The doorbell rang. He dragged himself up to get it and found Lydia Harper on his porch.
“You look ill, Omnimancer,” she said, peering at him with concern.
“Just … tired,” he said, unable to come up with a better word for it.
“I hate to bother you with a request for cold relief when you look worse than I do.”
“No, no—come in and I’ll get you something.”
He sat her in the kitchen with a cup of coffee while he checked the house, suspecting she was not in fact here for a brew.
“No, I’m not,” she murmured when he put the question to her on his return. “Beatrix warned me to be especially careful where we could be overheard.”
His stomach twisted. “How did she warn you?” Where could she speak candidly to her sister except in this house?
“Wrote me a note in a room with no tele-vision cameras, then burned it.”
He laughed, feeling a bit cheered by that. Unconquerable Beatrix, conspiring under the magiocracy’s nose.
“I thought I’d stop by before church to see how it’s going,” she said, and she did not have to elaborate on what “it” was.
“I’ve been to six,” he said. “No problems. I’m hoping to get three more done today and the last one next weekend.”
“Oh, that’s such a relief.” Miss Harper smiled at him—not quite Beatrix’s charming, ironic smile, but reminiscent of it. “Thank you very much, Omnimancer.”
“Are you holding today’s League meeting at your house?” he asked, wondering how she could plan anything that way.
She leaned in. “Not exactly, no. We’ll go through the motions there without talking about anything important, just to keep up appearances. The actual meeting is at Senator Gray’s house.”
“But Gray’s been bugged, too!”
“Yes, but most of his house is clean. He agreed to let us use the kitchen and said he’d play records in his office to cover up stray noises.”
That improved his opinion of the man. Still: “He’s outside of town. I can’t swear he doesn’t have more recording devices now than he did when I checked.”
“I’m hoping for the best.” She shrugged. “In terms of unfortunate possibilities, we could have another informer in the ranks just as easily as he could have more bugs, in which case the magiocracy will know everything, recording device or no.”
He nodded.
She paused for a moment, looking at him. “How are you—really?”
He opened his mouth to say “OK,” then shook his head. “Completely and utterly frazzled. You?”
She nodded. “Yes. That.”
They sat for a moment in silence, not drinking their coffee. Her next words were halting: “I feel guilty asking you this, Omnimancer …”
He realized with a start that he welcomed another request for help. Hewantedan assignment. For all the stress of the skulking and spying, he was accomplishing something, and the same could not be said for his months in the attic.
“Go ahead,” he prompted. “Ask.”
She shifted in her seat. She looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. “What do you and Beatrix want? That is, do you intend to keep your romance a secret for the foreseeable future?”
He stared blankly at her, lost for words.
“I know I should askBeatrix, really I do, but it’s so hard to talk about anything now, and it’s not as if it were easy before, and I—I—” She stopped and put her face in her hands. “She doesn’t confide in me. I suppose I haven’t confided enough in her, either, but I don’t know how to fix this, and while it would be good to understand for strategy’s sake if you planned to marry soon, I mostly just want to know because … she’s my sister. And I love her.”
He swallowed, feeling intensely sorry for Lydia Harper and Beatrix too, for surely Beatrix felt the same sense of loss and frustration. She loved her sister. She loved her so much that the thought of losing her brought on panic attacks. Why, before wizards bugged their house, was it so hard for them to talk to each other?
