Master Erick said he’d always heard dragons were rude.
Goodman Hame said, “There are caves on Svye.”
“Nearby?” IT asked.
“Yes. I’ve been there. Fly low, along the river.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
His Lordship couldn’t judge time here. After a half hour or an hour or ten minutes, the cries ahead became more distinct, a man’s voice and a woman’s, grunts and a few words: “Here.” “Push.” “I’m trying.”
He saw a mound of stones with a few wooden posts protruding—a collapsed cottage. How could anyone be alive under there?
In a frenzy, His Lordship burrowed in, his hands like shovels, heaving rubble behind him.
Lower on the mountain, a gash—a chasm too broad for His Lordship to leap across—opened in the earth.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Master Uwald transferred both satchels to one hand and lifted a torch from a sconce beside the door.
“Wait!” Elodie cried.
Courteous as ever, he said, “What is it, young Mistress Elodie?”
“Er . . . travel is hazardous at night. Why not wait until morning?” When High Brunka Marya may have awakened and can stop you. “You won’t get to Zertrum in time anyway.”
“No, but I’ll reach a cottager who can start for Bisselberg. Johan-bee, please.”
Johan-bee pulled open the heavy door.
“Tuomo, watch over my boy. There’s danger here. Don’t let him be hurt.”
“I won’t.”
Elodie sent Master Robbie an imploring look.
“Mast—um . . . Grand . . .”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want you to leave me.” Master Robbie, apparently a mansioner, too, twisted his mourning beads.
Master Uwald’s smile melted. “Oh, my boy, my boy.” He returned the torch to its holder, went to Master Robbie, and hugged him to his chest.
After a pause, Master Robbie’s arms circled Master Uwald’s waist.
Johan-bee stood awkwardly with the door open. The cold night air rolled in.
Ludda-bee entered from the kitchen, ringing her bell. After a minute she held the clapper to announce, “I made a light repast. I expect it to be eaten.” She put her bell on the floor. “How is Marya?”
“The same.” Mistress Sirka rubbed more ointment on her bumps.
“Too bad we don’t have a real physician.” Ludda-bee went to the corner where the tabletop and trestles were stowed. “Someone, help me.”
It was best to do Ludda-bee’s bidding. Goodman Dror, Ursa-bee, and the bees who were searching the great hall hurried to her. They began to assemble the table in its usual spot, not far from where the high brunka lay and near Master Uwald and Master Robbie, who had just dropped their arms from their hug.
“Son . . .” Master Uwald coughed wetly, a tearful cough. “It’s right that I go. Tuomo suffers from not knowing his sons’ fate. Our laborers need me. Nockess Farm needs me.”
“Master Uwald’s the proper one to go.” Ludda-bee set a trestle in place. “But he should eat something first. Johan, put down those weapons. You look ridiculous. You can help with the table if you don’t trip over yourself.”
Johan-bee smiled or bared his teeth, Elodie wasn’t sure which. In one smooth movement, he nocked his longbow and aimed it at Ludda-bee.
Lambs and calves!
In a mock frightened voice Ludda-bee cried, “Oh, don’t shoot me.” She shook the trestle and made it rattle. “See how afraid I am.”
He’ll kill her! Elodie thought. “Don’t do—”
Ursa-bee cried, “Johan, you—”
“Johan-bee,” Master Uwald said silkily, “remember? We talked about this. Ludda-bee speaks harshly sometimes, but you rise—”
“I tell the truth!” Ludda-bee said. “Everyone needs to hear the truth.”
Johan-bee lowered the bow.
“Now help me.” Ludda-bee picked up one end of another trestle. “Stop playing the fool.”
“I’m guarding to keep people from leaving.”
Ludda-bee opened her mouth for a rejoinder, which might have gotten her shot, but Master Robbie spoke first.
“Master Uwald”—he’d reverted to the term he found more congenial—“if you leave, I won’t go with you when you return. High Brunka Marya told me I could live here.”
Master Uwald shook his head as if unsure of what he’d heard. “Who . . . what?”
“If you stay now, I’ll go with you later.”
“Son, Marya wants to imprison me, all of us.”
Ah. That’s the crux of it, Elodie thought. He isn’t a thief. He just can’t bear losing his freedom.
The bees finished setting up the table and placing the benches. Deeter-bee lumbered to the end of a bench and sat. Ludda-bee stumped into the kitchen.
Elodie thought, I’m not nearly as brilliant as IT, but maybe the others would deduce along with me. “Er . . . Master Uwald . . .”
“Yes?”
“Everyone . . .” This would be the end of appearing dull witted, but she hadn’t made much of a show of that anyway. “Masteress Meenore flew off in search of information, leaving me to continue unraveling the mystery, with Master Robbie’s help.”
He nodded. “Mistress Elodie is ITs assistant. IT pays her.”
“The dragon thought you might help?” Master Uwald asked, sounding proud.
“IT said I have an ‘original mind.’”
“I’ll wager you do.”
“They’re children!” Master Tuomo cried.
In the voice of a mansioner narrator, Albin intoned, “‘The foolishness of age, the wisdom of youth.’”
“Nonsense!”
Elodie went on as if Master Tuomo hadn’t spoken. “IT may have been delayed.” Injured or killed! “In the meanwhile, ITs method is to deduce and induce and—”
“Use common sense!”
Elodie nodded at Master Robbie. “Yes. But IT asks for others’ opinions, too, especially when IT’s thinking hard. IT liked Master Robbie’s idea. That’s why—”
“What idea, son?”
“That the thief might have made a replica of the Replica, and the actual Replica might have been stolen before High Brunka Marya showed it to us the first time.”
“Ingenious!” Master Uwald clapped his hands.
“But then,” Master Tuomo said, “Zertrum could have done its worst while we were still on it, or days ago.”
Elodie didn’t want Master Uwald to lose his enthusiasm. “Correct or not, it was clever. Masteress Meenore explained ITs thinking thus far to both of us. If we tell you, maybe all of us can determine what happened.”
“Please stay, Grand.”
Ludda-bee returned with a loaded tray. “I’m not laying out a full meal in the middle of the night.” She put the tray down. “You’ll have to make do with this.”
No one moved.
Ludda-bee rang her bell and didn’t stop ringing. People started toward the table. Elodie crouched to tie her bootlaces and delay sitting. Finally the clangor ceased. She stood and saw that almost everyone, including Master Uwald, was seated. Relief coursed through her. Only Johan-bee at the door and Mistress Sirka on the floor with the high brunka didn’t join them. Johan-bee closed the door with a creak and a thud.
Ludda-bee occupied the stool at the head of the table, farthest into the room, closest to the high brunka. The other stool stood empty. Elodie, feeling presumptuous, took it. She wanted to be able to see everyone, and she could, excepting Johan-bee at his post behind her.
Albin sat at her right and a bee she hadn’t met was at her left, until Master Robbie squirmed out of his place between Master Uwald and Ursa-bee and came around the table, where he squeezed onto the bench at her left.
Across from Master Uwald and Albin, Master Tuomo and Goodman Dror were on either side of Deeter-bee. The other places were filled by the bees who’d been searching the Oase beyond the great hall.
“I’ll stay for the meal,” Maste
r Uwald said. “It would be foolish to leave hungry. Son, will that satisfy you?”
Master Robbie nodded.
Eat slowly, everyone! Elodie thought.
There seemed to be as many dishes as ever. No pottage, but a sausage-and-bean stew, along with poppy-seed rolls, spiced apples, long yellow beans, the eternal beets, and honey wafers.
Ludda-bee told Johan-bee to sit. When he told her twice and roared at her once that he wouldn’t, she filled a bowl and brought it to him. He put down his bow to eat.
“Well, girl?” Master Tuomo demanded.
Elodie tried to quell the flutter in her stomach. “Deeter-bee, would you tell everyone where the Replica was hidden?”
He obliged and answered Master Tuomo’s questions about who had known.
When the subject was exhausted, Elodie persuaded Ursa-bee to say what had happened when she’d been guarding and had heard the weeping.
As soon as she finished, Elodie asked Master Robbie to lay out ITs theory about what had happened. While he spoke, she worried about the next step, the deducing.
If only IT would blow the door open.
But she might get ITs help another way. Maybe she could be IT—shape-shift in a mansioner’s fashion. Lambs and calves, could she?
Master Robbie ended with “Now we have to deduce and induce and use our common sense.”
Elodie cleared her throat and glanced at Albin. Help me.
“Masters . . . Bees . . . Mistress . . . We’d certainly do better if my masteress were here, but if I mansion IT, IT may help us all think.”
“Absurd!”
“Master Tuomo,” Albin said, “if your sons survive, you can tell them and your grandchildren that you were fortunate enough to be present when Elodie of Lahnt mansioned.”
Thank you, Albin!
“Oh, hush, Tuomo.” Master Uwald smiled benevolently at her.
If you rush, you will bungle. In her own voice Elodie said, “If Masteress Meenore were really here, ITs smoke would rise in tight white circles, which mean dragon happiness. IT’s always pleased to show off ITs unfathomable brilliance. Please imagine the smoke rings.” She wished she could recline as IT would have, but she might lose everyone if she began moving benches.
She made her voice nasal. “When an object of great value is taken, there is never a lack, I mean, dearth”—she needed all the hard words she could command. Luckily, the mansioners’ plays were a help—“of persons who would benefit from owning it. Let us consider you one by one.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The fires on Zertrum lit the north face of Svye.
Goodman Hame spotted the caves. “See? There!”
IT saw. A minute later, IT landed on the ledge, while everyone outside dashed inside.
Master Erick and Goodman Hame disembarked, the latter by crawling.
Goodman Hame shouted, “You can come out. IT’s a good dragon.”
Masteress Meenore’s smoke reddened. Good at what? Good for what?
Lovers of the good ogre—everyone—poured out of the cave, eager to meet the good dragon, and began coughing.
“IT rescued us. IT lifted a boulder off me,” Goodman Hame announced. Then he fainted.
Several people surrounded him.
“And almost killed me.” Master Erick couldn’t keep the tidings to himself: “Uwald stole the Replica.”
After an hour of Master Erick, IT thought, everyone will forgive Master Uwald. IT spied Brunka Arnulf and lumbered to the edge of the crowd, where the brunka joined IT.
“Did Master Uwald really steal the Replica?”
“Yes. Where is His Lordship?”
“Back on Zertrum, finding people and bringing them here.”
“Is that why you lied to me before?”
“He’d been injured as a bird. He couldn’t fly back to the Oase. But he’s recovered, and I didn’t want you to keep him from rescuing folks.” Brunka Arnulf flicked out a short rainbow. “His heroism will live forever.”
“I prefer he not begin his afterlife tonight. He owes me wages.” IT stared across the river. In the chaos, His Lordship could be anywhere. Even a being twice his size might be impossible to find.
“The last time he delivered someone to the cave, I begged him to stay.”
IT pondered.
Leave now and fly to Elodie?
Arrive at the Oase too late to save His Lordship but in time—possibly—to rescue her from Uwald and his accomplice?
Allow Nesspa to lose his master?
IT sneered at ITself for thinking of the well-being of a dog.
“Masteress?” Brunka Arnulf said.
“I am cogitating.”
“His Lordship would search for you.”
“He and I are not alike.”
Although fire held no terror, IT could be buried if the mountain collapsed. A boulder could rip through one of ITs beautiful wings or shatter ITs skull and destroy ITs miraculous mind.
Moreover, if IT went after His Lordship, the folk of Lahnt would for all time dub IT a good dragon. That would gall.
“I have decided.” IT pushed off the ledge and flapped back toward Zertrum.
Over the Fluce, unexpectedly—uselessly!—from the depths of ITs prodigious brain, surfaced the location of the Replica and the identity of the second thief. IT remembered the puppet’s words: “Expectation misleads.”
Think, Lodie!
But IT doubted that even her penetrating mind would derive the answer.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Elodie tapped a claw (fingernail) on the table. “Mistress Sirka and Goodman Dror have been proposed as the thieves by Master Tuomo, so let us consider them first.”
“Again?” Mistress Sirka yawned.
“I beg your forgiveness, I mean, indulgence.”
Master Robbie giggled.
Elodie wished he wouldn’t. This wasn’t a mere performance. “Master Tuomo exposed their motives: rage at Goodman Dror’s family coupled with greed. The method—”
Ludda-bee burst out, “No one is eating! Eat!” She passed the plate of yellow beans in one direction, the beets in the other.
“The method the thieves used,” Elodie continued as people helped themselves and their neighbors to food, “we have already established. It will be the same whoever they are. The trouble, I mean, difficulty, is that neither knew where the Replica was hidden. Goodman Dror has not been a bee long enough to be told.”
“Another bee may have told him,” Master Tuomo said.
Elodie wished she knew the rest of the bees. She doubted the ones she knew would have told.
Deeter-bee came unexpectedly to her rescue. “Then we would have three thieves, or why else would the bee tell?”
Elodie made an O with her lips and blew a long stream of air. “Three is, er, an unwieldy number.” What to say next? She wanted to deduce about Master Tuomo, but she was afraid of him. “Let us move along to another potential villain . . .” Who? “. . . Lodie’s father’s helper, her friend—”
“Hair and teeth!” Mistress Sirka cried. “Now open your eyes. Open—”
“What happened?” Johan-bee sounded more frightened than glad.
Elodie stepped away from the table to see the high brunka. Everyone else either stood or turned.
“Less than I hoped,” Mistress Sirka said. “She moved her hand and a wee rainbow came out of her thumb. Then the hand dropped back and the rainbow faded.”
“Is that good or bad?” Ursa-bee said.
“Could be either. She may be waking up or sinking deeper.”
“Continue, Mistress Elodie,” Master Uwald said. “I want to satisfy my son and set out.”
Elodie thought, He wants to be off before he can be re-imprisoned.
Albin performed a seated bow. “You were about to accuse me, Lady— I mean, Masteress.”
She sat again. “Indeed. Goodman Albin wanted passage money to rescue my assistant, who in fact needed no succor. Stealing the Replica to realize such a small sum may be lik
ened to killing a flea with a cannon. Nonetheless, he was desperate. In a strange twist of fortune, he won more than enough dicing with Master Uwald, but that occurred after the theft, so—”
“I thought you never lose, Grand.”
Albin spooned beets into Elodie’s bowl. He said, “I believe that Master Uwald was kind enough to lose for my benefit.”
Elodie saw Master Tuomo frown.
Deeter-bee put the frown into words. “Hard to lose on purpose at dicing. The game is pure luck.”
“In truth, Goodman Albin ended my long good luck.” Master Uwald helped himself to a second helping of spiced apples, his eyes on the serving bowl. “These are uncommonly good, Ludda-bee.”
Elodie swallowed a spoonful of warm stew against the chill that ran through her. Master Uwald had just shown two signs of lying. She glanced at Albin and saw him looking at her. He’d noticed, too. Master Uwald hadn’t met Master Robbie’s eyes, and he’d said In truth. Her mansioner training had taught her that whatever followed that phrase was likely to be false. The game with Albin hadn’t been the one that ended his luck. Master Uwald had lost before.
Did that matter?
It mattered if he’d lost Nockess Farm.
How could she accuse Master Uwald?
Albin did it for her. “Mansioners study people so we can play our roles truthfully. Begging your pardon—I think you lied about your loss to me being the first.”
Master Uwald patted his lips with the tablecloth, leaving a lip-shaped, beet-colored stain. “How clever, to turn Mistress Elodie’s accusation away from you.”
Elodie nodded slowly, remembering ITs big head. “I will continue. Like Mistress Sirka and Goodman Dror, Goodman Albin came to the Oase with no knowledge of the whereabouts—”
“Uwald . . .” Master Tuomo’s voice was quieter and more controlled than usual. He half stood to reach across the table and tap Master Uwald’s left hand, which was on his bowl. “Did you lose Nockess in a wager?”
Master Uwald put down his spoon with care. “Certainly not.” But he didn’t meet Master Tuomo’s eyes either.
“Masteress,” Master Robbie said, “I’d like to deduce.”