want us to do?”
What—Hey, they’re listening to me! They really are! I’ve won!
Sure, but what was he going to do about it? “I think we’re going to have to return to Count Volmar’s casde,” the bardling said slowly. “We have to retrieve that manuscript. If Carlotta’s people really do have Charina, they might be willing to trade her for it”
“What! No!” the White Elf cried. “That’s insane!”
“I’m not going to give them the real manuscript! No, no, I’ll work up a forgery.”
“They’ll surely know the difference,” Naitachal argued.
“They won’t. You see, I had already started copying the manuscript before Charina was kidnapped. I’ll put a few pages of the real copy in with the fake, and only Carlotta will be able to tell the difference. But by the time she learns the truth, Charina will be free! Yes, and while we’re in the castle, we can tell Count Volmar what we’ve learned. Who knows? It just might force him to rethink how he feels about elves!”
“Sooner force a stone to walk,” the Dark Elf murmured. “But it’s worth the attempt.”
“I agree,” Eliathanis said—
Lydia shrugged. “Me, too—Hey, Tich’ki, you in?”
The fairy shrugged. “Why not? Now all we have to do is get out of the city—Easy. There’s only one gang out to get us, and guards watching for us at every gate.” She grinned sharply. “If we can escape all that, why, anything else will be a laugh!”
“Ha,” Lydia said dourly,
Count Volmar sat brooding before the fireplace in his solar, chin resting on fisted hand. How could things have gone so wrong so quickly? As soon as that stupid bardling, that Kevin, was safely gone from the castle, the count had ordered the library emptied down to the bare stone walls, under the guise of giving the place a good cleaning. He had personally examined every volume, no matter how useless or bizarre the contents. By now the newly cleaned books gleamed in the newly cleaned library. But Volmar was willing to swear on every sacred relic that not one of the whole lot was the missing manuscript.
Nobody took it. It didn’t walk out of there by itself. There is no place in that library for the thing to be hiding. Then where is it?
Not that it mattered. None of his plans mattered, not now, not when Carlotta was—
“You idiot! You utter idiot!”
Count Volmar leaped back from his chair with a startled yell, flattening himself against a wall, staring in horror at this sudden apparition. “In—in the Seven Holy Names,” he began, tracing holy signs in the air with a hand that shook, “I bid you begone—”
“Oh, stop that! I’m not a ghost! You can’t exorcise me!”
“Carlotta ... ? Are you ... real?”
“Of course I’m real!” The sorceress threw herself down in a chair in a swirl of green silk, flaming red hair crackling in a cloud about her. “What nonsense are you spouting now?”
“I th-thought you were dead.” Volmar took a deep, steadying breath. “Carlotta, I really did think you were dead.” Returning to his chair, he sat, a little more abruptly than he’d intended. “When your horse returned without you, when the court sages all swore something terrible had happened, something sorcerous—”
“Bah.”
“Well, what did you expect me to think? You’re a sorceress, dammit! Anything powerful enough to overcome you wasn’t going to be content at stopping at a mere kidnapping. I was sure you’d been killed by a demon!” Struggling for control, the count continued, “If you had only deigned to share your plans with me—”
“You never would have been able to play your role so convincingly.” Carlotta’s eyes glinted with scorn. “The boy never would have believed you. This way there was genuine terror in your voice when you told him of poor little Charina’s disappearance.”
“But you were gone so long!”
“Poor frightened little boy!”
