in with the King first, I made my way toward the State Rooms. Torches had been lighted against the encroaching twilight, but they were smoking and fizzling in the rain, and the courtyard stones were dark and slick. When a guard loomed out of the next passageway, pike in hand, I nearly slipped in front of him.
“Begging your pardon, Chantress,” he said, blocking my way, “but I have orders not to let anyone through.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Why ever not?”
“Evacuation orders, my lady.”
Blast. I’d forgotten about the evacuation. “Where would I find the King?”
“Couldn’t say for certain, my lady. The whole place is topsy-turvy today. But the Royal Steward’s set up a station by the Banqueting House with lists of all the changes, and if you go there, I’m sure they’ll help you.”
Pulling my hood tight against a particularly ferocious burst of rain, I started off for the Banqueting House, only to find myself in the midst of widespread chaos. At the Banqueting House itself, scores of people pleaded for directions. When I finally attracted the attention of a guard and asked him for the State Rooms, he was kind enough, offering me a lantern to light my way. But he must have misunderstood what I wanted, for when I reached the door he’d sent me to, I found nothing but my own belongings behind it, mixed up with Norrie’s.
In the flickering light of the lantern, I stared around the room in dismay. Norrie’s and my possessions were heaped in piles on and around the bedsteads. Evidently guards had been detailed to move us, but they hadn’t set anything in order. Probably there had been no time.
I was about to pull the door shut on the mess and start again on the wearying hunt to find the King. But what did I have to tell him, except bad news? Now that Melisande had escaped, I truly had no idea how to get to the root of these attacks and put a stop to them.
I knew Sybil would help me if she could, and so would Gabriel, but talking with them hadn’t done any good so far. None of us had any real idea what magic was at work here. All I knew for certain was that it was somehow connected with water and the sea, and it was stronger than me.
If only the water itself could tell me what was happening! But it wouldn’t or couldn’t speak to me of that. It was as if the element I best understood had become my enemy. It was even worse than last year’s silence, when I’d been hardly able to hear anything at all, and the only way water had spoken to me was through scrying.
Scrying.
Now, that was something I hadn’t tried. In fact, I hadn’t done any scrying at all since I’d gotten my powers back. At best, it was a poor substitute for singing and listening, yielding mysterious images that were more riddles than answers.
But even a riddle was better than no clue at all.
I rose and started to paw through the piles behind me. A bowl, that was what I needed. I could fill it at one of the outdoor troughs down in the courtyard. And perhaps I should light a fire, too.
It took me an age to get everything ready.
At long last, however, I was sitting before the flames, my blue-and-white delftware bowl brimming. The room was perfectly quiet, except for the crackle and sigh of the fire. The perfect conditions for scrying, except that my mind was restless.
Clear your mind. That was the first rule of scrying.
Instead my mind flitted to the wall I’d called up around Melisande . . . her strange keening in the Tower . . . the spiraling tentacles of the kraken . . . Nat’s strong hands pulling me to safety. . . .
Concentrate.
I stared hard at the water. Too hard. Now my eyes were picking out every detail of the bowl’s decoration—the dark blue blossoms, the curving latticework, the swirling vines along the lip.
The magic isn’t in the bowl, I reminded myself. It’s in the water. I could hear it there, a swirl of playful melodies, but that only made my task harder. Last time I’d scried, I hadn’t been able to hear magic. Now I had to tell myself sternly that I wasn’t here to listen but to look.
I blinked, softening my gaze, and pushed the bowl an inch closer to the fire. This time it caught the