“Is the hatch in good shape?” Pogue asked suddenly.
“Ye-es,” Celie said. “Why?”
“Oh . . . I just thought . . . it’s not important right now, but we could use it for the ship.”
“Oh,” Celie said. “I guess.” She sighed. There was no point in protesting, she supposed. If they wanted something for the ship, they would just take it.
“All right, all right,” Bran said. “I want to see this lock, but I think we’re better off sending the soldiers through the walls, to mark them and look for signs of Arkwright.”
“I don’t like this at all,” Rolf announced. “Mother, you of all people—”
“I said I don’t want to discuss this right now,” Queen Celina cut in. “And I meant it. It’s late, and we all need to go to bed.”
But first everyone insisted on filing through Celie’s room and inspecting the smoothly flagged floor where the trapdoor had been. They looked at the door, stacked against the wall, and made hmm noises. Except for Pogue, who picked up the trapdoor and raised his eyebrows at Celie. She sighed again and closed her eyes for a moment before she nodded for him to take it.
The queen produced the brass lockbox and offered to demonstrate it, but Bran shouted, “No!”
“There is no need for that,” the queen said, her voice ice cold. “We should all retire now.” And she swept out without looking back.
The others shuffled out of Celie’s room, looking angry or tired or upset to various degrees. Pogue was the last one out, after checking that Arrow was asleep in a basket in the griffin tower above Celie’s bedchamber. As he picked up the trapdoor and started to carry it out, though, Celie caught his sleeve.
“Why is everyone so upset about Mother doing magic?” she asked. It was sometimes useful, but sometimes irritating, that people told Pogue things they wouldn’t tell her.
He looked uncomfortable. “I shouldn’t say, if you don’t know,” he said.
“Pogue,” Celie said, hurt. “It isn’t fair that I don’t know, and you know it!”
“It’s how your grandmother died,” Pogue said reluctantly. “She was a wizard, you know.”
“I just found that out today,” she said.
“Well, they don’t talk about it much,” he admitted.
“Why not? I think it’s amazing that Mummy’s parents were both wizards!”
“Er, it’s just that . . . when she died . . . ,” Pogue said, hesitating.
“Yes?”
“She wasn’t a wizard when she died,” Pogue said in a rush. “They banned her from magic, for messing with spells that were too dangerous.”
Celie felt wobbly. “They do that?” She’d never heard of such a thing.
“You, um, have to . . . do some really bad things,” Pogue said. “She wasn’t evil,” he added quickly, when Celie’s mouth dropped open in shock. “She just wouldn’t stop doing things that, if they went wrong, could hurt people. And then she kept on, and eventually she . . . blew herself up.”
“What?” Celie’s knees buckled and she half fell onto a footstool.
Pogue dropped the trapdoor and knelt down by her. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said faintly. “I think . . .?”
“I’m so sorry I’m telling you this,” he said. “But, to be honest, if the queen is going to start meddling with magic when she hasn’t had any training, you ought to know why your brother is so upset.”
“She blew herself up?”
“And a couple of maids who were helping her,” Pogue added, looking grim.
“And they’re dead?”
“Very.”
“Where was this?”
“She was using one of the guest rooms at the back of the Castle for her spells,” Pogue said, “since the Royal Wizard, her husband, had taken away her workshop.”
“Ugh, that’s so . . . I don’t know what that is,” Celie said.
“It’s bad,” Pogue said. “But that won’t happen to your mother.”
“It won’t?”
“Your mother is too smart to do things that might . . . end that way.”
“I hope so,” Celie said.
Pogue squeezed her shoulder and got to his feet. “I should go.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Celie said.
“You’re welcome, I suppose,” he said. “I’m just sorry I had to be the one.”
“It sounds better coming from you,” Celie told him. “Daddy just blusters and sometimes Bran is just too . . . wizardly.”
“Thank you,” Pogue said. He bowed. “I try my best.” Then he picked up the trapdoor again. “And, Celie?”
“Yes?”
“I’m so sorry about your father. The king. I’m sure that Bran will find a cure.”
“Thank you,” she said as he went out.
Celie closed and locked her door, and went upstairs to spend some time with the griffins. She had an awful lot to think about, but one thing she was sure of: She was going to get that lockbox again, and she was going to use it to get rid of Arkwright.
For her father.
Chapter
13
It was a week before Celie managed to get her hands on the lockbox, however. A week in which no one found any sign of Arkwright, and everyone became short-tempered and paranoid. No one would tell Celie anything, and even Queen Celina refused to let her younger daughter help look for the villain.
But although Queen Celina disliked being reminded of her own mother’s disgrace, she also was not foolish enough to let Celie play with magic. Even Celie’s arguments that since the box had worked just fine once, there was no reason they couldn’t use it again had been met with flat refusal. Bran had commandeered the lockbox and hidden it somewhere in his workroom. He said that he would let them use it after he had run some tests himself, but he was busy trying to find a counterspell to wake up King Glower and the others, and wouldn’t so much as look at the lockbox until that was done.
“It’s more important that we wake your father,” said Queen Celina.
She and Celie were standing in the sheep meadow, watching lengths of lumber be cut into planks for the ship and taking a break from sitting in the Heart of the Castle with the king, Maisy, and the stricken guards.
There were more village girls than sheep clustered on the green lawn today, because the heat had caused more of the workers than Pogue to remove their shirts. Added to that, Lorcan, Juliet, and Arrow were all playing in the field under the watchful eye of Ethan, which made the girls all coo over the baby griffins in a manner that Celie found more than a little cloying.
“But why can’t we work on both?” Celie persisted. “Father and flushing out Arkwright?”
She watched in satisfaction as Rufus, who had just joined the sporting griffins, hissed at a girl who tried to offer him a bunch of flowers. “He doesn’t eat flowers,” Celie called to the girl, annoyed. She turned back to her mother. “We shouldn’t just be standing here because Bran said so! There’s so much to do!”
“Bran is the Royal Wizard,” her mother said.
“Twice someone has tried to break into the griffin stables,” Celie reminded her mother. “Arkwright wants a griffin; he’s not content to wait and see if one wants to bond anymore. What if he’s worked out a spell to force a griffin to do his bidding? Or put them all to sleep?”
“Oh, he couldn’t possibly!” Queen Celina protested half heartedly. “Bran says that we shouldn’t use the lockbox until after he’s approved it.”
“What does Bran know about it? He wasn’t there when we used it.”
“This is a large part of his job: to suss out magical threats and defuse them,” Queen Celina said gently.
“You’re not a magical threat!” Celie said, shocked that her mother would even say such a thing.
Her mother smiled. “Good heavens, I should hope not. But the lockbox is,” she explained. “It’s an untested magical device created by someone who is not a wizard.” She sounded as though she were reciting a
lesson. Perhaps she was.
“Why didn’t you go to the College of Wizardry?” Celie asked. “You should be a wizard!” Something occurred to her then. “If you can use magic, doesn’t that mean you’re a wizard anyway?”
“I didn’t want to go back then,” her mother explained. “I wanted to stay here, and marry your father. The Castle wanted it, too, remember?”
Celie nodded. Everyone knew the story of how Celie’s father, then Crown Prince, and the daughter of the Royal Wizard had been locked in the throne room together for six hours. When at last the doors of the throne room had opened, Celie’s grandfathers, also known as King Glower the Seventy-eighth and Royal Wizard Finnegan, had found their two oldest children sitting on the floor, holding hands, planning their marriage.
“Daddy would have waited for you, and I’m sure the Castle would have, too,” Celie said.
“Your father needed me,” she said. “And so did the Castle. Poor Rolf died not long after that, and your father was a king at barely nineteen.”
“What?” Celie stared at her mother, then looked over to the building site, where she could see Rolf helping to hold a large beam.
“Oh, Rolf is named after your grandfather,” Queen Celina hastily clarified. “Did you not know that? Glower the Seventy-eighth was born Rolf, just like our Rolf.” Her tone was wistful, and she was also watching Rolf.
Celie remembered the sorrow she’d felt when Rolf had been crowned Glower the Eightieth the year before. After the coronation, only she and Lilah had had the right to call him Rolf, and even then people had frowned when they had. Of course, their father was restored to the throne just days later, but it had still been a strange and terrifying time.
And one day Rolf would be Glower the Eightieth again. But hopefully not very soon.
Celie wondered if she would have a son one day, and if she would name him Owen. Would she have to explain that it had been her father’s name, but no one had called him that except his wife? Probably.
“Who started that?” Celie asked.
“Who started what?”
“Who started calling our kings Glower? And why Glower, and not Sleyne?” Celie asked.
“From what I can tell, it was the first king of the Castle, who I suppose was really Arkish,” her mother said. “But I thought you knew that . . .”
“Yes,” Celie said. “But I still don’t understand why these exiles from Hatheland and the Glorious Arkower didn’t try to blend in better. Shouldn’t they have called it Castle Sleyne, and tried to pretend they were always from here?”
“You and I would have done that,” Queen Celina said. “But they were too proud, I think. And too strange. I wonder how long it took people to really accept them, and to come to trust them, and the Castle.”
“I suppose,” Celie said slowly. A new thought was creeping into her brain.
Her mother saw her face change. “What is it.”
“What happened to the old king of Sleyne? The one who was here when the Castle arrived.”
“Ah!” Her mother beamed. “An excellent question, darling! And one that I can actually answer,” she said eagerly.
Celie held up a hand to stop her, though. “Will I like the answer?” she asked.
“Yes,” Queen Celina said. “I promise!”
“All right,” Celie said, lowering her hand. “What is it?”
“Sleyne had no king.”
“What?” Celie blinked at her mother. “How is that possible?”
“There had been a king, you see,” the queen said. “But he’d died a couple of years before, of very old age. Both of his sons had died without leaving any heirs, and he had only one daughter, who died about the same time. The king was very old; he and his children had lived long full lives,” she explained before Celie could ask. “The daughter had married a Bendeswean noble, and the Sleynth asked for one of her sons to be the new king, but none of them were interested.”
Celie was outraged. “Why wouldn’t they want to be king? And Sleyne is much better than Bendeswe! Aren’t they always having those awful dust storms?”
“These princes had never been to Sleyne,” the queen went on, laughing a little at Celie’s outburst. “I don’t think they even spoke Sleynth. They wanted to give Sleyne to their king so that he could make it part of Bendeswe, and he would give them large estates in return.”
“They sound horrible!”
“They do,” her mother agreed. “But you have to understand: Sleyne was very poor back then. The king had not been well for some time, and his Council did most of the work, but they were also old and feeble. Bendeswe and Vhervhine had both taken large bites out of our borders, roads were in bad repair, schools were out of funds . . . Sleyne was no prize.” She paused. “I suspect that’s why those horrible wizards thought it would make a good place to put the Castle, when they were trying to get it away from the plague in Hatheland. They could have taken control of Sleyne without any fight. And they did, in a roundabout way.”
“I think I hate Glower the First now,” Celie said. “I didn’t know that he just took over because the old king had been . . . old.”
“Well, we shouldn’t hate him,” her mother said. “My understanding was that the people of Sleyne greeted the Arkish and Hathelockes like saviors. Glower the First offered to rebuild the kingdom and take back the land that had been nibbled away. Which he did, and then he even married a Sleynth noblewoman,” she reminded Celie. “So he was trying.”
“And Arkwright probably helped him,” Celie said, unsure of how she felt about that part of the story.
“Probably,” her mother agreed.
“So the history of the Castle is both good and bad?”
“Most history is,” Queen Celina said.
“I suppose,” Celie said.
Celie didn’t really care for history, mainly because Master Humphries, her tutor, made even the bloodiest battle sound like a terribly dull affair. It had never occurred to her that each army thought they were in the right. But she supposed they did think that, just like the Arkish and Hathelocke people who had come to Sleyne thought they were doing the right thing by taking over. And had they? Sleyne wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t.
But if they’d never come here, there would still be unicorns frolicking in the meadow . . . and all the griffins would be dead.
“It’s not the most comfortable feeling, is it, Celie darling?” Queen Celina sounded sympathetic. “When you realize that sometimes right and wrong is hard to judge?”
“No,” Celie agreed. “I guess it’s not.”
Celie had already had to come to terms with the fact that the feasts and decorations in the holiday feasting hall were not made magically by the Castle. Instead, for hundreds of years, the people of the Glorious Arkower had made a pilgrimage to the Castle to prepare the feasts as an annual tribute to their long-lost home. Every day for a week, over the winter solstice, wonderful feasts and decorations would be laid out in the Heart of the Castle, and then the room would be transferred to Sleyne, where Celie and her family would enjoy their holiday feast, thinking the Castle had provided all, and not some mysterious people in a far-off land, who were only providing the feast as part of a half remembered tradition.
Now that the Heart of the Castle was permanently in Sleyne, the holiday feasts that year would be very different, but Celie was glad. She still felt strange twinges when she thought about the unknown hands that had prepared the old feasts. Hands that had worshipped the Castle, and the people in it, for hundreds of years without even knowing who or where they were.
Celie turned, not sure what else to say, and watched the work on the ship for a time. It looked like they were assembling a great wooden skeleton. She said this aloud, and her mother agreed.
“It’s the bones of the ship,” she said. “Just like the stones of the Castle are its bones, I suppose. They’re using whatever lumber they can find in the Castle, you know.”
Celie nodded. She did know that. There had been a wh
ole cache of lumber in one of the new rooms, as well as the fittings from the original ship that she’d found in the storeroom with the figurehead.
“The ship will be part Hathelocke and part Sleynth,” her mother said. “And a very fitting gift for Lilah and Lulath.” She looked at Celie. “I know you don’t like its being taken away from you. I hope you’ll come to be at peace with Daddy’s decision.”
“I am,” Celie said, and was surprised to realize that it was starting to be true.
But now, as she said it, something else bothered her. Their family wasn’t just Sleynth, it was also Hathelocke and Arkish. And there were no Arkish bits to add to the ship.
“There’s even a piece that’s Arkish,” her mother said, as though reading her thoughts.
“What? Is there?”
“Yes, Pogue told me that he’s planning to use the trapdoor from your room,” the queen said.
“That won’t be enough,” Celie said, mostly to herself.
“What was that, darling?”
“Nothing,” Celie said. “I need to go. I think my nose is getting sunburned.”
The queen looked at her intently for a moment, then said, “Go on, then, darling.” She put a soft hand on Celie’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “I’m going to go sit with your father.”
Chapter
14
Celie was at Bran’s door in a matter of minutes, with Rufus on her heels. Several months ago the Castle had put most of the Glower family rooms along one corridor on the opposite side of the main hall, and there they had stayed. Bran’s rooms were across the corridor and one door down from Celie’s, and it would be easy for her to pretend that she was on her way to her own room if anyone should come.
Bran’s door was locked.
Of course it was. He’d always been secretive, even before he became a wizard. Celie stared at the door in despair. She just had to get that lockbox!
She looked around, but Bran and Pogue were busy in the Heart of the Castle, looking up counterspells and grinding strange herbs into potions. They’d roped Rolf, Celie’s tutor Master Humphries, and the more scholarly Councilors into helping them. The guards, along with the younger and more warlike Councilors, were patrolling the passageways with Celie’s atlas in hand, marking the walls with chalk. But if they found Arkwright, what could they do?