“But it hasn’t yet.”
She leaned forward. “Listen to me, Davydd. I regret things did not come together as smoothly as we had hoped, but the pieces of the plan are still in play and still under my control. Brenna and Karl will soon be together. The moment for you to strike Kravon is still close at hand… very close. Can you sense the devices of yours we have smuggled into the Palace?”
“Yes,” Verdsmitt said. “I know much of what has been happening in the Palace. And if more disruption is called for… those devices, too, are within range of my will.”
“Not yet,” Mother Northwind said. “But the time may come.” She studied him. “I did not answer your request for leave to kill Falk. Does he, too, carry one of your devices?”
“No,” Verdsmitt admitted. “And he is powerfully protected. I don’t know how I could kill him, Mother Northwind, but I would find a way.”
“Hmmm. Well, I’d rather he stayed alive for now. While he pursues his Plan with such fervor, he gives me space to pursue mine. But to return to these devices. Can you activate them from within the cell?”
“No,” Verdsmitt said. “I can sense them, but these cells carry their own enchantments.”
“How close do you have to be?”
“Anywhere within the Palace, as long as I am free of this cell. The original plan was for me to use the enchantments woven into my clothing to escape when the time comes-”
“There is a better way,” Mother Northwind said.
Davydd Verdsmitt waited for her to go on.
She smiled. “Just how good an actor are you, Davydd?”
Falk, signing what seemed like the thousandth document in the last hour-the worst part about a crackdown on the Commons was the amount of paperwork it generated-paused to clench and unclench his cramped right hand, and then realized that Mother Northwind had just entered the room.
“Ah,” he said. “At last.” He gestured to one of the chairs on the other side of his desk; Mother Northwind seated herself with an audible creaking of joints. “Well?”
“Your hunch was correct, Lord Falk,” she said. “I did not believe it until I saw it in his mind, but Davydd Verdsmitt… is the Patron. Well, one of them.”
Falk felt a rush of pleasure. “I knew it!” He leaned forward. “And who was the mage who helped him?”
Mother Northwind shook her head sadly. “Here is another thing I would not have believed, Lord Falk,” she said. “His accomplice was.. . the First Mage himself, Tagaza. Who also sometimes acted as the Patron. Again, as I think you suspected.”
There was no rush of pleasure at hearing that suspicion confirmed. “I am not surprised,” Falk said grimly, “but I am pained. What else did you glean from Verdsmitt’s mind?”
Mother Northwind laughed. “Much about the sexual proclivities of various members of the acting profession. A great deal more than I wanted to know about the technical aspects of producing a play. But about the Common Cause… less than I had hoped.”
Falk’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Tagaza, again,” Mother Northwind said. “He is, of course, a master of hard magic, but he is also not completely unskilled at certain elements of soft… or rather, of some of those forms of magic that straddle the realms of hard and soft.” She sighed. “His meddling in Verdsmitt’s mind was clumsy but unmistakable. He created a
… wall, a wall that I cannot breach. To do so would kill Verdsmitt, and still I would not gain the information I want. And this wall not only keeps me from accessing information about the Common Cause in detail, it keeps Verdsmitt from consciously knowing it himself.”
“And yet you confirmed he gave orders as the Patron.”
“Only because my skill exceeds Tagaza’s,” Mother Northwind said acerbically. “He has built a wall, but it is rough and unfinished enough that here and there light seeps through the cracks.”
“If Verdsmitt has no knowledge we can access, if he doesn’t even remember that he is the Patron, then he is useless to me except as an example,” Falk said. “I will hang him from the statue in the Square so that the Common Cause and all their sympathizers know their leader has been arrested and condemned. Even if no one has come forward by then to tell me where Prince Karl is being held, that will open the store-hold of information on their sinking ship and send the rats scurrying out to save themselves.”
“A colorful metaphor,” Mother Northwind said. “Have you thought of writing plays?”
Falk was already opening a drawer on the left-hand side of his desk, in which he kept execution forms. He had pulled one out and was reaching for a pen when Mother Northwind’s next words stopped him.
“But would it not be better, Lord Falk, to have the Patron alive. .. but loyal to you? To turn Davydd Verdsmitt’s gift for propaganda against the Common Cause, instead of serving it? The confusion in the ranks of the Cause would be the same, seeing him alive at your right hand, supporting you, as it would be if he were dead… no, worse; because if you kill him, he becomes a martyr. Save him, and the leader of the Common Cause, the man most devoted to its perverse ideology, becomes nothing more than a turncoat, a sniveling coward who saved his own skin. How’s that for a symbol?”
Falk put down the pen he had just picked up. “You can do this?”
Mother Northwind smiled a little shamefacedly, like a child caught with her hand in the sugar jar. “It’s already done. Once I realized how little information I could retrieve from Verdsmitt, I… well. I confess I may have acted in haste, Lord Falk. I beg forgiveness if so.”
Falk had never heard Mother Northwind beg forgiveness for anything.
“I… was angry. And since I could not take what I wanted from Verdsmitt’s mind, instead I… twisted it. To serve you, and the MageLords, and especially King Kravon.” She shook her head. “I should have asked for your permission and advice first, of course. I cannot undo it, but you can still kill him, or I can, if you’d like him dead due to natural causes-”
“Kill him?” Lord Falk laughed. “Mother Northwind, your skills continue to amaze me. Of course I won’t kill him.” He stood. “I want to see him.”
“And he wants to see you,” Mother Northwind said. “To beg your forgiveness.”
“Which he shall most certainly have, Mother Northwind,” said Falk. “Which he shall most certainly have.”
Mother Northwind had been as good as her word, Falk thought, as he watched the stiff-necked playwright, so cool and arrogant the last time they had met, kneel before him and beg for forgiveness and mercy, tears streaming down his face: beg to be allowed to make a public statement to the Commons renouncing the Cause. He promised to burn his seditious play in the center of the Square. He offered to write another extolling the grandeur of the MageLords. He pleaded for an audience with King Kravon himself.
He begged so much that Falk soon got tired of it. “Of course, of course,” he said. “All of that can be done. But there is no need to make any plans now, Verdsmitt. Come with me, and I’ll have Brich find some more… suitable quarters for you. And if there’s anything you need from your quarters in the city…” Which had, of course, already been completely searched and stripped, which meant it was all in Falk’s storage rooms somewhere, but no need to tell him that, “just let Brich know.”
Mother Northwind had waited in Falk’s office throughout the exchange. She raised an eyebrow at him as he came in, and he laughed. “I say it again, Mother Northwind. You are a wonder.” He sat down at the desk once more. “Now, Tagaza. The other Patron.”
“Do you still want me to stay out of his mind?”
“Yes,” Falk said firmly; then amended “… for now.” He spread his hands. “My focus is on his completing the spell to find Brenna. Once he has done that, then I want you to strip his skull of everything he has ever seen, heard, thought, or smelled. Promise be damned. The man is a traitor.”
“I take it you will be executing him,” Mother Northwind said quietly.
“I will chain him to the Rock of Execution myself,” Falk snarled, “and it will be my will that makes it burn hotter than it ever has before.”
“Very well. Take me to him, and I will see what I can do… as a Healer.” She sighed. “I confess I’m a little weary after my dealings with Verdsmitt, but a simple Healing should not take much more out of me.”
“You will have the finest dinner the Palace chefs can create after your work today,” Falk said.
Mother Northwind laughed. “No, no,” she said. “A simple meal is all I ask. A simple meal for a simple
