Lost (13 page)

Connwaer,

I have received your letter.

You asked after Benet. He is better, though he still suffers from headaches and his arm has not mended yet. Benet’s recovery does not excuse what you have done, but it makes the magisters think somewhat less badly of you.

As you must expect, an order of exile has been passed. You are not to return to the city until this order is raised.

You cannot return here; yet you can serve Wellmet. The attacks by the Shadows continue, worse than before, and the people are frightened. We need whatever help is available. Report on what you have discovered about the Shadows, about the state of the city of Desh and its magic, about how Lady Rowan’s negotiations
with the sorcerer-king go on, about Jaggus’s use of magic. If you have received this letter, it means my attempt with the bird has been successful. I expect to receive from you at least one letter every five days, sent by the bird.

—Nevery

I
decided to start discovering things for Nevery right away. If I’d had a locus magicalicus I would’ve done the embero spell and turned myself into a cat, because as a cat I made a very good spy. Instead, as the night had gotten
cooler, I pulled on my black sweater and took off my boots. Leaving the bird perched on the windowsill with the lizard, I eased out into the dark hallway and down the stairs.

I was in luck. The fancy ball was breaking up. At the ballroom, the sorcerer-king stood in a wide doorway talking in a low voice to another man. Three guards waited for Jaggus, standing stiff as pokers in long-skirted white coats with red trim and white trousers with red boots. And swords. They stayed behind Jaggus, which meant I had a good view of him from the hallway where I crouched in a patch of shadow.

The sorcerer-king didn’t wear his locus magicalicus on a chain or a necklace outside his clothes. He had one hand thrust down into a pocket of his long-skirted white coat. Maybe the stone was in there. If I could get past the guards it wouldn’t be hard to pick his pocket to have a look at his locus magicalicus.

In the doorway, Jaggus glanced toward me and
I turned to stone until he looked away again. He hadn’t seen me.

He finished talking to the other man and I eased back behind a giant clay pot as he passed down the hallway, followed by his three guards. I cat-footed after them, keeping to the shadows. They wound around deeper into the palace until they came to a door painted red with a brass handle and lock.

Jaggus opened the door with a key he pulled from his pocket. A triple-flick count-two lock, from the sound of it. That was odd.

To Nevery,

I am very glad Benet is better
.
Please tell him that I am sorry
.

You said I should discover everything I can and report it to you, one letter every five days, so that’s what I’ll do
.
It’s a long, long way to Wellmet
.
I wonder how the bird flies there and back here so quickly
.
Maybe it’s got a piece of the magic in it
.

Something is strange about the sorcerer-king
.
Maybe he sent the Shadows to Wellmet, but I can’t tell for certain if he did or not
.
The strange thing is that he has his rooms locked up with a key and a lock
.

Nevery, wouldn’t a wizard use a spell to lock up his rooms, especially a workroom? Just like you use a spell to lock your grimoire and the magisters use spells to lock the gates to the islands?

He doesn’t wear his locus magicalicus on a chain the way Pettivox did
.
I wonder if he
doesn’t carry it on him at all
.
I’ll try to find out
.
Even though his rooms are locked with a puzzle lock, I can get in if I know when he’s going to be away
.

That’s all I could discover so far, but I’ll keep looking around as much as I can, and then I’ll write and tell you
.

From,
Connwaer

Rowan Forestal

Dealing with the sorcerer-king is frustrating. He is hospitable and friendly, but he will not give a clear answer to any of my questions. Magister Nimble reports that Lord Jaggus answered every one of his questions about the magic of Desh, which means Nimble is satisfied that our host is not responsible for sending the Shadows to Wellmet.

I am becoming more certain that Nimble is a fool.

I can’t be certain of anything until I have proof. The question is, how to get it?

A packet of letters from Mother arrived today. She asks how our meetings with Lord Jaggus go on, and describes further Shadow attacks in the Sunrise. She also wrote that she and the magisters have issued an order of exile against Conn, which means he cannot return to Wellmet until it is lifted. I’d suspected
something had happened to force him to leave, but I didn’t realize it was this bad: Heartsease destroyed, Nevery’s manservant severely injured, the magisters in an uproar. Mother advises me that I shouldn’t have permitted Conn to join the envoyage, and that now that we have reached Desh, I should order him to leave.

I absolutely refuse to obey her. Heartsease was half destroyed already. Conn was just finishing what Magister Nevery started twenty years ago. Has nobody thought of that? And while the damage done is appalling, it makes perfectly clear what Conn has been saying all along, that he can somehow do magic with pyrotechnics, which means he may be right about the magic itself. I half believe they have exiled him simply because his ideas are dangerous and they are afraid.

No wonder he has been so quiet. He is quiet anyway, but since he joined the envoyage he’s hardly said a word. I thought he was being sullen, and I should
have seen that it was because he is desperately unhappy. I feel like a poor sort of friend for not realizing this before.

I have tried to find him, but he’s disappeared, though Argent says he comes back in late at night to sleep before slipping away again. Next I will ask Kerrn, because I suspect that as guard captain she has been keeping a close eye on Conn.

T
he next night, after the usual dinner party had ended and the palace had quieted down into the night, I sat on the floor in the hallway outside Jaggus’s rooms in the shadow of a giant clay pot, trying not to fall asleep. He’d gone in
hours before. An oil lantern burned low beside his door.

Down at the other end of the dark hallway, a bit of shadow broke off from the rest of the shadows and hopped over the tile floor, coming toward me.

I sat up and blinked, and saw that it was a black bird. It had a quill strapped to its leg, and the quill went
tick tick
against the floor every time the bird took a hop.

Keeping an eye on Jaggus’s door, I went to meet the bird and carried it over to my hiding place. It let me take the quill off its leg. A letter from Nevery.

Connwaer,

I know you well enough, boy, to understand your cryptic references. In your letter you wrote that you will “try to find out” if Jaggus carries his locus magicalicus on him. And “I can get in” to his workroom. You mean you’re going to pick his pocket, boy, and pick the lock of his workroom. This is far too dangerous. If you were caught, Lady Rowan would have no reason to protect you, as she knows by now that you have been exiled, and I could do nothing from here. Also, you know well enough the effect of evil magics on a locus magicalicus. You remember prying into my family collection of locus stones and touching my great-aunt Alwae’s stone. It made you sick, did it not? If Jaggus is responsible for creating the Shadows, his stone
will be even more corrupt than Alwae’s.

Be careful, boy, and don’t be stupid.

The situation in Wellmet grows worse every day. I rely on your information.

—Nevery