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Leopold

L eopold had been a lot of things over the past few days—a deer creature, a butterfly thing, a pet, and of course Chaos personified—but his least favorite incarnation was his present one: a statue slung over the shoulder of a guy who looked like he’d just stepped off a romance-novel cover.

Oh, and Leopold was wearing nothing but a pair of discount-store boxer briefs.

Qylzryd was carrying Leopold face down, which meant that the captive couldn’t see much except the ground. First it was green and foresty-looking, then Juzir said something and zap! Now the floor was gleaming white tile.

Dammit. He recognized that tile. He was back at the Office of the Lost.

He’d been struggling desperately to Chaos his way out of this mess, but it wasn’t working. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even make any sounds except for very muffled groans, and those sounded so pathetic that he gave up. He simply had to let Qylzryd schlep him down that endless hallway.

Jeez. If Juzir could zap them here, why hadn’t he taken them straight to…

wherever their destination was? Leopold could have lived without the extra indignity of a long haul.

Plus, this gave him too much time to think.

He was worried about what fate OotL had in mind for him, and so he tried to distract himself with other topics.

Like Crispin’s treehouse, for example. Leopold had liked it quite a lot, even if it was too tidy for his taste.

And really, that was nothing a few piles of laundry and some pizza boxes couldn’t fix.

Did they even have pizza places in the… what had Crispy called it… the Grapewoods?

No, that couldn’t be right. That was more like the place where Fromlith lived.

Greatwoods. That was it. He savored the small victory of remembering something important .

He could imagine himself staying there with Crispin, maybe finding some sort of job to pay his share. It would be cozy. But cozy in the best way, not in the real estate agent way that really meant super tiny .

But maybe Crispin was better off without him.

Before they’d met, Crispin had been content with his job, his home, his squirrel.

His perfecality score. Leopold had messed all of that up.

Not on purpose, but it was his fault nonetheless.

And the mess he’d made of Crispin’s family relationships?

Leopold especially regretted that. Sure, Aspin was a turdbucket and their mother was…

terrifying. But family was family, and Leopold knew how miserable it was to not have any.

This wasn’t improving his mindset, not one whit. And what is a whit, anyway?

“This guy’s heavy,” Qylzryd complained. As if Leopold had asked to be carried.

Juzir made a grunting sound. “You should have brought a cart.”

His porter huffed. “Nobody said anything about needing a cart.”

“Well, how did you think we were going to get him here?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t the one planning things. I’m just hired muscle.”

“Exactly.” Juzir sounded smug. “Which is why you’re carrying him.”

Qylzryd didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

Leopold was getting the impression that the guy wasn’t especially bright, which made him wonder why Crispin had dated him.

Crispin didn’t seem like the type to go for pretty but empty-headed.

After all, he was falling for Leopold, who was never going to grace the cover of a romance novel.

But wait. Leopold wasn’t exactly Mensa material either.

What did Crispin see in him? After all, Crispin was handsome, skilled at a lot of things, and had a mother who was genuine fae royalty, which probably made Crispin some kind of prince.

He was someone who could date and reject hunks like Qylzryd.

And yet here he’d been, claiming that he loved Leopold. Nobody had ever done that before.

Oh no. A thought had occurred to him, and it was so awful that he groaned again, not that it made any difference to his captors.

He also felt a little queasy, and not just from the motion of Qylzryd walking.

What if he had made Crispin fall for him?

Not by being charming or irresistible, but by manipulating him with his Chaos powers.

Not that Leopold had intended to do so, but he also hadn’t intended any of the messes he’d made throughout his life.

He hadn’t, for example, intended to kill his parents.

Maybe he didn’t always have the best moral compass, but he was absolutely certain that magicking someone into falling in love with you was capital-w Wrong.

“My leg hurts,” Qylzryd complained. To Juzir, presumably. “Where that rat bit me.”

“He’s a squirrel,” said Juzir.

“Well, that squirrel bit me.” He sounded like a five-year-old.

“He’s very small. He couldn’t possibly have done much damage.”

Qylzryd grumbled under his breath, and Juzir either didn’t hear or ignored him.

Leopold, for his part, hoped Qylzryd’s leg would fester and then fall off. He would have bitten the jerk himself, if he could have managed it. Chaos bites probably weren’t healthy for anyone.

At long last they stopped walking. Juzir knocked, presumably, on a door, and a muffled voice ordered them to come in.

Leopold recognized the voice, so when Qylzryd walked into the room and set Leopold upright on the floor, leaning against a wall like a roll of carpet, he wasn’t at all surprised to find Bidulla Kronk staring back at him.

They were in an office, it seemed. Bidulla sat behind a metal desk roughly the size of Rhode Island, in stark contrast to the heavy white stone desks in the main office.

There was a single neat stack of papers on the desk, along with an aluminum pen holder, an enormous mug, and one of those desk toys with the swinging metal balls. She was smiling, which didn’t make her any more aesthetically pleasing.

“So,” she purred. “That was easy.”

“Crispin’s rat bit me!” Qylzryd sounded like a petulant toddler.

“Squirrel,” Juzir muttered.

“Whatever.”

Bidulla wasn’t impressed. “You’re lucky the Chaos creature didn’t turn you into a slug. Or simply dissolve your atomic structure.”

Qylzryd scrambled far away from Leopold, looking terrified. “He can do that?”

“Not anymore,” said Juzir. “Not as long as the containment spell holds.”

Leopold wondered how long that would be.

It had already been some time since Juzir zapped him.

Maybe his captors had lost track. Maybe in a minute or two he would be able to turn Qylzryd into a slug— thanks for the suggestion, Bidulla, that was a good one —and do something equally appropriate to Juzir and Bidulla.

But neither Juzir nor Bidulla looked concerned about this possibility, which Leopold found disconcerting.

Bidulla was signing and stamping some paperwork on her desk, slamming the stamp down with extra gusto.

Seemingly pleased with her efforts, she scooted the papers across the expanse of metal.

“Take these to the Exchequer’s Office on the fifth floor.

They’ll process them for you, and you should receive payment within sixty working days. ”

Qylzryd grabbed one of the papers, gave Leopold a final horrified look, and ran out of the room. Juzir, however, straightened his back. “I didn’t do this for the money. My concern was the damage this… being could cause.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a hero,” said Bidulla, flapping a hand dismissively. “Do you want payment or not?”

Juzir deflated a little. “Well, I do have to completely rebuild my bathroom.” He took the other paper and didn’t even glance at Leopold before leaving.

Bidulla spent a moment staring at him, her thoughts opaque. Finally she hauled herself upright. “Well, it wasn’t the cleanest retrieval effort, but at least we succeeded in the end.” She seemed to be speaking to herself more than to Leopold.

After staring a little longer, she shuffled over to the wall and touched it, revealing a closet behind a hidden door.

Leopold wasn’t at a good angle to see what was inside; he just caught a glimpse of a broom and a mop.

Bidulla stepped partway inside and, after a bit of crashing and banging, emerged with a wheelbarrow, which she stuffed Leopold into.

Since he didn’t bend much, she had to do a lot of prodding and wrenching to get him to fit.

He added non-consensual touching to his list of grievances against her.

Humming to herself, Bidulla pushed the Leopold-filled wheelbarrow out of her office and down the hallway.

This time he was mostly on his side, so he could see more than the floor, but that didn’t help him any.

There was just a long procession of doors.

The only interesting thing he spied was the Oracle’s door, but Bidulla didn’t pause there.

Who was this mysterious Oracle, whose dictates had turned his life upside down?

Leopold was still frozen several minutes later, when Bidulla stopped in front of one of the doors, opened it through some process he couldn’t see, and unceremoniously dumped him onto the floor, as if he were a bag of cement mix.

He landed face down on thin planks of worn wood.

“If it was up to me, we’d just destroy you.” She sounded conversational, like a person discussing the weather or what they might have for lunch. “But the Oracle says no, so here you are. Some of the items in our collection have been here for millennia. Maybe you will be too.”

He heard the wheelbarrow wheels squeak a little, and then the door closed with a bang. The lock engaged with a clunk of finality.

Leopold lay there for a long time. It wasn’t very comfortable, especially when his nose began to itch. And he wasn’t especially grateful that he hadn’t been killed, because now he was left with all of his doubts and regrets. And seemingly ample time to contemplate them.