I find that troubling, thought Meralda.
Donchen’s slate-grey eyes met Meralda’s. “I am pleased to see that your own arcane defenses proved more than adequate.”
Meralda remembered the thrill of power she felt while holding Nameless and Faceless.
“Many of the older artifacts here are quite powerful,” she said. The lie lay bitter on her lips. “The king will be livid when he gets the bill for the water mains.”
“A small price to pay, I think.”
Is that pain in his eyes?
“Thank you for coming to my rescue,” said Meralda.
“Quite the contrary. You came to mine. I was being throttled right below your feet, when you turned my assailant into a rather showy cloud of ash.” Donchen stood. “I do smell of an outhouse. Might I borrow yonder water closet, before Mug wakes and decides I am a compost heap?”
“I’ll have fresh clothes sent up,” said Meralda, wrinkling her nose. “I can send for some of your own, if you like.”
Donchen rose slowly from his chair, holding his ribs as he moved. “Actually, I’d prefer a guard uniform, if that’s not too much a slap in the face to Tirlish military tradition. Mail shirt, helmet, sword. Can that be done?”
Puzzled, Meralda shouted for Tervis, who came at a trot.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I need a uniform,” said Meralda. “In Donchen’s size. With arms. Can you do that, quietly, without telling anyone why?”
Tervis grinned and straightened. “Right away! Straight sword or Argen curved?”
“Straight, please,” said Donchen. “And sharp. Very sharp.”
Chapter Seventeen
Donchen’s plain straight sword flashed as it fell. He stepped back with his right foot, pivoted, and when he stopped the tip of his sword was a finger’s breadth from Kervis’ throat.
“You simply draw your opponent’s blade to his right, and then you step, turn, stab,” said Donchen. He flicked his sword away and fell back into a defensive crouch. “Now you try.”
Kervis nodded and charged.
Tervis sat beside Meralda and mopped sweat, fresh from his own bout with the Hang. “He’s so fast,” he whispered. “Faster than Sergeant Smithy, that’s for sure.”
Meralda looked away from Donchen and Kervis and leaned back in her chair. He looks Tirlish, in that guardsman’s garb, she thought. Dashing, in fact, even with a black eye and a split lip.
“I’m sure he is,” she said.
Tervis nodded at Mug. “He looks better, ma’am. Not so wilted. Has he said anything yet?”
“Nothing that made sense. But he’s dreaming. Watch.”
Mug’s leaves shivered, and his eye stalks moved as if in a sudden puff of wind.
“That’s a good sign, isn’t it, ma’am?”
“I’d be far more worried if he was perfectly still.”
Tervis nodded.
“I like him. I’m going to miss seeing him, when the Accords are done.” The Bellringer’s face reddened. “We’ll miss seeing you too, ma’am, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Of course I don’t mind. I didn’t want bodyguards, you know. But I’ve quite enjoyed your company. Who knows? I might ask for a permanent deployment.”
Tervis lit up with a wide sudden smile.
“We’d like that, ma’am!”
“I’ll see to it, then. If your brother agrees, of course.”
“He will. We’ve, um, talked about it. Please don’t tell him I told you that.”
“I won’t.”
“Well, I’d better get back to practice,” said Tervis. “Thank you, Mage.”
“Thank you, Guardsman.”
“I didn’t order shoes,” said Mug. “Oblate spheroid.”
Meralda patted the dandyleaf’s tossing leaves until they were still.
“As I was saying,” said the Tower, in a near whisper. “The only point of contact between the tethers and the curseworks appears to be this juncture, here…”
A diagram appeared in the corner of the sunlit glass. Meralda copied it onto her paper, and then set about finding its secrets.
Donchen, clad now in the waistcoat and leggings and shiny buckled shoes of a nobleman of old, raised Kervis’ hand and smiled.
“Right foot, left foot, turn, pirouette,” he said.
Kervis stumbled, trying to stand tip-toe in his guardsman’s boots. He frowned and looked down at his long, flowing ball gown.
“I don’t think I like this dream,” he said.
Meralda lifted her head from her desk and shook it, trying to wake.
Mug turned his eyes toward her, whole again. “None of that, mistress,” he chided, waggling vines at her. “Someone went to considerable trouble to bring this dream about. Please sleep just a few moments longer. It’s important.”
“Indeed,” said Tower, from inside the glass. “A fanfare, if you please.”
Mug sounded a fanfare, complete with trumpets and drums.
Footfalls sounded from the shelves. There came the sound of a door slamming shut.
Meralda rose and whirled to face the shelves. My back aches, she thought. My arm is numb where I slept on it. I can’t be dreaming.
Tim the Horsehead stepped into the light.
“You are, indeed, dreaming,” he said. He turned his equine head so he gazed at Meralda through his right eye. “Though it is a singular sort of dream.”
“Tim the Horsehead couldn’t speak.” Meralda sagged. “It is just a dream.”
“I can speak perfectly well in dreams,” replied Tim. “May I come closer?”
Meralda shrugged. “Please do.”
Tim approached.
Meralda watched. He’s wearing the robes of office, she noted. The very same clothes depicted in his portrait in the Gold Room.
“Well, I’m working with your memories, after all,” said Tim. He moved to stand two short steps from Meralda. “We’ve been very impressed with you, you know,” he said. “All of us. We look in from time to time.” He raised a gloved hand and pointed at Mug. “He’ll be fine, by the way. You needn’t worry.”
Meralda pinched her side.
It hurt.
Tim remained, perfectly solid, not the least bit dreamlike.
He smelled of cologne Meralda couldn’t name. His muzzle was whiskery and going grey.
Beneath the cologne, Meralda realized he smelled very faintly of…a stable?
Meralda’s heart began to race. What if this is really Tim, somehow?
“We? We who?”
Tim curled back his lips in a horse’s toothy grin. “We former thaumaturges. All this time, thinking the Tower was haunted, when it is this laboratory that is full of ghosts.” He made a sound somewhere between a whinny and a laugh. “The very walls in this place are infused with old, old magic. We mages leave a part of us behind.”
More figures stepped from the shadows between the shelves. Some solid, some faded and ghostlike, some little more than shadows themselves.
None moved far from the dark.
“We know of the threat to Tirlin, and your efforts to stop it. We salute you, Mage Meralda Ovis. As not just one of us, but the best of us.”
“I am no such thing.”
Tim whinnied again in laughter. “We shall soon see. Tirlin’s darkest hour is nearly upon us, Mage. Know that we who wore the robes before you stand at your side.”
“Can you render the curseworks harmless?”
Tim shook his long head side to side.