“I just wanted to see how it was going—” Celie began, but then she saw the tool the shipbuilder was using as a paperweight. “What is that?”
“Oh, what, this?” The shipbuilder picked it up and turned it around in his hands. “It is being called a . . . sextant, Your young Highness. It is being used for a thing to tell in which direction is the land the ship is sailing toward. But this one, which I hold, is being of no use. There is rust, too much, and a small piece that cannot be found.”
“Obviously we’d like to use the one from the Castle,” Pogue said. “But perhaps we could get one in Grath. We do want to have a few things from Grath on the ship, to show the combining of our two nations.”
To his further credit, Pogue was able to talk about Lilah’s impending marriage without grimacing now.
“If you wanted one from the Castle, I can get you another one,” Celie said. “One that should work. Also, do you need a spyglass? And a barometer?”
“Ah, be not of the concern, Your young Highness,” Master Cathan said courteously. “I am knowing, in my Grath, a very man of making such things.”
Pogue gave her a little encouraging nod, though. “Are there some in the Castle already?”
“I can get them,” Celie said.
“Please do,” Pogue said. He turned to Cathan. “Let’s at least have a look and see how they compare to the Grathian-made instruments.”
Celie climbed back on Rufus, and had him fly up to the tower with all the instruments, the one that the Castle had shown her during her flight from Arkwright. The speaking tube had come in handy, it was true, but she was sure that it would be even handier to have on a ship.
Rufus swooped into the tower, and Celie slid off his back. She went to the sextant first, and it almost fell off the brass mount into her hand. She went to the other windows and took the compass, the barometer, and the speaking tube. All of them came away in her hand, a sure sign that the Castle wanted her to take them to Pogue and the shipbuilder. Celie made a basket out of her skirt, and carefully climbed onto Rufus.
Rufus either noticed the extra weight of the instruments or sensed that they needed to be careful, because he flew very steadily down to the sheep meadow. The weather was fine, and now some of the maids had brought out the Builder’s sails and were spreading them out on the close-cropped grass. They were red and blue striped, like a circus tent, and when Celie got closer she could see that Master Cathan was staring at them with something akin to loathing in his eyes.
“Are they having of the holes so many?” he called to one of the maids.
The young woman straightened, and Celie saw that it was Pogue’s oldest sister, Jane Marie, who was an expert at repairing antique tapestries. Jane Marie, always serene and kind, came over to the table just as Celie did. She bobbed a little curtsy to Celie and then turned to the shipbuilder.
“No, sir,” she said. “Like most fabric that’s been stored by the Castle, it’s in perfect order. You wouldn’t know that it’s been boxed away for hundreds of years! It could have been put away last week.”
“That’s excellent,” Celie said, spilling the instruments onto the table and then shaking out her skirt.
“Is it being so?” Master Cathan looked unconvinced. “This being a danger, when there is cloth of too great age. The threads that do make the seams also might have the weakening—”
“Actually, sir, it’s all of a piece,” Jane Marie said. “There are no seams and they aren’t hemmed, either. They appear to have been woven exactly to size.” She shook her head in amazement. “The loom must have been enormous. I wish I could have seen it,” she said wistfully.
“My gown is made from fabric found in the Castle,” Celie pointed out. “It looks like new, but was probably in the sewing room for five hundred years or so.”
Master Cathan looked displeased, and gave Celie’s gown a quick and almost offended look. “But will my only prince and his princess have nothing that will be of the Grathian making . . . ?”
“The furniture and decorative fittings will be Grathian,” Pogue said. He sounded as though he’d said it a hundred times already.
“And here are these,” Celie said, pointing to the instruments. “They’re Hathelocke-made, I think.”
Master Cathan turned them over in his hands. “These are being fine work,” he had to admit. “Of a pity there is not a spyglass found. But in my Grath can such a one of fineness be made.”
“We have four spyglasses,” Celie said. “And they’re magic. They show you whatever you want to see!”
Master Cathan looked uncomfortable at this. “Do they see . . . things that are usual?”
“Yes, I’ll get one,” Celie said.
Back on Rufus, and back up to the sky. She had not had a lot of time to go flying lately, which was a shame. Especially since she could fly in daylight now, and didn’t have to hide what she was doing. Rufus clearly enjoyed it, as well, taking his time to weave around the hatching towers and swoop low over the central roofs before finding the open windows of the Spyglass Tower.
Arkwright was in the Spyglass Tower.
He was still asleep, laid out on the floor like . . . well, like a dead body. Except this dead body was snoring.
Celie looked around. No one else was here. She’d thought that Bowen and Roland would have left by now with Arkwright heavily guarded, but here he was. How had he gotten here?
Rufus squawked and nudged the wizard with one talon, but Arkwright didn’t move. If he hadn’t been snoring so loudly, Celie would have thought he was dead.
“Bran,” she yelled. “Braaaaaan!”
She started to go down the stairs and call for her brother, but the Castle turned around her, and she found herself dizzily facing one of the windows. The spyglass mounted in that window slid out of its brass mounting, and Celie leaped forward to catch it before it could smash on the floor.
“Oh, okay,” she said. “I’ll take this first.”
She made for the stairs again, but the Castle turned the tower, and she was facing another window. Holding on to Rufus’s harness to steady herself, she looked around. Arkwright was behind her now, still snoring away, but Celie felt uneasy. She didn’t like being here with the sleeping wizard. What if the spell wore off?
“Fine!”
She hurried to take another spyglass. The tower spun again. She took the third. The tower spun again. She took the fourth. When she had all four in her hands, the Castle seemed to settle, and she tried to go down the stairs, but there was no door.
She stuck two spyglasses in her sash, a third down her bodice, and switched the last one to her left hand so that she could climb on Rufus. Celie was terrified that the Castle would close the windows, too, but Rufus flew straight out the south-facing window without a problem. Celie urged him toward the courtyard so that they could find Bran, but there was a ripple that she could feel even in the air.
Rufus had to flap his wings frantically for a moment to stay aloft as a gust of wind nearly blew him into one of the hatching towers. When he had recovered and wheeled around, he let out a cry. So did Celie.
The Spyglass Tower was gone.
“Find Bran,” Celie said in a shaking voice.
Chapter
25
Bran was in the courtyard when she landed. Everyone was. All gaping and pointing to the space above the Castle where the Spyglass Tower used to be. Everyone turned to stare at her as Rufus landed, and Celie immediately became defensive.
“I didn’t make the Castle do that,” she announced, pointing to the empty air.
“Thank goodness you’re all right,” Bran said, rushing over. “I don’t know how he got free of my sleeping spell, and I can’t believe I’m even saying these words, but Arkwright escaped.”
“No, he didn’t,” Celie said. She pointed upward again. “I just saw him, still sound asleep, in the Spyglass Tower.”
“The Spyglass Tower? But it’s gone!” Bran said, stunned. “Where do you think . . . ?”
/> “I don’t know,” Celie said. “I went to get one spyglass to show Master Cathan, and it made me take all four, and then it disappeared. The whole time that I was there, though, Arkwright was on the floor, asleep.”
“This is highly unusual,” said Wizard Roland, walking up.
“But very fascinating,” Wizard Bowen said.
He turned to Celie and once again the measuring tape appeared.
“Oh, go on,” she said, and held out her arms the way she would for the dressmaker.
He didn’t waste any time. He started with the middle finger on her left hand and began to measure her finger, palm, wrist, and arm. He called out the measurements to Wizard Roland, who had taken out a small notebook and was writing down all the numbers. All the while Bran and Celie watched the space where the tower had been. After a few minutes, King Glower and Rolf came out, panting as though they’d run through the Castle.
“What happened?” King Glower said. Then, in almost the same breath, he said, “And what are they doing to Celie?”
“It’s fine,” Bran said, distracted.
He explained Celie’s involvement in Arkwright’s disappearance. King Glower began to splutter and Rolf started tossing questions at Celie one after the other, but Bran held up a hand.
“Do you feel it?” he whispered.
“I do,” Celie said as Bowen measured her hair, first with the curls stretched out and then with them naturally coiled.
“Something’s happening,” King Glower said, standing very still.
The Castle was humming. As they all stood and watched, the Spyglass Tower reappeared.
Celie was on Rufus in a heartbeat.
Lulath came running out with Lorcan, and Bran yelled for him to follow Celie. Together they flew up to the Spyglass Tower and peered in the windows. Celie did not want to land beside the unconscious wizard again.
But he wasn’t there.
Rufus hovered just outside the south window, and Lorcan went around to the north. He wasn’t fully grown, and could only carry Lulath for very short flights, so he bobbed up and down a great deal, but even so, Lulath leaned over his griffin’s wing and stared into the tower.
“For what do we look, our Celie?” he called.
“For Arkwright,” she called back. “I don’t see him. On the floor.”
“No, there is only being the table,” Lulath agreed. “My Lorcan must be going to return to the ground now.”
“Yes, all right.”
They flew back to the courtyard, where most of the court was gathered, pacing around and waving their arms. Bran grabbed hold of Rufus’s harness before his feet even touched the ground.
“Well?”
“He’s gone,” Celie reported. “The Spyglass Tower is empty!”
“Are you sure?”
“Unless he was hiding in the chest,” Celie said.
She’d meant to say it facetiously, but the worried thought came that he could have been hiding in the chest. But there was no way she was going to look. Bran or one of the other wizards could do that.
“I think he’s gone,” Rolf said. “I think the Castle got rid of him.”
Pogue came running up with the Grathian shipbuilder on his heels. “Did the Castle just dump Arkwright in Hatheland?” Pogue asked.
“Is it doing such things with a commonness?” Cathan said, looking around nervously. “How is it to be known when it will not be liking you?”
“You’re perfectly safe,” Pogue said. “It wants this ship built.”
“I think it did,” King Glower said slowly. “I think it did take Arkwright to Hatheland.” He had his hands pressed to each side of his crown. The rings, one like a griffin, the other shaped like a turret, glinted in the sun. “Arkwright is gone,” he said in wonderment.
“Why?” Celie cried. She grabbed hold of her father’s sleeve, then Bran’s, wanting answers. “Why would it take him now? Why not before? Why not when we came home with the crown? Or before he escaped the first time?” She stamped her foot on the stones of the courtyard. “Why did you make us go through all this?” She waved her hand in a gesture that encompassed the entire Castle.
“Does it answer you often, when you speak to it this way?” Wizard Bowen held up a notebook, ready to write down Celie’s reply.
“Now is hardly a good time—” King Glower said.
“Perhaps you aren’t needed here after all,” Bran said at the same time.
“Bran,” Pogue said, interrupting them both.
“What is it?” Bran turned to their friend, impatient.
“The Castle wants Master Cathan here, to build the ship,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” Bran said, turning back to the other wizards.
“It hasn’t gotten rid of Cathan,” Pogue said.
“Of course it hasn’t,” Bran snapped. He pointed to Bowen. “If you want to study something—” He froze. “Oh.”
“You don’t think . . . ?” King Glower jerked his head at Wizard Roland, who was holding up the measuring tape and looked like he was just seconds from taking the king’s measurements.
Pogue nodded. “Maybe the Castle wants us to know its secrets, now that it’s all here, and you have the crown and rings, Your Majesty,” he said.
“Oh,” Bran said again. His face screwed up and he was thinking hard, looking from Wizard Roland to Wizard Bowen and back to the Castle.
“You think it waited to get rid of him until they came to the Castle?” Celie said. But she believed it; as soon as she spoke the words, she believed them. It just felt right.
“If Arkwright were gone, Bran wouldn’t have sent for them,” Pogue said.
“We wanted to come, but have had other, more pressing, duties,” Wizard Roland said.
Rolf had an expression of dawning horror on his face. “You don’t think the Castle let Arkwright loose to begin with, do you?” he asked in a whisper. “Just to bring them here.”
“It would have been a cruel trick, but a necessary one,” Wizard Bowen offered, scribbling away in his notebook.
“It’s very like something the Castle would do,” King Glower said. He sighed. “Fine, measure me,” he told the hovering Wizard Roland. “We may as well do what it wants.”
“It wanted the passages gone, too,” Celie said, pressing a hand to her forehead as she thought it all out. “It wanted us to find the passages and get rid of them. Once Bran had called for help from the College, it could have locked Arkwright up in the kitchens, or any of the other places in the Castle that he went through. But it didn’t.”
“Devious,” Rolf said, sounding admiring. “It got the Arkish passages removed, found two wizards to help crack its secrets, and once that happened, it finally got rid of Arkwright!” He clapped his hands. “That’s our Castle!”
“It shows a more intricate intelligence than we have hypothesized,” Wizard Roland noted. “It will be good to begin immediately, and not need to take Arkwright to the College and return.”
Pogue gave King Glower a meaningful look. “Exactly what the Castle wanted,” he said.
“No doubt,” King Glower agreed, his arms still outstretched. “Otherwise I’m sure we’d all be head down in the pig yard.”
Queen Celina and Lilah, both wearing crisp new gowns that they had just received from the seamstresses, arrived in the courtyard.
“Now, what in heaven’s name is going on?” Queen Celina asked. “And why is Celie carrying all those spyglasses? She looks like a pirate!”
Chapter
26
It wasn’t until a day later, after dinner in the summer dining hall, that Celie was able to propose her idea to her parents. Well, her parents, and Bran, Rolf, Lilah, Lulath, Pogue, Wizards Roland and Bowen, Master Cathan, and a handful of the Council who had been invited to the informal family dinner.
At least her parents would be less inclined to argue with her if there was an audience, Celie thought. And she’d had time to practice what she wanted to say in her room, and to get the feeli
ng that it was what the Castle wanted her to say, as well.
“Father,” Celie said. She felt even smaller than she had when she’d offered them all her bound atlases.
There had been a lull in the conversation when she’d spoken, and now all eyes were on her. She cleared her throat.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“What is it, Celia-delia?”
Celie winced at the childish nickname but plowed ahead. “It’s about the ship,” she said, and she flicked her eyes to Master Cathan, who leaned forward a little around Lulath to see her.
“Yes?” he said, at the same time as her father made a gesture for her to go on.
“All these problems, with the Hathelockes and the Arkish, they’ve gone on and on for years, with the Castle in the middle of it,” she began. “And we just got rid of the Arkish passages because we want the Castle to be Hathelocke, but also Sleynth because it’s here now. But we still have the Arkish tapestries, and our family is part Arkish, and Ethan is Arkish, and that seems to be all right.”
“Yes, that’s true,” her father said, looking confused. “Go on.”
Celie drew in a deep breath. “We want the ship to combine things from the Castle, and from Sleyne, and also from Grath, to illustrate the connection between our countries, right?”
“Yes . . . ?”
Lulath briefly looked like he was going to toast her sentiment, but Lilah poked him and he subsided.
“But the Castle has parts of Hatheland and the Glorious Arkower in it, and I think the ship should, too,” Celie went on.
“We are having and using of the pieces from here in this Castle, Your small Highness,” Master Cathan told her. “You are bringing to us yourself, this very yersterday, the spyglasses.”
“Yes,” Celie said. “But I think those were Hathelocke-made. And so was the barometer. And the figurehead.”
“What would you like to add, darling?” Queen Celina asked.
“The doors,” Celie said. “Or at least use the wood, even if they’re not still doors. The doors to the secret passages.”