Two more things occurred to me in rapid succession. One was that I had to tell Veck something about Meshko, and soon. I’d been sent into town to investigate a suspect. Recent events had distracted everyone, but Veck would want a report.

  When Meshko was questioned, as was inevitable. Veck might rapidly deduce that the new black pawn had made her move right here in Bellogard. What manner of move? An aimless, ineffective one? One which got sidetracked?

  Would I be linked to Sara? Perhaps not. Perhaps not even by proximity, since I had turned up so soon after and to such good effect in Terga Square.

  The other thing which occurred to me was that Sara had laid long-term plans, into which I happened to fit conveniently. Meshko had only been getting into the swing of spying. Chorny had not intended to attack so soon. True, they had succeeded in eliminating our queen and a bishop and a pawn. In turn they had lost a bishop, and their prince had been injured. Their attack must have been premature. Presumably they’d hoped to inflict a more crushing defeat-but I had precipitated last night’s battle by challenging Squire Sara.

  So much, so much that I ought to tell! If I hurried up about it, one of our nobles might still overtake Sara. Why should I wish to protect her? Was it because of some cockeyed notion that Bellogard and Chorny might reach agreement in favour of perpetual stalemate, for which my sparing of Sara gave the precedent?

  Or was it because I loved Sara and thought that she might truly love me too, especially now that I’d spared her life and let her escape?

  Yes. Yes. Love is absurd, irrational. Sara was magical to me in more ways than one.

  If the truth came out, how would my colleagues regard a white squire who let a Chorny squire off the hook? Oh, they would have to applaud-because in passing her by I’d placed myself advantageously in the way of the more powerful and dangerous Zorn, and had trounced him. However, they might applaud slowly.

  Ruk waved at the eidolons. “This isn’t too bad. In sum, Bellogard lost a queen but gained a replacement, all be it less puissant. We lost a bishop and two pawns, Pyeshka included, and sustained an injured pawn. Chorny lost a bishop and suffered an injured prince. It almost balances.”

  Directly after, I excused myself from the queen and reported to Veck. I told him a highly censored version of events-about Meshko, only Meshko-and managed to deter him from dispatching guards at once into town to seek the painter. (“Let him come here innocently,” I argued. “Maybe he is moderately innocent. If not, he’ll be far away by now.”) It wasn’t easy, but deter Veck I did. This was my operation, my initiative. I found that I’d accrued a certain persuasive aura of success as a squire who had slain a bishop.

  Next I sought the queen, who was settling in to her new royal chamber. “May I speak privately?”

  Isgalt dismissed the maids who had been busily clearing away Alyitsa’s belongings and replacing those with Isgalt’s.

  When we were alone she smiled at me. “I suspect, my squire, that I may have you to thank for the fact that I’m queen.”

  How did she know so soon that I had nominated her at the conference? Impulsively, against all etiquette?

  “You took me to the Bibliotek,” she explained, noting my apparent puzzlement. “You showed me the emptiness at the heart of all. After that visit, during the past fortnight-of thinking and feeling-I believe I became queenworthy. I’m only uncertain as to whether I should thank you for this, or hate you.”

  “If I might make a suggestion, it’s preferable not to hate one’s squire.”

  She laughed. “In that case, I must thank you. Ask for something that’s in my power to grant.”

  A boon, a reward, would naturally endear her to her henceforth faithful squire. Perhaps Isgalt did possess a streak of Izold’s cleverness, though in much nicer style.

  I swallowed a couple of times.

  “As it happens, there is something.”

  I told her everything.

  I didn’t gasp out my tale in confused or hangdog style like a naive stripling. I flatter myself that I presented events in lucid order, together with rationale and motive.

  Does this sound unlike the lad who set out from the palace on holiday? Well, I’d changed since my nightly sojourns in Seveno. I’d changed since I stabbed a bishop mortally. And since I’d fallen in love with a spy, who was pretending to be a whore.

  At the end of my account Queen Isgalt mused a while; then said, with a curious blend of mischief and melancholy, “I think I see a neat solution.”

  Meshko did indeed turn up at our rendezvous, which to my mind at least established his naive artist’s innocence. Innocence of any really dark evil.

  He was arrested by the queen’s personal guards, who had put off the glass armour of the previous reign on her orders and donned leather and brass.

  To Veck’s chagrin, Meshko was questioned in camera by Isgalt then condemned by her to indefinite imprisonment-though not in any deep dungeon. His cell was to be an airy studio high atop a tower, with a special royal commission to fulfil. More of this, in a moment.

  Meanwhile the queen sent me hurriedly back into town escorted by two guards in mufti. I went first to Meshko’s lodgings, searched these, and took away his sketch-book with the portraits of Sara. Next I went to Groody Lane, but Sara had skipped, leaving only her flimsiest clothes behind.

  Later, Veck’s men would turn Meshko’s place over and bring back to the palace all his grisailles and painting equipment. At his lodgings they found a small supply of magic paint-as diagnosed by Veck additional to the little bottle which Meshko had brought to our rendezvous. Sara must have managed to enchant the paint herself; unless she had somehow had this smuggled in from Chorny after suborning Meshko.

  Meshko swore (the queen told me) that he had misused none as yet; he was reserving his supply for grisailles within the palace grounds. Certainly no magical grisailles were discovered in his attic. He may have already delivered any such grisailles to Sara, who had taken them with her when she decamped. Alternatively those had been used and smashed during the premature attack on Bellogard. Indisputably Meshko had painted inside the Samostan grounds-which is where Slon was ambushed as he returned from the hunt. But Queen Alyitsa had been reached directly and brutally by Prince Feryava using normal attack magic.

  On balance it seemed unlikely that Sara had fled with any crucial magic grisailles; certainly with none which could provide subtle windows into the heart of the palace.

  Isgalt graciously-and in confidence-let me keep the sketchbook for myself, after she had examined it for a day or so. As I was eventually to realize, she had a subtle motive for this act of generosity. At the time I merely rejoiced. The charcoal of those sketches mightn’t in itself be magical but the studies of Sara certainly were.

  So how about Meshko’s royal commission? Let me sketch a visit which I paid him subsequently in his locked artist’s eyrie.

  A guard admitted me to a decent enough, spacious room with big bright barred windows. An unmade bed. A table crowded with paints and inks, brushes and pens, not to mention a bottle of wine, half a loaf, a ripe cheese, the remains of a roast chicken.

  Days of mourning, days of marriage festival were over many weeks since. The reign of Queen Isgalt had well and truly commenced. The palace was at peace, as was Bellogard and the whole domain. The peace might last a year, or a decade.

  Meshko sat at a desk, smoking a pipe of rum-shag. Before him lay an open book in which he was roughing out an illustration of vineyards from memory.

  He laid down his pencil. “I swear I’ll go mad, Dino.”

  “Isn’t this the dream of any artist from the provinces? Well fed, well housed, working for the queen herself?”

  “A bird singing its heart out in a cage! How many blank volumes are there in that damned Bibliotek? No one will let me go to see for myself. I’ve hardly filled up one yet!”

  “Several thousand,” I said, and he groaned.

  “I’m sure the queen doesn’t expect you to fill them all. Even if it were possible, that might be dangerous. Yet to fill up a few dozen.”

  “A few dozen?” he repeated hopefully. “Thirty-six? Forty-eight?”

  “.to fill up a few dozen will lessen the emptiness, she feels. It may help strengthen the kingdom; so long as the artistic standard is high enough.”

  “It is, it is. I know she’ll inspect each volume when I finish- before she puts it back on its shelf in the dust!”

  I crossed to the desk. “May I?”

  “Why not?” He paced to the bars and stared out.

  I turned pages which were beautifully illuminated with landscapes, villages, farms he had seen in his travels; though showing a certain preference for grey tones. A figure in one rural scene caught my eye. I peered closer. Surely that was Sara. I turned a page. Sara’s face! This time her features occupied most of the foreground, with a waterfall cascading behind her hair, white behind black.

  On most pages Meshko had controlled his passion. Sara still put in some kind of an appearance on about one page in eight. She featured as reaper and milkmaid, horse-rider and goatherd, dancer at a village fete.

  I felt a pang of jealousy that he could so readily recreate her image. I also experienced a certain stifled satisfaction that this “rival” of mine was safely locked up, far from any chance of meeting her again.

  “You seem to have a limited repertoire of faces,” I remarked. “Is this your sister from Letto?”

  “No,” he croaked. He didn’t bother to turn. “No.”

  So he didn’t know about my own relationship with Sara.

  “I think you ought to vary your models.”

  “How? By using people down in town? They’re a bit too far away. I can’t quite make them out!”

  “I’ll persuade some people to pose for you,” I promised. “Only as minor figures in a scene, understand?”

  It might amuse-and distract-the three unsuccessful princesses to have their portraits included in a magical volume. Fiery Ysa, mercurial Aseult, sly Izold.

  No. I knew who I would prevail on. Margarita. Margarita might persuade our artist to forget about Sara. I wished that Margarita could similarly induce me to forget.

  However, Sara had surely magicked me. Not with any pawnmagic-only with her person.

  Part Two

  Knightmagic, Nightmagic

  On the evening when I accompanied Henchy to the astrology observatory, his broken wrist was hurting. Naturally this made him grumpy. Henchy was grim of demeanour, all the more so since his injury, but at heart he wasn’t a harsh person. I might have behaved rather more sourly if I’d had to nurse a smashed wrist for four years! So I thought that Henchy intended to use this grumpiness to justify tough words with the keeper of the observatory.

  Henchy’s wrist didn’t always hurt him. Sometimes the broken bones lay uncomplaining in their sling. Then the weather would alter, and they would ache. What constraints the injury placed on Henchy in all sorts of minor ways! He constantly had to watch his step so that he didn’t bump the sling. These days he always tended to walk slightly offside and crablike so as to present his sound left arm to the world and to any obstacles in it. He slept on his back, with a ribbon tethering his left arm to the bed frame. He relied on our maid, Margarita, to change the cotton padding in his sling. Nor could he exercise his left hand too strenuously in dagger-play for fear of jogging the bones of his right.

  He remained stoical and stubborn.

  Queen Isgalt had suggested diplomatically that Henchy might be better advised to ask chirurgeons to amputate his right arm at the elbow. Then at least he would be able to move about vigorously. To walk unhesitatingly, to roll over in bed, to stab and parry with a blade. The injury was magical; it would never heal unless Henchy personally killed the person who had inflicted it. This was impossible, since I had already killed the perpetrator, Bishop Zorn.

  Henchy disagreed with such advice. “I think my wrist’s gradually getting better,” he would say. “We aren’t a hundred per cent certain a magical injury won’t heal in time, even if the inflicter’s dead.”

  Once, in my hearing, King Karol was blunter. “You’re useless as a fighter in that state, Henchy. We might as well have lost you in the battle.” Isgalt soothed this outburst of ungenerous grumbling by her consort.

  The truth was that Henchy was far from useless. As squire to the slain Bishop Slon he had inherited a number of responsibilities, which no one else at the palace was eager to take on. Somebody had to administer the Samostan, with its various suboffices. Amongst other things Henchy became Chairman of Governors of the Gymnasium, and also Visitor to the Observatory.

  Hence our call on the astrologer, on that early autumn evening.

  Perhaps the visit became necessary because Henchy had neglected the observatory? Did he feel awkward there? Did he feel that he didn’t carry the same weight of personal clout as Bishop Slon had? Did he suspect that astrology was a bit beyond his scope? Thus he had allowed the astrologer to become eccentric and unreliable, until murmurs reached the ears of Queen Isgalt herself.

  When Henchy asked me to accompany him I assumed this was for moral backing and, if need be, the threat of violent discipline. (Not that I had become a swaggering desperado, despite my enlarged acquaintance with Seveno night life!) How wrong I was.

  The botanic gardens were on our route. At this season its maples, sumachs, and pagoda trees flushed fiery red and vivid orange; the female sumachs raised their fruit spikes like fuzzy crimson candles. I didn’t care for this part of the gardens in autumn and I was glad that we were traversing at dusk when the colours were dimmed. Wildly flaming hues made me imagine the whole of Bellogard ablaze, on that last day-after the final battle with Chorny.

  Why should town and kingdom necessarily be consumed by fire? Why not by the death of dust? Why should the very fabric not simply disintegrate; every city building, every farm and field in the country becoming a mere cobweb which the wind would whip away? Here in Bellogard, city of light, why such antipathy on my part to bright fire?

  Well, I’d become something of a night-owl. And the grey aesthetics of Meshko, our imprisoned artist, had affected me.

  By now Meshko had filled several hitherto-empty books from the palace Bibliotek. His illustrations generally tended towards grisaille style: shades of grey. Since those once-blank volumes were magical, might this artistic tampering have produced a subtle cultural shift in the population, myself included?

  The more likely explanation was the many hours which I’d spent poring over Meshko’s charcoal portraits of Sara, my lost love, my dark foe, my dream, my desire. Sara’s own absence and absence of colour intertwined achingly, tantalizingly in me.

  I was glad when Henchy and I quit that dusk-flame foliage to mount, amidst heather, the path leading up Bresh Hill. A few clouds in the sky reminded me of grisaille streaks. Already a couple of planets were incandescing faintly.

  Crowning the hill was a white marble dome with a glass cupola on top and supporting half-domes at the sides. The effect wasn’t unlike an obese breast with a plump nipple.

  We entered a door set in an archway. The main dome would have been impenetrably dark without the cupola which was admitting the last light of day. Most of the meagre light was blocked, even so, by the scaffold and the observation platform towering over us.

  “Watcher!” Henchy shouted. “Mr Matyash! Gospodin!'’” As Henchy uttered the polite form of address in the magic language I detected ironic disdain in his voice-and doubt too?

  A door squeaked open, spilling lamplight from the side room where the astrologer slept during daylight hours. Mr Matyash was a burly, hairy giant, wrapped in a silken gown decorated with comets and halfmoons. A grizzled beard enveloped cheeks and jaw and flopped down his breastbone. He gripped a lantern in a meaty, hirsute paw. Squeezed into one eye socket was a green-tinted monocle. An affectation-or a tool of his trade?

  “So it’s you, Mr Henchy? Who’s the shrimp?”

  Definitely I was no shrimp, except when weighed in the balance with this whale.

  “May I present the queen’s squire, Pedino. We want a word with you, Matyash. We hear you’re in secret communication with the illuminati in Chorny. You’ve been revealing details of the skies over Bellogard.”

  “Is the sky a secret?” roared Matyash. “Of course not! The heavens can best be interpreted from two separate and distinct locations, Mr Henchy. Thus one can perceive the parallax of the celestial bodies. A watcher who only watches from one spot is watching with one eye closed.” The astrologer waved a hand aloft. “Just look at this pathetic, rickety structure! No investment here! No magical guidance from Bishop Slon. Nor from you, Henchy. I must make and mend.”

  “This doesn’t excuse collusion with our enemies! I may indeed have been remiss-but remiss in not bridling your activities.”

  “We men of science know no frontiers, Henchy. We’re all inhabitants of the same world, whether our hearts are black or white.”

  “Science indeed. What does your science tell you about magical space?”

  “Quite a lot, as it happens. If you two gentlemen would care to mount my scaffold, I shall endeavour to explain.”

  “Take care that this doesn’t become your actual scaffold, Watcher.”

  “Huh. Hang me up here, and my weight would likely pull it down. That’s how wobbly it is. Isn’t it remarkable, when a war’s going badly, how repression should become the order of the day...”

  “Mind your tongue!”

  “.rather than illumination, which might liberate and open new avenues?”

  “Such as a highway to Chorny?”

  “Pah! I’m as patriotic as the next fellow. I’m loyal to our country and our people. But there’s a higher type of patriotism: the patriotism of existence, allegiance to life and the universe.”

  “How can you be loyal to a universe?” I exclaimed. “The universe isn’t loyal to you. That’s as silly as saying you’re loyal to water, or air. Our world is sustained by the royal war. That’s the engine which powers all the life we know. That’s the rationale; the cause. You should be casting horoscopes to guide mundane life.”