“Big mouth,” muttered Emana.
“I conclude you were playing somewhere you shouldn’t have been,” King Luther said tolerantly, and he turned to Erola. Beyond Erola, Lukin was just sitting there in front of his untouched soup. “What’s the matter, Lukin? Aren’t you hungry?” King Luther asked.
The glances his children exchanged with one another and with their mother seemed almost panic-stricken, until Emana said, “He just doesn’t like oatmeal soup.”
“He told me that, too,” Lyrian said, with such a strong air of relief that King Luther was puzzled. “This morning,” Lyrian added earnestly.
“While you were in your lessons?” asked the king.
Lyrian went white. “No. At breakfast. Yes. Breakfast, it must have been breakfast.”
“Can’t you speak for yourself, Lukin?” King Luther asked.
Again there was the barely hidden panic. Queen Irida said, “I think Lukin has overtaxed his throat somehow, my love. I’m worried about him.”
“Do you mean he’s made a magical hole in his throat now?” the king demanded.
“Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that!” Irida said faintly.
A look of cleverness came over Prince Logan’s face. “He did do some magic, though. That may be it.” The cleverness died away, and panic replaced it as his father looked at him. “You know how you can drink magical potions,” he said wildly. “Accidentally. It was brown, and Lukin probably thought it was coffee.” As the king continued to stare at him, he added desperately, “Or gravy. Maybe it was only gravy. Strong gravy, of course.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” said King Luther.
“He’s just inventing things again,” said Emana, glaring warningly at Logan.
“I am not!” Logan retorted, near to tears. “I always tell the exact truth. Lukin made me promise to last year!”
This caused his father to look at the motionless, silent Lukin again.
“You know, Mother,” Erola said abruptly, “I think it would be best if I took Lukin to his room. And helped him lie down, you know. He doesn’t seem well.”
“Excellent idea!” Queen Irida said, with extraordinary heartiness.
“Just a moment,” King Luther said as Erola was pushing back her chair. He would have been a fool indeed not to have realized by now that his family was trying to keep something from him, and he was not a fool. “Lukin, come over here and let me have a look at you before you go.”
Looks of desperation were exchanged on the other side of the table. On Lukin’s side the tablecloth billowed again. Erola and Lyrian both acquired distant, concentrating looks, and Lukin first jumped from his chair and then came sideways in jerks behind Erola. When he reached Lyrian’s chair, he did another of those momentary blinks out of existence but swiftly reappeared and came on strongly sideways again, accompanied by more billowing from the tablecloth, to stand at last obediently beside the king’s chair.
“Hmm,” said King Luther, and put out his large blue-knuckled forefinger. Not wholly to his surprise, this finger went right through Lukin. “This is a simulacrum, isn’t it?” he said. “What’s going on? Where is Lukin?”
Nobody answered. Lyrian sighed slightly, and the false Lukin disappeared.
“Answer me!” barked King Luther. “I have a right to be told where Lukin is. I’m not an ogre, you know.”
“Or not more than half the time,” Lyrian murmured.
King Luther pretended not to hear Lyrian, but this did not improve his temper. He raised his hurt, gloomy face to look at his wife. She was staring at him from her end of the table as if he had an arrow trained on her heart. “Irida, you seem to be leading this conspiracy. Be so good as to tell me where Lukin really is.”
Irida licked her dry lips and pushed away her soup. “I—I’m sorry, my dear. He’s at the University. He—he had my mother’s money, you know.”
“Is he?” King Luther said with the sarcastic calm of extreme fury. “Is he now? Against my express orders and with the connivance of the rest of you. And I suppose you were late for lunch, Isodel, because you’d sneaked off to see him.” Isodel simply nodded. “No wonder”—King Luther continued—“that I haven’t set eyes on the boy for the best part of a month! Well, well. I shall just have to set out myself tomorrow and fetch him back. In chains if necessary.”
“Oh, no!” gasped Irida.
“Oh, yes, madam,” said King Luther. “You may handle the kingdom while I’m away. Though it may be that I’m a fool to trust you even with that.”
“Luther!” Irida exclaimed.
The king ignored her and rang for the servers. When they hastened in, he gave orders for a squad of guards to be ready to ride with him at dawn. “And I want a watch kept on the pigeon loft,” he said. “No one—no one—except myself is to be allowed into it.” At this the glances Isodel and Lyrian had been exchanging fell glumly to the tablecloth. King Luther saw this. “And I shall need to speak to the Chancellor,” he added. “None of my sons or my daughters is to receive any money while I’m away, and my queen only precisely what is needed for running the country. Now please bring on the second course.”