Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(64)

I pretended to be astonished. “But there is nothing he likes better than iced pears! Unless it is music.”

Now, this was not exactly a stab in the dark, but I was betting on my understanding of boggarts, and their bone-deep yearning for kinship, to see me through.

“Music!” The boggart clapped his hands together, positively beaming. “Yes, yes! She delighted in her harpists in particular—she would often steal gifted mortals and keep them even after she tired of their songs, for she would have them killed and stuffed, then put on display with their instruments in their hands. She had quite the collection by the time she was overthrown.”

In retrospect, I am pleased with how quickly I recovered from this. “How—alike indeed,” I said.

The boggart continued to look Wendell up and down. I was relieved, though not overly surprised, to see that his murderous rage had vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, and he was now watching me with amusement.

“Iced pears,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I said, giving him a pointed look. “Were you not rhapsodizing about them at tea the other day?”

He smiled. “I was, wasn’t I?”

“Very well,” the boggart said. “I shall help you on two conditions. The first: that I shall be allowed to return to the castle and live among you.”

I did not like this condition at all, but Wendell replied before I had the chance to. “Of course you shall,” he said. “You were always welcome. I understood you left of your own accord when my father was slain and his bloodline overthrown.”

I could see this was exactly the response the boggart had desired. “Well, one prefers to be invited,” he said primly.

Wendell inclined his head. The boggart was so pleased he dematerialized for a moment, and when he reappeared he looked more like Wendell—he was even wearing his clothes.

“The second,” the boggart said, “is that you hold a great banquet to mark my return. This banquet must have at least two dozen harpists, as well as cannons you will fire when I enter the castle. At midnight, there should be a procession of the court’s finest drayfoxes, all adorned in silver and jewels.”

“Good grief, but that’s a lot to remember,” Wendell said. “Very well, you will have your banquet. Once my stepmother is dead and the realm is healed. To do that—”

“Yes, I know,” the boggart said. Now that he had what he wanted, he seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. “You wish to know where she is. I can help you with one detail only: her hideaway is an island.”

“But we knew that already,” I interjected. “Because of the snails.” This wasn’t how the story went—the boggart was supposed to give us a different clue, not one we already had.

Wendell’s brow was furrowed. “How do you know this?”

The boggart burst out laughing, as if he’d been suppressing it before. “Your face!” he crowed as I glowered at him.

He disappeared for a moment, flitting through some crevice in the ceiling to the upper levels of the tower, and when he reappeared, he had a piece of fabric in his hand.

“The queen told the king that she liked to wander the realm,” he explained. “But she always came back smelling of the same thing: sedges and mossy stones. I knew she was sneaking away to some secret fortress. One day, she returned with a bloody knee—the queen was clumsy, as all mortals are. She bandaged it with this.”

“Sailcloth,” Wendell murmured. He showed it to Lord Taran, whose eyebrows shot up.

“Sailcloth?” I repeated, nearly beside myself with impatience.

Wendell turned towards me, but he seemed lost for words. Finally, he said, “This is from—one of the boats. Our boats. Uncle?”

“Yes,” Lord Taran said, handing the cloth to me. “Many of the nobility take to the lake on warm summer days.” He saw my blank stare and clarified, “Silverlily.”

“What?” I snatched at the cloth—it was of purest white, with tiny silver stitchery. “How is that possible?”

The boggart began to laugh again. “Under your nose!” he crowed. “All this time, right under your nose. Oh, I begin to like your mother a little better.”

“But—the first clue. The snails. Silverlily has no islands,” I protested, angry and indignant. It could not be. Surely I would have worked it out by now, if Queen Arna was hiding on the bloody lake. The lake I had been gazing out at each day, furrowing my brow, expending all of my mental energies searching for hidden clues to her whereabouts.

“True,” Lord Taran said. “And yet, the creature must be correct—that is where we shall find her.”

Wendell, characteristically untroubled by paradoxes, clenched the sailcloth in his fist and bowed to the boggart again. “Many thanks, old one,” he said. It was difficult to read his reaction: anticipation, certainly, and something else I couldn’t name, but that was very near to the fury he had shown earlier, honed to a point sharp as a faun’s horn.

“So long as I have my banquet,” the boggart said, and then he was simply gone.

“Wendell,” I said, because I still couldn’t tell what he was feeling, and it made me nervous. He appeared lost in thought and didn’t reply, simply put his arm around my waist, and we left the tower.