Mabix squeezed past Lyra and Collins in the doorway, picked up the cushion, and pointed into the seat. "You can store your gear here."
Where? Collins followed Mabix and examined the chair. He saw a hole where his backside would usually go, creating a good-sized hollow that ended with a thick wooden bottom. Clearly, it served as a neat storage area as well as a piece of furniture once the cushion was balanced on top of the opening. About to say something about the cleverness of its inventor, Collins held his tongue instead. For all he knew, everyone had these in their homes.
Mabix noticed Collins studying the arrangement. "Convenient, huh?"
"Very." Collins let a bit of his respect seep into his tone.
Lyra added, "Craftsman who came up with that design won himself a permanent place on the king's staff.
Mabix bobbed his head. "A Random, too. On the king's staff. Can you believe it?"
"Wow," Collins replied, holding back a storm of questions he could never ask his Random companions. He swung the pack to the floor, feeling trapped. He had to leave it so Falima would have clothes and access to the makeup, but he hated to risk losing it. Suddenly, he realized he had no reason to hide that piece of information. "You know, I think I'd better put it back on…"He caught himself about to say "Falima." "… on Marlys. She gets cold easily and likes to dress as soon as possible." He had originally planned to say she felt uncomfortable naked among strangers but liked what came out of his mouth better. How do you like that? I can think on my feet. A less wholesome thought followed, Or am I just becoming a better liar? Winning over Korfius and Vernon had certainly given him plenty of practice.
Collins looked at the pack, as if noticing it for the first time. "She's due to switch pretty soon." He wondered if he had just made a crucial blunder. As partners, they ought to know one another's habits well enough that he would never have removed the pack in the first place.
But, if Lyra or Mabix thought the same way, neither revealed it. They headed back outside without another word or anything Collins would consider knowing glances. Falima grazed placidly among a small group of horses and one mule. As he reattached the pack, Collins found himself wondering about the long-earred animal. In his world, they came from breeding a donkey with a horse and were always sterile. He wondered how that applied here and how it affected the creature's human form.
Stop it! Collins blamed nervousness for his thoughts taking off in a trained but unhelpful direction. Focus! Casually, he poked a hand into his pocket, seized his watch, and glanced surreptitiously at it around folds of fabric. It now read 5:50 p.m., only ten minutes before Falima's switch. He needed to draw the guards away from her so she could have the privacy necessary to affect her disguise. "Now, about that tree I plan to eat…"
Mabix laughed, taking the hint. "I'll walk you to the dining hall. It's getting on toward dinner anyway, so you'll have a chance to meet a good bunch of the guards and staff."
Lyra made a throwaway gesture, and Mabix nodded. "She needs to return to her post." He took Collins' elbow, steering him toward the castle as Lyra headed back toward the gatehouses. "I'll have to get back myself, as soon as I've got you settled in. Can you do all right on your own?"
Still stuck on the realization that he would share the dining hall with a crowd, Collins forced a nod. "I'll do fine." He hoped he spoke truth. He was hungry, but he would have to feign starvation. So long as he had his mouth full, he would not have to answer questions. He only hoped dinner would not consist of a plateful of bugs as large as puppies. His mind conjured images of enormous beetles, crisply browned, legs stretched upward with turkey caps on all six drumsticks.
Mabix stopped suddenly, halfway down the courtyard path to the castle. "Didn't you say your partner would switch soon?"
The query put Collins on his guard, though it seemed foolish to lie. "Yes. Yes, I did."
"Won't she want to join us for dinner?"
Collins thought it best to leave Falima alone, at least for the change. "No," he said, fighting down an edge of terror. "No, she… she doesn't like to eat right after. The combination of rich food piled on a bellyful of grass." He wrinkled his features. "Bothers her."
"Interesting," Mabix said with the air of one who has found himself in the same situation many times but never had a similar experience. "But maybe it's different for us daytime humans. That's never bothered me."
"Me either," Collins agreed. "But it bothers her."
Mabix accepted that explanation, and Collins hoped he would not have to make up many more. The more implausibilities he forced them to consider, the more suspicious they would likely become. Though he enjoyed having a reasonably kindred soul, he was just as happy that Mabix would have to leave. Spreading his stories farther apart might make them harder to penetrate.
Mabix led Collins up the castle stairs, muddy with shoe and boot tracks, to the open door. Voices wafted through, a disharmonious hum of myriad conversations. Suspended by chains, a wooden cross-hatching hung overhead like the sword of Damocles. Collins' new knowledge of languages allowed him to give it a name, a raised portcullis. He had seen them before, in every swashbuckling movie that required a castle. Always, the heroes, from the Three Musketeers to Robin Hood dived beneath the closing grate at the last possible second, while guards' swords rattled futilely on the portcullis behind them. The very object meant to trap them saved them instead.
The door opened onto a spiral staircase that wound clockwise upward and also went downward. Cold funneled from the lower areas where Collins knew the dungeons and storerooms lay. Mabix took him up, past one landing with a set of doors opening on either side. Collins knew the right one led to the kitchens, the left to workshops. The noises grew louder as they continued their ascent, and Mabix stopped at the next set of doors. He opened the right one, revealing a vast dining hall, its grandeur surpassing Zylas' description. At the far end of the room, a smaller table stood on a dais. At it sat ten people in splendid silks and satins, their robes trimmed with gold lace-work or embroidery. The women wore nappy dresses and capes, the men fine tunics and sashes, doublets, and robes.
Three massive tables stretched between the door and the occupants of the dais, filled with people whose dress, demeanor, and appearance spanned a gamut that would once have seemed to Collins beyond possibility. Dogs of varying shapes and sizes wound freely around the diners or hovered beneath the tables. Tapestries and banners hung from every wall, their colors a rainbow mix of pattern and picture. Above them, cathedral-cut open windows revealed a balcony blocked by waist-high handrails. Men and women in matching aqua-and-white plaid looked down over the diners, clutching oddly shaped instruments and conferring with one another. "Impressive, isn't it?"
Mabix's description jarred Collins from his daze. He made no apology for staring. He was supposed to be an awestruck bumpkin. "Wow." It finally occurred to him to evaluate the food he had trapped himself into eating with gusto. He could not see what occupied the gold and silver platters of the head table, but the regular folk scooped a gloppy substance, with hands and spoons, from what appeared to be stale slices of bread that served as plates. Servants wove between the tables, refilling goblets, and plopping down fresh bowls of stew for the guests to ladle onto their bread plates.
"That's King Terrin at the head table," Mabix said, gesturing toward the central figure, a burly man with wheaten ringlets and a full beard." In order, that's the constable, the pantler, an adviser, the butler, the queen's steward, the prince, the queen, the king again, a princess, another princess, the king's steward, another adviser, the children's steward, the ewerer, and one more adviser."
The list came too fast for Collins to follow, but that did not matter. He did not intend to remain here long enough to care who he had seen and met.