It was strange to think of the Duchess as old. She’d been middle-aged practically forever. I guess she must have been young once, but when you put “Duchess” in front of somebody’s name, they become sort of permanently middle-aged. And she’d seemed…oh, not unkind, maybe, but stern, when I’d seen her before. Competent. Not like somebody who’d be crying in her bedroom and not knowing what to do.
“Are the guards going to come in…?” I asked. I was hoping for more than a towel if they did. Soap and water before they arrested me, maybe.
“No,” the Duchess said firmly, dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. “No, the guards are loyal to me at least, and will not act without my orders. I wish I knew who else was.”
“We are, Your Grace.”
Spindle, never a staunch royalist, scuffed his foot on the carpet and muttered something.
“Thank you, children,” said the Duchess. “Although I cannot think how I came to fall so far that my supporters must climb up the garderobe to pledge their loyalty!” She took my towel absently and tossed it into a hamper. I tried to pull my shirt down over my legs, but she picked up a lap-robe and handed it to me.
“It’ll get all dirty, Your Grace,” I said, looking at the fine embroidery.
“Then it will get dirty,” she said firmly. “We have bigger things to worry about.”
“Could I…” I looked longingly toward the bathroom. I stank. I didn’t want to ruin the lap-robe, but I also didn’t want to smell like a garderobe. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Yes, of course.”
I pulled Spindle in with me and made him wash. He muttered. “This soap smells like roses.”
“Yes, isn’t it nice?”
“No.”
I would have made him wash behind his ears, but we didn’t have all night. I was half-afraid that when we emerged, the Duchess would have called in armed men to deal with her visitors, but she was still sitting there, picking at a loose thread on the arm of the chair. She smiled a little when she saw us, but there was a lot of sadness underneath it. “Much better, my dears. Now, tell me about this assassin.”
So Spindle and I—interrupting one another and talking over each other more often than not—explained about the Spring Green Man, and the broadsheets and the curfew and the sudden disappearances of magic-folk.
I had to explain about Tibbie. Spindle didn’t say anything, but the Duchess reached out and took his hand in her own and squeezed. Her hands looked older than the rest of her. The tendons on the back stood out, and there was a white band of skin around one finger where a ring had been.
“I did not know about the registration of magic-folk,” she said soberly. “I would not have allowed it.”
“There’s posters up all over,” said Spindle.
The Duchess gave a short, bitter laugh. “I do not leave the palace much, my dears, and only then with guards. There is always so much to be done here. And we are not at war, but we are not far from it, and the Council—Inquisitor Oberon chief among them—tell me over and over again that I must not risk myself outside, that all it would take would be one madman with a knife to throw the city into disarray.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Without Ethan—the Golden General—here, it has become easy to listen. So I have seen no posters, and I suspect that the people seeking an audience are being screened, so that no one with such upsetting information would reach me.”
“But you wouldn’t have allowed the registry,” I said, feeling something unclench. It mattered to me, a lot. When you’re different, even just a little different, even in a way that people can’t see, you like to know that people in power won’t judge you for it.
“I would have tried to stop it. It has always been a great virtue of our kingdom that magickers are treated no differently than anyone else here. I would not see that end on my watch.” She sighed. “There are a great many things I would not wish to see on my watch, though, and perhaps it will not be my watch much longer, if Oberon has his way.”
“Can’t you stop him?” I asked. “Countermand the order?”
She sighed again and pinched the bridge of her nose wearily. “It is not so simple. You must understand, Mona, the ruler of a city is not an absolute power. The Council also wields a great deal of control. Usually that’s a good thing. It keeps a bad ruler from making things unpleasant for the citizens. But it can also lead to problems, particularly if someone on the Council has an agenda of their own. Oberon leads the Council and he is…skilled…at making other councilors see his way of thinking.”
“But what does he want?” I cried. “What does he have against magickers?”
The Duchess paused. “Odd as this may seem, Mona, I don’t think he does have anything against them. At least, nothing personally.”
I clenched my fists in the lap robe. It certainly felt personal to me.
“What Oberon wants—what he has always wanted—is power.” She stared out the window, but I don’t think she really saw it. “He has long believed that we should be waging war on other city-states, using the power of our war-wizards to bring as many of the cities as we can together under one ruler.”
“Cor!” said Spindle. “Does ’e want to be an emperor, like in the old days?”
“More or less,” said the Duchess, sighing. “He wants the power, but he wants a figurehead on the throne. If the people are angry, it is me that they will come after, not Oberon.”
“And the magickers—” I said.
“A power he does not control, and so must be removed. He has a good idea of the strength of the army, but there are so many minor wizards in the city, and who knows what they might be capable of? Clearly he has decided to force them out, or kill them if they will not leave.”
This may sound strange, but that actually made me feel a little better. Somehow it’s better to be a potential enemy than one of “you people.” At least you respect your enemies.
“Well,” said the Duchess. “At the moment, Oberon believes that I am unaware of much of what he does…and apparently he is right! He believes that I am a fool, and there is no need to act against a foolish old woman. The moment that I become dangerous, he will act to remove me.”
I gulped.
“It will happen sooner or later.” She rose and began to pace through the room, still limping a little on her right knee. “I am only convenient so long as I am a figurehead, and even a foolish old woman, sooner or later, will protest at what she is asked to do.” She fisted one hand in a tapestry. “I should have done so long before now. The blood of the magic-folk is on my hands. Mona, Spindle, I am sorry.”
I didn’t know what to say. Grown-ups don’t usually apologize to kids, not about big stuff like that. When somebody says, “I’m sorry,” you say, “It’s okay.” Except that this time it wasn’t. Tibbie was dead. So were a lot of other people. Maybe she could have stopped it but maybe she couldn’t, and who was I, Mona the baker, a wizard of bread-dough and cookies, to accept an apology on behalf of the dead?
Apparently, she didn’t expect an answer, because all she did was drop her chin to her chest and lean against the doorframe for a moment.
“If only Lord Ethan were here,” she said sadly. “Sending the army out was a mistake, but what could I do? The Carex mercenaries are raiding the outer townships for supplies and livestock—at least, so we have heard—and we cannot simply abandon those people to their fate. But Oberon is here and Lord Ethan is not, and I do not know if I am strong enough to stand against the Inquisitor and however many traitors he has rallied to his cause.”
“Can’t you get ’im back?” asked Spindle. “Send ’im a message! Tell ’im to get back here double-quick and throw Oberon out!”
“There is a problem with that as well,” she said. “It takes a mage—a wizard, like Mona, but specially trained—to send a message quickly. Otherwise we must fall back on riders carrying messages, which will take days. And of the three wizards left stationed at the palace, one has died quite recently of nat
ural causes…”
She stopped. I watched the knowledge cross her face that those causes had likely been unnatural. She took a deep breath, and continued. “One is very old and I do not know if he has the strength to send such a message at all.”
“And the third one?” I asked, feeling cold. Only three mages? Only two mages, if one had just died?
“The third,” said the Duchess, “I very much suspect is the one you call the Spring Green Man.”
Twenty-One
“Well,” said Spindle, speaking for all of us, “this is a right pretty mess.”
“The Spring Green Man? In the palace? Here?” I squeezed my arms around myself tightly, feeling an urge to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible. What if he could smell me already? What if he’d smelled me coming in through the scullery? He probably couldn’t climb up the garderobe, but he had to know what room it led to. What if he was outside the door right now?
No. The guards would have said something. The guards were loyal, the Duchess had said.
Assuming he hadn’t killed them.
Possibly reading my wide-eyed look of panic, the Duchess rose and went to the door. She opened it a crack and said softly, “Anything going on?”
“No, my lady,” said a deep male voice from the other side. “All is well.”
“Thank you,” said the Duchess. “See that I am not disturbed.” She closed the door again.
“This old wizard,” said Spindle. “How old are we talkin’? Like old-old, or like senile and decrepit-old?”
The Duchess raised an eyebrow. “Well, fairly old. I don’t know that he’s senile, but he’s definitely feeling his age. His loyalty, at least, is never in doubt. He was a dear friend of my father’s.”
“He’ll have to do,” I said. “If the Spring Green Man is here in the actual palace—Your Grace, he could come for you!” (And me, I thought, but I didn’t want to say it out loud.)
I expected her to tell me that I was being silly, or that there was something else I hadn’t thought of—you know, the sort of things grown-ups tell you when you’re absolutely positively sure of something, that blows the whole thing out of the water and makes you feel like an idiot—but she didn’t. Instead she nodded, and said, “Yes. You’re right. Let’s go speak to him.”
“Um,” said Spindle. “We’re not exactly dressed for wandering around the palace with you, ma’am.”
The Duchess smiled. It was a haggard sort of smile, but under the circumstances, it was pretty good. “Don’t worry about that, young man. There are some advantages to being the Duchess.”
She opened the door. The guards snapped to attention.
“Joshua,” she said to the one on the left, “go and get me some page’s livery. Two sets, one small and one large. If you can’t get the shirts, at least get the tunics.”
“Your Grace?” said Joshua, looking a bit startled.
“Now, Joshua.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Joshua left his post. The guard on the right, admirably blank-faced, moved to stand in front of the door. The Duchess closed the door again.
“Won’t he tell somebody?” asked Spindle, puzzled.
“I highly doubt that the Inquisitor is going to be woken in the middle of the night by news that I am requesting two page’s uniforms.” She ran a hand through her hair and paced around the room again. “If he’s monitoring me that closely, we are probably already doomed.”
Spindle nodded absently. His attention had been claimed by a plate of cheese and bread on a little side table. “Err…ma’am…?”
“Spindle!” I hissed, mortified. We were here to prevent a bloody coup, not eat a midnight snack.
“Help yourself,” said the Duchess, amused.
Spindle carved off a hunk of cheese and went to work. His table manners were mortifying. Also, now that I was aware that the cheese was there, I could smell it.
My appetite had shut down in self-defense during our ascent of the garderobe, but there were some stirrings that indicated it wasn’t quite gone. I helped myself to some bread and cheese.
It was great cheese. The bread was pretty good. Superior flour, very fine, but a bit too dense where it wanted to be fluffy. I could have done great things with that flour.
A few minutes later, the guard returned. He came into the room carrying an armful of clothes and stopped dead when he saw Spindle and me.
“Your Grace…”
“They’re friends of mine,” said the Duchess firmly. “I am making them royal pages.”
“But Your Grace—we were on guard—how did they…?” He sounded almost plaintive.
“Through the garderobe,” said the Duchess. “Which was ultimately a good thing, but nevertheless, we shall have to have it looked at. Not everyone climbing up it may be so benign.”
“I…yes, Your Grace. At once.”
“Couple of extra cross-bars ought to do it,” Spindle piped up. “The spikes aren’t worth much, but if you weld on another set of cross-bars, ain’t nobody getting through but rats.”
“Let us hope there will not be rats,” said the Duchess firmly. “I accept that rats are a fact of life, but I am not overly fond of them. Now, children, let us get you into uniform…”
The uniforms fit, sort of. My pants wouldn’t button. Spindle thought that was hysterical. His required a belt to hold up, which Joshua very kindly donated, and which went around Spindle’s skinny waist twice before they could get it buckled.
The tunics, however, were long and elegant and hid a multitude of sins. They couldn’t hide Spindle’s rolled cuffs, or the fact that neither of us were wearing the right shoes, but hopefully nobody would be looking that closely.
The gingerbread man, recognizing that we were in disguise, gripped the back of my collar and hid underneath my hair.
“Very well,” said the Duchess, surveying us. “No one is going to be looking that closely at this time of night. I hope. Let us go to Master Gildaen’s quarters.” She flung a cloak over her shoulders. “Joshua, if you would.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Stepping into the castle hallway was almost as frightening as climbing into the garderobe. The Spring Green Man was somewhere in the castle. What if he came out for some reason? What if he had insomnia, or wanted something from the kitchen, or just felt like murdering a random page that was wandering around the hallways?
The Duchess, however, had no such fears. She swept down the hall as if she owned it. I suppose technically she did. Joshua followed behind her with his hand on his sword hilt, looking very warlike and protective. I wondered how much he knew about what was going on with the Inquisitor. Spindle and I scurried after them. I was convinced that my shoes were leaving mud stains on the carpet, even though I couldn’t see anything when I looked behind me.
We turned and turned and turned again, went down a broad staircase, and through a doorway. Joshua threw open another set of double doors and waved the Duchess through it with a little bow. Our eyes met when I was going through. He looked thoughtful and a little worried, but not mad. That was a relief.
“Now,” said the Duchess, as we entered a broad hallway lined with doors. “Which one is Master Gildaen?”
“The third on the right, Your Grace.”
“Thank you.” She approached the correct door and rapped on the wood with her knuckles.
Nothing happened for a bit.
“He is a bit deaf, Your Grace,” said Joshua apologetically. “If I may…?”
“Please.”
Joshua pulled a knife—both Spindle and I took a step back—and hammered on the door with the pommel. “Open in the name of the Duchess!”
“Well, really,” murmured the Duchess, “that seems a bit excessive.”
“Very deaf,” said Joshua, putting his knife away.
Apparently Master Gildaen was not quite as deaf as all that, because we heard a faint “I’m a-comin’, I’m a-comin’…” and a moment later, the door swung open a handspan.
>
“What’s this all about, then?” asked the wizard, sounding cranky. “It’s the middle of the bloody night! It’s so late it’s practically early! What are you doing pounding on an old man’s door at this hour?”
Joshua pushed the door open, and Master Gildaen took a step back. “What?” he said. “Hey, you show some respect, young fellow! I’ll turn your blood into pickled herring, see if I don’t!”
“Master Gildaen,” said the Duchess warmly, “the kingdom needs your help.”
The old wizard blinked at her. “Oh,” he said slowly. “Oh. Err. Your Grace. I had no idea…come in, come in…” He took a few steps back and flapped his hands at us.
His chambers looked more like something you’d find in the Rat’s Nest than inside the palace. There were things piled on…other things…none of them terribly clear of purpose or definite in origin. There was a wingback chair with a thing in it that looked like a cauldron made out of a crocodile, with a big glass fishbowl full of sludge where the footstool would be.
Doors opened on every side, although the one in the far wall was only accessible by stepping over a jumble of what had probably been suitcases at some point in the distant past.
Master Gildaen looked around the room awkwardly. “Oh dear. Will you come this way, Your Grace? I think the sitting room is…errr….not so…um.”
The Duchess, showing the sort of grace that you expected from a monarch, said “Truly, it is nothing, Master Gildaen. We have come for your magical services, not your housekeeping skills.”
“Magic, eh?” asked Gildaen glumly. He pushed open the door to the sitting room. It was indeed better, although there were still stacks of books across the floor, and dust made a thick fur across the backs of the chairs. “Should get young Elgar to do it. Not that he’s good for anything but air and smoke and smells. Young wizards today! No better than a hedge-wizard, if you ask me. But still better than a senile old magicker. Not as young as I used to be, probably only make a hash of it…”
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