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“Did they try very hard to deny my existence?” she said with an amused glance.

“Maybe not. The old Romney woman implied I would meet you.” I paused, remembering exactly what the woman had said. “But were they afraid of my discovering there was someone who knew magic in the city?”

“Why would they do that?” she replied.

“They certainly left town in a rush, I assume to avoid telling me.”

“But if I were with them, how can I be here now? Or is that just another of my witch-like tricks?”

I was fascinated by her hair, a dark brown that caught gold highlights as she moved her head. It looked luxuriantly soft. “What are your other witch-like tricks?” I asked, almost wishing after all that I had accepted the invitation to her cave.

“What I actually like to do best of all isn’t even magic.” She paused briefly; I could tell this was very important to her. “I like to climb.”

“To climb?”

“I have to do it at night for the most part. It would cause scandal in the city to have a woman scrambling around on towers in broad daylight. But it gives me a sense of mastery, of power over my own body and over the world around me, to know there is nothing too steep or too tall for me to climb if I want.”

“Then you have a power over your body I don’t have over mine. I went up the new cathedral tower last week, and it gave me vertigo. If you’re not a Romney, are you perhaps related to those workmen working on the new church?”

“I thought they were from far away in the north somewhere,” she said with another smile. “Do they enjoy climbing too?” She had not actually answered my question, but it was too pleasant to have an attractive woman paying close attention to whatever I said to worry about it.

V

Even after we finished our food we continued sitting and talking, a conversation of unrelated questions and oblique answers, where she seemed continually amused by me. At last she looked out toward the street, where the movement of the sun over the house tops had cast the cobblestones into shadow. “I have a lot to do at home,” she said, as though surprised herself at how much time had passed.

“I’ll walk you back.”

She took my arm again. “You school-trained wizards may luxuriate in royal courts,” she said with a smile, “pondering the meaning of magic, but those of us who work for a living actually have to work.

We walked rapidly through twisting streets. Timbered house fronts leaned over us, seeming to stare down from multi-paned windows. We emerged in a quarter of small houses near the river, overlooked by the backs of the tall homes of the cathedral priests. Theodora stopped by a low door and turned her key.

“Maybe it’s just as well you didn’t come here for lunch,” she said apologetically as she opened the door. “I’d forgotten I left everything so scattered.”

Inside was a rather dimly-lit but completely conventional room. I had a brief glimpse of the black and white tail of a cat disappearing under a chair. Spread out on the table and chairs were brightly-colored embroidered pieces of cloth. “I do embroidery for some of the merchants and the garment retailers,” she said. “The best piece I’ve done recently is no longer here, but if you’re in the cathedral you’ll see it: the cloth on the high altar.”

Joachim or whatever cathedral officer bought altar cloths, I thought, must not know that the skilled local embroideress he had hired was a witch. I was not going to tell him.

“Usually I try to work at midday because the light is best,” she said. “The drawback to fire magic is that you never end up with anything better than candlelight. But I did enjoy talking to you.”

“I hope I’ll see you again,” I said.

“Of course you will. You promised to teach me some of your magic. An embroideress could use magic globes to shine beside her.”

I tore myself away and started back up the hill. I thought I knew now the source of the lights the watchman had originally seen on the new tower. But I knew even less the source of the bat-winged monster.

The dean was very quiet at dinner that night, as though he had decided it would not be tactful to keep quizzing me on my progress. I took advantage of his silence to think about Theodora. But, as usual, tact lost out.

“My servant told me you were lighting candles in broad daylight this morning,” Joachim burst out at last. “Are you trying your own version of an exorcism?”

“No, nothing like that,” I answered vaguely. “I was working on a different aspect.”

For close to twenty years, I had been the wizard of Yurt. When I had gone to the school for a few months, it had been with the assumption that life in Yurt would be the same when I returned. Now, in the last week, I had discovered the queen was getting married, had resigned as wizard of Yurt, and had met Theodora. With all my habits and suppositions shaken up, I had to remind myself that for Joachim, to whom the monster on the cathedral tower was of overriding concern, nothing was happening at all.

“I did find out one piece of information which may reassure you,” I continued. “The flickering lights on the construction at night, and maybe even the disturbance of materials up on the scaffolding, were due to the influence of a harmless magical being.”

“Do you mean a wizard?”

“Actually something closer to the fairies the workmen suggested,” I said, avoiding the word “witch.” But I wondered even while I spoke whether Theodora, even if she lit magical fires while scaling the scaffolding at night, would be capable of shifting heavy stones and equipment.

“But what about the monster?” said Joachim, looking at me with enormous black eyes. I had always found it difficult to hide anything from those eyes.

I dropped my own gaze to my plate. “I haven’t made as much progress with that as I hoped,” I confessed. “If it was called here by a wizard, that wizard is hiding very thoroughly from me.”

Joachim started to speak, stopped himself, and then spoke anyway. “I know you don’t need me to remind you that the bishop was hoping you could be quick.”

“And discreet,” I added. “Look on the bright side. If I can’t find out what’s happening, and the bishop blames you for bringing in a worthless magic-worker, then maybe the priests of the cathedral chapter won’t elect you bishop after him.”

Joachim took a deep breath. “Forgive me if I have in any way suggested you are a ‘worthless magic-worker.’ It is just hard to wait for it to appear again.”

“It may not appear at all,” I said. “Remember, while I was here last week there weren’t even any flickering lights. The guard saw a giant lizard with hands yesterday morning, but that was only a few hours after I arrived, and there’s been nothing further today. Maybe the monster is afraid of what it at least considers a highly competent wizard. I could stay here for a while, keeping it away by my very presence.”

“But you want to get back to Yurt.”

And Father Norbert isn’t the only priest who wants one less wizard on the street, I thought. “I can stay for some time,” I said airily. “For various reasons I don’t need to return to Yurt right away.”

Joachim stood up, and I started to rise to help him collect the dishes, but he had only gone to the sideboard for a second bottle of wine. I watched his face as he worked out the cork and filled our glasses; he seemed even more sober than usual.

“I may not always understand you,” he said after we had sat in silence for several minutes, “but I know you better than you think I do. Something has upset you, upset you terribly. What is it?”

“Why do you think I’m upset?” I said lightly. I took a drink of wine to avoid looking at him.

“Or made you angry, or frightened, or filled with sorrow. I know you were a little disturbed when you heard the queen was getting married, because you felt she was being untrue to the memory of the king we all loved and served, but this goes beyond her marriage. I first knew something was wrong when you arrived here yesterday at dawn, totally drenched. Since then you’ve acted distracted, and I know you well enough to realize that you’ve been thinking inappropriate thoughts even when you are not saying them.”