There were already some of the first arrivals there, with the clerks that Lily had left in charge. These were not the ones who had arrived at the sheepfolds first; their mouse-horses were not exhausted and they were mostly clean of egg. Prince Desmond was among them, standing a little apart from the others, his expression pleasant but unreadable, as he waited for his own horse to be brought to him.
"When this is over, those shepherds back there are going to be able to hire more shepherds to do their work for them," Leopold said to Siegfried, as they rode toward the finish line. "In fact, their dogs are going to be able to hire dogs!"
"And a flock of their own to mind." Siegfried chuckled. He was in a very good mood. He and Leopold had gotten through the first trial in good order, and now that they were on their way back to the finish line, he was extremely pleased with where they were. The mouse-horses seemed pleased, too; they loped along at an easy pace, just about a slow gallop, only a little warm and not at all winded. In fact, he and Leopold were passing the occasional rider whose mouse-horse was refusing to get above a trot, horses whose necks and flanks were spotted with dried flecks of foaming sweat. "I think they may be the ones who made out the best out of all of us."
"You're probably right. Still, I have to say, this was not so bad when we used our heads. And your business with the fodder worked a treat." Leopold grinned at the Northerner, who grinned back.
"We could have moved twice the number of eggs with your spoon trick." Siegfried had no trouble returning the compliment. "All things considered, we should do very well in these trials if they are all going to require us to use our heads. You and I are rather good at that."
The horses made a snorting, snickering sound.
Leopold laughed. "Face it, we are geniuses." Then he sobered. "This gave me a good chance to measure our real opponents, actually. I think I've pinpointed five of them that could give us some serious trouble, and I don't mean mere honest rivals..." He shook his head. "I don't much like them. They are clever, no doubt of it. They all thought to hire shepherds. But they went at this as if we were all on a battlefield, and I'm not entirely certain they didn't do some bashing in the pack on the race-leg out. Grigor is as cold-blooded as a snake, and Karl looked like he was ready to kill three of the sheep and chuck the carcasses in the pen."
"The rules didn't say the sheep had to be alive...." Siegfried replied, and shook his head. A chill passed over him, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud for a moment. "I get the feeling that if that one had thought of it, there'd have been mutton before you could say 'knife,' and never mind the shepherd. I expect to see some more trouble out of Karl. And we should watch our backs carefully anytime he is near."
Leopold rode on in silence for a moment; they were far enough from any other riders that the only sounds were the pounding of their own mounts hooves on the sod, and their rhythmic blowing as they galloped. "Themas and Peder might kill each other. Did you see the way they glared at each other? Fairly made my blood run cold."
"And Stenoth looked like he'd kill the lot of us if someone offered him enough to do it." Siegfried patted his horse's neck, more to comfort himself than anything. Karl might murder you in a conflict, but Siegfried had the impression that Stenoth would be willing to do so in the dark, when you were least expecting it, if he thought he'd profit from it. "That mademy blood run cold."
"Desmond seems like a good chap. Look, there's the line — " Leopold waved ahead of them, where a faint line of color against the green of the commons had resolved into a line of tiny figures. "Desmond seems much better than the five. Look, they've brought the carriages up already to the finish line." Leopold pointed at the distant crowd at the point where they had started, and sure enough, the carriages that had brought them all here were pulling up to take them back to the palace. "Hmm. We'll have to share with four other fellows, the way we did when we came in." And since Leopold and Siegfried were still in the front half of the middle group —
"There's going to be a lot of egg-going-bad about." Siegfried slowed his horse to a trot and looked down at its ears. "So, mice, would you be willing to take us all the way to the Palace so we don't have to put up with that?"
The mouse-horse he was riding flicked his ears. "As long as it's at a walk," the Magic Beast replied, sounding amused. "We'd have to walk back there anyway, since we aren't going to be restored in front of everyone. That would be giving part of the game away."
Leopold's mouse-horse glanced over at Siegfried with an amused glance. "I wouldn't want to be in those carriages. How did you know we were mice?"
"A little bird told me," he laughed. The mouse-horses snorted.
"Don't worry. I've no intention of telling anyone else. The Ice-Queen is also the Godmother, isn't she?"
Leopold stared at him as if he had gone mad. "Where did you get the idea that the Queen is also the Godmother? That's pre — " Then he stopped, blinked and sucked in a breath.
"Bloody hell," he said. "That's clever. That is damned clever. That is astonishingly clever. It lets the Godmother run all this without anyone knowing she's doing so. No one can cry 'cheat.'"
More than clever, as Siegfried well knew, and not just because it allowed the Kingdom's Godmother to appear to be aloof from this. It might be one of the reasons why the Princess was alive. The bird had been telling him about The Tradition off and on for years, but this was the first time he'd been able to use some of the things she'd told him to sort out someoneelse's situation. That was why he'd first realized that the Queen could not possibly be as evil as she seemed. If her stepmother really had been a Traditional Evil Stepmother, Rosamund would not even be there. The Queen would be the one making the choice of consort, Rosamund would probably be dead. And probably the trial would be much, much smaller, limited to the five enemy princes, and going on for quite some time as she played them against each other.
"How did you figure that out?" Leopold asked him, his eyes narrowing. "And don't tell me a little bird told you."
"I'm astonished. I think you're getting smarter!" the bird sang from above them. She dipped her wings in salute. "I think I may be a good influence on you!"
"Well..." Siegfried felt rather embarrassed, as not only was Leopold staring at him, the ears of both horses had swiveled to catch what he said. "Partly it was because the Princess isn't nearly as intimidated in her presence as she should be, and partly that the Queen isn't doing the sort of things I would expect if she really was bad. Do you know what I mean?"
"Not.. .really..."