I Will Not Ask a Third Time

The king stood up.

For one extremely satisfying second, I believed I'd made him do it.

"Clear the outer ring," he ordered. "No one touches the stone. Master Ilyen?"

The woman in grey knelt beside the dais, pushing a greying braid back over one shoulder. Under strong dark brows, her eyes were on the last fading lines in the floor.

So much for deference.

A copper instrument appeared in her hand, thin as a knitting needle. She held it over the fading circle. Its tip bent toward the light without touching it.

Okay. That was new. That was actually new, not painted-mountain new, and some small part of me that hadn't caught up yet went oh, cool before the rest of me sat on it.

"The working is closed," she said.

"And the throne?"

"I did not summon a throne."

That shut up several people who had been about to speak.

The king glanced at me. I gave him nothing. This was not difficult. I had nothing.

Master Ilyen moved her instrument toward the first step. A faint blue spark crawled along the copper. She pulled it back immediately.

"No further probing," she said. "Not until we have examined the residue."

"Is he in danger?" the king asked.

I did not like the pronoun.

"I am sitting here," I said. "You may address your concerns accordingly."

The old man recovered first.

"Forgive us, my lord. The summoning has produced an unexpected--"

"Corvane," the king said.

The old man stopped. A name, at least. In my head I'd been calling him the Collar.

The king turned fully toward me.

"You are in my hall. You have been brought here by a working authorized in my name. Until we understand what has happened, no one will approach you without my permission."

A competent opening. It took responsibility without promising anything expensive.

I'd have stolen it for the play.

"Your permission," I said.

"And yours."

Okay. I could work with that.

"Might we know your name?"

My name came up my throat on its own. Seventeen years of answering adults nearly undid me in one breath. I held it back with my teeth.

There was another name available. One I'd said until I could deliver it convincingly while half asleep on a train. It belonged to a man who had never existed, from a country whose eastern watch was, right now, still waiting for Miyata to finish describing its destruction.

"Solvane," I said. "The second of that name."

I let the rest follow without hurrying.

"King of Aurelheim."

Corvane studied me. The king's eyes went once to the crown, then back to my face.

Neither of them bowed. A sensible pair. How inconvenient.

In rehearsal, everybody bowed. It was in the script.

"Aurelheim," the king repeated. "Your country?"

"Yes."

"And your ruling house?"

I rested my elbow on the stone.

"Has not yet authorized an inquiry into its genealogy."

A guard looked sideways.

Too much. Way too much.

I'd heard it myself--the brittle edge of a boy defending an answer he didn't have.

I softened the next one.

"You will forgive my reluctance to provide a family history before receiving an explanation."

"Of course."

The king said it pleasantly. I couldn't tell whether he'd accepted the correction or just noted that I'd needed one.

Master Ilyen looked up at me. Something brushed the space behind my eyes.

I went very still.

For an instant--less than an instant--a pale blue rectangle flickered at the edge of my vision, like a window opening in a room I wasn't in. Then it was gone.

"Human," she said. "Otherworlder. First level. The surface pattern is consistent."

First level. She said it like a diagnosis.

I kept my face where it was.

"Identity?" Corvane asked.

"The deeper fields require an assay."

"Then arrange--"

"No."

The word was out before I'd decided how to say it.

All three of them looked at me. Ilyen lowered the copper needle.

"The surface reading causes no harm," she explained. "An identity assay is more involved. Contact, usually. Or a prepared circle."

"You may explain the procedure before proposing to perform it."

"I would not perform it here in any case." She glanced at the throne. "We have interfered with this working enough."

Corvane's expression didn't change, but his attention did. The king went back to his chair.

"All newly summoned persons arrive at the first level," he said. "Whatever abilities you possessed before, you will require instruction in how this world expresses them."

So I had apparently lost abilities I didn't know I'd had. The day just kept getting better.

"You have done this before."

"Yes."

"How often?"

"The records can be made available."

Corvane turned his head a fraction. The king didn't check with him.

I filed that away.

My collar had gone damp against my neck. The room was too cold for sweating and I was doing an absolutely undignified amount of it. I had been holding my hands still for so long the muscles between my fingers ached.

I needed water. I needed fewer witnesses. What I wanted was to go home, and that wasn't currently on the menu.

"Then I will put my question to you one final time," I said. "And I will not ask it a third."

I had not asked it once.

The king's eyes narrowed slightly. He might have noticed. Too late to fix the line.

"Why have you brought me here?"

A murmur went along the wall and died when the king lifted his hand.

"Because there is a war," he said. "And because we need help."

No destiny. No flattery. He was learning fast.

One of us was.

"With whom?"

"The ruler of the eastern dominions. The title used here is Demon King."

"Used here."

"Yes."

A careful answer. I could have started there--what the title meant, who chose it, why a kingdom with this many armed men needed a stranger to save it.

Instead I felt a small tremor go through my right leg.

There's a limit to how much indignation you can run on an empty stomach.

"Then perhaps we should discuss your war without the entire court listening."

The king considered me.

"Certainly."

Relief nearly loosened my shoulders.

Then he added, "The council chamber is warmer. Will you join us?"

I looked at the steps.

There it was. Not a challenge he had to say out loud. Just an invitation that required me to leave the high black throne and walk among the people I had been talking down to.

Corvane waited. The guards waited.

I could refuse. Insist the hall be emptied around me. Make it very clear that my sovereignty depended on staying attached to one particular chair.

"Lead the way."

I stood. My right foot had gone to sleep. For one hideous second the ankle refused to belong to me.

The robe hid the wobble. I took the first step slowly, trailing my hand along the armrest like I was reluctant to leave a comfortable seat. The second was easier.

At the foot of the dais stood a girl about my age. A little shorter than me. Slight, compact. Long dark hair--ocean-blue in that light--tied low with a strip of cloth and falling to the middle of her back.

She was wearing a faded blue jacket.

A jacket.

With a zipper.

The cuff had been mended with thread that didn't quite match. A pale rectangle marked where an emblem had been picked off. Her clothes were worn, foreign, and unmistakably from somewhere that knew what a school uniform was.

I almost stopped.

She was looking at my crown. Then the robe. Then the little line of hot glue under the biggest plastic gem.

Her lips moved. Four words, in a language I had known all my life.

That's a school costume.

I missed the last step. Not enough to fall. Enough for her to notice.

Her eyes came up to mine.

For the first time since the light had appeared under my feet, I was looking at someone who wasn't wondering what I was.

She knew.