“Thank you,” Willow said, and trudged away up the street toward the Serjian Residence. The sky in the east was beginning to glow pink, turning the clouds fluffy and soft instead of ominous, and Willow moved a little faster. If she could return before dawn…it was a little thing, but it might make a difference.
The guards at the Residence were alert despite the hour, and challenged Willow the way the ones at the black arch had. Willow waved at them, and they let her past without comment. She was too tired to make trouble for them. Her eyesight was blurry, her legs and back had cramped up painfully, and her fingertips were sore.
She was most of the way to her bedroom before she remembered Kerish and had to reverse her path. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, making the stones of the Residence glow, when she knocked on his door.
It opened almost immediately. “Willow,” Kerish said. She put her arms around him and let him hold her up.
“I found it,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-One
After reporting in to the harem and handing over the letter, Willow slept all morning, waking briefly to relieve herself, then returning to her bed for more sleep. She dreamed fragments of her theft, saw herself wandering halls that multiplied the more doors she opened, or climbing an endless chimney whose end was always more distant the higher she went. She never felt metal in her dreams, even when her dreaming self picked up a weapon or a fork, which drove her deeper into dream, chasing memories. When she finally woke, sometime after noon, she felt rested physically, but mentally exhausted. She lay on her bed, blinking up at the canopy, mustering the will to stand and hunt for food.
Outside her room, she heard someone moving around. “Hello?” she called out.
“Willow!” Felix shouted, and her door banged open. Felix ran into the room and jumped onto her bed, narrowly missing landing on her stomach. “You’re all right! You slept a long time.”
“I was tired. Why aren’t you at the scholia?”
“Kerish went to the gymnasium to spar, and I don’t like going to the scholia without him.”
“You have guards.”
“I think Kerish is a better fighter than they are, don’t you?”
Willow remembered how gracefully he’d taken down his opponent in the courtyard. “Probably. But if they weren’t good, Janida wouldn’t have given them to you.”
“I know. I wanted to wait for you to wake up, too.” Felix flung his arms around her so tightly it hurt. “I was scared. Hilarion says it’s okay to be scared if you don’t let it make you do something stupid.”
“It’s all right. I’m back, and I found what we needed, so it was worth being scared, right?”
“I guess. Will you take me to the scholia?”
“After I eat. Did you have dinner yet? Let’s go see if Derona will feed me. She thinks I don’t appreciate her hard work, so maybe you will have to convince her.” The Serjians’ chief cook took her job very seriously and didn’t like people eating between meals, something Willow was prone to do.
Felix convinced Derona, in his halting Eskandelic, to give Willow some bread and cheese. Willow did her best to express gratitude, though her stomach growled at the smell of the leftover midday meal. Heaven forbid she get any of that, even though most of it would go to the dogs. She folded the bread and cheese together and took a large bite. “We’ll get more when we go into the city,” she told Felix when they were out of earshot of the kitchen. “Or some sugared nuts. You like those, right?”
“I like candied fruit better. May I have some of that?”
“Sure. Now, why don’t you tell your guards we’re going to the scholia?”
The clouds that had given Willow so much protection the previous night were gone, and Willow was grateful for the canopy shielding them from the sun’s rays. Most people were indoors, napping away the midday heat, and the air hung heavy and still like a down comforter over the carriage. Felix licked his fingers, sucking up the last of the sweet stickiness of his candy. “I’m glad they didn’t catch you,” he said.
“So am I.” She decided not to let him know how close a thing it had been. “I had to hide for a bit, but they weren’t as smart as I am, so I got away…maybe not easily, but it wasn’t hard either.”
“You’re not going to do it again, are you? Kerish said you said you gave up being a midnighter.”
“Did he?” Irritation swept over her briefly, and she had no idea why. “It’s true. I don’t need to be a thief to survive. But if I had to do it to protect you, I would. So it’s only mostly true.”
“Oh.”
“What did that mean, ‘oh’?”
Felix said nothing.
“You’re unhappy about something,” Willow said. He shrugged. “Tell me what’s wrong, or I’ll make up something Hilarion would say about little boys who keep secrets.”
That made him smile. “I was just thinking about Fedrani. He died because he was protecting me. I don’t want you to die because you’re doing something you could be punished for, for me. Just because I’m King.”
“Felix—” Words failed her. “Felix, I protect you—and Kerish protects you—because we love you, and that’s what you do for people you love. Not because you’re King, though it’s true a lot of the things we protect you from only happen because of that. And someday you’ll be a grown man, and you’ll have people in your life you’d die to protect. That’s just how things work.”
Felix nodded, then gave her a sticky hug. Willow put her arms around him and cursed Terence Valant for what seemed like the thousandth time. Felix smelled of sweat and candied orange peel and the indefinable smell of little boy, and she closed her eyes and for a moment indulged a fantasy in which they were just an ordinary mama and her son. Then she gently detached him and squeezed his hand. “You’re going to need to wash when we reach the zoological collection.”
“I could let najabedhi lick my hands,” Felix said with a grin. “I wish Gianesh would find one with babies. Don’t you think her babies would be pretty?”
“They would be,” Willow said, “like big kittens. But I doubt she’d let you play with them. She’s probably a fierce mama.”
“Like you,” Felix said.
***
Willow sat cross-legged on the soft grass and regarded najabedhi, who stared back at her with total unconcern. The bars were far enough apart that Willow could reach between them and stroke the big cat, if she felt like losing a hand. Najabedhi was never anything but totally relaxed, but Willow wasn’t stupid enough to think that made her tame.
Behind her, Felix laughed and said something in Eskandelic. She half-turned to see him watching the monkeys, who were throwing…oh, lovely, they’d started throwing turds at each other again. Felix thought it was the funniest thing ever, and Gianesh had said it was a sign of intelligence. Willow just thought it was disgusting. “Don’t stand too close, Felix.”
“They’re not throwing at me this time. Don’t you think it’s funny? I think it’s a game, because if they wanted to hurt each other, they’d throw rocks.”
“Then they must be intelligent, if they can make that distinction.” Najabedhi yawned, and Willow found herself responding in kind. “It’s time for us to go.”
“Can’t we stay just five minutes longer?”
Willow sighed. “All right, but if any of that stuff gets on me, you’ll have to visit the monkeys without me in future.” She wasn’t terribly worried. The monkeys had good aim, but their…missiles…didn’t fly far from the cage. She propped her chin on her hand and regarded najabedhi. “I bet your children don’t play with their messes. You wouldn’t stand for it.”
She felt relaxed for the first time in days. True, the vote on the adjeni was approaching fast, with no certainty that Serjian would win, and Hajimhi Fariola probably still hated her, and Imara hadn’t come home yet, and she had no idea if Janida could neuter Abakian’s ability to hire assassins, but after last night’s successful theft, Willow felt she’d won a victory. The enclos
ure of the zoological collection contributed to that, with the occasional noises of the animals soothing her spirits. She’d even gotten used to the smell.
“I see you have made a friend,” Gianesh said, coming to squat beside her.
“I know she’d probably tear me to pieces if not for that cage, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to pet her.” Willow stood up and stretched.
“Najabedhi is fierce in the defense of her children, but she can be playful and friendly. Though I would not risk her teeth and claws, myself.” Gianesh patted his leg, and Maresh the sighthound came trotting to his side. “Thank you for bringing Felix. I have grown fond of him.”
In the next cage, a monkey scored a direct hit with a noxious clump on one of his friends. Felix cheered and laughed. “He loves this place. I should thank you for welcoming him.”
Gianesh nodded, and opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. “What is it?” Willow asked.
“Nothing. That is—Felix is well suited to this life.”
His carefully casual tone set off an alarm inside Willow’s head. “Meaning he’s less well suited to the life he has?”
“It is not my place to judge. Forgive my speaking out of turn.”
“No. That is—I understand. But Felix is King, and it’s the life he’ll have to live. Maybe he’ll start a zoological collection of his own in Tremontane, when this is all over.”
“Perhaps.” Gianesh nodded to her and walked away to stand by Felix. Willow watched them, feeling disturbed. So Felix was suited to being a scholar. He could do that when he was King, couldn’t he? He’d have all the freedom, all the resources—there was no reason he couldn’t do both.
Flanked by Felix’s guards, they walked back to the carriage. It was later than Willow had realized, nearly sunset, and hunger gnawed at her stomach. She hurried Felix along. She had no intention of missing another of Derona’s meals.
They were rounding the side of the Devisers’ building when, to her surprise, Willow saw Kerish approaching from the other direction. He veered away from the entrance to meet them. “I didn’t know you were here,” he said.
“I thought you were at the gymnasium,” Willow said.
“I was, until an hour ago. I had some things to finish here and I was just about to put away my new project.”
“Could we see it?”
Kerish shrugged and gestured to them to follow him. Willow regarded him closely. He’d sounded remote, as if she were just another acquaintance, and it chilled her. She made herself smile and nod.
They waited for the bodyguard to check the Devisers’ hall, then entered the room where the source resided and found another Deviser standing within the source circle with her hand held out. She didn’t look up when they entered.
“Imbuing motive forces is a meditative activity,” Kerish said, as if apologizing for her bad manners. “Fiolina’s a new student at the scholia, but she’s learning fast, at least as far as imbuing motive forces goes. She doesn’t have any interest in building Devices, but she seems happy doing what she’s doing. And we can always use people imbuing source. It’s left me free to work on my new project, for one.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll think it’s boring.”
“I’m never bored by what you come up with. Just knowing it interests you fascinates me.”
“So you care about my opinion. That’s good to know.”
His voice was harsh, cutting, and she felt as if he’d slapped her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He glanced in Felix’s direction, but the boy was standing next to the Deviser, rapt in his contemplation of the glowing disk on her palm, and wasn’t listening to them. “It’s nothing. Forget I said anything.”
“This is about last night. Kerish, I thought you understood.”
“So did I.” He turned away from her and picked up something thin and gold from the nearest table. “Willow, tell me the truth. How close did you come to being caught last night?”
She wouldn’t lie to him. Ever. “Reasonably close. I think one in a hundred thieves could have made the escape I did.”
He swore under his breath. “Mother could have dealt with Abakian another way. You risked your life—”
“For Felix. And I’d do it again if I had to.”
“Meaning you don’t care what I have to say about it.”
“Kerish, you love him too. Are you really saying his safety doesn’t matter?”
“Of course it matters. But—damn it, I should have just fought Terjalesh. An honor duel would have forced the issue.”
“As if anyone who’d conspire to murder a little boy has anything resembling honor. Kerish, I’m sorry I hurt you.” She felt her voice shake, and swallowed. “You’re a swordsman. You’re willing to fight to defend Felix, and that could mean your death, the way you Eskandelics handle these things. Why is that all right when it’s not all right for me to defend Felix my way?”
Kerish shook his head. “It’s different,” he said, “because I love you, and you make it impossible for me to protect you.”
“I thought there was a plan involving pirates.”
“This is serious, Willow.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just don’t see how it helps any of us if your…your motive force is your ego.”
Kerish raised his head. “Did you just suggest I’m some sort of Device?”
“I don’t know. All the metal in this room is starting to make me drunk. All I know is that I love you, and I depend on you for so much more than your strong right arm.” She touched his hand. “Can that be enough for you?”
“Enough?” Kerish smiled and put his arm around her. “More than enough.” He drew her close enough that she was pressed against him, feeling his steady heartbeat.
“Kerish, we’re not alone.”
“They’re not paying us any attention, and I feel I haven’t seen you in days.”
“You saw me just this morning. You were the first one I went to, you know.”
“I know. Thank you.” He kissed her, slowly, his fingers brushing the side of her face. Willow put her arms around his neck and kissed him back. His mouth tasted deliciously of honey and cinnamon. She kissed him again, feeling warmth spread across her back where his hand touched her…warmth that quickly became a burning sensation…
She twisted away, gasping. “What are you holding?”
His eyes widened. “I’m so sorry, I picked it up a moment ago and I forgot—are you all right?”
“Yes, but—what is that thing? It felt like a brand.”
Kerish brought his right hand around and displayed a rod of pure gold, about twelve inches in length. A thin disc of silver was impaled on the narrow end, and a cuff of inch-wide copper encircled the fatter end. “My new project. Gold works, but it’s impractical. Far too expensive, and I want this to be readily available. So I’m planning to make the next one out of iron or brass. Maybe wood, if I’m skilled enough.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s to speed up imbuing a motive force. This thing takes about an eighth of the time a Deviser does to imbue the average motive force. It only seems to work for ezdalha that are made of silver so far, so it’s not practical—”
“I thought practical was something Eskandelics were allergic to.”
Kerish grinned. “They’ll probably want this to be etched with floral patterns or something, but practical is all right if it’s also productive. And right now we’re experiencing something of a bottleneck with regard to producing fully imbued motive forces. Hence everyone’s pleasure at Fiolina being willing to do it for hours on end and not demand to be allowed to use the motive forces she imbues. Also, this Device can be used by a non-Deviser, so if I can get it to work properly, we can bring in others to use them.”
“A non-Deviser? Can I try it?”
“Sure. Point it at the source circle, and twist the copper ring.”
Willow took the rod and pointed it as directed. The copper made her
fingertips itch, so she gripped it more tightly. Kerish reached toward her. “Actually, you’re pointing it—”
She twisted the ring. There was a soft sound, the disk went from matte silver to palely glowing blue, and she felt as if her bones were sucked out of her body. It wasn’t painful, strangely, just a steady pressure that lasted for a few moments and left her ears ringing and her skin tingling.
“—the wrong way,” Kerish said. His voice was coming from very far away. Slowly, she touched her face. It was still there, but it took her some effort to move her arms. She felt as if she were swathed in warm cotton wool, sounds and sensations all dimmed. She blinked a few times.
“That was strange,” she said, and could barely hear her own voice. She felt deaf, and the lights were all wrong, like the sun was setting within the Devisers’ hall and her eyes were trying to cope with the gradual dimness. Blind, and deaf, and—
The rod was gone. Had she handed it back to Kerish? No, it wasn’t gone, it was still in her hands, but it felt inert, no warmth, no itching. She brought it close to her eyes, peering at it in the dimness, and felt no heat scorching her face. She couldn’t sense it at all.
She couldn’t sense any metal in the entire room.
Willow turned and ran to one of the many filigree boxes in the room and plunged her hand into it. Nothing. She might as well be touching glass marbles for all her senses reacted to the little discs. She closed her eyes and tried to orient herself, but it was as if all the metal in the room, in the nearby rooms, had vanished. She opened her eyes. The bodyguards’ steel swords shone with nothing more than reflected light. “What did you do?” she whispered.
“Willow, what’s wrong? You look as if you’re about to faint. Sit down.” Kerish guided her to sit on the floor—there were no chairs in the room—and put his arm around her.
Guardian of the Crown Page 26