“I’ll get you your jewelweed from the herbalist, right after breakfast,” Yara said. “You’ll stay here.”
Kilisha swallowed her half-formed protest and bowed her head. “Yes, Mistress,” she said.
And while she was waiting for the jewelweed, she told herself, maybe she would take another look through Ithanalin’s book of spells. Perhaps she might yet identify the brown goo. Or perhaps she might find an animation she could use to create a homunculus, as Yara had suggested.
Perhaps she could make a whole swarm of homunculi......
But no, she knew better than that. Animations were difficult, unreliable spells-that was why Ithanalin hadn’t taught her any yet, and why they were so expensive, and why the World wasn’t overrun with wooden servants, talking gargoyles, and self-pouring teapots.
She sighed.
“Eat,” Yara ordered, serving out the last of the salt ham, and Kilisha sat down at the table to eat her breakfast.
The meal was finished and Kilisha was clearing the plates when a thought struck her.
“We might be able to find a thread or a splinter or a flake of varnish from the couch,” she said.
“And what would that do?” Yara asked, as she wiped crumbs from Pirra’s face. “Do you know some divination you could use, then?”
“Not a divination,” Kilisha said. “Cauthen’s Remarkable Love Spell. The one I used on the rug.”
“No,” Yara said immediately.
“Why not? It worked, didn’t it?”
Yara scrubbed Pirra’s face vigorously before replying, “Do you know what that rug tried to do when I was locking it up? And there was the spoon, before that. They’re small enough that I can handle them, but I do not want an amorous sofa chasing me around the house, trying to lift my skirt or stroke my hair! No more love spells. None. Is that clear?”
“But it’s really-”
“I said no, Apprentice!” She flung the facecloth at the empty bucket by the door.
“Mistress, I-”
“ You, Apprentice, are a naive young virgin. I am a respectable married woman, and I am telling you that I do not want any more formerly inanimate objects enamored of me, because it’s weird, in ways you probably don’t understand. It makes my skin crawl. I’ve put up with a lot in twelve years of marriage to a wizard, but there arc limits. Nor do I want any portion of my husband’s soul to fall in love with anyone else. You will not use any more love spells on the couch or any of the other furniture. You won’t use them on anything except paying customers. Is that clear?”
Kilisha had never before seen Yara direct this sort of speech at anyone except her children, but she knew better than to argue further. “Yes, Mistress,” she said, as meekly as she could.
“Good. Now, why don’t you check on your master, and then start practicing the spell to restore him?”
“I need jewelweed, Mistress.”
“I’ll go get it. Find something useful to do until I get back.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Kilisha clasped her hands behind her back and stared at the floor.
A thought struck Yara. “Actually, you can watch the children. I’ll be quicker without them.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
A few minutes later Yara had left, bound for the nearest herbalist-which would probably be old Urrel, in the little shop on the corner of Arena Street, Kilisha thought. Yara had partially relented on demanding Kilisha care for the children; she was taking Pirra with her, but Telleth and Lirrin were still upstairs.
Kilisha came back down the stairs after ensuring that her two charges were safe, then wandered into the workshop to check on things there.
Ithanalin had not moved, of course, and the sheet was still in place, but crooked; she straightened it.
The boxes holding the dish, spoon, and rug were still where they belonged, and still locked.
The goo in the brass bowl was still simmering, but looking far less gooey, as most of the moisture had cooked out of it; she checked the oil in the lamp and added another cup. The concoction was beginning to smell somewhat foul, like sour wine, but it didn’t seem to be doing anything dangerous.
She looked into the parlor, where the chair and the table were having a shoving match. “Stop that!” she barked.
They ignored her. She marched in and pulled them apart, whereupon the table ran to the far end of its tether and stood by the back wall, turning back and forth, while the chair rocked side to side in what looked like a dance of triumph. The ropes that connected them all to the line in the chimney had gotten somewhat tangled, but Kilisha decided it was not worth trying to separate them; the furniture would undoubtedly just tangle them up again.
She hoped none of the furnishings managed to damage each other; that might complicate the restoration spell.
She glanced at the mirror over the mantel, then crossed the room, stepping carefully over the ropes, and asked, “Are you all right?”
I AM AS WELL AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED, it replied.
“Have you remembered what that is cooking in the workshop?”
NO.
“Do you have any idea where the couch might have gone? We have all the other pieces.”
NO.
Kilisha wondered whether the mirror might have some link to the other objects that it was not even aware of. “Did you know part of Ithanalin wound up in the spriggan?” she asked.
NOT UNTIL YOU SAID SO YESTERDAY.
Well, that would seem to indicate that no link existed. She turned away and looked at the furniture-and a thought struck her.
“Where is the spriggan?”
She hardly spared a glance for the mirror’s I DO NOT KNOW as she dashed for the door.
Chapter Twenty-one
The front door was, to her relief, still locked-but that did not necessarily mean very much with the latch animated. The spriggan might well have escaped into the street, and the latch could have locked itself afterward.
Kilisha opened the door and leaned out, and saw only the normal morning traffic of Wizard Street; no spriggans were anywhere to be seen. She closed the door again, locked it, then hurried to the workshop.
The spriggan was nowhere in sight-but there were dozens of nooks and crannies among the shelves and drawers and clutter where it might have hidden. She peered into the most obvious openings without locating the creature.
Then she heard a thump overhead, and a faint sound that might have been a child’s giggle-or a spriggan. She turned and ran for the kitchen stairs.
The dim drawing room at the top of the stair was empty, but she heard thumping and laughter from the front of the house; she hurried into the sunlit day nursery and found Telleth and Lirrin chasing a spriggan back and forth across the toy-crowded Sardironese carpet.
“Stop!” she shouted.
Telleth and Lirrin skidded to a stop and turned to look at her; the spriggan kept running and giggling, bounced off the far wall, then glanced over its shoulder and realized its pursuers were no longer pursuing. It stopped, too.
“Chase?” it said.
Kilisha glared at it.
It was the right spriggan, anyway-the face and voice were familiar. She had been worried for a moment.
“Is something wrong?” Telleth asked.
Kilisha started an angry reply, then stopped.
Really, was anything wrong? So the spriggan had come upstairs to play with the children; where was the harm in that? If anything, it would keep the little pest out of her way.
And Ithanalin had played with his children sometimes; he hadn’t been as aloof as Kilisha’s own father. The bit of his spirit trapped in the spriggan was probably enjoying this foolishness.