"Curses!" Magica shouted as the scene unfolded in her mirror. She threw a foof bomb at Poe, who, with his years of practice, avoided it easily. "You couldn't have found him before he took up with those two bozos?"

Poe cawed in response.

Magica turned and threw her hands in the air. "Bah!"

She paced over to her spell book and flipped through.

"What went wrong, what went wrong…" she muttered to herself. She shut the book with a loud bang and a cloud of dust and started drumming her fingers on the table. Then she pulled over another book, this one emblazoned with an image of the planets on the cover. "No, that's not soon enough…"

Poe flew over and settled on his perch on the table.

"I've got it!" Magica suddenly shouted, sending a very startled Poe into the air. She pushed the astronomy book aside and opened her spellbook back up and turned to the page she was looking for. She picked up the ivory feather, and dark laughter escaped from her beak as she formulated her plan.

"I thought your luck was supposed to prevent things like this from happening," Lena grumbled as they trudged through the snow.

"Hey, it got us off of that train in one piece, didn't it?" Gladstone said. "And we found out we had the wrong ink before anybody else did. And I found these delicious chocolates. Give it a little credit."

"It would have been easier if we'd just used the right ink in the first place."

"Everything happens for a reason," Gladstone said. "And my luck makes sure that those reasons are good for me. And what's good for me is usually also good for you."

"Ok. Hold on a minute," Lucas cut in. "Am I supposed to believe that your 'luck' is some sort of supernatural being that makes everything go your way?"
"I don't think I'd call it a 'being,'" Gladstone said thoughtfully. "More like a force, probably…"

"As if that makes it any better."

"Hey, it hasn't let me down yet," Gladstone said. "How else do you think I survived after the Revolution?"

"I don't know; the same way that I did?"

"Ah, but you aren't royalty," Gladstone said.

"I thought the whole point of this is that I am," Lucas said.

"You aren't known to be royalty. And you've had a much better disguise all these years."

Lucas frowned. "You don't sound so sure."

"About what, your disguise?" Gladstone said. "Look at you! You're a regular street urchin! Nobody would think that underneath all that dirt and those tattered clothes—"

"No," said Lucas. "About me being the prince."

"Kid, if my luck brought us together, you've got to be the prince," Gladstone said, throwing an arm around his shoulders. On the other side of Gladstone, Lena rolled her eyes.

"Does your 'luck' have a plan in mind?" Lucas asked.

Gladstone shrugged. "We'll just have to wait and see."

Lucas made a face. "So we're going to walk to Duckburg and hope that something better comes along?"

"No, of course not. We'll take a boat once we get to Cape Suzette."

"Oh, and I suppose then we'll fly to Cape Suzette."

"No, we'll get a bus in St. Canard."

"St. Canard?" Lucas asked. "Why not cut through Italy?"

"Italy's much too dangerous," Lena said, just a little too quickly.

"Why?"

"It's...complicated," Gladstone said., his eyes suddenly turning stormy. Lena looked away. Lucas chose not to press the issue.

"But we have to walk to St. Canard?" he asked.

A hay wagon came up the road. Gladstone put out his thumb and the wagon stopped.

"Your carriage awaits, Your Highness."

"Do you need help with that?" Lucas asked Lena, who was attempting to wrap a bandage around her burned palm for the third or fourth time.

"No," Lena said with a scowl. Her tongue poked out of the side of her beak as she went back and forth, wrapping and unwrapping, trying to get the bandage to lay flat. Her sleeve fell down from her wrist, and Lucas could see that she was wearing a bracelet woven from purple and green threads.

"Are you sure?"

The bandage fell off of Lena's hand entirely. She bit back a frustrated scream and said through a clenched beak, "I'm fine."

Lucas shrugged. He knew better than to try to help someone who didn't want it. "Suit yourself."

"Are you ready to become Prince Llewellyn Rebel Duck?" Lena asked.

"'Become?' What do you mean, 'become?' I thought you said I am him!"

"Sure, but it's been a while. We just have to…jog your memory. So you can get past Mrs. Beakley."

"Get past who?"

"Mrs. Beakley. The King's private secretary. She's worked for him practically as long as I can remember," Gladstone said. "Nobody sees the King without going through Mrs. Beakley first."

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on," Lucas said. "You didn't tell me I had to prove I was Prince Louie before I could even get to his family!"

"Don't worry!" Gladstone said. "She has a sharp eye, but with my luck—"

"Your luck? We're relying on your luck to meet the king?"

"Well, that and the fact that I know him—"

"Have you ever done anything in your life besides relying on your luck?"

"I can't say I've had to," Gladstone said thoughtfully. He elbowed Lucas good-naturedly. "Relax! It'll all work out for the best. You'll see."

"But, of course, we'll still have to teach you all about being royalty," Lena added.

"You want me to con the old man into believing I'm his long-lost grandson," Lucas said, his voice flat.

"Grand-nephew."

Lucas touched the coin in his pocket, running his fingers over the links of the old watch chain that kept it secure. He had pulled so many cons over the years, but this...this was bigger than any con. This was family. How could he be sure he'd found his family if he tricked everyone into thinking he was the prince?

But on the other hand, there was no way he would even get close to the King if he didn't know some of the basics. It was entry-level stuff, the stuff that probably wasn't all that impressive to know but would be obviously missing if he didn't.

Besides, if Lucas did turn out to be Prince Louie, it wouldn't hurt to know a thing or two about his own family. He'd have to learn about it anyway, right?

"All right," Lucas finally said. "But once we get to the King, I'm going to tell him I studied."

"Fair enough," said Gladstone with a grin. "Lena, if you'll do the honors?"

"Hold on. Lena's teaching me about the family?"

Gladstone shrugged. "She knows a lot more about the royal family than I do."

"If you don't even know everything about it, then why do I have to be an expert?"

"I don't have anything to prove. You do. Now." Gladstone gestured to Lena, who'd taken out a hefty tomb from her rucksack.

"Let's start at the top: your Uncle Scrooge…"

"You hatched in the old Money Bin on October 17, 14 years ago."

"Wait, in the Bin?" Lucas said.

"Sure. Where else?"

"I don't know, I just figured…" What had he figured? Scrooge was known for being cheap; there was no way he'd spring for...well, anything, really. "A hospital?"

Gladstone snorted. "Not ol' Screwdriver McDollarSigns."

Lucas' expression turned sour. "Did you do that to his face?"

"Do what to his face?"

"Call him names."

"As a matter of fact, I did."

"Focus!" Lena said.

"Right," said Gladstone. "You hatched about 48 minutes after Dewey and 51 minutes after Huey."

"Why'd I take so long?" Lucas asked.

Gladstone smiled. "Della always said you were cooking longer so you'd get more of a head start on life."

"Cooking?" Lucas said, his voice rising to a squeak.

Gladstone shrugged. "Well, your brothers thought it was just because you were lazy, so take your pick."

"Ok, but what's the angle?" Lucas asked Lena. Gladstone was off trying to barter for some corn growing in a nearby field.

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." Lucas gestured vaguely towards Gladstone, Lena, their things, the St. Canardian countryside. "Why are you doing this?"

Lena shrugged. "It's as good a way as any to get out of Scotland."

"It's the dumbest way to get out of Scotland," Lucas said. "Why are you really doing this?"

Lena laid a hand over her chest and sighed dreamily. "Out of the goodness of my heart," she said.

Lucas snorted. "Yeah, right."

Lena dropped her hand back to her side. "King's offering a reward."

"That sounds more like it," Lucas said. "How much are we talkin'?"

"Just enough for two ducks to start comfortable new lives."

"Mhm," Lucas nodded. "I want in."

"No."

"I'm just as much part of this con as you are. I deserve to get something out of it."

"You'll get a whole family! What do you need money for?"

"Food? Shelter? Clothes?"

"You'll get all of that!"

"But what if it goes south?" Lucas said. "The king can kick me to the curb just as quickly as he takes me in. I need a backup plan."

"Get your own backup plan."

"I'm trying to get my own backup plan!"

Gladstone returned, his arms laden with ears of corn. "What's going on here?"

Lena pointed at Lucas with her thumb. "The kid here wants a cut of the reward."

"Suits me," Gladstone said. He dumped the corn into Lena's rucksack.

"Yes!"

"What?"

"Why not? He's putting in just as much work as we are," Gladstone said.

"But—"

"It'll still be plenty of money."

Lena crossed her arms. "That's easy for you to say."

"It'll all work out," Gladstone said cheerfully. He swung his own rucksack onto his back. "Let's keep moving."

Lucas...Lucas...Lucas…

Lucas turned the word over silently in his head as he stared up at the stars, trying to calm his racing heart after waking up in a cold sweat from another dream he didn't remember.

Lucas...Lucas...Lucas…

The name was nothing special—just something some nurse had given him after the Revolution. It was better than calling everyone who didn't have a name John or Jane, and by that point, nobody expected Lucas to ever remember his. But somehow, the name "Lucas" felt familiar, like it was reaching back and just almost, almost touching that part of his brain that held all the things he couldn't remember.

"Lucas" might not have been his name before the Revolution, but it definitely held some sort of a clue to what had been. Like…

Louie.

Lucas sat bolt upright in his sleeping bag. Lightning charged through his body. Could his name really have been…? No. No. It couldn't have been. Could it…? It had to be, if… No; Lucas wasn't going to consider it. It was a name he'd been hearing all his life, whispered by hopeful Scots and printed in admonishing black ink in state-run newspapers. By now, he must have had all sorts of associations with the name that didn't really mean anything. No matter how the name may have made him feel, it didn't count.

Lucas ignored the electricity still tingling through his fingertips, laid back down, and tried to go to sleep.