“He’s right, you know,” said a deep, raspy voice from somewhere near the ceiling. The King looked up, and the carved wooden gargoyle in the corner grinned at him. “You should get married,” it said.

“Don’t you start,” Mendanbar said.

“Try and stop me,” snarled the gargoyle. “My opinion is as good as anyone else’s.”

“Or as bad,” the King muttered.

“I heard that!” The gargoyle squinted downward. “No thanks to you, I might add. Do you know how long it’s been since anyone cleaned this corner? I’ve got dust in my ears, and I expect something slimy to start growing on my claws any minute now.”

“Complain to one of the maids,” Mendanbar said, irritated. “We weren’t talking about hiring a housekeeper.”

“Why not? What are you, cheap or something?”

“No, and I wouldn’t discuss it with you even if I were.”

“King Mendanbar the Cheapskate, that’s what they’ll call you,” the gargoyle said with relish. “What do you think of that?”

“I think I won’t talk to you at all,” said Mendanbar, who knew from experience that the gargoyle only got more unpleasant the longer it talked. “I’m leaving.”

“Wait a minute! I haven’t even gotten started yet.”

“If Willin asks, tell him I’ve gone for a walk,” Mendanbar said. As he left the room, he waved, twitching two of the invisible threads of power that crisscrossed the Enchanted Forest. The gargoyle’s angry screeching changed abruptly to surprise as a stream of soapy water squirted out of the empty air in front of it and hit it squarely in its carved mouth.

Mendanbar smiled as the door closed behind him, shutting out the gargoyle’s splutters. “He won’t complain about dust again for a while, anyway,” Mendanbar said aloud. As he walked down the hall, his smile grew. It had been a long time since he had taken a day off. If Willin wanted to grumble about it, he could go ahead and grumble. The King had earned a holiday, and he was going to have one.

Getting outside without being caught was easy, even without using any invisibility spells (which Mendanbar considered cheating). Willin was the only one who might have objected, and he was at the other end of the castle somewhere. Mendanbar sneaked past two maids and the footman at the front door anyway, just for practice. He had a feeling he might want to do a lot of sneaking in the near future, especially if Willin was going to start fussing about Queen Alexandra’s daughters again.