Heroic Hearts

LITTLE THINGS by Jim Butcher

My name is Major General Toot-Toot Minimus, sprite in service to Sir Harry Dresden, Knight of the Winter Court and Wizard of Chicago, and captain of his personal guard. When the skies darken with smoke and ash, when wails of wrong and woe rend the night, when my lord goes to war with titans and unspeakable horrors from Outside of reality, someone must protect him from threats too small to readily discern.

That is my place: not at my lord’s side, but at his ankles.

In the days since my lord had defeated a mad goddess in single combat and claimed his Castle as reward, pizza deliveries had been spotty. The troops had begun to express concern. They had, after all, fought for their right to pizza. Castle stores of inferior frozen stuff could only last so long.

There was a dark mortal entity my lord called a conomee. The conomee was very bad, because of all the rubble and the blocked streets after the Battle. Battles make conomees that were once good very bad. Now the bad conomee was preventing pizza from being delivered.

It was a matter of grave concern.

The troops talked in fearful whispers about the conomee all of the time.

“My lord,” I said politely. “The troops are worried about the conomee again.”

My lord opened one of his eyes and blew out a little breath from between his lips. He had been sitting on a pillow on the floor doing absolutely nothing, which was why I had picked this moment to speak to him. His hair was mussy. There were circles under his eyes. He wore a cast on one arm and had an ankle wrapped so heavily that it was almost as big.

“Toot,” he said in a bleary voice. “I am meditating.”

He hadn’t been doing anything at all when I spoke to him, so he must have meant some other time. “When?” I asked.

He bowed his head forward sharply and sighed. Then he looked up at me and gave me a tired smile. “Shall we go put a couple of pizzas in the oven?”

“That would ease tensions greatly,” I told him in my most serious voice. It was good to be very serious when bringing matters to my lord, so that he knew I would not bother him with trivial things.

“Give me a second,” he said. I waited for practically forever while he unfolded himself from where he’d been sitting and clambered slowly to his feet.

My lord did not look well. Death had come for his lady during the Battle. At night, he would shut the world away from his chambers, and though he would sleep for hours and hours he never seemed rested. He moved as though the weight of an ocean pressed down on his shoulders.

“Right,” he said in a rough voice a moment later. “To the kitchen.” There was a rustling sound behind him. A second later, a large, gray, bobtailed tomcat named Mister brushed past his ankles, apparently in an attempt to trip him. My lord absorbed the assault with the reflexes of long practice and started walking. He stumped slowly through the hallways of the Castle, down to the kitchens in the first basement.

I did not like the kitchens. Everything was made of the Bane, which seemed completely unnecessary. Couldn’t they have made it out of plastic? My lord assured me that the Bane helped keep mortals safe from illness, but I did not see how. One of the mortal refugees who was residing in the guest quarters of the Castle had left a little cloth catnip mouse out for Mister, who had become the mascot of everyone staying in the Castle. He received all the petting he wished, from which he always seemed smug. The old tomcat pounced upon the mouse happily and began batting it methodically around the large kitchen floor.

My lord tightened the belt of his robe, shivering a little against the Castle’s cold as he started the ovens and walked into the freezer to emerge with a pair of frozen pizzas. He hit the switch on a battered, ancient-looking box, and very fancy-sounding human music came out of it, all crackly, like it was on the other side of a large fire.

It is not my place to judge why my lord likes his music crackly. He is a wizard. They’re weird.

He waited until the ovens were warm and then slid both pizzas in and twisted a little plastic dial on a plastic box and it started ticking.

Then he put his face in his hands, hunched his shoulders, and was silent.

I wanted to offer him comfort. I think that was the right thing to do. But I’d only been aware of death for a little while. It wasn’t a topic I could really discuss with any of my friends among the Little People. Death was not a topic they could really think about, which made conversations about it difficult. Death wasn’t a part of the Little People’s world.

Just mine.

My lord had lost his lady. And I knew that made him sad. But I didn’t think I understood all the reasons why. I didn’t know how to comfort a friend who was hurting like he was. I hadn’t ever hurt like that, myself. When the other Little People tried to cheer me up, sometimes it hurt on the inside. I didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing and hurt my lord’s feelings even more by mistake.

Death is really complicated.

There was a soft buzz of wings, and my love Lacuna landed beside me. She was wearing her traveling armor, which was all black leather, and her dark hair was trailing behind her in a braid as long as she was. Her wings looked very pretty. Of the Little People she was one of the few who were as tall as me. She fought ferociously, and I had some scars to prove it.

“Hello, lickspittle of my dreadful captor,” Lacuna said in her dreamy monotone. She wasn’t shouting, so my lord probably wasn’t going to hear her unless he was paying special attention. “Once again, I present myself to you for humiliation.”

“You think even pizza is humiliating, my love,” I said.

She folded her arms and hunched her shoulders. “The pizza of a captive is little better than death. And it isn’t good for your teeth.”

“You lost fair and square and got capturated!” I told her. “Those were the rules!”

“I am bound to serve your lord, as he defeated my lord,” Lacuna replied in a dark tone. “I must serve. I need not like it.”

Biggun footsteps came down the hall, and Sir William, who served my lord, poked his head into the kitchen. Sir William was not tall for a human, but looked very square and strong, as if he would be able to hold up the corner of the Castle if that block there failed.

“Harry?” Will called. “Oh, hey.”

My lord mopped his hands over his face and looked up. His face was red, especially his nose and eyes. “Will.”

“The Velasquezes’ little girl is out of the hospital,” Will said. “They’re bringing her back here tonight.”

A faint smile touched my lord’s face. “Oh, thank God. Fever broke?”

Sir William nodded, returning the smile. “After Michael Carpenter visited.”

Dark creases appeared in the skin at the corner of my lord’s eyes for a moment. “Well, obviously.” He raised his voice. “Bob?”

For a second, nothing happened. Then a point of blue light appeared and flickered within the stone of the Castle’s walls, as if the solid rock had become translucent. A voice emanated from the stone, piping, “Here, boss!”

Mister flew across the kitchen floor, bounded upon a counter with a grace that belied his years, and pounced upon the blue light in the wall, paws flailing.

“Ack!” Bob said. “Harry! This isn’t respectful!”

My lord gathered Mister up into his arms, and the big cat purred for a moment before flowing down to the floor again. “Bob, make sure the temperature in the Velasquezes’ quarters stays warm and regulated tonight,” he said. “Last thing I want is to get her back together with her parents and then have her take a chill and get sick again.”

“Will do!” Bob the Castle answered, and the light vanished.

Mister looked about the kitchen for a moment, evidently hoping for the light to return, then flicked his stub of a tail and ambled away in disappointment.

“And actually there’s the kitchen budget to go over,” Will said. He held up a clipboard covered with the sheets of floppy wood that the humans love so much.

“Hell’s bells,” my lord said.

“I know, I know,” Sir William said, “but there are thirty to fifty people eating here every meal, everything is spotty on deliveries, and prices are getting weird. It’s gotta get done.”

My lord checked the kitchen timer, nodded, and said, “I have a few minutes. Major General, I’ll be back before the pizza is done and we’ll take it up to the roof.”

I saluted crisply. “Yes, my lord. I will guard the kitchen.”

My lord and his castellan walked away on vital business beyond the ken of mere soldiers like me, their huge footsteps and low voices lingering long, long after they had passed.

“And now we wait to poison ourselves with pizza,” Lacuna said in her flat, adorable way.

“Nonsense!” I replied. “It is my lord who poisons us!”

Mister batted his catnip mouse across the room and romped after it gamely. Lacuna and I had to flutter out of his way or risk injury. Though we had grown quite large, Mister was yet mighty and fell.

It was only after the buzz of our wings had faded that I heard the villains breach the Castle.

There was a distant, faint, but weirdly piercing hissing sound, a crackling, like bacon on a stove over a fire, and it chewed at the insides of my ears like tiny bugs running around in there. We had only been staying all night in the Castle for two weeks (and my lord said that’s why it was called a fortnight!) but I had heard the enchanted stones of the Castle react in anger to invaders before.

Lacuna’s head snapped around at the same time as mine—as did Mister’s. The big tomcat let out a low, mewling growl, and his gray fur rose.

“We are under attack!” I cried. “The pizza must be guarded!”

Lacuna’s blade whispered as it slithered free of its sheath. “Of course, the pizza must be guarded,” she snapped affectionately. “I am without armor. You must be the vanguard. I will remain here.”

“Aye, my love! Castle Bob!” I thundered.

A blue light that was a whole lot blurrier than when Harry had called it appeared. “Uh, what? Oh, hey, it’s, uh . . . what’s his name. That little guy that kept getting bigger. What’s up, kid?”

“We are under attack!” I cried.

The blue light flickered more brightly for a moment, but then the voice said, “I am sure that’s a bunch of hooey.”

“Hooey!” I said, shocked. I was a Major General and the captain of the Za-Lord’s Guard, after all. “You’re hooey!”

“Kid, the defenses on this place are almost as thick as the island’s. Nothing can get in here without me knowing it. Are you sure you’re not just overly excited? Did you guys get into the Froot Loops again?”

“That was but once only!” I protested. “My lord must be warned!”

“Your lord must not be interrupted,” Bob the Castle replied in a very smug and superior voice that I did not like even the smallest little bit. “He has important Wizard of Chicago stuff going on. Budget meetings.”

I did not know what manner of monster a budget was, or how it might best be dispatched in order to free my lord’s attention, but the hairs on my neck rose and my thumbs prickled until I was almost beside myself—the enemy was nigh.

“The enemy is nigh!” I shouted. “Can you not hear the sound?”

Mister came hurtling across the floor and pounced ferociously upon the blue light.

“Gah!” it said. “I don’t have enough to do running this place, with sprites and cats trying to humiliate me every time I turn around!”

“Useless spirit!” I cursed him, drew my sword, and leapt into the air.

I drew the whistle I used to coordinate the movements of my lord’s Guard and started piping on it as hard as I could. It would be useless to alert any of the humans, since their ears were just too stupid to hear it, but any of my people would, and would come flying.

The Castle had been built for defense from the ground up. There were no staircases that stretched longer than a single floor. Invaders would have to take one staircase, fight their way the length of the Castle to the next, and so on. I shot down darkened corridors and up close-fit spiral staircases to the passage to the roof—and found it occupied by the enemy.

I had but an instant’s warning before a shower of darts slithered through the air I would have been flying in, if I hadn’t moved, and something greenish and covered in warty scales flew toward me. I banked and struck with all the power I could put behind my sword and felt the blade bite deep. There was a buzzy shriek, and the creature fell away from me.

“Taste steel, villain!” I howled, dodged more flung darts, and landed on the shoulder of a suit of armor, careful to avoid touching the Bane with my flesh, and took stock of the situation while crouched behind the helmet.

A carpet of creatures the size of sewer rats poured down the staircase from the roof. They were all of the same general caste but varied from one to the next—humanoids, covered in that leathery greenish skin, with flopping ears and oversized hands and feet. The features were exaggerated to various degrees of ridiculousness, but each one of them had the same sharp, vicious teeth, and the same sickly golden reptilian eyes. They wore armor, much as my Guard did, carried weapons and equipment—and I knew them, as they were an ancient foe of my folk.

“Gremlins most foul!” I shouted.

There was a thud as a larger form descended from the roof, this one nearly my size. He stood slowly, a gremlin larger and haler than the others, with but one eye and the other gone in a horrible mass of scars. Scar Eye gripped a human hatchet in both hands, and his cold gaze rose to meet mine.

“Pix,” he said, in a voice made of ground asphalt and living beehives. “We have no need to do battle with your ilk. Stand aside.”

“Foul gremlin, begone!” I shouted, pointing my sword at him. “You violate the rightfully won lands of my lord Dresden!”

The word rang with Power, and we were within his demesne. The gremlin flinched and snarled at the mention of my lord’s name, before staring back at me with slowly growing, gleeful spite. “Then we do need to do battle. Ilk.”

“You’re an ilk!” I shouted furiously.

Four very large gremlins plunged down the stairs carrying a bulky package between them. It had rectangles connected to a small jug of liquid connected to spiraling wires connected to a round circle that went tick tick tick.

I felt my eyes open very wide.

That was a mortal device. I saw them on televisions and movies. Those were things that went boom.

Scar Eye looked from me to the boom device and back, his teeth showing even more in a slow, evil smile. “Kill the pix.”

Gremlins howled like rabid beasts suddenly freed from cages and a cloud of spears flew at me. I dove away from my position on the suit of armor, spears clattering against the Bane behind me. Scar Eye waited for me to move, then seized a spear from one of his lackeys and flung it hard and true at the spot I would have been in if I hadn’t been looking for the attack. Instead, I slapped the spear aside with my blade, spread my wings, caught myself just before hitting the floor, and darted down the hall with a small army of gremlins howling on my heels.

“Major General!” shouted a friendly voice.

I looked up to see Bluenose and Wobbleshanks in their dark, oil-slick-colored armor, spears in hand, wings a blur as they flew to my support and fell into formation on my flanks.

“We must slow the enemy and gather the Guard!” I shouted to them.

“Aye-aye, General!” Bluenose shouted. “The tapestry, sir!”

“The tapestry!” I shouted. “Come on!”

One of the humans standing guard during the night walked by in a cross hallway as we zipped toward him. I shouted at him—but like bigguns always do, he didn’t notice. Shouting pixies, howling gremlins, death and doom hurtling down the hallways of the Castle—and the big stupid human doesn’t even notice.

Sometimes it’s like we have to hit you people with a rock just to get you to realize we’re standing there.

We darted down the hallways toward the Great Hall, where workers had hung tapestries everywhere while they repaired a hole in the ceiling. The tapestries were of terrible quality, as they were simply blank canvas, and I felt that such artisanry was not to the standards of my lord, but for the purposes of the Guard, quantity was a quality all its own.

By then two dozen of the Guard had responded to my whistle, and as we soared into the hall, almost everyone was ready. I gave swift orders. The Guard split into teams of four, each seizing one of the large canvas tapestries, a weight that our wings could just barely manage, and my team led the way as we labored back toward the enemy.

We caught them at the bottom of the stairs from the top floor.

“Za-Lord’s Guard!” I shouted. “Follow me!”

Down we swept toward the foe, and as we did, we changed grip on the rolled tapestry, let it unfurl—and then dropped it like a massive net upon the gremlins. Down fell the blank tapestry, clunky and flapping, and dropped over a dozen of the enemy.

The other teams dove down as well, canvas falling everywhere, and Scar Eye howled his rage as his troops were bogged down.

“Blades!” I shouted.

Swords sprang from sheaths and spears whirled to couch as a double dozen of my folk shouted their defiance at the enemy.

“Dive!” I screamed, and led the way down toward the foe.

Gremlins are naturally wicked just as my own folk are naturally curious. They’re tough, clever, vicious, practical—and relentless. Their armored hide makes them very tough to kill. Dark cousins of breeds like the cobbler gnomes, they shared those folks’ cleverness with their hands but continuously turned their talents to mischief and destruction. Crude but sharp and effective blades appeared among them, and the foe began to cut their way free of the tapestries.

We met them with our svartalf-made faemetal blades as they struggled to free themselves, and their pig iron could not withstand us. The foe outnumbered us three to one—but their three were stuck under big dumb tapestries and our one just started stabbing them right through the cloth.

We couldn’t get them all—they were too tough to die fast enough. But we cut the numbers down to something like only two-to-one, just as Scar Eye emerged from beneath the corner of a tapestry and smashed Redcullen out of the air with his mortal hatchet, sending the Guardsman to a broken heap on the floor.

I screamed and threw myself at Scar Eye. He got the hatchet up in time to stop me from changing his name to No-Eyes, but I marked his cheek for him and drew blood from one of his forearms, and if two of his no-good cheating buddies hadn’t gotten in the way, I might have finished him before he could recover his balance.

Then two more gremlins joined the first pair, and I was pressed too closely to fly and fighting for my life as gremlin weapons, made of the Bane, hammered at me, their sickly cold aura making my flesh recoil even when my armor stopped the blows, weakening my limbs and making them shake.

For a moment, things looked very bad. Then Bluenose was there, a sprite whose head came most of the way up my shoulder, his spear darting, and bought me a breath. I used it for all it was worth—whipped the flapping ear off one gremlin with my blade, kicked another in its gangly neck, and seized a third by its inordinately long and pointed nose and threw it to the ground, where Bluenose ran his spear through it. Then we turned together and went to the aid of the nearest member of the Guard who was embattled.

“Wait!” I shouted. “Where is Scar Eye and the boom?”

“What?” asked Bluenose, as if we were not standing in a fight with ancient foes.

“The boom!” I shouted. “It’s going to boom the Castle!”

Bluenose blinked once. Then he said, “But not the pizza!”

A gremlin blindsided Bluenose and tackled him to the ground, sending Bluenose’s spear flying.

“Loo-Tender!” I shouted, and tossed my sword.

Bluenose seized my weapon out of the air, drove it into the gremlin’s thigh, and twisted. The creature screamed and rolled away and Bluenose came to his feet fighting.

The battle was desperate. My people were fighting hard, but the odds against them were rising as more gremlins emerged from their temporary prisons. I didn’t have time to explain everything to everyone. Right now, Scar Eye and the boom were somewhere I couldn’t see, planning to do something bad. I had to stop them.

“Fight them, Loo-Tender!” I shouted. “Their leader fled! I’m after him!”

“Take him, sir!” Bluenose shouted, shattering a Bane-made sword with my blade. He cut down his foe, laughed heartily, and began to sing, and all the Guard nearby began to join him.

I stepped over a fallen gremlin, seized its crude spear, and took to the air, searching for any sign of Scar Eye and the boom. A spark down at the far end of the hallway showed me Scar Eye’s swollen-knuckled hand dragging the mortal hatchet along the floor behind him, and I zipped off after them.

Gremlins are ugly, dirty, violent, cruel, mean, and vicious, but also quick and quiet, even for Little Folk. By the time I’d reached the corner, they were already at the bottom of the stairs beyond—and Scar Eye’s fangs flashed in a crocodile’s smile as he smashed closed the heavy oak door at the stairs’ bottom almost perfectly in time to make me break out all my teeth on it.

I swerved and curled into a ball at the last second to take the impact on my shoulders, bounced off the door, and collapsed to the ground. It took me a moment to gather myself and stagger to my feet. My wings were stunned. I had to jump up to grab the doorknob and wrestle the thing open, then start running forward on my slow, stupid legs like some slow, stupid biggun.

I ran anyway, jumping and thrumming my wings as much as I could get them to move, helping me take long steps like in those Hong Kong movies, but it was all I could do to stay on the gremlins’ trail, descending through the Castle on the most rapid path to the basement.

I caught up to them in the kitchens, and only as I came through the doors did my wings beat true again, and I zipped up to near the ceiling to observe.

The four large gremlins bearing the boom were rushing toward . . .

Mab’s frozen boogers.

They were rushing toward the pizza ovens.

Suddenly I saw their plan. The ovens were full of gas that could burn. The boom would go boom and then the Castle would burn, collapsing down into its own guts.

And it would kill everyone inside.

I felt my tummy get cold. Because that wouldn’t be a little death, the kind of death that my people hardly noticed. That would be a great big death, the ones I could see now. It would make endings where stories were supposed to be happening.

I gripped my captured spear, clenched my jaw, and prepared to dive on the gremlins with the boom.

“Not so fast, pix!” growled Scar Eye in his horrible buzzing voice.

I whirled to see the gremlin standing on one of the Bane-made tables, grasping the mortal hatchet in one hand.

His other hand was knotted into a fist with Lacuna’s dark braid wrapped around it. Even as my eyes widened, he swept the edge of the hatchet toward her throat—stopping only when she flinched back from the touch of the Bane and let out a harsh scream.

“Villain!” I shouted. “You let her go!”

“Here is what happens, pix,” Scar Eye said. “You land, drop your weapons, and come with us. Once we’re outside, I’ll let your man go.”

“Oh!” Lacuna said indignantly, her dark eyes flashing as she looked at me. “Oh, did you hear what he said?”

“Do not fear, my love!” I declared. “I will save the day!”

Scar Eye growled and leaned in toward Lacuna a little more. I heard the sizzle as the Bane touched her skin and she let out a thin peal of pain.

I whirled in a circle, searching for options. The four gremlins with the boom slapped it against the side of the pizza ovens and twisted a dial. The boom started making tick tick tick noises, which was what booms did on television just before they went boom. Those four were very large and tough-looking warriors, heavy with scars. I mean, as dumb as gremlins are, with that many scars they had to have learned something somewhere.

“Now!” Scar Eye said. “Or I kill him!”

“No!” I said. I dropped the spear and it clattered to the ground. “Wait!” I zipped down to the table, my hands raised. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Hah,” Scar Eye said. “What I thought. Stupid pix.” He kicked a coil of leather cord over to me. “Now tie your legs.”

I bent over slowly and picked up the cord, trying to think. This situation was bad. The boom kept going tick tick tick. The other four big gremlins leapt up onto the table, surrounding me.

Kringle’s merry balls, that pizza smelled good. Even the gremlins were noticing that. One of them with extra large rubbery lips eyed the oven and licked them.

“Do it, pix,” Scar Eye almost purred. “It’s over. You lost.”

And then a blue light appeared in the room. It darted erratically across the floor, then up the leg of the Bane-made table.

And thirty pounds of gray tomcat came merrily along behind the light, batting at it excitedly. Mister the cat flung himself up onto the table in pursuit of the blue glowing dot and came to a sudden stop. All seven of the Little Folk standing on the table froze in place. Then the tomcat tilted his head to one side and, with barely more pause than that, pounced on the nearest gremlin.

“Move, kid!” screamed Bob the Castle. “Sixty seconds on the counter!”

The mauled gremlin let out a shriek of terror as Mister’s claws began to rake, and I went into action, whirling the coil of leather cord at Scar Eye’s face. The leather cord hit him in his only good eye and sent him flinching back and away from Lacuna—who suddenly produced a small, sharp blade from I know not where and struck it cleanly through her own braid, freeing her from Scar Eye’s grasp.

I hurtled at Scar Eye and slammed my shoulder into his chest, driving him off the table’s edge, across the kitchen, and into the Bane-made doors of the pizza freezer.

Behind me, I caught a glimpse of Mister raking and shaking a second gremlin while Lacuna deflected a thrust spear with a kung-fu hand and flung her little knife at a third.

Scar Eye howled as his back touched the Bane and seized me with terrified strength. His arms fouled my wings and we both crashed to the floor. He bounced to his feet like rubber, took up his hatchet, and smashed it down at me. I rolled clear as he struck thrice more in a single breath, the mortal hatchet raising sparks from the concrete floor and sending chips of poured stone flying.

Tick tick tick went the boom.

I caught the gremlin leader’s wrists as he brought the hatchet up for a blow and we struggled for control of the weapon, bodies straining.

“Your lord will fall,” the gremlin’s buzzing voice murmured. “His house will be laid waste. It is only a matter of time. One night, one day.”

“But not this night!” I snarled, and then I surged with the full strength of my body and whirled with Scar Eye, driving the mortal hatchet’s edge into the thin steel of the refrigerator doors. The hatchet sank into it to the eye and stuck there.

Scar Eye stared at the weapon, his eye wide, then whirled to me.

Lacuna’s wings buzzed as she came down beside me, her reclaimed sword dripping with gremlin blood. There was a thump, and a gremlin corpse fell to the floor from the Bane-made table. The form of the big tomcat appeared at the table’s edge, bright green eyes on Scar Eye.

The gremlin made a fatal mistake.

He panicked.

Scar Eye darted to one side with the agility of his kind and streaked for the door.

Mister lifted one paw, judged the speed of his target, and made a single lazy bound down from the table.

Which solved the gremlin problem.

“The pizza!” Lacuna hissed.

“Right!” I said. We buzzed over to the boom. The ticking thing went tick tick tick and was round and had a lot of little hash lines on it.

The blue light buzzed in and said, “Dresden will be here in forty seconds . . . Oh, crap, only thirty-six left.”

The round thing my lord had set out earlier went bing and all three of us jumped and let out a little shriek.

“Wait!” Lacuna said. “That’s it!” She strode determinedly toward the boom.

“Whoa, there!” Bob the Castle said. “Do you know what you’re doin— You know what, thirty seconds, screw it.”

Lacuna knelt down by the boom, seized the plastic dial—and turned it mightily. It rotated up until a red hashmark was by a number that said 30.

“There,” Lacuna said firmly. “Now you have thirty minutes to save the pizza.”

The blue light wobbled for a second and then said, “Oh. Yeah. Guess this wasn’t exactly a Spetsnaz team or anything. Good work, Tiny Tish.”

Lacuna narrowed her eyes at the blue light as heavy biggun footsteps plodded closer, and my lord and Sir William came charging into the kitchens. My lord slid to a stop, breathing hard, his dark eyes wide, and surveyed the place.

“Is that a gremlin?” he said a second later. “Bob, what the hell did you do with my cat!?”

An hour later, we were all on the roof of the Castle, looking at the stars and eating pizza.

“How are the Guard, Major General?” my lord asked.

“Several injuries, one severe, none mortal,” I said. “We were fortunate, my lord. We drove the enemy forth.”

“Next time try to take one alive,” he said. “It’d be nice to know who sent them.”

“You’ll have to take that up with Mister, my lord.”

The big cat, sprawled in my lord’s lap, purred contentedly. He apparently had no regrets about leaving none alive to tell tales.

“My lord?” I said after a quiet moment.

Those sad, dark eyes looked down at me. “Yeah, General?”

“I am sorry,” I said. “That your heart hurts. She was brave.”

He stopped chewing pizza and stared down at me for a long moment. Then he blinked several times and said, “Yes, she was. Thank you, Toot.”

I patted his knee awkwardly. He rested a couple of fingertips on my shoulder for a moment in response.

“You did great tonight,” he said. “Bob says the Castle’s defenses were all calibrated to larger threats. He didn’t have them set to see anything as small and sneaky as gremlins. Without you and the Guard, the place might have burned down. People under my protection could have gotten hurt.”

I felt my chest stick out a little more. “It was nothing, my lord. All in a night’s work.” I paused, and said abashedly, “I am sorry about your refrigerator, my lord.”

“Necessary action. I try never to second-guess the guy on the ground.” He took an entire piece of pizza and offered it to me.

I accepted it gravely.

“My lord,” I said. “This battle is done. But what will we do about the conomee?”

He took another piece of pizza of his own and held it forth. We gravely tapped pizza, and then ate. “What we always do, little buddy,” he said. “We stick together.”

I sat down next to him. A moment later, Lacuna came to sit beside me. I gave her half of my pizza.

“You came for me first,” she said. “Not the pizza.”

“You,” I said, “are more important than pizza.”

She stared at me in fond, stony silence for a moment before she said, “You are a great fool.”

But she leaned against me while she ate.