Chapter 10
Klaus heard footsteps approaching them. He hoped they were friends and not pirates, but he was feeling too weak to raise his head.
"Why did you drag us up here, Quigley?" came the voice of Isadora Quagmire. "It would have been safer to stay with the others."
"I want to scope out the lay of the land for when we have to fight," said Quigley. "I've mapped some narrow rock passages would make good ambush points. The pirates have placed large rocks with levers ready to drop them down on someone."
"Oh no! Klaus is hurt!" Isadora cried, running to him.
"It looks like our enemies have had a falling out," said Duncan. "That helps us, but I wish Klaus hadn't gotten in the middle of it."
"Help... me and Fiona..." Klaus called out weakly.
"I'll help you, Klaus. I don't know about Fiona," said Isadora. "She dragged you into this mess."
"We'll rescue both," said Quigley. "We need to know what the woman with hair and no beard was up to. Both look badly hurt. If we just rescue Klaus he might die before he can talk and we won't have Fiona to interrogate."
"Quigley, you're so cold it's scary," said Isadora.
"I'm just dedicated to the cause, that's all," said Quigley. "Let's get them moved out before the lava gets any closer."
Duncan and Quigley lifted Klaus and Fiona, respectively, in a firefighter's carry. The three Quagmires continued to argue as they walked down the hill.
"Sunny thought you were cold, too," said Isadora to Quigley. "When we were all in the brig she wouldn't talk to you."
"She found out I lied to them at the Valley of the Four Drafts," said Quigley. "Pretty soon she'll put two and two together and realize you lied to them at Prufrock, too. You pretended not to be trained V.F.D. agents, just like me."
"We had to keep our cover there," said Duncan. "But when we were being carried away on the Deus ex Machina, we both dropped our notebooks to them. Real notebooks with real V.F.D. secrets, not a decoy 'commonplace book' like the one you used to fool them."
"It was the least we could do after they rescued us from that clammy statue," said Isadora. "But the notebooks were hit by a harpoon and all the pages scattered."
"You're lucky that happened," said Quigley. "That was a serious rule violation and you could have been disciplined for it."
"You'd never break the rules, even for someone you care about? Like Violet?" Duncan asked.
"I didn't really care about her. I used my charm on her so she wouldn't think too hard about the holes in my story," said Quigley. "I'm upset she's dead, though."
"We don't know she's dead. Don't say that," said Duncan.
The Quagmires reached the place in the woods where the other escaped prisoners were hiding. They reported what they had seen.
"It's safe to come out of hiding," said Isadora. "Only the woman with hair and no beard is left."
"Careful... She's armed..." Fiona told them in a gasping voice.
"I think we can risk going to the docks," I said. "We can take the Carmelita or the Siren and get out of here."
The Carmelita was not at the docks when we got there. It was moving out into the lagoon.
"How can it work without rowers?" asked one of the Snow Scouts.
"Kit designed a self-propelled mode, too," I said. "Olaf never knew about it, but the machine was in the hands of the man with beard and no hair and the woman with hair and no beard for a long while. They must have figured it out."
"I wonder why she didn't take the hydroplane," the Duchess said.
"Because she wanted to fight that," I said, pointing to the pirate ship which was just now arriving in the lagoon.