Found (14 page)

C
aptain Kerrn took me to the usual cell. Chair, table, damp walls, not much light.

The guards took my coat, then shoved me in and left; I heard the click of the lock after they slammed the door behind them.

Drats.

I sat down in the chair and
rested my arms on the table, then put my head down on my arms, tired and dizzy from dragon flight and from not eating for too long.

I needed to talk to Nevery, and to the other magisters. To Embre and Sparks, too, because they could help with the pyrotechnics. Most of all I needed to talk to the Wellmet magic. Desh’s magic wasn’t bad, and neither was the cave dragon. Why was Arhionvar different? Maybe our magic could tell me. It was gathering itself in the Dusk House pit. Maybe that’s where its lair had been, when it was a dragon. I had to get out of this cell and find Pip, and then get over to the Twilight.

Arhionvar wasn’t in Wellmet yet. The city’s magic felt unsettled, but I couldn’t sense the dread, cold feeling of Arhionvar, the feeling I’d had in the sorcerer-king’s fortress. It must be close, though.

After a while, Kerrn unlocked the door and came into the cell, followed by her bristle-bearded second. Farn, his name was; he was the guard who’d given
me phlister the first time Kerrn had caught me.

She stood staring down at me with her ice-chip eyes.

“I’m very hungry,” I said.

Kerrn glanced at Farn and gave him a sharp nod; he set the werelight lantern he was carrying on the floor, then left the cell. Going to get me something to eat, I hoped.

“Get up,” Kerrn said.

I stood up.

She reached around me, dragged the chair in front of the cell door, and sat down, leaving me standing before her.

Time for questions.

“No phlister?” I asked.

“Be quiet,” Kerrn said. “I ask the questions.”

“Kerrn, we don’t have time for this,” I said. “Arhionvar is coming. You know what that means—you were in Desh, and in the sorcerer-king’s fortress. I need to talk to Nevery and the other magisters, and to the duchess.”

Kerrn shook her head. “
I
ask.”

All right. I climbed onto the table and sat with my legs crossed.

Kerrn scowled. “What was that lizard?”

Lizard? Oh, Pip, she meant. “It’s a dragon.”

“It was thought that no dragons were left in the world.”

I shrugged. She’d seen the flame dragon well enough, when it’d landed in the courtyard.

The lantern flickered, reflecting bits of light from the water seeping down one of the cell walls.

“You are a thief,” Kerrn said quietly. “And a danger to the city.”

Maybe I was a thief. But I felt the city’s magic around me, warm, with a tingle of fright in it. “I’m a wizard, too, Kerrn,” I said.

Kerrn folded her arms and leaned back against the chair. “If you are a wizard, then where is your locus magicalicus?”

“Pip ate it,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows.

“The dragon,” I explained. “The dragon is my locus magicalicus.”

“A dragon cannot be a locus magicalicus.”

“Well, it is,” I said. It really was. Unless Pip could cough up the stone, which it would’ve done before now if it could, and unless I was willing to cut open the dragon to get at my stone, which I wasn’t, then Pip really was my locus magicalicus.

“You are not a wizard,” Kerrn said.

“I was always a wizard,” I said.

She shook her head. “You cannot be a wizard without a locus magicalicus.”

I knew what she was thinking.
Gutterboy
. And
thief
. “Kerrn, if you lost your sword, would you still be a guard?”

She didn’t answer. But she frowned, like she was thinking about it.

Then Farn came in with the food. Water, bean soup, and a piece of bread without any butter on it. With one last glare, Kerrn turned and walked out with Farn, slamming the door shut.

After eating, I fell asleep at the table with my head on my arms.

A hand on my shoulder woke me up.

“It is time,” Kerrn said.

I blinked and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, stiff from sleeping at the table. Time for what? For breakfast, I hoped. And then Nevery and I would have to convince the duchess and the magisters that Arhionvar was coming. I needed to find Pip, too. The faint call of my locus magicalicus pulled at me from off in the direction of the river.

Kerrn and Farn led me up the stairs and into the hallways of the Dawn Palace. We came to a double door; Kerrn opened it and poked her head in. “Are you ready?” she asked somebody inside.

“Wait a moment,” said a voice. It sounded like Nimble.

Kerrn closed the door and stood beside me with her hands clasped behind her back.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Hearing room,” Kerrn said, staring at the closed door.

Good. I could tell what I knew, and whoever was in there would hear it. I straightened my black sweater and with my fingers combed the hair out of my eyes. They were more likely to listen if I didn’t look too scruffy.

“Is Nevery coming?” I asked.

Kerrn shook her head. “He is not. He was arrested last night and imprisoned. He is likely to be exiled from the city.”

Well, once they heard what I’d learned about Arhionvar, they’d know we needed Nevery to stay here. And if I knew Nevery, he wasn’t in the cell they’d put him in. I’d taught him how to pick a lock and get himself out.

The hearing room doors opened and we went in.

The room was long and had a polished stone floor that sent the sound of our footsteps echoing off the walls. The ceiling was high, held up by stone pillars carved like tree trunks, for Rowan’s
family, I guessed, the Forestals.

At the other end was a wide table, where the magisters sat staring as we crossed the room.

Another clump of chairs was set off to the side; some city councilors and rich merchants and other wizards sat there. As we came closer, they shot quick glances at us, whispering. More palace guards stood along the walls. The duchess wasn’t there. I didn’t see Rowan, either. A little twist of worry tightened in my stomach. Rowan needed to be here.

With a hand on my shoulder, Kerrn stopped me before the magisters’ table. The magisters examined me.

Bat-faced Nimble sat in the center chair looking red-nosed and cranky. After giving me a good glare, he glanced down at some papers piled on the table before him. Also at the table was Brumbee, looking worried, and Trammel, sharp and sour as always, and Periwinkle, and the keen Sandera, all the magisters of the city. Except for Nevery.

I glanced over at the clump of chairs. Argent
was there, dressed up in his fanciest clothes. “Hello, Argent,” I said, my voice echoey and loud in the silence.

Argent didn’t answer, just gave me a wide-eyed look. Not his usual down-the-nose sneer. The last time I’d seen him, he’d tied me to a tree. Maybe he’d thought I was dead. He probably wished I was.

At the table, Nimble cleared his throat. “We shall begin.” He nodded at Kerrn. “Captain, we’ll need phlister for the prisoner.”

The prisoner. That was me. “I don’t need any phlister,” I said.

“We want the truth,” Nimble said. “Get phlister.”

“I won’t lie,” I said.

“If I might interrupt,” Brumbee said, from the row of magisters, “I—ah—have never known Conn to lie; he has always been truthful. Rather alarmingly so, I should say.”

“Oh, very well,” Nimble said, wiping his red nose with a handkerchief. “We can dispense with the phlister.” He turned to me again. “Who do you name to speak for you?”

“I can speak for myself,” I said. Nobody knew as much about Arhionvar as I did; it didn’t make sense to have somebody else speak for me.

At the table, Brumbee whispered something to Periwinkle, who shook her head.

Nimble sniffed. “Very well. We will begin. Do you, Connwaer, admit to collecting pyrotechnic materials, including”—he took a piece of paper from the table and glanced at it—“magnetic rust, atriomated water, and blackpowder?” He handed the list back. “Possession of which is against the law of the city?”

Oh, so they wanted to talk about the pyrotechnics first, and then we’d get to Arhionvar. “Yes,” I said.

“So noted,” Nimble said with a nod. “You admit to breaking into the academicos in order to use a room there to conduct a pyrotechnic experiment?”

“Yes,” I said. No point in denying it; Brumbee had seen me.

“So noted,” Nimble said in his dry, high voice.

He was about to say more when the double doors
at the other end of the room burst open and crashed against the walls. I whirled ’round to see. Roaring, Benet bulled into the hearing room. He had a guard hanging on each arm and another leaping on him from behind.

He flung one of the guards off and pulled his truncheon out of his belt and slammed it into another guard’s face; she went down with blood spraying from her nose. Benet caught sight of me and headed across the room.

The magisters at the table jumped up, shouting.

“Guards!” Kerrn ordered.

The guards stationed around the hearing room were already moving, drawing their swords.

“No!” I shouted, starting toward Benet. Farn grabbed my arm and held it tight. “Kerrn, no!”

Kerrn glanced at me.

“No swords!” I said to her.

She gave me a quick nod and, shouting orders at her guards, ran across the room.

Benet gave a roar that echoed off the walls and
swung his truncheon, but two more guards grabbed his arm and another snaked an arm around his neck.

“Benet!” I shouted.

He shook his head like a bear, sending a guard flying, and caught sight of me. “Get out of here, you!” he bellowed.

Then the rest of the guards were on him. They wrestled him to the floor, two to each arm and leg, and he was dragged out, struggling. Other guards helped up the guard with the broken nose and took her out, leaving only a patch of blood on the stone floor.

Kerrn closed the door, shutting out the sound of guards fighting with Benet in the hall.

Farn let me go; my arm hurt where he’d been holding me. My breath came fast. Benet wanted me out of here. He’d come in just to tell me that, and gotten himself into trouble for it. What was going on, exactly?

At the magisters’ table, Nimble cleared his throat.
“Well. Thank you for dealing with that disturbance, Captain.”

Kerrn, coming to stand beside me again, nodded.

Nimble glanced down at his notes.

My hands were shaking. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling shivery cold.

“Ah,” Nimble said. “We left off here. Did you do the pyrotechnic spell?”

They already knew I’d done it. I nodded.

“Answer aloud,” Nimble said.

“Yes.” My voice shook. “I did the finding spell.”

At the table, Brumbee put his head in his hands; beside him, Trammel looked angry, and Periwinkle gazed down at the table.

“And your master, Magister Nevery Flinglas, assisted you?”

I stared back at Nimble. I wasn’t going to answer that question at all.

“You refuse to answer?”

“You’re not asking the right questions,” I said.

Beside me, Kerrn took a sharp breath. I glanced
aside at her. She was thinking of the time I’d been caught stealing my locus stone from the duchess and she’d given me phlister and asked all the wrong questions.

“Well, he’s not,” I said to her.

She frowned and shook her head.

I looked back at Nimble, then along the line of magisters at the table. “You should be asking about Arhionvar.”

“We have looked into the question of Arhionvar,” Nimble said primly. “Arhionvar was a city far to the south in the Fierce Mountains, but it was destroyed many years ago. There is no other Arhionvar than that.”

“Yes there is,” I said. “Nimble, there was magic in the city of Arhionvar, wasn’t there? D’you think it just disappeared when the city did? Arhionvar is a magical being, and it is coming. It’ll be here very soon.” I looked around at the other magisters, willing them to understand. “Arhionvar isn’t like our magic. It won’t protect us. We saw what
it did to Desh. It’ll do the same thing here, if we let it.”

“The magic is not some kind of being!” Nimble said loudly.

“We have to figure out what to do once it gets here,” I said. “Nevery and I have a plan.” They weren’t going to like the part of the plan that had pyrotechnics in it. Or the part where the magic had once been a dragon.

“Be silent,” Nimble ordered. “Your delusions about magic have no bearing on this trial.”

Trial? What did he mean,
trial
?

“It is quite clear,” Nimble said. “The accused has readily admitted his crimes. I see no reason not to proceed with the execution.”

With the
what
? “Kerrn, what is he talking about?” I asked.

Kerrn glared at me, her gray-blue eyes like ice in her pale face. “You should not have returned to Wellmet.”

I stared at her. When I spoke, my lips felt stiff.
“But I had to come back. Kerrn, what execution is he talking about?”

“The sentence for return from exile is death by hanging,” she said flatly. “To be carried out immediately.”