TEN

CLAUDIA’S FRIENDS WERE slightly puzzled when Claudia said she would do without lunch and meet them in Elda’s room afterward. “Do you not want to meet your brother then?” Felim asked.

“It’s not my brother,” was all Claudia would say, and she left at a run with the faithful cloakrack clattering after.

The others went into the refectory. Here they found that the new cook had produced a choice between the usual stew and sandwiches. “Using up leftover bread,” Ruskin said, gloomily prodding packets with a large finger. “Soft as a slug in the middle and hard as nails at the edges. Wait till I get my food-spells right.”

“We might take Claudia some, though,” Olga suggested.

They each stuffed a packet of the sandwiches into Elda’s bag and chose stew. Feeling more honest if they did without pudding—it was called fool and looked like brown custard, and no one wanted it, anyway—they left early. And stood staring in amazement at the bottom of the refectory steps as a trumpet rang out and a procession crossed the courtyard toward the Spellman Building.

First came a squad of men dressed like the legionary who had knelt to Elda, all in step, skirts swinging demurely, helmet plumes bobbing in rhythm. These were followed by a second squad. In the space between the two squads, very stately and carefully not walking in step with the soldiers, came two elderly men draped in dark purple versions of Claudia’s wrap. You could tell they were important, Elda thought, because each of them had a band made of green leaves stuck end to end, like a crown, around his head. If that didn’t tell you, it was obvious from the important looks on their wrinkled faces.

One of the wrinkled faces turned Elda’s way. Someone barked a command. Both squads wheeled through ninety degrees, and the procession advanced on Elda, spread out in a line now, with the wrinkled men in the middle.

Lukin, muttering that his father had been at war with the Empire for the last eight years, backed out of sight behind Elda. Elda herself was so alarmed to find all these people pacing toward her that her front legs retreated toward her hind legs of their own accord, arcing her back and causing her wings to spring out on either side of her. Quite without meaning to, she bent her neck to the attack position and raised her crest. The measured steps of the advancing Empire people faltered, just slightly, at the sight.

Ruskin uttered a buzzing moan of distress and dived under Elda’s outspread left wing. “Hide me!” he said desperately.

The change in the direction of the procession had revealed the party of dwarfs that had been following it. They were even more resplendently caparisoned than the Empire party and were standing, annoyed and deserted, scowling toward Elda.

“They’ve come to get me!” Ruskin’s voice buzzed, muffled and feathery.

Elda made haste to bring her wings to her sides and to sit down. Her tail had been nervously lashing at Lukin’s shins, and she quickly brought it around to coil in front of her feet and hide Ruskin’s legs. But her crest stayed up. She was quite surprised by the surge of motherly protectiveness that swept through her. It was the feel of Ruskin huddled against her side and the sound of his voice vibrating in her wing. Mother griffins, she realized of a sudden, were meant to protect their young ones this way.

She watched alertly while the Empire party all went down on one knee before her, the wrinkled ones rather slowly and creakingly. Beyond them the dwarfs shrugged and continued on their way toward the Spellman Building. Elda was so relieved to see the dwarfs go that she said kindly to the Empire people, “Do get up, and I hope all the right things happen in the Empire.”

They all jumped at hearing her speak, and even the soldiers floundered a bit getting to their feet. Once upright, they realized that the dwarf party was now ahead of them. Someone barked, “Quick, march!” and they all set off toward the Spellman Building at a walk that was nearly a sprint.

Felim gently picked up the edge of Elda’s wing and peered in at the cowering Ruskin. “Why are you so very frightened?”

“Get me to Elda’s room,” Ruskin buzzed back, “and I’ll explain.”

Corkoran meanwhile was extremely irritated. Everyone seemed to be conspiring to stop him getting to work on the ideas his students had given him. First it was the high priest. Almost as soon as he was back in his lab, a healer appeared to say that the high priest’s broken leg was more comfortable today and that he wished to be returned to the Holy City. Now.

You did not argue with high priests. Their gods could make things extremely uncomfortable for you if you did. So that meant that Corkoran had to find Finn and then Dench and take them over to Healers Hall, along with the ingredients of a transport spell. Holy City was a long way north, and it took three wizards to supply strength for the translocation. And it took the rest of the morning.

Corkoran rushed back to his lab, only to find the porter waiting for him with the news that a party of important dwarfs wanted to see him at once.

Corkoran sighed. “I’ll see them after lunch in the Council Chamber,” he said, and sent out for lunch at once, before anything else could happen. But he and his lunch had barely arrived in his rooms before he found one of the secretaries showing an Empire centurion through his door. This man saluted him, Empire fashion, with a violently outflung arm that made Corkoran start backward, and announced that the two noble senators of the Empire, Antoninus and Empedocles, were presently in the city and craved instant audience with him. Corkoran irritably decided to see them at the same time as he saw the dwarfs. Get both lots over with at once. “After lunch,” he said. “In the Council Chamber.” This way he might save at least a quarter of the day to get to work in.

The centurion flung an arm out again and departed. Corkoran ate his lunch slowly, making notes about his moonship as he ate and wishing he had stayed longer with his students. Ruskin had not said nearly enough. He would have to arrange some kind of special tutorial and get Ruskin to talk about the moonship some more. Eventually, sighing at this waste of his time, Corkoran set off down the stone stairway to go to the Council Chamber.

He was halfway down the stairs when the legionaries, followed by the senators, followed by more legionaries, began streaming extremely quickly across the hallway to the Council Chamber. These were followed by a slow and stately group of dwarfs. Corkoran stopped where he was, struck by how magnificent they all were. He had intended to interview them all in his usual T-shirt and his comet-decorated tie, to show them how busy he was. But now he had serious second thoughts.

These people are rich, he thought. I sent both lots a request for money, and this is probably why they’re here. I have to meet them looking as stately as they do, to show them what a fine and august place they’ll be giving their support to. He sighed again as he conjured his official robes to him and climbed into them on the stairs. Ever since the tours, when Mr. Chesney had insisted that wizards all wear robes all the time, Corkoran had hated the wretched garments. Nevertheless, he went grandly down the rest of the stairs, wearing the red of a Third Level Wizard, with the hanging hood of ermine that showed he was a high official of the University, and feeling hot and disgruntled.

In the Council Chamber they all bowed to him, and he was glad he had bothered with the robes. The two senators were in the full pomp of their Imperial senatorial purple, red borders, laurel wreaths and all, and the spacious chamber seemed crammed with all their legionaries. The dwarfs took Corkoran’s breath away, with their gilded, jeweled armor, ceremonial weapons, and the precious stones swinging in the braids of their hair and beards. Two of them, whose hair was white, wore exquisite platinum coronets on their snowy heads.

Corkoran was awed by all this wealth, though he tried not to show it. He went briskly to the other side of the Council table and sat down facing them all. At this the two senators creakingly lowered themselves into seats, while the legionaries stood in massed ranks behind them. The two white-haired dwarfs also climbed into chairs, jingling faintly, and the other dwarfs crowded behind them on foot. So these standing ones were there to make the sitting dwarfs look important, just like the legionaries, Corkoran thought.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said pleasantly, but in a brisk, I’m-really-very-busy tone. “What can I do for you?”

“Who are you?” demanded one of the dwarfs who were standing up.

Corkoran blinked a bit. “I’m Corkoran, Wizard Chairman of the Governing Board of the University. And you are?”

“I am Antoninus,” said the left-hand senator, deftly cutting in, “Senator of the Empire. Beside me sits my colleague Senator Empedocles, and we have urgent business—”

Corkoran nodded pleasantly and turned to the dwarfs. “And you gentlemen?”

“We,” said the right-hand dwarf with the coronet, “are all forgemasters from Central Peaks fastness, and we are our own soldiers.” His green eyes swept sneeringly over the rigid legionaries. “We have no need to bring protection with us. I am Dobrey, son of Davelly, son of Dorkan, son of Dwain, who was founder of the tribe of forgemasters. Beside me sits Genno, son of Gart, son of Graid, son of Dwain, and behind me to my right stands Hordo, son of Harnid, son of Hennel, son of Haman, son of Dwain. And to his left stands Clodo …”

Corkoran listened unbelievingly as every one of the ten dwarfs was introduced by name and by descent. Senator Empedocles leaned toward Senator Antoninus to whisper, “This need to recite one’s pedigree puts one in mind of a horse fair.”

“What can one expect of nonhumans?” Senator Antoninus whispered back, shrugging.

Corkoran began to see he might have made a mistake to put these two groups together.

“… And we have come here—” continued Dobrey.

“No doubt on a very great errand,” Senator Empedocles slid in deftly. Corkoran could see he was a senior veteran of committees. “But ours is pressing, Wizard. As you must know, our great Empire is the cradle and nurse of democracy, throughout all its classes and many distinctions. The Senate, to which I have the honor to belong, is but the highest of our democratic institutions, being selected by the votes of all the people on a five-yearly basis and thus being the supreme voice of the will of the people. The Emperor himself, not being so elected, on many occasions discovers the aforesaid will of the people through the votes of the Senate and is of course swayed by it. Thus I may say—though with all due diffidence, Wizard—that I and my senatorial colleague beside me represent the revealed will of the Emperor. If you follow me.”

Corkoran did not follow Empedocles. He had no idea what the fellow was on about. Dobrey, sitting with his massive braceleted arms folded over his breastplate, said contemptuously, “He means his Emperor hasn’t told him to come and probably doesn’t know he’s here. Right, Senator?”

Empedocles’s wrinkled mouth pinched furiously at the corners, but he inclined his head politely to the dwarf. “This being so”—Antoninus smoothly took over—“it follows that it is imperative that you, Wizard, understand our position, or stance, if I may put it that way. Our nobly democratic institutions can only keep their integrity, integrity that is our most precious asset, if they preserve the integrity of the entire people, of our whole Imperial family, by ensuring, for their smooth operation and the maintaining of our high standards, that we take such measures toward cleanliness, unity, and normalcy as we can. Any tinge—I will not go so far as to call it a taint—of what might loosely be called anti-Imperial is to us a thing to be deplored and expunged at all costs.”

Antoninus was worse than Empedocles. Corkoran looked involuntarily toward Dobrey. Dobrey’s eyebrows were up, wrinkling his bulging forehead all the way up to his coronet. “Lovely,” he said. “Intricate. Wizard, I think this one’s on about not wanting to mix their breed. But he’s said it so tangled up that he could turn around and tell you he was saying just the opposite if he needed to.”

Antoninus gave Dobrey a steady snakelike stare. “My good dwarf, do you wish to make my statement for me?”

Dobrey waved a massive hand. “No, no. Carry on. This is amusing.”

“We don’t like half-breeds either,” Genno remarked from beside him.

Corkoran suddenly discovered what they were talking about. “You mean, you’ve come here about Claudia,” he said.

Two laureled heads gravely bowed at him. “An understanding having been reached,” Empedocles said, “we can now proceed to outline our position more precisely. Our Imperial ruler, gracious Emperor Titus, is still quite young and has so far regrettably failed to provide for the advancement of the griffin through another glorious generation—”

“Emperor won’t get married,” Dobrey translated.

“And as matters stand”—Empedocles continued, ignoring this—“the chief person to profit from the reversion of the Imperial title and honors is this most unfortunate half sister. You see our problem, Wizard. Without in the least wishing to go against the august preferences of the Emperor, we would want rather to preempt them by annihilating any threat of mixed blood at the heart of the Imperium.”

“With this in view,” Antoninus put in, “we in the Senate were exceedingly interested in the discovery that this University is currently, and we hope temporarily, suffering a slight shortfall in its funding. The Emperor would, I am sure, in the right circumstances, be happy to put it to the vote in the Senate that the Empire relieve, to some extent, the embarrassments of a worthy institution, so that matters can be adjusted to the satisfaction of all parties.”

Dobrey chuckled. “And now he’s offering you a bribe.”

“To hand her over so that they can snuff her,” Genno explained.

Two laureled brows turned and lowered at the dwarf party.

“Or you can snuff her yourself if you’d rather,” Genno added.

“This is infinitely crude,” said Antoninus.

“But moderately accurate,” said Empedocles.

But I think I’m going to need Claudia for my moonshot! Corkoran thought. I’ve never seen anyone calculate as fast as she does. This morning he had felt nearer to getting to the moon than he had ever felt before. On the other hand, there was no denying that the University needed money badly. The two different needs pulled Corkoran this way and that like the rope in a tug-of-war. He could tell Claudia to work for him or he’d let the senators have her. But there was no guarantee that Claudia was as good as she seemed. He could take the senators’ money and use some of it to hire someone else who could calculate equally swiftly. But there was no guarantee that he could find anyone who could. No—hang on! There might be a way to keep Claudia and get the money. The senators, thanks to the dwarfs, had let him know that the Emperor had no idea they were here.

Corkoran raised his head with a regretful, sad smile. “Alas, gentlemen. You should have come and talked to me a week ago, before my fellow tutors discovered that the young lady in question, though a half-breed, is their most promising student for years. The University has already decided to award her a scholarship. Talent counts over blood here, you know. We have to retain the young lady on our books.”

The senators turned and looked at one another. Antoninus raised an eyebrow. Empedocles nodded. Both old men got up. “Then we won’t waste any more of your valuable time, Wizard,” Empedocles said, “but merely remind you, in view of your resolve to retain the young person in question, that the Empire never sleeps, never rests.”

Bother! Corkoran thought, watching the legionaries form up smartly in squads and smartly march out of the chamber with the senators pacing in their midst. That was a warning. It almost certainly meant more assassins. Still, they had dealt with one lot of assassins, so they could probably handle another—except that this time Corkoran was determined that the Emperor was going to help them do it. Just get rid of the dwarfs first. He waited until the doors had boomed shut behind the last legionary and turned to the dwarfs.

Dobrey grinned at him. “Oddly enough,” he said, “we’re here on a rather similar matter.”

“But we don’t beat about bushes,” said Genno. “We want that Ruskin back. We’ll pay in treasure or in gold bars, whichever you prefer. So how much?”

Now that the senators had left, the other eight dwarfs clearly felt no need to pretend to be an honor guard. They pulled out chairs and hopped up into them with sighs of relief. “Oh, my poor feet!” said one, Hordo, Corkoran thought, and leaned his elbows on the table. “Name your price, Wizard. You need the money. Everyone in town was telling us that your roofs leak and about how Bardic College and Healers Hall both refused you a loan last summer.”

This was true, unfortunately. Corkoran was still smarting, when he thought about the matter, about how rude the bards had been. He could see no way out of this demand. And he was exasperated because he was fairly sure that he needed Ruskin to work on the moonship even more than he needed Claudia to calculate its course. He thought of losing the chance of all the exquisite dwarf handwork Ruskin could do for him and almost ground his teeth. He could make Ruskin do the work by threatening to sell him to these forgemasters, but only if he could see some way of inducing these dwarfs to let him keep Ruskin here. It was fairly clear that they were too blunt and shrewd to believe him for a moment if he suggested another scholarship for Ruskin. “Why?” he asked, playing for time. “What do rich, high-caste dwarfs like you want with a measly runt like Ruskin?”

“That’s the nubbin of it,” Dobrey said. “We’re all Sons of Dwain here. Forgemasters. Artisans like Ruskin are our slaves—legally. They belong to us, Wizard. All the lower tribes do.”

“And we can’t have a slave running off like this,” Genno explained. “He has to be taken back and publicly executed as an example to the rest, or they’ll all think they can run off.”

“Yes, I see that,” Corkoran said. “But I met a lot of dwarfs while I was on the tours, forgemasters and artisans, too, and nobody ever suggested the artisans were slaves.”

“Western dwarfs,” Dobrey said dismissively. “Different customs. Dwain made our customs when he took over Central Peaks five hundred years ago. Did it legally, too, with Wizard Policant for witness. Came all the way here to this University to make sure it was lawful.”

“Look in your library,” said Hordo with his elbows on the table. “You’ll find that agreement in your Inventory. We brought our copy with us, just to make sure. That Ruskin belongs to us, and you’ve got to give him back.”

“Let’s see your copy then,” Corkoran said, still playing for time.

Dobrey, who was obviously the senior forgemaster, fetched a folded parchment from the front of his ornamental gold breastplate. It was brown with age and almost clattered with stiffness as Corkoran took it and spread it out. Yes, there it was, all in order, with Policant’s crabbed black signature beside the University seal at the bottom and a swirl that deciphered as “Dwain” at the other corner. “Artisans, miners, drudges … agree to form clans, these clans to be the sole property of forgemasters … this agreement in exchange for certain spells of protection donated by the University in consideration of one ton of gold … said spells only known to forgemasters and of proven value against the demons of the deep....”

So this was why the low-caste dwarfs sold themselves, Corkoran thought. Silly thing to do. But it clearly brought the University quite a profit. Wizard Policant must have been a smooth operator. “Do you still have the spells, or much trouble with demons?” he asked, wondering if he could offer to renew the spells in exchange for Ruskin.

Dobrey coughed. “Er-hem. Naturally we’ve still got the spells, but between you and me, Wizard, those demons were what you might call a legal figment. A lot of the dwarfs thought there were demons in the lower galleries, so it came to the same thing. And that doesn’t alter the agreement one bit.”

“Of course not,” Corkoran agreed. So the only thing for it seemed to be to operate as smoothly as old Policant and ask for a ton of gold this time, too. Then give half of it back in exchange for a team of artisans to work on the moonship. Who might do the work much faster than Ruskin on his own, anyway. “Well, then …” Corkoran began.

The big doors of the Council Chamber swung open, and Lukin came in. Olga was with him, very stately in her fur cloak. Lukin had a stately air to him as well, even more than Olga did. Knowing how important this was, Lukin had struggled against his usual desire not to be prince or king of anywhere and had managed to pull over himself all the royal magnetism he usually left to Isodel. “Good day, forgemasters,” he said, every inch a prince.

“Oh, go away!” Corkoran said irritably. “Two of my students,” he explained to the interested dwarfs.

“My business,” Lukin stated firmly and majestically, “is with the forgemasters.” Before Corkoran could say any more, he said to the dwarfs, “I am the Crown Prince of Luteria, and I find myself in need of a servitor in this place. By an oversight, I left my man behind in Luteria. I’ve come to buy Ruskin from you as a replacement.”

The dwarfs all put back their braided and helmeted heads and bellowed with laughter. “And what, lad, do you think you could offer us that we don’t have twice as much of, anyway?” Dobrey asked, with his face all creased up in amusement. “If you’re talking gold, forget it. Precious jewels, fine work, the same goes.”

“I’m serious,” Lukin said. “I’ve come to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

Corkoran prudently decided to keep out of this. He could hardly lose. If Lukin won, he had Ruskin to work on the moonship and money from the Emperor Titus, anyway. If the forgemasters refused the bargain, whatever it was, there would be even more money and a team of artisans into the bargain. He sat back.

“You’d have to be offering something pretty valuable, lad,” Genno observed.

“I am,” Lukin said with his chin haughtily raised, and hoped mightily that this was true. It was a mad gamble that he and Olga were trying, from a plan hatched with difficulty while Ruskin was almost incoherent with terror, and Claudia just as bad and no help at all. It all depended on Elda’s sudden conviction that the small golden notebook was very valuable indeed. Why else, Elda said, had it been among Olaf’s hidden treasures? At which Felim had looked thoughtful and asked Olga why she had kept it instead of selling it with the rest of the treasure she had taken. Olga was not sure, except that she felt drawn to it somehow. At which Felim nodded to Elda and said it was quite probably some sort of magical virtue in the notebook that made Olga feel this way.

The plan they hurriedly hatched after that depended on the senators’ leaving before the dwarfs. Because, as Felim pointed out, senators were rich people, too, and they didn’t want the matter confused by a senator becoming covetous and wanting either Ruskin or the notebook for himself. So would the senators be likely to get their word in first? “Oh, they will, they will!” Claudia had cried out, with her teeth chattering. “They always do.” Felim had sped off to watch and returned with the welcome news that the senators were just leaving. Lukin and Olga had sprinted to the Council Chamber with only the sketchiest notion of what they were to say.

To Lukin’s relief, the dwarfs were decidedly interested. All their round, shrewd eyes were fixed on him. “So what is it you’re offering?” Genno said.

“This.” Lukin took a few steps forward and, in a careless, royal way, fetched the small golden notebook out of his pocket.

There was a long, penetrating silence, while all the dwarfs’ eyes narrowed to focus on the book. “It looks,” Dobrey said at length with unconvincing casualness, “like dwarf work from here. Can I see it close, lad?”

“If it is dwarf work,” Genno said, clattering his ornaments as he shrugged to show how unconcerned he was, “if it is, and I don’t say it is, mind, it’ll have a virtue of some kind. What does it do, lad—if it does anything, that is?”

This really might be going to work. Lukin tried to keep calm. “I don’t know. It’s queer. All I know is that most of the things I write in it just disappear.”

A very slight tremble of excitement affected all the dwarfs. One of them actually licked his lips. Dobrey held out a large hand, blistered and discolored on its palm and lumpy along its fingers. Old and important he might be, but he evidently still worked at a forge. “Show, lad.”

Lukin took hold of the notebook by one delicately molded corner and held it out so that Olga could take hold of a corner, too. Together they went along behind the row of dwarfs—like assistants at an auction, Lukin thought—holding the book open so that each dwarf could turn the small, crisp pages. Most of them seemed particularly interested in the page containing the half sentence from Wermacht’s first class, but others checked the gaps in the notes about herbs, and others leafed all through. Once or twice either Olga or Lukin had to let go for someone to examine the work on the cover and grunt enigmatically. When every dwarf had seen his fill, Dobrey leaned back in his chair.

“Just how did you come by this, lad?”

It was said as though Dobrey thought Lukin had stolen the book. But Ruskin, shaking with fear so that Lukin could hardly understand him, had assured Lukin that this manner of question would be the second part of the process. If there was a process, which Ruskin appeared to doubt miserably. Lukin looked Dobrey haughtily in the eye and replied, “It was given me as an engagement present by my bride-to-be, Olga Olafsdaughter here. It was part of her dowry. Please tell them, Olga.”

The shrewd, round eyes all turned to Olga then. Olga colored up and seemed very uncomfortable. “My father was a pirate,” she said, in a flat, wooden way. “Olaf Gunnarsson. This book was part of his private treasure. He took this book and a lot of other things from a dwarf ship that I saw him rob and sink on the Inland Sea.”

Genno turned and slapped Dobrey ringingly on his armored back. “It is! It is!”

The great chamber echoed with his voice and the huge delighted voices of the others. “It really is! It’s the Book of Truth! We got it, and those fool Westerners have lost it!”

Dobrey looked up at Lukin. “It’s the only book of its kind,” he said. “They made it, these Western dwarfs, a good thousand years back, to record only the truth. That’s why your notes went missing. None of them were true. It’s one of the Great Treasures, this book. You can have Ruskin and welcome for this, lad. You can have the whole tribe of artisans with him, for all I care.”

“Steady on!” said Hordo, whose elbows were still on the table. “Don’t get carried away and sell off all our workers, Dobrey.”

“Just Ruskin then. Hand us the book,” said Dobrey, stretching out his hand again.

Corkoran realized that it would be prudent to intervene here, before he lost Ruskin and the money. “Er-hem!” he said. “Before you give it to him, Lukin, I think you should get the bargain down in writing and make sure they all sign it.”

Lukin’s eyes, turning to Corkoran for an instant, seemed to say, “Why weren’t you any help before this?” Corkoran was surprised to feel his face heating up. Well, he was quite hot in these wretched robes.

“Yes, of course. Get it in writing—I was forgetting. It’s the excitement,” Dobrey said shamelessly. “Anyone thought to bring writing stuff? Sealing wax? What a pity. Never mind.”

Corkoran wordlessly conjured a sheet of parchment, pens, ink, a lighted candle, and a lump of sealing wax to the table in front of the dwarfs. Dobrey looked at it all regretfully. “Run out of excuses, haven’t I? You’d better write it, lad. We’ll sign and seal.”

Lukin grinned a bit. An important part of his education as a prince had been in how to draw up treaties and contracts that were properly binding. Dobrey was not going to get anything this way either. Lukin pulled the parchment over to the end of the table and wrote, quickly but very carefully, two copies and signed his name on both. He passed the parchments along to the dwarfs, who all read with narrowed eyes and signed without comment, except for Genno, who asked in a hurt way, “Now why did you go and put in all this about ‘and all magic he now commands,’ lad?”

“I gathered that he borrowed a lot of magic from the rest of his tribe,” Lukin explained, as haughty and princelike as he could be. “He’s of no use to me without that.”

“Oh, don’t haggle, Genno!” Dobrey bellowed as he stamped hot red wax with the great ring on his forefinger. “We’ve got the best bargain we’ll ever get in a thousand years, and you know it! Shake.” He offered his great, rough hand to Lukin again, who shook it with hearty relief. “If only you knew, lad,” Dobrey said, “just what you’ve signed away here! What a treasure!” He clutched the notebook lovingly to his breastplate as he climbed down from his chair. Genno snatched up one copy of the agreement and stuffed it inside his armor, before climbing down, too.

The dwarfs were all leaving at last. The rest of them, even Hordo, who had been looking like a fixture, were clattering down to their feet and marching in a cheerful body to the door. Corkoran sprang up, too. “Nice work, Lukin, Olga,” he said. Then he fairly pelted out by the back way to the pigeon loft. A clever pigeon could get to the Emperor long before those senators were near the Empire. On the other hand, the senators had almost certainly sent a pigeon of their own. You could hire them from several lofts in the city. Corkoran knew he had to get his version off to the Emperor as soon as possible. A lot of money hung on it.

The janitor met him at the base of the ladder, looking worried. “I was just coming to find you. Been a bit of a frackshaw up there, there has.”

“Oh, what now?” Corkoran started up the ladder, nearly fell off it when his robes tangled around his feet, and angrily conjured the robes away, back to his rooms. He arrived in the dim wooden loft with the janitor panting at his heels.

All the small, rounded pigeon doors at the end were open, letting in a chilly draft and enough light to show gray feathers and splashes of blood everywhere. Two pigeons lay on their backs with their pink claws uppermost, dead, right by Corkoran’s feet. Beyond them was the corpse of a mouse that seemed to have been pecked to death.

“I ain’t been drinking,” said the janitor.

“I’m sure you haven’t,” Corkoran said, stunned.

“You got to believe what I saw,” the janitor asserted. “I heard this noise, see, as I was on my rounds, and I climbs up to investigate. And—you got to believe this—there was battle and mayhem going on, hordes of mice going for the pigeons and the pigeons flying every which way and some of them fighting back. So I jumps inside here and shouts, and the mice all run away down between the floorboards. Then—you got to believe this!—I see a lot of little tiny men at the end there. Climbing about opening the pigeon doors, some were, and some of them was pushing pigeons out through the doors and two of them were fixing a message to another pigeon. When they sees I see them, they push that pigeon out, too, and run for it. Wriggle down cracks in the floor, just like the mice. And I’ve not touched a drop of drink, I swear.”

“Tell me,” asked Corkoran, “were these little men dressed all over in black?”

“They were and all,” said the janitor. “That’s why I didn’t see them first off.”

“Then I believe you completely,” said Corkoran. He looked glumly around the shambles in the loft. The assassins had teamed up with the ex-pirates, by the look of things, and from what the janitor had seen, the assassins had just sent a pigeon for reinforcements, while making sure there were no pigeons that the University could send for help. Corkoran shivered. For a moment he was almost tempted to send Finn or Wermacht to ask Querida to come here quickly. But no. Querida was such a tyrant. She was almost certain, if she came, to reorganize the University around him, and she would start by canceling his moonshot, Corkoran knew it. Much better to manage by himself. He had dealt with assassins and pirates once. He could do it again. “Are there any pigeons left at all?” he asked the janitor.

There was a stirring in the rafters over his head. “Croo. Some of us. Up here,” a warbling voice replied.

Corkoran raised mage light in one hand and discovered five decidedly battered birds crouched along the highest beam. Some of his anxiety left him. “I’m going to put the strongest possible protections around you—particularly you,” he said, pointing to the one that seemed the least battered. “I need you to take a message for me.” The bird hunched a bit but obediently fluttered down to the rail beside the message desk. “You,” Corkoran said to the janitor, “go and get all the mousetraps you can find and set them up all around this loft.”

“Think that’ll work?” the janitor asked dubiously. “These looked to be brainy mice.”

“They’ll work when I’ve put spells on them,” Corkoran said grimly. “Killer-spells.”

“Right.” The janitor collected the three corpses for disposal and clumped away down the ladder.

Corkoran got to work putting protection around the remaining pigeons. He enhanced it upon his chosen pigeon and then, since the bird did look very battered, added a strong speed-spell as well. The ink for writing messages had been spilled in the affray, and all the little slips of paper had been torn up. The assassins had been making darned sure no one could send for help. Too bad. Corkoran conjured more ink and paper. Then he wrote a careful and accurate account of his conversation with the two senators, their hints and their offer of money, and dwelt particularly on their final threat, citing the dwarfs as witnesses to the whole interview. He addressed it to Emperor Titus. He did not ask the Emperor for money or for help from any assassins the senators planned to send. That would have been crude. He was sure he could rely on the Emperor’s gratitude for both.

“Now,” he said as he fixed the flimsy paper into the tube on the bird’s leg, “you are to take this to Condita in the Empire and deliver it to Emperor Titus. The Emperor in person and no one else. Have you got that?”

“I’ll try,” croodled the bird. “I’ve heard they bag you in butterfly nets and take you to the Senate down there.”

“Avoid that,” said Corkoran. “Find the Emperor.” He took the pigeon’s warm, light bulk in both hands and carried it to the open pigeon doors. “Don’t let anyone lay hands on you until you find the Emperor.” He let the bird climb to the small doorstep and watched it wing rather wearily away.

The janitor arrived back then with an armload of mousetraps. Corkoran spent quite a time setting them up with some distinctly vicious spells, while the four remaining pigeons craned down from their beam to watch. When Corkoran finally climbed away down the ladder, the birds exchanged looks, crooned at one another, and fluttered down to the doors. Corkoran had hardly reached the bottom of the ladder before the pigeons were gone, too, winging painfully away to Derkholm.

The sun was setting by the time Corkoran reached his lab. He turned on the lights with a sigh of relief. And stood with his hand on the switches, appalled. The assassins and their mouse allies had been here, too. His notes and calculations had been gnawed into confetti-sized scraps and tossed about in heaps. His experiments for the moonsuit had been broken and spilled and emptied all over the floor. But worst and most heartbreaking of all, his precious moonship, his carefully designed and cherished moonship, which had taken him three years and untold amounts of money to build—and had been two-thirds finished by now—had been hacked to bits. Shining shards of it lay in a heap by the window. Corkoran could see hundreds of very small gleaming sword cuts on each shard. Those assassins must have sat in their cage, day by day, learning exactly what things were most important to him.

Corkoran stared at it all numbly.