Chapter 5
Madra stands in the main hall of her castle, hovering over the large chest. She reads the attached card and inspects the key, preparing to insert it into the lock.
“Your majesty,” one of the guards says, “you have a visitor. A Mister Zanther Maus.”
“Oh! Send him in,” she says, returning her attention to the key. She places it into the lock and is about to turn it when Zanther knocks her off her feet in a flying tackle. Before either of them can rise, a dozen guards have Zanther surrounded, lances drawn and ready to run him through.
Zanther holds a sheath of papers bundled in his hand and proffers it to one of the guards. The guard takes it. The sheath of papers is, in fact, a copy of the Kleighton Gadabout, the number-one best-selling newspaper throughout the continent.
The guard reads the headline and skims through the first paragraph of the article.
“Queen Madra! This man has just saved your life!”
The newspaper bears the following headline in large print: Wizard Apprehended in Connection with Arcanian Bombing.
Madra orders her guards to leave the chest and its key in the doorway of the local philosopher’s guild, ring the doorbell, and flee. She then summons Varello and she, Zanther, and Varello proceed to her War Chamber for a meeting.
As they sit down, Zanther remembers something, and produces an envelope and hands it to Madra.
“The Trinese Emperor has asked me to deliver this letter,” he says.
“After all that, I’m a little hesitant to open it,” she says with a laugh, tearing it open and unfolding the piece of paper inside.
“Is this a joke?” she asks.
“I assure you that it is a heartfelt expression of the Emperor’s earnest desire for good relations.”
She stares at the paper for a moment, trying to make sense of the image, then has a realization and smacks her forehead. “Ah! Of course. I shall treasure it always.”
Zanther turns to Varello. “I’m guessing the rumors of your death were somewhat exaggerated, eh?”
Varello smiles. “You know what they say, nobody ever dies offstage.”
Madra clears her throat. “Perhaps we should focus on the matter at hand,” she says, tapping the newspaper on the table.
“Well,” Zanther says, “I’m sure Nove wouldn’t blow up the Mayor without a good reason.”
“You can’t honestly think he’s involved in this, can you?” Madra asks, “If he’s in on the plot, that would mean he wanted to kill me as well!”
“I don’t know,” Zanther says, “what surprises me is that a Maximagus of the First Circle would allow himself to be detained by a few guys with spears.”
“What’s with the wooden longknife?” Varello asks.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Zanther says, “I had this dream about Risma, and when I woke up, I was allergic to metal.”
“Oh, that’s silly,” Madra says, grabbing Zanther’s hand and touching a few of her elaborate rings to his skin. Zanther screams, quickly clasping his hand in his opposite armpit.
“Maybe ‘allergic’ isn’t the best way to describe it, but it burns me like hot coals. It feels like some kind of curse.”
Varello and Madra both give him quizzical looks for a moment. Regaining his composure, Varello is the first to speak. “Well, I think our first step is clear. We must talk to Novanostrum.”
“We’d better do it fast,” Madra says with a glance at the newspaper, “it says he’s to be executed in three days.”
“How do you propose we get there in three days?” Varello asks.
“The Trinese aren’t the only ones with skyships,” Madra says, “I have a skyacht you can use.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Zanther asks.
“I should remain here. After all, I think we might be at war.”
“Okay, we’ll go,” Zanther agrees, “but you might want to hold off on that ‘war’ until we get back. Something about all this doesn’t seem right to me.”
Novanostrum sits cross-legged in the center of his cell. The floor is packed soil, and the walls are thick lumber. He focuses his thoughts on his body, drawing himself outside and facing himself.
“Looks like you’re really deep in it this time,” he says to himself.
“I’ve gotten out of worse.”
“You had magick then.”
“A wizard’s more than a spellbook and a staff.”
“And if the worst should happen?”
“Oh, I’m confident that it will. It’s up to me, well you and me, to react when it does.”
“And do you have a plan?”
“Nope. I’m going to try Zanther’s brand of magick.”
“So you’re going to bungle your way out of danger?”
“Sure, why not? It works well enough for him.”
“You’re not him.”
“Yeah, there’s that.”
Though his cell is well-lit, Novanostrum finds himself drifting off, fading in and out of sleep on his hard cot. Sometime in the middle of the night, he wakes just enough to see an old woman standing in front of the bars. Dressed in rags, with dirty hair and a permanent scowl, she sets a small wooden figurine inside the bars on the dirt floor. Barely cognizant and unable to distinguish this scene from his rapid succession of shallow dreams, Novanostrum closes his eyes again.
He opens them once again perhaps half a bellchime later to find that the little wooden statuette has advanced perhaps an arm’s length closer. Still drowsy, he is able to determine that the object resembles a cat with a wide smile and one paw behind its head.
“So you’re just going to sleep until they put you to death?” the figurine asks.
“Seems like the best use of my time.”
It takes him a moment, but even in his somnambulant state Novanostrum finally realizes something is amiss.
“You can talk...?”
“So can you, but you don’t see me freaking out about it.”
“It’s just that I’ve never seen this particular type of magic before.”
“It’s not magic. I’m an aural manifestation of your subconscious mind. A straw doll or a pebble would work just as well. Some part of you must see this as more productive than simply talking to yourself.”
“Which would be a kind of magic, would it not?”
“Actually, it would be a kind of insanity.”
“Do the two always have to be mutually exclusive?”
“In your case they would, as you’ve convinced yourself that you have no magic.”
“So if I can magically use you to communicate with the hidden part of my brain, I must still be able to access my abilities in some way.”
“That’s certainly a possibility, but it’s equally possible, nay, more likely, that you’re just going crazy and imagining your conclusion to be true.”
“Yes, well, cat, isn’t it equally possible that you’re just imagining me?”
“No. Actually, that’s ridiculous. I’m not even a sentient entity. I’m your voice projected onto a statuette of a cat. The fact that you’re starting to speak like a philosopher only proves my point that you’re losing it.”
“Why would I go to all the trouble of imagining you just to ridicule myself? It seems a little counterproductive.”
“Because unlike your conscious mind, I notice everything. I have access to every detail, every bit of minutiae you don’t have time to process. The loose stone in the wall, the slight limp in the night jailer’s step, the odd groove in the cat figurine where the head meets the neck...”
Novanostrum picks up the figurine and twists the head. It comes off in his hand, and a small metal key falls to the dirt with a dull thump. He picks it up and wipes it off, then tries it in the lock.
It doesn’t fit.
He screws the head back onto the figurine. “So why would the old woman go to all the trouble of using you to smuggle me a key if it isn’t the
right key?”
“It’s the right key; it’s just the wrong lock.”
“That does me no good if I don’t live long enough to find the right lock.”
“Well, this time I’m not here to help you escape. I’m here to help you pass the time until you’re rescued by Zanther and Varello in a few bellchimes.”
“And how do you know that’s what’s going to happen? I don’t know it, so there’s no way you can know it.”
“The important thing is that you will know it, and once you do know it, I will have always known it. I’m not some jumble of neurons forced to exist within the framework of linear time; I’m a carved little figurette of a cat.”
“Well cat, there’s only one problem with that prediction: Varello’s dead.”
“You sure do love being wrong about this and that. Why, that’s three times in the past three ticks you’ve been wrong. Wrong about the key, wrong about my temporally-unrestricted existence, and wrong about Varello. It’s a good thing no one’s around to keep score--oh, wait, never mind.”
“Well, little cat, there’s at least one thing you’re wrong about?”
“Yes. What’s that?”
“I’m not crazy.”
“So sayeth the man talking to a little wooden cat.”
The skyyacht putters its way across the night sky with Zanther at the helm and Varello asleep belowdecks. Zanther leans over the rail, squinting at the shadow the ship casts on the sea of grass illuminated by the half-lit moons--the Flatplains, yet another place Upper Kleightonians fear to tread. The scene makes him feel a little poetic, and he improvises a verse:
“Twinkle twinkle, blades of grass, hiding monsters, toxic gas, spells of instant death or worse--what could be your deadly curse?”
He pops his shoulders and saunters back to the helm when he notices a speck out of the corner of his eye. Closer inspection reveals it to be a raven.
“What are you doing all the way out here, little bird? Can’t you hear it? No bugs, no sugarmice, nothing for little birds like you to eat...you’d best flap your wings as hard as you can back the way you came.”
It passes under the ship and out of Zanther’s field of vision. In the cabin below, the bird perches on the edge of the porthole, fixing its gaze on Varello. Even in his sleep, he can’t help producing music: he whistles a little tune every time he exhales. The bird begins to mimic the melody, and after a few ticks, Varello ceases his whistling and begins to sleep silently. The lack of noise causes him to awaken with a start, and he jerks his head in the direction of the porthole, but there’s nothing here.
Above, Zanther catches the faint echo of the bird’s song.
“For being in such a desolate place, you sure are cheerful, little bird.”