Stolen Magic(15)

They all plague him, Elodie thought.

The oldest bee—a big man with a big head, a bloodshot nose, and a white beard trimmed straight across the bottom—shuffled to the benches that had been placed by the youngest bee. His jowls jiggled as he sat and placed his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, facing into the great hall, watching everyone intently.

Elodie turned to investigate the shelf nearest her, which was on the south wall. She hoped that luck might trump the arduous work of deducing, inducing, and using her common sense. Let the Replica be here!

But the shelf merely held a forest of vials made of clay and glass, none big enough to contain the Replica or to conceal it from view. The shelf below was filled with chained books, chained so they could be read but not taken away. Elodie pulled one out and proved to herself that the Replica wasn’t behind it. There! She’d searched two shelves—out of hundreds—and behind one book—out of dozens.

“Son, there will be an excellent reason.” The voice was soft-spoken, educated, the t crisply pronounced, the r’s solid. “High Brunka Marya wouldn’t have roused us for anything insignificant.”

Still holding the book, Elodie twisted to see. Only a few yards to her left, an elderly man and a boy entered the great hall. The man held the boy’s hand and advanced with small steps, as if he were walking in a slow procession.

Son? The man was old enough to be the boy’s grandfather.

Was this “poor” Master Robbie? Elodie opened her book and watched the two while mansioning absorption in the volume. Both wore wooden mourning beads over their cloaks. Did the beads make them both “poor”?

Almost everything about the man was just so, and nothing suggested he’d been surprised from sleep: short gray beard and mustache, neatly clipped; small ears; thin nose onto which round spectacles were clamped. He wore a sober dark-blue cloak of brushed wool edged with a border of rabbit fur, a wealthy costume. Only his hat—wealthy also, orange with a bright-green tassel—veered, in Elodie’s opinion, from just so to too much.

Could he be the thief? He seemed not to need money. If he was the thief, the just-so in him meant he would make a careful, thorough job of it.

How could a thief look so genial? He smiled as if he’d been awakened from happy dreams.

The boy’s cloak, fine brushed wool also, his in moss green, lacked only a fur trim. His shoes, with the old-style round toes that were still customary in Lahnt, were so new they hardly had creases.

Below his neck, he was a just-so boy. But his unguarded face gave too much away, and its forlorn look made Elodie’s breath catch.

An artist could have sketched his portrait almost entirely in straight lines: the head a triangle ending in a pointed chin, a smaller triangle for his nose, a horizontal slash for his unsmiling mouth, two angled strokes for the shadows under his cheeks, roof peaks for his eyebrows, curved lines only for his dark-blue, red-rimmed eyes and for the dot of pink that bloomed at the tip of his nose, probably caused by weeping.

Elodie bent her head over her book, not wanting to seem to pry, but the just-so man noticed her. “Look, Robbie, someone for you to play with. Isn’t that lucky?”

He was Master Robbie!

To her surprise the boy came to her and whispered, “It’s gone. Am I right?”

In a rush she induced and deduced. Master Robbie knew. He’d asked to see the Replica, and the high brunka hadn’t brought it out.

Should she reveal she knew, too? Would her masteress want her to?

Probably not, but—she used her common sense—he knew everyone here, and he’d tell her more if she were honest. “Yes,” she whispered back. “The high brunka told us.”

Master Robbie looked around, probably seeking the rest of Elodie’s us.

She remembered that IT wanted her to appear slow-witted, but that wouldn’t do with someone her age.

“I’m Elodie of Dair, and I’m”—with a touch of grandeur—“delighted to make your acquaintance.” She gave him the curtsy she had once bestowed upon Greedy Grenny, King of Lahnt.

He bowed a slight bow, the bow Count Jonty Um would make to a peasant. “I’m Robbie.”

Maybe he was too sad to be polite.

“I was of Zee.” Zee was the fishing village where the cog had docked. “Now I’m of Zertrum.”

“Oh!” He’d lose his new home if the Replica wasn’t found.

He tilted his chin toward the elderly man. “With him.” He touched his mourning beads.

She said what grown-ups say: “I’m sorry for your loss.”

His voice sharpened. “Whales and porpoises! I didn’t lose anything.” He was silent a moment. “I apologize. My grandmother died. She used to say I have no manners.” Then he added what Elodie had heard people remark about orphans: “She was all I had in the world.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. No parents? He really was poor Master Robbie.

He changed the subject. “The Replica could be in a thousand places. Have you been here before?”

She shook her head.

“There are corridors of rooms full of things like this.” He gestured at the shelves in front of them.

“You think it’s inside the Oase?”

“If it’s outside, it could be anywhere. Something else is missing, too.”