it. His shriveled leg seemed to extend into some other distance, not fully in this reality. Another human-shaped person joined us, a tall figure with flowing black hair and glossy dark feathers. He had a long, nearly gaunt face, with a large, hooked nose—and the amber eyes of Merle’s canny face.
I looked between them, and Ambrose smiled, a world of apology in it. Understanding all at once, I said, “You are two of Anure’s wizards.”
Ambrose winced and Merle made a soft negation, the echo of a raven’s caw in it. “We are not his,” Ambrose corrected gently. “We are our own wizards, but we are also not free.”
“Those other wizards—the black pyramid and the red sphere—those are the black-and red-robed wizards,” I realized.
Merle and Ambrose exchanged glances. “They do not appear to our perceptions in the same way, but You are a child of a different magic, so it makes sense You see them differently.”
“Let’s try this,” I said, gathering my anger around me, layering the hurt of betrayal and incipient rage tightly around my heart so it wouldn’t break. “In my usual reality, the one where I was a prisoner to be tortured, you wore a blue robe, Ambrose, and Merle wore purple.”
Instead of denying or protesting, they both sank to their knees, pressing their foreheads to the watery, magical ice. Below us, birds flew through an infinite sky.
“We do not beg Your forgiveness,” Ambrose said, “for we know we do not deserve it. But we do ask Your forbearance. Neither of us had the power to free You from the other wizards. If we had that ability, we’d have freed ourselves long since. We could not offer You comfort, or aid You in any way, lest we be discovered too soon. We could only do what we did: help You escape to live again.”
“You pretended to be our friends.” It was all I could think to say. All those times Con had wanted to throttle Ambrose. If only he’d known this …
They both knelt up, keeping their heads bowed and nodding solemnly. “We were doing what we could,” Ambrose explained. “We could not act directly against Anure or his wishes, but we found a … loophole, if You will.”
“By aiding Con and his people.”
Ambrose looked up, haunted shadows in his green gaze. “And You, Your Highness, though dropping hints and clues only goes so far. We could not act directly.”
“Merle acted,” I pointed out. “You preserved Calanthe for My return.”
Merle met my gaze with his amber one. “I wasn’t there for mosst of what happened to You at the citadel,” he said in a deep voice, an accent twisting some of the words oddly. “Only the thinnesst sslice of my attention was required to appear to be present. The rest of myself sstayed with Calanthe.”
I nodded, still working my way through understanding, then turned to Ambrose. “That’s why you seemed to disappear after Cradysica—you had to concentrate your presence to Yekpehr.”
Ambrose smiled, a gaunt version of his usual cheer. “I counseled Anure on how to handle You as best I could, diverting his attention as much as possible. I couldn’t stop them from all they did to You—but I could keep them from taking the ring, and stall until Con arrived to rescue You.”
“And you helped Con get Me out.” I focused on his leg. “This is part of how you are shackled there. You with that tether, and Merle with the raven form?”
“That’s close enough to the correct metaphor,” Ambrose agreed. “The other wizards do not know of our defection. We are not as powerful as they are. Should they discover we are aiding You…”
“They would stop you?”
“Worsse.” Merle’s caution echoed and spiraled like feathers caught in a dust devil. “They would correct the loophole that allowss uss to do thiss—and they would force uss to aid them againsst you.”
“It’s been a dicey gambit,” Ambrose confessed. “We needed to know enough about You to help, but if they tighten our leashes sufficiently, we might have to give up knowledge we’ve so far withheld.”
“You asked Me for the secret of the ring’s transference,” I said to Ambrose. And I had trusted him.
“Yes.” He returned my gaze somberly. “And You will recall that I did not share what I knew with the others. I had to know the truth, so I could misdirect them. I couldn’t risk that they’d stumble upon the secret.”
I supposed that was true. “Oh, stand up already.” Their penitential mien did nothing to appease my