So much had happened, so many wonders, so much terror, but also great happiness.
“Few live the life they thought they wanted, lamb.” The high brunka started walking again.
They passed six closed doors on each side.
“What rooms are these?”
“They’re for guests, but they’re empty now.”
The Replica could be in one of them, Elodie supposed.
Or it could be outside, in a tree hole or buried under earth and snow, and then how would anyone find it?
Only by luck or cleverness.
The doors ended. Other corridors branched off to the right and left, here and there, but this one continued for at least a quarter of a mile. Elodie felt the weight of the mountain press down on her. How much time had passed since she’d left her masteress? Was Zertrum’s volcano already spewing?
“When I get this far, I can no longer hear a sound from the great hall, not even a shout.”
“How did you hear my masteress?”
“We’ve been walking south, not far from the face of the mountain. I can hear the world outside. And ITs voice carries.”
“How far can you hear ordinary conversation?”
“Eavesdropping is as rude as picking one’s teeth!”
Elodie’s smoke would have turned red if she’d had smoke. If the high brunka had been willing to be impolite, she might have heard something and prevented the theft. “If you did listen, how far could you hear?”
“About two hundred yards.”
“A whisper?”
“I don’t know, lamb. A hundred yards, perhaps.”
“High Brunka, begging your pardon, you’ll listen until the Replica is found, won’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought . . . It’s a habit not to . . . Yes, lamb, I’ll listen.”
Doors began again on the left.
“We put guests in here only in summer when all the other rooms are full,” the high brunka said.
“Why do you wait till then?”
“So I can sleep. My room is nearby. When these chambers are occupied, the people keep me awake, just by rolling over in their sleep. I feel like I’m in the middle of a flock of noisy pigeons.”
A single door broke the right-hand wall, and it alone had a lock.
“What room is this?”
“It’s a storage area.”
“When the Replica was stolen before, did that high brunka keep it in the same place as you do?”
“No. Then it was on a table in the middle of the great hall. I was just a brunkle, a lamb like you. No one gave a thought to theft. It had never happened.”
Another right and they reached a series of doors on either side of the corridor.
The high brunka said, “These chambers hold just relics and curiosities.”
More hiding places for the Replica.
Ahead, a man and a woman sat side by side on stools. The woman kicked the man in the shins. “Get up, Johan, lazy lump.” Her sharp voice seemed to strike the rock walls and bounce down the corridor.
The man stood awkwardly, without complaining. His cloak, which had been draped over his stool, slid to the ground. Grunting, he picked it up and held it bunched in his arms. Upright, he rocked back and forth on his heels, a tall, stout, ruddy-faced young man whose left cheek bulged with what was probably a toothache remedy.
Elodie expected the high brunka to tell the woman she shouldn’t be kicking people, but she just said, “Why are you guarding, Ludda?”
Ludda-bee rose in one fluid motion for all she was middle-aged, and her cloak remained on the stool. “Deeter begged a few more minutes of sleep. Now breakfast needs starting, and where is he?” She turned to Elodie. “Everyone imposes on my good nature.”
Elodie bobbed a curtsy. Do not show your penetrating mind, she thought. Do not show you think this woman has no good nature.
Wicked enough to steal the Replica?
Ludda-bee was thin with a fat face and small features—small mouth, small nose, and small eyes—crowded together in the middle of a big, round face, like a raisin roll in which all the raisins had collected in one spot. Her smile would have to be small, too, hemmed in as it was by lots of cheek. Yes, it was small, and the smile did nothing to banish her peevish expression. “I’m Ludda-bee.”
The cook, Elodie remembered, had been there when the high brunka returned to Master Robbie without the Replica.
Ludda-bee continued. “And this shy, hulking thing is my friend Johan-bee, Johan-of-the-privy, as we bees call him.”
They were friends? Elodie looked at his face—large nose, thin lips, that bulging cheek, owlish round eyes, expression blank. He doesn’t consider her a friend, she concluded.
“Two nights in a row of guarding, Johan,” the high brunka said. “Thank you.”
His face relaxed. “You’re welcome.” The second word sounded like welka, likely because he found it hard to close his lips on the m.
Ludda-bee seemed to resent the compliment. “If you can call it guarding. He left me thrice to visit the garderobe, and was, as ever, slow to return.”
Elodie blushed.
“It’s my stomach, Ludda.”
It couldn’t matter for the theft that Ludda-bee was horrible and that Johan-bee didn’t like her. But it might matter that Johan-bee deserted his post sometimes.
“When someone tells me her name, young mistress, I always tell her mine, unless I’m a rude lout.”
“Pardon!” She dropped another curtsy while hoping Ludda-bee would turn out to be the thief. “I’m Elodie.”
“Come, lamb.” The high brunka took her hand again. “I promised you a gift. You may have a painted rainbow.”
Elodie expected to go into the room closest to the bees, which they had been guarding. But instead they turned right into an intersection after that door and entered a short corridor.
A few steps took them to a door on which words were painted in neat blue letters: Hart Room. Below the words, for those who hadn’t learned to read, a representation of a stag in red paint. The painter was a master artist to capture the antlers, the delicate stance, the curves of back and belly, in only a few brushstrokes.
The high brunka opened the door, which had no lock, and closed it behind them. “This is my chamber. Folks see guards by the Goat Room and believe the Replica is there, but I kept it here. Anyone who plotted to steal it would be planning to take it from the wrong room.”
Glowworms lit this space, too. The bedsheets and blanket were rumpled. A high brunka who didn’t make her bed might like such chores as little as Elodie did. The chamber had a fireplace, which was empty, since the air was warm. A rack, hung with spare hose and a spare shift, stood to the side of the fireplace. Elodie looked away, embarrassed to see the exalted brunka’s undergarments. “Why is there a fireplace when you don’t need it?”
“The early brunkas didn’t know the temperature would stay warm all year. Only the great hall gets cold.”
The other furnishings were a padlocked chest, a shelf above it that held a pile of small wooden arches painted in rainbow colors, a low stool, hooks on the wall, and a hanging that depicted a female brunka standing before a cottage on the Lahnt plateau. Another door, without a lock, provided a second exit.
“Where does that lead to?”
“The storage room we passed before.” High Brunka Marya straightened her sheets.
Embarrassed at being caught with an untidy bed?
“The lock on the storage room door was made on the mainland. I was assured it cannot be picked. Safe as the heart in your chest, they said.”
“Is the door locked on the inside, too?”
“No, lamb, only on the corridor side. If you’re inside the storage room, you just lift the latch.”
“Who has a key?”
The high brunka showed Elodie a large silver key among a ringful of keys fastened to her belt. “No one else has it. But if the thief was in here, picking wouldn’t have been needed. My bees will search the storage
area first.”
Elodie felt a bubble of hope. It might be that simple. “Was the Replica in there?” She pointed at the chest.
“No, lamb. You see, my fireplace needs more daub.”
Daub made of dried mud and straw cemented the stones together in a fireplace or in walls. Elodie didn’t see what missing daub had to do with the Replica.
High Brunka Marya brought the stool to the fireplace and stood on it. “I don’t know why I closed it up again.” She began to pull out loose stones from the chimney about a foot above the mantel to reveal a hole.
Lambs and calves! If Elodie had managed to get in to this chamber and had known the Replica was here somewhere, she wouldn’t have more than glanced at the chimney.
The high brunka stepped down to let Elodie see, and she climbed up, too.
There, immured in the chimney wall behind the facade of stones, was the pedestal, cloud gray marble shot through with lines of white and patches of gray and black.
“How tall is it?”
“Two and a half feet.”
Elodie stuck her hand in and explored the top with her fingers: square, perhaps ten inches on a side with a three-inch groove in the middle. “Is there a ridge in the Replica that fits the slit?”
“Exactly, lamb.”
“Is the magic in the pedestal?”
“I don’t know, lamb. I always supposed it was in the Replica. Perhaps it’s in both.”
Elodie nodded, then pivoted carefully on the stool, memorizing the room for her masteress. No trapdoor in the rock floor, none in the rock ceiling. She prayed she hadn’t missed anything.
High Brunka Marya’s face had a listening look.
“Excuse me. Can you hear what Ludda-bee and Johan-bee are saying?” Elodie couldn’t hear even a murmur. Maybe one of them had divulged something useful. “Can you hear them as clearly as you can hear me?”
The high brunka nodded. “Ludda-bee said I was kind to give you a wooden rainbow. She told Johan-bee that he was too lost in his own concerns to be as kind.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. The tooth remedy makes speech difficult. The bees all tease him about it and other matters, although Ludda is the worst. They mean no harm. He has to learn to command respect. You know that.”
Elodie nodded. Bees sometimes had to tell farmers what to do and make them do it. But the teasing still seemed cruel. Johan-bee might learn better from kindness.
The high brunka took a rainbow from the shelf. “Ludda-bee may ask to see it.”
The rainbow was small enough to fit in Elodie’s purse. Her thoughts returned to the Replica. What else should she ask? She felt the usual pressure on her brain, and IT wasn’t even here. “Er . . . do all brunkas know where the Replica was kept?” Probably a silly question. A brunka would never take it.
“We all know. We decided together where to put it after the first theft. Lamb, a brunka could no more harm Lahnt than a rabbit could kill a deer.”
But, Elodie thought, a brunka might tell someone who could. “Are any other brunkas here now?”
“I’m the only one. My bees are all the help I need. Have you seen enough for your masteress?”
“Was anything out of place when you came in to get the Replica?”
“Nothing. The room was as it always is.”
“Have you opened the chest?”
“I did. It’s not there.”
“I guess I’ve seen enough.” Elodie hoped IT would know what to make of it all.
Instead of leaving, High Brunka Marya sat on the bed. A rainbow drooped from her hand. “I half convinced myself that when I came back, the Replica would be here, that I’d imagined the theft. Come, lamb.” But she didn’t rise. “Brunkas are kind, but we’re blamers.”
Elodie had to strain to hear.
“If anyone is hurt . . . if anyone . . .”—she left the word dies unspoken—“I’ll blame myself, and the others will blame me, too.”
“You didn’t steal the Replica.”
“I failed to keep Lahnt safe.” She stood. “And now I must confess.”
CHAPTER NINE
A band of gray brightened the eastern horizon as a swift settled on the slate roof of a stone cottage with two chimneys and an attached stable. Destination reached, the ogre within awakened and thought . . .
Not about Elodie or the missing Replica or even Nesspa, but about his coming nakedness. Fee fi! He had to decide quickly, because he couldn’t stay himself inside a bird or beast for long. The only time he had, he’d been very ill.
He planned and concentrated so the swift would remember, and then he receded.
The bird tapped the shutters of one of the front windows of the cottage, rattling the slats and the window frame, not knowing about brunkas’ sharp ears.
“Enough. I hear you.” The door rumbled open as a voice said, “Welcome. Always welcome. Enter. What’s— Bird?”
A short, youngish personage—Brunka Arnulf—stood on the threshold, wearing a long undershirt with a blanket slung around his shoulders. Although he was half asleep, his expression was courteous and peaceful, and his mouth curved in a gentle smile—a brunka as brunkas normally were.
The swift flew inside and stood on the floor between an oaken table and a man sitting up on a pallet.
“Perhaps it’s feeling cold,” the man said.
Brunka Arnulf crouched. “Look! It’s wearing Marya’s medal.” He held out his hand.
The bird hopped across the floor to the hand but not on it and allowed the brunka to wind the chain off his neck. Then he began to vibrate and grow.
Anticipating the worst, the man jumped up and flattened himself against the nearest wall while the brunka retreated to the doorway.
After a minute, an amber-furred monkey with a pale face and merry copper eyes smiled hugely at them both, showing an inch of pink gum. He scampered to the table and snatched up a heel of bread, which he crammed into his mouth. As soon as he swallowed, he tilted back his head and laughed a huffing, breathy laugh.
The brunka and the man smiled, although the man’s smile was hesitant.
“Is it . . .” the man said.
“I think so,” the brunka answered.
“Foh!” The man’s smile vanished. “They eat people! Do you think it ate Marya? Is it here to eat us?”
The monkey picked up two spoons and a ladle and juggled them while continuing to laugh.
“No . . .” The brunka shook his head. “If it was going to, it would have come in its own shape.”
“They’re gross, monstrous.”
Still laughing, the monkey darted to the brunka, pulled the blanket away from him, and dragged it outside, trailing it through snow that mounded to the monkey’s waist. The brunka lifted a cloak from a peg by the door and followed at a distance. On him, the snow reached his thighs.
A dozen yards from the cottage, with his back to Brunka Arnulf, the monkey shifted, this time into Count Jonty Um. Fee fi! He hastily pulled the blanket up and tied it around his waist. The snow rose only to just above his ankles.
Bracing himself for the brunka’s terror, he turned. He meant to keep his expression neutral, but a careful onlooker—Elodie or Masteress Meenore—would have seen the worry around his eyes and a smolder of resentment in the corners of his mouth. An unobservant person would have seen a glum face, not inviting, not friendly.
Brunka Arnulf didn’t step forward but he didn’t step back. If he felt fear, he kept the feeling in check. His voice careful, he said, “If you can be that laughing monkey, there must be some joy in you. Therefore, I’m happy to make your acquaintance. I’m Brunka Arnulf, which you may already have guessed.” He bowed but kept his eyes on the ogre’s face.
At the absence of fear and disgust, the face cracked into a smile that rounded His Lordship’s eyebrows, lifted his cheeks, and softened his eyes. The brunka’s peaceful smile widened, too, as it could hardly fail to.
“Count Jonty Um of Two Castles.” His bow was a mere inclination
of the shoulders. Then he shook his head, shaking the smile away. “I have terrible tidings.” He explained what he knew of the theft of the Replica. “The high brunka says everyone should leave . . .” He trailed off because Brunka Arnulf had run back into the cottage.
The brunka reemerged in a minute. “Canute will begin the alarm. My other bees are helping families and flocks. If only there weren’t so much snow! Will you stay to help, Master Count?”
“No. I have questions to ask you and then I must return with the answers.”
“Ask.” He put the high brunka’s medal in his purse.
“Do you know of anyone who is angry at brunkas or anyone on Zertrum”—he didn’t like asking the rest of the question because it sounded strange, but he did—“or even angry at the mountain itself?”
“You’re helping Marya find the thief!”
“Yes.” He didn’t want to bring a dragon into the discussion. He shivered in the cold, and his stomach rumbled.
Canute-bee, casting frightened looks at His Lordship, led a horse out of the stable and mounted it. He started down the mountain, the horse making slow progress through the snow, despite Canute-bee’s frantic slaps on the beast’s rump.
“People are angry,” Brunka Arnulf said, “then not angry, then angry again. They don’t steal the Replica every time they’re vexed.” Thoughtfully he flicked a short rainbow out of his right hand. It hung in the air for a few seconds before fading.
His Lordship wished he’d do it again and again.
“Folks don’t tell us about every argument.”
“Someone did steal it,” His Lordship said.
“So you say.” He sighed. “Franz was angry.” He explained that he had told his bees not to help a farmer named Franz after his shed burned down for the second time. “He’ll be more careful in the future. He put up a new shed, which took longer without our aid, but I brought him a basket of eggs a month later. He invited me in for a meal, and we were jolly together.”