Anton knew Mother Northwind had done something terrible to him the first time they met, and he knew Brenna thought Lord Falk wanted Mother Northwind to do something more terrible yet, but though he was getting better at accepting the impossible things he saw everywhere around him in this strange country, the notion that someone could reach inside his brain and change everything he believed was so far outside his experience that he couldn’t take the threat as seriously as Brenna obviously wanted him to.
Like her, he had been shocked when High Raven handed them over to the Commoners who had come north to return them to Mother Northwind, but he understood Minik culture better than Brenna and knew that High Raven literally had no choice: Mother Northwind was obviously considered a member of the clan for all she had done for them years earlier, and the request of a clan member would always outweigh the needs or desires of someone outside the clan-another Minik, even, let alone Minik-na.
The ride south on the dogsled had been unpleasantly cold, and the sleds on the ice had made too much noise for easy talking-not that the men who had taken them showed much interest in playing tour guide, and Brenna had no more been to this part of the Kingdom than he had-but even without knowing what he was seeing, he had found it fascinating, watching the changing shoreline to his left and the unchanging ice to his right: not for the scenery, which after all wasn’t much, but simply because he knew he was the first person from the Union Republic to see it. The Professor would have loved this, he thought sadly.
The sudden violence on the shoreline horrified him as it had Brenna, but maybe not quite as much-it had been a while, but he was not exactly a virgin when it came to violence. You didn’t live as long as he had on the streets of Hexton Down without seeing things that Brenna had no concept of in her sheltered existence. It was so obviously terrifying for her, though, that almost without thinking he drew her to him for comfort-and was inordinately pleased when she returned the embrace.
But then had come her cryptic warning about the men who had been killed being Mother Northwind’s, and the men who had killed them being Falk’s, even though Falk and Mother Northwind were supposed to be allies in a plan to bring down the Anomaly…
Anton was way out of his depth. He didn’t know enough about, well, anything to guess who could be an ally and who an enemy. And since that hurried exchange in the blood-soaked camp, he had not even been able to talk to Brenna.
The carriage they had climbed aboard near the village of Foam River had its windows sealed against prying eyes, and so Anton had seen nothing of their approach to New Cabora. Now he heard the rumble of wheels on dirt change to the clatter of wheels on cobblestones, and felt the accompanying change in motion. He smelled smells he knew from cities back home, horses-lots of horses-wood smoke, coal smoke, outhouses and bakeries, frying meat and rotting meat, sweat and sweets, a cacophony of odors that suddenly made him feel homesick for the crowded, dirty streets where he had grown up.
There was something different about the sound that made him think they were crossing a bridge, and then…
The smells changed. From city to country, and even more astonishingly, from the cold, harsh smells of winter to the warm, soft smells of spring: water, and marshland, green growing things, flowers.
At the same time, he realized it was warming up. Not just a little, either, but a lot. In moments he felt far too warm in his heavy winter clothing.
And then they rolled to a halt, and an armed man in a blue uniform, wearing a silver breastplate and helmet, opened the door to the carriage, and Anton stepped out into a whole new world.
It had been cloudy when they’d been loaded on the carriage, and looking up, he could still see the clouds, but they were behind the sun, or, he supposed, some magical facsimile thereof, a brilliant beacon that cast bright sparkles off the lake he was facing and brought the greens and reds and yellows and purples and whites of the ornamental garden that stretched between him and the lake into vibrant, glowing life.
Beyond the lake… snow. And, shimmering strangely as though seen through heat haze, though surely it wasn’t that warm, the city of New Cabora, stone buildings black from burning coal, smoke rising from a thousand fires… a proper city. A real city. Almost like home.
His new guard pulled him around the corner of the carriage, and he stared up in awe. Unlike this!
Stretching more than a hundred yards in both directions from the central block, itself at least a hundred feet wide, a palace glowed in the false sunlight. Sheathed in white limestone, four stories high on each wing, with six stories on the central block and a giant dome above that, it wasn’t the largest building he’d ever seen-the railrunner station in Hexton Down was probably bigger-but it was easily the most beautiful.
Again, he wished he could have asked Brenna about it, but though she was not far away, their paths were already diverging. She, too, had a blue-uniformed guard, who was handing her over to two women, servants by the look of them. He only had time to exchange the briefest glance with her (and not a very meaningful one, at that) before she was taken away, once more the ward of Lord Falk, and Anton was taken in the opposite direction to… what?
A cell, it turned out. In the same cell where, though Anton didn’t know it, Davydd Verdsmitt had sat just three days earlier, he sat on the bed, stared at the wall, and waited for Lord Falk to decide his fate.
I hope, he thought, that at least he takes good care of the airship.
Brenna’s quarters were more palatial than, but every bit as much a prison as, Anton’s cell. As usual when she came to the Palace, she was placed in a guest suite next to Lord Falk’s apartment, with a luxurious four-poster bed, a bathroom with hot and cold running water, a toilet with a constant stream of water running through it to whisk away any waste, a sumptuously furnished private living/dining room with an enormous fireplace and ceiling-high windows overlooking the lake…
… and a few things that had not been there on her previous visits: a magical lock on the door and windows, two Royal guards outside the door, and a maidservant named Hilary whose nervous demeanor made it clear to Brenna she had stringent instructions from Falk to keep an eye on her as well as help her dress and bathe.
Brenna never would have believed it, but she thought she would have preferred a mageservant. She had asked another maid about the lack of mageservants in the Palace on her first visit, when she was just ten years old, and the girl had explained that most MageLords didn’t like them. “They prefer to hire Commoners,” the girl had said. ‘They’re everywhere, might as well make use of them’ is what my previous employer said to me once.”
Remembering that now, Brenna thought how much of the MageLords’ contemptuous attitude toward Commoners-Commoners like me!-was summed up in that phrase. And she knew well enough that there were some MageLords who treated their human servants with exactly the same amount of respect they would show to a mageservant-none.
With no indication of when, or if, she might be summoned to talk to Falk, or he might come to talk to her-though surely that would happen-and unable to leave her prison, she decided to make the most of it and do something for which she’d been pining for days:
She took a long, hot bath.
Lord Falk kept his fury at Prince Karl’s public insolence tamped down well beneath the icy crust of his exterior as he showed the members of the Council out one by one. It doesn’t matter what the brat thinks or says, he reminded himself. Everything is in hand.
It galled him, all the same. Tonight had been intended as his opportunity to reinforce in the Councillors’ eyes just how effective and, indeed, dangerous a Minister of Public Safety he was; to remind them who was the real power in this kingdom. After all, in the course of a few days he’d defused a Commons rebellion, rescued his ward, found out who was responsible for the attempt on Prince Karl’s life, and returned the Prince to his rightful place in the Palace.
The Prince- the false Prince, Falk thought savagely-had taken some of the bloom off of that rose-but again, it didn’t matter. Because the accomplishments the Councillors did not know about were even greater. He had also lucked into information about the outside world, retrieved an amazing flying device, and finally put all the pieces together for the great moment when he would seize control of the Keys for himself.
Soon now, he told himself as he smiled at Athol and sent the Prime Adviser on his way, the wrong done to my family will be righted, and I will return the Kingship to our line. And I will be a King such as Evrenfels has never had, freeing us from our self-imposed prison, eventually reclaiming the Old Kingdom stolen from us by Commoners.
Commoners. They would fall in line. They had no choice. He had decapitated their precious Common Cause. Their attempt at sabotaging the MageFurnace had been futile (even the coup of killing the First Mage had ultimately meant nothing), and he had already demonstrated to them, as should have been done long since, what it really meant to defy the MageLords: that what they claimed was oppression and exploitation was nothing compared to what could be done to them if the MageLords chose to do it.
Not bad for a few days’ work, he thought. Not bad at all.
Prince Karl had been the first to retire, as protocol demanded, and Falk had promised to come to his quarters later to provide him with a full briefing of everything that had happened in his absence. It doesn’t matter, he told himself again. It costs nothing to keep him thinking he’s really the Heir for the short time he has left, and if it keeps him placated, it’s worth the effort.
However humiliating it felt.
The other Councillors had left one by one after Karl’s departure, most congratulating Falk on his success in finding the Prince and his ward, and hoping that Brenna would soon be up to social calls so that they could renew her acquaintance. Falk was polite but noncommittal on that point.
Finally, only Mother Northwind was left, ostensibly remaining behind to ease the pain of a strained shoulder “suffered pulling poor Tagaza from the Spellchamber,” Falk said, which earned him, he hoped, at least a couple of sympathy points from the one or two Councillors who had actually liked Tagaza.
Mother Northwind had gotten up from her chair while he was saying his farewells, and was staring into the fire when he returned. He studied her, wondering what her reaction would be to the evening’s events. She had obviously known nothing about either Brenna or Karl being found, for all her vaunted connections among the Commoners. If their relationship were the chess game it sometimes felt like, he had just stolen a piece.
But when she turned to face him, she was smiling. “Well, my lord. That was a pleasant surprise, without a doubt. I’d made up my mind the whole lot of them was gone for good: Brenna, the Prince, and Anton. However did you find them?”
“Just luck,” Falk said. “A Mountie spotted Brenna and Anton on the ice of the Great Lake, riding dogsleds, no less. Seems they fell in with some savages who sold them to the Common Cause, probably for a handful of beads. He mounted a rescue.”
“What happened to the Commoners?”
“All dead,” Falk said. “Just the way I like them when they’ve been involved with something like this. It’s amazing how much less trouble dead Commoners cause me than live ones.”
Mother Northwind turned her head suddenly toward the fire. “Then I suppose the same is true of the Commoners who held the Prince.”
Falk shrugged. “Most of them. One or two escaped. But as I said, we do have the woman who calls herself Goodwife Beth. She’s in a cell awaiting my interrogation.”
“Hmmm.” Mother Northwind picked up the poker and stirred the coals of the fire. They flared briefly, but the wood was long gone and they quickly settled back to a red glow. “She may be quite high up in the Common Cause,” she said, as if thinking out loud. “Perhaps…” She looked up at him again. “Lord Falk, I feel badly for failing with Tagaza. Perhaps I can help with this woman’s interrogation.”
“I can get information on my own, Mother Northwind,” Falk said softly. “As I believe the presence of the Prince, Brenna, and Anton in the Palace tonight demonstrates.”
“I never said you couldn’t,” Mother Northwind said, voice cheerful. “Always said you were the best at what you do. But there are some kinds of information it takes a long time to get out of people your way. Like the other leaders of the Common Cause. Verdsmitt and Tagaza were the Patrons, sure enough, but just because you have the one and the other is dead, it doesn’t mean the whole Cause will collapse. There will be other leaders. They’ll be trying to regroup. Seems to me a true believer in the Common Cause like this Beth woman could stand quite a lot of your kind of interrogation before giving away that list of names. But if I were to go in there, give her an ‘examination,’ just to be sure she hasn’t been injured…”
“You can come out with the information within a couple of hours,” Falk finished for her. He felt an odd reluctance to take her up on her offer, but that made no sense. He knew what she could do- had done-for him. And certainly today he had reestablished his independence-and preeminence. Maybe this was her way of reassuring herself, and convincing him, that he still needed her.
He could afford to be magnanimous, he decided. He had made his point.
“Very well,” he said. “Please ‘examine’ her at your convenience. And then… there’s still the matter of Anton.”
“You still want him…” Mother Northwind smiled. “… Verdsmitted?”
Falk barked a laugh. “Ha! Verdsmitted. I like that. Yes, I think I do. But for a different reason than before. Now that we know this airship of his can fly, I’ve got a better idea for using him. I want to send him to the Outside as my emissary.”
“Isn’t the sending of emissaries usually the prerogative of Kings?” Mother Northwind said, her voice dry.
“Which I will be by the time he returns,” said Falk, shrugging. “I’m only jumping the flag a little bit.”
“And what message will you send with this emissary of yours?”
Falk spread his hands. “That we are a peaceful people, that we mean no harm to anyone, that we look forward to a long and profitable trade relationship as equal partners… that sort of thing. I want them absolutely convinced that we are no threat to them…”
“Until you prove it otherwise.”
“Exactly. Think of it as softening up the battle space.”
“And magic? What will he say of that?”
“Magic?” Falk gave her a blank look. “There’s no such thing as magic. The Great Barrier is a natural phenomenon our ancestors were unfortunate enough to be caught on the wrong side of, but our extensive studies of it over the years have convinced us it is weakening and will soon collapse altogether.”
Mother Northwind laughed. “Clever, Lord Falk. One might even call it, if one were a wholehearted believer in the myths surrounding the SkyMage, diabolical.”
Falk felt a flash of anger at that, and then another flash of anger at himself for letting her get to him so easily. She’s trying to regain lost ground in our little power struggle, he thought. And so though he was on the verge of snapping at her, he instead limited himself to a mild, “I’m not the Dark One, Mother Northwind. Not even a minor demon.”
“Not sure the Commoners would agree with you,” Mother Northwind said, “but as they say, if you have to choose between being feared and being loved, it’s always better to go with being feared.”
“In any event,” Falk said, seizing firm control of the conversation again (he hoped), “the sooner you sway young Anton fully to my side, the better. I’d like to send him Outside as soon as possible.”
“ Is it possible?” Mother Northwind said. “The airshipthing has so far traveled only with the wind, and the wind will take it east, not west.”
“It is possible,” Falk said. “By the boy’s own testimony. We need only provide the right kind of fuel for the… engine, I think he called it… and that burner-thing. Once he is twisted to my ends, he will be able to tell me how to find or create this fuel.” Time for a little dig. “You can still do it, can’t you? Attempting to heal Tagaza seemed to take an awful lot out of-”
“I can still do it,” Mother Northwind snapped, and Falk smiled inwardly. “In fact, I’ll do it right after I examine this Goodwife Beth person. That way I don’t have to drag my poor old-woman’s knees down those stairs to your damnable dungeon twice.”
“We don’t call it a dungeon, Mother Northwind,” Falk said. “We call it the Center for Extended Detention.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Mother Northwind. She had hung her cane from the back of a chair while she poked at the fire; now she turned and picked it up. “Now, if there’s nothing else, my lord, I am getting increasingly anxious to see my bed…”
“One more thing,” Falk said. “Brenna.”
Mother Northwind sighed. “You want me to interrogate her for you, too?”
Falk laughed. “Of course not. She’s been a pawn in all of this; my pawn, admittedly, then Anton’s, to help him escape-he took advantage of her more ways than one, I’d wager. She’d have no knowledge of any interest to me, unless one of my human servants has been stealing silverware. And there is still the risk that any… manipulations. .. of her by you could disrupt her status as Heir.”
“Then why do you mention her?”
“You know why.” Falk’s eyes bore into Mother Northwind’s. “Everything is in place, Mother Northwind. My man is in position within King Kravon’s inner circle. I have Brenna. The mage who will replace Tagaza in carrying out the spell of transference is standing ready in Berriton-we’ll collect him on our way to the Cauldron. So now I ask you, as one who has been involved in this great Plan from the very beginning, as one who in large part made it possible, by switching the Heir with our fake Princeling at birth, as one who has, in your own way, worked as hard toward its success as I have: is there any reason of which you are aware that I should not proceed?”
Mother Northwind was silent for a long moment. “This man of yours, in place to kill the King,” she said. “You trust him?”
“As much as any man can trust another, yes,” Falk said. “He has aged parents. They are currently living in a cottage on my demesne, under the protection of my men-at-arms.”
“Even so,” Mother Northwind said. “If there is a weak link in your plan, surely it is there, in this Commoner… I presume he’s a Commoner?”
“Of course. Mageborn must account for their presence. Commoners. .. who notices the servants? And in any event, the King is well protected against magic. The assassination must be done by physical means.”
“Well. This Commoner. You cannot know if he has what it takes to strike down the King in cold blood until he does so.”
“If he does not, he knows what will happen,” Falk growled.
“But when the moment comes to strike the necessary blow, he may still falter. I would feel better if you would let me examine him-make sure he is the man for the job.”
Now that, Falk thought, is an excellent idea. “Please do, Mother Northwind. I should have thought of it myself. I confess I, too, would rest easier knowing our assassin is absolutely reliable.”
“So,” said Mother Northwind. “Three ‘examinations’ I must perform, not to mention this problem with your sprained shoulder.” She sidled closer. “If you’d just let me take a look at it, I’m sure-”
Falk, trying not to look as though he were in a hurry, stepped back. “Thank you, but I find it much improved.”
“It’s a miracle,” Mother Northwind said. “Praise the SkyMage!” She laughed. “I’ll show myself out.”
And after she was gone, Falk once more thought, That went well…
… although as always, after he’d spoken to Mother Northwind, his confidence was seasoned with the tiniest dash of doubt.