The healer, when he came, took a look at Karl’s feet, ears, and cheeks, then checked his fingers for good measure, grunted, and said, “Going to have a blister on that one ear, nothing serious. Face is okay. Feet, I’ve got to do something with. Stay still.”
Karl did the best he could, though the pain in his feet seemed to intensify rather than ease as the Healer placed his hands on Karl’s ankles and closed his eyes in rapt concentration. But then, abruptly, the feeling changed. The pain diminished, replaced by what felt like a furious swarm of angry bees. That, too, dropped off rapidly, and when the Healer finally took a deep breath, released Karl’s ankles, and sat down rather heavily on the bed across the room from him, the pain had settled to nothing more than a slight, throbbing ache.
“Thank you,” Karl said fervently. Vinthor, who had stood by silently watching the whole procedure, now turned to the Healer.
“Can he walk?”
“Yes,” The Healer said faintly. “Probably better than I can for the next minute or two.”
“Jopps! Bring some food and a glass of wine for the Healer.”
“My thanks,” the Healer said.
“As for you, Your Highness,” Vinthor said, “it’s lucky for you that you can walk, because whether you can or not, we’re heading out.”
“Tonight?” Karl quailed at the thought of facing the cold again. “Why?”
“You’re the Prince. You’re now officially missing. Once Falk twigs, he’ll search inside the Barrier… and he’ll find the boats and the tracks you made. He’ll know you somehow came through the Barrier. Which means he’ll be searching New Cabora for you next-and the kind of search he’s likely to launch is all-too-likely to find you.
“So we’re leaving. Tonight.” He crouched down and pulled a worn pair of black boots from under his bed. “You’re about my size. See if you can wear these.” He reached under the bed again and pulled out a pair of not particularly clean-looking woolen socks. “Put these on first.”
Gingerly, expecting more pain, Karl pulled on the scratchy socks, then slid his feet inside the scuffed-up footwear. The boots proved to be a big-toe’s-length too long, but were far better than nothing.
Vinthor also produced an equally scruffy-looking brown leather coat lined with sheepskin, a knitted woolen cap, and a pair of gloves with holes in the palm. Once he’d put them on over his own clothes, Vinthor examined him critically. “You’ll do,” he said. “You don’t look like the Prince.”
“No, he looks like a cutthroat,” the Healer put in unexpectedly. “He could get arrested on general principles.”
“He looks like far too many Commoners look,” Vinthor growled, and the Healer, who was, after all, Mageborn, though obviously a sympathizer to the Cause, wisely held his tongue.
The Healer left shortly thereafter. Vinthor waited another half hour past that, then doused the fires, blew out the lanterns, and led the way into the frosty alley, locking the door behind him. “Horses,” he whispered, and that seemed to be enough for Jopps and Denson to know their destination. They moved through the deserted streets of the midwinter night, so dark and still and frigid it was hard to believe the sun would ever warm them again. They kept mostly to back alleys, slinking from shadow to shadow, Vinthor leading the way. Once he stopped at the corner of a dilapidated house and held up a fist. Instantly Jopps’ big hand clamped itself over Karl’s mouth and Denson seized his arms. He started to struggle, thought better of it, and relaxed. A frozen minute crept by, then another… and finally Vinthor lowered his fist. “Patrol,” he mouthed, barely audible. “Gone past. This way.”
After what seemed an eternity but logically must have been less than an hour-New Cabora simply wasn’t that big-they reached the outskirts of the town, where a very unprepossessing inn stood guard at the intersection of two roads that, judging by the lack of either ruts or hoofprints in the snow, and the weeds sticking up through that snow, were seldom used by anyone. The slate roof sagged, but not as much as the porch; the wood had obviously not felt the touch of a paintbrush since before Karl was born, and even the light of the welcome lamp the law required inns to display had a sickly quality, glowing wan and yellow behind the paper used to replace several panes of the front window.
The inn sign hung askew above it. In the urine-colored light, he could just make out the faded image of a fat man holding his apron-covered belly and laughing uproariously. “The Jolly Host,” Karl read.
They didn’t go into the inn, though. They went around it, into the fenced yard at the back. Here, trampled snow and an unmistakable smell announced the presence of horses, and a third road, which had been much more heavily trafficked, led away through a copse of trees and between two low hills. The inn’s just cover, Karl realized. So the Common Causers can come and go unobtrusively.
Like now. As he watched the horses, all of whom seemed grumpy at being woken (he really couldn’t blame them), being saddled and bridled, he thought he should point something out to Vinthor.
“I can’t ride,” he said.
“What?” Vinthor turned to look at him in disbelief.
“Never had any reason to learn,” Karl said. “You can walk around the Lesser Barrier in an hour, and when I’ve gone into the Commons it’s always been in a magecarriage.”
Vinthor sighed. “Then you’ll have to ride double with Denson… he’s the smallest. All you’ll have to do is hold on. Can you do that?”
Karl nodded.
Riding, he soon discovered, was almost as painful as frostbite.. . though it involved different parts of his body. He jolted and bounced on the saddle, unable to find the rhythm of the horse’s stride
… if it had one… as they moved at a trot away from the lights of New Cabora along a road that by the looks of it no one else had traveled all winter. Then they began to gallop, and that seemed better at first… better until the cold started to find its way into his coat and boots, resharpening the dull ache left in his feet by the Healer’s touch. But there was nothing he could do but hold on to the solid, wiry form of the little man behind whom he rode, and press his face to the back of his coat to keep off the wind.
Karl had no way of knowing how long they rode, alternating galloping, cantering, and walking. But at some point he noticed that he could see more of the other horses riding alongside; and then that he could distinguish the horizon; and then ever-so-slowly after that, dawn broke, the sun poking a semicircle of orange fire above the black rim of the prairie.
Before it had completely cleared the horizon, though, it was hidden again, as they abruptly came to a little valley and followed the road down into its depths.
A house nestled there among willows lining a frozen line of ice that in warmer times would be a stream. Karl realized he must be almost asleep in the saddle, because he first saw the house off in the distance, then blinked and suddenly discovered they were riding into its yard. And then Vinthor and Jopps were helping him down from the horse in the yellow glow of a lantern shining through the windows. He could barely walk, but the light that streamed out of the open door promised shelter and warmth, and that was enough of an incentive for him to force his aching muscles to propel him forward.
He’d expected to find another hard-faced man, some soldier for the Common Cause, inside the cozy farmhouse kitchen; but instead, it was a woman who greeted him, a woman as welcoming and comforting as her house. She said her name, but he didn’t hear it, barely noticed as she helped him take off his boots and coat and hat and gloves. He climbed the stairs like an old man, turned to the bed she pointed him to, and two minutes later was blissfully asleep.
As the sun set on the day after Verdsmitt’s arrest and Prince Karl’s disappearance, Lord Falk stood in the central square of New Cabora, on the broad stone base of the larger-than-life bronze statue of some Commoner whose name Falk neither recognized nor cared about. He had sent his guards into the streets an hour ago, rousting people from their homes and the businesses they were just locking up, ordering them to assemble. They stood in silent throngs all around him now, their breath creating clouds of steam that the last orange rays of the sun, finding their way between buildings, slashed through in ever-shifting lines of fire.
Falk gathered his will, drew energy from the air, and tossed skyward a glowing ball that hung over the square. As he spoke, the ball, first cousin to a magelink, amplified his voice, throwing it out across the crowd in a booming, inescapable wave of sound.
“Commoners of New Cabora,” Lord Falk thundered. “Last night, an unspeakable criminal act was committed. His Royal Highness Prince Karl, Heir Apparent to the Throne and the Keys of the Kingdom of Evrenfels, was kidnapped.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. Falk was not foolish enough to believe it was an entirely disapproving one.
“This follows, of course, the attempt on the Prince’s life three days ago. We have strong evidence that the terrorists behind both of these outrages were members of the criminal organization styling itself the Common Cause.”
Another murmur, this time of denial; a few muttered “No!”, even someone calling “That’s the scuttle calling the hearth black!” Falk’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t turn to look for the culprit, who would soon see where such petty defiance led.
“We therefore require anyone with knowledge of the Prince’s whereabouts, or the method by which he was taken, or the identities and whereabouts of the leaders of the Common Cause, in particular the one known as the Patron, to make themselves and their information known to us.”
He glared around at the crowd. The Royal guard hemmed those gathered with a line of blue and silver, insuring there would be no trouble. As reinforcements, Falk had even called in soldiers from the army barracks, their white winter uniforms harder to see among the snowdrifts around the square, stationed to prevent access to or from the surrounding streets.
The guards had shaped the crowd as Falk had commanded, so that to his right there was a large open space between the wall of the watchful guards and the red-brickand-limestone City Hall with its recently added clock tower, officially opened by Prince Karl just three months ago. That tower, Falk had been told by Brich, boasted the latest Commoner cleverness, mechanical automatons in the shape of men and women and children and animals that emerged with clanging cymbals, jingling tambourines and ringing bells, to mark the passage of time. The Commoners, Brich said, had an inordinate fondness for the clock and City Hall itself, which had just reached the ripe old age of 150 years.
“Lest anyone thinks we are not serious about obtaining this information,” Lord Falk said quietly, “let this prove otherwise.”
He had enchanted the object he pulled from his cloak himself, working for an hour to pour into it the necessary amount of energy from the roaring coal-fed fires of the Palace’s MageFurnace. It was a simple wooden ball, such as a child might play with, but even through the heavily insulated glove he wore he could feel its deadly cold. It smoked, the very air that touched it condensing like water on its surface, then falling away in a puff of white.
“For every day that the Commoners of New Cabora fail to tell the MageLords what we wish to know about the disappearance of Prince Karl and the leaders of the Common Cause, this will be the fate of a building.”
And with an effort of will, he hurled the smoking ball out of his hand, above the wide-eyed faces of the Commoners, over the helmeted heads of the guards and, with a tinkling crash, through one of City Hall’s multi-paned windows.
Lord Falk waited just the right amount of time… and then exerted the very little bit more will required to activate the magic packed so densely into the ball.
Blue-white light, brighter than the sun, flashed through the windows of City Hall. The windows themselves simply… vanished, the wooden frames and glass alike instantly vaporized.
In the aftermath of the flash, the sunlight seemed faded. Gloom gripped the square. And then City Hall… collapsed.
The roof went first, falling into the suddenly hollow interior as the beams that had held it crumbled into ash. The walls followed. The tower stood for one moment all by itself, and then collapsed straight down, rock grinding to dust that billowed across the Square. The massive mechanism of the clock hit the stones with a great ringing crash that shook the pedestal on which Falk stood.
Falk heard soft sobs from the crowd of Commoners, then coughs as the dust clouds swept over them. “Every day, another building falls,” he said, his voice thundering from the globe overhead. “Every day.. . until someone tells me what I want to know.”
He raised a hand and flicked the glowing ball out of existence, then nodded to Captain Fedric. The guards pushed the Commoners out of the way, holding them back as Falk strode between them, back toward the Palace. He would not have been surprised to hear them cursing him, even surging forward to try to get their hands on him, but in fact they stood all but silent, as though numbed by the power he had just demonstrated.
We have been too lenient too long, Falk thought. This Kingdom belongs to the Mageborn. It’s time the Commoners remembered that.
After what he had just done, he did not think they would forget again anytime soon. He allowed himself a small smile at that thought; a smile that vanished as he crossed the bridge that led from New Cabora into the Palace grounds and saw Brich waiting for him, face pale in the blue magelight glowing above the guardhouse at the bridge’s far end.
Falk, seeing him, suspected that just when he thought his very bad day was almost over, it was instead about to get much worse.
“Lord Falk,” Brich said as Falk and his bodyguards reached him. “I have… disturbing news.”
“Why am I not surprised? One moment.” Falk turned to Captain Fedric. “Dismiss your men with my thanks.”
“Yes, my lord.”
As Fedric turned to talk to his men, Falk nodded toward the Palace. “Let’s walk.” Once out of earshot of the guards, he continued. “Now, Brich. What news?”
“Brenna has fled the manor,” Brich said.
Falk prided himself on maintaining a steely composure in the face of almost any provocation, but that simple sentence stopped him in his tracks. “ What? ”
“In the company of Anton, the boy from Outside,” Brich continued steadily. “In his flying device.”
Falk literally did not know what to say. The disappearance of the Prince was a disruption in the Plan. But the disappearance of Brenna was… catastrophic. Without her in his control, ready to be slain at the crucial moment, there was no Plan.
“Details,” he grated out at last, and resumed walking, much more quickly, toward the Palace.
But of details, it seemed, there was a shortage. Gannick had been aware that the boy was trying to fix the airship, and had thought nothing of it, since that was the task he and the mageservants had been set, though he had made sure that a man-at-arms kept an eye on both Brenna and the boy. But then the back door had suddenly opened and that man-at-arms had been tossed, bleeding and senseless, into the hallway by a mageservant, which had then slammed the door shut.
Gannick had seized his control wand and tried to run out into the courtyard, but a mageservant, obviously under a command to let no one into the yard, attacked him so quickly he couldn’t use the wand on it. As he scrambled for safety, he glimpsed Brenna and Anton in the gondola of the airship, which was straining at its ropes. He’d called out the other men-at-arms. The mageservants had been quickly dealt with… six destroyed, and despite everything else Falk winced at the thought of how much each of those cleverly made and fiendishly expensive magical marionettes cost… but they had given Anton just the amount of time he needed. The airship had shot skyward, “Quick as an arrow,” Gannick said, rising so far and fast that it was only a tiny blue dot in the sky in seconds. They had watched it start to drift to the northeast. The men-at-arms had mounted and ridden after it, but the heavy brush and snow in that direction had slowed them to a crawl, and soon they had turned back, defeated.
“Are you certain there is no magic in that device, my lord?” Brich said. “Gannick said they opened the back of a chimney and drew on the heat of the Mage Fire.”
Falk snorted. “He needed the hot air, Brich. That’s all.”
Brich frowned, clearly not understanding, but said nothing.
That suited Falk, who was thinking furiously, picturing a map of the Kingdom. Northeast would take the airship to the Great Lake, this time of year an enormous sheet of windswept ice rather than an inland sea. And northeast of that, if they somehow made it clear across, lay only wilderness, home to the Minik, the native people driven from the South by the arrival of the MageLords eight centuries ago.
What those primitive savages would make of a giant airship dropping into their midst, Falk couldn’t imagine.
The trouble was he had no idea how far the airship could go. It had not traveled far in miles from the town Anton had described on the other side of the Barrier before coming down in Falk’s backyard, but Falk suspected a lot of that had had to do with the unusual conditions that prevailed above the Barrier. If he understood the airship’s principle well enough, it would gradually descend as the air in its envelope cooled. If the burner still worked, they could use it to stay aloft longer, but its reservoir of rock gas was empty and they certainly hadn’t been able to fill that in Falk’s manor. They could throw out ballast for a time to stay aloft, but eventually…
If he only knew how far it had risen, how fast the winds were blowing, and the rate of descent, he could easily calculate their approximate landing point. But he knew none of those things.
During the last few moments of mutual silence, he and Brich had entered the Palace and were now descending to Falk’s office. He waited until they were through the checkpoint and Brich had taken his accustomed place at his desk before giving his orders.
“Call out the army,” he said. “Start…” Again he pictured the map. “They’re to start at Moose Leap and move northeast, questioning everyone they can find, adjusting their search as necessary based on whatever sightings of the airship are reported. When they find the airship, they’re to secure it and have it transported back here.”
“Here, my lord?” said Brich, who had been taking notes using pen and paper, as though he suspected the Commonermade text-stamper was not something Falk would appreciate at that moment. He was right.
“Yes, here.” Falk rubbed his forehead. “I may have use for it. Brenna, when they find her, is also to be brought here. The boy…” Kill him, he wanted to say, but all the reasons for not killing him remained valid. “Likewise.”
“It will be done, my lord.”
“And then, Brich, magespeak the manor. Tell Gannick to tell my men-at-arms they are to gently-gently, mind you, but firmly-insist to Mother Northwind that she, too, must come to the Palace. I need her talents.”
“Yes, my lord.” Brich’s pen quit moving across the paper. “Anything else?”
“Yes. Verdsmitt. Has he said anything to his interrogators?”
“Only,” Brich said dryly, “that he was sorry they did not appreciate his play and the next time he comes to the Palace, he promises to bring a musical comedy.”
Falk smiled tightly. “Davydd Verdsmitt,” he said, “believes he is untouchable because harming him will inflame the Commons. After what I have done this evening, Brich, perhaps he will understand that inflammation of the Commons no longer concerns me.”
“Shall we make more… intense inquiries?” Brich said.
Again, Falk was tempted to say yes, to let loose the torturers. But though torture had its place, he did not place much faith in the information he received from it. Men in agony would say anything to ease that agony, and sometimes they even convinced themselves they were telling the truth, their own memories warped by the pain… in which case, even drawing out those memories would be useless.
He did not want Verdsmitt’s mind warped. He wanted it crystal clear when Mother Northwind reached inside it.
“No,” Falk said. “Stop all inquiries. Let him sit in silence and contemplate his misdeeds… until Mother Northwind is here.”
Brich nodded. He didn’t know all of what Mother Northwind was capable of, but he knew enough.
“And Tagaza?” Falk said.
“The First Mage says he will speak only to you, and points out that he serves at the pleasure of the King, not you, Lord Falk,” Brich said. “He says you have arrested him illegally and are abusing your authority. The Council has, of course, learned of his arrest and is demanding you account for it at the morning meeting.”
“And so I will,” Falk said. “After I’ve had a little chat with my old friend. Issue my orders, Brich.”
“Right away, my lord.”
Falk took a moment to divest himself of his winter coat and boots in his office, pulling on his indoor boots and making sure every thread was in place on his gray tunic and trousers before heading down the hall to Tagaza’s cell… just across the hall from Verdsmitt’s, he noted with grim amusement. No doubt they would have had a lot to say to each other if not for the fact the cells were magically soundproofed to prevent any such communication… magically, so that the soundproofing could be easily removed if Falk judged it worthwhile to have the sounds from one cell heard by other prisoners.
There was a lot of magic at work in that dungeon. It made it cold enough in the hallway that Falk could see his breath. Some of it held Tagaza’s door closed. He reached out and adjusted the spell with his mind, then pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing and locking the door again with a quick magical flick.
The cell, eight feet wide by ten feet long, held a bed, Tagaza, a chamber pot, and nothing else. It had no window, the only light coming from a magelight in the ceiling. Reset once a day, it gradually faded as the day went along until it plunged the cell into pitch-blackness around midnight. Already it had dimmed far enough that the room seemed twilit. Falk gave it a quick boost, flooding the cell with harsh blue light.
“Falk!” Tagaza, tight-lipped, lumbered to his feet. “I have done nothing to deserve this. Have you gone mad? We’re only weeks from-”
“Mad?” Falk said coldly. “On the contrary, I believe I am seeing much more clearly than I have for some time.”
“I’ve been working with you for twenty years to bring down the Barriers,” Tagaza said. “At the solstice that work will be done. How on earth can you believe I would sabotage two decades’ labor this close to its culmination?”
“People change, Tagaza,” Falk said. “I have noted for a long time your distaste for the sacrifices we must make to bring down the Barriers. You have grown inordinately fond of both Brenna and our faux Prince. And though you have always claimed you share the goals of the Unbound, you have never shared our reasons. You’ve claimed to believe that magic is running out, and will fail entirely if we don’t bring down the Barriers. My guess is that you have realized you were wrong about that-as I’ve always said-and so you’ve decided to sabotage the destruction of the Barriers to save the lives of Brenna and the King. But did you really think I would not put two and two together when I discovered Commoners had found a way to pass through the Lesser Barrier and kidnap the Prince? Only a master magician, steeped in the lore of the Barriers, could accomplish such a thing. Only you, My Lord First Mage.”
Tagaza’s jaw and fists had clenched, as though he wanted to physically attack Falk. I’d like to see him try, Falk thought contemptuously as he glared at the First Mage’s broad face. “That’s. .. ludicrous,” Tagaza said at last, voice tight with anger. “You have no evidence any of that is true. And I do not doubt my belief, Falk. The magic lode beneath this Palace cannot sustain both the Barriers and still meet the needs of the Mageborn forever. In a few more years, if the Barriers stand-”
“No evidence?” Falk snarled. “How many times have you told me the Lesser Barrier is impenetrable? And yet it has been penetrated.” Falk stepped closer to the First Mage, who squared his shoulders and glared back. “And there is more. You have long argued for giving the Commoners more say in governing this kingdom. I have heard from more than one source that you have even expressed a wish that there were some way Commoners could use magic, too. And now, it seems, Commoners can. Somehow they have gained access to enchanted weapons, and a key to the Lesser Barrier. Some mysterious, powerful mage has been providing the Common Cause with magical help. That is clearly sedition. It is clearly a threat to Public Safety. And therefore, clearly, the Minister of Public Safety has the authority and duty to arrest that mage. You.”
“Falk, listen to yourself,” Tagaza said. “Why would I help the Common Cause assassinate the Prince? You just said I had grown too fond of him!”
“But they didn’t assassinate him, did they? They spectacularly failed to assassinate him. You claimed it was incompetence on the part of the mage who crafted the weapons. But no one could be that incompetent. I believe rather than a sign of incompetence, it is a sign of great competence, by a master mage who knew exactly what he was doing, whose goal was not to kill the Prince but to disrupt plans involving the Prince… my plans. My Plan.
“And then the ‘kidnapping.’ The Prince left his room on his own, took a boat, rowed it across the lake, and exited the Lesser Barrier in the company of unknown Commoners. Almost as if it weren’t a kidnapping at all. Almost as if the Prince had been told to flee… by someone who knew what was about to happen.” Falk took another step closer, staring down at Tagaza with cold fury. “Confess, Tagaza. Confess willingly, or when Mother Northwind gets here, you will confess unwillingly.”
Tagaza held himself very still, eyes searching Falk’s face. And then, to Falk’s surprise… and fury… he had the gall to smile. “Bring her,” he said softly. “Bring your pet mindreader, Falk. I welcome her to look inside my mind. In fact,” his voice grew stronger, “I demand it. I have nothing to hide! ”
“Nothing?” Falk said. “You will have no control over what she gleans from your mind, Tagaza. Do not think that, because you are First Mage, you can stand against her. I have seen her work. You may be a master of hard magic, but she is the master of soft. You will not be able to keep anything hidden from her, Tagaza. Anything. Even if you are innocent of my specific accusations, is there nothing you are guilty of? Is there nothing hidden away in your head that you do not want known by me?”
And still the First Mage didn’t quail. He met Falk’s gaze and said, firmly and clearly, “Nothing.”
Falk’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t expected that; hadn’t expected Tagaza to remain so constant in denial when faced with the threat of Mother Northwind rummaging through his memories. For the first time he doubted his suspicion. Well, he thought, if this is more than simple bravado, there’s an easy way for him to prove it.
“If that is true,” he said, “and if you still support the Plan.. . there is a way for you to demonstrate that.”
Tagaza turned his head a little to one side and his eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Find Brenna.”
Tagaza’s eyes shot wide. “Find her? But-”
“She has fled the manor. Use the spell that finds the Heir. Tell me where she is.”
Tagaza looked thoughtful. “Even if I do… you still won’t have Karl.”
“I can manage without him if I must,” Falk said. “This close to the end, he’s almost superfluous. Of course I must continue my aggressive search for him-to remind the Commoners of their proper place, if nothing else-but I am willing to consider the possibility you are telling the truth about not being involved in his disappearance- if you find Brenna for me.”
“I’ll be sentencing her to death,” Tagaza said.
“You sentenced her to death when you crafted the spell to bring down the Barriers,” Falk said harshly.
Tagaza nodded slowly. He stared at the floor for a moment, as if thinking, then raised his head again, met Falk’s gaze, and said, “I will find her. Whatever you may think, Falk, I have never betrayed you. The Barriers must fall. Our reasons for wanting that have always differed. But we still share that goal.” His eyes narrowed. “I had thought perhaps we shared a friendship as well,” he said softly. “I see I was wrong.”
“I don’t need friends,” Falk said, steel in his voice. “All I need are results.” He went to the door, unlocked it, went out, then turned to face Tagaza through it. “I will send for you when I’m ready. Find Brenna, and you will be a free man again… and I will keep Mother Northwind out of your mind.”
“I eagerly await your summons, Lord Falk,” Tagaza said, and his voice was as cold as the air in the hallway.
Falk closed the cell door, locked it, and strode away.
In the cell across from Tagaza’s, the man called Davydd Verdsmitt sat quietly. He was not supposed to be able to hear anything from inside his magically soundproofed cell, certainly not supposed to be able to hear a conversation carried on inside another magically soundproofed cell… but Davydd Verdsmitt had a great many capabilities he was not supposed to have, and he heard every word.
When Falk had left, he opened his eyes and frowned. His entire purpose in getting arrested had been to position himself inside the Palace, ready to strike when the moment came. But that moment would not come until Brenna was also in the Palace. He had expected Falk to bring her within a day or two. If she were missing…
Verdsmitt believed deeply in what he had been sent into the Palace to do, both for noble reasons-he truly did want to see the MageLords overthrown, the Barrier cast down, and the Commoners free at last to choose their own destiny-and for far more personal ones. But he would not throw his life away. If Mother Northwind’s plan failed, the Common Cause would still need his peculiar skills.
He would wait, he decided, but not indefinitely. He had always had in the back of his mind a secondary plan, one that would not accomplish the great goal of destroying the MageLord’s rule, but one that would certainly create havoc enough. If Brenna could not be found, he could still strike hard at the MageLords-one MageLord in particular-and live to carry on the struggle in some other way.
He lay down on his bed again and closed his eyes. Anyone looking in would have thought he was asleep. In reality, he was writing the first act of a new play, though he had to admit the odds were stacked against it ever being performed.
It didn’t matter. Davydd Verdsmitt was not his real name, and very little else that everyone thought they knew about him was real, either, but one thing was absolutely true: Verdsmitt was a writer, and a damn good one.
And a good writer never lightly passed over any opportunity to work for a long period of time without interruption.
By the time the guards came to Mother Northwind’s door, she was ready for them.
She had known, of course, almost as soon as it happened, that Brenna had fled the manor with the boy from Outside. Why she had chosen to run, Mother Northwind didn’t know. She had never been inside Brenna’s mind, something which suddenly seemed an incredible oversight: why hadn’t she insisted, why hadn’t Falk insisted, that she make the changes in the girl’s mind that would have rendered her absolutely compliant to Falk’s wishes?
Because she always seemed compliant without that, Mother Northwind told herself angrily. Because she was only a little girl. Because I’m a senile old fool and Falk is an idiot. Because…
She took a deep, calming breath.
And also, she reminded herself, because there seemed a risk, however slight, that such manipulation might sever the link between Brenna and the Keys, rendering her an ordinary girl, and not the Heir at all.
She reached inside her own mind to cleanse it of the useless anger aimed at herself, while holding onto the core of cold fury that she had lovingly maintained like a prize rosebush, one with very long thorns, since the long-ago day she watched the MageLords massacre the Minik men, women, and children she had grown to love.
Little girls like Brenna, she thought. And that was another reason she’d never tried to manipulate Brenna’s mind. Even though she knew Brenna’s life was forfeit to the need to destroy the Barriers, she’d wanted her to at least have her childhood to enjoy, unlike the little Minik girls the Mageborn raped and slaughtered.
The scullery maid who had run all the way from Falk’s manor to tell her of Brenna’s escape had quailed before her fury that morning, when for a moment it had slipped through the kindly mask Mother Northwind perpetually wore. But she had hidden it at once, and reassured the poor girl that she had done the right thing. Then she had asked after the maid’s invalid father, whose heart Mother Northwind had kept going far longer than it would have without her ministrations, and her pregnant sister, and had soon had the girl calmed down and smiling.
Now that she had also calmed herself-though she had no desire to smile-she wondered why Brenna had fled. Had she somehow figured out what was planned for her?
She snorted. Hardly. She’s eighteen years old and a handsome young man just literally dropped into her lap… right where she wants him, I’d wager.
And who could blame her for that? But whether she had meant to disrupt Mother Northwind’s plan-or Falk’s-or not, that was what she had done, in as thorough and potentially disastrous fashion as she could have managed short of committing suicide.
She has to be found, Mother Northwind thought with an unfamiliar hint of desperation. Verdsmitt is in the Palace. The Magebane is safely tucked away. I need only get Brenna and the Magebane together. Verdsmitt will strike. The Keys will pass to Brenna… but the Magebane will intercept and destroy them. And since the Barrier is bound up intimately with magic in this kingdom, its power drawn from every hard mage, not only will the Barrier fall, it will drag hard magic down with it.
They’ll all be Commoners then. And we’ll see how they like it, when the Commoners are running the show.
But none of that could happen without Brenna. So once again, it seemed, her needs and Falk’s ran in tandem, however different the outcomes they desired. Karl’s disappearance would be a nuisance for Falk, and he would have to act forcefully against the Commoners- not that he’s at all loath to do so, and I can’t wait until he faces his erstwhile victims without the protection of magic. But Brenna… for his Plan, as for hers, Brenna was essential.
He has to find her, she thought. And only one man knows how to do that, how to locate the Heir.
Tagaza.
He’ll turn to Tagaza for help. Tagaza will locate Brenna. Falk will bring Brenna back to the Palace. I have to be there to spirit her away to where the Magebane waits.
She had anticipated Falk returning to the manor in a day or two, and then traveling back to the Palace with him, Brenna, and Anton, once she had molded the boy from Outside as Falk had asked (or not precisely as he had asked; she had had her own thoughts about the best way to twist the boy’s mind, turning him into her weapon instead of Falk’s tool, but that was all moot now). Falk would not be coming now, of course, but she was confident he would still want her in the Palace
… to interrogate Verdsmitt for him, if nothing else. He’ll send men for me, she thought. Well, it never hurts to be thought omniscient.
Which was why, when four men-at-arms came quick-marching behind their sergeant up the gully to her door, perhaps two hours after dark, they found her sitting on her front step, a flowered carpet bag containing a few clothes and other essentials on her lap. She reached for her cane and got to her feet as the sergeant called the men-at-arms to a rather startled halt.
“Took you long enough,” she said cheerfully. “Well, come on, Sergeant. I’ve grown tired of the cold and the dark. I think it’s time I paid a visit to the Palace, don’t you? Always spring inside the Lesser Barrier, they do say.” And she set off down the gully at such a pace, despite her cane, that the men-at-arms had to resume quick-marching in order to give her a proper escort.