Bourne sat on the hard, narrow pallet in his prison chamber, flipping a coin. Sometimes the crowned head of the young woman in the wood landed upright, sometimes the twelve linked Crowns of Raine. He would pause to gaze intently at either, as though trying to comprehend the message they were giving him in the alphabet of coins. He had no pen or knife to tally which fell when, so he had decided from the beginning that it didn’t matter: he would regard every toss as the first, and every image as a message. The message, which one fall or another of the coin would eventually give him, was how to get himself out of his chamber and into Nepenthe’s, so that he could tell her why he had not come to tell her why he had not come.
He had tried. Each time he filled his heart with her, so that longing fashioned the shortest path through time, he would be brought up against a wall. He tried more than once; the second wall looked different. He tried many times, thinking that Vevay could not be shoring up that many spells at once, and somewhere there must be an end to walls. There wasn’t. He sank down on the floor and began pitching coins into his shoe, trying to devise a way to outwit the door. It was visible; it functioned; it opened and closed whenever someone from the kitchens brought him food. There seemed no lock on it. He offered money to the servant to show him how to open the door. The servant, who might have been Felan himself for all he knew, only snorted at the idea and went off snickering unpleasantly. Bourne kept his mind on the problem, doggedly throwing the seventeen coins he had in his pocket over and over. An idea grew the way mushrooms seemed to grow, unexpectedly, out of nothing, when no one was watching. There it was: the door in his head and a way to open it. He barely remembered to empty his shoe and put it back on before he went to the door.
He opened it and nearly fell over the cliff.
He closed it again, leaned against it, his heart pounding sickly, still feeling the sudden blast of wind leaping up over the cliff, smelling of sun and salt, pushing against him even as the shock of the long emptiness almost unbalanced him into it. Illusion, he guessed, but was not entirely convinced that, stepping into it, he would not be instantly stripped of every illusion in his young life as he plunged to his death. Nor did he believe that Vevay might bestir herself to rescue him. He—or something—seemed to have tested her patience severely; she didn’t look in the mood for mercy.
So he went back to his coins, tossing this time instead of pitching, with the one coin he had that bore the queen’s face. It didn’t resemble the girl in the wood. The face on the coin belonged to someone older, stronger, tempered. A warrior queen, not the shy woodland creature he had met. That one was magical, talking to trees and birds, and seeing portents in—what had it been?—a bramble bush. Perhaps some of her magic would spark within him at a coin’s toss, if her face came up often enough. Queen or Crowns, he threw, again and again. Queen or Crowns. It seemed a question to which he must give his entire attention. If he chose correctly he would find the magic, work the spell, set himself free…
This time the spell that stole into his empty mind was not one he had thought to look for. He had no idea how long he had been in the windowless place except by counting meals; already there seemed to have been more than possible. No one came to tell him anything. Even the servant who brought his food and wash-water rarely glanced at him, and refused to acknowledge any remarks. I might as well be invisible, Bourne had thought a hundred times. I might as well be a stone in the wall, without eyes or ears or thoughts. Much longer in this timeless, soundless place, and I will turn into one…
Queen or Crowns.
Queen or Crowns.
Queen or Crowns.
“I might as well be,” he whispered, flicking the coin with his thumb. “I might as well…”
Be invisible.
He heard his breath stop.
He picked the coin up as tenderly as if it were a love token, gazing at her face.
Invisible. I might as well be…
“Why not?” he asked her. “Why not? No one sees me, anyway. I might as well.”
Be invisible.
He sat there for a very long time, holding the face of the young queen, not trying anything, even not to think, just letting himself be what he was, something no one wanted to see, hear, speak to, a stone in the wall, an unlit candle. Something that was nothing. Nowhere. Unnoticed. Invisible.
He placed the coin gently into his pocket and waited.
When the servant brought his next meal, he saw the scattering of coins on the floor where the prisoner had been sitting.
While he straightened, staring incredulously around the room, Bourne walked out of the door into the mages’ comfortable library and kept walking as the servant shouted, into the library in his heart.
He appeared in Nepenthe’s chamber. Not daring to show his face anywhere in the halls he waited for her there. Sitting on her bed, tossing the coin again to empty his head, he tried to remain invisible. The sky in her tiny window took forever to darken. But it did eventually, and no Vevay came searching for him. He wondered why. He loved an orphan transcriptor in the library; she must know he would go there first. Perhaps because she had caught him there before, that was the last place she expected to find him now. His mouth crooked ruefully. Or she simply thought he would run, since he took so little seriously; she would expect to find him somewhere between the mages’ wood and the safety of his uncle’s court.
He flipped the coin upward; the door opened.
Nepenthe, staring at the coin falling over her bed, brought both hands over her mouth to stifle a scream.
She tried to scream again when Bourne stumbled off her bed and caught her shoulders. “Nepenthe,” he whispered. “It’s only me.”
She pushed past him into the room, shoved the door closed with her foot. She was trembling; her hands shook badly as she tried to light one taper from another. Bourne took them from her; she gasped sharply, “Don’t do that!”
“Do what?”
“Make things float in the air like that.”
“Do I?” he asked bewilderedly.
“Bad enough that I couldn’t see you when you weren’t there—”
“But I’m here, now.”
“Where?” she demanded tightly. “Why are you hiding from me? Leave me alone if you can’t think of anything better to do than torment me.”
He put the taper very carefully in a holder. “Nepenthe.” For some reason he was whispering again. “Can’t you see me?”
“No!” She was trying, he could tell. Now that he no longer held anything her eyes searched for him desperately everywhere in the chamber. “I can hear you; I can see things you hold. But I can’t see you at all.”
He closed his eyes, slumped against the wall. “Oh,” he breathed, “this is cruel.”
“Please.” He caught her hand; she tried to pull away, but he brought her palm to his rough cheek. “Feel that. That’s what grew in however many days I was locked away. How many days has it been since I should have met you that evening in the refectory?”
Her wide eyes searched the air her hand cupped. “Five days.”
“Five. It felt like half a year.”
“Why are you still invisible?”
“Because I don’t know how to undo my own spell,” he answered raggedly. “I don’t know how I managed to turn myself invisible, but as soon as I knew I was unseen I crept out the door and came here.”
“Where have you been?”
“Somewhere in the mages’ school, boxed in by Vevay. She found me wandering around the library when I was last here looking for you, and she arrested me for treason.”
“Trea—” She tried to stuff the word back into her mouth, as though saying it would bring down disaster. “Bourne. What have you been doing?”
He sighed. “Sit with me. You don’t have to see me, just feel my hand in yours, my body beside you. I’ll try to explain.”
He tried, and watched her trying to understand. What had seemed a lighthearted venture into the mystery of magic sounded foolish now, fraught with the dangerous ambiguities of history. Her hand grew slack in his hold. Once or twice she tried to interrupt, but he continued doggedly, insisting that he had meant no real harm, that truly he thought himself incapable of—He had actually met the queen in the wood one day and liked her. He had gotten her to smile—
“Bourne.” Nepenthe was not smiling. Her eyes were enormous and very dark. His babbling died away; he waited uneasily. “There was a rumor at supper tonight about your uncle. They say he’s leading the entire forces of the Second Crown here to attack the queen.”
He felt his skin go cold with shock, as though someone had doused him with a bucket of water. At the same time, something was unleashed, a sudden flash of wild magic that he had been holding in place without realizing it. As it dispersed, and the expression in Nepenthe’s eyes changed, he knew that he had broken his own spell.
“Bourne!” she cried to his visible face. “Not now!”
“I couldn’t help it—” He gripped her hand again; they were both silent, motionless, listening. No irate mages appeared out of nowhere to haul him back into his cage. He loosed her slowly, whispering again, “I didn’t know about my uncle. No one has spoken to me for days.”
“Can’t you turn yourself invisible again? You’re in terrible danger.”
He looked at her, brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “You believe me?” he asked wistfully.
“Yes, of course I do; I always knew you had a careless heart,” she answered dolefully. “But a transcriptor in the royal library believing in your—well, your foolishness if not your innocence—is not going to matter to anyone else if they find you. What are you going to do? You can’t show your face, even down here.”
“I don’t know.” He shifted closer to her, pushed his lips against her hair. “I only came here because I knew I had hurt you. I wanted you to know that I didn’t mean to—I’ve wanted nothing but to come to you for days, explain that maybe I have taken the world too lightly, but never you. For you I work magic. I do things I never knew I could do. Like—” He paused, holding words back, then continued reluctantly. “Like leaving you, now, before I get you into trouble, too.”
“No.” Her fingers closed on his shoulder, his wrist. “No.”
“I can’t stay.”
“Yes. You can make yourself invisible again. Stay with me. I’ll hide you, and feed you—”
“She’ll find us both here. You’ll be as culpable as I am.”
“Then I’ll put you where I hide my thorns. No one ever goes there except me. You can practice your invisibility there.” She put her arms around him, held him tightly. “Where else can you go? Back to the wood, where the mages will be looking for you? To your uncle’s army, to help him fight?” She loosed him as abruptly, to meet his eyes. “Would you do that? Use your mage’s powers to fight for the Second Crown?”
“I could,” he answered softly. “But what is my uncle going to do when the warriors of eleven other Crowns converge on this plain around him to rescue their own rulers and protect their powers? The Second Crown is doomed. I’d do better to flee with the gypsies on the plain, go off to a strange city, change my name and do tricks for a living. I don’t suppose you would come with me?”
To his surprise, she considered it, her eyes wide, oddly desperate. “Have you got any money?”
“Yes,” he said. Then he sighed. “No. I left it all, except for this coin, in the school.”
She dropped her face against him, hiding her eyes. “Then we must stay. Anyway, what about your family? You can’t run away from them.”
“What about them?” he said bitterly. “My uncle is not thinking of them. There won’t be much left of it if he continues his march toward the plain.”
“Can you stop him?”
“Not with words. The queen and her mages and the other Crowns will put a stop to him soon enough. I won’t have a home to go home to.”
“Then this must be home for now. Wait with me until it gets late. Then I’ll take you to my secret place. I know where the librarians keep spare bedding, and I can bring you food from the refectory kitchens. You’ll turn yourself invisible again, and no one will find you.”
He saw Vevay’s eyes, gray, clear, and winter-cold, knew she could see through any spell he conjured. “For now,” he said, and kissed Nepenthe. “I’ll stay tonight at least. I won’t put you in danger longer than I can help it. But I can’t seem to think clearly now.”
“Don’t think. She’ll only find you.”
He tried not to, as Nepenthe led him, hours later, through the soundless, shadowy corridors, down every worn stone stair, it seemed, she could find until they must be in the center of the cliff somewhere near the Dreaming King. Was he dreaming now? Bourne wondered. Was Ermin of Seale a nightmare or merely an irritating twitch in the Dreamer’s sleep?
Nepenthe deposited him among the broken shards of history, left him with a candle while she went for food and blankets. He studied the old slabs with their incomprehensible letters, shifting the light to see tablets of wax and stiffened hide, all filled with writings that once were urgent and necessary for an orderly world and now were buried away, gathering dust and of no use to anyone.
The little book of thorns caught his eye. It lay closed among Nepenthe’s pens and ink jars and papers covered with her careful, miniscule writing. Her translations. He picked one up, scanned it. Kane and Axis, nothing else, nothing but, both names as ancient and dusty as the tablets around him. What, he wondered, not for the first time as he picked up the odd, thorny book, was her obsession?
Thorns.
He blinked, remembering. Something. The queen in the wood. The warrior that had appeared to her, armed, faceless, pointing, warning silently of—what?
A pile of brambles.
Thorns.
The eerie magic flashed out of him again, sudden fear colliding with sudden power.
“Only the beginning,” he heard Vevay say again in memory, talking about his uncle. “Only the beginning of trouble.”