Jack hugged Elaine as the prisoners were taken away. She hugged him back. They

would have kissed but everyone in the operating theater was watching and that made

Jack nervous.

“Mush,” said Alicia.

“I think it shows a better side of life,” said Matilda. “Ugly hero and beautiful maiden

falling in love and trying to make the world a better place.”

“Still mush,” said Alicia.

“We’ll talk about your love interest when you are older,” said Jack. “I will practice

my dad talk for him.”

“Please, no,” said Beatrice. “I think Alicia can do without that.”

Josie, the King, and Duke Hent joined them on the observation deck. They had

varying expressions of I’m glad that’s over on their faces. Jack grinned at them as he

kept hold of Elaine with one arm.

“I think we still have a lot of work ahead of us,” said Josie. “There is no time for

slacking now.”

“But it is time for lunch,” said Angelica. She looked at the small crowd. “And we

should have it.”

“Ladies, would you like to eat with us?,” asked Jack. He turned his smile on Jane and

her seconds. “Angelica has been working on a recipe good for more than two people.”

“No,” said Jane. “We are starting our nurses that need it on your pill. We are going

to be busy with that.”

“Remember to tell them to only take half a pill at the start and see how that goes,”

said Jack. “If they have to take the other half, then they can do that. Also don’t let

anyone pregnant take the pill. Just pull them off coma people duty altogether and let

them do something else. I don’t know what the pill will do to their unborn babies, and

I’m afraid to find out. I’ll look for a way to help them when I have some of this other

stuff sorted out.”

“Sounds doable,” said Jane. “Massa looks good to come back in the morning and start

getting that part of things organized.”

“Madam Fass,” said Josie. “How are the adventurers doing as helping hands?”

“Some of them excel at what we are asking of them, some of them don’t,” said

Madam Fass. She smiled. “I am doing what I can to get them all work.”

“If you have to, tell them to patrol the local area,” said Josie. “We want the people in

the hospital safe, but I am willing to pay to help the people neighboring us too.”

“I understand,” said Madam Fass.

“Your Grace,” said Josie. “Thank you for going along with this. We didn’t receive a

clearance for the shadow board. There has to be someone out there who can still use

it to order commissions from the Watch.”

“Captain Griff and his staff found ledgers in the two judges’ domiciles when they

conducted their raid,” said Hent. “That pointed to a large amount of the money going

to my uncle. We haven’t found where he sent it from here, if it left his hands.”

“It wasn’t in his house,” said Jack. He smiled. “I ripped that place apart. There was

nothing left when I got done. A huge amount of liquid money would have popped

right out when I ripped the walls down before it got converted to something else.”

“Can you give me a day, or two, Your Grace,” said Josie. “I have to move Jack’s big

lunk of a sister and her smarter assistant out of the secondary quarters we have, and

set up Caroline there, and deal with a hundred other things at the moment. Luckily,

our official quests are done, so we can concentrate on our local problems again. I can

send a marker out to see if I can find the money. It might have been moved through

the Exchange.”

“And I have some ideas about the house I can build for you,” said Jack. He grinned.

He pictured the weirdest house he could think of in his mind, but could only say,

“Maybe a tower fifty feet tall with a ton of rooms that you can only traverse with

swing ropes.”

“I think that would be a bit much,” said Hent. “I have to get the Duchy’s finances in

order before I can worry about a magic house.”

“No liminial spaces,” said Josie.

“I know,” said Jack. He waved his arms around in a I don’t need to be reminded way.

“You don’t want the rooms to suddenly vanish and take the Duke with them.”

“Exactly,” said Josie.

“Thank you for your foresight, Mistress Fox,” said the Duke. “Also it would be good

if you didn’t shoot lightning inside the walls, Jack.”

“I warned them about the dangers of crossing the Ear Ripper first,” said Jack. He

grinned at the sound escaping his friend. “They refused to listen.”

“So you shot them with lightning,” said Duke Hent. He frowned at the other man.

“No,” said Jack. “The Enterprise shot them with a line of charged particles caused by

light being radiated and passed through several different mechanisms.”

“I fail to see how this is not your fault, and I know weaseling when I hear it,” said

Hent. He shook his head.

“I suppose I could have done something else, but you should have seen the rag doll

on that first shot,” said Jack. He grinned as he traced the arc in the air with his hand.

“It was almost perfect.”

“You know better,” said Hent. “Don’t make a habit of shooting your attackers outside

of the street where you live. It scares some in the city.”

“I will do better,” said Jack.

Will do better rag dolls.

“Am I carrying everybody across the city?,” asked Laura.

“No,” said Josie. “We’ll use the gate home, and then call the Enterprise so we can

take the King home. Then we have to look for a place for June.”

“I think Caroline will be safe here in the hospital until we have June’s room cleared

out,” said Jack. “I assume you are going to want to stay with Caroline, Case. Do you

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want me to look at your arm and fix it up.”

“I already took one of the potions,” said Case. “It is healing up faster than what

Caroline’s did.”

“I will be here to make sure he doesn’t do any inappropriate touching, no matter what

the Princess says,” said Emily. “They will both be safe as long as they are here.”

“More mush,” said Alicia.

Case’s and Caroline’s faces turned red at Emily’s words.

“You’ll understand one day,” said Emily. She smiled at the middle girl.

“So we are going home?,” asked Melanie.

“Yes,” said Josie. “We will have lunch with the Royal couple, and then we will try

to find a place for June up north. I think that is the most pressing thing now that we

have some of this out of the way. Caroline is going to stay with us while she and Case

work out their relationship.”

“Do you think they can?,” asked Matilda. “It would be like a story in a book.”

“No,” said Aviras. “I forsee things crashing and burning.”

“Hush you,” said Josie. “I am going to put the effort in to get this lame duck off the

ground, or strangle someone. One or the other.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” said the King. He grabbed his wife’s hand. “Are you

sure you don’t want us to stay overnight with you, Care?”

“I will be fine,” said Caroline. “I am making friends with my bodyguards, and Case

will be here some of the time until he is called away. Tomorrow I will be looking at

my new room. The day after that, Case and I will figure out how to proceed.”

“I have to transfer those holdings and start the audit,” said the King. “We might have

lost millions in taxes thanks to Rustam and Exsua. And I have to send independent

auditors to all of the duchies in the kingdom to make sure their books are right.”

“Exsua?,” asked Jack. He wondered who that was.

“He was the former chancellor,” said the King. “His manor is where we are housing

the women Mistress Fox brought to the capitol when we met. He was also a key

figure in the country’s finances.”

“Let us know how that goes,” said Josie. “If we can keep the country stable, we’ll try.

Maybe we can trace the money somehow.”

“Would you to have lunch with us, Your Grace?,” asked Jack. “One extra person is

not going to slow us down.”

“No, I have work to do,” said Hent. “I have proposals for new rules and projects that

need to be looked at and approved with the limited resources available to me. Some

things will have to wait, while I try to improve other things.”

“All right,” said Jack. “Let’s break this up and go about our business.”

“Jack,” said Josie. “I am going to take the Enterprise and June and Boim up north to

look for a place after lunch. I am going to take the King home. Are you still going to

stay with us overnight, Queen Lois?”

“Yes,” said the Queen.

“You and Elaine should show Her Majesty around the neighborhood,” said Josie.

“Maybe let her see where her daughter will be staying.”

“Shouldn’t be too much trouble,” said Jack. “We can show her the Hangar, maybe the

Village if she wants to go south.”

“The Dragon should be out front by now,” said June. “We’ll have to take it with us

up north.”

“All right,” said Jack. “We can load him up on the Enterprise so you can take him

with you. Before you kids go home, let me show you what June made on her first try.”

“Jack!,” said June.

“He’s really great, and fast,” said Jack. “Come on. If we didn’t have the quinjet, or

the Enterprise, this would be a good second choice.”

“The Dragon is fast, June,” said Mister Warner. “We reached Devermore in almost

twenty minutes. That is stock car fast in my opinion.”

Jack ushered the crowd of women, the royal couple, and one cranky dragon and one

cranky mentor out of the operating theater. He waved at the people they were leaving

behind, nodding as Case and Caroline had started holding hands again.

He smiled as he joined Elaine at the back of the crowd and wrapped an arm around

her.

“Rag doll, Jack?,” she asked. She smiled a little.

“That’s what you call someone flying through the air without control,” said Jack.

“Thank you for keeping me on the rails.”

“Shooting lightning into the city would have been the mildest thing you were

thinking, wasn’t it?,” asked Elaine.

“I admit I wouldn’t have dropped a torpedo on our door if I thought I couldn’t fix it,”

said Jack.

“I’m glad you didn’t do that,” said Elaine. “The girls are talking about this fishing

trip. Where did that come from?”

“It was out of the blue,” said Jack. “Some of it is we need to take moment away from

saving the world and just idle for a day. Some of it is Case and Caroline need a

chance to get to know each other. A day at the fishing hole usually helps with that.”

“If they can’t stand to be around each other fishing, then what else is there?,” asked

Elaine.

“Exactly,” said Jack. “How do you want to do this big wedding?”

“I thought we should find a place we liked and ask for a joining,” said Elaine. “We

could have the reception dinner in a place reserved for us.”

“We’ll have a lot of invites to send out,” said Jack. “We can use Josie’s air mail for

that.”

“Are you going to ask your family to come over for it?,” asked Elaine. She made a

gesture to indicate that she wouldn’t mind meeting the in-laws.

“I don’t know, maybe,” said Jack. “June asked me to write home. I’m having

problems thinking of ways to explain all of this.”

“Really?,” said Elaine.

“Mom will never believe I met the most beautiful woman in the world and I fell in

love with her and we’re getting married,” said Jack. He smiled at his beloved. “She’ll

think I’m lying.”

“That is a lot of hi-ho,” said Elaine. She smiled back. “I don’t think of myself as

beautiful.”

“Trust me,” said Jack. “A man would have to be blind not to see it. Women who

didn’t like other women would change their minds in your presence.”

“I think you are exaggerating,” said Elaine. “Have you ever fished before?”

“Sure,” said Jack. “We used to do it in the Army all the time. Fish is a good resource

if you can get some to carry to a camp site and then cook.”

He didn’t talk about having to eat it raw because you couldn’t set a campfire up, or

having to go without because sometimes there were no fish.

“So we will be cooking the fish too?,” said Elaine.

“I honestly thought Angelica would see it as a challenge,” said Jack. “Another day,

or so, and we will be hitting the beach and taking it easy.”

“I don’t think I like the skydiving part,” said Elaine. “Flying around like a pixie is bad

enough.”

“People surf where I am from,” said Jack. “But that’s a little advanced for our crowd

of crows.”

“Surf?,” asked Elaine. She had his hand in hers, watching the girls and Josie arguing

with June over what her house should look like.

“People looked at skydiving and surfing and combined them,” said Jack. “They jump

out of planes and use the boards to move around in the air and do tricks. Some of

them film what they do. We just want to make sure our kids can hit a bull’s eye

without breaking their legs.”

“Don’t you think this is a little dangerous?,” said Elaine.

“Nah,” said Jack. “I’ll be there with Gravity, and both Bea and Laura can fly on their

own, as well as catch the others. I am more afraid that we will get scattered and run

into wild animals in the woods.”

“A wolf pack would have light eating with our girls,” said Elaine.

Jack grinned at her.

“I can’t wait to see you in a bikini,” said Jack.

“I will ask Josie what that is before I wear it,” said Elaine. “I think there are levels

of modesty that must be adhered to at least in front of the girls.”

Jack leaned in and kissed his beloved.

“You cannot bribe me with kisses either,” said Elaine.

They followed their herd out the front door of the hospital. The Red Dragon sat in

front of the place, eye watching for his mistress to appear. He seemed to smile a little

wider when he saw her stepping into the open in the middle of the girls.

“Hey, Red,” said June. “We’re going to take you up north so we can find a place we

can use for our future headquarters. So Josie is going to give us a lift up, and you will

have to carry us around until we find something for us.”

“Yes, mistress,” said the dragon.

“Excellent,” said June. “We’re going to the Hole in the Wall first so we can eat, and

Boim and I can pack up our things. Then we’re going to fly up there on the

Enterprise. You’ll have to carry us around on the ground when we get there. You

ready for that.”

The dragon looked at her for a long moment. A puff of steam escaped its nose. Then

it said, “Yes, mistress.”

“All right,” said June. “Everybody get onboard, and we’ll sail down to the place.”

“I have to take Mister Warner home,” said Jack. “You guys go ahead.”

“All right,” said June. “We won’t wait the food.”

“Not as much as you eat,” said Jack.

“Jack, you are coming home?,” asked Elaine.

“Yep,” said Jack. “Case reminded me I have to do something first, and taking Mister

Warner home is just a side issue. I will be home as soon as I can get him through the

gate system.”

“I will be waiting,” said Elaine.