Текст книги "All the Paths of Shadow"

Автор книги: Frank Tuttle

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Frank Tuttle
All the Paths of Shadow

Chapter One

Meralda Ovis, Royal Thaumaturge to the kingdom of Tirlin, waved her carriage away at the palace gates and walked the twenty city blocks home.

Ordinarily, Meralda enjoyed the walk. She loved the wide clean sidewalks and the red brick shop fronts and the rattle and clop of rubber-tired carriage traffic on the cobblestone streets. She loved to stroll down Fleethorse Street, amid the florists and herb shops and tea houses. She loved the pastry shop on Ordoon, Holin’s Bookstore on Kelwern, and the fruit market at the corner of Halor and Stick, where a mechanical man in a bright red suit offered pedestrians fresh apple slices with a click of a smile and a tick-tock wink.

Today, though, Meralda stalked fuming past Flayne’s and Holin’s without a sidelong glance. She marched, unseeing, through the fruit market, not heeding the fruit seller’s cries of “Lamp River apples, fresh off the docks, half price for you, Thaumaturge!”

Meralda didn’t pause until the crossing at Kemp and Weigh, and then only long enough to let the traffic master recognize her and wave traffic to a halt with quick motions of his white-gloved hands.

“Evening, Thaumaturge,” he said as she passed, a gaggle of pedestrians in her wake. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

Meralda nodded, but couldn’t force a smile. Lovely day,she thought. Perhaps to persons not currently in my skin.

Meralda marched down the rows of clothiers on Stringle, dodged a pair of wandering minstrels on Argen, and hit her stride on the home stretch of tall old water oaks and small, shady lawns and tidy, close-set houses between Bester and Shade.

The streets there were named for kings of old-Thinwase and Flanshot and Inlop and Gant.

Marvelous,fumed Meralda, as the names ran sing-song through her head. Just what I need. More kings.

Traffic on the sidewalk picked up on the king streets. Dozens of people passed Meralda, greeting her with smiles and nods. Meralda kept her pace fast and her eyes on the ground.

A few passers-by recognized Meralda. The sorceress, both the first woman and the youngest mage to ever occupy the seat of Thaumaturge in the long history of Tirlin, had briefly been the subject of notoriety in the papers. The Posthad dubbed her “Tirlin’s Lady of Mages,” while the Timeshad run two full weeks of furious editorials questioning the appointment of one so young to the court. Meralda recalled how unnerving it had been, suddenly being known to strangers wherever she went.

Meralda’s fame soon died, though, and she discovered that by leaving the dark blue mage’s robe and black cowl in her closet she could go about as she pleased, unremarked and largely unnoticed. Her customary outfits of long skirts, soft half-knee boots, and plain, high-necked blouses made more sense, anyway. Even old Mage Fromarch, her mentor, had stripped down to pants and a shirt for serious magic. “Robes are fine for show,” he’d said with a frown, the first day Meralda had shown up in her loose brown apprentice robes. “But we’ve got work to do.”

Meralda dodged a small yapping dog and sighed at the memory. Work to do, she thought. Work, indeed.That was before I learned that the office of Royal Thaumaturge was apparently instituted to provide the crown with the arcane equivalent of fancy stage lighting.

Through a gap in the thinning boughs of the water oaks, Meralda spied the sad, pigeon spotted gargoyles that cowered gape-jawed at the corners of her apartment building. The doorman at the Oggin House doffed his hat at Meralda, and she found a smile for him, but didn’t stop to speak.

Finally, Meralda clattered up the ten steps to the lobby of her building, spoke to Ernst the doorman, and took to the stairs.

Six flights of steep, narrow stairs beckoned. Meralda took a deep breath, hiked up her skirts, and sprinted for home.

From his pot on the kitchen windowsill, Mug heard the hall door open with a whoosh and slam shut with a bang. He waited for Meralda’s footfalls, but instead heard two loud thumps as she kicked off her boots and flung them to the floor.

Mug swiveled twenty of his eyes toward the ceiling. The sorceress is slamming doors and throwing boots,he thought. That can only mean one thing.

Meralda’s socks made quick soft pats across the floor. The kitchen door opened, and Meralda marched inside.

Mug’s eyes turned and bobbed. His bottom-most leaves wilted. Meralda was pale. With anger. Mug had heard of humans changing colors, but he’d never seen Meralda do it until then.

Meralda’s long hands were clenched into fists, her mouth was a thin straight line across her narrow face, and her fierce glare met Mug’s quick three-eyed glance with dire, unspoken warning.

Mug turned his blue eyes quickly away from Meralda’s brown ones. What,wondered the dandyleaf plant, has that idiot king done now?

Meralda shook off her jacket, threw it across the back of a chair, and was across the kitchen and in front of Mug’s windowsill with four long strides. She reached past Mug, threw open the window, and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

“Mistress,” began Mug.

“A moment,” said Meralda. “Just a single quiet moment.”

Cool, dry air washed over her face. Breathe in autumn,Meralda thought. Breathe in chilly nights and turning oak leaves and fat orange harvest moons. Breathe out thick-headed kings and snickering court toadies and long royal lists of impossible things to do.

The scent of caramel covered candy apples, fresh made at a harvest carnival, wafted up from the park below. A hot, fresh Lamp River carnival apple,thought Meralda. When was the last time I had one of those?

“I surmise you’ve seen the king,” said Mug, after a time. “What does Yvin want you to do this time? Lower the moon? Shorten the day? Give him back his girlish figure and his front teeth?”

Meralda sighed and opened her eyes.

The sky through the high window was cloudless and blue. A ragged vee of geese flew by above, veering wide around a lumbering red Alon cargo dirigible dropping toward the docks behind the palace. The dirigible’s long shadow raced over the tops of the towering Old Kingdom oaks that ringed the park before sliding over the park wall and disappearing.

Beyond the park and the oaks Tirlin itself rose up in a tidy profusion of red brick buildings and dark slate roofs and red-gold tree tops just touched by autumn. The towers and spires of the palace peeped through here and there, rising just barely above the banks and shops and offices that made up the heart of Tirlin.

Above it all, though, loomed the Tower, squat and black and brooding in the midst of the green and open park.

Meralda frowned, and looked away.

“Mistress,” said Mug, turning all twenty-nine of his eyes toward Meralda. “Talk. What’s wrong?”

“How many days remain until the Accords?” said Meralda, quietly.

“Twenty,” said Mug, with a small stirring of leaf tips. “Counting today, which I suppose I shouldn’t, since it’s nearly gone.”

Meralda sat on the edge of her battered kitchen chair. “So, in nineteen days, Tirlin will be full of Alons and Vonats and Eryans and Phendelits, all gathered here to strut and brag and eat like pigs while making long speeches explaining why they broke every promise they made at the last Accord.”

Mug nodded by dipping his eye buds. “You left out carousing and spying and tavern wrecking,” said Mug. “What does that have to do with you?”

Meralda slapped her hands down on the table. “Nothing,” she said. “It should have nothing to do with me at all. The Accords are a political matter.”

“Or so you thought.”

Meralda shook her head. “So I thought.” She put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Just for an instant, she heard her mother’s scolding voice. “Elbows off the table, young lady. We raise swine. We do not emulate their table manners.”

Meralda sighed and stared at the table top. “His Highness is to give the customary commencement speech on the eve of the Accords,” she said. “He plans to speak from a platform at the foot of the Tower. Carpenters are building covered stands in the park for the delegates.”

Mug shrugged with a tossing of fronds. “Sounds fine. I think Kings Ortell and Listbin did the same thing, way back when.” Mug lifted his three red eyes toward Meralda’s face. “It’s not the weather, is it? Surely even Yvin knows better than to take pokes at the climate just to make sure he has a sunny day for a speech.”

“He didn’t ask that,” said Meralda. “Yet.”

She stretched and yawned and thought again about caramel apples and fall carnivals. “Yesterday-” said Meralda, “Yesterday, the King was inspecting the stands being built in the park. He arrived at five of the clock, the same time his commencement speech is set for.”

“And?”

“And,” said Meralda, “it suddenly dawned on our gifted monarch that the sun sets in the west and casts shadows toward the east.”

“Leaving His High Pompousness to make a speech in the shadow of the Tower,” said Mug, with dawning apprehension. “Which aggravated his royal sense of badly done melodrama.”

“And led him to instruct me to move the Tower’s shadow,” said Meralda. “Move it, or banish it, or fold it up and pack it away for an hour,” said Meralda, in a mocking baritone. “Roll up a shadow? Pack away the absence of light caused by a seven hundred year old wizard’s keep?” Meralda shoved back the chair and stood, hands spread before her. “What kind of an imbecile asks for a roll of packed up shadows?”

Mug cast his gaze toward the ceiling. “The kind with the scepter and the crown,” he said, quietly.

Meralda stood. She walked back to her open window and leaned on the sill.

“Was it a suggestion, a request, or a royal directive?” asked Mug.

“Is there a difference?” Meralda shrugged. “The king asked. Before the full court. I stood there and nodded and made vague assurances that I’d look into the matter.” Meralda sighed. “The Tower is-what? Nine hundred feet high? Almost two hundred wide? At five of the clock today, the tip of its afternoon shadow hit the park wall at the east entrance. That makes its shadow almost two thousand feet long and two hundred wide at the base.”

Mug ticked off figures on his leaf tips. “How big a bag will you need, after you roll it up?” he asked.

“Mug!” snapped Meralda. “Enough.”

“A thousand pardons, Oh Fiery-Eyed One,” said Mug, with a mock bow. “But could it be, mistress, that you are not exclusively angry with King Yvin?” A trio of bright blue eyes peeked up through Mug’s tangle of leaves. “Could it be that you are peeved at your own reluctance to describe to the king in lengthy detail just how asinine and vacuous his shadow-packing scheme truly is?”

Meralda glared. “I could get a cat,” she said. “A nice quiet cat.”

Mug lifted out of the bow. “Fur on the couch, a litter box to empty? I don’t see you with a cat,” said Mug.

“Keep talking,” she said. “We may all see things we didn’t expect.” Meralda shook her head, ran her fingers through the strands of long red-brown hair that had worked loose from the tight bun at the back of her head.

“I was going to add that you shouldn’t fault yourself for not browbeating the king before the full court,” said Mug. “I was going to say that even though your hero, Tim the Horsehead, spent his career berating and insulting kings he was always careful to do so in private.” Mug paused, waving his leaves. “I was going to suggest that you take a long hot bath and curl up on the couch with a cup of Vellish black tea and a book of Phendelit poetry, and that you see Yvin privately tomorrow and explain to him that you only just discovered that moving the Tower’s shadow would loose a plague of biting flies on Banker Street and devalue Tirlish currency abroad and cause the collapse of the aqueducts and, incidentally, make snakes grow in his beard. He’ll forget the whole shadow business and you can go back to your studies of spark wheels and lightning rods, interrupted only by occasional royal requests to shrink the royal bald spot.”

Meralda laughed. Mug turned his eyes away. “And you want a cat,” he said, airily. “Could a cat say that?”

“No one with lungs could say that, Mug,” she said. “You’re right. I should have a talk with Yvin.”

“Then why aren’t you making tea and drawing a bath?”

Meralda sighed. “Because I’m changing clothes and going back to the laboratory,” she said. “There are things I need to look into, at least.”

Mug sighed. “Mistress,” he said. “Can it be done? Can the shadow be moved?”

“I don’t know, Mug,” she said. “Perhaps.”

Mug turned a tangle of green eyes toward her. “I don’t like this, mistress,” he said, no humor in his tone. “The Tower isn’t something to be trifled with.” Mug bunched all his eyes together in an instinctive signal of grave concern. “Leave it alone, if you can,” he said. “Please.”

Meralda frowned. “Why, Mug? It’s just an old tower.”

Mug moved his eyes closer. “It was never just a tower,” he said. “Not seven hundred years ago, not yesterday, not now.” Mug’s leaves stirred, though no wind blew. “Why do you think the old kings tried for all those years to knock it down?” Mug paused and stilled his leaves. “Leave it alone, mistress. Tell Yvin to light a few gas lamps and leave the Tower be.”

Meralda stroked his topmost leaves. “Thank you, Mug.”

“For what?” asked Mug.

Meralda smiled. “For not being a cat.”

Mug’s eyes exchanged glances. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I think.”

“Water?” asked Meralda.

“None, thanks.” The dandyleaf plant sighed. “So you’re going to try this, despite my heartfelt plea.”

“I have to,” said Meralda. “I have to try. Not for the king, but for me.”

Mug grunted. “As long as it’s not a heroic effort for the glory of His Thick-headedness,” said Mug. “So what’s this idea of yours?”

Meralda bit her lip. She turned from Mug and began to pace slowly around the dining table.

“I see two ways to do this,” she said, frowning. “First, bend the sunlight around the Tower, so it casts no shadow at all.”

Mug frowned. “That would render the Tower invisible, wouldn’t it?” he said. “And a working invisibility spell? Weren’t you saying just a few days ago that such a thing was impossible? I believe you used the words ‘penny-novel nonsense’.”

“The spell would only redirect light striking the Tower from a certain angle,” said Meralda. “It wouldn’t be invisible. Just a bit fuzzy, from a single spot out in the park.”

“I see,” said Mug. “What’s your other idea?”

“Leave the shadow,” she said. “Just delay it a bit. An hour, perhaps. Maybe less.”

“Delay it? How, mistress, does one delay the setting of the sun?”

Meralda laughed. “I’ll leave the sun alone, thank you. I’d merely borrow a bit of sunlight from one day and move it to the next.”

The edges of Mug’s leaves all curled slightly upward. “Let’s work with your original notion,” he said. “Moving sunlight from one day to the next. That sounds like the sort of story that ends with the Thaumaturge being brutally suntanned and the king giving his speech from beneath the cover of perpetual night.”

Meralda smiled. “Good night, Mug,” she said. “I’ll be late. Shall I move you to the sitting room window?”

“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll stay right where I am. It’s a good place in which to worry oneself sick. Lots of room to drop leaves and shrivel.”

Meralda sighed. “It’s only a shadow, Mug,” she said. “And the Tower is just a tower. Stones and wood. Nothing more.”

Mug sniffed. “Certainly,” he said. “Nothing to all those old stories. Nothing at all.”

Meralda snatched up her cloak and stamped out of the kitchen. Mug listened to her wash her face, brush her teeth, and change her clothes. Then the living room door closed softly, and Mug was all alone.

Meralda settled into her cab. The driver snapped the reins, and the carriage pulled onto Fairlane Street with the steady clop-clop of Phendelit carriage horse hooves.

Carriages and coaches hurried past, most bound for the shady lanes and quiet neighborhoods that lay to the west, beyond the college and the park. The sidewalks were crowded as well, as bakers and hat makers and shopkeepers closed their doors and shuttered their windows and turned eager faces toward home.

Meralda’s driver, a short, bald, retired army sergeant named Angis Kert, bit back a curse as a slow moving lumber wagon pulled out of the alley by Fleet’s Boots. Meralda grinned. She’d heard Angis let loose before, and was always reminded of her grandfather, who cursed at his swine with exactly the same words and tone.

“S’cuse me, milady,” said Angis from his perch above. “Bloody lumber wain like to drove us into Old Pafget’s pastry shop.”

Meralda laughed. “No apology is necessary, Sergeant,” she said. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

Angis laughed. “I must not be as loud as I once was, then,” he said. “How late you reckon you’ll be, Sorceress? Late enough for old Angis to nip into Raggot’s and have a pint and a game of checkers?”

Meralda sighed. “Have three pints and ten games,” she said. “In fact, don’t wait. I’ll catch a public cab. It’ll be midnight, or worse.”

Angis spoke to his ponies and the carriage surged suddenly ahead, passing the lumber wain.

“I’ll wait for you,” said Angis, after a moment. “You’ll not find a public cab without a fight, these days, what with half of Erya camped out in the Green Wing.”

Meralda frowned. “Eryans? Here already?”

Angis guffawed. “You got to stick your head out of that lab-ra-tory every now and then, milady,” he said. “Eryans got here yesterday, king and queen and soldiers and all.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You always are,” said Angis. “Work all day an’ work all night. It ain’t my place to say, Sorceress, but if you don’t slow down a mite you’re gonna be stooped and grey-headed before me.” Angis snapped his reins. “But I reckon I’ve said enough.”

Meralda looked at her reflection in the carriage window glass. “You’re right, Angis,” she said, leaning closer to the window. “You’re right.”

Was he?

My hair is a fright,thought Meralda. But that can be fixed.She looked into her eyes, surprised by the dark circles beneath them and the weariness within them.

Angis stopped at an intersection and bellowed at the white-gloved traffic master until he waved them through. Meralda watched as a pair of shabby gas-lighter boys darted past, magefire lighters held high and leaving persistent glowing wakes drifting down the sidewalk as they rushed to light their appointed street-lamps. Meralda shook her head. She’d proposed a simple method to automate the lighting and extinguishing of the street-lamps in her first month as Mage, but the Guilds has raised such a fuss the king had refused to even consider it.

The gas-lighters vanished around a corner, leaving Meralda’s reflection alone in the glass. Meralda turned away. No wonder the papers stopped chasing me,she thought. I don’t look eighteen anymore.

She certainly didn’t feel eighteen. Whisked off to college at thirteen, after enchanting Mug into sarcastic life. Graduating in a mere four years, when most mages take eight, if they manage it at all. A year spent as Fromarch’s apprentice, before his abrupt retirement and unwavering insistence that Meralda be named royal Thaumaturge despite her youth and gender. All that,thought Meralda, to wind up spending three-quarters of my time doing petty stage magics intended to impress a gaggle of bored foreign nobles?

Meralda’s stomach grumbled.

“Sergeant,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. The laboratory can wait until after supper. Make for the Kettle and Hearth, please, off Wizard’s Way.”

Angis whistled. “That I’ll do, milady,” he said. “A bit of Missus Pot’s meatloaf would go down tasty, all right.”

Angis snapped his reins, and Meralda’s carriage sped westward, toward the fat towers and squat spires of the college and the darkening shadows that lay about them.

“Whoa.”

Angis brought the carriage to a smooth halt at the curb, well within the pool of steady yellow light cast by the hissing gas lamp.

“Well, at least I’ve seen you fed,” said Angis. The lights from the palace lit his face a ruddy red. “Sure you don’t want to just go on back home? It’s a bit late to be working, especially on a full belly.”

Meralda yawned, fumbled with the door latch, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Thank you, Angis,” she said. “But I’ve got work to do. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Angis turned and frowned at Meralda beneath his enormous cabman’s hat. “Aye,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll be down to Raggot’s, till midnight. Send a lad down to fetch me if you get done before that.”

Meralda nodded. “Oh, all right. Who do you fuss over on your days off?”

Angis grinned. “Not a soul, milady,” he said. “Not a soul.” Then he doffed his hat and rolled off into the night.

The sky was filled with moving lights, as late-arriving airships sailed overhead, seeking out the docks. The palace was aglow, and the streets were crowded, even well after dark. Most of the people strolling past Meralda were Tirlish sight-seers, out for a walk and perhaps a glance of the newly arrived Eryans.

Meralda smiled, bemused. At any given moment,she thought, there are probably ten thousand Eryans in Tirlin. Half the minstrels, half the fishermen, half the barge masters. All Eryan, all the time. What makes these Eryan so special that half of the North Quarter is out strolling around the palace, just hoping to get a glimpse of one?

“Look! Look there!” said a wide-eyed Tirlish lady, who stopped suddenly beside Meralda. “It’s the king! The king of Erya!”

The lady pointed, covering the wide O of her mouth with her gloved hand. Meralda stifled a laugh. The uniformed man the awestruck woman pointed out was Rogar Hebbis, coach driver to the queen of Tirlin.

Rogar nodded to Meralda, made a sweeping bow to the lady at her side, and marched into the west wing palace entrance. “He bowed to us,” said the lady, to Meralda. “The king made a bow! To me!” With a squeak, the lady fluttered away down the street, purse thumping at her side like a schoolboy’s lunch pail.

Meralda followed Rogar up the five wide steps that led up to the entry hall. The guards nodded. One scribbled Meralda’s name and the time in a ledger.

“Evening, Sorceress,” said the other. “Captain Ballen is waiting inside for you.”

Meralda stepped through the open palace doors. Parts of her frown returned. Why would the captain be waiting for me here?

Meralda padded down the long hall to the stairs at the end. The hall was deserted, but filled with the muffled sounds of pots clattering and glasses clinking and waiters shouting at cooks and cooks shouting at everyone else.

A man pushing a cart of precariously stacked Phendelit dinner plates came dashing through a door just ahead of Meralda. “S’cuse me, milady,” he said, leaping ahead of his cart and shoving the opposite door open with his right foot. “Coming through.”

Meralda brushed quickly past. Another door opened, and out stepped the captain, a fried chicken leg in one hand and a tall glass of Eryan iced tea in the other.

Meralda smiled and halted. The captain bent his long, gaunt frame in a mocking bow, brandishing his chicken leg like a baton.

“Sorceress,” he said, with a grin. “I was just looking for you.”

Meralda laughed. “And naturally you thought I’d be in the kitchen pilfering the royal poultry,” she said.

The captain took a gulp of tea, wiped his greying beard with his uniform sleeve, and returned Meralda’s smile. “Man’s got to eat,” he said. Bright blue eyes glinted beneath bushy white eyebrows. “Are you calmed down yet?”

Another waiter popped out behind the captain, then darted around him, and vanished through a door behind Meralda.

“I’m better,” said Meralda. “Why don’t you bring your supper up to the laboratory and tell me why you’ve been looking for me.”

“Indeed, I shall,” he said, motioning Meralda forward with his chicken leg. “After you, milady.”

Meralda hurried for the stairs, mindful of the doors on either side. The captain followed, munching contentedly. “So you heard about the Tower’s shadow?” said Meralda.

“I hear everything, Thaumaturge,” said the captain, between bites. “By the way, you can thank that skunk Sir Ricard for bringing the Tower’s shadow to the king’s attention.”

Meralda felt her face flush. “Oh, I’d like to thank Sir Ricard,” she said, softly. “I really, really would.”

The captain chuckled. “Maybe someday you will,” he said. “I’d pay dear to see that.” The captain bit the last bite of meat off the leg, drained his tea, dropped the chicken bone in the tea glass, and set both in the crook of the elbow of the fourth-century suit of armor that guarded the foot of the west wing back stair. “Sir Ricard aside, though, I have a surprise for you, Thaumaturge,” he said, mounting the stairs beside Meralda. “You do love surprises, as I recall.”

Meralda half-turned as she climbed and lifted an eyebrow at the captain. “I detest surprises,” she said.

“Quite right,” said the captain. “My mistake.”

Meralda reached the second floor landing. The copper-bound double doors to the Royal Thaumaturgical Laboratory were just ten paces away, but in place of the mismatched suits of armor that had flanked the laboratory doors since the days of King Esperus, a pair of gangly, red-shirted palace soldiers stood at attention, right hands on sword hilts, eyes straight ahead.

Meralda stared.

The soldiers were twins. Both were blond, fair skinned, blue-eyed, and freckled. Both avoided Meralda’s gaze with a terrified determination, further evidenced by the sheen of sweat on their faces and their futile attempts to remain absolutely still to the point of excluding breathing and swallowing.

“Thaumaturge,” said the captain, “I present to you Tervis and Kervis Bellringer, Guardsmen of the Realm. They are to serve as your bodyguards for the duration of the Accords.” The captain shook his head. “By order of the king,” he said, before Meralda could protest. “All members of the court are to be assigned bodyguards. No fewer than two, no exceptions, no discussion.” The captain turned away from the young soldiers and lowered his voice to a whisper. “They’re good lads, Sorceress,” he said. “Twins, fresh in from a horse ranch halfway to Vonath. I won’t waste them on toads like Sir Ricard and I don’t trust them to hooligans like Ordo or Thaft. Give them a chance. This isn’t their fault.”

The captain’s half-smile vanished, suddenly replaced by a grimace of barely contained fury. He turned and stamped up the last few stairs. “You there!” he bellowed at the right-most lad, not halting until he was a hand’s breadth from the boy’s face. “Guardsman Kervis!”

“Sir,” said the left-most boy. “Pardon, but I’m Kervis. He’s Tervis.”

“You’re Kervis if I say you are!” shouted the captain. “You’re Kervis, your boots are Kervis, your hat is bloody well Kervis if I say it is! Now then.” The captain stalked over to the face of the boy on the left. “Do you see this woman, soldier?”

The boy glanced at Meralda, looked away, and nodded frantically.

“Do you think your brother Kervis sees her, soldier?”

The nods came faster. The captain leaned down and stepped close to Kervis. “You and your brother are the lady’s bodyguards, soldier,” said the captain, his voice fallen to a whisper. “What does that mean, bodyguard?”

“Sir,” said the boy, his eyes wide, “We are to protect her, um, body, from, er-”

“Enemies, sir!” croaked the other Bellringer. “Enemies, foreign or, um, domestic. Sir.”

The captain glared. Kervis shook. “That’s correct, soldier,” he said. “So if you’ve got to take on the whole of Vonath single-handed with a dull butter knife then that’s what you do. Because if anything happens to the sorceress it won’t be the army or the crown you’ll answer to. It’ll be me.” The captain’s voice rose to a bellow. “Me!”

The captain whirled, winked at Meralda, and stamped off down the stairs.

The Bellringers, sweating and wide-eyed, watched him go.

Meralda shook her head. “Guardsman Kervis,” she said, when the captain’s footfalls died. “How old are you?”

The boy cleared his throat. “Eight and ten, ma’am,” he said. “Soon be nine and ten.”

“Me, too,” said Tervis. “Ma’am.”

“I surmised as much,” said Meralda. “Well, gentlemen, let me make one thing clear, here and now. The king has decreed that you shall dog my steps. But it would not do for you to be too much underfoot.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Meralda sighed. Somewhere in the palace, a clock began striking the ninth hour, and with every bell toll Meralda felt the weight of the day settle heavy in her bones.

“Guardsman Kervis,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Are you familiar with the palace?”

Guardsman Kervis leapt to attention. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Then you know where the basement kitchen is.”

“Down the west stair, left at the Burnt Door, right and two doors down from the Anvion Room. Yes, ma’am,” said Kervis.

Meralda stepped off the last stair. “Very well. Go there, at once. Tell them the sorceress wants a pot of coffee.”

Kervis beamed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Right away.”

“And get three mugs, too,” said Meralda. “You gentlemen do drink coffee, I assume?”

The Bellringers nodded. Tervis’ helmet threatened to fall off, despite the strap cutting into his chin.

“Good,” said Meralda. “We’ll all need a cup, tonight.” Then she stepped to the door, fumbled in her pocket for the big black iron key, and put it in the lock.

The door crackled faintly, and the short-cropped hair on Tervis’ head tried to stand up below his helmet.

Meralda whispered a word, and pushed the door gently open. “Knock, when you return,” she said to Kervis. “And, gentlemen, I don’t need to warn you against ever opening this door yourself, do I?”

“No, ma’am,” said the Bellringers. “Not ever.”

“Good,” said Meralda. “Good.” Then she removed the key, dropped it back in her pocket, and closed the door gently behind her.

“Nineteen days,” she said, to the shadows. “Nineteen days to shrink the Tower or move the Sun.”

“Ma’am?” spoke a muffled voice from beyond the door. “Were you speaking to me?”

“No, Guardsman,” said Meralda. “I wasn’t.”

“Just checking,” said Tervis. Meralda couldn’t see the young man, but she was absolutely certain that he had snapped to full attention before speaking. “Ma’am.”