“Anyone else?”
Another rainbow flashed out. “Dror.”
“He’s angry?”
“Maybe. Three months ago his father kicked him off his farm and made him choose to become either a bee or a soldier, and he picked bee, as I advised. He’s at the Oase. Being a bee will settle him. He wouldn’t steal the Replica or hurt his family. He’s a loyal lad.”
Meenore would want to know about this.
“Has anyone else left the mountain recently?”
“Master Uwald and Master Tuomo, his steward, rode to Zee. They’ll pass the Oase going and coming back. I don’t know if they’ll stop. And Master Tuomo’s sons are on their way to a wedding on Letster Mountain.”
Count Jonty Um frowned. “Does Master Tuomo have daughters and a goodwife?”
“Just his sons. He’s a widower.”
“Does Master Uwald have children and a goodwife?”
“Neither. He lives with his steward and his steward’s sons, and he has servants.”
Meenore would be interested in this, too. “Anyone else?”
“Mistress Sirka left, but barber-surgeons never tarry long anywhere. I heard a rumor that she and Dror were betrothed, although nothing came of it.”
The brunka had now answered Elodie’s and Meenore’s questions, but Count Jonty Um suspected Meenore would have found more to inquire about if IT had been here. A headache started, which would have felt familiar to Elodie.
“Oh!” Brunka Arnulf extended his arms, palms down, fingers spread, as if he were calming something. “Did you hear that, Master Count?”
“No.”
“The volcano rumbled. It was so slight I might not have noticed if you hadn’t come with your news. The Replica hasn’t been found yet.”
A winter hare hopped across the snow to the right of the brunka’s cottage. Canute-bee would warn the humans, who would flee the mountain if they could. If they had time, they’d drive their herds and flocks along with them. His Lordship ground his teeth in misery. The wild beasts wouldn’t understand the warning.
The hare stopped, nose twitching, ears straight up. His Lordship remembered being a hare and hearing thunder. His frightened hare’s heart had jolted painfully before his ogre mind took over. If the tremors grew strong enough for the beasts to sense them, they’d run hither and yon, crazy with terror, but they wouldn’t know to leave the mountain. If the worst happened, they’d stay and die.
CHAPTER TEN
In the corridor again, High Brunka Marya told Ludda-bee and Johan-bee to accompany her to the great hall. Once there, Ludda-bee bustled off to the kitchen. The high brunka brightened the chamber with a grand rainbow. Elodie blinked in the light, her eyelids sandy from lack of sleep.
High Brunka Marya awakened her bees and gave some of them tasks, which they began unquestioningly, although a few sent curious glances Elodie’s way. The bees seemed unremarkable—most in middle age, plump or thin, straight or stooped, evenly divided between men and women.
Possibly one of them had stolen Lahnt’s most precious thing, but Elodie could hardly credit it. Bees helped people. They devoted their lives to helping, and most appeared to love it. They didn’t need to steal because everyone contributed to the brunkas and their bees. The saying went, One bean to the brunka, nineteen beans remain. Lahnters gave a twentieth of everything to the brunkas and their bees. The saying continued, They give out of goodness. We give out of gratitude.
High Brunka Marya’s rainbow dwindled as her bees lit tallow lamps and torches around the great hall, creating almost as much smoke as light. The youngest bee and the most eager, a man, hurried to the northwest corner of the great hall, where benches, stools, wooden boards, and trestles were stacked. He dragged four benches to the largest fireplace, the one opposite the entrance to the Oase, and arranged them in a line.
Elodie circled the chamber, whose immensity rivaled the great hall in Count Jonty Um’s castle. She took it all in: the stone floor under a scattering of rushes; the distant stone ceiling, reinforced by oak beams; and the stone walls, interrupted at intervals by oak posts. Only the outer wall was entirely man-made, plaster over ordinary wattle and daub, broken near the ceiling by a line of eight small windows covered with the usual oiled parchment, which gleamed a gray that gave nothing away. Dawn might have begun, or it might not have. Her masteress might be here any minute or not for another hour or two.
Count Jonty Um must have reached Zertrum by now. Was the mountain aflame? Had he learned the identity of the thief? Was he on his way back to them? Was he safe?
All four walls were lined with closed cabinets and open shelves, which held what Elodie supposed were relics of Lahnt and brunka history. The Replica could be hidden in a cabinet or even on an open shelf, concealed behind something larger. A person could spend days—a week!—combing through everything. And then there were the chambers of relics High Brunka Marya had pointed out and probably others besides. Lambs and calves! A legion of bees would be needed to search everywhere in time.
Two doors and an archway opened off the chamber: the big outside entry door in the west wall; an archway far to the left of it in the north wall; and a small door on the right side of the east wall, the door the high brunka had taken her through, which led to her distant chamber.
Johan-bee and two more bees stirred up embers in the three fireplaces and added logs until crackling and spitting spiked the quiet.
In the center of the hall, High Brunka Marya spoke softly to a knot of older bees—those, Elodie supposed, who’d been with her for at least seven years, as IT had required. She heard muffled exclamations and cries of distress. When the high brunka finished, they left the hall in pairs, except for the bee who seemed oldest. Elodie deduced the pairs were off to begin the search and perhaps to wake the guests. On their way, a bee detoured to Johan-bee and jogged his arm so that his poker clattered on the hearthstone. Johan-bee looked up, flushing, but said nothing.
They all plague him, Elodie thought.
The oldest bee—a big man with a big head, a bloodshot nose, and a white beard trimmed straight across the bottom—shuffled to the benches that had been placed by the youngest bee. His jowls jiggled as he sat and placed his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, facing into the great hall, watching everyone intently.
Elodie turned to investigate the shelf nearest her, which was on the south wall. She hoped that luck might trump the arduous work of deducing, inducing, and using her common sense. Let the Replica be here!
But the shelf merely held a forest of vials made of clay and glass, none big enough to contain the Replica or to conceal it from view. The shelf below was filled with chained books, chained so they could be read but not taken away. Elodie pulled one out and proved to herself that the Replica wasn’t behind it. There! She’d searched two shelves—out of hundreds—and behind one book—out of dozens.
“Son, there will be an excellent reason.” The voice was soft-spoken, educated, the t crisply pronounced, the r’s solid. “High Brunka Marya wouldn’t have roused us for anything insignificant.”
Still holding the book, Elodie twisted to see. Only a few yards to her left, an elderly man and a boy entered the great hall. The man held the boy’s hand and advanced with small steps, as if he were walking in a slow procession.
Son? The man was old enough to be the boy’s grandfather.
Was this “poor” Master Robbie? Elodie opened her book and watched the two while mansioning absorption in the volume. Both wore wooden mourning beads over their cloaks. Did the beads make them both “poor”?
Almost everything about the man was just so, and nothing suggested he’d been surprised from sleep: short gray beard and mustache, neatly clipped; small ears; thin nose onto which round spectacles were clamped. He wore a sober dark-blue cloak of brushed wool edged with a border of rabbit fur, a wealthy costume. Only his hat—wealthy also, orange with a bright-green tassel—veered, in Elodie’s opinion, from just so to too much.
Could he
be the thief? He seemed not to need money. If he was the thief, the just-so in him meant he would make a careful, thorough job of it.
How could a thief look so genial? He smiled as if he’d been awakened from happy dreams.
The boy’s cloak, fine brushed wool also, his in moss green, lacked only a fur trim. His shoes, with the old-style round toes that were still customary in Lahnt, were so new they hardly had creases.
Below his neck, he was a just-so boy. But his unguarded face gave too much away, and its forlorn look made Elodie’s breath catch.
An artist could have sketched his portrait almost entirely in straight lines: the head a triangle ending in a pointed chin, a smaller triangle for his nose, a horizontal slash for his unsmiling mouth, two angled strokes for the shadows under his cheeks, roof peaks for his eyebrows, curved lines only for his dark-blue, red-rimmed eyes and for the dot of pink that bloomed at the tip of his nose, probably caused by weeping.
Elodie bent her head over her book, not wanting to seem to pry, but the just-so man noticed her. “Look, Robbie, someone for you to play with. Isn’t that lucky?”
He was Master Robbie!
To her surprise the boy came to her and whispered, “It’s gone. Am I right?”
In a rush she induced and deduced. Master Robbie knew. He’d asked to see the Replica, and the high brunka hadn’t brought it out.
Should she reveal she knew, too? Would her masteress want her to?
Probably not, but—she used her common sense—he knew everyone here, and he’d tell her more if she were honest. “Yes,” she whispered back. “The high brunka told us.”
Master Robbie looked around, probably seeking the rest of Elodie’s us.
She remembered that IT wanted her to appear slow-witted, but that wouldn’t do with someone her age.
“I’m Elodie of Dair, and I’m”—with a touch of grandeur—“delighted to make your acquaintance.” She gave him the curtsy she had once bestowed upon Greedy Grenny, King of Lahnt.
He bowed a slight bow, the bow Count Jonty Um would make to a peasant. “I’m Robbie.”
Maybe he was too sad to be polite.
“I was of Zee.” Zee was the fishing village where the cog had docked. “Now I’m of Zertrum.”
“Oh!” He’d lose his new home if the Replica wasn’t found.
He tilted his chin toward the elderly man. “With him.” He touched his mourning beads.
She said what grown-ups say: “I’m sorry for your loss.”
His voice sharpened. “Whales and porpoises! I didn’t lose anything.” He was silent a moment. “I apologize. My grandmother died. She used to say I have no manners.” Then he added what Elodie had heard people remark about orphans: “She was all I had in the world.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. No parents? He really was poor Master Robbie.
He changed the subject. “The Replica could be in a thousand places. Have you been here before?”
She shook her head.
“There are corridors of rooms full of things like this.” He gestured at the shelves in front of them.
“You think it’s inside the Oase?”
“If it’s outside, it could be anywhere. Something else is missing, too.”
“What?”
“I’ll show you.”
How could he show her something that wasn’t there?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Elodie?” An unmistakable round baritone. “Lady El?”
Her pet name, which she loved. “Albin? Albin!”
In an instant he rushed to her, lifted her by her waist, and spun her around, exactly as he used to after they’d mansioned a scene particularly well. When she sailed by Master Robbie, she saw his expression close.
She pitied him, but Albin came first.
He set her down.
Master Robbie left them, his shoulders hunched as he went to the just-so man, who had seated himself in the middle of the row of benches, two benches away from the elderly bee.
“Are Mother and Father here, too?”
“I’m alone. How did you get here?”
“It’s too much to tell.” What could she tell him? She could trust him with anything. Even IT would have to agree. She beckoned him to bend to hear a whisper. Certainly she could divulge this, which he’d find out soon anyway: “I came with a dragon.”
Albin straightened. “No!”
Theft or no theft, she smiled her widest smile. “Yes.”
He looked puzzled and pleased. “Lady El—”
There wasn’t time for his questions. “Why are you here?”
“Because”—he began to narrate and mansion, as he often did—“the farmer sent his helper”—he bowed awkwardly, portraying the lowly helper of Elodie’s father—“here to secure enough coin from the good brunkas for passage to Two Castles to bring his daughter back.”
She’d sent a note to set their minds at rest, but it might not have reached them.
“Why didn’t they ask Brunka Wilda?” She was the Dair brunka.
“Brunka Wilda said no, and so did the high brunka. They think Bettel and Han shouldn’t have sent you to Two Castles.”
If Elodie had had a tail, it would have twitched. The brunkas had judged without understanding.
“What is this, rousing people in the night?” The voice, loud and angry, issued from the doorway.
Elodie turned to look.
The speaker addressed the just-so man. “Has High Brunka Marya told you, Uwald?”
Elodie tilted her head at Albin. The just-so man was Master Uwald? Master Uwald, the richest person on Lahnt after the earl?
Albin whispered, “The very same.”
Master Uwald’s vast Nockess Farm spread across the south slope of Zertrum Mountain and into the valley. With the Replica gone, he stood to lose everything.
He’d called Master Robbie son, but Master Uwald didn’t have a son. Everyone knew that.
“Marya hasn’t told us anything yet,” the just-so man—Master Uwald—said, “but I’ll bet it has to do with our new arrival.” He gestured in Elodie’s direction.
Still in the doorway, the newcomer demanded, “Who is she?”
Albin added, still whispering, “That’s his steward, Master Tuomo.”
Elodie curtsied. “I’m Elodie of Potluck Farm on Dair, Master.”
Rudely, Master Tuomo said nothing, just swung into the great hall with a rolling gait. He reminded Elodie of the knave in a pack of cards: his cap tight against his forehead, his face any age between thirty and fifty, a thick fringe of brown beard, wary brown eyes, short neck, barrel chest, thin legs. A rich man in a brown cloak with a silver pin at the neck. He, too, wore mourning beads.
Might he be the thief? Elodie thought. If he had taken the Replica, it would have been in anger. She returned to wondering about Master Robbie. How did he and Master Uwald come to be together? Master Uwald had been jilted by his first and only sweetheart. He had no children and thus no grandchildren.
The steward sat on Master Uwald’s other side from Master Robbie.
In a whisper, Albin added, “Master Uwald’s true love was Master Robbie’s grandmother. He’s now the boy’s guardian.”
Everyone knew the story of young Mistress Lilli and Master Uwald and laughed over its irony. She turned down the marriage offer of a poor peddler (Goodman Uwald then) because she disapproved of wagering, and he bet on anything. Soon after, he threw the dice and won the most prosperous farm on Lahnt. He’d been rich ever since.
Was the grandson going to get the riches?
Did Master Robbie love his guardian?
Two bees entered with the barber-surgeon the high brunka had mentioned earlier, her occupation revealed by her linen cap bleached to snowy whiteness. She was a large woman, young, with ripples of light-brown hair below the cap. Her face was broad with widely spaced tawny eyes, flaring nostrils, a round chin, thick neck.
She smiled at the chamber, and the smile tightened her chin and raised her cheekbones,
making her handsome. Such a smile it was, mouth half open, a blazing smile. Elodie thought, When I smile that way, I’m running full tilt or standing at the prow of the cog in a strong wind with flying fish leaping about.
The woman stood behind Master Tuomo, while the bees who’d brought her sat one full bench away from the guests.
High Brunka Marya called into the kitchen, “Ludda, come. Breakfast can wait.”
Did that mean all the guests were here?
Ludda-bee, a serving spoon in one hand, entered the great hall and sat with the other bees.
“Lady El . . .” Albin bowed and held his arm out for her.
In the grand manner of mansioners promenading across a stage, they strutted to the bench, where she sat next to Master Robbie. He looked solemnly at her, seeming to take her measure.
She met his gaze. After a few seconds he blushed. They both looked away.
Albin, on her other side, leaned down to whisper, “Did you mansion at all while you were away?”
She couldn’t help smiling and whispered—shame on her—loud enough for Master Robbie to hear, too, “For the king.”
“No!” Albin said.
She felt Master Robbie jerk a little and sit straighter.
“Yes, and for the princess, too.”
Lodie! a nasal voice said in her mind. Remember your purpose. Observe!
The bees who’d been working here in the great hall came to the benches and sat together, along with the oldest bee, who had preceded them. At the end of the bench, Johan-bee lowered himself so awkwardly—he seemed not to look—that he fell. No one had forced him into this mishap. He’d done it by himself, but the others grinned. One said, “Hopeless.” Another chimed in with “Hapless.” And a third, “Useless.”
Everyone faced the crackling fire. Elodie turned and saw High Brunka Marya approaching from the center of the hall.
Elodie realized she shouldn’t be sitting. Masteress Meenore had instructed her to observe everyone when they heard the news, but she wouldn’t be able to if she couldn’t see them all. She jumped up and stood to the right of the fireplace, feeling as conspicuous as a mouse on a tablecloth. Everyone stared. Albin raised his eyebrows comically. Master Robbie continued his solemn gaze.