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  The sorcerer-king didn’t wear his locus magicalicus on a chain or a necklace outside his clothes. He had one hand thrust down into a pocket of his long-skirted white coat. Maybe the stone was in there. If I could get past the guards it wouldn’t be hard to pick his pocket to have a look at his locus magicalicus.

  In the doorway, Jaggus glanced toward me and I turned to stone until he looked away again. He hadn’t seen me.

  He finished talking to the other man and I eased back behind a giant clay pot as he passed down the hallway, followed by his three guards. I cat-footed after them, keeping to the shadows. They wound around deeper into the palace until they came to a door painted red with a brass handle and lock.

  Jaggus opened the door with a key he pulled from his pocket. A triple-flick count-two lock, from the sound of it. That was odd.

  To Nevery,

  I am very glad Benet is better. Please tell him that I am sorry.

  You said I should discover everything I can and report it to you, one letter every five days, so that’s what I’ll do. It’s a long, long way to Wellmet. I wonder how the bird flies there and back here so quickly. Maybe it’s got a piece of the magic in it.

  Something is strange about the sorcerer-king. Maybe he sent the Shadows to Wellmet, but I can’t tell for certain if he did or not. The strange thing is that he has his rooms locked up with a key and a lock.

  Nevery, wouldn’t a wizard use a spell to lock up his rooms, especially a workroom? Just like you use a spell to lock your grimoire and the magisters use spells to lock the gates to the islands?

  He doesn’t wear his locus magicalicus on a chain the way Pettivox did. I wonder if he doesn’t carry it on him at all. I’ll try to find out. Even though his rooms are locked with a puzzle lock, I can get in if I know when he’s going to be away.

  That’s all I could discover so far, but I’ll keep looking around as much as I can, and then I’ll write and tell you.

  From,

  Connwaer

  Rowan Forestal

  Dealing with the sorcerer-king is frustrating. He is hospitable and friendly, but he will not give a clear answer to any of my questions. Magister Nimble reports that Lord Jaggus answered every one of his questions about the magic of Desh, which means Nimble is satisfied that our host is not responsible for sending the Shadows to Wellmet.

  I am becoming more certain that Nimble is a fool.

  I can’t be certain of anything until I have proof. The question is, how to get it?

  A packet of letters from Mother arrived today. She asks how our meetings with Lord Jaggus go on, and describes further Shadow attacks in the Sunrise. She also wrote that she and the magisters have issued an order of exile against Conn, which means he cannot return to Wellmet until it is lifted. I’d suspected something had happened to force him to leave, but I didn’t realize it was this bad: Heartsease destroyed, Nevery’s manservant severely injured, the magisters in an uproar. Mother advises me that I shouldn’t have permitted Conn to join the envoyage, and that now that we have reached Desh, I should order him to leave.

  I absolutely refuse to obey her. Heartsease was half destroyed already. Conn was just finishing what Magister Nevery started twenty years ago. Has nobody thought of that? And while the damage done is appalling, it makes perfectly clear what Conn has been saying all along, that he can somehow do magic with pyrotechnics, which means he may be right about the magic itself. I half believe they have exiled him simply because his ideas are dangerous and they are afraid.

  No wonder he has been so quiet. He is quiet anyway, but since he joined the envoyage he’s hardly said a word. I thought he was being sullen, and I should have seen that it was because he is desperately unhappy. I feel like a poor sort of friend for not realizing this before.

  I have tried to find him, but he’s disappeared, though Argent says he comes back in late at night to sleep before slipping away again. Next I will ask Kerrn, because I suspect that as guard captain she has been keeping a close eye on Conn.

  CHAPTER 24

  The next night, after the usual dinner party had ended and the palace had quieted down into the night, I sat on the floor in the hallway outside Jaggus’s rooms in the shadow of a giant clay pot, trying not to fall asleep. He’d gone in hours before. An oil lantern burned low beside his door.

  Down at the other end of the dark hallway, a bit of shadow broke off from the rest of the shadows and hopped over the tile floor, coming toward me.

  I sat up and blinked, and saw that it was a black bird. It had a quill strapped to its leg, and the quill went tick tick against the floor every time the bird took a hop.

  Keeping an eye on Jaggus’s door, I went to meet the bird and carried it over to my hiding place. It let me take the quill off its leg. A letter from Nevery.

  Connwaer,

  I know you well enough, boy, to understand your cryptic references. In your letter you wrote that you will “try to find out” if Jaggus carries his locus magicalicus on him. And “I can get in” to his workroom. You mean you’re going to pick his pocket, boy, and pick the lock of his workroom. This is far too dangerous. If you were caught, Lady Rowan would have no reason to protect you, as she knows by now that you have been exiled, and I could do nothing from here. Also, you know well enough the effect of evil magics on a locus magicalicus. You remember prying into my family collection of locus stones and touching my great-aunt Alwae’s stone. It made you sick, did it not? If Jaggus is responsible for creating the Shadows, his stone will be even more corrupt than Alwae’s.

  Be careful, boy, and don’t be stupid.

  The situation in Wellmet grows worse every day. I rely on your information.

  —Nevery

  It wasn’t very good advice. I couldn’t learn anything just by watching. Still, I watched Jaggus’s workroom door for the rest of the night. Sitting against the wall in the dark quiet, I thought about Nevery’s letter. He’d called me boy. Maybe he wasn’t quite so angry with me anymore. And he sounded worried. He didn’t need to worry; I wouldn’t get caught picking a pocket or a lock. And what did he mean by the situation in Wellmet? The Shadows, clear as clear, but what were they doing?

  Just before dawn, Jaggus came out of his workroom. He stepped out the door and looked both ways down the hall, but he didn’t see me in my hiding place. Then he turned to snick-close the lock and paced softly away. I started to follow him, when I noticed something.

  On the floor by the workroom door. Something glowed a little against the tiles. I went down on my knees and peered at it.

  Just the heel of his footprint, outlined in something purple-black and glowing. After a moment, it disappeared with a sizzle of acrid smoke.

  Darksilver.

  The next night, during the dinner party, I decided to have a look in Jaggus’s rooms while he was away, just to see what he had in there.

  After he’d gone out, I snick-picked the lock and crept in, locking the door behind me. Oil lanterns had been left burning but turned low, so the rooms were full of shadows and bits of light glinting off all the gold draperies and glass tiles. But I wasn’t interested in finery.

  I slunk through the rooms, finding nothing, until I came to a library.

  Here was Jaggus’s treasure. I found a lantern and prowled through the shelves of books and scrolls and stitch-bound treatises. He had books full of the swirly, Desh writing. He had a copy of both of Jaspers’s writings on pyrotechnics, written in the same runes we used in Wellmet.

  I could read fast. It would only take a little while, and he’d be gone until dawn. I grabbed the treatise off the shelf and found a lexicon, and sat down with the lantern at the long table that ran down the middle of the room between the rows of shelves.

  A long time later I looked up because I heard the rustle of cloth and the soft scuff of a slipper on the carpet. Someone had come up behind me and stood looking over my shoulder.

  “Ah, I must have left my door unlocked!” he said.

  Jaggus, I realized. Drats. Why h
adn’t I heard him come into the library? He must have a secret way in. The back of my neck shivered. He knew very well that he hadn’t left the door unlocked.

  “What do you read?” he asked. He spoke with an accent, almost like his tongue was a knife and it sharpened the words so they sounded pointed and prickling.

  I turned the book and held it up to show him the title stamped in gold on the front cover.

  “Ah!” The sorcerer-king moved to the side, where he could see me better, and where I could see him. Even though he had to know that I’d picked the lock to get in, he was smiling. Pretending to be my friend. “You have an interest in pyrotechnics?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He leaned over and tapped the book. His fingernails were painted gold. “This is the second treatise of Jaspers. My own rare copy. Have you read the first treatise?”

  I nodded.

  “And I assume you have read the Prattshaw book.”

  I nodded again.

  “Hmmm! Who are you, precisely?”

  “I’m Connwaer,” I said. No point in lying about it.

  “Ah!” He rested his finger on his lips, then pointed at me. “A true name, one that is meaningful to the magic. It means black bird, I believe.”

  Is meaningful to the magic, he said. Did he know the magic was a living being, just like I did, and that spellwords were its language?

  “Here in Desh, Connwaer also means black shadow,” he said.

  I blinked.

  “Many words, as we use them, have two meanings, so that we mean two different things when we say them.” He smiled, and when he did, I realized that even though his hair was white, he wasn’t much older than I was. “You do remind me of a black shadow,” he said.

  I looked down at myself. I was wearing the black sweater Benet had given me, and my hair had gotten shaggy again and hung down in my eyes. But I had a feeling he meant that I looked dark, like a shadow, and that he’d seen me watching him.

  “I am the lord of this city, Jaggus,” he said, settling into a chair. “Also a true name.”

  I wondered what Jaggus meant; I glanced toward the end of the table, where I’d left the lexicon.

  “Now, my shadow, you have not yet answered my question.”

  I thought back over our conversation. Who are you? he’d asked. Oh. “I’m from Wellmet.”

  “Yes. A servant of the Lady Rowan’s companion, Sir Argent?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I answered, hating the taste of the lie in my mouth.

  “Pyrotechnics seem an odd interest for a servant.”

  I shrugged. Drats. I needed to not talk to him anymore. He was too sharp.

  “And from Wellmet. I know a man from Wellmet who has an interest in pyrotechnics. Perhaps you know him, too? His name is Flinglas.”

  Nevery, he meant.

  “Do you know him?” Jaggus asked.

  I nodded.

  “He is a friend, then?”

  I looked down at the book, at the gold letters stamped on the cover. “No.”

  “Ah. Not a friend. But not an enemy, either, I think. He is, perhaps, your master?”

  I shook my head.

  “I see.” Jaggus got to his feet. He blinked, and in his eyes the black pupils widened like a window opening up on the blackest night sky, no stars. He stared at me for another moment, then, on silent feet, he crossed the carpeted floor and went out the door.

  I see, he’d said. I wondered what he saw with his strange eyes. I had a feeling he already knew who I was and what I was up to.

  I got up and went to the end of the table, to the lexicon. Jaggus. It meant destroy. But its second meaning, in small type, was broken.

  I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

  CHAPTER 25

  After leaving Jaggus’s rooms in the gray light of morning, I crept up the stairs toward Argent’s rooms. Rowan was lying in wait for me.

  She sat hunched on a step, wrapped in a robe over her nightgown, with a lantern next to her.

  “Hello, Ro,” I whispered.

  She looked crossly up at me and rubbed her eyes. “What are you up to, Connwaer?”

  I sat on the step next to her. “I have to find out what Jaggus is doing.”

  “I believe that is my job,” she said.

  “Are you getting anywhere?” I asked.

  She rested her chin on her knees and stared down the dark well of the stairs. “I can’t tell,” she said at last. “Though I agree with you that he’s up to something. I must try talking further with him.”

  But talking was taking too long.

  We sat quietly. I leaned my shoulder against hers. The light from the lantern flickered golden against the whitewashed walls.

  “He’s not going to tell you anything,” I said at last. “Tomorrow night I’ll have a look in his workroom.” He had a secret door in that library somewhere, and I could find it and get in.

  At that, Rowan sat up and glared at me. Her hair hung in tangles around her face. “No!” she said.

  Her voice echoed off the walls. The door to the right of the top of the stairs creaked open, and Argent peered out. He came down a few steps, blinking, in bare feet and a spotted blue nightgown. “What is the matter, Lady Rowan?” he asked.

  She didn’t even glance at him. “What if you’re caught, Conn? Have you thought of that?”

  I shrugged.

  She gritted her teeth and made a noise that sounded like grrrr. “I could order you, as a member of the envoyage, not to do it.”

  “I’m not a member of your envoyage,” I said.

  “Do as you’re told, boy,” Argent said.

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. “I’m not your servant, Argent,” I said.

  Rowan stood up and glared down at me, her hands clenched. In the lantern light, her eyes gleamed silver and furious. “So you’ll just do as you please, Conn, is that what you’re saying?”

  I stood up to face her. “Ro, things in Wellmet are getting worse. We have to do something.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Argent,” she said. “Please allow Conn and me to continue this conversation in private.”

  “Of course, Lady Rowan,” he said. He bowed and went back into his rooms.

  Rowan opened her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right. My mother’s letters have not been specific, but I suspect things in Wellmet have gotten very bad. We have to get on with it.”

  Good. “Then I’ll sneak into Jaggus’s workroom to see what he’s up to.”

  “No, you won’t,” Rowan said. “I need to try one more time to talk to him, to see if I can figure out why he’s sending the Shadows against us. If it is him.”

  “It’s him,” I said. The darksilver footprint proved that.

  “Maybe.” She shook her head slowly. “I need one last chance to try diplomacy.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure, exactly, what diplomacy was.

  “All right?” Rowan said.

  All right, if she really wanted me to wait. I nodded.

  Rowan Forestal

  I have insisted that Lord Jaggus give me a tour of one of the slowsilver mines, and to my surprise he agreed. Oddly, he suggested that I bring Argent and also Argent’s servant. By that he means Conn, which means Conn isn’t as good a spy as he thinks he is.

  I thought carefully about my request. Slowsilver is associated with magic. And Desh is the supplier of much of the Peninsular Duchies’ slowsilver. Yet that supply, according to the pyrotechnist Sparks, has dwindled. I suspect that something is wrong with the slowsilver mines, something that will explain the nature of Wellmet’s danger.

  Dear Nevery,

  You were right about lockpicking Jaggus’s door. He caught me at it. I didn’t realize that you knew him. He talks like he knows you, anyway.

  I haven’t gotten a look at Jaggus’s locus magicalicus yet, and yes, I’ll be careful when I try for his pocket, and when I check his workroom. The only proof I have so far of anything is a
darksilver footprint. He’s up to something, sure as sure, but I don’t know what, and I don’t know what Wellmet has to do with it. I will find out.

  The magic was right to send me here, though. Hello to Benet.

  —Conn

  CHAPTER 26

  I was at the table in the room I shared with Argent, finishing up a letter to Nevery. One of the city’s lizards, the same one, I suspected, peered into the inkpot and then, making footprints along the edge of the paper, came to sit next to my hand.

  Across the room, Argent lay on his bed eating plums and reading his book about swordcraft. He had his boots off, and his feet smelled like moldy cheese.

  “Go fetch me a pot of tea, boy,” Argent said, and took a juicy bite of plum.

  I ignored him. When the ink on my letter was dry, I tipped the lizard onto the table and folded the paper. A bird would be along soon, I expected.

  Knock-knock-knock at the door.

  “Go and see who it is,” Argent said.

  I folded the paper again and rolled it into a tight tube so it would fit into the bird’s quill.

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

  “Go see who’s at the door!” Argent said loudly, and when I didn’t he picked up his boot and threw it at me. I ducked, and it flew past me and out the window.

  Rowan flung the door open. “Neither of you could be bothered, I suppose,” she said. She glared at me. “What are you laughing at, Connwaer?”

  “Stupid fool,” Argent grumbled.

  “You’d better go get it,” I said to him.

  “I’ll send a servant for it,” Argent said.

  Not me, then.