This certainly didn’t sound like any magic they had taught
The children looked at each other, shrugged, and laughed. “We don’t know! We haven’t seen him. Have you seen him?”
They scattered then, laughing and squealing. The woman, scowling under her red scarf, looked after them and then at me as though wondering whether to strike me with a Romney curse or offer to tell my fortune.
“I’m looking for someone,” I said ingratiatingly, “called Dog-Man. He’s just been here a couple of weeks but is already gaining a reputation as a miracle-worker.” When she continued to frown, I added, “I’m a friend of Theodora’s.”
Theodora the Romneys all knew. The woman’s expression suddenly cleared. She smiled broadly, flashing gold teeth below a lip that sprouted a long bristle. “You’re her wizard friend!” But she shook her head. “I have never seen the Dog-Man myself. He has not visited our camp.”
I spun her an illusion of her own, a bracelet of scarlet blossoms, thanked her, and headed back through the darkening air toward the lights of the city. First I would go by the episcopal palace and leave a note for the bishop, telling him of my lack of success in finding the man but suggesting hopefully that he might have left Caelrhon as inexplicably as he had arrived. Then I would go talk to Theodora. I had wanted to keep her out of this, but she might be the only person who could help me find someone who very clearly did not want to be found.
Simultaneously I knocked at Theodora’s door and called to her directly, mind to mind, so she would know who was outside her house at this hour of the evening. “It’s me.”
She swung the door open hard, her amethyst eyes round. “Antonia’s fine,” I said rapidly, realizing too late how startling it must be to have someone at her door from whom she had just gotten a pigeon-message saying he was forty miles away. “Everyone’s fine. Antonia is safely in Yurt with the duchess’s twins. But the bishop needed to talk to me, and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see you.” I took her face between my hands and kissed her. “Did you get those dresses done on time?”
She smiled then and pulled me inside. “It’s wonderful to see you, Daimbert. I’m sorry that I was too busy to talk yesterday. Yes, I got the dresses done on time.” I had told her more than once that I had plenty of money from what they paid me in Yurt that she needn’t sew for a living, but she had always insisted that she wanted to support herself.
Theodora cleared a space on the couch, wadding cloth scraps and loose threads into a bag, piling pattern pieces on the table, giving me quick, happy glances as she worked. I knew enough to stay out of the way. She lit the magic lamp that she
We settled ourselves comfortably, my arm around Theodora and her head on my shoulder. She had always alternated between being affectionate and good-humored as she was now, and being-well, not lacking in affection, but somehow distant, as though wanting to keep some aspects of her life independent from me. I told her how Gwennie had insisted that it would be improper for Antonia to stay in my chambers, and how the twins seemed to enjoy her.
“She seems happier with them than with me,” I finished, finding it coming out more plaintively than I intended.
“She loves you, Daimbert,” Theodora said in reassurance. “She’s just more used to women. That’s why I’m so glad you’re having a chance to be together.”
If we ever did. I realized Antonia, happy to sit on my lap but not laughing at my most amusing illusions, had the same inner private reserve as her mother.
“And what did the bishop need?” Theodora continued. She kissed the corner of my cheek. “This is probably not what a wizard likes to hear, but one of the best side-benefits of knowing you has been the opportunity to become, at least a little bit, friends with a bishop.”
She laughed as she spoke, but there was an emotional note to her voice when she mentioned Joachim that sounded as though she rated him more highly than any wizard. But I dismissed this thought. I was just being irritable because I was worried about the purported miracle-worker.
“There’s someone working magic-or something-here in Caelrhon,” I said abruptly. “The children call him the Dog-Man. Do you know him?”
Theodora turned in the circle of my arm to look at me. It was full dark outside now, and the lamp made wavering points of light in her eyes. “It’s not any magic I know,” she said quietly.
I pulled her closer. “Then you’ve met him? Is he really working miracles? Or-” and found I couldn’t say it.
She shook her head, her hair moving against my beard. “I don’t know what he’s doing. I’ve not met him in person, only sensed his mind. There’s something about him that is, well-not right. I can’t say that he’s evil, but there is nothing about him like the force of good that flows from the bishop.”
Joachim again. I kept silent.
“A lot of the children in the neighborhood have made something of a pet of him. I’ve gotten to know the children well through Antonia, and they talk to me about him. He’d been living in a little shack on the docks, made from scrap lumber, and the children bring him food from home. I told Antonia I didn’t want her down there. I don’t think she’s disobeyed me yet…. That was part of the reason I wanted her in Yurt now. But I couldn’t tell you that yesterday, with her standing right there.”
This sounded to me too like an excellent reason to have Antonia in Yurt. The castle had had a giant pentagram put around it by my predecessor as Royal Wizard. Unless someone had moved the stones over the years, no demon would want to enter the castle because he would be unable to leave again. “I tried without success to find the man. No one has seen him since yesterday.”
Theodora went still a moment, slipping her mind away into her own magic. “I don’t find him either,” she said then. “Maybe he’s gone.”
That was fine with me. Maybe he’d left Caelrhon for a kingdom where the Royal Wizard would spot him before the local bishop did, where no one would be too squeamish to call for a demonology expert. “Then I don’t have to worry about him anymore,” I said, finding Theodora’s lips. “Say! You know you’re always worried that Antonia will wake up-”
She laughed, pushing me away with hands on my chest. “I’ll kiss you as much as you like, as loudly as you like-but wouldn’t that be disgusting, to make big smacking kisses just because no one is here to overhear them? — but that’s it. Remember our agreement.”
I leaned back, exasperated. “I don’t remember making an agreement that would last this long.”
“Yes, you do,” she said teasingly, though I was not about to be teased back into good humor over this. “I know the bishop explained it to you. We have sinned, been penitent, and been forgiven, but that means we must be even more careful. We are not married, and we cannot act as though we were.”
“So we made one mistake,” I said in irritation, “one big mistake six years ago, and now it’s going to ruin the rest of our lives?”
“We have Antonia,” she said mildly. “I would not call her the ruin of our lives. She is rather a reason for us to be supremely grateful.”
“And do whatever the bishop tells us,” I grumbled. Maybe I should have been angry with Joachim, but this all seemed like Theodora’s fault. “Since when does a witch pay so much attention to a Church that considers all magic dangerous-
“Since when does a wizard come racing to town the instant a bishop telephones him?” she shot back.
But then she looked at me, gave a smile that brought out the dimple in her cheek, and took me by the ears and kissed me on the eyelids. “Don’t be angry, Daimbert. I get so little chance to see you. I want to talk to you about what’s happening in Yurt. Let me make us some tea.”
She was right, I thought, watching her light the fire for the water and forcing myself to stop frowning. I didn’t want to waste this time with her by arguing. The easiest answer, of course, would have been to get married, but I no longer dared ask her. She had always refused, always would refuse, saying it would be the ruin of my wizardry
