“But they didn’t assassinate him, did they? They spectacularly failed to assassinate him. You claimed it was incompetence on the part of the mage who crafted the weapons. But no one could be that incompetent. I believe rather than a sign of incompetence, it is a sign of great competence, by a master mage who knew exactly what he was doing, whose goal was not to kill the Prince but to disrupt plans involving the Prince… my plans. My Plan.
“And then the ‘kidnapping.’ The Prince left his room on his own, took a boat, rowed it across the lake, and exited the Lesser Barrier in the company of unknown Commoners. Almost as if it weren’t a kidnapping at all. Almost as if the Prince had been told to flee… by someone who knew what was about to happen.” Falk took another step closer, staring down at Tagaza with cold fury. “Confess, Tagaza. Confess willingly, or when Mother Northwind gets here, you will confess unwillingly.”
Tagaza held himself very still, eyes searching Falk’s face. And then, to Falk’s surprise… and fury… he had the gall to smile. “Bring her,” he said softly. “Bring your pet mindreader, Falk. I welcome her to look inside my mind. In fact,” his voice grew stronger, “I demand it. I have nothing to hide! ”
“Nothing?” Falk said. “You will have no control over what she gleans from your mind, Tagaza. Do not think that, because you are First Mage, you can stand against her. I have seen her work. You may be a master of hard magic, but she is the master of soft. You will not be able to keep anything hidden from her, Tagaza. Anything. Even if you are innocent of my specific accusations, is there nothing you are guilty of? Is there nothing hidden away in your head that you do not want known by me?”
And still the First Mage didn’t quail. He met Falk’s gaze and said, firmly and clearly, “Nothing.”
Falk’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t expected that; hadn’t expected Tagaza to remain so constant in denial when faced with the threat of Mother Northwind rummaging through his memories. For the first time he doubted his suspicion. Well, he thought, if this is more than simple bravado, there’s an easy way for him to prove it.
“If that is true,” he said, “and if you still support the Plan.. . there is a way for you to demonstrate that.”
Tagaza turned his head a little to one side and his eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Find Brenna.”
Tagaza’s eyes shot wide. “Find her? But-”
“She has fled the manor. Use the spell that finds the Heir. Tell me where she is.”
Tagaza looked thoughtful. “Even if I do… you still won’t have Karl.”
“I can manage without him if I must,” Falk said. “This close to the end, he’s almost superfluous. Of course I must continue my aggressive search for him-to remind the Commoners of their proper place, if nothing else-but I am willing to consider the possibility you are telling the truth about not being involved in his disappearance- if you find Brenna for me.”
“I’ll be sentencing her to death,” Tagaza said.
“You sentenced her to death when you crafted the spell to bring down the Barriers,” Falk said harshly.
Tagaza nodded slowly. He stared at the floor for a moment, as if thinking, then raised his head again, met Falk’s gaze, and said, “I will find her. Whatever you may think, Falk, I have never betrayed you. The Barriers must fall. Our reasons for wanting that have always differed. But we still share that goal.” His eyes narrowed. “I had thought perhaps we shared a friendship as well,” he said softly. “I see I was wrong.”
“I don’t need friends,” Falk said, steel in his voice. “All I need are results.” He went to the door, unlocked it, went out, then turned to face Tagaza through it. “I will send for you when I’m ready. Find Brenna, and you will be a free man again… and I will keep Mother Northwind out of your mind.”
“I eagerly await your summons, Lord Falk,” Tagaza said, and his voice was as cold as the air in the hallway.
Falk closed the cell door, locked it, and strode away.
In the cell across from Tagaza’s, the man called Davydd Verdsmitt sat quietly. He was not supposed to be able to hear anything from inside his magically soundproofed cell, certainly not supposed to be able to hear a conversation carried on inside another magically soundproofed cell… but Davydd Verdsmitt had a great many capabilities he was not supposed to have, and he heard every word.
When Falk had left, he opened his eyes and frowned. His entire purpose in getting arrested had been to position himself inside the Palace, ready to strike when the moment came. But that moment would not come until Brenna was also in the Palace. He had expected Falk to bring her within a day or two. If she were missing…
Verdsmitt believed deeply in what he had been sent into the Palace to do, both for noble reasons-he truly did want to see the MageLords overthrown, the Barrier cast down, and the Commoners free at last to choose their own destiny-and for far more personal ones. But he would not throw his life away. If Mother Northwind’s plan failed, the Common Cause would still need his peculiar skills.
He would wait, he decided, but not indefinitely. He had always had in the back of his mind a secondary plan, one that would not accomplish the great goal of destroying the MageLord’s rule, but one that would certainly create havoc enough. If Brenna could not be found, he could still strike hard at the MageLords-one MageLord in particular-and live to carry on the struggle in some other way.
He lay down on his bed again and closed his eyes. Anyone looking in would have thought he was asleep. In reality, he was writing the first act of a new play, though he had to admit the odds were stacked against it ever being performed.
It didn’t matter. Davydd Verdsmitt was not his real name, and very little else that everyone thought they knew about him was real, either, but one thing was absolutely true: Verdsmitt was a writer, and a damn good one.
And a good writer never lightly passed over any opportunity to work for a long period of time without interruption.
By the time the guards came to Mother Northwind’s door, she was ready for them.
She had known, of course, almost as soon as it happened, that Brenna had fled the manor with the boy from Outside. Why she had chosen to run, Mother Northwind didn’t know. She had never been inside Brenna’s mind, something which suddenly seemed an incredible oversight: why hadn’t she insisted, why hadn’t Falk insisted, that she make the changes in the girl’s mind that would have rendered her absolutely compliant to Falk’s wishes?
Because she always seemed compliant without that, Mother Northwind told herself angrily. Because she was only a little girl. Because I’m a senile old fool and Falk is an idiot. Because…
She took a deep, calming breath.
And also, she reminded herself, because there seemed a risk, however slight, that such manipulation might sever the link between Brenna and the Keys, rendering her an ordinary girl, and not the Heir at all.
She reached inside her own mind to cleanse it of the useless anger aimed at herself, while holding onto the core of cold fury that she had lovingly maintained like a prize rosebush, one with very long thorns, since the long-ago day she watched the MageLords massacre the Minik men, women, and children she had grown to love.
Little girls like Brenna, she thought. And that was another reason she’d never tried to manipulate Brenna’s mind. Even though she knew Brenna’s life was forfeit to the need to destroy the Barriers, she’d wanted her to at least have her childhood to enjoy, unlike the little Minik girls the Mageborn raped and slaughtered.
The scullery maid who had run all the way from Falk’s manor to tell her of Brenna’s escape had quailed before her fury that morning, when for a moment it had slipped through the kindly mask Mother Northwind perpetually wore. But she had hidden it at once, and reassured the poor girl that she had done the right thing. Then she had asked after the maid’s invalid father, whose heart Mother Northwind had kept going far longer than it would have without her ministrations, and her pregnant sister, and had soon had the girl calmed down and smiling.