“I can summon him again. When I pulled you from the archives, a scroll came with you.”
“Because I was holding it. If you don’t summon him at the exact right time, the scroll won’t come. Also, you can’t summon him. It was in the terms for his freedom. I still can, but timing remains an issue.” Isa shrugged. “So long as you can track him, I think we are better off not letting him know that we still have a way to find the scroll.”
Marc had entered the archives by this point, so I focused back on his location. I didn’t see a map of the castle in my mind when I used this power, so I wouldn’t know exactly what row of the archives he was in, only his position in relation to the node. Still, I had learned to match that sense to exact rooms throughout the castle. I should at least be able to memorize the spot and direct Isa to it, even if her route was made difficult by the maze.
Marc stilled, and I understood why Isa didn’t want to try summoning him in order to get the scroll. There was no telling when he picked it up. He paused in one spot for long enough that he probably checked a dozen scrolls, not remembering the exact location of the one he needed. Then he moved again, and not back the way he had come. A little farther on, he paused once more.
At the end of that interlude, he retraced his path, and I focused on the last location he had stopped, imprinting it into my memory. “I think I have the spot.”
“Wonderful. Once Marc gets upstairs, we can head down to the archives. If we are lucky, it will be on the floor when we get there.”
I leapt out of the node. “And if we aren’t lucky?”
“Then we’ll still have a very limited area to scour for a useful contract. If it is a Truth scroll, I might even be able to identify it by the sound of the magic.”
I checked my sense of Marc’s location, ignoring the building throb in my head that told me Isa had been right to advise me against using magic today. I wouldn’t let a headache deter me now. “He’s on his way to the third floor. I expected him to flee the instant he fulfilled his part of the contract.”
Isa followed Marc’s earlier path to the back of the great hall. “He no doubt thinks it is worth taking the time to pack his things. Even if he suspected that we knew he never planned to hand over the scroll, he still considers himself safe. You can’t hold him here.”
I walked at her side. “But you could still lock him in? Not that I necessarily want to. I’m just curious.”
“I could, if I knew the correct Truth to invoke.”
I spun around and flicked a strand of node power, causing the doors behind us to slide closed. “The invocation is ‘Let this door be locked to all but the correct key.’” The lock clicked into place. “And to unlock: ‘Let this door unlock as though the key was turned.’”
Isa studied the unlocked door for a long moment. “Let this door be locked to all, including its key.”
Before I could point out that she had changed the invocation, the lock clicked. Then Isa hummed and a brass key materialized in her hand. She inserted it into the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. She smiled at me.
“I hope you know how to unlock it now. I’m going to be very annoyed if I always have to use the front door to enter the great hall.”
Isa shrugged. “I’m sure we can find the correct strand of node power, eventually.”
I flicked a claw against the strand I would usually use to unlock a door. Nothing happened. I growled.
Isa laughed. “Let this door unlock and be controlled by its key.”
The key twisted as the lock opened once more. I sent it back into the drawer of my desk with a flick of power. “How did you guess the correct invocations?”
“They follow a pattern. I’ve tested several the past few days.” Isa started walking again. “I bet there are several variations on the Truths you know about that you’ve never tried because you stop at what works. Duke Valois clearly wasn’t one to stop after a single success, though.”
“I wish you had been around when I was a boy. I bet we could have gotten up to quite a bit of mischief together.”
Isa smirked at me. “Are you implying that you no longer get into mischief?”
“Merely conceding that you are unlikely to go along with my schemes at this point.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t go along with mine.”
“I will gladly be your accomplice,” I told her with complete honesty.
???
Unsurprisingly, Isa’s planworked perfectly. It took a few false turns and a bit of backtracking before she reached the section of the archives Marc had pulled the scroll from, but once there, she found the scroll within minutes. At least, she found a Truth scroll, signed only by Duke Valois, that we assumed was the correct one. If it didn’t have any helpful information, we’d come back and search more thoroughly.
Despite the relative ease with which we found the scroll, by the time we exited the archives, I could sense Marc making his way down the hill. I debated if I wanted to ask Isa to summon him and lock him up again before he reached the border of castle lands. The first time, my reason for not letting him leave had merit. Now that we had the scroll he had hidden from me, however, I suspected Isa might object to imprisoning him again. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure what locking him up would even accomplish. He couldn’t tell anyone about the curse—his first contract protected me from that—and what other damage could he do now that he wasn’t actively hindering my search for answers?
I let Marc go. I had made a mistake in trusting him, and dwelling on it wouldn’t help. At least that mistake had brought me Isa. Without Marc, I never would have bargained with Edwin Cardh for his younger daughter’s aid. As guilty as I still felt, I couldn’t regret signing that contract. Whether she helped me break the curse or not, meeting Isa was a boon I probably didn’t deserve.
