the trouble so much as the indicator. Something like a compass. The Prism Cat had appeared at the behest of the fairies in the mists, a sort of emissary sent to nudge the High Lord and his friends in the direction required for setting aright things that had gone askew—all without really telling them what it was exactly that needed righting. If that were true here, then Mistaya might be headed for a good deal more trouble than she realized.
Questor sighed. He was at his wit’s end. He could continue to do what Ben Holiday and he had done every day, which was to go up to the Landsview and scour the countryside. But that had yielded exactly nothing to date, and it felt pointless to try yet again. He had thought about approaching the dragon, always a daunting experience, in an effort to see if it might be willing to help. But what sort of help might it offer? Strabo could cross borders that the rest of them couldn’t—he could go in and out of Landover at will, for example—but that would prove useful only if Mistaya were somewhere other than Landover, and there were no indications at this point that she was.
“I remember when the High Lord was tricked into believing he had lost the medallion and Dirk trailed around after him until he figured it out,” Questor mused, turning his coffee cup this way and that. “He was there when the High Lord was trapped with Nightshade and Strabo in that infernal device that Horris Kew uncovered, too. Dispensing his wisdom and talking in riddles, prodding the High Lord into recognizing the truth, if I remember right from what we were told afterward. Perhaps that is what’s happening here.”
“You make the cat sound almost benevolent,” Abernathy huffed, his terrier face taking on an angry look, his words coming out a growl. “I think you are deluding yourself, wizard.”
“Perhaps,” Questor agreed mildly. He didn’t feel like fighting.
Abernathy didn’t say anything for a moment, tapping his fingers against his cup annoyingly. “Do you think that perhaps Mistaya might be trapped somewhere, like the High Lord was?”
Possible, Questor thought. But she had been wandering around freely not more than a few days ago in the company of those bothersome G’home Gnomes and the cat. Something had to have changed, but he wasn’t sure it had anything to do with being trapped.
“We need to think like she would,” he said suddenly, sitting up straight and facing Abernathy squarely. “We need to put ourselves inside her head.”
The scribe barked out a sharp laugh. “No, thank you. Put myself inside the head of a fifteen-year-old girl? What sort of nonsense is that, wizard? We can’t begin to think like she does. We haven’t the experience or the temperament. Or the genetics, I might add. We might as well try thinking like the cat!”
“Nevertheless,” Questor insisted.
They went silent once more. Abernathy began tapping his fingers on his cup again. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, what are your thoughts, now that you’ve taken on the character of a fifteen-year-old girl?”
“Fuzzy, I admit.”
“The whole idea of trying to think like a fifteen-year-old girl is fuzzy.”
“But suppose, just suppose for a moment, that you are Mistaya. You’ve been sentenced to serve out a term at Libiris, but you rebel and flee into the night with two unlikely allies. You go to the one place you think you might find a modicum of understanding. But it is not to be. Your grandfather takes the side of your parents and declares you must return to them and work things out. You won’t do this. Where do you go?”
Abernathy showed his teeth. “Your scenario sounds unnecessarily melodramatic to me.”
“Remember. I’m a fifteen-year-old-girl.”
“You might be fifteen, but you are also Mistaya Holiday. That makes you somewhat different from other girls.”
“Perhaps. But answer my question. Where do I go?”
“I haven’t a clue. Where do I go? Where Edgewood Dirk tells me to go perhaps?”
“If he tells you anything. But he might not. He might speak in his usual unrevealing way. He might leave it up to you. That sounds more like the Prism Cat to me.”
Abernathy thought about it. “Well, let me see. I suppose I go somewhere no one will think to look for me.” He paused, a look of horror in his eyes. “Surely not to the Deep Fell?”
Questor shook his head and pulled on his long white beard. “I don’t think so. Mistaya hates that place. She hates everything connected with Nightshade.”
“So