"There arc plenty of places to hide in this city," Kilisha said. "Someone will find it eventually. You'll see."
And with that she pushed away her half-finished meal and stalked back into the workshop, where she went through Ithan-alin's book of spells once more, looking for some magic that might help find the couch.
She found none, and in the end set about practicing Javan's Restorative again, failing her first attempt to reassemble a shattered jar, then getting it right on the second try.
She also repaired and cleaned a torn tunic, and fixed a toy juggler Telleth had broken a twelvenight before; she had decided that if she was going to work the spell, she might as well make it useful, rather than specifically breaking things so that she might restore them.
The jar, the tunic, and the toy all came out as good as new, gleaming and flawless. By the time she finally went to bed she wondered why the spell wasn't used more often.
Of course, the ingredients weren't free, and it took at least an hour, usually more, of a wizard's time – hardly reasonable for repairing broken toys. It really wasn't an especially difficult spell, though. She was confident that she would be able to use it to restore Ithanalin, once she had all the pieces.
All she needed was the couch, and with so many friends out looking for it, it would surely turn up soon. She told herself, as she lay on her narrow bed, that it would probably be found within a day or so.
It wasn't. The nineteenth and twentieth of Harvest passed without any news. Kilisha grew very tired of working the same spell over and over, and eventually, despite Yara's insistence that she practice the Restorative, she began reviewing some of her other spells instead. The possibility of making a few homunculi to join the search for the couch occurred to her, but a careful study of a few likely spells in Ithanalin's book convinced her that she was not yet ready to attempt them on her own, with no master to guide her hand-or to interpret Ithanalin's sometimes cryptic phrasing.
She wished she could go out looking for the couch herself. When the searchers continued to report no success she had begun to wonder whether it might have somehow gotten up on a rooftop, or in a ditch somewhere; she wanted to levitate herself again and see if she could spot it from above. She almost managed to convince herself that she had missed it before because she had only looked at ground level, at streets and courtyards and gardens.
Yara, however, forbade Kilisha to leave the house. "I don't trust the furniture, let alone that spriggan," she explained. "I want someone here who knows magic, and who can catch them if they get away. And I want someone here in case the couch comes back, or someone comes by with news."
Kilisha was tempted to argue, but resisted. "Yes, Mistress," she said.
Yara herself, though, felt free to go out searching, or recruiting more searchers. By the afternoon of the twenty-first it seemed as if half the city was looking for that red velvet fugitive. Yara and the children had gone to Arena and Bath to post more announcements on the message boards and see whether anyone had responded to yesterday's crop, and Kilisha had the house to herself- except for the furniture, milling about the parlor and tangling the ropes, and the smaller pieces thumping in their boxes, and the spriggan swinging by its fingertips from the edge of the workbench.
She was staring at the heap of jewelweed, trying to decide whether to attempt yet another iteration of Javan's Restorative and wondering what she could try it on this time, when someone knocked on the front door.
The distraction was welcome, and the possibility that someone might have found the couch gave her steps speed as she leapt from the stool and hurried to the parlor. She dodged the bench as she ran to the door.
The latch had already unlocked itself; Kilisha had to give it only the slightest tug to open the door and find herself staring at the tall, dark-haired beauty who stood on the stoop.
Kilisha had expected Kelder or Opir or Adagan, or perhaps Istram. It took her a moment to adjust to the reality and recognize this visitor.
"Lady Nuvielle!!" she said. She bowed hastily. "A pleasure to see you, my lady; but alas, my master is indisposed."
"Is he still? I'm sorry to hear that," Nuvielle replied. "But perhaps you can answer my question, apprentice-Kinsha, is it?"
"Kilisha, my lady. And I fear I have not yet studied animations, and can tell you very little about your pet dragon."
"It's not about the dragon."
Kilisha blinked, trying to imagine what else the noblewoman might want. "Did you wish to order another creation, then? Or some other spell?"
"No. I came here to ask a question. I came here three days ago to ask the same question and was turned away, and this time I am resolute-I will have an answer."
Kilisha remembered almost bumping into Nuvielle while chasing the spriggan; it had not occurred to her that the Lady Treasurer might have been headed to Ithanalin's door. Kelder had told her he had turned away a customer, and she had not bothered to ask who the customer might have been, but presumably that had been Nuvielle.
If it wasn't about the dragon, though, then what could she want? Was there a problem with the taxes, perhaps?
Whatever the aristocrat wanted, she was clearly determined, and the simplest thing to do was to cooperate. "Of course, my lady,"Kilisha said. "I apologize for the inconvenience." She hesitated, then said, "I would invite you in, but I fear the shop is disordered at the moment."
"Is it?"
"Very much so."
"Is your couch missing, then? The rather good one, dark wood with crimson velvet upholstery?"
Kilisha's jaw dropped-something that until that moment she had thought merely a figure of speech. She quickly snapped it shut again, and said, "How did you know? I mean… have you seen it?"
"I believe I have, yes. That was the basis for my question."
"Then by all means, my lady, please tell me more! The couch's absence has been a matter of great concern to us!"
"It's quite an unusual couch, isn't it? I've never seen another quite like it, have you?"
"No, my lady." Kilisha fought down the urge to say more, to demand an immediate explanation; Nuvielle would come to the point eventually, and there was no need to antagonize her.
"Do you know where it's from?"
"No, my lady. My master had it when I first came here, and I never thought to ask."
"I rather admired it when I came here before, and I did not recall ever seeing another quite like it, which seemed entirely fitting for a wizard's parlor couch-and then a few days ago I did see another like it, under surprising circumstances, in a room I had visited a hundred times, and it seemed a very curious coincidence-so curious that I wondered whether it was merely a coincidence, or whether that same couch had somehow been transported."
"Where is it, my lady?"
"Well, that's what's so strange about it-how is it you don't know?"
Kilisha began to suspect that Nuvielle was deliberately teasing her. "It escaped, my lady," she said. "The accident that left my master indisposed animated that couch, and it fled. We are very eager for its return, but we don't know where it went."
"Ah."
She was teasing. "My lady, please," Kilisha said. "Where is it?"
"I wonder how it got past the guards? It must be quite clever. For a couch."
"Guards?"
"At the Fortress door," Nuvielle said.
"It's in the Fortress"}"
There had been sign after sign that some of the furniture had wanted to get into the Fortress-Kilisha couldn't begin to imagine why-but she had thought that was impossible. The doors were locked and guarded, and surely something the size of a couch couldn't have slipped in unnoticed!