A Princess of Landover (32 page)

She frowned. “Yet you were prepared to send me here?”

“Not alone, I wasn’t. Only if I was in your company, your supervisor for this job of reopening the library and your protector against any threats. I wasn’t worried about Crabbit specifically. Frankly, it had been so long that I wasn’t even sure he was still here. I thought he might have moved on. I regret that I was wrong and regret even more that you had to encounter him on your own.”

“It hasn’t been such a problem,” she declared quickly, shrugging the matter off. She paused. “Let me make a suggestion,” she said impulsively. “A compromise. You leave me here and go back to my parents and tell them where I am. Let them know I’m fine, and I’m doing what Father sent me to do in the first place. Sort of, anyway. Ask him to give me a chance to work on this a little while longer before he hauls me home. Tell him all I want is a chance to prove myself. Besides, Thom risked a lot for me, and it wouldn’t be right if I just walked out on him.”

“I am not comfortable with the idea of leaving you here alone,” the old man declared, pulling at his whiskers. “If Craswell Crabbit were gone, as I had hoped he would be by now, I would feel better about your staying. As it is …”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised. “I have my magic to protect me, don’t I? Didn’t you train me yourself? Besides, I don’t think I’m in any real danger. His Eminence hasn’t threatened me or anything.”

“He won’t bother with threatening you if you get in his way. I
know him. He is a snake. He never should have been appointed director of the library, but the old King was failing and didn’t see.” Questor shook his head. “Are you sure he doesn’t know who you are?”

“He hasn’t said or done anything that would suggest he thinks I’m anyone other than Thom’s sister, Ellice.”

But she wondered suddenly if she had missed something. Was it possible that His Eminence had recognized her and was keeping her here for reasons of his own? The possibility sent a sudden chill up her spine.

“This business with the voice bothers me, too. I just don’t like any of it, Mistaya. I think you should come with me.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “It was your idea for me to come here in the first place,” she pointed out, brushing aside her concerns about His Eminence. “Yours and Abernathy’s. Well, I did what you wanted. What my mother and father wanted, too. And now you want me to just walk away, to give up. Like I did at Carrington?”

She reached out and took the old man’s hands in her own. “Please, Questor. Let me stay. Let me see this through. This is as much for me as it is for Thom; I know that now. I need to do this. Please!”

Questor Thews cleared his throat. “If I agree to this—and I am not saying yet I will—I want your word that you will not do anything to place yourself in danger. I do not know what hearing that voice means, whether it is Libiris speaking or someone else, but before you go off investigating the source—no, no, Mistaya, let me finish—before you do anything that puts you at risk, you will call on one of us to help you. And I do not mean this boy, whoever he is. I mean myself or your father or someone else who can protect you. Otherwise, you can pack your clothes and prepare to leave right now. I want your word.”

“You have it,” Mistaya declared, prepared to say or do whatever it took to get him to agree to let her stay.

“Then I have something for you.” Questor reached into his pocket and withdrew a round stone not much bigger than a pebble.
It was infused with striations of various colors that swam through its surface like the currents in a river. “Take this,” he ordered.

He handed it to her, and she held it in the palm of her hand, looking down at it. “This is a rainbow crush,” the wizard advised. “Should you need to call for help, this stone will allow you to do so. You give it a message and tell it who you want the message to reach—you say the words in your mind—then drop the stone to the ground and stamp on it. Whoever you summoned will hear your voice speaking the message and respond accordingly. If you feel you are in any danger at all, you are to use it at once. Understood?”

She nodded. “Understood.”

“You are not to rely on your own magic to protect you except as a last resort. You are well schooled in its use, but you are not well practiced. Too many things can go wrong. Use the crush instead and summon one of us.”

She was tempted to remind him that her magic had helped save his life five years earlier, but decided that was pushing things. “I’ve never heard of a rainbow crush,” she said instead.

“That is because there are only a few in existence. They are very precious and difficult to come by. So take care of yours and use it wisely.” He stood up. “Time for me to be going. Morning is almost here, and I do not want to be found inside these walls when it arrives.”

She put the rainbow crush in her pocket and hugged him to her. “Thank you, Questor, for trusting me. You won’t regret it.”

“I’d better not,” he declared. “Do not forget that when I leave here, I go back to the castle and your parents. I cannot speak for what they will choose to do; they may come here whether you like it or not. So whatever you need to do, do it quickly.”

“All right.” She stepped back from him. “But you can tell them you’ve seen me and I’m fine. Assuming His Eminence doesn’t throw me out after our meeting. After hearing from Rufus Pinch, he might do exactly that. Thom and me both. I might be home before you are.”

He gave a disapproving grunt. “That would not be the worst thing in the world. Think of the satisfaction you will feel if he does throw you out and you return as Princess of Landover and his new employer. Then you can throw him out!”

She grinned. “That does have a certain appeal.”

“Just remember one thing.” He was serious again, his frown back in place. “Craswell Crabbit is no one to fool with. He has skills and trickery of his own to call on if he needs them and an appalling lack of morals to back them up. If there is something to be gained, he will not hesitate to sacrifice anyone or anything that stands in his way. You keep on being the poor little peasant girl who doesn’t know anything and let him toss you through the door if that is what he wants. No heroics.”

“I promise to be careful.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Now you’d better go.”

“One thing more,” he added, turning back as he reached the door. “I am taking those G’home Gnomes with me. Keeping them here is just asking for trouble. All they are doing out there is plotting ways to steal the livestock. That does nothing to help you.
They
do nothing to help you, come to that. So back they go!”

She felt a momentary pang of regret for Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel, who had tried so hard to help her. But she also felt a huge relief. “Say good-bye for me.”

He smiled anew, nodded his approval of something or other, and disappeared through the door into the darkness of the hallway. She stared after him, smiling back. When he was gone, all that remained was the whisper of his robes and the warmth she felt on thinking how lucky she was to have him as her friend.

“I
t seems you have a problem understanding the difference between obedience and disobedience,” His Eminence declared, his over-large head cocking to one side as if somehow dislodged from his neck. He rocked back in his chair with his fingers steepled and gave
them a stern look. His tall, angular, skeletal form seemed to fold over on itself as he leaned forward suddenly. “A rather serious problem, it appears.”

It was first light, and Mistaya stood beside Thom on the other side of the desk facing their judge and jury. Rufus Pinch lurked off to one side, hunched over and frowning, which was pretty much what he did the rest of the time, so there was nothing troubling there. His Eminence, on the other hand, was scowling in a way suggesting that the outcome of this trial was unlikely to be favorable to them no matter what their defense.

“The rules are quite clear about use of the Stacks,” he continued, looking thoughtful. “You are to be there only during working hours. You are to stay in your assigned area of work. You are to concentrate on the task you have been given and no other. You are not to go outside your area of work and never are you to go back into the Stacks unaccompanied and without permission. I believe I made that quite clear to you, Thom, on your arrival, did I not?”

“Yes, Your Eminence, but—”

One bony hand lifted quickly to cut him off. “Your time to speak will come later. Just answer my questions.” He turned to Mistaya. “Did Thom explain the rules to you, Ellice?”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

“So when you went into the Stacks at midnight or whatever hour it was, you knew you were there in violation of the rules, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

Craswell Crabbit glanced over at Rufus Pinch, who managed a sour smile and a curt nod. “Mr. Pinch?”

“They were where they weren’t supposed to be and they were obviously doing something they weren’t supposed to do. The evidence is quite clear. Our course of action should be just as clear. This is a flagrant violation of the rules.”

“So it seems.” His Eminence gave a huge sigh, turning back to the accused. “Have you anything to say for yourselves?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

“Yes, Your Eminence, I do,” Mistaya said suddenly, stepping forward. She lifted her chin and met his judgmental gaze bravely. She deliberately did not look at Thom. “If you please.”

He nodded. “Say whatever it is you want to say, Ellice.”

“None of this is Thom’s fault. It is entirely mine, and whatever punishment you care to deliver I will accept it without complaint. But Thom was only trying to help me, the way big brothers do their little sisters when they discover that their hearts have been broken.”

“Is that so?” His Eminence sounded only marginally interested. “Please explain yourself.”

Mistaya never hesitated. “While working in the Stacks the other day, I lost a pendant, a family heirloom. A gift, actually, from my mother. I wear it everywhere, but somehow the chain broke and the pendant was lost. I didn’t realize it right away, and when I did, I looked for it and couldn’t find it. I was devastated. I searched for it two days straight, looking all around the areas in which we worked. I looked for it in the kitchen and all the common rooms and even my bedroom. But it was gone.”

She paused, taking time to look as if she were composing herself. “Then it occurred to me that one of the Throg Monkeys might have taken it. Maybe just to look at, but maybe to keep. So I begged Thom to go with me back into the Stacks while everyone was sleeping to see if it might have been carried back there somewhere. It was a foolish thing to do, but that pendant meant everything to me.”

She cried a little, real tears. “It was all I had left to remind me of my mother,” she whispered, sobbing softly. “We lost her not long ago …”

“It was my fault as much as hers, Your Eminence,” Thom cut in suddenly. “I knew how much she valued that pendant. I didn’t want her to lose it. So I said I would take her into the Stacks to look for it.”

“Knowing you were breaking the rules?” His Eminence pressed.

“Knowing I was,” Thom agreed. “I admit it. I hoped no one would find out, but Rufus was on watch, as usual.”

“Of course I was on watch!” the little man snapped. “I am always on watch against the likes of you and your sister!”

“Rufus, Rufus,” Craswell Crabbit soothed.

“Well, it’s true!” the other hissed.

“But we didn’t get very far,” Thom added quickly. “We were afraid to do something that bold. We only looked a little way before coming back. The Stacks are too huge for a search of the sort that was needed, and if the Throg Monkeys took the pendant—which they might have done, since they take things all the time—then I needed to confront them and find out what they had done with it.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure that all this is true.” His Eminence looked and sounded bored. “But rules are rules.”

“Your Eminence,” Thom replied, straightening. “I will save you the trouble of making a decision on our punishment. A mistake has been made and a rule violated. There is no excuse. Ellice and I will pack our bags and leave immediately. After seeing my sister safely home, I will return and complete the remainder of my service working in the stables.”

Rufus Pinch looked pleased. But His Eminence held up both hands and shook his head slowly. “No, no, that won’t do at all. Your service here is not for mucking out stables, it is for cataloging and organizing books. You will stay and work as you have committed yourself to doing.”

He turned to Mistaya. “As for you, Ellice, I have a different plan in mind. Because I am by nature a generous and forgiving person, I am going to make an exception this one time and give you another chance. You may stay to help your brother. But as punishment for your disobedience, you will do service in the stables every third day for an entire month cleaning up after the animals. Mind you, young lady, should you violate the rules again—any rules—you will be dismissed immediately. There will be no discussion, no excuses, and no further leniencies. One misstep, and you are gone. Do we understand each other?”

Mistaya hung her head meekly. “Yes, Your Eminence.”