Prunella withdrew her arm in triumph. Zacharias was clutching at his chest, his face twisted in a grimace. He bent over, his hand pressed to his heart, and let loose an enormous sneeze.
“Is this he?” said Prunella.
A dragon sat on the floor, looking astonished. It was far smaller than Rollo, and not half as attractive, for its skin was leathery with age, and its amber eyes had a hardened, cynical look.
“Good day, Leofric,” said Zacharias. He looked somewhat dazed. “May I present to you the Sorceress Royal?”
Leofric had clearly not been attending to the goings-on outside Zacharias, for he said:
“A Sorceress Royal? I agreed to serve you only upon the condition that you held the staff.”
“Your agreement is precisely what I wished to speak to you about,” said Prunella. “What good does your bond do Zacharias, if you are forever gnawing away at his insides and making him indisposed?”
Leofric gave her an incredulous look.
“Zacharias has access to the profoundest depths and most exalted heights of magic,” he said. “I have bestowed upon him the gift of an ageless wisdom, and an understanding of the mysteries of sorcery surpassing the ken of ordinary mortals.”
“If ordinary mortals can do without, I cannot see why Zacharias should not be content with a comprehension only of those mysteries that fall within their ken,” said Prunella. “Would not you consider terminating the agreement? You could return to Fairyland. I am told it is a prodigiously agreeable place.”
“The agreement will only be terminated when I have received my payment,” said Leofric, with hauteur. “I accepted Zacharias’s soul inexchange for Stephen’s, on the understanding that I could begin to exact payment while he was still alive. As matters stand, I have rendered service to two sorcerers, and have enjoyed the benefit of only a portion of one soul.”
“But,” argued Prunella, “if Zacharias were to live till he were seventy—which let us say he will, because the Bible says so, though it would be no surprise were he to be killed off earlier, living as he does in a nest of snakes and scorpions in human form—if, as I said, he were to live to a ripe old age, defying assassins, and being Sorcerer Royal all that time, that would require of you forty-six years of bondage. You have only rendered Zacharias a few months of service. Even if we were to be generous and allow it to be a year, you would only be entitled to one sorcerer, in compensation for your service to Sir Stephen, and two percent of another.”
Prunella was delighted with this calculation, which she had invented as she spoke, and thought rather clever. Leofric seemed less pleased.
“I am not sure I like your purported successor, Zacharias,” he said.
“Nor do any of us,” said Mr. Plimpton.
“You will have to recover the staff,” said Leofric to Zacharias—speaking as though Prunella were not there at all! “It was shockingly careless of you to have lost it.”
Prunella saw that she was losing her audience’s attention. She had hoped to avoid what she must do—what she had planned since she had heard Zacharias’s account of how he had come to be Sorcerer Royal—but there was nothing for it. The alternative was to permit Leofric to continue tormenting Zacharias, with the certain result that Zacharias would be bound for an early grave, and that was not to be thought of.
“You have not heard me out, Leofric, but I think you ought,” said Prunella. She must be calm, and keep her mind clear as glass, or the familiars would begin to suspect her intentions. “Zacharias promised you one mortal in exchange for two. But what if I were to offer you something else entirely? Another type of feast, far better, far finer, notto be compared with mortal flesh or spirit? Would not that settle the balance?”
A gleam of interest lit Leofric’s eyes.
“Speak further,” he said—but then her meaning struck him. He reared back, squealing, a noise that startled the thaumaturges, and sent Tjandra fluttering up to the ceiling.
Prunella did not take her eyes off the dragon.
“Which would you offer me?” growled Leofric.
“The oldest. It is best,” said Prunella. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them into fists. She would need them soon. She would need to act at once, quicker than thought. “But you must release Zacharias from his bond. Say it now.”
“Yes,” said Leofric, and Prunella’s hand flashed out. She seized Nidget by the scruff of its neck, and, with a strength she had not thought she possessed, threw the elvet at Leofric.
Leofric darted forward. A snap of his jaws, a heartrending wail from Nidget, and Nidget vanished.
Zacharias sat down abruptly. The other magicians were pale with shock.
Prunella observed that the trembling in her hands had spread to the rest of her person. She felt as though she had been hollowed out.
But it had had to be done, and she had her mother’s own capacity for ruthlessness. The daughter of a Grand Sorceress—the heir to the Seven Spirits—could not hesitate to act for fear of any consequence.
“Tjandra, Youko—to me,” said Prunella quietly.
There was a moment of doubt, when it was not clear what the simurgh and the unicorn would choose: loyalty, or rebellion. Out of the corner of her eye, Prunella saw Zacharias reach for his staff, before he recollected that it was no longer his.
