“Tell them what you don’t want them to do, they do it anyway!”
“Go here, you say, and they go there!”
“No, no!” Questor was practically beside himself. “Go here, and they tell you they won’t, but then they do anyway!”
The air seemed to go out of them all at once, that final revelatory sentence left hanging in the wind like the last leaf of autumn. They stared at each other, a similar realization dawning on both at the same moment.
“No,” Abernathy said softly. “She wouldn’t.”
“Why not?” Questor Thews replied just as softly.
“Just to spite us?”
“No, not to spite us. To deceive us. To go to the last place we would think to look for her.”
“But her tracks …”
“Covered up by Edgewood Dirk for reasons best known to him.”
“And maybe to her. An alliance between them, you think?”
“I don’t know. But isn’t Libiris the very last place we would think to look for her?”
Abernathy had to admit that it was.
Much farther east, on the far end of the Greensward, another was contemplating Mistaya’s disappearance, though with much less insight. Berwyn Laphroig, Lord of Rhyndweir, was growing increasingly vexed at the inability of his retainers to track down the missing Princess, a chore he felt they should have been able to accomplish within the first thirty-six hours of learning that she was missing. She was a young girl in a country where young girls did not go unescorted in safety. Thus she had chosen to accept the company of a pair of G’home Gnomes—this much he had managed to learn through his spies. This, and not much more. Since the discovery that she had turned up at her grandfather’s in the company of the Gnomes, not another word had been heard of her.
In something approaching a rage, he had dispatched Cordstick to personally undertake the search, no longer content to rely on those underlings who barely knew left from right. Not that Cordstick knew much more, but he was ambitious, and ambition always served those who knew how to harness it. Cordstick would like very much to advance his position in the court, abandoning the title of “Scribe” in favor of something showier, something like “Minister of State.” There was no such position at this juncture; Laphroig had never seen the need for it. But the title could be bestowed quickly enough should the right candidate appear. Cordstick fancied himself that candidate, and Laphroig, eager to advance his own stock in Landover by way of marrying Mistaya Holiday, was willing to give the man his chance.
If Cordstick failed him, of course, the position would remain open. Along with that of “Scribe.”
A page appeared at the open door of the study where Laphroig sat contemplating his fate and crawled across the floor on hands and knees, nose scraping the ground. “My Lord,” the man begged.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Scrivener Cordstick has returned, my Lord. He begs permission to give you his report.”
Laphroig leaped to his feet. “Bring him to me at once.”
He walked to one of the tower windows and looked out over the countryside, enjoying the sound of the page scraping his way back across the stones. He admired the sweep of his lands in the wash of midday sunlight, though he had to admit that his castle was rather stark by comparison. He must find a way to brighten it up a bit. A few more banners or some heads on pikes, perhaps.
He heard movement behind him.
“Well?” he demanded, wheeling about. “What have you—” He broke off midsentence, his eyes widening in shock. “Dragon’s breath and troll’s teeth, what’s happened to you?”
Cordstick stood to one side, leaning rather uncertainly against a stone pillar. He was standing because it was apparently too painful for him to sit, although it might have been a toss-up had there been a way to measure such things. He was splinted and bandaged from head to foot. The parts of his skin that were not under wrap were various shades of purple and blue with slashes of vivid red. His right eye was swollen shut and enlarged to the size of an egg. His hair was sticking straight up and here and there were quills sticking out of his body.
