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NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Even supposing that the danger was over, she decided to stay where she was, braced before the opening with her arms extended, until her strength left her. Exhausted by her efforts, she sat cross-legged on the floor with Thom and waited longer still to be sure that nothing else was going to happen. Then she and Thom went back into the Stacks and took stock of her efforts to return the missing books of magic. It was impossible to know how successful her plan had been. The Throg Monkeys had all fled, even the ones that had cringed about the opening at the end of things. She had no idea where they had put the books she had ordered returned from Abaddon, and no idea where those never taken might be. It would take a thorough search of the library to discover their whereabouts, and she wasn’t up to it just now.

She was disappointed in losing the red leather book, but then she could hardly blame Thom for its destruction. When it came right down to it, he had probably saved their lives.

It was enough that he had done so.

Satisfied, she turned her efforts anew to finding out what had become of Crabbit and Pinch.

She received only marginal assistance from Questor Thews when he arrived late in the day with Abernathy in tow and not before she got a stern lecture that had something to do with not listening to the warnings of her elders. Which warnings those were and how listening to them would have helped she wasn’t sure, but she endured it all and at the end kissed and hugged them both and told them she loved them dearly. This seemed to placate them, and not another word was uttered about what she should have done.

Unfortunately, her patience did not yield much in the way of rewards. Questor was not able to shed much light on the disappearance of Crabbit and Pinch or do anything about The Frog’s unfortunate condition. He was pretty certain that the spell that had turned The Frog to stone had come from His Eminence, intended for Mistaya but redirected by Haltwhistle. It was typical of what happened when you attacked someone under the protection of a mud puppy. The strange little animal couldn’t actually harm you, but it could turn your efforts against you or deflect them. Something of the sort had happened all those years ago when Nightshade had attempted to retaliate against Mistaya.

“So I would guess that was what occurred here,” he finished, giving a shrug of dismissal. “Wherever they are, Craswell Crabbit and Rufus Pinch will have to find someone else to manipulate.”

“And good riddance!” Abernathy added with an audible growl.

On a more positive note, when Questor went back inside with her to inspect the damage to the back wall, he was enthusiastic. After taking measurements of the magic still in use by the building, he pronounced her well on the way to a full recovery, adding that Mistaya and Thom had done extraordinarily well and he couldn’t have done better himself.

“Damned by faint praise,” Abernathy whispered in her ear and gave a small bark that approximated a dog laugh.

They decided they would spend the night at Libiris. Thom took them all into the little kitchen and fixed them dinner, more cheerful than at any time since Mistaya had known him. He laughed and joked with her and even managed to charm Abernathy out of his usual pessimistic attitude.

“Andjen Thomlinson,” the royal scribe declared at one point, ebullient and expansive, “you will make a fine new Lord of Rhyndweir.”

Thom instantly went still. “It wasn’t ever my intention to become Lord of Rhyndweir,” he answered at once.

“Perhaps not your intention, but quite possibly your destiny,” Questor chimed in. “Rhyndweir needs a master, and you are next in line and the logical choice. More to the point, I think Abernathy is right. You are most suited to the task.”

“But there is still so much work to be done here,” Thom objected.

“Thom, you can still supervise that work,” Mistaya cut in quickly. “Why not? Father will give you authorization; I will ask him myself. You can bring all the help you need from the Greensward and send those dreadful Throg Monkeys back to wherever they came from.”

Everyone but Thom thought this a grand idea, and in the end he promised to sleep on it.

“And you, Mistaya,” Questor said. “Will you continue to work here with Thom?”

She knew what Thom wanted her to say, but she wasn’t yet sure of her own wishes, so she shook her head and shrugged. “Like Thom, I have to sleep on it. I also have to go back to Sterling Silver and straighten things out with my parents. They may not want me coming back.”

So they talked on through the meal, agreeing that the best thing for The Frog was to have him transported back to Rhyndweir and placed somewhere in a park where those who chose to do so could visit him at their leisure. Perhaps to comment on how much better behaved he was now than before, Abernathy observed. Perhaps to provide recalcitrant children with an object lesson on what could happen if you were not a good person, Questor added.

After dinner was over, Questor took Mistaya aside, putting his hands on her shoulders as he faced her. “I want you to know how proud I am of you. Well, how proud we both are, Abernathy and I. You have conducted yourself with courage and demonstrated both wisdom and determination. You stayed when you could have left—when I told you to leave, in fact—and you were right to do so. Had you followed my advice and not discovered what Crabbit and Pinch were up to, we all might have found ourselves in a much more dangerous situation down the road. And your father would have been in considerable peril as a result. The trap set for him on his arrival was cunningly conceived and well hidden. He might not have been able to avoid it, even with the help of the Paladin.”

“What sort of trap was it?” she pressed him quickly.

“The sort I don’t care to talk about.”

“But shouldn’t I know?”

Questor shook his head. “What you need to know is that the disappearance of the man who contrived it effectively put an end to its usage. Your father is safe now, and he can thank you for that.”

She frowned. “You won’t tell me?”

“I won’t tell him, either. But I will tell him that you helped save him from his enemies and that no blame should attach to your behavior during these last few weeks. I will tell him you are every inch a true Princess of Landover.”

Then he kissed her on the forehead. “Mistaya Holiday, I do believe you are growing up.”

Several days later, she was back home. The walls of Libiris were continuing to heal, the books were safely back in place, and the library would soon be under new management that Questor had promised he would personally arrange. The demons of Abaddon were shut away again, perhaps without fully understanding what had happened to derail their plan, but that was their problem. Laphroig’s spy at Sterling Silver had been rooted out, a cook’s assistant with ambitions for advancement whose reach exceeded his grasp. An irate Parsnip, in ways that the kobold would not discuss and summarily dismissed when questioned, had disciplined him. All was right with the world, and there had been no reason to stay longer at a place she still didn’t much care for, so off Mistaya had gone.

Now she was sitting with her father on the south lawn at the edge of the castle walls, enjoying the sunlight and the sweet smell of lilies wafting on the summer breeze. She had told him everything by then—well, almost everything; there were one or two things she was keeping to herself—and to her surprise he had not scolded or criticized her for anything she had done. Not even for running away. Not even for trying to hide from him. Not even for worrying her mother and himself to the point of distraction.

“I’m mostly just glad you’re back,” he said when she asked if he was mad at her. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

She was both relieved and pleased. She had no desire to engage in another confrontation with him. While she had been in hiding, she had thought a lot about her attitude toward her parents and decided that it could use some improvement. So one of the first things she did on her return, once they were reassured that she was unharmed, was to tell them how sorry she was for not trying to understand better that they had only her best interests at heart. Her father responded at once by telling her he was sorry he had treated her as a child.

“I still think of you that way,” he told her. “Maybe I always will. Parents do that. We can’t help ourselves. We can’t help thinking that you need us to look after you. We can’t get used to the idea that you are growing up and need space to find your own way. We don’t like it that you might one day discover you will be just fine without us.”

“I would never be fine without you and Mother,” she had replied and hugged him so hard he thought she might break something.

Thom had come back with her, deciding that he would return to Rhyndweir as successor to his brother. This decision had more to do with his determination to change the way things were done in the Greensward than anything to do with Questor’s repeated references to destiny and fate. Ben had received him warmly and told him that he could count on the throne to support him. He had suggested that he send Questor to the Greensward to make certain the transition went smoothly. Not that he believed there would be any problem, he was quick to assure the boy. Berwyn Laphroig had not been well liked, and the people of Rhyndweir would be happy to have a new Lord. They would be especially accepting of one who seemed so willing to put the welfare of his subjects ahead of his own.

“He wants to give the land to the people,” Mistaya had told her father later. “He wants the people to feel they have a vested interest in it, something they can call their own and pass on to their children. All he wants in return is for them to agree to pay a reasonable tax to the crown. He has a plan to accomplish all this, and it is a good one. Listen.”

Her father did so, and after asking a number of questions he was inclined to agree. Perhaps Thom’s openness would provide a working model for the other Lords of the Greensward, one that would revolutionize the old practices and herald the beginning of an era of fresh cooperation between the Lords of the Greensward and their subjects.

Perhaps.

“I think Thom will become a valuable ally, Father,” Mistaya finished. “I think you’ll come to like him very much.”

She had not missed the way the boy looked at her, of course, and she knew how he felt about her. What she didn’t know was exactly how she felt about him. The two had shared a very dangerous and exhausting ordeal at Libiris, and that sort of experience had a way of bonding people. She liked Thom, but she wasn’t sure she liked him in that way—even though she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had kissed her in that storeroom at Libiris when she was to be married to Laphroig. It still sent chills up and down her spine when she thought about it. It still made her want to try kissing him again. Someday.

She sat with her father for a long time after that without speaking, comfortable just to be together. She couldn’t remember when they had last done this, and she was almost afraid to say or do anything that might break the spell. One or the other of them was always rushing away, and time spent doing nothing, father and daughter sharing space and nothing more, was a rarity. Thinking on it, she felt a pang of regret that it might be another broad stretch of time before they would do it again.

She caught him looking at her and said, “What?”

He shook his head. “I was just thinking about how much I enjoy being with you like this. Just sitting and not saying anything or doing anything. Just …”

He trailed off, unable to finish. “I know,” she said. “You don’t have to say it. We don’t do this like we did when I was a little girl.”

“You remember, do you? I thought that maybe all that was so far in the past that you had forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten any of it. We would go on picnics, and I would sit next to you and watch everything you did. Mother would set things out, but I would sit with you. Sometimes you would carry me on your shoulders into the trees and pretend you were my charger.”

He grinned. “I did do that, didn’t I?”

“You did a lot for me—you and Mother both. Since coming home, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been doing a sort of self-assessment. There might be some areas of improvement needed. What do you think?”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. You don’t really expect me to answer that one, do you?”

“Not really.”

“Then don’t ask me things like that. I’m trying to walk a fine line here between parenting and friendship.”

“They’re supposed to be the same thing, aren’t they?”

“When the stars align properly, yes. But you might have noticed over the past few weeks that sometimes you have to work at it.”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “Well, I guess I did notice something of the sort.”

They were quiet again for a time, and then her father said, “What do you think you will do now, Mistaya? Now that you’ve come back home.”

She had thought of little else. “I don’t know.”

“You have a lot of options open to you. You’ve probably thought of a few that I haven’t. I’m not asking this to try to persuade you to do anything in particular. The choice is yours, and whatever you decide is fine with your mother and me. I think.”

“Thank you.”

“So do you have any ideas?”

“Some.”

“Care to talk about them with me?”

He sounded so eager, she could hardly make herself give the reply she had already decided on. “Maybe later. Can we just sit here like this for now?”

He said they could, but she thought that he would have preferred the discussion he had suggested. Trouble was, she just wasn’t ready. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She thought it might take some time to figure it out.

As it turned out, she was wrong. She went for a walk outside the castle grounds late in the afternoon, needing to stretch her legs and find space to think. She was in a meditative mood, and movement always seemed to help spur her thinking. In addition, she wanted to see if there was any sign of the G’home Gnomes, Poggwydd and Shoopdiesel. After the horse to which they were tied had galloped in terror away from a hungry Strabo, they had thought themselves doomed. The dragon had caught up to them almost immediately, but then it had refused to eat them after finding out they were G’home Gnomes. Even dragons had limits when it came to food choices, Strabo had observed archly before abandoning them to fly after tastier morsels. Eventually, Questor Thews and Abernathy had come across them on their way to Libiris, still bound and gagged astride their grazing horse. Showing considerably more compassion than others, they had released the pair and, after hearing how they had revealed Mistaya’s hiding place to Laphroig, had sent them packing, and no one had seen them since. Mistaya wouldn’t have blamed either one for refusing to have anything to do with her from that day forward and wouldn’t have lost a great deal of sleep over it, either. But she felt certain she hadn’t seen the end of them.

So she went looking for them that afternoon, out to the woods where she had first encountered a dangling Poggwydd some weeks earlier on her return from Carrington. Maybe they had come back and made a new home, a fresh burrow in the soft earth. Maybe it wasn’t that they didn’t want anything to do with her. Maybe they were waiting to see if she wanted anything to do with them, given that they had betrayed her whereabouts to The Frog.

But a thorough search of the area revealed nothing, and she was just about to turn around and start home again when she saw Edgewood Dirk.

The Prism Cat was sitting at the base of an ancient broadleaf, his emerald eyes fixed on her, his silver-and-black coat glistening in a wash of hazy sunlight. She stopped and stared, making sure she wasn’t seeing things, and then she walked over to stand in front of him.

“Good afternoon, Princess,” the Prism Cat greeted.

“Good afternoon, Edgewood Dirk,” she replied. “I wondered what had become of you.”

“Nothing has become of me. I’ve been here all along, watching.”

“Watching? Me?”

“Not simply you. Everything. Cats like to watch. We are curious creatures.”

She smiled despite herself. “So you know what happened back at Libiris?”

The cat blinked. “I know what I care to know, thank you. All’s well that ends well, it seems.”

“Do you know what became of His Eminence and Pinch?” She arched one eyebrow at him. “You do, don’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Someday, if the mood strikes me. But the mood doesn’t strike me just now. Now is the wrong time. Why don’t you tell me something instead?”

She sighed. She could have guessed that it wouldn’t be that easy. Dirk revealed what he knew of things only now and then. “What would you like to know that you don’t already know?”

“What do you intend to do now that you are back home again?”

“You sound like my father. He wants to know that, too. But I guess I haven’t decided, so I don’t have an answer to your question.”

“Perhaps you do. Perhaps you just need to consider the possibilities.”

She glared. “Why don’t you save us both a lot of time and list them for me. In fact, why don’t you just tell me what you think I should do and save me the trouble of having to decide anything at all?”

The cat blinked and then began washing himself. He took a long time in doing so, a rather deliberately slow process that she was certain was intended to aggravate her. But she held her tongue and waited.

Finally Dirk looked at her. “It isn’t my place to tell you what to do with your life. But I do think putting things off is not a good idea. Or leaving things undone. Cats never do that. They always finish what they start before going on to anything else. Cats understand the importance of completing what they start. They are easily distracted, as you know, so it is necessary for them to establish good life habits early so that they learn to focus.”

He paused. “It might be true of young girls, as well. Although I do not pretend to understand young girls in the same way I understand cats.”

She studied him a moment, and then she nodded. “I think you probably understand young girls pretty well. For a cat.”

Edgewood Dirk closed his eyes and then slowly opened them. “Just the ones who merit understanding. And only once in a very great while.”

Suddenly she heard her father calling her, although later she could never be certain that she had heard anything at all, and she turned toward the castle to look for him.

When she turned back again, Edgewood Dirk was gone.

She stood staring at the spot he had occupied for a very long time, as if by doing so she could make him reappear. She could hear him speaking in her mind; she could hear his words quite clearly. They jumbled together at first and then they sorted themselves out, and suddenly she discovered she knew exactly what she was going to do. Maybe she had known all along, but just hadn’t realized it. In any case, it hadn’t taken any time at all to figure it out. It had just taken a few words of wisdom from a very unusual cat.

She started back to the castle. She would tell her parents at dinner. She would tell them that it was important to finish what you start and to make a habit of doing so. She would tell them that she had learned this from a rather unexpected source, and now she must act on it.