The Queen's Librarian (23 page)

Lucas turned and pointed at Bramble when they crossed the threshold. “You. Sit. Stay.”

Lucas set about carefully lighting the lamps, making sure the covers were secure. Bramble stayed but not without trotting out the sad, betrayed puppy face first. He hadn’t yet seemed to figure out that Lucas was immune to it by now. Well, mostly. But Lucas’s love only went so far when it came to precious books and cultural antiquities.

And then Slade sidled quietly into the room and all of Bramble’s reluctant obedience vanished. He was already up on his haunches—like he was begging, when Bramble had never begged for anything in his life, because he never really had to, and Lucas had only ever had the patience for the “sit” and “stay” commands that didn’t always work anyway—but Slade merely whispered something lilting and soft, almost melodic enough to be a song, and Bramble came to an abrupt and cheerful halt. And then he turned in a circle, laid his bulk down, and went to sleep. Just like that.

Lucas almost said something, but then he remembered the gauntlet of forest creatures at the Circle, and he shut his mouth with a clack of teeth. The apparent kinship the Daimin had with animals was not something he’d ever actually believed when he read about it, but it certainly explained angry squirrels and Cat’s “slutty kitten” routine with Mister-Scontun-who-wasn’t-Mister-Scontun.

“What is your father’s name, anyway?” Lucas asked Slade.

Slade smiled. “You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.” Casually, he pointed one by one at the rest of the lamps ringing the circular tower room and, one by one, they lit up bright.

Again, Lucas thought about saying something, but it seemed like the casual display of magic annoyed Laurie—jealousy, no doubt; Lucas
did not
snort—more than it did Lucas, and the covers were all secure, so Lucas only said, “I’ve been calling him Mister Scontun.” Actually, Mister-Scontun-who-wasn’t-Mister-Scontun, along with a few other choice expletives, but Slade didn’t need to know that.

“Key,” said Slade and his smile turned a bit sad. “It will do.”

“Ah.” Lucas paused. “So ‘key’ is ‘scontun’. Not… ‘
scounttune
’?”

Slade puffed a very polite little chuckle. “I don’t think you want to know what ‘
scounttune
’ is in my language.”

“Um.” Lucas cleared his throat. “Right.”

Huh. So Lucas had been sort of right—Mister Scontun
had
been trying to say “key” that first night outside the Duck. And Lucas had chided him on his pronunciation, when it appeared it had been Lucas who’d been off. He would blush in embarrassment, but there had been so many other things in between that deserved it more.

“Good grief, Lucas,” Laurie said, staring around at the stacked shelves and overflowing tables with wide eyes. “I see I should visit you at work more often. You
have
been busy, haven’t you?”

“Which you would have known,” Lucas told him, “had you ever been inclined to pick up a book for something other than propping up a table leg.”

“That was only the once, and I was
five
.” Laurie scowled, then waved a dismissal. “It was a baby book anyway.”

“Which I’m sure some less pampered child would have loved, had it occurred to you to deposit it in the poor box. And I’m sure that child would have never, ever used it as a prop.”

Laurie rolled his eyes. “I sent it along eventually, didn’t I?”

“You dented the cover.
And
bent the binding.”

“Which you fixed. Not without a healthy dose of peevish grumbling,
and
you got me in trouble with my mother.”

“I’m crying great, fat tears of lament just for you.”

“Wait,” Alex put in, eyebrows twitching as he studied Lucas. “He was five, so that would make you ten….” He tilted his head. “You were fixing books when you were ten years old?”

“Knowing him,” Laurie grumbled, “he was doing it in the womb.”

Lucas smirked. “You’re only pissy because your mother punished you and then made me tutor you. It was nearly twenty years ago, you great mollycoddled whiner, you really should have gotten over it by now.”

“Mother wouldn’t let Father give me candy for a
week
! Do you know how hard it is for Father to interact with a child when there’s no candy involved?”

“You’d
drawn
on the pages of a
book
!”

“I was five!”

“In
ink
!”

“I was
five
!”

“You were a spoiled little brat!”

“
You
were a short little know-it-all!”

“You’re
still
a spoiled brat!”

“And you’re still short!”

“And you—”

“Right, then, sorry I asked,” Alex cut in and stepped between them. “I know we’re all tired and it’s the middle of the night, but there are probably some things we should be getting on with…?” He lifted his eyebrows at Lucas expectantly.

Lucas’s mouth pinched. “Fine. But no one is to touch
anything
unless I expressly say so.” He peered around Alex’s shoulder to glare at Laurie. “Especially you.”

“You know,” Laurie said, examining his fingernails, “you still can’t kill someone with your eyes.”

“I can try.”

“And you do.”

And then Laurie whispered something Lucas didn’t quite hear, snapped his fingers, and… grinned when a tiny fireball bloomed at the tip of his thumb. With a smug look at Lucas, Laurie rolled the little ball along the backs of his knuckles then settled it in his palm.

Slade looked on approvingly. Alex rubbed at his eyes like he wasn’t sure they were working properly.

It took a moment for Lucas to fully comprehend what he was seeing—the disappearing trick down at the Circle, which Lucas
still
hadn’t had the time to properly process, was apparently not some fluke or hallucination;
Laurie
was actually doing
magic
, magic he hadn’t been able to do only yesterday—and when the reality of it finally sank into Lucas’s brain, it was all Alex could do to hold him back.

“Are you
insane
?!” Lucas cried, reaching out to swat at Laurie and then thinking better of it. Not that he could’ve, anyway—Alex wasn’t letting go. “Put that out! Put it
out
!”

Laurie merely grinned. “Aw, don’t be jealous, cousin. We can’t all be tiny little scholars who ramble like a drunken hobo and scream like a girl. Some of us have to be the great magicians of our generations.” He sighed with a hand set dramatically to his brow. “It’s a tediously glamorous job, but someone’s got to do it.”

“Laurie,” Lucas said, slowly and very clearly, “put it out.
Now
.” He waved his hand around the roomful of priceless and very flammable objects of education and culture. “
Look
where you are.”

Laurie did. He was still wearing that arrogant grin at first, until he seemed to realize what he was doing and where he was doing it, and then the grin slowly fell. “Ah,” he said, and he peered down into his palm with a purse of his lips. “Uh… Slade? If you could…? Um.” He lightly dipped his hand, the little flame bobbing and sputtering a tiny bit as he did.

“Of course.” Slade stepped forward, and with a wave of his hand, the tiny ball of fire winked out without so much as a
pop
or a wisp of smoke.

Lucas watched long enough to be sure the flame was completely out before he turned on Slade. “
You
taught him that?”

Slade smiled and his cheeks darkened with a bashful flush. “It was nothing,” he said with a generous wave of his hand. “Prince Laurie is a very quick study, actually. There is much power and potential in him, and he only needs to—”

“He only needs to understand that it’s not a toy to play with before he’s handed the key to using it!” Lucas snapped. “What is
wrong
with you? You taught him how to
make fire
, for pity’s sake, and didn’t think to teach him how to put it out? Would you give a razorblade to a baby?”

“Hey!” said Laurie.

Slade’s mouth flapped. “I….” He cleared his throat. “I was merely—”

“Well, don’t do it anymore,” Lucas said with a glare at Laurie. “There’s a reason Cráwa keeps refusing to let him apprentice.”

“Yes,” Laurie agreed. “Because he’s a cranky old duffer who likes his tower rooms and the royal kitchens delivering his meals, and has no intention of stepping off and giving someone else a turn.”

Lucas opened his mouth to retort, but when he thought about it, he wasn’t so sure he had an argument. After all, the more Lucas thought about Cráwa’s assumed intentions, the more suspicious they seemed.

“If I may,” Slade put in, his hand out and his tone soft and reasonable, “I have had cause lately to question your Cráwa’s motives for several things. As I understand it, Tarcen served as translator when Prince Laurie’s great-grandmother came to my people to stop the rain. Was not Cráwa apprenticing with him then?” He paused to let the implications sink in. “We have always believed there must have been some misunderstanding in the translations, that your Queen was never privy to what was actually said, and if your Cráwa is aware of the circumstances…?” He left the rest hanging, but Lucas didn’t really need him to finish.

“And how did he know about Parry’s book?” Lucas wondered aloud.

“All of it was based on trickery,” Slade insisted, “which resulted in a terrible misunderstanding. One perpetuated by those who know better. There is no other explanation. Our people had always enjoyed a relationship quite beneficial to both worlds. Perhaps the split began with Booths Brinley, but Tarcen was, it would seem, a willing wedge.”

Which, Lucas had to admit, made Cráwa highly suspect—both in the instigation of the situation and the continuation of it.

“Yes, I’ve been wondering about that,” mused Alex. “‘A relationship beneficial to both worlds,’ you said. Apparently, we get gold and decent weather when we need it out of the deal.” He lifted an eyebrow. “What do you get?”

“Ah,” said Slade, and he blushed. “Well. You see.” He cleared his throat.

Laurie puffed a snort and patted Slade on the shoulder. “Besides mucking about with the weather whenever they want to, the Daimin can also choose the sex of their children before they’re conceived. Only problem is, it rather goes in waves, and they have yet to come up with the idea of checking with one another to keep a proper balance. Apparently, in Great-gran’dam’s time, they couldn’t get enough daughters.” He grinned at Slade. “Now they’ve rather overcompensated with sons.”

Lucas stared. He turned to Slade. And then he blinked. “You’ve run out of women.”

Slade coughed. “Well, not
run out
….”

“We are
sooooo
judging you right now,” Laurie told Slade with an unrepentant grin, which only made Slade blush harder.

“Oh my god,” Lucas marveled, “this really is a romance novel.”

“And once again, I’m sorry I asked,” Alex said to no one in particular.

Lucas stared some more. And then he shook his head. “Right. Let’s find this book, then, and see what we can do about keeping you.”

“You truly mean it?” Slade gripped Lucas’s arm, his face full of hope. “Master Tripp, there’s no way I can thank you.”

“Sure there is,” Lucas told him, and then he shook off Slade’s grip and headed toward the shelves stacked with Daimin lore. He looked back over his shoulder and lifted his eyebrows. “After you’ve safely wed Clara, I’ve still got three more marriageable sisters to go.”

“Two,” Alex corrected. “Tress and Anson will likely….” He trailed off when he caught Lucas’s glare.

“
Three
marriageable sisters,” Lucas repeated and started digging through the shelves.

“A
ND
yet again,” Alex sighed, “I have no idea what I’m looking at.” He flipped the pages of the book he’d been studying, his black fringe fluttering against his brow in the breeze he stirred. “Or for.” He shut the book and peered up at Lucas. “Hey, get down from there, what d’you think you’re doing, you’re going to fall and break your neck!”

Lucas merely reached… a little… farther…. “
Ha
! Got it.” He carefully slid the book from the shelf and let his feet settle more firmly on the top rung of the ladder. “Don’t worry, love,” he told Alex. “I do this all the time.”

“You should see him when he needs something from under the turret’s rafters,” Laurie offered helpfully. He glanced up from his own book as Lucas made his way down the ladder. He flicked a look up to the ceiling. “Could smash his skull from up there.”

“Oh good,” Alex grumbled. “
Put
ideas in my head.”

“Rafters are a good place to store scrolls,” Lucas said, mostly to himself.

“Doesn’t use the ladder to get up there, either,” Laurie went on. “He climbs right up the shelves with nothing more than—”

“Not helping!” Alex snapped. He turned to Lucas. “You don’t really do that, do you?” He rolled his eyes. “What am I saying? Of course you do.”

“This is all very interesting,” Slade said from his seat across the table from Laurie. He paged through Damases’s
The Book of Daimin and Their Magical Rituals
. “Wrong, but interesting.”

“Yes,” Lucas agreed quickly, glad for the change of subject. “It’s not meant to be used as a resource, merely as an example of bad scholarship.” He shook his head. “Damases was a bit of a twit, really. His research methods were disgraceful, and I think most of the time he pulled his conclusions right out of his—” He coughed. “Anyway, we’re not looking for an education right now. We’re only looking for those spells.”

“But—” Slade threw his hands up and shook his head at the book. “It says our skin is white as paper. And that our ears are pointed! I mean, it’s only been about a hundred and fifty years—surely we haven’t been wiped from your world so thoroughly that we’ve become nothing more than faerie stories!”

Lucas didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d hit it very nearly on the head. “Well, he also said our Green Warden is actually a do-gooder Daimin, so I wouldn’t—”