“Not chewing,” Ma’am Housekeeper said. “Stealing.”
“What?” Celie followed her father and the housekeeper down the stairs from the hatching tower, face screwed up in confusion. “Stealing?”
“There’s been food missing from the kitchens, Cook says,” Ma’am Housekeeper told them. “And linens from the closets. A few other things, my girls say. Misplaced, moved, that sort of thing. They hear them scrabbling about, but can’t seem to catch the beasts in the act.”
Her tone was frosty. Ma’am Housekeeper was very strict. Even the most royal of guests soon learned to stay on her good side, and not make unreasonable demands of her staff or scuff the furniture. Ma’am Housekeeper kept a careful inventory of all the goods in the Castle, and knew precisely how many towels there were and whether they were in the laundry or neatly folded in a cupboard.
Cook was of a far more generous and easygoing nature, but she also kept her kitchens with precision. Food was given out gladly in the kitchens, but it never “went missing.” This was serious indeed.
“What sort of food?” Celie asked.
The younger griffins favored fruit and seeds, while the older ones liked meat more. They also had certain preferences. Both Juliet and Lady Griffin enjoyed drinking milk, but none of the others would touch it. And Lorcan and Rufus had a fondness for sweets that led them to try to snatch cakes and sweetmeats out of the hands of people at dinner. It would help her figure out which griffin was guilty, if she knew what had been taken.
“A loaf of bread, a cheese, a bottle of wine, a basket of dates,” the housekeeper recited. “And I’m missing half a dozen towels, and now two wool blankets and two sheets!”
Celie stopped walking. They were just at the bottom of the stairs, and headed toward the corridor that held the long row of closets where the linens were stored. But Celie didn’t need to see them. She knew that it hadn’t been a griffin.
“A loaf of bread . . . one loaf?” she asked.
The housekeeper nodded.
“And a bottle of wine?”
“And a wheel of cheese and a basket of dates.”
“The basket, too?” Celie asked.
“The basket, too,” Ma’am Housekeeper said darkly.
The king had also stopped, and when he looked at Celie, she could tell that her father had just had the same thought.
“Griffins didn’t take the food,” Celie said.
“I beg your pardon, Your Highness?”
“If griffins had taken the food, they would have taken all the bread they could snatch,” Celie told her. “And they don’t drink wine . . . besides which, they couldn’t even carry the bottle!”
“Hmm,” Ma’am Housekeeper said.
“Were the linens disturbed, as though an animal had grabbed them?” King Glower asked, arms folded over his chest and a thoughtful expression on his face.
“They were taken very carefully,” the housekeeper admitted. “I doubt very much that a less careful person would have noticed they were gone. Certainly none of my girls noticed!” The look on her face made Celie very glad she wasn’t one of the housekeeper’s girls. “I was just checking the blankets, getting ready to change the bedding in the Councilors’ bedchambers, when I found that some were missing!”
“If a griffin wanted to make a nest with the towels, it would have torn the closet apart,” Celie said. “There would have been scratches from its talons on the doors of the cupboards, and it probably would have dropped some of the things on its way.”
“You mean to say a person did this, and not one of those animals?” Ma’am Housekeeper looked appalled that a human would have tampered with her stores.
“It looks that way,” the king said gravely. “But who?”
Celie knew. She could feel the answer vibrating the stones beneath her feet. The Castle seemed to pause, to wait and see if she would say it aloud.
“Arkwright,” Celie said in a small voice.
“What’s that, my dear?” King Glower had started down the corridor to take a closer look at the linen cupboards.
“Arkwright,” Celie said, louder. “It was Arkwright.”
“Oh, I hardly think . . . Bran is sure he’s gone to Grath,” King Glower said.
“How could he be sure?” Celie argued. “No one saw Arkwright leave! He could be right here in the Castle, hiding from us! He’d need food, and bedding, and now he’s taken it.”
“It’s not possible,” King Glower said, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself, rather than arguing with Celie.
“That awful old wizard is loose in this Castle?” Ma’am Housekeeper was as close to rattled as Celie had ever seen her. “Living in the walls like a rat? We need to smoke him out!” She put one hand on a cupboard door and opened it, waving a hand at the shelves that were presumably lighter by two blankets and two sheets, though Celie could not tell.
When Celie was done studying the sheets and blankets that remained, she looked at the housekeeper, and saw that Ma’am Housekeeper was looking back at her, expectant.
So was King Glower.
“Me?” Celie squeaked. “You want me to find him?”
King Glower shook himself. “What? Of course not! That’s a job for the Royal Wizard! I was just . . . thinking for a moment.”
“We need to stop thinking and do something,” Celie said. Her feet were tingling unbearably now. “We need to—”
The door to the cupboard next to them thumped, as though someone had rattled the latch. Celie stopped short and turned to look. The stones of the corridor heaved, making both Celie and her father take a few stumbling steps closer to that cupboard.
“What’s happening?” Ma’am Housekeeper cried, clutching at the open door of the robbed cupboard to keep her balance.
“Something’s amiss,” King Glower said.
As if this were a signal, the door to the cupboard burst open, and a body fell out. Celie and Ma’am Housekeeper both screamed, and King Glower shouted out a curse that would have impressed the coachman.
It was a young woman, about four years older than Celie, wearing the gown and apron of one of the Castle staff. She was pale as chalk, and her dark braids were half-unraveled, her hair wrapping around her face and neck like waterweeds.
“It’s Maisy,” Ma’am Housekeeper said, when her scream had died away. She was clutching her chest, her face nearly as white as the maid’s. “I sent her down to count the blankets this morning. I came myself because I thought she was shirking!”
“What’s happened to her?” Celie said.
There was no sign of a wound.
King Glower knelt by the girl and gently straightened her crumpled form so that she was lying on her back. Celie braced herself to see a knife or an arrow . . . but there was nothing. She looked like she was asleep.
“Your Majesty? I heard screaming!” Lord Sefton, the Councilor who had just been trying to bond with the newly hatched Arrow, came running around the corner with his black robes held out of the way. At his heels came a pair of footmen, looking equally concerned.
“Get the Royal Wizard at once,” Celie’s father ordered. “He was in the western hatching tower!”
“You heard the king!” Lord Sefton said, delegating to one of the footmen. He hurried to kneel beside King Glower. “Please, allow me.” He felt the girl’s wrists and then her neck. “Her heart is beating, but only just,” he whispered. “What happened to her?”
“She’s alive?” Celie gasped.
“It would seem so,” Lord Sefton said.
“Praise be!” Ma’am Housekeeper clapped her hands. “Do you think it was him?” She rolled her eyes meaningfully.
“I can think of no one else it could be,” King Glower said.
“Who?” Lord Sefton asked.
“Arkwright,” Celie said.
“He’s still here?” Lord Sefton’s eyes bulged in horror.
“Summon the guards,” King Glower said to the other footman. “They can start searching from here.?
??
But Celie knew that Arkwright was long gone. The girl had been sent in the morning to check the blankets. He wouldn’t be anywhere near this corridor now, and it was useless to look.
Useless to look with your own eyes, perhaps . . .
Celie turned in the opposite direction as the footman ran off, but her father caught her sleeve.
“Where do you think you’re going, miss?”
“I want to check on Rufus,” she said.
Her father gave her a stern look, but Celie gazed back without blinking. When he nodded and let go of her sleeve, she took off at a trot. But instead of going into her bedchamber, and from there into the griffins’ exercise tower, she kept going down the corridor, past her rooms, and Rolf’s, and Lilah’s, and Bran’s, until she came to a narrow staircase.
She went up the staircase and turned, and then up another staircase, to the Spyglass Tower.
The Castle had given the Spyglass Tower to Celie, Lilah, and Rolf as a refuge during the awful time when Prince Khelsh had tried to take it over. Even now that Khelsh was long gone, eaten by Rufus’s father, few people but Celie ever bothered to visit it, and the maids never cleaned there.
With the Castle whole, it didn’t move things around as much as it once had. Celie wasn’t sure if it was because the Castle was content, or if it had less room to maneuver. Either way, the Spyglass Tower was one of the few rooms that still shifted its location, but Celie could always find it without too much effort.
Celie picked the western spyglass, which looked out over the roofs of the Castle. The spyglasses could see much farther than any normal spyglasses, looking for miles to the edges of the valley that held the Castle. They could also look through the walls of the Castle and show you what was happening inside. She took hold of the brass tube, closed her left eye, and asked the Castle to show her Wizard Arkwright.
“I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before,” she muttered, pressing her right eye to the lens.
But there was nothing there. The view through the spyglass was of the stone walls of the Castle, the tile roofs, and nothing else. It blurred and came into focus several times as though looking for the missing wizard, but there was nothing to see.
“What does that mean?” Celie said in frustration. “Is he not in the Castle?”
She swung the spyglass around on its stand, scanning the village and the road out of the valley. But the lenses never focused. The road was just a gray stripe, and the village was full of brown and gray blobs, with smaller people-shaped blobs moving among them.
She studied the walls of the Castle again, but still nothing came into focus. Was Arkwright too far away for the Castle to see? Or had he used magic to hide himself? Or would the Castle have hidden him, if he asked? His family had owned the Castle at one time, after a long battle with the Hathelockes that lasted for centuries. But they had wanted the Castle and the griffins, and in the end they had tried to kill everyone in their entire world in order to possess those two things. Would the Castle feel any loyalty to Arkwright? Or had he done something to make it hide him?
“Castle?” Celie pulled back from the spyglass and put one hand on the stones of the window frame. “Are you hiding Arkwright?”
There was no answer.
Chapter
9
“Hold still, Celie!”
“Why do I have to do this, Lilah? I have plenty of new gowns!”
“You keep growing!”
“It’s not my fault!”
“Hold still!”
“Princess Delilah, it’s you who are not helping,” the head seamstress said.
She was on her knees beside Celie, who was standing as still as she could with her arms outstretched while the seamstress pinned the hem of her newest gown. Every time Celie moved so much as an eyebrow, Lilah scolded her. But at the seamstress’s words, Lilah turned in a huff and started shuffling through the patterns on the table.
Celie dared to tilt her chin down and look at the head seamstress. The woman winked at her.
“I quite liked my old new gowns,” Celie said. “Is it possible to just alter some of them?”
“Very possible, Your Highness,” the head seamstress said. “Send them down and we’ll remake them.”
“Maybe the green one?” Celie asked. “I really like that one. If you could make the hem and sleeves longer, it would be wonderful.”
“I’m sure we could,” the head seamstress said, nodding. “That was a very nice gown, as I recall. The embroidery on the bodice was particularly fine.”
“That’s my favorite bit,” Celie agreed.
“Absolutely not!” Lilah whirled, looking horrified. “Embroidered bodices aren’t the fashion anymore! Now everything is very simple, with wider sleeves!”
“Lilah,” Celie began, wincing at the hurt expression on the head seamstress’s face. “I think they’re very nice—”
“But they’re not in fashion,” Lilah said again. “Do you want to look frumpy in front of Lulath’s family?”
Celie was going to protest that she didn’t care what she looked like in front of Lulath’s family, but she stopped. Lilah cared. And this was all for Lilah. Lilah was terrified that she would embarrass herself in front of Lulath’s family, or that they would think she was ugly or frumpy or foolish. Queen Celina had explained all this to Celie again that morning as she’d walked her to the seamstresses’ rooms like a jailer, making sure that Celie didn’t run off to help Bran look for Arkwright, or check on Maisy. The maid still had not awoken, and Bran could not figure out what spell had been used to put her to sleep.
“Do you?”
With a jolt, Celie realized that Lilah was waiting for an answer.
“No, no, I don’t,” she muttered.
“Speak clearly, don’t mumble,” Lilah said.
“Oh, look, Your Highness! I found that lace you were asking about!” One of the younger seamstresses came to Celie’s rescue.
“Put your shoulders back,” the head seamstress said to Celie.
Celie did, tilting her chin up in the process. Over one of the cutting tables she could see the trapdoor in the ceiling. She’d come through that door and fallen on the table almost two years ago, running away from Khelsh. She thought for a chilling moment how she would probably be dead if she didn’t know all the ins and outs of the Castle, the trapdoors and passageways. That was why Celie had been the first person to truly map out the Castle: she’d been the first person in centuries to explore every single secret passage and hidden door.
“Oh,” Celie said. “Oh, oh, oh!”
“Did I poke you, Your Highness?” The head seamstress sat back on her heels, concerned.
“I need to get out of this gown,” Celie said. “I need to find Bran.”
“Don’t you dare sneak off,” Lilah said. “It was hard enough to track you down today!”
“Lilah,” Celie said. “This is very important. More important than new gowns.”
“Right now there’s nothing as important as these gowns,” Lilah said. Then she flushed. “I know that sounds shallow, but it’s true! We have to have new wardrobes on time!”
“Lilah,” Celie began, “I really, really have to talk to Bran.”
“I’m all done, Your Highness,” the head seamstress said. “So you can go now. We have all your measurements, and this will be hemmed today.”
“Oh, good,” Celie said. “Can someone get me out of this? Now?”
One of the other seamstresses helped Celie out of the gown, which had been pinned together in the back since the laces were not yet done. Celie was so anxious to talk to Bran that she started to run out of the sewing room in her shift, and only Lilah’s scandalized cry stopped her. She hopped into her old gown, nearly ripping one of the sleeves as she jammed her arm in, and the seamstress helping her yanked the laces so tight, she could hardly breathe.
“There you are, Princess,” the woman said, breathless herself at Celie’s urgency. “You’re ready.”
&
nbsp; Celie gave her a grateful look and took off at a run for Bran’s rooms, but they were empty. She headed to her own room, to see if he was in the griffins’ tower helping Pogue with Arrow, but she found herself at the front doors of the Castle instead. She turned around to go back to her room, but then there was that familiar twist in her head.
Once again she was facing the front doors.
“Can I help you, Your Highness?” The guard at the doors was staring at her.
“I’m looking for Wizard Bran,” Celie said.
“He’s out in the sheep meadow,” the guard said. “Setting up the workshop.”
“The workshop?”
“For the ship,” the guard said, his eyes shining. “It’s going to be an amazing sight, isn’t it? A great ship, in our sheep meadow!”
“Blast Lilah and her new wardrobe,” Celie snarled, startling the guard.
She pushed through the doors, muttering all the while, and went across the front courtyard and out the gate. She’d been so busy being fitted for stupid gowns, never mind learning Grathian customs from her tutor, that she’d completely forgotten about the ship, and her figurehead that was going to be used on it.
In order to use as many tools and materials as the Castle could provide, the king had decided to cut and shape the pieces of the ship in the sheep meadow, with Bran supervising. The materials would then be moved on massive carts, which Bran also seemed to think he could build, to the Grathian docks. As part of the celebration of Lilah and Lulath’s betrothal, the assembled ship would be launched in front of the Grathian court. Also attending would be Queen Celina, Celie, Rolf, and of course Lilah, all presumably in fashionable new clothes that wouldn’t embarrass the Glower family.
The sheep were standing in a huddle, looking stunned. They often looked stunned, because they were sheep, but this time Celie had to agree with them. In the middle of the smooth, green meadow just to the east of the Castle, a massive structure was being erected. It was a rough shed, hardly more than a roof with support timbers, to keep the weather off the pieces of the ship, but still it was huge.