Rowan—
Anything strange? Why do you ask? Have you?
—Embre
CHAPTER
6
Benet brought my things, clothes, and some equipment from my workroom, and the box of books from beside my bed, but I didn’t bother unpacking them except a few of the books. I wouldn’t be living in the Dawn Palace for very long.
There was a knock at the door. As I walked across the carpeted floor to open it, Pip leaped from the back of the knobbled chair where it’d been perching and landed on my shoulder. I opened the door. The hallway was dim-dark.
After pausing to check that the magics were calm enough, I said the lothfalas spell, and Pip burped out a puff of pink sparks that floated up to hang over my head. In the glow of the spell, I saw one of Kerrn’s guards standing stiff and straight beside the door, and a man wearing green livery, flinching away from the light.
“What?” I said. Pip leaned forward, snorting smoke from its nostrils.
The man edged away, his eyes wide and fixed on Pip. “A, ah—”
“It’s not going to hurt you,” I said. Pip wasn’t, I meant. “What d’you want?”
The man pulled a piece of paper out of his coat pocket. On my shoulder, Pip lashed its tail, and the man jumped back. “A note for the ducal magister,” he said quickly. Oh, he was a servant. Still backing away, he held out the paper.
I stepped forward and took it, and the man turned and fled, casting a glance over his shoulder as he went.
The guard beside the door gave me a quick look, checking the bruises on my face, I could see.
“If I go out, are you supposed to follow me?” I asked her.
“To accompany you, yes, Magister,” she answered stiffly.
Hmmm.
I went back into the ducal magister’s rooms and closed the door. The paper was thick and cream-colored, with Rowan’s house crest on it. The handwriting was sloppy, as if she’d been in a hurry when she wrote the note.
Conn, join me for dinner later, just me and some friends. A servant will fetch you. Your dragon is welcome, too. You’ll have to tell me what it eats.
—Rowan
Pip ate pigeons and blackpowder. Sure as sure, Rowan wasn’t going to have that at her dining table.
Right.
I looked around the room again. It felt like Rowan and Nevery and even Benet were trying to put me into a box that I didn’t really fit into. I could feel the walls of the box pressing against me, turning me sort of square-shaped, and I didn’t like it.
Well then, I’d better do something about it.
I had two problems facing me. First, figuring out how to settle both magics here in the city. Second, finding out who’d sent the kidnappers and what he or she wanted with me.
Three things, really, because there were the stolen locus stones to think about, too, but those had nothing to do with me, even though the magisters thought they did.
Once I’d worked out the problems, I could get out of the ducal magister’s rooms and go back to living at Heartsease, and maybe Nevery would stop worrying about me all the time.
So, the kidnappers. I’d been wondering what kind of person sent men with fists to beat people up and then grab them, somebody who knew a lot about thieving, and I had a cold, snaky feeling in my chest that was telling me who that person might be. Somebody from the Twilight who wasn’t supposed to be here in Wellmet.
Crowe, maybe.
When I was a little kid, Crowe had killed my mother, who was his sister, and he’d tried to turn me into his heir, the next Underlord. Instead of letting him do that, I’d run away and hidden in the streets of the Twilight, trying to keep out of his minions’ hands, because every time they caught me they beat the fluff out of me and then dragged me back to the Dusk House. Then Crowe used his clicker-ticker, a palm-sized counting device made of metal with notched bone discs, to calculate just what I’d hate most as a punishment. Click-tick-tick with the clicker-ticker, and that would be three days locked in a dark room with nothing to eat. Just thinking of Crowe made a misery eel hatch and squirm around in my stomach.
There was only one way to be sure if it was him. Magic. The finding spell was big and complicated, and I couldn’t do it here, not with a guard outside the door and servants all over the place, so I’d need to get out of the Dawn Palace and out of the Sunrise. My cousin Embre had as much to do with Crowe as I did—more, even—so I was sure as sure he’d let me do what I needed to do at Dusk House. The trick was getting over to the Twilight without any guards following me.
Digging through the books that Benet had brought, I found an old wizard’s grimoire, one with lots of spells written in tiny, neat black letters, and looked up the remirrimer spell, which I could use to make a kind of shadow version of myself. Then I looked up the anstriker, a finding spell, which I also knew about but had never used.
I read over the spells until they stuck in my memory, then dumped everything out of a canvas knapsack that Benet had brought from Heartsease and refilled it with some magical things. I got to my feet and put the knapsack over my shoulders. “Pip!” I called.
The little dragon flew over from the windowsill and perched on top of the knapsack.
“Careful,” I said. I’d put two glass scrying globes in there, and they would shatter if they got bumped too hard.
The guard was waiting outside the door. “Where are you going, Ducal Magister?” she asked, as I set off down the hallway.
I ignored the ducal magister part of her question. “To the library.” That wasn’t a lie; I really was going there first.
Rowan had once shown me the Dawn Palace library. The academicos library just had books and scrolls about magic, but the palace library had books about lots of other things, every book ever printed in Wellmet, plus other books from other cities. It took up half of the second floor of the palace, a big room with rows of tall book-stuffed shelves and long tables in the center. A good place for reading; an even better place to give a palace guard the slip.
Assuming the magics didn’t do something strange when I tried the remirrimer spell, that is.
Followed by the guard, I went in the library door, past some tables where a few people were reading quietly, and toward the rows of bookshelves. At the end of the alley between two long shelves, I paused. “I have to look at a book,” I said to the guard. “Will you wait here?”
She nodded and folded her arms. Very alert.
Pretending to examine the books, I walked slowly through the narrow way between the two shelves. Here, all the way at the other end, where the light was dimmest. This was a good place. I stopped and stared straight ahead at a book set on the shelf. A Young Person’s Guide to Fighting Cephalopods, the book was called. Slowly I reached up and put my hand on Pip’s claw-paw where it clung to one of the knapsack straps.
All right, you magics. Let’s do this right.
Whispering, I said the remirrimer spell. When I got to the end of it, Pip gave a little shiver and coughed out a fist-sized ball of writhing light and shadow. It hung in the air right by my shoulder.
Krrrr, Pip said.
So far, so good.
I held my breath, hoping the guard wouldn’t see what happened next.
As I stepped aside, the shadow expanded, taking shape and gathering substance, until a shadow-me stood beside me. It wore a knapsack and a scruffy black sweater, and had a crest of black hair shadowing its face, and it stared straight ahead at the kid-fighting-squid book on the shelf.
Then, with a whumph, all the doors and windows of the library flew open and then slammed closed again. At the other end of the bookshelf, the guard whirled away to look. From the other people in the library came shouts of surprise. The books shivered on their shelves.
With a rush of power, the magics poured into the shadow-me, and he started to grow. First he was just tall, and then he grew bigger and bigger until he was looming over the shaking bookshelves. He stood with his hands on his hips, grinning, his blue eyes flas
hing, and he really did look like me, only he was huge and zinging with magic. The shouts in the library turned to shrieks; the room grew dim as the shadow-me grew even larger, blocking the light. A wind leaped up and swirled around him, carrying bits of paper and dust.
“Ducal magister?” shouted the guard, her eyes wide, staring up.
It wasn’t what I’d planned, but as a distraction it couldn’t be any better.
I ducked from between the wobbling bookshelves and took off in the other direction; Pip clung to my shoulder. I darted around the end of the shelf and peered back to check on the guard. She had drawn her sword and was backing away from the giant shadow-me. Laughing, I skiffed across the passageway to another alley between shelves, then ’round a corner, through a room full of map books, and out into the hallway.
I heard the sound of shouting and running feet. Quick as sticks, I headed in the opposite direction.
I got away clean, out of the Dawn Palace and into the rainy city, sticking to alleys and backstreets, through the Sunrise. At the bridge I saw a pair of guards, but I hid Pip under my sweater and kept my head down, and they didn’t notice me.
Finally I stepped off the bridge and onto the puddled streets of the Twilight.
Good! Now I could do the magical spell and find out who’d sent those kidnappers after me.
CHAPTER
7
My cousin Embre had worse memories of the former Underlord Crowe’s house than I did, so when he’d taken over as Underlord he decided to leave the pit and ruins of the old Dusk House to rot, and a street away had built a new Dusk House of sand-colored stone, all on one level so he could get ’round it in his wheeled chair. His legs didn’t work because Crowe had had minions break them when he’d been Underlord and he’d wanted Embre out of the way, even though Embre’s true name, Embre-wing, was a black bird name, and he was Crowe’s own son.
I walked up to the double-wide front door. No guards were posted, but somebody was watching, because the door opened before I could knock. Pip flew up and landed on my shoulder, and a silent minion brought us down a wide, slate-paved hallway to Embre’s office.
He was there, sitting in his wheeled chair beside a warm fire and small table with a tea tray set on it. Seeing me, he frowned. “A bit worse for wear, aren’t you, cousin?” he asked.
“I’m all right,” I said, wiping the rain off my sore face with my sleeve.
Embre’s aunt, the old pyrotechnist Sparks, sat opposite him, holding a teacup in her three-fingered hand. She wore her usual gray, scorch-marked dress, and her ash-colored hair was cut short. “Whatcher, wizard boy,” she said to me with a grin.
I grinned back at her. I was just as interested in pyrotechnics as she was.
“Magic’s been tricksy lately,” she said.
“I noticed,” I said. Hmmm. As a pyrotechnist, Sparks collected slowsilver, and made blackpowder and other things that would explode if you combined them. Because they’d once been dragons, the magics loved anything that had to do with smoke or fire, and explosions like the ones Sparks did drew their attention and got them all roiled up. That would not be a very good thing for the city right now. “Sparks,” I said slowly. “It’d be a good idea to not do any pyrotechnics for a while.”
“Figured,” Sparks agreed. “Been experimenting with tea lately, instead.”
Pip dropped off my shoulder and flew across the room, landing on the arm of Sparks’s chair.
“Want a sip of my blackpowder blend, do you?” Sparks said to the dragon. She held out her cup.
Pip stuck its snout into the cup and took a drink of her new tea. It looked up at Sparks, breathed out a puff of smoke, then took another gulp.
Sparks gave a gap-toothed grin, then set her cup on the table and got to her feet. “All right then?” she said to Embre.
He nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll give the ducal magister some tea if he wants it.”
“Righty-o!” Sparks said, and bustled out of the room, leaving me and Embre to talk.
“Would the ducal magister like some tea?” Embre asked, picking up the teapot.
“I’m not the ducal magister, and I don’t want any tea,” I said. “I want to do some magic.”
Embre raised his eyebrows. “And you had to come here to do it?”
I nodded. “Rowan and Nevery moved me into the Dawn Palace.”
“I know,” Embre said. “The duchess wrote me a note about it. She said you were attacked outside Heartsease. Go on. What does doing magic have to do with that?”
Right. “I was thinking about the fluff-beaters who attacked me. It could’ve been Crowe.”
Embre’s face went paper-white. “D’you think Crowe’s come back?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s how he does things, though.” I held up my fist.
He nodded. Crowe had been sent into exile for his crimes. But people had come back from exile before, and maybe Crowe had, too.
Embre frowned down at his hands. “I’ve had this feeling that something’s wrong in the city,” he said quietly. “Rowan’s felt it, too; she mentioned it in her note. It might be because we’ve got two magics here and they’ve yet to be properly settled, but I’m not certain that’s it.” He looked up at me. “Maybe it’s because Crowe’s returned.”
“Maybe,” I said. “The anstriker spell will tell us if he has or not.”
I pulled the small table into the middle of the room, where I put the tea tray on the floor, then took the rag-wrapped scrying globes out of my knapsack. Pip stuck its nose into the knapsack and snuffled around, its tail twitching.
Embre leaned forward in his wheeled chair so he could see what I was doing.
I unwrapped the smaller of the scrying globes. It was a glass ball about the size of a fist, but perfectly round. I gave it a polish and set it on the table. Its surface swirled with rainbow colors, so it looked like a soap bubble.
“I’m going to need some slowsilver,” I said to Embre.
He nodded, and while I unwrapped the other globe, he rolled his wheeled chair to the door, opened it, and gave an order to a minion waiting outside, then wheeled back over to the table. “What do they do?” Embre asked, pointing at the fist-sized globe.
“Escry,” I said. That wasn’t a very good answer, so I added, “This one can see all of Wellmet.” The second globe was the size of Pip, when the dragon was curled up and sleeping. I flicked it with my fingernail. It made a chiming hum. “This bigger one can see the parts of the Peninsular Duchies nearest Wellmet.” If it didn’t crack under the spell, which the grimoire said could happen.
Embre gave a sharp nod. “We’ll be able to see if Crowe is here, then?”
I nodded. If Crowe was in Wellmet or nearby, we could be sure as sure that he’d sent those men to beat the fluff out of me and try to kidnap me, and I figured we’d know who was responsible for the locus stone thefts, too. Pushing Pip aside, I dug a set of nested metal bowls out of the knapsack and put them on the table.
The minion came in then with a glass beaker half full of slowsilver, which he set on the table. Embre sent him out again.
Carefully I set out the metal bowls and poured a bit of slowsilver in each. Then, holding them with the wormsilk cloth so I wouldn’t smudge them with fingerprints, I set each scrying globe in its puddle of slowsilver. The spell could be done with water in the bowls, but using slowsilver made it stronger and gave a clearer picture, the grimoire said. That made sense—the slowsilver had once been a dragon’s scales, before the dragon turned into a magical being, so the slowsilver attracted the magic’s attention.
“Tallennar,” I said, Pip’s true name.
Pip popped its head out of the knapsack, then crawled up to my shoulder. I rested my hand on the dragon’s back, on the smooth place between its wings. Before starting the spell, I glanced across at Embre.
“You’d better go out for this part,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Why, Cousin?” he asked.
Because spells didn’t alway
s work the way they were supposed to when I did them, was why, and the two-magics problem could make it even worse. “It might be dangerous,” I said.
“I’ll take my chances,” Embre said. “Get on with it.”
All right.
I moved the smaller scrying globe in its dish to the edge of the table so Embre could see. Keeping one hand on Pip, I touched the globe with the tips of my fingers and started the anstriker spell. As I spoke the spellwords, the surface of the globe swirled with rainbow colors, like oil on water. The inside of the globe darkened until it was the shadowy black of a Twilight alleyway.
Under my fingers, the globe tingled. The darkness inside it brightened slowly, revealing a view of the city, but small, a tiny version of Wellmet shaped to the curve of the glass globe. We saw the narrow, steep streets, the tumbledown houses, and the factories of the Twilight with tiny wisps of smoke coming from their chimneys. Then the river twisting through the city like a little brown snake, and then the bright Sunrise on the other side.
I glanced up at Embre. “Ready?”
He nodded. He leaned forward to see, gripping the arms of his chair.
Because Crowe was a true name, as soon as I said it out loud, the globe would escry for him.
I took a deep breath. “Crowe,” I whispered.
A tiny spell-spark flared up inside the globe. It started its search at the Dawn Palace and raced downhill from there, through the wide streets and stone houses and parks of the Sunrise. At a street near the river, the spark slowed down, as if sniffing out some faint scent, but then it went on, zooming over the bridge and into the Twilight, racing along the river and the mudflats, through the factories, through the Deeps and the Steeps. Embre and I leaned close, watching the streets and houses flicker past. We saw the old Dusk House pit, and then the new Dusk House. The spark flared, shadows swirled, and the inside of the globe turned black.
Embre grabbed my sleeve, his hand like a claw. “Well?”
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