There was a clatter. The secretary had dropped his tablet on the floor. “Bouragonr?” the king asked again.
“That is not Bouragonr,” said Hirizjahkinis.
“That is a Faitoren, in its natural state,” Aruendiel said.
Abele’s gaze slid to Aruendiel. “My chief magician is a Faitoren?”
“No, not originally. There has been a substitution—probably in the recent past. Sometime after the Lady Ilissa arrived in Semr,” Aruendiel said.
“That is an outrageous suggestion, Aruendiel!” Ilissa said. “Your Majesty, I must protest. I will not be insulted by one of your subjects!”
“Do you deny that this is one of your people, Ilissa?” Aruendiel asked. “Hirizjahkinis took off not just the spell that made the Faitoren look like Bouragonr, but the spell that made him look human in the first place.”
“Then where is my chief magician?” the king asked, looking at the Faitoren with distaste. “You, sir, what have you done with my chief magician?”
The Faitoren opened its wide mouth, giving the others a glimpse of a long gray tongue, but it said nothing.
“Lady Ilissa, is this indeed one of your Faitoren?” Abele asked. “I had always thought that your people were, well, more pleasing to the eye.”
Ilissa hesitated, but finally she nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty. That is one of my people.”
“And why was he disguised?”
“Oh, it’s the custom among us Faitoren to wear faces of our own devising, Your Majesty,” Ilissa said with a wistful smile, “much the way you or any other human might choose an elegant garment to wear. It is a bit of a game with us. We take pleasure in the art of it, in seeing who can make themselves the most beautiful, and in the end we grow so used to our chosen faces that we forget that we are even wearing them. These magicians”—she threw a scornful look at Hirizjahkinis and Aruendiel—“have taken it upon themselves to tear away the face that poor Gaibon made for himself. It is an act of both rudeness and cruelty, like stripping someone naked in a public street.”
“Yes, I see,” said Abele. “But why would your subject want to make himself look like Bouragonr? Bouragonr is no beauty. An excellent chief magician, but not a handsome man.”
“A very distinguished man,” Ilissa insisted sweetly.
“Yes, perhaps, but even so, I can’t permit one of your subjects to simply insert himself in the place of my chief magician. There are all sorts of security and confidentiality issues here. And what has become of Bouragonr?”
“Oh, I am sure that Gaibon has done nothing to harm Bouragonr. Isn’t that right, Gaibon dear?”
Gaibon said something in muddy Ors that could have been an assent.
“You, Lady Ilissa, what have you done with Bouragonr?” Hirizjahkinis spoke up suddenly. “Gaibon is not lying—”
“He can’t lie,” Aruendiel muttered.
“—but can you deny responsibility for Bouragonr’s disappearance?”
“I don’t need to,” said Ilissa. “It is a preposterous accusation.”
“But it’s not preposterous at all. You came here to persuade this king to lift the restrictions on the Faitoren. You knew that Bouragonr, his trusted adviser, would not favor such a plan—Bouragonr was one of the magicians, like Aruendiel, like myself, who defeated you half a century ago. But there was a way for you to turn Bouragonr’s suspicion to your advantage. If he supported the alliance, despite his known distrust of the Faitoren, it would make your cause more credible. Bouragonr’s support would not only help sway King Abele, it would make the alliance more palatable to many lords as well.”
“Lady Hirizjahkinis, I’m terribly flattered that you would think me capable of such clever scheming.”
“When I arrived here in Semr,” Hirizjahkinis continued, “I was surprised by how little opposition Bouragonr raised to the proposed alliance. Today, in fact, he seemed to advocate frankly for the Faitoren side. But I did not think that Bouragonr was not actually Bouragonr, until Aruendiel suggested it to me a little while ago.”
“Lord Aruendiel?” the king asked, his voice sharpening. “How did you discover this substitution? Some of your famous magic?”
“No,” said Aruendiel. “I simply found it odd that Bouragonr would know that the human woman who had escaped the Faitoren was living in my household. I had done nothing to advertise the fact. But the Faitoren knew. So I asked Hirizjahkinis to investigate while Your Majesty and I continued our conversation.”
“I heard no such request,” said the king.
“That is some of my famous magic, Sire,” Aruendiel said, unsmiling.
“Your Majesty,” said Ilissa to the king, with an air of appealing to the only sensible person in the room, “I’m afraid I’m losing patience with this absurdity. Your subjects, these magicians, have insulted and attacked me and the members of my legation. I demand an apology—and I demand that Aruendiel reverse the terrible magic that he has worked on my son.”
“I will do it,” said Aruendiel, his mouth curling, “I will even apologize—if you tell us where Bouragonr is.”
The king coughed and looked down at the table. “Lady Ilissa, if you can offer any help in locating my chief magician, it would be taken as, as—a gesture of great goodwill,” he said at last.
“Enough.” Ilissa rose from her chair. “I will hear no more of this. King Abele, you should know that those who slight me always regret it. The magician Aruendiel can tell you that.” Her lips curved in a fragile smile as sharp as a scythe. Her dress seemed to be made of white flames.
Turning on her heel, she walked swiftly down the length of the long council table to the double doors. They flew open for her without a touch. Gaibon scuttled after her.
“Regrettable,” said the king musingly after the doors had closed behind her. “Extremely regrettable.” He did not specify exactly what he was referring to, Ilissa’s angry departure or the disappearance of his chief magician or the end of the alliance negotiations or the fact that he had opened negotiations in the first place. Quite likely he was not sure himself.
“When did you learn how to undo that Faitoren masking spell?” Hirizjahkinis demanded of Aruendiel, once they were in the corridor. They had left the king and his military advisers to plot out the invasion of the Meerchinland without Faitoren aid.
“I worked out a method and tried it for the first time last winter,” he said. “Interesting results, don’t you think? Although you took your time getting it to work.”
“Your directions were a bit sketchy.”
“There’s only so much one can say with a feather. You figured it out eventually.”
“Now, can we use the same method to find Bouragonr? Could she have used the same kind of masking spell to hide him away?”
“It’s possible. Although it’s more likely she killed him outright.”
“You always believe the worst of that woman, don’t you?” Hirizjahkinis said, chuckling. “All right, we will try to find his body then. We’ll start by following Ilissa’s trail, visiting the places that she has visited.”
“How do you propose to do that?” he asked, shaking his head. “By asking the walls what they saw? By wood and water, that will take forever. Once walls start talking, they never shut up.”
“No, no. You will be annoyed to hear it, Aruendiel, but this is exactly the kind of situation where the Kavareen can be very useful.”
Nora was scratching the Kavareen behind the ears when the two magicians came into the room. Aruendiel looked disquieted at the sight, but Hirizjahkinis only smiled. “I see you have become friends.”
“More or less,” Nora allowed. “After I realized it wasn’t going to eat me.”
“You’d be too small a meal,” Aruendiel said. “The Kavareen prefers to consume cities, or whole
