A pole well wrapped with rope formed the centerpiece of Lorenzo's collection of parts and pieces. Lorenzo slid the pole down into his brackets, then topped it off with a ring of gigantic birchwood propeller blades. He checked the fit of the rotor assembly, then attached a pair of free-moving rings to the pole to act as handholds and a support for the passengers' feet.

"The principle is based on a flying sycamore seed." The artist began feeding excess rope off to one side. "The rope is wound about the drive shaft; a weight is dropped from a height, pulling on a rope, and the rope whips free, accelerating the rotor blades to high speed. Lift is produced; we stand on the lower ring and grip the upper while the shaft turns between us, and the whole assembly will fly up into the sky!"

"Brilliant!" Miliana was utterly impressed. "So we fly over the school walls?"

"And we'll then join Luccio in an escape-out through the city's river gate-to freedom."

Miliana watched Tekoriikii threading the pulley ropes and checking the fastenings one by one.

"So how do we drop a weight?"

"Aha! There we must trust to science once again!" Lorenzo rubbed his hands together with glee. "A feather fall spell is used to slow the descent of a falling body through the air. How does it achieve this? By reducing the specific mass of the target of the spell."

Miliana blinked. Lorenzo lectured on:

"Well, don't you see? A pound of feathers falls slower than a pound of iron, yes?"

"Um…" The girl felt a fallacy somewhere in the offing. "Well, yes, I suppose…"

"Right! So lighter objects must fall slower than heavier ones. The feather fall spell make objects lighter in order to slow their fall." Lorenzo made a proud gesture at Tekoriikii, who sat puffed like a canary beside the magnificent new flying machine. "We have with us the heaviest anvil in the kingdom-the perfect counterweight. All you do is throw the spell; Tekoriikii carries the weightless anvil up aloft across the walls and ties it tight to the rope. When the spell wears off, the anvil falls… and we have our motive thrust!"

The girl fixed Lorenzo with a heavy-lidded stare.

"You brought what with you?"

"An anvil! A gigantic anvil!" Lorenzo stuck his thumbs beneath his arms "A great big anvil we left just outside the gates…"

Miliana wearily hid her face inside her hands. Lorenzo bit his lip, and sensed that he had made a slight faux pas.

"Look… um… We invent a new type of acid that can tunnel through the school's wall-"

The girl hit him with her hat; it seemed the only thing to do.

At this juncture, the forces of the headmistress inevitably came racing back into the fray. Massed squads of teachers armed with rocks, meat cleavers, and school benches held like battering rams charged into the courtyard, whipping themselves into a lather of righteous rage.

A hundred enemies surged into the courtyard. Miliana and Lorenzo somehow shot up the marble punishment column, where they perched aloft like monkeys shaking fists at a storm. The tutors ignored the flying machine and instead tried climbing up each other's backs to reach their prey. Miliana stuck the point of her hat into one woman's eye and cursed angrily at Lorenzo's rear.

"Use your lightning sword! Knock them all out!"

"I only have one charge left!" Lorenzo brandished his rapier, parrying weapons left, right, and center. The whole column shuddered as battering rams struck against the base. "They'd all have to be wet-unless we can somehow convince them to all join hands?"

The column shook, and Miliana ended up perched upon Lorenzo's back like an ungainly crab.

"What do you mean you came here with only one power charge?"

"It isn't as simple as it looks!" Lorenzo unsuccessfully tried to remove Miliana's bare foot from his eye. "You have to attach copper cables to the two canine teeth of a sleeping blue dragon! Either that, or fly a kite up into a thunderstorm."

"I'll fly you up into a storm in a minute!" Miliana balanced on Lorenzo's back, desperately trying to find useful spells inside her hat. "Some damned rescue this turned out to be!"

Intrigued by all the action below, Tekoriikii fluttered down and perched on a gargoyle just above the yard. Miliana punched a teetering pyramid of singing tutors, watched the amateur athletes fall, then fixed upon Tekoriikii with panic in her eyes.

"Tekoriikii! Scream! You know-scream, like you did the other night!"

The bird made a "Krrrrrr" of curiosity and fixed Miliana with one golden eye. The girl dodged a passing stone and opened her arms out to the bird.

"That battle scream, you dodo! The one that knocked out all those men! Come on-get angry or something!"

The bird had no real inclination to hurt anyone. To his eyes, Miliana and Lorenzo seemed to be engaged in some sort of dance rather than a fight; each of his friends took it in turns to tread upon each other while gangs of snarling teachers shook the column back and forth. The bird ruffled out his feathers and creased his brows into a puzzled frown.

"A-all right, just sing a song, then! You know… like you do when you feel happy?" Miliana struck upon a sudden inspiration. "Your tail! How does it feel to have your lovely tail back?"

Tekoriikii drew a breath of excitement. He spread out his streaming tail feathers like a courtier's fan and shimmered them back and forth in glee. Filling his chest, the bird opened up his beak and caroled out a scintillating song of pride.

Lorenzo and Miliana ducked and blocked their ears; the teachers lacked the benefit of their victims' hard-won experience. With the shock front of a god-flung tidal wave, Tekoriikii's song swept clean across the open yard.

Tekoriikii's high notes loosened eyeballs in their skulls and cracked the marble facing all along the courtyard walls. The luckiest of the teaching staff simply fell from their half-built human pyramids and dropped unconscious to the ground. Those with greater stamina, but less native luck, managed to hear the second chorus before fainting clean away.

Uncorking his fingers from his ears, Lorenzo gazed about a scene taken from a hideous battlefield. A hundred women lay strewn in heaps about the cobblestones; some heaps stirring weakly as a semiconscious victim tried to knock her head against a wall. Tekoriikii settled into a magnificent sulk and turned himself away from his ungrateful audience.

Lying behind her troops was the headmistress-several hundredweight of iron-hard flesh. Lorenzo leapt down from the column and snatched up the rope which powered his flying machine.

"Excellent! We'll use her as a counterweight! Tekoriikii-come over here and help." The inventor and the firebird began trussing a rope beneath the gigantic woman's arms. "She'll hit the city dung pit; she'll be all right…"

Lorenzo pulled the last knot tight, laughing as he heard the sound of soldiers hammering at the bolted gates.

"Right! Now all we need is that feather fall spell-Miliana?"

He looked about, only to find the princess crawling about the courtyard on all fours; an empty pair of wire frames were clamped above her nose.

"My spectacles! He broke my curse-damned spectacles!" Miliana groped her hands in front of her, as blind as a mole. "That's the second pair he's done that to so far!"

The school doors shuddered as unseen soldiers tried to force their way in. Lorenzo heard the roar of male voices, and orders calling for battering rams and heavy crossbows.

"Miliana-the feather fall!"

"I can't read!" The girl snarled in ill temper, waving a hand across her eyes. "I'm blind as a bat without my spectacles!"

"But you can't read the language the spells are written in anyway!"

"I still need to visualize the symbols in my mind!" Miliana bumped herself into a wall. "Maybe someone has a telescope someplace?"