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by Sarah Prineas

  During the night I woke up sure as sure that the two men were lurking by the door of my room. Shivering, I sat up and stared into the shadows, listening for the skff-skff of stealthy footsteps and waiting for a heavy fist to come crashing out of the dark.

  Instead, all I heard were raindrops pattering on the canvas overhead.

  Why had those men been after me?

  Then I felt Pip curled against my side and the Wellmet magic’s warmth and Arhionvar’s stony protection wrapped around me. I was safe, even if those fluff-beaters wanted me to think I wasn’t. Knowing that, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep without any more dark dreams.

  BENET’S TO-DO LIST

  Talk to Fist and Hand about professionals working out of the Twilight.

  Beat the fluff out of professionals, if found.

  Make soup.

  Bake biscuits.

  Buy extra bacon.

  Fix stovepipe.

  Bake the scones with berries that Kerrn likes and take them to guard barracks at Dawn Palace.

  Buy fingering yarn (blue?), four double pointed needles. Knit socks.

  Keep a closer eye on the kid and his lizard.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The kidnappers had scared me, but I was not going to crawl into a hole and hide. I had things to do out in the city. At the meeting the day before, the magisters had been complaining about the instability of the two magics. I thought maybe it was getting worse, too, because I was more sensitive to what the magics were doing than anyone, and I hadn’t noticed it being so bad before.

  As I’d told the magisters at the meeting, there was no knowing how the two magics would work together. They might not. If they settled peacefully and worked together, they’d be hugely powerful. But now they were struggling, pushing and pulling at each other, entangled over the city, and it felt like they were on the edge of panic.

  I needed to figure out how to help the two magics. And I couldn’t do that from my safe, cozy room in Heartsease.

  Going out into the city to deal with the magics meant the kidnappers might come after me again. But I wasn’t a defenseless gutterboy anymore. I was a wizard, and I needed to come up with some spells to protect myself. Spells that would work in the middle of a fight. If the magics worked, that is.

  I got up and, leaving Pip to snooze in the blankets, fetched a couple of old grimoires off the bookshelves, carried them over to the table, and got to work, squinting with my good eye at the pages.

  Hmmm.

  Magic spells were really the language of the magical beings—the dragon language. Most wizards didn’t know much of the spell language, but one thing I was very good at, besides lock picking and thievery, was remembering, so I could hear a magical spell once and repeat it back exactly. That meant I understood the magics’ language and I could speak directly to them. Really, any wizard could do it, too, if they thought about it, but none of them had ever tried it.

  I thought through all the spellwords I knew. The new spells would need to be short, just a few words so I’d have time to say them if some- body was coming after me. Something like the lothfalas spell, but more focused. I paged through the grimoires until I found a white-bright-light spell, and changed some of the words.

  “Come here, Pip,” I said. The little dragon snorted in its sleep and didn’t move, so I went over to the bed and put my hand on the smooth spot between its wings; then I said the new dazzler spell.

  As the spell effected, Pip burst from the blankets, its eyes wide and whirling; a gout of white-bright sparks flashed from its mouth and slammed into my eyes. Then the dragon scrambled with sharp claws up my front and onto my hair, spitting out more sparks as it crouched there.

  Squinting through the sparks, I saw its tail lashing before my eyes. Whoops. More proof that the magics were unsettled. Poor Pip!

  The little dragon hopped down from my head and crouched in the blankets, still lashing its tail. “Sorry,” I said. It gave me a glary glance and curled itself up to go back to sleep.

  As tricksy as the magics were, I still thought the spell would work to blind an attacker for a few moments. After a while, the sparks faded and I could see again. I rubbed my good eye and read some more, figuring out a spell that would prick somebody all over with needles if he tried hitting me. No need to try that one out—I didn’t want to prickle myself, or Pip.

  There. I felt safer already. But I really did need to go out into the city to get a better feel for what was going on with the magics.

  See? I wanted to tell Rowan. I don’t have time for meetings and ducal magistering. I have more important things to do.

  Trying to be careful of my bruised ribs, I put on my black sweater and my coat. I picked up sleeping Pip and put it on my shoulder.

  As I slunk down the stairs past Nevery’s study, I met Benet coming up.

  “Here, you,” he said. “Where’re you off to?”

  I shrugged and tried to edge past him. Important wizard business. No fuss, if you please.

  “No you don’t,” Benet growled, and grabbed me by the arm; he opened the door to Nevery’s study and dragged me inside.

  Nevery was sitting in his usual chair; standing around the table were Magister Brumbee, looking plump-rumpled and worried, and Magister Nimble, the bat-faced wizard who didn’t like me. What were they doing here?

  Benet let me go. “Caught him sneaking out, sir,” he said.

  “I wasn’t sneaking,” I said. Not really. Only a little.

  Nevery gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Going out? Where?”

  I shrugged. If I told him what I was up to, he’d worry, and I didn’t want that.

  “And he hasn’t had his breakfast yet,” Benet said from beside me, and folded his arms.

  Oops. Very suspicious, me sneaking out before breakfast. “I won’t be gone for very long.” I glanced at Benet, then at Nevery, and they were both scowling. Brumbee looked even more fretful; Nimble just looked smug, as if he knew something I didn’t. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Hmm,” Nevery growled. “Brumbee and Nimble have just brought the news. Another locus stone has been stolen.”

  What? “Whose?” I asked.

  “Mine!” Magister Nimble said in his whiny voice. “And I know who stole it!”

  Oh, no. I knew what he was going to say. “It wasn’t me,” I said quickly.

  “Connwaer.” Nevery was giving me his most keenly-gleaming look. “What has your dragon been up to?”

  I glanced aside at Pip, asleep on my shoulder. “Nothing, Nevery.”

  “Oh, dear,” Brumbee said.

  “Are you certain, boy?” Nevery asked.

  “Sure as sure, Nevery,” I said. “Pip’s been with me all night. It wasn’t out stealing Nimble’s locus stone. We had nothing to do with it.” I held my breath. He had to believe me.

  Nevery nodded. “Well then,” he said, turning to Brumbee and Nimble. “You will have to look elsewhere for your thief. It wasn’t Conn.”

  “He’s lying!” Nimble shrieked.

  Nevery got loomingly to his feet, gray and threatening as a stormcloud. He glared thunder and lightning at Nimble. “Conn does not lie.”

  Nimble gulped and went wide-eyed and silent; Brumbee wrung his hands and muttered his usual oh dear me’s.

  “Now,” Nevery said, still glowering. “Go away.”

  I ducked out of Benet’s grip and headed for the door.

  “Not you, boy,” Nevery said, using his exasperated voice. “Them.” He pointed.

  Benet opened the door, and the magisters scuttled out and down the stairs.

  Nevery settled behind his desk again and looked me up and down. “Trouble, and somehow you’re in the thick of it again. I don’t know what to do with you, boy.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, Nevery,” I said. On my shoulder, Pip woke up and puffed out a cloud of smoke.

  “Have a word with the captain,” Benet said, from behind me.

  “Ah. A very good idea, B
enet. I shall. Fetch my hat, cloak, and cane.”

  “Yes, sir,” Benet said, and left the room.

  A word with the captain, Benet had said. “A word with Captain Kerrn?” I asked. “Why?”

  Nevery glanced at me from under his bushy eyebrows, but didn’t answer. Instead he got to his feet and went to the door. Benet met him on the stairs and handed him his things.

  Benet gave me a buttered biscuit.

  “Come along, boy,” Nevery said, putting on his wide-brimmed hat.

  “Where’re we going?” I asked. I put the biscuit into my coat pocket. Pip cocked its head, as if it was waiting to see what Nevery would say.

  Nevery said something in a low voice to Benet, then put on his cloak and swept-stepped down the stairs. “You’ll see when we get there,” he said.

  Oh. I followed Nevery down the stairs and out into the cobbled courtyard. The rain had stopped, but the sky was thick with gray clouds, and a morning fog hovered over the river, making the Twilight and the Sunrise banks invisible. Brown leaves covered the big tree in the middle of the courtyard, and a few black-and-white birds perched in the highest branches, like lookouts.

  I dodged a pile of roof slates and ran a couple of steps to catch up to Nevery. “Why are you going to have a word with Kerrn?” I asked.

  “You will be living in the Dawn Palace. Captain Kerrn must be told to keep an eye on you.”

  “Nevery!” I protested. That was a terrible idea. Kerrn hated me! She’d put a guard on my every move! And I was not going to live in the Dawn Palace.

  “Listen, boy,” Nevery growled. “We’ve got locus stone thefts and a crowd of idiot magisters who think you are the thief. Something is going on, and you’re involved in it, somehow.” He swirled to a stop. “And there’s this attack,” he said, pointing at my bruised face. He lowered his voice, as if talking to himself. “I will not lose you again, Connwaer.” Then he glowered at me from under his bushy eyebrows. “If it means sending you away from Heartsease, then so be it.”

  Nevery kept a keen eye on me as we crossed the bridge and headed to the Dawn Palace, which sat at the top of the hill like a huge, pink-frosted cake. A chill wind from the river followed us, ruffling my hair and making Nevery’s cloak swirl around him. We crunched down the drive and up the wide front stairs, where two palace guards stopped us. We waited just inside the door while one of them went to fetch Rowan.

  “I hate this, Nevery,” I growled.

  “It’s to keep you safe, boy,” he growled back.

  To me, safe meant never doing anything interesting.

  At the sound of footsteps, I looked up. Rowan, followed by Miss Dimity, who carried a stack of papers.

  Seeing my bruised face, Rowan’s eyes widened. “Oh, Conn!” she said.

  “It looks worse than it is,” I said.

  She stepped closer and put her hand to my cheek. “It looks awful. What happened?”

  I shrugged and listened as Nevery told her about the attackers in the courtyard outside Heartsease. “He’ll be safer in the Dawn Palace,” Nevery said.

  Rowan gave me a quick hug. “Yes, we’ll take good care of you here, Conn. Miss Dimity has arranged the ducal magister’s rooms, so they are all ready for you. I haven’t had time to see them, but she says they are quite splendid.” She and Nevery turned and set off down the hallway, followed by the secretary. “I’ll assign servants to look after you, too, Conn.”

  I scowled, trailing behind them. I still hadn’t agreed to be the ducal magister. And I didn’t need looking after.

  “Excuse me, Your Grace, Magister,” Miss Dimity interrupted then.

  She was very good at interrupting, I’d noticed.

  Rowan paused at the bottom of a wide, carpeted staircase. “What is it?”

  “I do apologize most sincerely, but you have a meeting now with the stonemasons league.”

  “Isn’t that tomorrow?” Rowan asked impatiently.

  “No indeed,” Miss Dimity said, and her eyes bulged. “See here, on the agenda.” She waved a sheet of paper.

  “Yes, of course.” Rowan turned to me. “Conn, I have to attend this meeting, but Miss Dimity will show you your rooms, all right?”

  No, it wasn’t all right. I glared at her.

  “You must hurry, Your Grace,” Miss Dimity put in. “It simply wouldn’t do to keep them waiting.”

  Rowan closed her eyes for just a moment. “I don’t have time for this,” she muttered. Opening her eyes, she said, “Will you just go, Conn?”

  Yes, all right. I gave her the slightest nod. She whirled and snatched the pages that Miss Dimity shoved into her hands and then hurried away down the hall.

  “You seem to be well settled, my lad,” Nevery said to me. He rested a hand on my shoulder. “As it happens, I have a meeting to attend as well, so I must be going.”

  It didn’t matter what I said, because clear as clear he wasn’t going to listen to me, any more than Rowan had. So I stayed quiet.

  Nevery shot me one last behave yourself look and left.

  “Well then!” Miss Dimity said, and scraped her lips into something that was supposed to be a smile, but wasn’t really. “Come along.”

  She led me up a wide stairway, then down a long, carpeted hall to a set of double doors with bronze handles and what looked like a puzzle lock. Tricky to pick a lock like that.

  Miss Dimity threw the doors open. “The ducal magister’s chambers,” she announced.

  The main room was very fancy, a study with a few knobbly-looking wooden chairs and wobbly small tables with lace doilies on them, a patterned rug on the floor, and lots of shelves covered with more lace doilies and fancy dishes and silver statues instead of books.

  “You see?” Miss Dimity pointed at the walls, where gilt-framed oil paintings of old men and women hung. “The former residents of these rooms, ducal magisters all.”

  I could tell exactly what she was thinking. A gray-bearded old man or a wrinkly old woman was her idea of a proper ducal magister, not scruffy me.

  She was right about that, too.

  I stepped farther into the chilly room, looking around. Pip hopped off my shoulder and flapped to one of the high-backed, uncomfortable chairs set next to the hearth. The little dragon landed on the back of the chair, and its claws scratched a gouge in the wood. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Miss Dimity had noticed. She stood near the doorway, watching me with her bulgy eyes. Captain Kerrn had joined her; she said something to the secretary, but kept her eye on me.

  Miss Dimity gave me another one of her false smiles. “Do you approve of your rooms, Ducal Magister?”

  Not really, no. They were too grand. “I’m not staying here,” I said.

  Ignoring that, Miss Dimity walked over to another door and threw it open. “This is your dressing room.”

  I didn’t have enough clothes to need a dressing room.

  “Do you see?” She pointed at a row of fancy-fine clothes on hangers, and three brand-new, shiny silk magister’s robes. “Magister Nevery says that his manservant is bringing your things.”

  For some reason, Kerrn’s cheeks turned a little pink. “Benet is coming here?”

  Miss Dimity’s nostrils flared. “If that is his name, yes. But, Ducal Magister,” she said grandly to me, “as you can see, you won’t need any of your old clothes.”

  Oh, yes I would. I was not going to wear those primp-proper ducal magister robes.

  Out in the main room, Miss Dimity glanced at the empty hearth. “Servants will be sent to attend to the fire.” She gave a sharp sniff. “Yes, I think that is sufficient.” Without another word to me, she hurried out.

  I stood in the middle of the room. The frothy plaster and gilded ceiling arched way above me; the windows stretched up the walls; the empty hearth gaped like a wide mouth; the oil-painted wizards on the walls stared disapprovingly down at me.

  Rowan hadn’t seen these rooms, but Miss Dimity had told her they were splendid. They’d probably make a real ducal magister feel
important and powerful.

  They made me feel small and cold.

  I went over to the window. Drats. The ducal magister’s rooms were on the third floor, and there was no ivy growing up past the window, no nearby tree to climb down. I wouldn’t be able get out that way when I needed to leave.

  When I turned back to the room, I noticed Kerrn still standing in the doorway, hands on her hips. “I know what you are thinking,” she said.

  She probably did.

  She put her hand on the pommel of her sword and spoke like she was giving me an order. “My guards will be watching you. If you wish to go out into the city, you must inform me first, and be accompanied by me or a guard.”

  Accompanied? Followed and spied on, more likely.

  She waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, she turned and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

  I looked around the room. It was fancy, but it was a prison, and I was not going to stay locked up in it.

  Rowan, Duchess of Wellmet,

  to Underlord Embre-wing

  Magister Nevery just brought Conn to the Dawn Palace. Apparently Conn was attacked outside Heartsease. He looks terrible, his face all bruised, and moving stiffly, as if his ribs hurt. Conn and his dragon managed to fight off the attackers, but Nevery is worried—rightly so, I think—that they will try again.

  As if that wasn’t enough to worry about, my councilors and the magisters remain upset about the stolen locus stones and the unreliable magics, and want to blame Conn for all of it. I’ve just come from a meeting with several of them, who are insisting that Conn be arrested and imprisoned—for the good of the city.

  I am, as I am sure you must be, quite concerned. Conn is moving into the ducal magister’s rooms in the Dawn Palace, where he will be under the protection of my guard. I thought it best to keep you informed.

  Sincerely,

  Rowan, Duchess

  Dawn Palace, Wellmet, etc.

  P.S. I wondered if all in the city seems quite well to you. Apart from this trouble with Conn and the magical beings, have you noticed anything else strange going on?