“He’s after something,” Perdita agreed. “And he’s liable to get
stopped for speeding before he finds it. I wonder if he knows we’re behind
him . . .”
He led them on a long, winding chase through the city, once they left the
palace grounds, by way of the truck routes, alleyways, and side streets of
Severluna, thoroughly snarling the pathways that Perdita thought she knew so
well, and revealing, after she thought she had seen everything at least twice,
portions of the city she did not know existed. Some had been frozen in time,
streets still cobbled, buildings low, thick-walled, and unfashionably ornate;
the cars and buses on them seemed to have wandered in from the future and were
involved in a rambling, futile search for the way back. Perdita stubbornly
tracked the helmeted figure on the electric bike ahead of her, no matter how
frequently he made his turns or how abruptly he sped up and left behind only
the memory of where they had seen him last.
She always found him again.
“He’s playing us,” Scotia said finally, calmly. “I’ve done that to fish.
”
“Then why doesn’t he just disappear? We must have driven through most of
Severluna. If we are still in Severluna. I have no idea where we are. I wonder
if even he knows. Now where did he go?”
Finally, the streets grew broader, less congested; the knight on the bike
stopped his sudden veering, held a steadier path, as though finally he could
see in the distance the object of his search. Intent on him, Perdita scarcely
noticed the wealthier neighborhood she drove through, the parklike setting of
stately trees, the gently curving streets that held no traffic now, only the
strange little hut that appeared in the middle of the road as though it had
dropped there from some tale.
“Ah—” Dame Scotia said; Perdita heard the astonishment in her voice.
She braked abruptly. They watched the figure in black speed past the
guardhouse without generating any interest whatsoever from the guards chatting
outside it.
“Either he’s that familiar to them,” Perdita said incredulously, “or he’s
invisible.”
The sedan was not; the guards gestured it forward, looking into the tinted
windows as the princess neared. They straightened quickly, waved her past. She
drove on, her mouth tight, looking for the black-clad cyclist down footpaths,
hiding in bushes, though without a thread of hope.
She yielded finally with a sigh, and said to the tactfully silent knight
beside her, “All right. He may not know you, but he knows me far too well.”
“It seemed a very good idea,” Dame Scotia said fairly.
“But how did he know? And why, of all things, did he bother leading us on a
wild-goose chase all over the city?” She slowed at another checkpoint, guards
standing rigidly as she passed, and wound her way toward the palace garage. “
He could have stopped and asked us not to follow. And he could have lost us
easily enough a dozen times. What possessed him?” She watched another bike
pass them, this one traveling at a more sedate speed. The rider, wearing jeans
and boots, and a helmet with a familiar crest on it, did not glance at them as
he passed, so intent was he on his own pursuits.
She braked again, sharply. They both turned to stare at his back as he
followed a curve out of sight.
“That was Daimon,” Perdita said. Her voice shook. “That was the
Wyvernbourne crest on his helmet and bike. That was his pale hair.”
“Then who—” Dame Scotia exclaimed. The princess turned to meet her amazed
eyes. “Who else knew we were going to follow him?”
“No one. No one but you, and I, and the queen.”
“Then who did we follow through that tangle of streets? Someone must have
known—”
“No one,” Perdita whispered. And then she was silent, looking back at the
face of her aged, charmingly scattered great-aunt as she watched the princess
from the top of the sanctum stairs.
Morrig.
PART THREE
KINGFISHER
15
Pierce floated out of Severluna with his father and his brother in a black
limo the size of a small yacht. It bore them effortlessly northward,
surrounding them in a cocoon of soft leather, perfect air, small luxuries of
every kind to while away the hours. Beyond its tinted windows, Pierce watched
the highway he had driven down in the Metro scant days before. It looked
completely different now, as though he saw it through the eyes of someone he
barely knew. This strange Pierce unreeled a past to his new family that
seemed, compared to theirs, scant of detail, monotonous, inexplicable.
“It took courage,” Leith said, “to leave the only place you ever lived.
Even more to brave the complexities of Severluna and the court, where you knew
no one and neither of us knew you existed.”