She laughs. “It would take him days to burn all this.”
I look back at the books and am not so sure. They are dry enough to burst into flames just by my looking at them too long. With a sigh, I stack them and move on to the cushions, to pulling back the rugs. Underneath, I find only dust.
I dump out all the drawers onto the massive table-size desk: the metal nibs of quill pens, stones carved with faces, three signet rings, a long tooth of a creature I cannot identify, and three vials with the liquid inside dried black and solid.
In another drawer, I find jewels. A collar of black jet, a beaded bracelet with a clasp, heavy golden rings.
In the last I find quartz crystals, cut into smooth, polished globes and spears. When I lift one to the light, something moves inside it.
“Bomb?” I call, my voice a little high.
She comes into the room, carrying a jeweled coat so heavily encrusted that I am surprised anyone was willing to stand in it. “What’s wrong?”
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I hold up a crystal ball.
She peers into it. “Look, there’s Dain.”
I take it back and look inside. A young Prince Dain sits on the back of a horse, holding a bow in one hand and apples in the other. Elowyn sits on a pony to one side of him, and Rhyia to the other. He throws three apples in the air, and all of them draw their bows and shoot.
“Did that happen?” I ask.
“Probably,” she says. “Someone must have enchanted these orbs for Eldred.”
I think of Grimsen’s legendary swords, of the golden acorn that disgorged Liriope’s last words, of Mother Marrow’s cloth that could turn even the sharpest blade, and all the mad magic that High Kings are given. These were common enough to be stuffed away into a drawer.
I pull out each one to see what’s inside. I see Balekin as a newborn child, the thorns already growing out of his skin. He squalls in the arms of a mortal midwife, her gaze glazed with glamour.
“Look into this one,” the Bomb says with a strange expression.
It’s Cardan as a very small child. He is dressed in a shirt that’s too large for him. It hangs down like a gown. He is barefoot, his feet and shirt streaked with mud, but he wears dangling hoops in his ears, as though an adult gave him their earrings. A horned faerie woman stands nearby, and when he runs to her, she grabs his wrists before he can put his dirty hands on her skirts.
She says something stern and shoves him away. When he falls, she barely notices, too busy being drawn into conversation with other courtiers. I expect Cardan to cry, but he doesn’t. Instead, he stomps off to where a boy a little bit older than him is climbing a tree. The boy says something, and Cardan runs at him. Cardan’s small, grubby hand forms a fist, and a moment later, the older boy is on the ground. At the sound of the scuffle, the faerie woman turns and laughs, clearly delighted by his escapade.
When Cardan looks back at her, he’s smiling too.
I shove the crystal back into the drawer. Who would cherish this? It’s horrible.