Dennis had been raised to be a prince.
Whether or not his parents were really a king and queen.
The dragons were bellowing again. Parol must have decided to start earlier today. Lizardfolk weren’t permitted to stay overnight within the perimeter of Emath. Almost no daylight had been available for trading yesterday, by the time the guard beasts were finally contained.
The apprentice wizard would gain skills quickly—or he’d have to be replaced. Unless the perimeter were expanded within a matter of months, people would have to start building on the headland opposite the palace, displacing the graves there. Even another Serdic looked preferable to that.
King Hale would probably have acted already… except that he’d spent the past three weeks with the sea and his own grim thoughts for company, instead of taking care of the business of his kingdom.
Dennis pulled his trousers on, then paused. “I still want to talk to him,” he said harshly to Chester, glaring at the argument he expected to hear from the little robot.
“Do not be so impatient when you ask,” Chester said, “that you then become angry when you listen.”
“I…” Dennis began.
He began doing up the buttons of his blouse so that he didn’t have to look at his companion when he continued, “Look, Chester. Dad doesn’t want to talk to me. He’d have talked already if he did. So he’s going to get angry—”
The boy raised his eyes to the robot, poised motionlessly on the curves of its eight limbs. “Chester, I’m going to make him tell me no matter what. Because I’ve got to know what happened before I was born. And from what Uncle Ramos says, there’s no other way I can learn.”
Chester swayed slightly from side to side. Dennis’ reflection in the robot’s dull silver finish seemed to be shaking its head.
“Is there another way I can learn?” the boy demanded.
“There is another way you can learn, Dennis,” Chester said with self-satisfied calm. The robot never exactly volunteered information, but there were times he was more forthcoming than others. When Dennis was pushy or hostile with his little companion, he could expect to be given time to consider his behavior.
When Dennis calmed down, as he’d learned to do immediately by now, he knew that was for his own good too.
“Please Chester,” Dennis said with polite formality. “What is the way that I can learn how Emath came to be—without asking my father?” He bowed.
“The Wizard Serdic had a device that could tell us, Dennis,” Chester replied with equal formality. “The wizard is gone, but the device is not gone from the rooms in which he worked.”
“Oh,” said Dennis, trying to process the information he’d just been given. “Oh. But will Parol help us, Chester?”
The robot raised one tentacle in a delicate gesture that indicated to the boy his ill-temper had been forgiven. “Parol cannot help us, Dennis,” he said, “for Serdic did not teach him the use of the apparatus.”
Chester paused. Instead of flaring up angrily again, Dennis smiled to show that he knew Chester was trying to trap him.
“I know the use of the apparatus, Dennis,” Chester said, the approving smile in his voice matching the boy’s reflected expression.
“Then let us see what the apparatus will tell us, my friend,” Dennis said, squeezing the raised tentacle as he led the way to the door. “If Parol can’t help us, we’ll look into his rooms while he’s occupied with the dragons.”
Dennis kept a cheerful lilt in his voice, while his quivering stomach was all too aware that ‘Parol’s rooms’ had been the Wizard Serdic’s rooms not long before.
But the feeling of doom that lay over Emath frightened Dennis more than memory of Serdic could.
CHAPTER 5
Serdic had appropriated a ground-floor wing of the palace. It extended along the seacoast rather than the harbor which the suites of the royal family overlooked, so Dennis and Chester had most of the building’s convoluted length to traverse.
When they started out, the boy felt furtive: he was going to sneak into somebody else’s private rooms. Then Dennis noticed that the servants he met jumped and bowed to him with more than their normal courtesy.