Page 71 of Kingdom of Feathers

Not that this information would have swayed the dragons, of course. His desire to save an hour would be incomprehensible to the immortal creatures.

With another sigh, Basil started walking along the line of the city wall, wondering first whether his guards were going to be angry enough at his defection to murder him themselves, and second whether any other king in Solstice had ever had to trek through a foreign city alone and on foot.

“Less ego, more stability,” he reminded himself in a mutter.

As it happened, the walk was actually quite grounding. Fortunately the guards on the city gate recognized him, and—although clearly utterly bewildered—let him in without protest. And by the time Basil finally reached the castle courtyard from which Rekavidur and Dannsair had spirited him away, he’d had plenty of time to think about their revelations.

He didn’t know what to make of the dragons’ vague comments about magic lingering around Wren. He supposed it confirmed his theory that her silence wasn’t entirely a matter of choice, but that didn’t really help him solve the mystery.

What they’d said about the front lines concerned him more. He knew his father had considered the idea of using magic in the fight with Mistra, but as far as he was aware, the suggestion had never gone anywhere. Enchanters’ skills were in too great a demand for many of them to choose the uncertain life of a soldier. And civilian magic-users were often conscientious about their own codes of conduct, which would preclude them from using their magic for war.

If Entolia wasn’t using magic in the war effort, did that mean Mistra was? But it couldn’t be anything too potent, or surely it would have enabled the Mistrans to force a victory years ago. If she wasn’t so studiously avoiding him, Basil’s first instinct would have been to tell Wren what he’d discovered, and ask whether she knew anything of magic on the Mistran side of the front lines.

He decided he would speak to her about it at dinner. She would probably refuse to engage with him, but even her reaction might be telling. His heart lifted slightly at having a justifiable excuse to speak to the princess.

But when he arrived in the dining hall, slightly late due to his unplanned trip outside the city wall, he was disappointed not to see her in her seat. And she didn’t show up for the entire meal.

He couldn’t help the flicker of alarm that awoke at her failure to attend. The astonishing scene that followed hadn’t made him forget what Wren had confided in him—her accident at the pond had been no accident at all. The knowledge that someone might be trying to kill her had made her distance over the last fortnight even harder to bear. He knew there was no point pushing his company on her, but he often wandered the castle’s second story, hoping to catch a glimpse of her down in the gardens through a window, just to assure himself that her continued absence was the result of her choice, not something worse.

But he told himself he was being foolish to read anything sinister into her decision not to come to dinner on that particular night. All the chatter in the dining hall was about the dragons’ visit, and Basil well remembered the discomfort he’d read behind Wren’s carefully cultivated expression. Was she hiding away in her rooms out of mortification at being made such a spectacle? The thought was a little heart-wrenching, but also exasperating. He’d thought she knew him well enough by now to know there was no need to be embarrassed with him.

After the meal, Basil sought out the enchantress who had accompanied him from Tola. He hadn’t seen a great deal of her and her husband in recent weeks. He knew they were making the most of the rare opportunity to form connections with Mistran merchants, clearly hoping that the two kings would reach an armistice, and that they would be in a strong position to open trade. He didn’t begrudge them the head start on their counterparts back in Tola. They had done him a favor by accompanying him on a trip most Entolians believed fraught with peril.

To his astonishment, when he mentioned magic at the front lines, the enchantress nodded, unperturbed.

“Yes, Your Majesty, I felt it when we passed the battlefield.”

“Why didn’t you say anything at the time?” Basil demanded.

She looked perplexed. “I assumed you knew, Your Majesty. All I could feel was a faint sort of protective power, and I thought you must have arranged for a general protection over our forces. Similar power covered the whole region, so I figured it was common practice in times of war, and that the Mistrans must have done the same.” Seeing Basil’s astonishment, she pressed on anxiously. “I’m sorry if I did wrong, Your Majesty. If I’d felt anything that seemed dangerous, I would have mentioned it, but it never occurred to me that you were unaware…I mean, it was just the sort of basic hedge enchantment that many wealthy nobles pay enchanters to place over their homes.”

Basil shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t think to ask about magic outside of Myst.” He ran a hand thoughtfully through his hair. “We certainly haven’t put such an enchantment up, but the Mistrans might have, I suppose.” He frowned. Could that be all the dragons had noticed? “Not that I can expect a straight answer from King Lloyd, of course.”

Not for the first time, frustration welled up within him at the counterproductive attitude of the Mistran king. It hadn’t chafed him nearly as much when he and Wren had been locked in their own investigation. But now that her assistance—and if he was honest, her company—was denied him, he was struggling to find reasons to stay.

His time was split between wandering the corridors aimlessly—usually accompanied by Lord Baldwin—and sitting in his suite for hours at a time, reading reports and answering correspondence from home. He had a rotation of couriers going back and forth on a practically constant circuit, and he knew that his communication was still far from adequate. It would all be so much simpler if he was at home. From all he could make out, his mother was doing an excellent job of keeping things running in his absence, but she wasn’t the monarch, and there were limits to what he could delegate. It was difficult enough to keep vaguely on top of the practical things. He was floundering completely in other areas of equal importance, such as reading the mood of his court.

Not to mention that it was clear from Zinnia’s letters—Basil’s only source of information about the state of his family rather than his kingdom—that the queen’s new duties led to her spending even less time with her children than normal. Guilt lanced through Basil at the thought. But what else could he do?

He could just go home, he supposed. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that just yet. In spite of Wren’s avoidance of him, it was her presence that kept him from giving up on negotiations, packing up and returning to Tola. It wasn’t just about solving her mysteries, either, or completing their interrupted investigation. He’d seen her crushing isolation, and he simply couldn’t bring himself to leave with things as they were.

Over the several days following the dragons’ visit, Wren continued to dodge his company. She had begun to sit with her friend, Lady Anneliese, for meals, in a gesture that clearly indicated her unwillingness to be seated near Basil. The noblewoman hadn’t previously eaten in the royal dining hall, so Basil could only assume her presence now was the result of a specific plea from Wren.

The thought wasn’t heartening.

Still, he took every opportunity to watch her from a distance, and what he saw was both reassuring and deeply concerning.

It was reassuring because, although she might do her level best not to interact with him, she couldn’t quite keep her eyes from straying to him every time they were in the same room. There was no anger in these glances, and somehow Basil didn’t believe that their strange and painful scene by the pond had given her a dislike of him that made her shun his company. There was something else behind her distant behavior, some new layer of mystery that separated her from him as surely as her silence seemed to separate her from most of her fellow Mistrans.

Fools, he thought, as he had so often done before. Quite a small amount of effort had allowed him to see the vibrant and intelligent person hiding behind Wren’s silent mask. It was absurd that so few seemed to have made the effort before him.

The aspect of Wren’s new demeanor that was deeply concerning was the fear. She exuded it, moving around the castle as if in constant expectation of disaster, jumping at every noise, and often fidgeting with the ring hidden under her gown. When she glanced at Basil, thinking herself unseen, he could see the fear rising in her eyes, and it broke his heart a little every time. At first he’d thought it was just the expectation of embarrassment from the dragons’ words, but as the days turned into a week, it became clear to Basil that it was something more than that. What had her so terrified?

With Wren’s assistance denied him, Basil attempted to renew his efforts with King Lloyd, hoping that Rekavidur and Dannsair’s recognition might have given him greater credibility with the older king. But it quickly became clear that Wren’s father was more inclined to blame his royal guest for the humiliation he and his daughter had supposedly suffered from the visit than to respect him for being on good terms with dragons who, by their own admission, did not represent their colony.

All inquiries into Lord Baldwin’s suggestion about renegade enchanters in Albury yielded nothing. A week after the dragons’ visit, Basil had to face the reality of the situation. He’d been in Myst for almost two months, and not only had he failed to end the war, he’d made no progress whatsoever in that direction. He supposed his visit was worthwhile purely for the fact that as long as it continued, so did the temporary ceasefire. But he couldn’t kick his heels in Myst for that reason forever, and he didn’t want to. He had no armistice, no solution to the mystery of who had killed Wren’s brothers and sought to create conflict between the kingdoms, and not even a lead to pursue. And with the dragons having come and gone, and Wren’s company denied him altogether, any reasons he’d had to stick around were fast evaporating.

Pacing his room one evening, he reached a decision. He would leave first thing in the morning. He’d tell King Lloyd he needed to speak with his general, at the front lines, and would go to investigate the dragons’ comments himself. He dispatched one of his guards to take a message to the Entolian enchantress, and to Lord Baldwin. They’d only be gone a matter of days. The rest of his delegation could await their return in Myst, so that King Lloyd knew he wasn’t planning a flight back to Tola with the state of the border still unknown.

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