immediately recognize him. Even without the reflected light he had changed completely. His hair had twisted into small spires like points on a crown, like the tips of his ears. His pale gray beard now hung in a row of skinny stalactites, which were mirrored in the smaller spikes that jutted up from his brows. No longer a ragged, simple tinker, he looked like a sea god, majestic, decisive, and terrible.
The attendants, both hers and those of Diverus, retreated from the pool as the king stepped to the head of it. “It’s rare we have guests,” he said. “But far, far rarer is the one who has the will to rove free among us. We know your traveling name and your profession, but tell me, lady, who are you?”
“My name is Leodora. My mother was Leandra. My father gave himself the name of Bardsham.”
The king’s eyes lowered and he smiled. “We know that name.”
“So you knew me only as Jax.”
“Just so.”
“How? Was my coming foretold?”
“Not foretold. Inevitable.” He swept his arm across the pool. The long sleeve of his robe seemed to flutter like a sail after the arm. “You may bathe now in comfort and contentment. No magic of ours will be thrust upon your will in there. It is become a pool of healing.”
She glanced at Diverus, still moon-eyed below her. “What of my friend?”
“Your . . . lover is released as well, although the water has rather swiftly drawn his desire to the surface.” He stepped out upon the water and walked to stand over Diverus. “He is susceptible. Has he perhaps encountered spirits of the water before now?”
“Afrits,” she said. “On another span on another spiral.”
“Oh, more recently than that, I think.” He knelt upon the water as upon a sheet of glass and brushed one slender hand across Diverus’s eyes. Eyelids fluttering, Diverus turned away from Leodora and focused on the king above him.
“Ah, yes, and he’s been to Edgeworld.”
The king of Epama Epam tilted his head and looked past Diverus then, into the distance past the rows of columns. “No conflation of such piquant rarity is possible. This can be no mere matter of destiny.” He rose, and Diverus leaned back his head to follow him. The king gave a flick of his wrist, and Diverus went floating deeper into the pool.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“That we surely have something you need, and our quest now will be to discover it together while you’re here.”
Leodora started to climb from the water, but the king held out a hand to stop her. “No. Swim in soothing waters. Your Diverus is unsorcelled now, although neither you nor I can suppress his true feelings that have emerged. After a time the attendants will bring you robes, and then the feast will go on. Whatever there is to unearth, it shall be found in time.” He walked then across the pool as across a solid surface, stepping up onto the lapis stripe and then out between the columns.
When he had vanished from sight, she stood on the last step and clutched the pendant. “Counselor?” she called to it softly.
“Truth was spoken,” said the lion. “Economical truth.” It went back to sleep.
She glanced around at the attendants, who remained well back, no longer pushy, standing cowed instead, as though she might charge out of the pool and hit them. She could not say why exactly she believed the king, but she did. She turned from them and dove into the blue depths and was not consumed.
Applause filled the Terrestre, but it was not so enthusiastic as in the past—at least, that was how Soter heard it. He got up stiffly from the stool in front of the curtained screen, and turned to Bois. “You did very well. Very well, indeed.” Bois put down the lute and bowed his head. He gestured at the exit from the booth. “No,” Soter told him. “They mustn’t see me. They have to think Jax is still working the puppets, and they’ve seen her, some of them.” Bois tilted back his chin as if to say he understood.
Soter stepped into a front corner of the booth, where he drew back the cloth along the side of one upright and surreptitiously peered out at the dispersing audience. Glaise and Orinda ushered them up the aisles.
Soter stretched, and his spine popped and creaked, and he groaned. “This is too hard on an old man like me,” he told Bois, who shook his head in denial.