Father be hanged. I want these. Without bothering to look through them any further, he put them on the top of his pile and caught the stallholder's eye. The poor fellow, sweating furiously, heaved himself up out of his chair, and got a little more lively when Kellen made only a token gesture at bargaining. Profit, evidently, was the sovereign remedy for what ailed him.
He got out a bit of old, scraped paper and even began writing up a bill of sale with the merest stub of a graphite-rod, noting down titles and prices in a surprisingly neat hand.
'Ah, got younger sibs at home, do you?' the man asked when he got to the last three special volumes.
'No—' Kellen said, startled by the non sequitur. 'Why do you ask?'
'Well, children's stories—' The man gestured at Kellen's three prizes. 'I just thought—' Then he shrugged, wrote down three titles and prices, and handed the receipt to Kellen, who looked down at it in confusion.
There were his Student's Histories, Volumes Four, Five, Six, and Seven—but what was this? Tales of the Weald, Fables of Farm and Field, and Hearth-side Stories?
There was nothing like that, nothing like that at all, inside the covers of those three books.
He thought quickly. Perhaps he had better go along with this…
'Cousins,' he said briefly, with a grimace, as if he was plagued with a horde of small relatives who needed to be amused.
'Ah,' the man said, his curiosity turning to satisfaction, and stuffed the purchases in the carry-bag that Kellen handed to him without a second look.
There was something very odd about those books… and Kellen wanted to get home now, before his father returned from the Council House to plague him, and give them a very close examination. An examination that could be made without any danger of interference. Armethalieh held many magical oddities, but where had he ever heard of a book that could disguise itself? How was a very interesting question—but more pressing than that was—
Why?
THE house of Lycaelon Tavadon was not set apart from the street by a wall. It didn't need to be. The two great stone mastiffs on either side of the walkway to the front door were not mere ornaments, but guardians. Anyone not invited, or not belonging to the household, would be… discouraged from entering. And as one long-ago thief had discovered, a knife has very little effect on a stone dog. Lycaelon's guardians were very, very good.
The front garden, a geometric arrangement of walkway, sculptural shrubbery, and guardians, was not particularly large. The back garden was larger, but no more inviting. The former served to isolate the house from the common thoroughfare and as an ornament against the white stone walls of the mansion. The latter—well, Kellen would have thought that a back garden should be a private place to relax; a spot insulated and surrounded by greenery, to enjoy a bit of sun away from the prying eyes and the noise of the City. Lycaelon's back garden, home to tall, dark, somber cypresses planted along the wall, kept it too shaded for that, and far too cold except in the heat of summer when the sun was overhead. No grass grew there; only careful, somber evergreen plantings in raised beds, separated by gravel, and more statuary, though at least the statuary in the back garden wasn't animated. There was nothing to sit on, in any event, except the edges of the beds or the gravel. There was a single water- spike of a fountain that stabbed up at the sky. Not even birds could find anything to like in this place—though it was possible that, to spare his statues, Lycaelon had worked a little spell to chase the birds away.
Kellen carried his burden up the walkway between the stone mastiffs. As he passed them, there was, as ever, the faintest suggestion of movement; the barest tilt of neck in his direction, the tiniest twitching of stone noses as the household guardians tested him, the hint of the glitter of life in those deeply carved and polished granite eyes.
As always, the back of his neck crawled when he passed them. But he refused to go around by the back entrance just because the damned things intimidated him. He hated the sight of them, though—they were too like the worst aspects of their master, hard and cold, unchangeable and unyielding.
The ebony door, inlaid with silver runes, swung open at his touch, and closed behind him without any effort on his part. More magick, of course; you could hardly do without ostentatious use of magick at every possible opportunity in the home of a High Mage. And when that High Mage was the head of the Council, well, it was actually more surprising that Lycaelon had human servants at all.
He could have done without them, had he chosen to—but it would have meant a great deal of work on his part. Nothing came for free, after all; magick servants in the form of simulacra or homunculi were difficult to create and required an endless supply of magick to keep them working. The alternative, literally making dust vanish, food appear, clothes to clean themselves, was even more time and effort-consuming. Lycaelon would dispense with servers if he had an important gathering of his fellow Mages here, animating a single simulacra that he kept on view, serving double-duty the rest of the time as a chaste statue of a shepherd-boy, but with no one here to impress but his son, human servants were cheaper, easily replaced if they gave offense, and took very little thought on his part—only orders.
On their part—well, the servants knew who they had to please. Lycaelon was generous with his money, but not with forgiveness if anything went wrong. Kellen, however, mattered not at all—except as Lycaelon ordered.
