere, bowing and scraping as the prince walked by. They went up a few steps, passed a library, an indoor garden with a sculpture fountain in the middle, and a large aviary filled with birds of all descriptions.