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Chapter 4: Roads and Rubies
Alex did not appear during the course of the next three days. A letter did, though: delivered by courier, for Maggie and Lilac. Lady Claudine, Marquise of Ferlaine, wrote on rose-scented paper with golden ink, and misspelled words likedaughtersandaffection.
Lilac, running a hand through her short blonde curls, dressed in wildly expensive salmon-colored satin that’d acquired dirt-scuffs at both knees, said, “Affection has two f’s.”
“The point,” Maggie’s tiny bluebell voice corrected sweetly, “is that she loves us both. Apparently. And she wants our happiness. Which ought to be spelled with two Ps. She says someone reminded her that she believes in Love and Romance—she’s capitalized both—and so she supports us fully, with open arms. Can you support someone with open arms? Well, it’s kind of her.”
Garrett, who ought to be enforcing some sort of discipline among his apprentices, said, “Someone reminded her?”
“Apparently.” Lilac shrugged, folded the letter, said to the impatient courier, “Tell her we’ll come down for supper next week. Six days from now.” The young man nodded, eyed half-built walls and the pool and the expanse of marble with anxiety about world-altering magic, gave a perfunctory bow, and bolted down the hill.
“Theyarerunes.” Lilac, not being privy to the thoughts happening in Garrett’s head, had returned to the subject of the silver mystery. “They’re all about protection. For horses, I think. Is it for horses?”
“I don’t know.” He was saying that a lot lately. “It might be. Lorre gave it to us to decipher.” Deciphering. Mysteries. Poetry. Someone reminding Lady Claudine about love. Alex not turning up with a ready smile and a gift of food or a goatherd or a returned student.
“It could be a battle-harness,” Karis contributed. They generally liked animals, though the goats had been a problem, mainly because Karis tended to get lost in and sympathetic to whatever animal they’d been sharing senses with. “For a war-pony.”
“Not a bad idea,” Garrett said, with some effort. “Let’s lay it out and see.”
* * * *
The silver plates and chain-links did seem to suggest a harness. Garrett put it in the room he’d decided was the vault, along with the enchanted horn and luck-granting golden coins and other relics of previous, more unscrupulous, magicians. Alex hadn’t returned, so he couldn’t tell his prince about their conclusions, or about the way he’d finished the covered walk along the west wing, or about Connor’s success at wrangling goats into bleating contentment.
He took his scarf down from the bookshelf, that night, and curled lonely color around his wrist, and struggled to fall asleep in his narrow bed under the dim cold arch of marble above.
* * * *
After four days he wondered whether he should send a note of his own. An invitation. In case Alex needed one. A welcome. Always.
He found paper. He started to write, hesitated. How did a magician write to a prince? How did the son of merchant traders write to a prince? How did Garrett Pell write to Alexandre de Berri, who obviously had far better places to be, other requests from his father?
He didn’t know how to begin. He told himself he’d wait another day.
* * * *
The fifth morning brought, not a prince of Averene, but the Grand Sorcerer, returned from Penth and island-sized sea turtles. He was in the kitchen when Garrett, yawning, came in to make tea before the students got up; silvery morning tangled in his long blond hair, along with a leaf or two.
“Oh,” Garrett said.
Lorre looked at him, looked at the kettle. “Did you want tea? Blackcurrant.”
“Yes, thanks.” He added, while Lorre poured, “Did you find the island-turtles?”
“I did. Two. Older than me, and thoughtful.”
“Well, that’s not hard.”
Lorre got surprised at that. “Am I thoughtless?”
Garrett buried his face in blackcurrant-scented steam. “Joke. Mostly. It’s all right; you’re not human.”
The Grand Sorcerer sat down on the edge of the low table. Blue-eyed, barefoot, unpredictably pretty in the way of sun through wind-blown clouds, he was simultaneously a hundred years old and agelessly young. “I’m trying to build a home for magic. Where we can be ourselves.”
“I know.”
“It’s not my fault humans get nervous about things they can’t understand.”
“I know.”
