“Here,” Isodel said to Lukin, handing him a worn old wallet that chinked a little. “It’s not as much as we’d hoped, I’m afraid. Father suddenly decided to check up on everyone
’s allowance—Mother’s particularly—and tell us we all spent too much. We had to account for every copper. Mother invented a charity, and I pretended there was a dress bill I’d forgotten. But we think he’s getting suspicious, Lukin. He keeps asking about you. Mother and I keep saying we’ve seen you just this minute, and the younger ones are being magnificent, inventing things you said to them that morning, but there are so many courtiers not in the secret—like Lord Crevet, going around saying he’s not seen you for weeks now—that it’s getting very difficult.”
Lukin experienced a deep sinking feeling somewhere just under his stomach. “The University sent out a request for donations. Did he—”
“No, that was all right,” said Isodel, “though it was a narrow squeak. I’d told the loftkeeper that any pigeons that arrived from the University were to be brought to me, but Father was actually in the loft, inspecting it, when it came. Luckily Lyrian was with Father, and he realized and managed to whisper to the pigeon to fly off and look for me, so Father never saw it after all. But, Lukin, it would make things a lot easier if you could manage to nip home on a spell for a day or so and show Father you’re there.”
“Oh, gods!” said Lukin. “They keep us so busy here. And we haven’t done translocation yet. The way I am now, I’m quite likely to arrive in the palace at the bottom of a deep pit. Or,” he said, thinking about it, “at the end of a line of deep pits, between here and Luteria.”
“You could borrow Endymion,” Isodel suggested. “If I asked him very nicely—”
“Endymion regards himself as your own personal dragon,” Lukin said. “If he wouldn’t bring me here, why should he take me back? Where is he, by the way?”
“Hiding in a wood. He got shy,” Isodel explained. “He hates being gawked at.”
“Then you must have walked miles!” Lukin exclaimed. “Come over to the statue and sit down and meet my friends.” He put an arm around her shoulders and led her to the statue, where his friends were all rather feverishly pretending not to be interested. “You’ve met Elda, of course. This is Ruskin, Claudia, Felim, and”—he took a deep breath—“this is Olga.”
There was a weighty pause then. Isodel looked at Olga, and Olga looked at Isodel. Then both of them smiled in the same anxious-to-please way. It was clear that they liked one another but were both a little daunted by the situation. As soon as he saw this, Felim, on whom Isodel’s smile worked in the usual profound way, went dashing off to fetch Isodel some coffee.
“And some food!” Lukin shouted after Felim. “Because I’ll bet you had no breakfast,” he said to Isodel, who confessed that this was so.
“I can’t stay here more than half an hour,” she added. “It’s about five miles to the wood, and Endymion has to get me back for lunchtime or Father’s going to ask where I am, too.”
“We’ve got a class, anyway,” Lukin said. “And I’ve got to talk to Wermacht about—” He looked around for the cloakrack. Claudia, Ruskin, and Olga pointed. It was standing on the other side of the statue. “And I know we left it inside the tutorial room,” said Lukin. “But if it got out of a sealed pit, what’s a mere door? It just takes a little longer. Isodel, if you think we’ve got problems, you should hear about Claudia’s. And Felim’s.” And he told her, although he said not a word about Olga’s troubles, for which everyone silently congratulated him.
Claudia had been looking from brother to sister. They were very alike, although Lukin’s face was heavier and his hair darker. When they were both smiling and talking, they were more alike than ever. Claudia was puzzled, because they looked about the same age. “Are you two twins?” she asked.
They laughed. “People always ask that,” said Isodel. “No, but I’m only ten months older than he is.”
“She’s the eldest, and she’d make a much better monarch than me,” Lukin said. “Though nothing seems to convince my father of this.” Here Felim came dashing back from the refectory with a tray laden with coffee and a quantity of buns. He handed the tray to Isodel, who thanked him with a smile. “Don’t you agree she’d make a good queen?” Lukin asked Felim.
“I certainly do!” Felim said devoutly. That smile had made him Isodel’s for life.
“Problem,” Lukin said. “Mine this time. The king, my father, has no idea that I am here learning to be a wizard. If he knew, he would not only hit the palace roof but probably also go on up through it. He thinks wizardry and kingship are two incompatible things. The rest of my family, bless them, are trying to prevent my father finding out where I am, but he is getting suspicious because he doesn’t ever actually see me. Can any of you think of a way I can be in two places at once? Isodel’s finding things really difficult.”
“An illusion,” Felim said promptly. “He will see you at the end of a long corridor or running ahead downstairs too fast to catch.”
“No,” said Ruskin. “A golem. I came across a very pretty little golem-spell the other day. You need a likeness of Lukin that this king can get close to.”
Everyone looked dubious about this, knowing the success rate of Ruskin’s spells lately. Isodel said diffidently, “I’ve seen golems. They don’t behave like a real person.”
“How about—” Elda and Olga began at once. Elda shut her beak, and Olga continued, “A sort of mixture of the two ideas?” and Elda exclaimed, “I was going to say that!”
“Yes,” agreed Claudia. “That might do it. I believe such things work best on something that belongs to the person you’re trying to copy. Lukin, give us a handkerchief or a button or something, and if we can get it to look like you with a simple trigger word—if somebody says your name maybe—then we can give it to Isodel—”
“And I can take it home and pass it around the family so that Father sees him in all sorts of places! Perfect!” Isodel exclaimed.
While Lukin searched himself, muttering that somehow he didn’t seem to have a handkerchief, Felim said politely to Isodel, “Are you a wizard also, my lady?”
Isodel laughed. “Good lords, no!”
“She just has personal magnetism,” Lukin said, giving up the handkerchief hunt and handing Claudia the torn-out inside of a pocket instead. “The kind of magnetism that has fledgling dragons swearing lifelong fidelity and courtiers falling at her feet proposing marriage twice a day.”
Isodel turned decidedly pink. “It’s not—I really don’t encourage anyone.”
“I wish I had half of it, that’s all,” said Lukin.
Felim’s dark eyes studied Isodel, then Lukin. “Forgive me,” he said in his polite way, “but I think you simply seldom choose to exercise yours.”