“Trouble?” the plumper of the two asked, then she chuckled. “Young man, you can’t even begin to imagine the trouble we’ve had; could he, sister.”
Her companion snorted in derision, then sipped from her teacup.
“However,” the first continued, “we are well cared for, and certainly not stranded, but we do thank you for your concern. Perhaps you will join us for some tea?”
At first Willis declined, but the lady said, “Surely the others can set up the camp without your help, can they not?”
“Well—” Willis began.
“Even a king’s Black Shield is permitted a tea break now and then, hmm? Sit down, young man. We cannot imagine what brings you all to be here along the Kingway, but it is propitious, isn’t it sister.”
The thin one nodded. “An unexpected opportunity.”
The way Willis cocked his head, Amberhill could tell he was too intrigued now to refuse. With a slight bow to the ladies, he took a chair that appeared to be waiting just for him.
“And you, too,” the thin one said, pointing her cane right at Amberhill.
“Oh, yes,” the plump one said. “Come, young man, sit with us.”
At first Amberhill was too startled to move, but he set his gear on the ground and sat next to Willis. The sisters poured tea and passed around scones, and introduced themselves. They called themselves Penelope and Isabelle Berry, or Miss Bunch and Miss Bay, respectively. They carried on the conversation quite well by themselves, speaking of the winter to come, their sudden need to move, and the rough paths they had to travel by.
Amberhill found himself quite under their spell, feeling as though he were in some manor house’s parlor rather than out in the elements sitting before a campfire. By Willis’ transfixed expression, he could tell the Weapon was quite taken, too.
“How, may I ask,” said Willis, “did you find yourselves on the road?”
“You may ask,” Miss Bay said, “but it is an unusual story and the source of great woe.”
Miss Bunch nodded fervently. “It began with a sneak thief that in our poor judgment we allowed into our home.”
The clatter and voices of Weapons setting up camp fell away as the sisters told an incredible story of how the thief, whom they thought a hunter lost in the woods, was caught stealing a book from their father’s library by a servant named Letitia, and in his struggle to escape, he broke one of their father’s “things.”
“An arcane object,” Miss Bay said. “Do you understand?”
Willis nodded slowly, his eyebrows drawn together. Amberhill didn’t think the Weapon had taken more than one sip of his tea once the ladies began their tale.
“That’s when it happened,” Miss Bunch said. “That’s when our lovely house, built by our father for our dear mother, was destroyed.”
Both sisters appeared on the verge of tears.
“How?” Willis asked.
“Well, it was the pirate ship, of course,” Miss Bay replied tartly.
“Pirate ship?”
“Nasty pirates.”
Miss Bay then described, with comments inserted by her sister, how the sea rose in their house despite its location far from the coast, and flooded it and poured out the windows, and how the ship materialized to full size inside the house, destroying it utterly.
“Not a chimney left standing!” said Miss Bunch with a mournful sniff. “It will be a long while before the house mends itself.”
“If it can, sister,” Miss Bay said. “It isn’t like the simple leak we had in the west gable roof last spring.”
“True, but I have faith. I must.”
A silence passed before Miss Bay said, “We had to hide from the pirates. We hid and hid. They would not have been in the bottle in the first place had they not been very bad.”
“Bottle?” Willis’ voice cracked as he asked the question.
“Why, yes,” Miss Bay said. “Weren’t you listening? We said it was an arcane object. Really, I thought the Black Shields grasped such concepts.”
“I—”
“In any case, young man,” Miss Bunch interrupted, “you will want to warn the king that pirates now infest his forest. This is why we are glad we met you, so you could warn the king.”
“Nasty pirates,” Miss Bay reemphasized.
“We don’t know how many, do we, Bay?” Miss Bunch said, and her sister shook her head.
If Amberhill had not slain the pirates himself, he’d have thought the two sisters seriously mad. He twisted the blood ruby ring on his finger.
“Pirates…” poor Willis muttered.
“Is he dense?” Miss Bay asked Amberhill.
“No, my lady,” he replied. “But I think you need not worry about the pirates anymore.”
Willis glanced sharply at him, and the ladies turned intent gazes on him.
“Is that so?” Miss Bunch asked.
“Look at the ring,” Miss Bay whispered, pointing.
Amberhill raised it into the light so they could get a better look at it. The fire made the ruby glow with red and orange flames, the dragon seeming to slither around his finger. He covered the ring with his other hand, withdrew it from the light.
The sisters stared at one another, then turned their gazes back on him.
“There are oddments of jewelry,” Miss Bunch began.
“And then,” her sister continued, “there are objects that take some responsibility to own.”