Another brief silence fell; then Kilisha said, “That was cruel.”
Adagan let out a sigh. “I know,” he said. “She’ll never forgive me. But I’m tired of having her following me around, trying to seduce me, and she might have eventually gotten over anything less vicious.”
“I don’t think she’ll get over that any time soon,” Kilisha said, gazing at Nissitha’s door.
“I’m not sure I will, either,” Adagan said. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go home and throw up.”
“Of course,” Kilisha said.
She was watching Adagan walk away when one of the soldiers cleared his throat behind her. She turned.
The men had gotten the couch into the house and tied it down amid the rest of the furniture; now they were tossing extra ropes back onto the empty wagon.
“Is there anything else we can do for you, lady?” a soldier asked her.
Kilisha blinked at him for a moment, and then, startled by her own daring, said, “Yes, actually. Would you stand guard here for the next hour or so? I need to perform a spell, and it’s very important that no one interrupt me, and that nothing escape during that time.”
“Escape?” The soldier looked at one of his companions. “You mean the couch?”
“Or any of the other furniture, or the bowl, or the spoon, or one particular spriggan,” Kilisha said. “I need them all here.”
The guardsmen exchanged glances; then one turned up a palm. “As you say, lady.”
That settled, Kilisha entered the house smiling.
Yara met her in the parlor as the furniture bumped and clattered around her. “Kilisha, what happened?”
“Til tell you later, Mistress,” Kilisha said. “Right now, I want to perform Javan’s Restorative before anything escapes again. Could you help me fetch everything I need?”
Yara started to say something — presumably, Kilisha thought, to reprimand this insubordinate Apprentice — but then she stopped, frowned, and said, “What will you need?”
“The spriggan, the door latch, the mirror, the bowl, the spoon, the rug, the bench, the couch, the chair, the coatrack, the table- and Ithanalin,” she said. “In the parlor. Oh, and I’ll need incense and jewelweed and... well, I’ll get those.”
Fifteen minutes later everything was in place.
Attempting a spell of this difficulty so soon after the exhausting events at the Fortress might Have been foolish, but Kilisha felt strangely invigorated, rather than tired; the ride home had given her time to recover, and Adagan had called her astonishingly brave, and the soldiers had said she had saved the overlord’s life, and she felt inspired. She could not bear to wait any longer to perform this act of wizardry and put an end to Ithanalin’s dispersal.
This particular performance of Javan’s Restorative turned out to be far and away the most difficult Kilisha had ever managed; the furniture kept trying to move about, the spriggan squeaked and struggled constantly as Yara held it in place, and simply coordinating so many pieces amid the clouds of magical smoke was a severe strain. Kilisha’s initial flush of vigor and enthusiasm faded quickly, and there were times she didn’t think she would be able to finish. The work dragged on and on, well past the hour she had asked of the soldiers, past sunset and suppertime, and still she worked.
And finally, when her reserves were completely exhausted and she knew she could do no more, a sudden silence fell across the furniture, and the clouds of magical smoke began to dissipate. Kilisha let out a breath and turned to her master.
Ithanalin straightened up from his crouch, stretched, smiled, then turned to her and said, “I’m impressed, Apprentice. That was excellent.”
Kilisha smiled at him, and then fainted.
Chapter Thirty-two
Kilisha awoke in her own familiar little bed, with Telleth sitting beside her and a familiar spriggan standing on her feet. She opened her eyes and turned her head to see the morning sunlight through the window.
“She’s awake!” Telleth called, leaping up. “Dad! She’s awake!”
“Awake awake awake!” the spriggan squealed, jumping up and down on Kilisha’s ankle. She kicked it off, and it danced happily on the bed. By the time she looked up from the spriggan Telleth was on the stairs, heading down.
“Thank you, thank you!” the spriggan said. “Got wizard out of head!”
“I didn’t do it for you” Kilisha retorted-but secretly, she was pleased that the spriggan hadn’t been hurt, and didn’t mind being back to itself. She brushed it off the bed, sat up, and reached for her robe.
A few minutes later she ambled down the stairs into the kitchen and found the entire household gathered around the breakfast table, waiting for her. Ithanalin rose from his chair as she entered.
“Kilisha,” he said, “I want to thank you. I saw most of what happened-I remember everything that happened to all the pieces, which is the oddest sensation. I remember you demanding that you be given the bowl and spoon, I remember you coaxing the coatrack to follow you, I remember you chasing the bench, all of it.”
Kilisha swallowed hard. “You remember it all?”
Ithanalin nodded.
Kilisha remembered, too. She remembered yelling at various fragments of her master, chasing them recklessly through the streets, tricking them and trapping them and tying them up, lying to them and bribing them and threatening them. She remembered sitting on them. She remembered the love spell on the rug, she remembered the spoon wrapped around her arm and trying to get under her clothes, she remembered holding the coatrack over her head, and grabbing the spriggan by the throat...
“I’m sorry, Master,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
“Sorry?” Ithanalin chuckled. “Oh, don’t be foolish. I remember you doing what had to be done to collect a bunch of idiot fragments; any disrespect involved was entirely justified. I remember some rudeness, yes, but I remember persistence and ingenuity, as well. Most particularly, I remember the very fine performance you gave when I dove off the Fortress with the overlord-it was a remarkable display of courage and foresight. You must have put a great deal of thought and effort into preparing those potions! That was excellent work, worthy of a master wizard, let alone a journeyman. You’re clearly ready for more than just the Spell of the Obedient Object.”
“Thank you, Master,” Kilisha said, somewhat overwhelmed by this praise. Then a thought struck her. “You remember every-thing?”
“Yes, I think so. Why?”
“Could you tell me, then, how the couch got into the Fortress, and why?”
“Ah!” Ithanalin smiled and reached for his chair. “Well, I’m sure you know how sometimes when you’re working on a long spell odd, irrelevant thoughts will wander through your mind. That was happening as I stirred the mixture, and I was remembering an incident several years back when I spoke with someone who had once been a rat, who had told me about rinding the legendary escape tunnel from the Fortress.”
“Escape tunnel?” Telleth asked from his seat at the table, his eyes wide.
“Yes,” Ithanalin said, sitting down again. “When the Fortress was built, during the Great War, the possibility of a long siege by Northern forces was considered, and a secret tunnel was built from deep in the Fortress crypts to a nearby cave, so that messengers could slip in and out undetected. After the war knowledge of the tunnel’s location was lost, but this rat-well, former rat-had rediscovered it, and she told me where it was, and I was thinking about that when that tax collector started pounding on the door.”