The Queen's Librarian (14 page)

Lucas gulped. “Alex,” he said weakly, “tell my mother and my sisters I love them, and… just don’t let him turn me into anything that eats bugs, all right? Or anything particularly slimy. Or that lives in swamps. Or… well, you know, anything that you wouldn’t cuddle with.”

Alex muttered something surly about waistcoats, but Lucas was too busy trying to sink into the floor to suss it.

Dorset, in all his regal guardsman finery, parted the small crowd before him like a sword through butter, pausing only briefly to lift a curious eyebrow at Mister Hensley, who was stooping rather low to the floor in something that looked like it was trying to be a formal bow. Dorset sailed past him with a shake of his head then stopped across the desk to spear Lucas with an assessing stare. Lucas had no idea what Dorset was seeing—anxiety, most definitely; likely a bit of cowering, though Lucas was trying not to—but whatever it was, it made Dorset look Lieutenant Emerson up and down with a purse of his lips and then nod.

“I shall take it from here,” he told the lieutenant in his crisp, cultured voice, then he crooked an eyebrow at Lucas. “Come with me, please.”

“Y
OU
believe
me?” Lucas warbled, too afraid to let the relief swamp him just yet, because he’d been more and more convinced, all through the barbed questioning and the truthful but—Lucas had to admit—somewhat ludicrous answers, that he would eventually be taken away in chains to the bailey for kidnapping the Prince. Or at least misplacing him. Lucas’s knees buckled and he sank down to the unmade bed where Alex had last night turned the world into something wonderful, a world that was since seeming farther and farther away every second Lucas spent in this bizarre alternate universe that looked an awful lot like his but had abruptly turned into something much more awful and bewildering. “But…
why
?”

“Because you’re telling the truth, love,” Alex pointed out and sat down next to Lucas with a very discreet hand set to the small of Lucas’s back.

“Well, yes, but….” Lucas threw his hands out. “
I
wouldn’t believe me!”

Alex rubbed at his brow. “You really need to stop saying things like that out loud.”

“What’s confounding me,” Dorset said to Cráwa, “is that he seems to come and go without a portal.”

He turned back to Lucas with a frown. Lucas frowned right back, because portal? Really?

“You saw no bright light when this Mister Scontun appeared or disappeared?” Dorset pressed. “He didn’t sing or anything?”

Lucas stared. And then he turned to Alex, who was no help at all, because his eyebrows were all over his forehead and his eyes were wide then narrowed, wide then narrowed, and he looked like he couldn’t decide between laughing outright or resorting to drink.

Neither could Lucas. “No, the man did not sing,” he told Dorset. “What would he have sung? ‘I’m Crazy and Think I’m Daimin’ sung to the tune of ‘Give Me My Prince and I’ll Give You Yours’? Anyway, what possible difference could it make if he had? And what’s this about portals?”

The portals had been useless since some idiot ancestor had accidentally invited a Daimin through the Stone Circle almost two centuries ago, caused a great ruckus with rain, and one of Cráwa’s predecessors had… well, Lucas had no idea what had been done. Something magical, no doubt, but the end result was that all the portals had been shut permanently. Couldn’t have Daimin just running about the place, now could they.

Cráwa
harrumphed
something Lucas was just as glad he didn’t catch then looked at Dorset. “There have been those with such power before.”

“Not for thousands of years!” Dorset retorted.

“Nonetheless.” Cráwa opened a hand. “He is looking for the key. He shall not have it.” He turned to level a piercing glower at Lucas. “Tell us what you know of the book.”

Lucas blinked then turned around to look over his shoulder, just to make sure Cráwa was actually addressing him and not someone lurking behind him. He turned back to Cráwa and blinked some more. “Book.”

“The book of spells and incantations written by your ancestor, Booths Brinley, and passed down through his lines to the youngest child of each generation.”

“Er….” Was it too much to hope that a decoder key came with that? Lucas fervently wished someone would say something that made even a little bit of sense. He could almost feel his brain turning to porridge, and his head was starting to hurt again. “Booths Whowhatnow?”

Cráwa rolled his eyes then dismissed Lucas altogether. Lucas really didn’t mind.

“He doesn’t know,” Cráwa told Dorset.

Dorset had gone very still and was leveling a narrow glare at Cráwa. “
I
didn’t know, either,” he said slowly. “And neither, I’d venture, did the Queen.”

Cráwa ignored the obvious implications and glared back. “That would be between the Queen and her Magician.”

They stared at each other, for quite some time, the tension mounting thick and hot, until Dorset shoved out, “If that’s the way it’s going to be,” from between his teeth. He took a long breath and set a calmer look on Lucas. “We shall have to search for it ourselves. We can begin at Rolling Green.”

“Search?” Alex put in, suspicious.

“At Rolling Green?” Lucas added, a little faintly. He tried to imagine Cráwa searching about his little carriage house and simply couldn’t do it. He tried to imagine Cráwa
in
his little carriage house and simply couldn’t do it.

“We must locate the key before he does,” Dorset told them, not unkindly.

“A waste of time,” Cráwa snapped. “Time that would be better spent—”

“He wants the book in exchange for Prince Laurie,” Dorset said, very nearly growling and eyeing Cráwa with a hostile slant to his gaze. “If we can’t let him have the book—”

“Wait, you’re taking that crazy man seriously?” Lucas stood a little too quickly and had to latch onto Alex’s shoulder so he wouldn’t stagger. Maybe he should have eaten that toast. “We can’t go back to Rolling Green—the man has Laurie somewhere, and he took him from
here
. We have to start looking—”

“Do you think, young Mister Tripp,” Cráwa cut in mildly, “that you know better than we when it comes to the safety of the Queen’s son?”

Lucas should probably not say “yes.”

“But you’re talking like you think the man really is Daimin. And that he came through a portal somewhere.”

Dorset shrugged uncomfortably but opened a hand toward Cráwa. “There have been stranger things.”

“The man was a nutter! Breaking into houses, claiming to learn the language in a day, stealing books and then stealing princes—he didn’t seem the sort to hurt Laurie on purpose, but he also didn’t seem the sort to kidnap him, and who knows what could happen by accident when a crazy person’s in charge? Can’t we find Laurie and
then
go hunting for this book?”

“Do as your betters tell you and Prince Laurie will be fine,” Cráwa said, though the level of threat with which he managed to infuse it was really rather impressive. In a terrifying sort of way.

And though the “betters” crack set his teeth on edge, Lucas obligingly shrank beneath the glare, but his mouth was doing that not-checking-with-his-brain-before-engaging thing again: “But how can you know that? How do you know you’re not putting Laurie in more danger by not—?”

“Do you think,
young
Mister Tripp, that you know more about Daimin than I?”

“I know as much as anyone else, and I’m quite certain I know Laurie better than you do. He could drive the Wardens themselves to violence just to get him to
shut up
, and the man we’re talking about is already squirrelly in the head.”

“Perhaps,” Dorset put in, sliding a narrowed glance between Lucas and Cráwa. “And perhaps there are things the Queen’s Magician has neglected to communicate to the Queen’s Guard.” He turned a slightly less tight-lipped look on Lucas. “But as it now stands, it appears the safer and more practical thing to do would be to lay our hands on the ransom so that we may at least have something with which to bargain.”

Lucas couldn’t decide if he wanted to cry or punch someone. “Daimin or not, it’s neither safe nor practical to leave Laurie to this man’s whims while you go off on a treasure hunt to look for a book that some relative I’ve never even heard of supposedly handed down through—”

“
We
, I’m afraid,” Dorset said with a shrug that might have been the tiniest bit apologetic. “You and your Mister Booker will be accompanying us back to Rolling Green.” He held out a hand when Lucas’s mouth dropped open and Alex huffed out an indignant “You’ve no right!” Dorset sighed. “Whether you know about this book or not, Lucas, I’ve no doubt your guidance in the search for it will prove vital. I’ve also no doubt that, should we leave here without you in tow, you would likely be off on your own search for your cousin, and I have no wish to lose another of the Queen’s relatives.”

“But you’re proceeding as though you think this man really is Daimin!” Lucas cried, frustrated beyond belief.

“And how do you know he is not?” Cráwa asked mildly.

Lucas’s mouth flapped, but Alex didn’t seem to have that problem. “And why are you so sure he is?” he asked suspiciously.

Cráwa’s jaw set tight and his eyes narrowed. “Enough!” he snapped. “I will not have my authority questioned in such disrespectful tones!”

“Then perhaps,” Alex retorted in a tone even more impressively disrespectful, “you would do well to tell us why we’re being compelled to participate in, as Lucas called it, a treasure hunt and taking the word of a man who is obviously a criminal—and more obviously quite completely batty—over Lucas’s comparatively sane suggestion that we actually
look for Laurie
?”

Lucas nodded in firm agreement until the whole of that caught up with him. “Wait, ‘comparatively’?”

Cráwa glared at Alex so hard Lucas couldn’t decide if he should angle himself between the two or nonchalantly scoot out of blasting range. And he wasn’t imagining it—thunder rolled overhead and the skies darkened out the window, all at once and so quickly that Lucas had to blink for a moment to adjust to the abrupt lack of light. Lucas shot up from his seat on the bed and pointed at the ceiling.

“Did you do that?” he demanded of Cráwa.

Cráwa rolled his eyes, which Lucas took as a “no.”

“There, you see?” This time Lucas ignored Alex’s hand on his shoulder. “The man promised no rain, too, and now look. I’ve read the books, I know about Daimin, and I know they can control the weather when they want to. He said no rain and that’s clearly rain, so he can’t be Daimin, and even if he is, he just broke his promise. We have to find Laurie.”

Cráwa merely blinked slowly at Lucas with a flat look of disregard then turned to Dorset. As if Lucas was
boring
him.

“I shall see to the horses,” Cráwa told Dorset then turned for the door. “Wasted trip and wasted time though it shall be”—he glared again at Dorset on his way past—“we leave in seventeen minutes.” And then he was gone.

Lucas was left blinking at Dorset, who looked back somewhat uncomfortably then shrugged.

Alex was shaking his head until he caught Lucas’s gaze then he rolled his eyes with an annoyed wave at the door. “Seventeen minutes,” he muttered with a press of lips. “
Seventeen
. Who
says
that?”

T
HE
ride back was horrible. Not only was the downpour cold and drastically uncomfortable, but on top of everything else, Lucas couldn’t stop himself from obsessing over the fact that it meant the harvest was now almost certain to rot in the fields, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. They had enough stores in the barns and silos for perhaps half the winter, but once those ran out—and providing they weren’t even now succumbing to mold and mildew—they were going to have to rely on trade and purchases from more fortunate quarters, and Lucas already knew he wasn’t going to be able to come up with the necessary capital.

Alex’s father had more than once offered to invest, but Lucas knew it wasn’t actually an investment when there was no real hope of a return. He could, perhaps, borrow from his-cousin-the-Queen, but again, he had no idea how he’d ever pay it back when he could barely afford the taxes he paid into the royal coffers in the first place. And creditors were out of the question. The only thing Lucas had left to put up as collateral was Rolling Green itself; one late payment to those sharks and Lucas and his mother and sisters would be put out of their home and made instant paupers. And he didn’t even want to think about what would happen to all of his tenants. Creditors didn’t care about unexpected babies or blighted crops.

Lucas shivered in the saddle and tried not to cry as he watched Dorset and Cráwa sustain an argument Lucas couldn’t hear over the pounding of the rain. He wished he
could
hear it. Not only was Lucas quite sure he didn’t have the full story, but it was too bloody quiet, and he didn’t even understand why he thought so until it occurred to him that he actually missed Laurie’s chatter.

Even Bramble was subdued, walking along behind Saffron with his head down and looking somehow forlorn and reproachful at once, though Lucas couldn’t fathom what the reproach might be for. Besides being a failure at just about everything. But Bramble should be used to that.

“It’ll all be all right,” Alex said softly, only loud enough to be heard over the rain as his horse kept a pace beside Lucas’s. He reached out and set a hand to Lucas’s soggy shoulder. “Lucas, it’ll be all right.”

Lucas didn’t have the heart to contradict him.

“W
ELL
,”
said Alex, staring with wide eyes two feet away from Lucas, Alex on the Orchard Downs side of the boundary and Lucas on the Hunt’s Run side. Or, to be more precise: Alex on the side that had sunshine and singing birds and no rain, and Lucas on the side that had thunder and lightning and near flood conditions.

Lucas could only blink and close his mouth so the rain wouldn’t actually drown him. He was silent for approximately the amount of time it would take to have a heart attack—which he didn’t actually do, but he thought about it—then prompted, “Well what?” somewhat thinly.