“Who has a key?”
The high brunka showed Elodie a large silver key among a ringful of keys fastened to her belt. “No one else has it. But if the thief was in here, picking wouldn’t have been needed. My bees will search the storage area first.”
Elodie felt a bubble of hope. It might be that simple. “Was the Replica in there?” She pointed at the chest.
“No, lamb. You see, my fireplace needs more daub.”
Daub made of dried mud and straw cemented the stones together in a fireplace or in walls. Elodie didn’t see what missing daub had to do with the Replica.
High Brunka Marya brought the stool to the fireplace and stood on it. “I don’t know why I closed it up again.” She began to pull out loose stones from the chimney about a foot above the mantel to reveal a hole.
Lambs and calves! If Elodie had managed to get in to this chamber and had known the Replica was here somewhere, she wouldn’t have more than glanced at the chimney.
The high brunka stepped down to let Elodie see, and she climbed up, too.
There, immured in the chimney wall behind the facade of stones, was the pedestal, cloud gray marble shot through with lines of white and patches of gray and black.
“How tall is it?”
“Two and a half feet.”
Elodie stuck her hand in and explored the top with her fingers: square, perhaps ten inches on a side with a three-inch groove in the middle. “Is there a ridge in the Replica that fits the slit?”
“Exactly, lamb.”
“Is the magic in the pedestal?”
“I don’t know, lamb. I always supposed it was in the Replica. Perhaps it’s in both.”
Elodie nodded, then pivoted carefully on the stool, memorizing the room for her masteress. No trapdoor in the rock floor, none in the rock ceiling. She prayed she hadn’t missed anything.
High Brunka Marya’s face had a listening look.
“Excuse me. Can you hear what Ludda-bee and Johan-bee are saying?” Elodie couldn’t hear even a murmur. Maybe one of them had divulged something useful. “Can you hear them as clearly as you can hear me?”
The high brunka nodded. “Ludda-bee said I was kind to give you a wooden rainbow. She told Johan-bee that he was too lost in his own concerns to be as kind.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. The tooth remedy makes speech difficult. The bees all tease him about it and other matters, although Ludda is the worst. They mean no harm. He has to learn to command respect. You know that.”
Elodie nodded. Bees sometimes had to tell farmers what to do and make them do it. But the teasing still seemed cruel. Johan-bee might learn better from kindness.
The high brunka took a rainbow from the shelf. “Ludda-bee may ask to see it.”
The rainbow was small enough to fit in Elodie’s purse. Her thoughts returned to the Replica. What else should she ask? She felt the usual pressure on her brain, and IT wasn’t even here. “Er . . . do all brunkas know where the Replica was kept?” Probably a silly question. A brunka would never take it.
“We all know. We decided together where to put it after the first theft. Lamb, a brunka could no more harm Lahnt than a rabbit could kill a deer.”
But, Elodie thought, a brunka might tell someone who could. “Are any other brunkas here now?”
“I’m the only one. My bees are all the help I need. Have you seen enough for your masteress?”
“Was anything out of place when you came in to get the Replica?”
“Nothing. The room was as it always is.”
“Have you opened the chest?”
“I did. It’s not there.”
“I guess I’ve seen enough.” Elodie hoped IT would know what to make of it all.
Instead of leaving, High Brunka Marya sat on the bed. A rainbow drooped from her hand. “I half convinced myself that when I came back, the Replica would be here, that I’d imagined the theft. Come, lamb.” But she didn’t rise. “Brunkas are kind, but we’re blamers.”
Elodie had to strain to hear.
“If anyone is hurt . . . if anyone . . .”—she left the word dies unspoken—“I’ll blame myself, and the others will blame me, too.”
“You didn’t steal the Replica.”
“I failed to keep Lahnt safe.” She stood. “And now I must confess.”
CHAPTER NINE
A band of gray brightened the eastern horizon as a swift settled on the slate roof of a stone cottage with two chimneys and an attached stable. Destination reached, the ogre within awakened and thought . . .
Not about Elodie or the missing Replica or even Nesspa, but about his coming nakedness. Fee fi! He had to decide quickly, because he couldn’t stay himself inside a bird or beast for long. The only time he had, he’d been very ill.
He planned and concentrated so the swift would remember, and then he receded.
The bird tapped the shutters of one of the front windows of the cottage, rattling the slats and the window frame, not knowing about brunkas’ sharp ears.