Vinthor’s mouth quirked. “More or less.” That hint of a smile faded. “But believe me, Your Highness, with Falk’s men in the streets, if we stay here even another hour we’ll be neck-deep in shit anyway.”
“Anything,” Brenna said suddenly. “Anything to get out of here. But I won’t share a wagon with Mother Northwind. I won’t let that hag near me!”
Vinthor started to speak, but Karl interjected. “If it is two to the wagon, I will lie with Mother Northwind…” He winced. “Um, so to speak. She can do nothing to me.”
Is that true? he wondered suddenly. I’ve assumed that the Magebane can be no more influenced by soft magic than hard… but is that really true?
Better ask Mother Northwind. I’m sure she’ll tell you the truth. He snorted.
“It’s settled, then.” Vinthor went into the room with the beds and came out with boots and a coat for Brenna. “Too big, both of them, but better than nothing,” he said. “The man they belonged to is dead, so he won’t begrudge your use of them. And they’ll serve as a disguise, as well.”
He looked at Karl. “There are other clothes in there,” he said. “Get rid of your finery. Blacken your face with soot. If we’re stopped, let me do the talking.”
Karl nodded, and went into the other room. There were several sets of nondescript work clothes, black pants, flannel shirts, boots. He undressed and dressed again, found a coat that fit him, and, remembering what Vinthor had said, plunged one hand into the cold ashes of the fire and rubbed the black soot on his cheeks and forehead.
When he returned to the front room, Vinthor gave him a critical once-over, then nodded. “Best we can do.”
“Wait,” Karl said. “Is there a sword I can wear?”
Vinthor gave him the look of a man pitying an idiot. “Commoners don’t wear swords. Not much point disguising yourself if you’re going to carry a whopping piece of illegal steel on your hip, is there?”
Karl blinked. “Good point. A dagger, then?”
“Daggers we have.”
Vinthor nodded and went to the wall, opening a cabinet to reveal several scabbarded blades. Karl picked two at random, one for himself, one for Brenna. As he held it out, belt and all, the girl’s eyes widened, making her look very young for a moment; then her expression hardened. She took the dagger without a word, fastening it on beneath her coat.
Karl did the same. “All right,” he said.
Vinthor led them out into the dark, snow-filled streets.
To get to the King’s quarters, one climbed the broad staircase of green marble that swept up from the south side of the echoing, pillared rotunda. As Verdsmitt climbed it, he thought he heard Falk’s voice, shouting something down by the main entrance, but he ignored it: the shouts weren’t intended for him, and that was all that mattered.
On the broad platform at the top of the stairs stood four pikemen, two on either side of the closed, gold-leafed double doors, their weapons glistening with the frost of enchantment, eyes reduced to glitters of light in the eye holes of face-covering helms.
Verdsmitt ignored them, focusing instead on the man who sat at a simple desk to one side, writing something on the single piece of parchment that was the only thing to mar the desk’s dark, polished wood. “Davydd Verdsmitt to see the King,” he said.
The man did not look up. “One does not gain a Royal audience merely by announcing one’s presence,” he said, his pen, one of the new Commoner-created kind with a built-in ink reservoir, scratching across the parchment. “Particularly not moments after a portion of the Palace has been damaged by a magical attack.”
“King Kravon will want to see me,” Verdsmitt said. “If you show him this.”
He pulled his hand from his pocket, aware as he did so of a subtle shifting of weight on the part of the guards closest to him, and held up the ring.
The secretary put down his pen and leaned forward for a closer look. “Pretty,” he said. “But why should the King care about your taste in jewelry?”
“Because it was also his, once upon a time,” Verdsmitt said. “You might also mention a name: Calibon.”
Verdsmitt had no idea how long this particular secretary had served the King, but he suspected no one at this level of the bureaucracy could have been unaware of some of the more sordid details of the King’s personal history. The secretary did not do anything as gauche as raise an eyebrow, or even blink, but he did nod, and said, “Very well. I will pass your message to the King.” He held out his hand. “I will show him the ring.”
Verdsmitt’s hand closed on it. “No,” he said. “You just describe it to him. I will show him the ring. When I see him in person.”
A brief pause. “Wait here,” the secretary said. He picked up pen and parchment and turned, and a section of the wall behind him swung silently open. He disappeared through it, and it vanished into the marble once more.
Verdsmitt sat down in the chair the secretary had just vacated, and glanced over at the nearest pikeman, who continued to stare straight ahead as though he didn’t exist. “Do you mind if I whistle?” he said, took the guard’s silence for consent, and launched into one of the tunes written for one of his lesser-known comedies, The Bride of Brethan. He suspected he’d have time to get through the entire score before the secretary returned.
But he was equally confident the secretary would return.
After so many years, he would finally see Kravon again, face-to-face… one very final time.
When the call came from Vinthor to the Patron, Mother Northwind was waiting in Malia’s empty bedchamber. She had been panting by the time she got there, and had dipped at last into her precious vials of restorative, downing one of the four. A good thing, too: as she swallowed the last of it, she heard the tumult of the guards racing through the servants’ halls, doors slamming open as they searched room by room, and barely had time to summon up her coat of invisibility once more. Had she not taken the restorative, she wouldn’t have been able to do it at all.
Had the guard who kicked open Malia’s door and stepped into the tiny room with his sword drawn and a magelight globe floating above him lingered even half a minute longer, he would have seen his quarry appear out of thin air, pale and gasping; but he spared only a glance for the obviously empty room before racing down the corridor with his fellows.
To her relief, Mother Northwind had a good hour or more of much-needed rest, sitting quietly in the dark room. Then, much to her surprise, she felt the call from Vinthor.
His news reinvigorated her as much as the restorative and the rest. She gave him his instructions, closed the magelink, and smiled to herself for the twenty minutes more that passed before Malia returned and found her there.
Malia, though relieved to see Mother Northwind was not dead, as had been rumored, was still understandably upset to hear that Falk had murdered her sister in a fit of rage, but Mother Northwind did not have time to allow her to grieve for very long before laying a sympathetic hand on her arm and guiding her anger to a more productive purpose: helping Mother Northwind escape from the Palace.
It proved to be less of a challenge than she had feared. The Palace was not a fortress, after all, but a glorified apartment and office building, with numerous entrances and exits, some of them quite
… obscure. Mother Northwind’s quick rummage through Malia’s mind revealed one known to only a few. In fact, it was not officially an entrance at all. Certainly it would not show up on any map of the building or the grounds.
Most of the MageLords preferred to stay within the immediate vicinity of the Palace, but the Lesser Barrier was a full two miles in diameter. Southeast of the Palace, a sheltered grove grew close to the Barrier. Screened by bushes from passersby… although almost no one ever did pass it by… it was a place where the Commoner servants who lived in the Palace could slip for assignations forbidden by their Mageborn masters. Malia had made much use of it, in the company of the personal manservant of Lord Athol.