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C
HAPTER

9

I
didn't want any pay for being the ducal magister. Still, I went over to investigate the bag. It was full of money—silver locks and even some golden sun coins. More money than I knew what to do with. I hid it away on a shelf behind some books and went to the door to have a look at the lock.

I was just about to bring out my lockpick wires to see if I could open and close it—just to keep myself sharp—when the door was flung open, knocking me over, and Miss Dimity stepped into the room.

I scrambled to my feet, shoving the wires back into my pocket.

“The dragon is not here with the ducal magister,” she announced to the green-liveried servants behind her. “It is safe to enter.”

Some of the servants brought coal and started a fire; she waved the rest to a table near the hearth. After eyeing the deep scratches on the back of the chair Pip liked to perch on, she gave me one of her scraped-on smiles.

“Ducal Magister,” she said, with a stiff bow. “Your dinner.” She handed me a napkin and pointed at the Pip-scratched chair.

I sat in it. My stomach rumbled.

Servants trooped in and, casting cautious-curious looks at me, laid out plates and forks, and covered dishes, enough to crowd three of the little tables.

Miss Dimity swept the cover off the first dish. Something gray and wobbly. “Jellied eel with horseradish sauce,” she proclaimed. Another dish with a lump of bluish-white stuff in it: “Eggplant surprise!” A bowl: “Cabbage soup.” Another plate: “Piebald beans.” And last: “With candied fern-frond for dessert.” She pointed to a teapot. “Tea.” She nodded as a servant added a last plate covered with a white napkin. “And, as ordered especially for you by the duchess, biscuits.”

She stepped back and waited as all the other servants went out; then she left, closing the door behind her with a polite
click
.

I looked over the food. I'd start with the biscuits, of course, though I knew they wouldn't be as good as Benet's biscuits, hot out of the oven and dripping with butter and honey.

These biscuits were a brownish-gray color and were arranged on a plate around a little pot of greasy-looking butter and a sprig of some sort of greenery. I tried one. Hard and tasting a bit like ash. Even the biscuits I baked were better than this!

The cabbage soup sounded like the best of the rest of it, but when I tried a bite, it was cold. None of the other food was hot, either; it was all cold as cobblestones, and so was the tea. The kitchens were far away from the ducal magister's rooms, I guessed. I dunked one of the ashy biscuits in the soup, which tasted like salted washwater, and ate a few bites, but didn't feel like eating any more.

In the hearth, the fire roared. The servants had lit fires in the other rooms, too, because Rowan had ordered them to make it more cozy in here, but now it was getting stuffy and hot. The bedroom was hottest of all, so I took the blankets off the bed and slept on the floor in the main room with the windows wide open.

In the morning I woke up with the fire dead in the grate, frosty air pouring in the windows, and Pip crouched on my chest, glaring at me with its ember-red eyes.

“Hello, you,” I said, and my voice sounded rusty.

Pip opened its maw and dropped something onto my chest. I picked it up and used the edge of the blanket to wipe the dragon spit off it. Pushing Pip off me, sitting up in my blankets, I examined it. A stone. It fizzed in my hand, making my fingers tingle. It was deep purple, round, and rough, about the size of a quail's egg. A locus magicalicus. Sandera's stolen stone, sure as sure. I got to my feet and looked down at Pip, crouched on the floor next to me. “Where'd you get this?” I asked.

Krrrr
, Pip said. It crawled onto my abandoned blankets, wrapping its tail around itself.

Busy night, clear as clear.

I crouched down next to the nest of blankets. “You didn't steal it, did you Pip?”

The little dragon blinked, then closed its eyes.

Had
Pip stolen Sandera's stone? Maybe. More likely, the dragon had stolen the locus stone back from the thieves, whoever they were. Why else would Pip be bringing the stones to me? If it wanted the stones for itself, it'd just swallow them, as it had swallowed mine.

Getting to my feet, I set the locus stone on the table. Then I washed and found some clean clothes and got dressed.

I was pulling my black sweater on over my head when a knock came at the door, and a piece of paper, folded, slid under it. As I went to pick it up, I heard footsteps hurrying away, a servant too frightened to wait for me to open the door.

A note from Nevery.

 

 

The last thing I wanted to do this morning was go to a meeting where I'd be shouted at by the magisters. Especially with Sandera's stolen stone on me. Still, if Nevery wanted me there, I had to go.

Not on an empty stomach, though. Because I had a ferocious dragon with me, the servants wouldn't bring breakfast to my room unless they had a direct order from Rowan, so I settled sleeping Pip on my shoulder, slipped Sandera's stone into my pocket, and went looking for food.

When I stepped out of my rooms, two guards were at the door. They both followed me while I found the kitchens. The cook shooed me and Pip out, but told me to wait in the hallway while she found me something to eat.

“Nothing fancy,” I called after her, as she went back inside.

She came out with a plate of hot rolls and butter and jam. “You're that wizard boy, aren't you?”

I had a dragon riding on my shoulder; who else would I be? I nodded.

The cook looked me up and down, hands on hips. “You are too thin. You should eat more. And what about that?” She pointed at Pip. “Does this . . . animal need anything?”

I grinned at her, and she backed away a step. “No,” I said. Not unless she had some pigeons flying around in the kitchen. I took two of the hot rolls from the plate and ate a big bite. Mmmm. “Thanks,” I said to the cook, who nodded and went back into the kitchen. I held a roll out to the guards. “Want some?” I asked.

They didn't eat while on duty, they said.

Munching on breakfast, with Pip still asleep on my shoulder, its snout nestled against my neck, I headed out of the Dawn Palace. At the front gate, standing on the gravelly drive, I stopped and looked back.

“Ah, sir?” one of the guards asked.

I ignored him. The Dawn Palace. A fancy prison. Rowan wanted me to give it a chance, and I'd done that. I wasn't coming back to live in those too-hot, too-cold ducal magister's rooms, with the nasty fancy food, and closets full of silk-stiff clothes, and guards outside every door, and Miss Dimity bulging her eyes at me. If Nevery wouldn't let me come back to Heartsease, well, I'd figure something else out.

That decided, I headed down the hill. The guards followed. The air was chilly, the streets bustling with people and carriages and hansom cabs.

When they saw I was heading for the bridge, one of the guards cleared his throat. “Sir?”

Him calling me
sir
was about the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. I ignored him and swallowed down the last bite of buttered-and-jammed roll.

“Ducal Magister Connwaer?” he said.

I stopped. “What.”

One of the guards stayed behind me; the other stepped in front, blocking my way. People passing us on the street stared as they walked by. It probably looked to them like I was being arrested. The guard said, “Magister, we're supposed to report with you to Captain Kerrn if you attempt to go into the Twilight.”

It really was starting to sound like I was a prisoner. I glared at the guard. “I'm not going to the Twilight. I'm going to a meeting at Magisters Hall.”

“That's all right, then,” said the guard behind me.

They let me go on, following me across the bridge and down the steps to the tunnel that led under the river to the wizards' islands. We came to one of the tunnel gates. I plucked sleeping Pip off my shoulder and held it up to the gate's magic lock and said the opening spell. Pip twitched and blinked, giving me a surly look, and then touched the lock with its snout. The lock clicked open. We went through the gate, then two more gates, then through the Magisters Hall gate and up the stairs to the building itself.

At the top of the stairs was a long, stone hallway, and it was filled with wizards and apprentices and magisters in their fine robes, all talking in little groups, waiting for the meeting to begin. When they saw me with the two guards looming up behind me and Pip on my shoulder, they stared, whispering.
Stolen
, I heard, and
thief
.

Annoyed, Pip lashed its tail and snorted out a puff of gray smoke. I put my hand into my pocket to be sure Sandera's stone was still there.

I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me—
step step tap
—and then Nevery was beside me, leaning on his cane. “Good morning, Connwaer,” he said mildly.

I was annoyed, too. “Not really, Nevery,” I said, and I wanted to ask him if he was missing me, but he didn't seem to be, so I kept quiet.

He snorted. “The morning is not going to get any better, either.” He started down the hallway. “Yet another locus magicalicus stone went missing during the night. Brumbee's. Come along. It's time to start the meeting.”

The other magisters headed for the meeting room, too, Brumbee in his bright yellow robe looking rumpled and worried, and sharp Trammel who ran the medicos, and Periwinkle with her gray hair in its usual messy bun, and bat-faced Nimble. Coming last was sharp, clever Sandera. They muttered to one another while we went into the meeting room, me shedding my guards at the door.

Here was my chance. Once I'd picked Nevery's locus stone from his cloak pocket. Sure as sure I could do a reverse pocket-pick. On feather feet, I hovered behind Sandera. As she stopped beside her chair, I pulled her locus stone from my pocket and—
quick hands
—dropped it into the pocket of her magister's robe. She sat down, not noticing a thing, and I went on, finding a seat about halfway down the table and slouching into it, my hands in my pockets. Pip hopped up to perch on the back of my chair. My heart pounded a little. I watched Sandera out of the corner of my eye, but she still hadn't noticed anything.

Nevery was the leader of the magisters, so he sat at the head of the long table and, when everyone was sitting, started the meeting.

“Well, Brumbee,” Nevery said. “Report.”

“Oh, dear,” Brumbee said. He clasped and unclasped his plump hands, which were shaking, and looked around the table. “As you all know, another locus stone has been, ah, stolen. This time it was my own. And I hear no call from it at all. Nothing. It has simply disappeared.”

I frowned. That was strange. Even if his stone was gone, Brumbee should be able to feel where it was.

“What happened?” Trammel asked sharply.

Brumbee cast him an unhappy look. “
Nothing
happened. I was being careful, of course. The door to my bedroom was locked. No one could have gotten in. But I woke up this morning and my locus magicalicus was gone from the table beside my bed. Stolen.”

“Impossible,” Periwinkle said, shaking her head. “The stone would have killed the thief.”

Nimble leaned forward. “And my own locus stone as well—simply gone! And Sandera's, as well.”

Sandera looked up, and then cocked her head, as if she was listening to something. I knew what it was—she'd just picked up the call of her locus magicalicus. In not too long she'd find it in her pocket.

Nimble caught my eye and gave a secret smirk-look, as if he knew something that I didn't. “My fellow magisters,” he went on, “we do know one thief who has shown that he can handle another wizard's locus magicalicus.”

Me, he meant.

“Oh, no,” Brumbee said. “We can't possibly think—” He glanced at me. “He wouldn't—”

“Yes he would,” Nimble said in his whiny voice. “He held the apprentice Keeston's stone the other day when his little pet brought it to him. And he once stole Nevery's locus stone, didn't he? Picked it right from his pocket!” He stood up and pointed at me while pointing his smirk at Nevery. “Well, Nevery? Didn't he?”

Nevery, scowling, opened his mouth to answer, when Nimble went on. “And his first locus magicalicus was a jewel stolen from the ducal regalia! Who else could it be if not him and his dragon?”

I sat up straighter in my chair. “It wasn't me,” I said. And not Pip, either.

“Prove it!” Trammel shouted, jumping to his feet.

“He's well known to be a liar and a thief,” Nimble said. “We should have hanged him when we had the chance!”