Such as that, for years, Helgira had carried on a secret platonic love affair with the great mage Rumis.
Helgira’s expression softened into amusement. “My lord Rumis has quite the sense of humor then, sending his manservant into my bedchamber unannounced.”
“He has an urgent request and no time to lose.”
“Speak.”
“He asks that m’lady outfit me with a steed and send me on my way.”
Since he had entered this copy of the Crucible via a portal, the same rules applied. He must physically travel to the exit. A wyvern would ensure speed.
Helgira sighed. “Tell your master that although his request makes little sense, I trust him too much to delay you with questions.”
“Thank you, m’lady.”
“You may rise. I will have a wyvern waiting for you.” Removing a cuff from her wrist, she placed it around his. “And this token from me will grant you safe passage through my lands.”
Titus came to his feet. “Thank you, m’lady. I take my leave of you.”
As he reached the door, she asked, “Is your master well?”
He turned around and bowed. “Very well, m’lady.”
“And his wife, healthy as ever, I suppose?”
Rumis’s wife was said to have outlived both Helgira and Rumis. “Yes, m’lady.”
She looked away. “Go then. May Fortune be at your back.”
Her expression so reminded him of Fairfax’s that he could not help stare one more moment. “My master sends his most fervent regards, m’lady.”
The wyvern was swift—too swift.
In a few minutes Titus would arrive at his destination. And perhaps in a few more minutes, he would use the execution curse on the Inquisitor.
A ruling prince was required to master the execution curse. If he sentenced any subject to death, he was to perform the deed himself, so that he must look the condemned mage in the face as he took the latter’s life.
Titus had never thought he would use the curse. He was a liar, a schemer, and a manipulator, but not a murderer.
Not like his grandfather.
For Fairfax’s safety, he was willing to give up his life. But was he also willing to give up what remained of his soul?
The wyvern landed on the meadow. He pushed aside his agitation to concentrate on what needed to be done. Under normal circumstances, when a mage exited the Crucible, it did not matter whether he had filled his pockets full of objects from the tales. Nothing could be brought out; the slate was wiped clean. But using the Crucible as a portal changed all the rules. The book would not close, so to speak, if he left with something that belonged inside.
He had already decided he would keep Helgira’s cuff on his person. Should he escape the library of the Citadel unscathed, he would need a ready steed, and he could not find a better one than Helgira’s. All he needed to do to keep the wyvern in place and waiting, her groom had informed him, was to take the stake at the end of the long chain attached to the beast’s leg and push the stake into the ground.
The wyvern, however, did not seem to like the spot Titus had selected, on the bank of the stream that bisected the meadow. It bellowed plaintively, its claws clutching at the edges of Titus’s tunic.
“What is the matter? Do you smell something?”
Wyverns had extraordinarily sensitive noses and could smell prey from miles away.
“You cannot be hungry, can you? I thought they fed you fresh meat all the time.”
The wyvern hissed.
“I would not worry. Nothing menacing ever comes to the meadow. Not that I have seen, in any case.”
Then again, he had never before physically inhabited the Crucible and did not know how it behaved in this state. He looked around. Everything was familiar enough, including Sleeping Beauty’s castle on the hill.
Or was it? The castle glowed not with the usual coppery light of torches and lamps, but with something akin to the blue-green luminescence of deep-sea creatures.
This copy of the Crucible had been his grandfather’s. It would seem Prince Gaius had made changes. While one could not alter the underlying thrust of a story—Sleeping Beauty, for example, would never come downstairs on her own and help her rescuer battle the dragons—almost all the incidentals of a story could be modified.
Turning Sleeping Beauty into Fairfax was only the latest of the changes Titus had made in his particular copy of the Crucible. There had not been wyverns in the great hall when the Crucible first came to him. Nor had the pair of dragons that guarded the castle gate been colossus cockatrices.
The changes Prince Gaius had made, however, felt more unsettling. But Titus could not pay much attention—not when he had murder on his mind.
Or ought to, in any case.
“And they lived happily ever after.”
He was now in the Citadel, next to the Citadel’s copy of the Crucible, which sat on a pedestal at the exact center of the dimly lit library. He slipped between the shelves.
The doors opened, and in came Alectus’s voice. “And here we are, the library. Very soft lighting, exactly as Madam Inquisitor requested.”