Annabel turned in time to see Peter flush a deep red, and caught the curl of Blackfoot’s lip. Peter caught it, too, and flushed even deeper red. Annabel didn’t think it would hurt Peter to be a little bit squashed, so she ignored his angry embarrassment in a combination of kindness and satisfaction, and studied Blackfoot instead. He was younger than she’d expected. Perhaps only eighteen or nineteen, he was very elegant, with a tracery of silver vines all over his sleek waistcoat, and impeccably creased trousers. His coat was unbuttoned, but fit so perfectly that he could have stepped from the gilded frame of a fashion-plate.
He smiled at her, slight creases at the edges of his eyes softening the sarcastic curl to his mouth, and said: “Well, here I am, Nan.”
“You look ridiculous,” said Annabel. She stomped over to her sketchbook and pocketed the pencil nub that was also a staff, ignoring the smile that deepened on Blackfoot’s face. She knew it wasn’t reasonable, but somewhere in the back of her mind—perhaps that place where she had always heard Blackfoot’s voice—floated the idea that Blackfoot the cat was her friend, always present, always wise, while Blackfoot the man, with his thin, sarcastic lips, was the one who had lied to her, tricked her, and kept things from her. “What are you dressed for, an evening party?”
“Council session, as it happens,” murmured Blackfoot. “If I’d known it would meet with such disdain I would have taken the trouble to change, but there was rather a lot happening at the time. Council members being turned into cats, the love of my life kissing another man– it was a busy day, all in all.”
“Wait, you were there when the Great Cat Incident happened?” said Peter, forgetting his annoyance and embarrassment. “That was the work of the Enchanter Luck, wasn’t it?”
“Indirectly,” said Blackfoot. “Actually, it was his dog that did the mischief.”
“And you were what, collateral damage?”
“More of a spy in the midst,” Blackfoot temporised. “Magic was flying, cats were getting away, and you know how slippery Mordion can be. I wanted to make sure he didn’t get up to any more mischief.”
“Well, he did,” muttered Annabel. There were still a lot of things she meant to discuss with Blackfoot, not the least of which was how much he’d known when he chivvied her and Peter into the castle. “Didn’t do a very good job, did you?”
“Thank you, Nan: no. It’s very kind of you to mention it.”
Annabel folded her arms. “What’s your real name, then? Blackfoot’s the name I gave you.”
He hesitated. “You can still call me Blackfoot, Nan.”
“Blackfoot was my cat. You– you’re something else. What’s your real name?”
“Melchior,” he said. “That’s the name I had until five years ago, at least. I’ve gotten used to Blackfoot.”
“All right,” Annabel said. “Melchior, then: I want you to answer some questions.”
Melchior curled in a swift semi-circle, and sat down as she had seen Blackfoot do so many times. “That’s not like you, Nan.”
Annabel felt a poniard of painful familiarity pierce her chest. “Don’t do that!”
He looked up at her in surprise. “Nan? Do what?”
“Don’t sit like that!”
Peter frowned. “What’s wrong with you, Ann? Why are you picking fights with the– with Bl– with Melchior?”
“Yes, Nan,” Melchior said, looking at her curiously, “why are you picking fights with me?”
“Well, why did you lie to me?”
Melchior froze for an instant, but relaxed again in his off-puttingly catlike way so quickly that she wasn’t sure it had really happened. “What’s this, Nan?”
Peter laughed rudely. “Oh, so you’ve only just figured that out, have you?”
“No!” flashed Annabel. “I knew about it a while ago. I’ve just been waiting for him to tell me the truth. He’s been lying to you, too.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Peter, but he sounded uncertain. “What do you mean, lying to me?”
“Your mother and stepfather aren’t dead.”
Peter went very white. “What are you talking about, Ann? I saw them die– you saw them die! They– they have to be dead, or why would–”
Annabel glared at Melchior. He’d gone almost as white as Peter, which only made her angrier: what did he have to be pale about? “It was a test, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Melchior. “They all were.”
“A tes– testing what? Why would Blackf– Melchior be testing me?”
“It wasn’t Blackfoot,” Annabel said, plunging on through. Peter would have had to be told at some stage, and she was too angry to stop and give him a chance to process it all. “He just knew it and lied about it. It was the castle. And it wasn’t a test for you, either: it was a test for me.”
Peter, alternately white and flushed, said in a suffocated voice: “The castle was doing it?”
“Well, not exactly: I’ll explain that later. The important thing is that your mother isn’t dead: it was just a test to see how I’d react to your– to your–”
“Grief and anger,” choked out Peter, more red than white now. He took in a deep breath and said, more clearly: “They’re really not dead?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Annabel said again.
Peter kicked at the table leg, almost visibly swallowing several things he wanted to say. “All right, Ann. I see why you’re angry. What’s the cat got to do with it, though?”
“He found out I’m the heir,” Annabel said. “I don’t know how, but he did. And then–”
“I can explain that,” Melchior said, and his voice was less smooth than it had been at first. “My original directives were to find the Sleeping Princess, then the Queen, then to reinstate the monarchy.”
Peter huffed again. “Didn’t want much, did they?”
“They, who?” demanded Annabel. “Who was giving you orders? And why you? Why are you so special?”
“They,” began Melchior, and stopped. “Come to think of it, there are two different theys. The first ones, I can’t tell you about. The second are Black Velvet.”
Annabel felt another surge of anger. “Spiders! There never were any spiders, were there?”
“Not as such, no,” said Melchior. “And I’ll have you know that I’m not afraid of them, either, Nan. That was a ruse.”
“I don’t care about your stupid ruse,” snapped Annabel. “It wasn’t clever of you, it was deceitful!”
“Well, yes,” said Melchior. “But it hurts my pride to have you thinking I’m afraid of spiders.”
“I don’t care about your stupid pride, either,” Annabel said. “Who are Black Velvet?”
Melchior looked distinctly rueful. “I can’t really tell you about them, either.”
“All right,” said Annabel. She didn’t mind not being told things if she knew she was not being told them. “What about the Sleeping Princess?”
“You remember I told you a curtailed version of the story? The Sleeping Princess, rescued from her sleep, Mordion’s part in her curse, and the Great Cat Incident?”
“I remember.” Annabel folded her arms across her chest. It was just as she had thought: Melchior, in telling her the truth, had only told her part of the truth.
“What I didn’t tell you was my part in that story. I found the sleeping princess,” Melchior continued, and his sarcastic lips quirked in a particularly thin half-smile, “but unfortunately, someone else had already found her. Things got a little messy, as I mentioned—magic flying, love of my life kissing someone else, cats, the spy that followed Mordion, etcetera—and at the end of it all, there you were. The Queen Heir. Mordion got wind of you somehow: I’m not sure how. I was following him, trying to keep him out of mischief, but as soon as he narrowed it down to this general area of New Civet I separated from him to try and find you first.”
“And you did,” Annabel said, her voice particularly flat. “Was that part of t
he tests, too? Teach me first, then test me? Must have been a bit of a shock to find someone like me.”
“It wasn’t a test, Nan,” said Melchior. “I was desperately trying to keep you out of his sight: I didn’t realise how dangerous you were until I met you. The tests began as soon as the castle realised who you were and how old you were.”
“Yes, Rorkin explained about that,” said Annabel.
Melchior sat back again, slightly dazed. “Ah. You’ve met Rorkin, have you?”
“What?” said Annabel, rather nastily. “Worried about all the other lies you’ve told? You could have told us about the tests this whole time.”
“I suppose it seems like that,” Melchior said. “And technically, it really is like that; but if I’d told you, the tests would have been null and void. You would have been disqualified as the Queen Heir.”
“I don’t want to be the Queen Heir!”
“Unfortunately, Nan, there’s not really a great deal you can do about that.”
“Rorkin says there are always choices.”
“Oh, does he?”
“Yes. It’s just that this is one of the bad ones.”
“Regardless, I would like to remind you that I wasn’t the one testing you: the blame for that lies squarely on the castle itself. It’s how Rorkin set it up when he arranged the magic and made the staff.”
“Yes,” said Annabel, who was beginning to wonder a little about that as well. There were one or two things about it that didn’t quite add up, and it was one more thing she needed to think about again. “I knew you weren’t the one testing me.”
“I see,” Melchior said, and his hazel eyes were very narrow. “Then, Nan–”
Turning her back on him, Annabel said to Peter: “It was Rorkin who told me your mother isn’t dead. He’s very clever, and he knows things. Rorkin says–”
“Since I don’t suppose Rorkin mentioned anything about what to do or where to go next,” said Melchior, his lips particularly thin, “do you think we could discuss what is going to happen now that everything is back where it’s supposed to be and you’ve been recognised by both the castle and the staff as the Queen Heir?”
“Rorkin says–”
“Nan, I’m growing a little tired of hearing what Rorkin says.”
“Well, I’m getting tired of hearing what you say,” Annabel said, losing her temper. “I’m going.”
She left the kitchen with something of a slam despite Melchior’s calling, leaving him and Peter to get along together as best they could.
Annabel went back to see Rorkin that night after dinner. Peter wouldn’t have missed her: he was running a Look-See spell again when she briefly saw him in the kitchen, but Annabel didn’t tell Melchior where she was going, either. Wandering the castle alone, she’d had more time to think about things, and if she’d grown angrier at Melchior the more she thought about some of those things, she’d grown steadily more astonished at Rorkin the more she thought about others.
She had been right when she told Mordion he had bound himself to the wrong power. She’d been thinking of the staff as the greater power, but the staff hadn’t ever been the greater power, either. The greater power, the power that had formed the staff, bound the castle, and set Annabel, Peter, and Blackfoot up against Mordion in a deadly game– that power was Rorkin himself. Clever, tricky, lying Rorkin, who had made her believe through her own deductions everything that she was meant to believe, in order to make sure that the test was as effective as it could possibly be.
And so Annabel went back to see Rorkin.
“Rorkin,” she said, giving him her flattest look. “You’ve been lying to me, haven’t you?”
Guiltily, Rorkin said: “Told you that already.”
“Yes, but I mean that you’ve been lying to me about lying.”
“Who could keep that straight in their head?” protested Rorkin. “Far too devious!”
Annabel gazed at him without blinking. She was quite certain of what she knew: it was only after she had erased Rorkin, after all, that the castle had lost its power. The castle had never been the controlling power behind the tests. Nor, now that she came to think about it, had she been in absolutely mortal peril at any time, unless she counted the time when Rorkin was erased, and she wasn’t even sure about that. To Rorkin, she said: “You’re a very devious person.”
“Don’t look at me like that: it gives me the shivers.”
“Good,” Annabel said. “You said– well, you didn’t say, exactly. You did that thing with your eyebrow so I’d think that Mordion almost managed to take over the castle. You made me think it wasn’t all part of the plan, or test, or whatever it is you were doing here. But that’s not true, is it? You were in control the whole time. Even me erasing you, and Mordion, and the whole castle: it was part of your plan, wasn’t it?”
Rorkin blinked. “After all, what’s control? Is it in the grasping, or the letting go?”
“That’s what’s so hard to pin down about you,” Annabel said accusingly. “You answer questions without answering them, and change the subject without changing it. And you say things that can be taken more than one way.”
“Mother always said I’d come to no good,” Rorkin said sadly. “Wouldn’t she happy if she knew how bad!”
“How am I supposed to know what the truth is, then?”
“I suppose you’ll never know,” said Rorkin. He sounded faintly smug, but Annabel was aware in an almost amused, wondering way, that she couldn’t even be sure of that. He was too good at discreetly leading people to see what they were prepared to see.
“I suppose I won’t,” she said.
“Shall I tell you?”
Annabel surprised herself by giggling. “Don’t bother. I wouldn’t know whether or not to believe you.”
“And thus my last lesson,” Rorkin said impressively, wriggling his eyebrows at her. “Even if you’re the wisest Queen the Two Monarchies have ever seen, there are some things you’ll never be sure of. Sometimes you’ll just have to make the best guess you can make. And sometimes you’ll be wrong. Actually, you’ll probably be wrong at least as often as you’re right: that’s just the law of averages.”
“There never was another choice, was there? I’ve always been the heir. The rumours of heirs and the castle coming back: you did that, didn’t you?”
“Well, it adds such an air of mysteriousness to the whole thing! And it wasn’t me that spread the rumours, if it comes to that. I have two little minions to do that for me.”
“I remember,” said Annabel, “when I was born.”
“So do I,” Rorkin said unexpectedly, and entirely without hedging. “Ugly little thing, you were! And you were pulling in every bit of magic around: your poor parents didn’t know what to do with you. Had to give you a spell that was good enough but not too good.”
“I knew it!”
“If you knew it, things would have been very different.”
“I sort of knew it, then! And the tests– I was the heir all along, by blood, wasn’t I?”
“In a manner of speaking,” hedged Rorkin. “There were one or two other choices, but they weren’t particularly good ones.”
“Wait, though! If you were part of the castle, how could you get away to me when I was born?”
“That?” Rorkin’s eyebrow twitched.
“Don’t do that!”
“Let it be a lesson to you,” Rorkin said impressively.
“A lesson in what?” muttered Annabel. “How to lie by implication?”
Rorkin, agreeably, said: “If you like. Or it can be a lesson on not taking a slip of the tongue at face value. Take it any way you want.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t do that with your face. It’s frightening.”
“I can do what I want with my face. I’ll make that a law, too.”
Much to Annabel’s surprise, Rorkin giggled. “Don’t be like that. Don’t you want to know how you did in the tests?”
“No,” said
Annabel. “Why should I? You just played games with me and prodded me until I did the things you needed me to do.”
“What are you talking about?” said Rorkin, in surprise. “Did you a world of good! You don’t think you’d have pushed yourself to do things if I hadn’t held that boy hostage, do you?”
“How do I know?” Annabel said angrily. “Maybe I would have! You don’t know, because you made me do it!”
“Ah,” said Rorkin carefully. “I can see why you feel that way, but I didn’t make you do anything. I just gave you the opportunity to do it. You could have done nothing, after all.”
“No, I couldn’t,” said Annabel coldly. “It was Peter! How could I leave him with Mordion?”
“He wasn’t with Mordion, was he?”
“No, clever clogs, and I couldn’t leave him stuck in the past, either!”
“Why not? He’s bound to get to us– well, well, never mind that.”
“What?” Annabel gave him her flattest look. “Laying another trail? Or did you say something you weren’t meant to?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!”
“Actually,” Annabel said, “I want to know if me figuring out that Mordion didn’t have Peter was part of the tests, or if it was just what made you think of the idea of pulling Mordion into the tests.”
“Oh, that. Yes, of course it was part of the tests. What else? He was already there as an unexpected element, and it would have been a shame not to use him, so–”
“Yes, but how unexpected, I’d like to know,” complained Annabel. “You’re just lucky I remembered about Mordion and doorways.”
“Did, though, didn’t you?”
“But what if I hadn’t?” demanded Annabel. “Would you have said I couldn’t be Queen because I did badly then? Because that’s not fair–”
Rorkin looked startled. “Not fair? But you passed that bit!”
“That’s what I mean. You were just lucky that day: it could have easily gone the other way if I hadn’t remembered. So that’s not really what I’m like. For all you know, I’ll be an awful Queen.”
“The whole test didn’t hinge on that one little thing,” Rorkin said. He sounded vaguely insulted. “The castle uses a sliding scale to determine the final results. And if you must know, I was looking for patterns of repeated behaviour: if you’d shown a habit of determined stupidity, there would have been something to worry about.”
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