little village at the south edge of the Greensward called Averly Mills. When I introduce you, bow to him. Always address him as ‘Your Eminence’ or just ‘Eminence.’ Can you do that?”
She could if she had to, though she didn’t much like the idea. But she held her tongue. “Does he have a name other than ‘Eminence’?” she asked instead.
Thom gave her that familiar shrug. “He says his name is Craswell Crabbit, but I think he made it up. It doesn’t matter because he won’t allow us to use that name anyway. Only ‘Your Eminence’ will do.”
“Is he a noble of the Kingdom? Is that why he insists on being addressed as ‘Your Eminence’?”
Thom beckoned with a sweeping gesture of his arm, directing her to follow. “Come with me. You can decide for yourself.”
He walked her down the right side of the Stacks and along the far wall until he came to an ornately carved oak door, scrolled with all sorts of symbols and runes and edged in gilt. At the very center and right at eye level was a sign that read:
The letters, also outlined in gilt, fairly jumped off the polished wood of the door. Directly below was a huge metal knocker resting on a metal plate. It looked to Mistaya as if it would take a fair-sized battering ram to knock the door down if it was secured.
Without hesitating Thom lifted the knocker and let it fall once. A silence followed, and then a rumbling bass voice replied from within, “You may enter, Thom.”
How the inhabitant knew who it was who’d come calling was a mystery to Mistaya, but Thom seemed undisturbed and pressed down on the door handle to release the latch.
The room they entered was large but not cavernous, and it in no way resembled the Stacks. Here the wood was polished to a high gloss, the walls decorated with paintings and tapestries, and the floor laid with rich carpet. The ceiling was much lower, but not so low as to make it feel as if it were pressing down, and there were slender stained-glass windows at the rear through which sunshine brightly shone in long, colorful streamers. A massive desk dominated the rear center of the room, its surface piled high with documents and artifacts of some sort. His Eminence sat comfortably behind it in a high-backed stuffed armchair, beaming out at them with a huge smile.
“Thom!” he exclaimed, as if surprised that it was the boy who had entered. Then he stood up and held out his arms in greeting. “Good morning to you!”
Mistaya didn’t know what she was expecting, but it wasn’t exactly this unbridled display of camaraderie. Nor was Craswell Crabbit quite what she had envisioned. Sitting behind his desk, he looked fairly normal. But when he stood up he was well over seven feet tall, skeletal beyond simply lean or gaunt, a collection of bones held together by skin and ligaments. As if to emphasize how oddly thin he was, his head was at least two sizes too big for his shoulders, an oblong face suggesting that the obvious compression it had undergone hadn’t been quite enough to make up for the job done on the body. Because his legs and arms were rather crooked, even given the oddity of the rest of his body, the whole of his appearance was something rather like that of a praying mantis.
“Good morning, Your Eminence,” Thom replied promptly. Rather quickly, Mistaya thought, he led her forward to stand before the desk. “This is my sister, Ellice.”
“Ah, what a lovely child you are, Ellice!” the spider enthused, reaching out with one bony hand to take her own.
“Your Eminence,” she responded quickly, letting the hand he held hang limp as she gave him something between a bow and a curtsy.
“Come for a visit?” he pressed. “All the way from … ?”
“Averly Mills, Your Eminence,” she answered smoothly.
“Yes, that is the name. I’d forgotten.” He smiled. “Missing your brother, are you?”
She noticed now that his head was shaved of hair, but fine black stubble grew over his bald pate and along the smooth line of his angular jaw in a dark shadow that refused to be banished. His sharp eyes locked on her own, and she could feel them probing for information that she might not wish to give.
“Yes, Your Eminence,” she answered. “I thought perhaps I might be allowed to remain with him for a time. I am willing to work for my keep.”
“Oh, tut, tut, and nonsense!” the other exclaimed in mock horror. “We don’t treat our guests that way!” He paused, cocking his head at her. “Then again, we are short of helping hands just now, and our
