Stolen Magic (9 page)

M
asteress Meenore had interviewed the bees who guarded the Replica when High Brunka Marya discovered the theft. Both had been at the Oase for more than fifteen years, and they'd sworn that their post had never been abandoned. If true—and IT had found no reason to doubt them—then the most likely time for the theft was near the end of Ursa-bee and Johan-bee's turn guarding, when he'd been in the privy and she'd gone to investigate the weeping.

IT had also already interrogated Johan-bee and Ludda-bee. The conversation with the cook left IT wishing to scrub ITs earholes. Johan-bee's brief answers had revealed little. He'd talked at length only about his digestive difficulties.

IT chose Dror-bee to interview next.

“Please find the Replica, Masteress.” Dror-bee looked hopeful and eager to help.

“I intend to. You are from Zertrum, are you not?”

“How did you guess?”

ITs smoke spiraled. “I never guess. You are not permitted to guard the Replica, correct?”

Dror-bee shook his head. “Yes. I've only been a bee for three months.”

“Just so. Who do you think may have stolen it?”

The bee shrugged, raising his shoulders to his ears.

“Speculate.”

He clapped his hands, then wrung them. “Mistress Sirka.”

“Ah. Is she avaricious?”

Silence. He shifted from foot to foot.

Masteress Meenore wished to hold him in place. The man was never still. But why wouldn't he answer? Ah. “
Avaricious
means greedy.”

“She doesn't mind being poor.”

“Why then?”

“She's reckless.”

“Mmm. How would she have done it?”

Dror-bee put his index finger on his chin, the image of someone thinking. “I don't know where it was kept, so it's hard to guess. She's a night owl. She would do it when others are sleeping.”

“Mmm.” How did this youth know the barber's ways—her recklessness, her tardiness to bed? “You became a bee rather than a soldier. How did that choice come about?”

“My father said I couldn't stay on our farm, and I could be only one or the other. I'm happy as a bee.”

Masteress Meenore's internal flame flared. Here was a reason for anger against someone on Zertrum. “A farmer always needs more help. Why then did your father have no use for you?”

Dror-bee nodded twice. “I had too many ideas, which often failed. Father said I made him tired. Mother said, ‘The sheep with too much wool gets caught in the brambles.'”

Masteress Meenore thought that Lahnt had as many proverbs as sheep. “Are you enraged at your parents for sending you away?”

“No!”

“Were you angry at the time?”

His shoulders slumped. “I was sad. But Marya doesn't mind my ideas, and a month ago when I found two lost goslings for a farmer, he thanked me. He said”—Dror-bee's chest expanded—“that Lahnt was lucky to have bees like me.”

“You called Mistress Sirka reckless. Why?”

Dror-bee flung out his arms. “You'd think so, too, if you watched her cut hair. It's a wonder she hasn't chopped
off an ear, and yet the result is always pleasing.”

“Is it reckless of her to court a bee?”

Softly, so IT had to strain to hear, he said, “It is hopeless.”

“Please tell the alleged thief to come to me. I will speak with her next.”

But a reckless thief would snatch and run. If Mistress Sirka were the thief, she would have to be cunning, too. Perhaps she was.

F
ear and hatred had almost killed Count Jonty Um in Two Castles town. Lahnt, he thought, may finish me off. His teeth chattered, and he'd lost feeling in his feet. At a safe distance, the hunters had cleared snow and built a fire, fetching branches from the woods below, but when it was roaring, they held burning brands to keep him from approaching, until he half wished they'd thrust one at him. Fee fi! Roasting might be preferable to freezing.

He could shape-shift into a bear and have fur to warm him; however, he feared what the men would do to it or it would do to them.

Brunka Arnulf arrived at last on a mule. He jumped off, crying, “You'll kill our rescuer! Let him warm himself!”

The men backed away, and His Lordship, who was
usually graceful, lumbered to the fire. When he stopped, Brunka Arnulf flashed rainbows at his half-frozen feet.

“My rainbows have no other medicinal use, but they're good for this.”

His Lordship's feet tingled agonizingly, but agony was better than no feeling at all. And being touched by rainbows made the pain worth having.

“How bad is your wound, Master Count?”

His Lordship boomed, “Not so bad for me. Dreadful for a bird. I can't fly.”

Brunka Arnulf stepped back from the sound. “Otto, you chose the wrong swift to shoot. We're lucky your aim was off.”

“He really is a count?” Goodman Otto said. “A
count
?”

“I believe him when he says he is.”

“Oh.” Goodman Otto touched his cap. “I'm s-sorry. Er . . . p-pleased to make your acquaintance. Brunka Arnulf, is it true? The Replica was stolen?”

“Alas, yes. I hear the mountain rumbling. Count Jonty Um was flying back to the Oase with information.”

“I can walk, though I'll be too late.”

“Then stay,” Brunka Arnulf said. “Folks here need you.”

His Lordship felt heat behind his eyes. Fo fum! To be needed! Meenore, he thought, if I could reach you in time, I'd leave. Forgive me for allowing myself to be wounded. Forgive me, Elodie, Nesspa. “I'll stay.”

E
lodie awoke with no sense of how long she'd been sleeping. The glowworms shone as brightly as ever. She sat up.

Her masteress had said IT would want her in an hour or two. Had that time come? Or passed, and the Replica had been found and she had slept through it? She hoped not, then felt ashamed. Of course she wanted it to be recovered, but she preferred to be there when IT proved ITs brilliance with her
penetrating mind
helping IT reach ITs conclusions.

Most of all, she hoped His Lordship had come back.

She left the Donkey Room. Before going to the great hall, she could still investigate the other guests' rooms.

Painted on the door next to the Donkey Room was a parrot with red-and-blue plumage. She eased the door
open while trying to think of an excuse in case its tenant happened to be inside.

There was no one, and no need to tarry. Albin slept here. She recognized the room as his because her favorite thing lay atop the bed: his thick book of mansioners' plays.

The cover was raised a little, and the pages didn't lie flat. He was always careless with his things. She went to the book, curious to see which play he'd marked. But when she opened it, she didn't even notice. The marker was a silver coin.

Lambs and calves! How did Albin come to have a silver, which would pay passage for all of them to and from the mainland many times over?

Did she have to mistrust him, too?

Since the room had been searched, she didn't have to replace the book exactly where it had been. Now she did comb the chamber but found nothing else of interest. Albin's satchel held only a spare undershirt. His mountain staff leaned against the chest, which proved to be empty.

Back in the corridor, the Stoat Room came next, a bigger chamber with a double bed and a single: Master Uwald and Master Robbie's quarters. Either the bees who'd searched had turned everything topsy-turvy or Master Uwald, the just-so man, was slovenly. Rich apparel was heaped on the unmade big bed, the pile capped by a
single shoe, while its mate rested on the floor. Atop the chest, a backgammon game lay open. Within the chest: nothing.

By contrast, Master Robbie's bed was neatly made. At the foot, carefully folded and stacked, were three spare undershirts and two spare tunics, everything new, the undershirts silk, the tunics soft linen. The tip of something leather protruded from under the pillow. Elodie went to it and discovered a long knife in a leather sheath.

She, like everyone else, carried a little knife in her purse, for ordinary tasks that might arise, like cutting thread or opening nuts. But why a long knife? For protection? For murder? An inheritance from his grandmother?

Might it have something to do with the Replica?

As she left the room, she wondered what the bees had made of the knife. The Elk Room was Master Tuomo's. To Elodie's surprise, a lute lay across the bed. She wouldn't have guessed angry Master Tuomo to be a musician. In the distance, a clappered bell rang. She stepped out into the empty corridor and heard voices.

“Johan, wait! Don't you march off! You'd think Marya would trust me to fetch the child alone. I'd trust . . .”

No time to return to her room, but at least they hadn't caught her in anyone else's. “Has the Replica been found?” she called.

Johan-bee came into sight first, then Ludda-bee.

“No, not—”

“That dragon hasn't discovered anything. Girl, I pity you for having to travel with the meddling, sneering monster.”

“IT wasn't meddlesome with me,” Elodie said mildly.

The three started back toward the great hall.

“Aren't you the lucky one. But what does a child have for anyone to meddle over?”

In the great hall her masteress was interrogating Master Uwald and Master Robbie—or perhaps not. The two humans were sitting on the floor. IT had lowered ITs head and was leaning on ITs elbows. A thin stream of pink smoke rose—an irritated dragon.

“Mistress Elodie, approach, if you will.”

When she drew close, she saw that IT and Master Uwald were playing Thirty-One. A smiling Master Robbie dealt the cards. Happy to be in Master Uwald's company or in ITs?

Master Robbie placed two cards faceup and one facedown in front of IT and set the same before Master Uwald.

IT brushed the cards away. “Enough. I cannot part with more books.”

“Masteress,” Master Uwald said, “I was unlucky once in a great affair of the heart. Since then, the cards smile on me. The dice smile on me. I believe the Replica will be found. If not”—he winked—“I can sell your books.” His
face became serious. “I hope it's found, for Tuomo's sake and the sake of his sons and of our poor workers.”

Serious, Elodie thought, but not anxious.

IT straightened. “Mistress Elodie, come with me. I require your assistance with the dog. Master Robbie, you may be helpful as well. May he accompany us, Master Uwald?”

“Robbie, do you want to—”

“Yes!”

“Go then. Wrap your cloak tight around you.”

A late-afternoon sun hung low in the cloudless sky. The air sparkled with cold. Followed by Masteress Meenore, Master Robbie and Elodie walked down the dragon-wide pathway IT had forged earlier. But the stairway, which IT must have hopped over, was still heaped with snow.

“Move aside.” IT thrust out ITs snout and flamed. The snow vanished; the steps steamed; Master Robbie held the mourning beads and grinned.

Another of the surprising comforts his grandmother had predicted, Elodie thought, and was glad.

IT spread ITs wings and skimmed over the steps, landing lightly below.

Elodie ran down. “Masteress, let Master Robbie stand under your wings. Please!”

“We may not dally, Lodie.”

IT set off at ITs slow pace, wings out. Elodie knew ITs
wings were ITs only vanity—and all IT had to be vain about. She waved for Master Robbie to hurry.

He caught up and ran under, craning his neck to see. “Whales and porpoises!”

ITs wings were crisscrossed with sinews, like the stitch lines in a quilt, between which stretched skin that was utterly different from the wrinkled brown of ITs belly. This skin was thin as a butterfly's wing and tinted the tones inside a seashell. The blue sky blended through, turning pink skin to violet, yellow to green, and pale blue to deep. From above, when Elodie was on ITs back, the hues changed constantly, depending on what they flew over.

“I wish Grandmother could see.”

They continued toward the stable. Elodie hoped for a sign that His Lordship had returned, but she saw nothing and heard only Nesspa barking. As soon as they entered, he greeted her joyously and Master Robbie almost as happily. He gave IT a wide berth. The other beasts moved uneasily in their stalls.

IT settled on ITs belly in the space near the door. “Lodie . . .”

Elodie noticed IT wasn't pretending to hardly know her. She sat on the stool she'd occupied earlier. “Yes, Masteress. Masteress, shouldn't His Lordship be back by now?” Nesspa curled up on the floor at her feet.

“When he arrives, he will be here.”

Master Robbie took the other stool.

“Masteress! Tell Master Robbie I'm your assistant.”

“Indeed. I pay her a salary, which I will curtail if she does not begin to earn it by deducing and inducing and using her common sense. I expect you to do the same, Master Robbie, although I will not remunerate you.”
Enh enh enh.

Elodie deduced that IT didn't suspect Master Robbie of the theft.

He tilted his head, looking puzzled. “What are deducing and inducing, Masteress?”

“Lodie?”

These were the foundations of detecting. “To deduce is to reason from something you already know or from a principle.”

IT nodded ITs huge head.

“To induce is to pull the truth from facts, from what you saw or heard or smelled.”

“
Pull
is inelegant, Lodie. Now, describe where the Replica was concealed. I have had an account from Ursa-bee and I must compare.”

She did, hoping she was including more details than the bee had.

“Ah. Ursa-bee neglected to mention a storage room.
Repeat, Lodie: the door to it from the corridor was kept locked?”

“Yes. High Brunka Marya said she has the only key.”

“The lock is locked on both sides of the door?”

“No, Masteress. Only on the corridor side.”

“Careless! Of a piece with everything else. So the storage room door in her chamber entirely lacks a lock?”

Elodie nodded.

“Master Robbie, earlier you alluded to a handkerchief that weeps. Pray tell, what is this?”

He wet his lips. “Masteress . . .” He repeated, clearly enjoying the word, “Masteress, it's one of four enchanted things, but the handkerchief is the only one that's missing.” He described the others, ending with “Mistress Elodie can make a person laugh as well as the flower can.”

“It is a shame Lodie could not hear the handkerchief and model it. You were told this weeping can insinuate itself inside one's mind?”

Master Robbie nodded. “Yes, Masteress.”

Elodie wondered if she could mansion the handkerchief even without having heard it. She closed her eyes, summoning sadness. The flower had started laughing slowly, and the nightingale had chirped before it sang. She sighed deeply, looking at the stable floor, and thought of the people who might die on Zertrum. Her eyes filled. She
looked at her masteress and brought His Lordship to mind. A sob bubbled up. She looked at Master Robbie. He'd lost one home and might soon lose another. A tear trickled down her cheek.

The sadness took her. She wiped her streaming eyes and nose with her sleeve and sobbed and wept.