A Tale of Two Castles

I backed away.

The cheese and bread were in bowls on the fireplace bench.

“I have new cheese. Tell me how you like it.” IT threaded skewers and toasted them in the fireplace, one for IT, two for me. “And we still have a few figs and dates from His Lordship’s visit. They are in a bowl in the cupboard. Fetch it.”

I wondered if IT had saved the delicacies for me.

When the skewers were toasted, I sampled the new cheese, which was sharper than any I’d ever tasted. “Mmm. Delicious.”

“Make more skewers if you like.” IT settled on ITs belly, ITs head and neck along the floor between me on the bench and the hearth, ITs eyes on me. “And tell me everything.”

I did so, ending with my visit to the menagerie.

IT raised ITs head. “When you found the ox, you saw nothing of a lion?”

“Nothing.”

“The grass around the ox had not been disturbed? You saw no tracks?”

“The grass was bloody, but not torn up.”

“Why is this detail important, Lodie?”

I imagined a lion, stalking a grazing ox. The ox smells something amiss, lifts his head, turns. Sees the lion. The ox gallops. The lion is faster and springs. The ox swings his horns, misses the lion. The lion’s teeth rake the ox’s shoulder. The lion’s claws scratch.

I closed my eyes tight and screwed my face into a grimace, feeling the pain of the ox.

The ox whirls, trying to get free, sending up great clods of dirt and grass.

“Oh!” I opened my eyes.

“Yes, Elodie?”

“There was no lion.”





Chapter Twenty-Eight

Was there a dragon? Did I do it?”

I didn’t have to think. “There would have been a struggle as well. You didn’t do it. But I knew that already.”

The ridges above ITs eyes rose. “Ah. You have already exonerated me.” IT sat up and picked ITs teeth with a skewer. “Undoubtedly the attacker planned to create signs of a struggle. If Nesspa had not barked and given warning—unintentionally, certainly—you might have caught him or her at it. Someone wants the folk of Two Castles to believe in the lion, and most do believe, save us deep thinkers.”

“Then who or what attacked the ox?”

“Yes, who? Who indeed?”

I considered. “A person with a rake. Someone the ox trusted. Someone he wouldn’t run from.”

“But who? You stayed in the castle. You may know better than I.”

“The stable master Gise . . . The grooms and stable hands. Master Dess, the animal physician . . . no animal fears him. And the beasts may be used to Master Thiel if he often sleeps in the stable.”

“You are ready to accuse handsome Thiel?”

To cover my discomfort, I helped myself to a handful of cheese squares. I no longer knew what Master Thiel might do.

IT said, “He was with you. He couldn’t have interrupted himself. May he be exonerated too?”

I hoped he might be, but I wasn’t sure. “Perhaps he was frightened off before I came.”

“Then someone else would have discovered the ox.”

“Anything might have startled him.” I frowned, searching for ideas. “The grooms exercise His Lordship’s steeds in the outer ward. At the sound of hooves Master Thiel—or anyone else—would have run without looking back, but the grooms might not have rounded the tower. Then he might have gone with me to discover the ox, which he knew was there.”

“That is cold-hearted enough for Thiel. Anyone else?”

I hesitated, hating to say the words. “His Lordship as himself, not as a lion. But why would he maul his own ox?”

“I doubt he did. Common sense deems it unlikely.”

I felt tears coming. “He is likely dead, isn’t he, Masteress?”

“Common sense says yes, but induction and deduction have not yet proved the result.”

I swallowed the tears. “He may be alive?”

“Or dead. We may never know.”

I felt like a bird that kept rising and then being thrown to earth.

“I will hate not to know. Not knowing will gnaw at my liver. Dragons have livers, too, Lodie.”

“Masteress, whoever mauled the ox wanted to en-

danger His Lordship, right?”

“I can think of no other reason.”

“Does that person know for certain that His Lordship lives?”

“It would seem so, but that conclusion is not proven either.”

I sighed, then yawned in spite of myself.

“Lodie . . . when Thiel was mending His Lordship’s plates, did you notice his satchel?”

I missed nothing when it came to Master Thiel. “It was at his elbow.”

“Did it lie flat?”

“No. I saw the angles of his tools through the cloth.”

“Think, Lodie.”

I was too tired to think.

IT waited.

The plate mender rarely came to our cottage on Lahnt. Poor people learned not to be fumble-fingered.

What were a mender’s tools? A glue pot. Thiel’s had been on the hearth. A glue jar. Next to the sack. Two or three clamps, which would occupy little space. I could think of nothing more.

No!

Yes. “Some of His Lordship’s goblets and bowls and such were in the sack.” I marveled. “With Sir Misyur in the hall, too.”

“Thiel is a master thief, light-fingered enough to steal a man’s beard.”

I smiled at the idea.

Enh enh enh.

“And Pardine is a master thief among cats,” I said. “He must have taken my copper.”

“Very likely.”

“Do you think Master Thiel is the thief His Lordship told us of, who made off with the linens, the wall hanging . . .” I’d forgotten what else.

“Also very likely.”

He had probably taken Master Dess’s cow, too. But we still didn’t know who the poacher was. Or, most of all, who had signaled the cats.

“How can Master Thiel make people like him and then rob them?”

“Speculation exhausts the mind, Lodie.”

“Do you think His Lordship discovered Master Thiel’s thievery?”

“Possibly.”

“And so Master Thiel set the cats on His Lordship and mauled the ox?”

“Perhaps, Elodie.”

“Elodie? But I’m speculating!”