“Do not interrupt your masteress.”
I blushed. “I’m sorry. But I heard it.”
ITs scales dulled. “You may say ‘I heard a roar from the direction of the menagerie.’ You can be certain of nothing more.”
I grew afraid. “Was it the ogre?”
“You may probe the possibilities.” IT put the skewers in the fire. “But you must not draw unwarranted conclusions.”
“Then might it have been Count Jonty Um?”
“Indeed. He is capable.”
I shuddered.
IT removed the skewers and ate one.
“Was it the count, Masteress? Do you know?”
“Not of a certainty. Nor a likelihood. I have never known His Lordship to shift into a lion, and I have known him since his infancy.”
My heart lifted. He seemed a decent ogre; I wanted him to be a good one. “Why is he so disliked and feared?” My heart prepared to sink. “Does he turn into something else, or eat people?”
IT raised ITs eye ridges. “Many who neither shape-shift nor eat people are disliked and feared. Our king for one.”
A perfect example. On Lahnt no one liked him. I waited for an answer about Count Jonty Um eating people, but none came, so my fear remained. I toasted my skewer. “Are there any lions nearby that are not in the menagerie?”
“Perhaps. The menagerie houses none. The last lion in the environs of Two Castles was killed a year before my birth. King Grenville wants to procure one for his zoo, but he refuses to pay full price.”
What could I have heard? I began to eat.
IT ate a skewer uncooked and went to the table. “The day is passing. Nothing done, nothing earned. Fetch a sheaf of skewers.”
IT meant the skewer sticks, which I took from the cupboard, and IT set me to cutting bread into cubes. I had to stand on the bench to be tall enough.
“Now tell me, what did you see on your way here last evening?”
As I cubed, I told IT about the open menagerie gate. “I heard calls from inside.” I imitated the rise and fall of the creature’s voice.
IT said the cries came from an animal called a high eena.
“Masteress, a man was leaving town, Master Dess from the cog. He brought a donkey and two cows and a basket of kittens over—”
“His appearance?”
I described him and told what had happened outside the town gate. “When he knocked”—I rapped the bench— “on the gatehouse door, the guards raised the drawbridge without seeing who he was. His knocks were”—I stopped myself—“may have been a code.”
IT scratched around ITs ear hole and looked unconcerned.
“What if there’s a plot against the king?”
The noon bells pealed. Testily IT blamed me for the lateness of the hour.
What if IT was part of the plot?
We pushed cheese and bread onto skewers in silence. After a few minutes, I called up my courage and asked if I might write and post my letter home.
IT put down ITs skewer and waddled to the trapdoor. “Follow me, Lodie.” IT pulled the door open.
I didn’t move. Did IT plan to kill me before I could write to Mother and Father?
Chapter Eleven
From halfway in, IT swiveled ITs neck and grinned back at me before disappearing down the stairs.
I stood at the top and saw a light spark on far below. The glow brightened. IT was lighting torches.
“Come!”
The stairs were stone blocks wedged into the earth. Follow IT or leave ITs service.
IT could have murdered me last night. I stepped cautiously and continued downward into a chamber almost as high and big as the one above, empty but for three large baskets beneath a table and four stacks of books on top, a fortune in books. I had never seen so many gathered together.
IT stood on the far side of the table. I approached, curious about the books but most eager to see inside the baskets.
They brimmed with coins, mostly tins but also coppers, several iron bars, and a sprinkling of silvers. I had never seen a silver before. The coin turned out to be smaller than a copper, much smaller than a tin, no bigger than one of my teeth, such a little thing to be worth a year of an apprentice’s labor.
I wondered if the baskets held coins to the bottom or were only a layer hiding something else underneath.
“In a century of industry and thrift, a dragon can amass wealth.” IT pulled out the baskets and thrust a claw into one after another, churning up the contents. Coins spilled onto the floor. “No bones of bygone assistants.”
I blushed.
IT sat back and rested a claw on a stack of books. ITs smoke turned gray; ITs eyes paled. In a dire and doleful voice, IT said, “I cannot read.”
I didn’t know how to soften ITs sorrow. I ventured, “Few people can.”
IT snapped, “Is that supposed to comfort me?”
I tried again. “Your vocabulary is big.”
“And varied and excellent. I astound my hearers with the erudition of my speech.” IT opened the top book to the middle and passed a claw across the page. “But I cannot decipher the merest word.” IT took the book.