Then Mienthe found herself blinking once again at the ordinary sitting room. Tan was sitting with his head bowed against his hand, his face hidden. He made no sound, but obviously he was in some distress, though she did not know exactly why. There were no marks of any kind on the paper that rested on his knee.
Iriene was staring at both of them. “Well,” she said. “Well… that was no ordinary mageworking, was it? It wasn’t anything I recognize. How strange. Was that legist-magic?”
“Yes,” said Tan, not looking up. “Though it wasn’t anything I recognize, either.”
“Oh,” said Mienthe. “Legist-magic? That explains the words, and why they’re written out rather than spoken, and I suppose it also explains why I couldn’t read them—because I’m not a legist.”
“Words?” asked the queen, puzzled.
“Written?” said Iriene, at nearly the same time. “Did you see something, Lady Mienthe? What did you see?”
“Purposeful words?” asked Tan, looking up at last.
“But surely you saw them, too?” Mienthe asked him. “You’re a legist—didn’t you understand them?”
Tan touched his forehead gingerly with the tips of two fingers, as though not perfectly certain the top of his head was still attached. “I don’t… nothing’s very clear… I wonder what Istierinan had hidden in that study of his? Something that only a legist could take, and not even quite realize he’d taken it?”
“Oh!” Mienthe jumped to her feet and was through the door before she’d even realized that she’d forgotten to take proper leave of the queen. But the book was right there on the shelf where she had known she would find it. The fat little book with its expensive leather binding and its thick, heavy, blank pages, with no sign that anybody had ever written a single word in it.
Mienthe found she had no difficulty imagining thin, ornate writing filling the book, black and spidery across all its fine pages. She only wondered what the writing might have said.
CHAPTER 6
Tan recognized the book, of course—recognized it at last not merely as the blank-paged book Istierinan had brought to that memorable interview in the barn, but from before that as well—from that last rushed day and frantic night in Teramondian, when everything had suddenly fallen into order and he’d slipped past Istierinan’s watchful eye and into his private study. Years of work used up in that one night, years of moving in all the right circles to gain knowledge of disaffected younger sons and yet with all the right steps to gain the trust of their weary fathers as well… Tan had not in the least minded acting as one of Istierinan’s close-held Teramondian agents. He’d gradually established himself as one of Istierinan’s most useful agents in the Fox’s court, and that night he’d poured out every last drop of credit he’d ever gained. But he’d judged it worth the cast, and so it had been.
And now here this one small book was again, which he had hardly noticed at the time. Not that it was poorly made. It was, in fact, superior workmanship all through: top-quality paper that would take ink beautifully, a tooled leather binding. He was afraid to touch it himself in case that, too, might serve as a trigger for Istierinan’s mage—and surprised again by the blaze of anger he felt at being forced to such timidity. But he asked Mienthe to page through the book for him. He watched in growing unease as the young woman turned one blank page after another. Finally he asked her to shut the book again.
Queen Niethe, curious, held out her hand, but one of her ladies took the book instead and held it for her so the queen would not touch it. That seemed a wise precaution to Tan, though he doubted it was necessary. Nevertheless, a weak-minded fear of the book ironically filled him now, when it was too late to evade whatever magic it had contained.
He had looked at this book and evidently taken the writing out of it, and he did not even remember what it had said. It was some trap Istierinan had left for a thief or a spy, and he had fallen into it. The writing in the book had got into his mind. Of course it had. Where else would it have gone? What had it done to him? What might it be doing still? No doubt it had rendered him vulnerable to Istierinan’s mage—no doubt he was still vulnerable—and who knew what Istierinan might be able to do to him through it? Tan wanted to run in circles, screaming. Only years of hard-held discipline, a disinclination to look like a hysterical fool in public, and his injured knee allowed him to stay sitting calmly in his chair.
He said, trying for a calm tone, “I’m only surprised I did not recognize it at once. But I had other things to think about when Istierinan was, ah, making inquiries.” He hesitated. Then he admitted, “This book was in Istierinan’s study, on a shelf with a few others and a trinket or three and several jars of ink. I glanced through it… it wasn’t set apart. I didn’t think it special. I suppose I thought it might contain the key to a cipher or such, but…” He stopped.