"You have asked, colleague, why you are here. The answer is simple. I have asked you to come in the interest of our mutual advancement. It is high time that we men of potential moved our sights beyond the bounds of a single city's walls."

In the darkness beside them, the black hippogriff gave a sharp hiss of desire. Behind her, the moon rose across the killing grounds and stained the dry grass with lifeless gray.

"Tekorii-kii-kii!

"Tekorii-kii-kii!"

Miliana looked up from her books and charts, smiling as she saw the great long neck dangling down from the hole in the bathroom ceiling. Tekoriikii's giddy, crested head announced itself with pride.

"Tekorii-kii-kii!"

"Well, hello!" Miliana closed her books and leaned upon her elbow to regard the bird. "Where have you been?"

"Glub glub!"

The bird jumped down through the broken ceiling in a swirl of feathers and landed on the blue-tiled floor. Thus far Miliana had kept the portal secret by ruthlessly chasing all maids and servants away from her room; a ruse that would only work until Lady Ulia freed herself from the distractions offered by the Festival of Blades.

Tekoriikii warbled happily and marched himself into Miliana's study room. The bird walked with a rolling seaman's gait, trailing a vast mass of gorgeous orange tail behind it. Silly plumes above his head bobbed and nodded as he walked, waggling like a gaudy helmet comb as he ducked his head about in avian curiosity. He sidled over to Miliana, cocked an eye at her books, and offered her a delighted smile.

Miliana unwrapped a rock-hard salted ship's biscuit, peering warmly at her guest.

"Did you eat? Here's something for dinner, if you want it. Just as a warning-don't eat any of the palace rats. They smell like cherries, but they're behaving very, very strangely…"

The bird extended a genteel foot and fastened it about the biscuit. Tekoriikii gnawed the tidbit with an air of concentration, keeping one golden yellow eye on Miliana's face.

Miliana ruffled her scrolls and settled the toadskin sheets back into order.

"You've been very quiet up there. Were you asleep, or did you go off for a flight?"

Aaaaah! Tekoriikii instantly launched into an attempt to relate his evening's adventures. The bird danced high, the bird danced low-he gaped his beak and wobbled his backside up and down as though it came equipped with springs. A slap on his chest and a proud puff of feathers ended his announcement, and the firebird clucked his tongue and let smug self-satisfaction shine like fire in his eyes.

Miliana adjusted her spectacles across her freckled nose.

"No… I didn't quite catch that. Actually, languages don't really seem to be my strong point." The girl scowled in concentration. "I will keep trying, though. See here? I think I've managed to assign sounds to the first three ideographs on page seventeen…"

The princess had been hard at work over her puzzling collection of toadskin scrolls. Tekoriikii helpfully came over to inspect the results of her day's labor, darting his head erratically this way and that as he examined the pages with their absurd calligraphy and diagrams. Miliana spread the pages open for him, pleased to at last have someone with whom to discuss her ideas.

"It's not orcish, and it's not elven. It looks like a southern language-sort of an early dialect of Akalan, maybe-but it isn't." The girl paused, then waved a finger over the cryptic texts. "I'm trying to turn them all into something I can understand. Some of them are magic chants, but others are mental images I have to frame in my mind if I'm going to cast the spell… maybe spell ingredients, or possibly phases of the moon…" Miliana flipped a clammy page of her collection and gave a frustrated sigh. "I just can't find the key! I have to stare and stare at a page for hours and hours. Sometimes I seem to understand, and sometimes I just can't."

"Glub glub?" The bird flipped a toadskin over with his beak, scanning the page beneath. "Onk honk?"

"No, I thought of that. If I hired someone to cast a spell which would allow me to understand the scrolls, he'd tell my father. There's nothing for it but to break the code myself."

Tekoriikii coiled his head back on his neck to look the girl in the face with his astonishing golden eyes.

"Krrrrrrrk?" Wings wagged, and a foot spread its toes into a complex little sign. "Grook awk?"

"Well, yes-if they find out I'm doing it, it's all over. They'll burn the books and toss me out to some finishing school somewhere; no more Miliana." The girl hissed a sharp sigh for the injustices of her world. She then brightened up, pulled out her pointiest of hats, and held it open to the bird.

"Aaaah-but see? Even in finishing school, I'd still bring my pointy hat! So what I'm doing is copying the scrolls in miniature and hiding them inside the hat lining. You see? Always anticipate disaster, birdie my friend. That's what makes a great thinker a great thinker!"

It had been a long, frustrating evening of close-written work. Miliana reached fingers under the frames of her spectacles and wearily rubbed her eyes. Stifling a yawn, she leaned back in her chair and absently scratched the warm, soft feathers of the giant bird.

"Ooooort ooor! Ooooort ooor!"

Proud, pleased, and pampered, Tekoriikii began a song-a melody that started like the nighttime murmur of priceless, winsome hummingbirds, then changed into something reminiscent of a live narwhal being fed backward through a sausage machine. The awful row set bats starting up out of the eaves, caused nearby flowers to wilt, and set guard dogs howling for miles around. Feeling her hair loosen at the roots, Miliana gave a squawk of panic and frantically clamped the bird's beak shut with her hands. Tekoriikii's throat pouch bulged, and his eyes almost burst out of his head.

"Miliaaaa-naaaaaa! Miliana, what's that noise?"

The imperious summons cut through solid stone to stick right into Miliana's heart. Tekoriikii flattened himself against a wall, his chest panting and his eyes mad with fear-the usual reaction to one's first encounter with Lady Ulia's voice. Miliana sped to the door and frantically ran her eyes across the room.

The door pounded to a hammering fist.

"Miliana! Miliana! Open up this door and speak to me at once!"

Tekoriikii began to flap madly about the room, rebounding off the ceiling, cupboards, walls and floors in panic as Ulia's voice pealed through the air. Miliana stuffed her toadskin scrolls inside her pointy hat; then helplessly tried to latch her hands onto the bird.

"Tekorii-kii-kii! Tekorii-kii-kii!"

"Miliana! Miliana, what's that sound?"

The princess managed to grab Tekoriikii's yellow feet and anchor him to the floor. Her clothing whipped backward in the breeze of frantic wings.

"It's-it's just me looking for clothes!"

"Clothes? What do you mean clothes?"

"I can't open the door!" Miliana hurtled her arms around Tekoriikii and wrestled his writhing bulk to the ground. "I-I'm unsuitably dressed!"

"Not dressed? Sooth, girl! I am your stepmother, not your sweetheart!" Ulia's fist pounded at the door until the tower foundations began to quake. "Now open this door!"

Miliana stuffed the firebird under the covers of her bed and pathetically tried to smooth the blankets down. It was a little like hiding a landshark in a china teacup. Backing frantically toward the door, the girl tried to motion Tekoriikii to stay hidden, then whirled about and ripped open the door locks.

"Ulia! Stepmother, what a surprise to find you up at this late hour."

"And when can I be expected to sleep?" Ulia sniffed in indignation. "The palace has over thirty guests. Thirty!" Pulling up her hems to reveal ankles like oak trunks, Lady Ulia Mannicci stepped across the threshold. "This festival shall be the death of me yet. Now, what was all this chaos and cacophony I heard from the corridor just now?"