Isabeau must also have made a plan for herself, for at the very same moment, her eyes spilling tears from how he pulled her hair, she grabbed Moreau’s other hand and stole his mirror.
“Run!” screamed Elesbed, dragging Isabeau with her. They would have escaped too, except that Isabeau took a long, precious second to slam the mirror to the floor and grind it under her foot.
Julien screamed as the mirror broke. His wound slowed his enraged lunge, but Isabeau had taken too long. Moreau had caught her otherwrist, yanked her away, and picked her up bodily, all his teeth bared. Then he stepped back and vanished into the shadows. Elesbed cried out with rage, but they were both gone, and her clever ploy had failed. She was left alone again, in that same cold courtyard with doors in the castle of Never-Was.
And this time there was no Butter to save her.
“Butter,” said Elesbed. “Butter—please, I’m sorry I left you in Nantes, but Hawiz needed you, and I don’t think you’d have liked trying to ride a horse. Butter, I don’t know what to do.”
Talking to an absent cat sounded foolish to her own ears. She wiped snot and tears from her face. Tried to think. Which door? Where had Butter led her that first time?
Maybe she could think like a cat. She looked at all the doors in turn. One was white like the duchess’s pearls, but she didn’t trust it. One looked just like the door to her house before the bandits came, but that scared her. One was just a shimmering veil of cloth, and she thought she saw a moving silhouette behind it.
Which one?
A lady was standing under the dead tree in the courtyard. Elesbed had not seen her at first glance, because the lady was gnarled like the tree. She squeaked and stumbled back.
The lady was smiling a little. Elesbed frowned. “You are the abbess,” she said. Only the lady was not dressed like an abbess anymore. She was wearing a robe with a belt of white stones and a great tall hat whose veil swept gracefully down.
“I am many things, small one,” said the lady. “You are trespassing.”
The lady was frightening, in the same way a wolf can stand quietly and be frightening, with bright watchful eyes. “Oh, I am not, Madame!” said Elesbed earnestly. “I am trying to save my lady and my friend; she was stolen away by a wicked sorcerer. Do you know where they have gone?”
The lady looked faintly amused. She said, “Well, you are a bold child, at least. Why do you think you can save anyone from a sorcerer?”
Elesbed didn’t know. Her voice turned small. “I have to try. And I am clever. Everyone says so.”
“With a quick tongue in your head, to be sure. I have a granddaughter, but I have not seen her in—in a long time. She went mad, you see.”
“Oh,” said Elesbed. “I am sorry.”
“Would you like to come away with me? I could make you a princess in her place.” The bright eyes bored into hers.
Elesbed said, “No, indeed! I do not want to be a princess. My lady Isabeau is practically a princess and they will not let her stir a foot by herself.”
“A wise child too,” murmured the lady. “What do you want, then?”
“My cat,” said Elesbed at once. “She will help me, I know, and also she is very handsome and yellow. But she is far away in Nantes.”
The lady laughed; really laughed. She suddenly sounded like someone much younger and happier. “Well, then,” she said, “I suppose there is yet wisdom in the children of men. You shall have your cat, child. And more, if you ever seek me out.”
Elesbed said cautiously, “Are you a korrigan?”
But the lady had stepped away and was gone, as was the light she’d stood within.
Something moved in the leaf-litter. Elesbed stared.
Butter sauntered out of the leaves and licked a paw. Elesbed burst into the loudest, snottiest tears she’d ever cried in her life, snatched up her cat, and buried her damp face in the yellow fur.
Butter tolerated this for a moment, then batted Elesbed away, jumped down, and ran to a door Elesbed had not noticed. It was a door made all of metal.
“That one, really?” said Elesbed.
The cat just looked at her.
“All right,” said Elesbed, and wiped her nose.
The rooms of Never-Was changed after Anne found Louis. Now they passed through rooms made for both of them, and that made it harder. They saw a coronation with pomp and circumstance, two thrones side by side. A Christmas feast. A rumpled bed, with dawn light pouring in. A sunny nursery and a boy with Anne’s eyes in the arms of a wet-nurse. They stopped at that one, their hands closing tight each upon the other. Anne said, after a long pause, “It’s not real.”
