to owl, watched on in silence. I was part of that crowd, and yet I knew I was there only in dream form, unable to speak or move.
“I need to see them!” Tati was pleading. “You know I have accepted this way of life. I have done my best to become part of your realm. Love brought me to the Other Kingdom, and it will hold me here forever. I mean no disloyalty to you and yours. But my love for Sorrow did not cancel out my love for my family, Your Majesty. It seems cruel that I can never go back. I just want to hug my sisters and talk to them a little. I need to know they’re safe and well and to show my father that I am all right.”
Ileana was wearing her feathered headdress. She towered above my sister, her robe swirling around her with a life of its own. In its folds, clouds of small bright butterflies danced. Her eyes were cool. “Do you not speak with those of our own folk who are permitted to go across?” she asked. “Grigori or the dwarves? They can report to you on your sisters’ progress. I expect they’re all doing very well, Jena in particular, since we took such a hand in her learning. I can’t imagine why you would concern yourself about them.”
“They’re my sisters,” Tati said simply. “I love them. I miss them. I want to see them so much it hurts. Such things are important to human folk, Your Majesty. Isn’t there some way I can earn the right? Or if I can’t go across, couldn’t I win them the privilege of coming back here, just for a little?”
Ileana gave a slow smile. On the trees around her throne, the leaves shivered. “You do not know what you ask, Tatiana,” she said softly.
“With respect, Your Majesty, I do know,” Tati said. “I’ve talked to Sorrow about it, and he agrees. I am prepared to undertake a quest.”
“I see. And if you had to choose just one of your sisters to see, which would it be? Jena, to whom you owe so much? Little Stela, who lost the most by being forbidden the Other Kingdom, since she was only a child when the portal was closed? Clever Paula, whom our scholars miss so badly, or Iulia, who danced like moonlight?”
Tati’s eyes had widened. “Only one of them?” she whispered. “How could I possibly choose?”
“How indeed?” Ileana looked amused. My heart was pounding fast as I wondered what Tati would do, what cruel choice she would make. “As it is,” the forest queen went on, “you need not decide that part of it until your quest is complete. It will link very neatly with a mission we have for your sister Paula, who happens to be right where we need her. Dragua has been asked for assistance—an old, old friend in another part of the world requires human intervention to set matters right. This can become a threefold mission: We can assist Dragu
a’s friend, give you your chance, and, at the same time, help no fewer than three human folk to learn and grow. Tell me, how brave is your sister?”
Then, before I could hear more, the scene dissolved around me, Tati, Ileana, the scholars of the Other Kingdom fading away as if they had never been, and I was lying in my bed at the han, with darkness outside and only my tears for company.
Poor Tati! In all those years of missing her, I had not imagined she, too, might be unhappy. She had been so sure of her love for Sorrow, so certain in her choice to leave us. If only I had been able to hold the dream a little longer. I had so wanted to walk forward, to put my arms around her and tell her we loved her and missed her, as she did us. As for being brave, I hoped very much that I could be as brave as I needed to be.
Now I had to go to the privy. Stoyan was asleep, lying across the outer doorway, through which I must pass to make my way along the gallery. I fumbled for my cloak, then tiptoed out of my closet and across the larger chamber in my bare feet. Stoyan was lying on his back with one arm flung over his eyes and the other relaxed by his side, the blanket loose around him. His pose was that of a small boy exhausted by a day’s activity. For all my confusion, it made me smile. I put one hand against the door frame and stepped across him.
A powerful hand seized my ankle. I teetered, then sprawled at full length onto the hard floor of the gallery. “Ahh!” I exclaimed as a spear of pain stabbed through my ankle.
The hand released its viselike grip. “Paula!” He was on his knees, lifting me with an arm around my shoulders, his voice rough with comprehension come a moment too late. “I hurt you! Why were you out of bed? What is wrong—”
“Nothing,” I said, grimacing as I gingerly felt my ankle. “I got up to go to the privy, that’s all. I didn’t want to wake you. I’m fine, really.” But my ankle still hurt, and as soon as I tried to rise to my feet, it was obvious. I hobbled to one of the chairs by the little gallery table and lowered myself carefully onto it. “I’ve just wrenched it,” I said.
Stoyan looked devastated at what he had done. “You are crying.” He crouched by me, reaching a hand to brush my cheek. “You are badly hurt. I should wake Master Teodor—”
“Don’t. I will be all right soon, Stoyan. They’re not tears of pain. I had another dream. I really didn’t want to disturb you again. I’m sorry. And now I’m going to have to hobble to the privy. You might need to help me. So much for lessons in self-defense.”
Leaning on him, I got there and back well enough. Then I was wide awake, the image of Tati clear in my mind and the mission teasing at my thoughts. “I won’t be able to sleep for a while,” I said. “You don’t need to stay up with me. I’ll just sit here and think.”
“I will put a strapping on your ankle.” He was already looking in his bundle of belongings, stowed on a shelf just inside the main doorway of our quarters. “If you permit. It will swell before morning; this will make it more comfortable.”
The ankle hurt too much for me to worry about propriety. “Thank you,” I said. “Stoyan, I need to go back to the library in the morning. I dreamed about Tati again; she’s here because she’s earning the right to visit us—her sisters, I mean. That’s the reward for her quest. And it’s tied up with mine. Stoyan, if we go to Irene’s, I might see Tati again and be given my last clues so I can work out what it is we have to do. Will you have time to take me there before you escort Father to the blue house?”
The end to this evening had been interesting. Father hadn’t said a single word about Cybele’s Gift until we had parted ways with Irene and Murat and returned to the han. Then he had calmly reminded me that our own buyer was a scholarly collector of advanced years with a passionate devotion to religious antiquities. This man, unwed and something of a recluse, would care little about the supposed capacity of Cybele’s Gift to bestow a future of good fortune and prosperity on its owner. Chances were he would not be troubled by the availability of only half the piece; he would still want it for its historical interest. Indeed, Father had said, our buyer should be delighted to obtain the item at a reduced price. Slightly reduced. Father had no intention of letting anyone else outbid him now that success was within his grasp. Before we had left the blue house, he had told Barsam he would be back in the morning with a revised bid, one that was likely to be acceptable. He had asked the Armenian to hold Cybele’s Gift until the midday call to prayer.
“There is only one possible problem,” Father had added. “Perhaps one or two of the others might consider
