Stolen Magic(11)

A single door broke the right-hand wall, and it alone had a lock.

“What room is this?”

“It’s a storage area.”

“When the Replica was stolen before, did that high brunka keep it in the same place as you do?”

“No. Then it was on a table in the middle of the great hall. I was just a brunkle, a lamb like you. No one gave a thought to theft. It had never happened.”

Another right and they reached a series of doors on either side of the corridor.

The high brunka said, “These chambers hold just relics and curiosities.”

More hiding places for the Replica.

Ahead, a man and a woman sat side by side on stools. The woman kicked the man in the shins. “Get up, Johan, lazy lump.” Her sharp voice seemed to strike the rock walls and bounce down the corridor.

The man stood awkwardly, without complaining. His cloak, which had been draped over his stool, slid to the ground. Grunting, he picked it up and held it bunched in his arms. Upright, he rocked back and forth on his heels, a tall, stout, ruddy-faced young man whose left cheek bulged with what was probably a toothache remedy.

Elodie expected the high brunka to tell the woman she shouldn’t be kicking people, but she just said, “Why are you guarding, Ludda?”

Ludda-bee rose in one fluid motion for all she was middle-aged, and her cloak remained on the stool. “Deeter begged a few more minutes of sleep. Now breakfast needs starting, and where is he?” She turned to Elodie. “Everyone imposes on my good nature.”

Elodie bobbed a curtsy. Do not show your penetrating mind, she thought. Do not show you think this woman has no good nature.

Wicked enough to steal the Replica?

Ludda-bee was thin with a fat face and small features—small mouth, small nose, and small eyes—crowded together in the middle of a big, round face, like a raisin roll in which all the raisins had collected in one spot. Her smile would have to be small, too, hemmed in as it was by lots of cheek. Yes, it was small, and the smile did nothing to banish her peevish expression. “I’m Ludda-bee.”

The cook, Elodie remembered, had been there when the high brunka returned to Master Robbie without the Replica.

Ludda-bee continued. “And this shy, hulking thing is my friend Johan-bee, Johan-of-the-privy, as we bees call him.”

They were friends? Elodie looked at his face—large nose, thin lips, that bulging cheek, owlish round eyes, expression blank. He doesn’t consider her a friend, she concluded.

“Two nights in a row of guarding, Johan,” the high brunka said. “Thank you.”

His face relaxed. “You’re welcome.” The second word sounded like welka, likely because he found it hard to close his lips on the m.

Ludda-bee seemed to resent the compliment. “If you can call it guarding. He left me thrice to visit the garderobe, and was, as ever, slow to return.”

Elodie blushed.

“It’s my stomach, Ludda.”

It couldn’t matter for the theft that Ludda-bee was horrible and that Johan-bee didn’t like her. But it might matter that Johan-bee deserted his post sometimes.

“When someone tells me her name, young mistress, I always tell her mine, unless I’m a rude lout.”

“Pardon!” She dropped another curtsy while hoping Ludda-bee would turn out to be the thief. “I’m Elodie.”

“Come, lamb.” The high brunka took her hand again. “I promised you a gift. You may have a painted rainbow.”

Elodie expected to go into the room closest to the bees, which they had been guarding. But instead they turned right into an intersection after that door and entered a short corridor.

A few steps took them to a door on which words were painted in neat blue letters: Hart Room. Below the words, for those who hadn’t learned to read, a representation of a stag in red paint. The painter was a master artist to capture the antlers, the delicate stance, the curves of back and belly, in only a few brushstrokes.

The high brunka opened the door, which had no lock, and closed it behind them. “This is my chamber. Folks see guards by the Goat Room and believe the Replica is there, but I kept it here. Anyone who plotted to steal it would be planning to take it from the wrong room.”

Glowworms lit this space, too. The bedsheets and blanket were rumpled. A high brunka who didn’t make her bed might like such chores as little as Elodie did. The chamber had a fireplace, which was empty, since the air was warm. A rack, hung with spare hose and a spare shift, stood to the side of the fireplace. Elodie looked away, embarrassed to see the exalted brunka’s undergarments. “Why is there a fireplace when you don’t need it?”

“The early brunkas didn’t know the temperature would stay warm all year. Only the great hall gets cold.”

The other furnishings were a padlocked chest, a shelf above it that held a pile of small wooden arches painted in rainbow colors, a low stool, hooks on the wall, and a hanging that depicted a female brunka standing before a cottage on the Lahnt plateau. Another door, without a lock, provided a second exit.

“Where does that lead to?”

“The storage room we passed before.” High Brunka Marya straightened her sheets.

Embarrassed at being caught with an untidy bed?

“The lock on the storage room door was made on the mainland. I was assured it cannot be picked. Safe as the heart in your chest, they said.”