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Or so he'd made certain that all the staff knew.
So that afternoon, immediately after he'd approved the new rattan tables and chairs (the tables looked more like overturned bushel baskets than he'd anticipated, but that was all to the good) and the rose-hedge plantings to either side of the garden canopy, he allowed himself to be taken to his most cherished possession.
"Sir," the docent said with the smallest and stiffest of bows when he entered the cabinet.
"Dame Serena," Will said. Alone of all the staff Dame Serena refused to permit the Pretender to address her familiarly. Yet Will could never resist trying. "You're looking as lovely as ever, today."
"Piffle," she said. "Age has laid its hand upon my shoulder and left me hunchbacked, ski
"Eitri says you were a king's mistress when you were young."
"Does he."
"He says you were mistress to two kings and the terror of every monarch since."
"Eitri is a verminous little gossip, and a backstabbing snitch. If you had any self-respect, you wouldn't listen to him. Now. What is it that you want to see today?"
Though the original cabinet may have been a single piece of furniture, the collections had long since metastasized to the point where they required a vast, barrel-vaulted room stuffed with cases and vitrines. A Conestoga wagon, a whaling boat, and a Soyez spacecraft hung from the ceiling. There was a Scythian lamb growing in a pot alongside a stuffed Capricorn. Hidden away within drawers were comprehensive selections of stone flowers from the Urals and dried mushrooms from the Fôret de Verges; on the walls were the only portraits of Queen Lilith and Lord Humbaba known to have been painted from life; elsewhere were to be found the cauldron of Ceridwen, a vast table whose polished top was made from a cross-section sliced from a single horn of Behemoth, endless shelves of Japanese shunga, a crystal skull that could talk, though not to any purpose, seven coral-encrusted brass bottles in which Solomon had imprisoned rebellious dji
"The amulets of power, I was thinking," Will said.
"Follow me."
Dame Serena glided down the aisles, not bothering to look to see if Will was keeping up. She stopped before an exhibit case and one by one its drawers glided open at her glance, each containing hundreds of amulets, Will pointed at random to an amulet that was set with garnets. "What does this one do?"
"Place it around the neck of whosoever you desire and he or she will fall completely and immediately in love with you." She sniffed. "I imagine that makes your eyes light up, eh?"
"Alas," Will said, "getting someone to love you is the easy part."
"Quite right," the docent said crisply. "Though where in the world one so young as yourself learned such a salutary lesson is more than I wish to know." She nodded and the drawers slid closed. "What else would you like to see?"
"There was another drawer with some interesting amulets..."
"You'd be thinking of the unicorn-ivory amulet with the secret name of fire carved into it. The one you tried to snitch the last time you were here. No, I don't think that you need to look at that. What else?"
Will drew himself up. "Dame Serena. I am the king apparent, not only of this tower but of all Babylonia and half the civilized world beyond. So that amulet is properly mine. You may doubt the legitimacy of my claim, if you wish, but even if I were an imposter — what conceivable difference would it make? Where could I possibly go with it?"
The docent's face grew taut with anger. Old though she was, there was no denying that she had great cheekbones; it was easy to imagine what her dead lovers had once seen in her. She jabbed him hard in the chest with a long bony linger. "Don't you try to pull rank with me, you young jackanapes. I've got tenure. And it's been a long time since I was impressed by mere royalty. Once you've seen an absolute monarch drunk, covered in his own puke, and weeping because he can't get it up, you lose all sense of awe for the institution. Now. At the risk of repeating myself, what next?" "Urn... winds?"
The cabinet of winds held a suite of shallow drawers divided into partitions like typesetters' trays. Each partition in turn contained a short length of rope tied into a witch-knot, and each witch-knot different. Dame Serena lightly touched four knots at the cardinal points of the tray. "These are the Anemoi, according to the Greek system: Boreas the North wind, Zephyros the West, Notos the South, and Euros the East, which are also known as Tramontana, Ponente, Ostro, and Levante, in the medieval compass rose system, whose octave is completed by Maestro, Libeccio, Siroco, and Greco. The subdivisions are theoretically infinite, of which this collection contains several hundred particularly select exemplars."
"These are from Lapland, right?" Will said, fingering the tray. He lifted a knot. "What happens if I untie one?"
"We shan't ever know, shall we?" Dame Serena slapped his hand. "Drop it," she said, adding, "You're a regular font of mischief today."
"It was only a zephyr," Will said placatingly. He placed the witch-knot back in its rectangle with such exaggerated care that Dame Serena didn't notice that he had palmed the original knot, while leaving a carefully tied duplicate of it in its place.
The hour went quickly. ("Ten minutes, sir," Ariel said, and "Get stuffed," Will replied.) As Will was turning to leave, however, Dame Serena slid open yet another drawer. "There's something in here you'll want to see," she said. "This is Your Majesty's smallest territory. It'll take no time at all to inspect." Within the drawer were blue ocean waters with spouting whales smaller than earwigs and a mountainous island no more than a yard across, complete with harbors, a bustling port, and wee stone cities.
Holding his breath to avoid afflicting its inhabitants with a tempest, Will bent low to examine the tiny prodigy. But when he did, the land blurred before his eyes and he looked up to discover that he was standing in a pavilion by a white-sand beach. Bright tropical foliage blossomed all about him. "Where am I?" he asked. An elf-maiden, tall and lissom in a turquoise sarong, lounged against the railing. She was beauteous even beyond her kind.
"You can stop staring at my tits now," she snapped. "You'll wear your eyes out."
Will recognized the cheekbones then and gasped. "Dame Serena?"
"You needn't act so astonished," the elf-maiden said." It's hardly flattering that you find it so hard to believe that I was once a looker. As to where we are — this is the Land of Youth. We cant stay here long."
"Is this some kind of allegory?"
Smiling, the elf-maiden leaned forward and pinched him hard. "Does this feel allegorical?"
"No, I suppose not. Why are we here?" Will said, rubbing his arm.
"The Palace of Leaves may be an architectural wonder, but there's no expectation of privacy to be found in it. Its quite the fascist state, actually. There are spies and hidden microphones everywhere. But in the Land of Youth there are no such hazards, Marduk XVII and I used to come here to... well, never mind. But if his subordinates had known, I'd not have lived to such a disgustingly old age. We can talk safely here."
"Uh, okay, I suppose. What about?"
"They know you want to escape. Please don't try." "I am a prisoner in the palace, Dame Serena," Will said quietly, "and the first duty of a prisoner is to try to escape."
"Well, if you must, you must. Far be it from me to stand between an idealist and his conscience, however disco