Kingfisher(34)
—
The king’s magus was most likely to be found in the ancient keep that had been part of the first Wyvernbourne king’s castle. It stood on a lovely swath of green overlooking the sea, walled by worn stones salvaged from the original ruins. The tower was massive, and so high it had attracted the attention of a pair of wyverns, among the last before they went extinct. They took up residence on the top of the keep, with an eye to nesting there. The first Arden’s magus was able to charm them away, then decided to live there himself. Magi, gifted as they were, had no need for stairs. But Perdita, who had been in and out of Sylvester Skelton’s library since she was small, was grateful when he thoughtfully installed an elevator.
She was surprised to find a knight sitting on Sylvester’s floor with an open tome on her knees.
Sylvester, who was at his desk, stroking his long mustaches with both hands as he read, glanced at Perdita vaguely, and then, after blinking her into place, with great interest. Knight and magus got to their feet.
“Princess Perdita,” Lord Skelton said, “you might remember Dame Scotia Malory? She has traveled from the mountainous northeastern parts of Wyvernhold, where the last of the wyverns were seen five centuries ago in King Hodder’s time.”
The young knight, a foot taller than either of them, with a knot of long, honey-colored hair, bowed her head to the princess, and said ruefully, “The time also of my appalling ancestor, Tavis Malory, Princess. Lord Skelton kindly let me come to borrow some books about him.”
“Tavis,” Perdita exclaimed with delight. “He wrote The Life and Death of Arden Wyvernbourne while he was in jail for— What was it? Stealing sheep? Hiding in a hayrick during a battle?”
“I believe that time he was accused of assaulting Calluna’s acolytes, Princess. I’m trying to find out if he was malignant or maligned. If I could borrow this, Lord Skelton?”
“Of course, Dame Scotia.”
She wedged the huge book easily under her elbow and bowed her head again.
“Then I’ll leave you—”
“Wait,” Perdita said impulsively. “I don’t suppose you ever trained as an acolyte yourself in Calluna’s sanctum?”
Dame Scotia smiled apologetically. “I never had the chance, living that far north. I came to court so seldom that I only became a knight by accident.”
“That doesn’t sound easy,” Perdita commented.
“Growing up so big and gawky, I felt most comfortable among people whose feet and elbows might be lethal to others. So I lived on the practice field at home, and here, whenever my father brought me to the king’s assemblies. I caught the king’s attention by knocking Bayley Reeve off his horse in the antique-tournament style of fighting.”
Sylvester chuckled. “I remember that. The king knighted you, he said, before you had a chance to think about it.”
“And I’ve never had a second thought.” She paused, her calm, violet eyes on Perdita. “Why did you ask, Princess Perdita? Is there something I can do for the sanctum?”
“Perhaps,” Perdita answered lightly, aware of the magus’s swift attention. “I’ll let you know.”
She came to another abrupt decision as Dame Scotia closed the study door behind her. The slight, bespectacled, spindle-shanked magus disguised startling powers behind his mild manner. Perdita had seen him untangle the technology of her stalled Greenwing by absently patting its hood while he expounded on the migratory habits of the bird singing on the tree branch above them. His predictions were eerily accurate; he could boil water by whispering to it; he could change the shape of his shadow to anything he wanted, which he had done many times to the delight of the royal toddlers. He could find any lost object he was asked about. Even those lost, apparently, in lines of poetry for thousands of years.
“Be subtle,” Mystes Halliwell had warned. But at that moment, under the magus’s clear, interested gaze, she sensed that his dedication to scholarship would outweigh the preferences of Mystes Ruxley, and the king, and even the god Severen himself.
She said baldly, “Mystes Halliwell sent me here to find out what you’re searching for, and if you have any idea where it is. I understand that revealing all this is the point of the Assembly of Knights. But since we are not knights, we are not invited. Mystes Halliwell is convinced that the lost vessel belongs to Calluna, not to Severen. Where should we—acolytes of the goddess—look for it? If, on the off chance, we do?”
“Intriguing, yes,” the magus admitted, “that argument. Lady Seabrook brought it up to me as well. Oh, while I’m thinking about it, would you mind?” He pulled a bag out of a drawer and shook pieces of candy-coated licorice into an envelope. “She is the king’s aunt, his own father’s sister; she could ask for a tower full of sweets and get it. For some reason she prefers mine. If you would be so kind as to pretend you pilfered them?” Wordlessly, Perdita took the packet he made and slid it into a pocket. “Thank you, Princess. Now. As to your questions: What is it, where is it, and to whom does it belong?”
There followed a bewildering weave of scholarly references, lines of poetry, each older than the last, a briar patch of arguments about a badly translated word, a foray into the book Tavis Malory had written five centuries before, then into other older works the writer had used as reference points. By the time Lord Skelton came to a barely comprehensible conclusion, open books were strewn all over the desk and the couch, and decades of disturbed dust motes floated in the shafts of light from the lowering sun.