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FROGS, DOGS, AND THROGS

“I know you’ve explained it, but I still have a very hard time thinking of The Frog as your brother,” Mistaya said.

She was back to sitting next to him on the pallet, the clouded balls that bound her hands resting in her lap. Food had arrived, finally, and since she couldn’t feed herself, he was helping her by spooning into her mouth small portions of something that was just a notch above gruel on the nutritional meter. She was eating without tasting, her concentration elsewhere ever since His Eminence had departed, leaving behind his latest pronouncement on her fate.

“Well, it does take some getting used to,” he agreed.

“At least he isn’t your real brother. That would be even more difficult to accept.”

“We had different mothers. Really, we’re nothing alike. We share a common father and that’s the extent of it.”

“I wouldn’t ever think you were like him,” she said after a moment of chewing and swallowing. “No one would.”

Thom smiled. “He’s not like anyone, really. He was never interested in being friends with other people. He only wanted one thing from the time he could walk—to be Lord of Rhyndweir.” He paused. “Actually, I think he wants a great deal more than that. That might have something to do with his interest in you.”

She thought about it for a moment. It made sense. If he married her, he would be her spouse when she took the throne. Took the throne. That sounded so weird. She almost never thought about it. She couldn’t quite make herself believe it would ever be necessary. The idea of her father not being King of Landover was inconceivable. Laphroig wouldn’t think that way though; he would already be anticipating her father’s demise.

“He wouldn’t be satisfied with being married to me unless he could be King, would he?”

“He would want you to bear him a son he could raise as future King while he acted as regent during the child’s minority. That’s how he thinks. You would be a means to an end and not much more.”

“Then he would get rid of me,” she agreed. Thom didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. She accepted another spoonful of whatever it was he was feeding her. “Well, I hate to disappoint him, but none of this is going to happen. I’m not ever marrying The Frog or bearing his child—ugh—or having anything to do with him. Once we get out of here and tell my father what he’s done, we won’t either of us have to worry about him ever again!”

Thom had related the details of his story earlier, laying it all out for her once she had calmed down enough to listen. After his father’s death, he had lasted through the brief reign of his oldest brother, thinking that things at Rhyndweir might actually improve, since his brother was a decided improvement over his intractable and impetuous father. But when his brother had died under circumstances that were decidedly suspicious and his sisters had been shunted off to the farthest corners of the Greensward, he had recognized the writing on the wall. His other brother, who was now the new Lord of Rhyndweir and almost certainly responsible for everything, would soon get around to disposing of him. Telling no one, he departed his home in the dead of night. Once safely away, he resolved to wait things out until he knew which way the wind was blowing. When Berwyn’s wives began dying one after the other, he abandoned any thoughts of returning and resolved to stay away as long as necessary. Shortly after, he reached Libiris, a refuge he had been considering from the first, and convinced His Eminence to let him stay.

Thom finished feeding her and put her bowl and spoon aside to take up his own. He ate with studied disinterest, eyes downcast and his usually cheerful demeanor subdued.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him after a few minutes of silence.

“I was just thinking. After I fled Rhyndweir, my brother announced that I was dead. He did it in part, I think, to see if I would reappear to dispute it and in part to make everyone stop thinking about me. The first didn’t work, but the second did. All this time, ever since I left, everyone has believed it. My mother, my sisters, my friends—everyone. I don’t have a place in their lives anymore. I’m just a memory to them.”

She looked down at her bound hands. “Don’t be sad. All that will change once we’re out of this mess.” She gave him a tentative smile. “Think how happy they’ll be to have you back.”

He shrugged. “I just wish I knew how to make that happen. His Eminence isn’t going to let us go; he can’t afford to do that now that he’s made a prisoner of you. Not to mention that he clearly has something bad planned for your father.”

“I know,” she agreed. “It has something to do with using me as bait to lure him to Libiris. He made that clear enough. My so-called special use. I wonder what it is.”

“Whatever it is, he plans to improve his situation at our expense. Or maybe at your father’s. I don’t even trust him to keep his agreement to hide me, though he’s done so up until now. If he thinks it will gain him anything, he will give me up in a heartbeat. Laphroig has never stopped hunting for me. If he finds me, I know what will happen.”

Mistaya knew, too. Laphroig was ruthless and ambitious, and he had demonstrated on more than one occasion that he would eliminate anyone who got in his way.

“We’re going to get out of here, Thom,” she said suddenly, standing up as if ready to do so right that moment. “He can’t keep us locked up forever. Sooner or later, we will find a way to get out.”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “It had better be sooner. I don’t think we have all that much time. Whatever he’s got planned, it’s going to come about pretty quickly now.”

She was about to reassure him that it didn’t matter what His Eminence had planned for them, that they would find a way to escape, when the cell door opened and in strolled Edgewood Dirk. The Prism Cat looked sleek and relaxed, his brilliant fur shining in the near darkness, his eyes agleam and his tail aloft and twitching left to right, right to left. He glanced at Thom, but mostly he kept his eyes on Mistaya as he came up to her, sat down so that they were facing each other, and began cleaning himself.

She watched him with ill-concealed frustration, but kept silent while he performed his ablutions.

“Good day,” he greeted when finished, sounding as if he believed it actually was.

“I see that you’ve abandoned your insistence on never talking in front of anyone but me,” she responded with as much irony as she could muster.

“I’ve abandoned it because you’ve compromised me by telling your friend everything you know about me,” the cat replied. “There’s not much point in pretending to be ordinary when you’ve already let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.”

She sighed heavily. “Of course, I should have realized. But about that cheerful greeting you just offered?” She purposefully placed her hands where he could not miss seeing them as anything but balls of swirling, misty smoke. “It might be a good day for some, but not necessarily for me.”

The cat cocked his head. “I see what you mean.”

She waited a beat. “Well, then, perhaps you can do something about it? I would like to have the use of my hands back.”

Edgewood Dirk seemed to consider. “I am afraid I cannot help you.”

“You can’t help me,” she repeated flatly, exasperation flooding through her like a riptide beneath the water’s surface.

“I’m a cat, you see.”

“I do see. But you are so much more than an ordinary cat. You are a Prism Cat, in case you have forgotten. A fairy creature, possessed of special magic, if I am not mistaken.”

“You are not mistaken. I am possessed of special magic, although I might choose a different word than possessed to describe my gifts. But while I have the use of special magic, I do not have the use of either fingers or opposable thumbs.” He held up one paw to reinforce his point. “In case you have forgotten.”

She shook her head. “What has that got to do with anything? All I want you to do is employ enough magic to rid me of my shackles!”

The cat cocked his head the other way. “I understand that. But it isn’t easy for me to undo other spells. True, I have formidable skills with which to protect myself and sometimes others. I also have the ability to shield those I think might need it, such as you. But there are many things I cannot do because I lack the ability to weave spells in conjunction with speaking words. I believe that is your current problem, in point of fact, isn’t it?”

“You have to use your hands to get rid of this spell?” she demanded in disbelief. She gave a quick glance over at Thom, who was eyeing the cat with some suspicion but clearly not interested in getting involved in this argument. “You can’t set me free?”

“Lacking fingers and thumbs, I cannot make the necessary signs, even though I can speak the words. So, no, I cannot set you free.”

Mistaya wanted to scream aloud her frustration. What was she supposed to do now? Dirk was her last real hope for getting out of there.

“Can you open the door and let us out?” Thom asked cautiously.

The cat lifted one paw and licked it, and then set it down again. “I can open the door for you. I can even shield you from discovery. I can do this, Andjen Thomlinson, and I will, even though the Princess broke her word and told you about me. But I can only help you, not her. So long as she wears her shackles, she can be tracked easily. For her, escape is impossible. She wouldn’t get a dozen feet from the doorway before her captors were after her.”

He paused. “So, then. Do you want me to help you escape? You alone?”

Thom shook his head reluctantly. “No, I won’t leave Mistaya.”

“So here we sit, awaiting our fate, helpless victims of your lack of thumbs and fingers,” Mistaya declared with a flourish that was somewhere between theatrical, disgusted, and clumsy.

“Well, not entirely helpless,” the cat advised. “You do have family and friends who might try to help you. And you do have your own considerable intelligence on which you might rely, just as you did with the problem of returning the books to the Stacks.”

She stared at him. Had he just paid her a compliment? “His Eminence is already seeking to undo what I have done, so it may all have been for nothing. My family and friends have been told to let me be, so I don’t look for them to come to my rescue.” She paused. “And my considerable intelligence is drained of ideas.”

“Perhaps you need to have a little more faith both in yourself and in others. You like being mistress of your own fate, but when you’ve needed help, hasn’t it always been there?”

She thought back to her adventures with Nightshade. She considered her term of imprisonment at the Carrington Women’s Preparatory School. “I suppose so. But that might not be the case this time.”

“Faith, Princess,” the Prism Cat repeated. “It is a highly underrated weapon against the dark things in this world.”

He stood up, stretched and yawned, and turned for the door. “I have to be going now. I have other things to do and other places to be. But we will see each other again. Be patient with yourself. Cats are enormously patient, and as a result we almost always get what we want. I advise you to try it out for yourself.”

“Wait!” she exclaimed, leaping up. “You can’t just leave us!”

The cat was at the door. He stopped and turned. “Cats can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard to what anyone says or does. Rather like Princesses.”

The door opened of its own accord. He sauntered out, and the door closed behind him, the locks refastening.

Mistaya looked at Thom. “That cat has a rotten attitude,” she said.

In the somewhat subdued and somber chambers of Sterling Silver, a different attitude was in evidence. Ever since Questor Thews had returned from Libiris with news of Mistaya’s whereabouts, the members of the inner circle of Landover’s high court had been mulling over the King’s decision to honor his daughter’s choice to remain where she was. There were mixed feelings about this, and no one was resting easy. Knowing that Mistaya was with someone as notoriously unpredictable as Craswell Crabbit took a good deal of getting used to. No one was comfortable with the idea that the Princess was alone with such a man, yet no one was willing to press the point with her parents. After all, no one was more aware of the risks than they were, and they did not need reminding.

This did not mean, however, that their friends and retainers were able to stop worrying about it.

Abernathy in particular was distressed. He had been thinking it through from a somewhat different perspective than the others, being both man and dog and, thus, subject to the genetic breeding and emotional makeup of both, and he was beginning to see things that they might have missed.

First, he didn’t much care for the idea of a fifteen-year-old being mistress of her own fate. A child unlike others, but a child still, Mistaya should be held accountable for her actions, and he did not think she should be telling her parents what to do. There was no reason for her to remain at Libiris and in such close proximity to Craswell Crabbit, a man Abernathy had been worried about from the beginning. She should come home and face Ben and Willow and then, after having aired her grievances, she might petition them to go back in the company of either Questor or himself. But she shouldn’t be there alone.

Second, he was beginning to have a strong suspicion about Thom. At first, he had dismissed the boy as someone of no importance. But the more he thought about it, the more he wondered why Crabbit, who never did anything unless there was a strong chance for personal gain, had allowed the boy to stay on. Because he was court scribe, he knew Landover’s history and everyone connected with it intimately, and he had come to suspect that the mysterious Thom might be Andjen Thomlinson, the younger brother of Laphroig, who supposedly had been dead for three years. Abernathy had always been suspicious of that story; there had never been any proof that Kallendbor’s youngest had indeed died. They would be about the same age now, the Princess and the boy, and what Mistaya had related of Thom to Questor suggested he might be less a village boy and more an equal. Which made Abernathy wonder if Crabbit, who was no fool, might have recognized this, too.

Because, third, he was almost certain that Crabbit knew who Mistaya was. How could he not? Everyone who had even the smallest link to the royal court knew of the King’s only daughter. Her physical features were striking and hard to mistake. Her history was common knowledge. They knew what she looked like and they knew her history. Crabbit should have figured it out by now. If so, then why was he keeping it a secret from everyone, especially from Mistaya? This bothered Abernathy because he knew it meant that Crabbit was up to something.

Finally, he was troubled that Questor had managed to sneak in and out of Libiris without being caught. This was a terrible thing to admit, but he knew that the odds against the frequently inept wizard successfully bypassing the wardings and locks that the overlord of the library would have set in place were huge. Crabbit was too smart. Abernathy suspected that he had deliberately allowed Questor to come and go, and that meant, once again, that he was up to something

So went the soft-coated wheaten terrier’s thinking.

He mulled matters over for an entire day before he finally came to the conclusion that he had to say something to someone.

The question was, To whom should he speak?

He did not want to alarm Ben and Willow; he needed his listener to have a clear head about what he was going to say. The depth of his concern for Mistaya’s safety suggested he should bypass the King and Queen. The kobolds, Bunion and Parsnip, were good choices, but their judgment in these matters was suspect. Bunion, in particular, would favor a full-fledged frontal assault on Libiris and her caregiver.

That left Questor Thews, but speaking to him openly might prove awkward—especially if Abernathy questioned his wizarding abilities.

But he decided to take his chances, and following breakfast on the second day after coming to his decision to speak up, he sought the other out. He found him in his workshop, cataloging chemicals and compounds in his logbook and humming absently to himself. Abernathy stood in the open doorway for several long minutes, waiting to be noticed. When it became obvious he might stand there the rest of the day, he knocked loudly to announce his presence and stepped through.

Questor looked up, clearly annoyed. “I am quite busy at present, so if you don’t mind …”

“But I do mind,” Abernathy interrupted quickly, “and unless you are on the verge of making a breakthrough in your efforts to find a way to turn me back into a man, perhaps you ought to listen to what I have to say. It concerns Mistaya.”

He sat himself down on a stool next to the wizard and proceeded to tell him everything. Well, almost everything. He chose to leave out the part about the suspicious ease of Questor’s entry and exit from Libiris and focus on the rest. Irritating the wizard probably wouldn’t do much to help his cause, whether what he had to say was valid or not.

“What are you suggesting we do?” the wizard asked when the other was finished. He pulled on his ragged white beard as if to free up an answer on his own. “Are we to try to persuade the High Lord that he should change his mind and go fetch Mistaya back?”

Abernathy shook his head, vaguely annoyed that the action caused his ears to flop about. “You promised the Princess that you would do the exact opposite. I think you should keep that promise. Sending the High Lord would only cause trouble for everyone. I think we should go instead, just you and me.”

“To have a closer look at things?”

“Without attempting to bring the Princess back home unless we encounter problems with Craswell Crabbit. Which I am almost certain we will. Call it intuition, but there’s something going on there that we don’t know about. Once we determine what it is, then we can decide whether or not to tell her she has to come home.”

Questor sighed. “I don’t fancy a trip back to that dreary place, but I see the wisdom in your thinking. Sometimes you quite amaze me, Abernathy. You really do.”

“For a dog, you mean.”

“For a court scribe, I mean.” Questor Thews stood up. “Let’s make something up to explain our absence and pack our things. We can leave right away.”

At about the same time that Abernathy and Questor Thews were deciding on a course of action, two ragged figures were trudging north along the western edges of the Greensward, bound for a home they didn’t particularly care to reach. Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel had been walking since early the previous day, when High Lord Ben Holiday had satisfied himself that they had told him everything they knew about the Princess and had released them with a stern warning to go home and not come back again anytime soon. The G’home Gnomes, used to much worse punishments, had considered themselves lucky to be let off so lightly. Shouldering the food and the extra clothing they had been given for the journey, they had set out with an air of mingled happiness and relief.

But the good feelings didn’t last out the day. By nightfall, they were already pondering the dubious nature of their future. Poggwydd had left home under something of a cloud, and Shoopdiesel had chosen to throw in with him, so neither could expect to be welcomed back with open arms. In truth, neither cared anyway, since neither liked his home or wanted to return to it, even had things been different. What they really wanted was to stay at Sterling Silver, close to the Princess, whom they both adored. Add into the mix their ongoing concerns for her safety, which they did not feel certain about at all, and you had a pair of decidedly unhappy travelers.

Unfortunately, things were about to get worse.

The Gnomes were engaged in a heated argument about which form of gopher made the best eating or they might have caught sight of the rider before he was right on top of them. He seemed to appear out of nowhere, although in fact he had been tracking them for some distance, watching and waiting for his chance. He reined to a stop right in front of them and gingerly climbed down from his mount, looking decidedly grateful to be doing so. He was an innocuous-looking fellow, nothing of an apparent threat about him, rather smallish and thin with a huge shock of bushy hair, so the Gnomes didn’t bolt at once, although they remained poised to do so.

“Gentlemen,” the man greeted, giving them a deep bow. “It is an honor. I have been searching for you ever since you left the Princess behind at Libiris. Is she safe?”

Poggwydd, who was the smarter of the two friends, was immediately suspicious and held his tongue. But poor Shoopdiesel was already nodding eagerly, and the damage was done in an instant.

“Good, good!” exclaimed the stranger, who was now suddenly looking decidedly less innocuous and more predatory. “We must act swiftly, then. You do wish her safety assured, I assume? You would go back with me to help her, wouldn’t you?”

Again, Shoopdiesel was nodding before Poggwydd could stop him. He glared at the other G’home Gnome and gave him a punch in the arm to make him aware that he was doing something wrong. Shoop stopped nodding instantly and looked at him in wide-eyed bafflement.

“What my friend means—” Poggwydd began, intending to undo as much of the damage as possible.

“Tut, tut,” the stranger interrupted, holding up his hands to silence him. “No explanations are necessary. We all have the same goal in mind—to keep the Princess from harm. Now then. I need you both to come with me.”

Poggwydd frowned. “Come with you to where? We are on our way home.”

“Well, going home will have to wait a little longer,” the stranger advised. He brushed at his mop of red hair in a futile endeavor to straighten it. “A little detour is required before your journey can continue.”

“Who are you?” Poggwydd demanded, his query ending in a high-pitched squeak as other, more formidable horsemen rode out from behind trees and boulders, armed knights aboard chargers.

Cordstick smiled. The information supplied him through his network of spies had been accurate. These fools had been at Libiris and now they had revealed that the Princess was there, too. He could already envision his rapid advancement at court, the newly created position of Minister of State eagerly bestowed on him by a grateful Laphroig.

“Come with me, gentlemen, and I will take you to someone who will explain everything.”