Princess Miriam looked bored and angry; Queen Stella looked cold and angry; King Hermann's expression was hidden by the battlesuit he wore—but Hermann was so nearly blind with fear that a stumble slammed him into the doorjamb as he entered the citadel.
"Majesty, milady," Platt said, bowing to rise and bow again, as quick and graceless as a bird drinking. "Milady princess—"
Stella trod on his foot without noticing the contact. The attendant jumped out of the way with a stifled yelp. King Hermann, equally oblivious, swept through the vacated space like Juggernaut's carriage.
"Sparrow!" boomed the king's amplified voice.
"Where is he?" demanded the queen, though she was looking at the cell rather than Sparrow's attendant. "Where's the prisoner?"
"Why are you dragging me to this filthy place?" the princess said in a tone as hot and clear as live steam.
"Your Majesties!" Sparrow cried in apparent amazement.
It was just after noon. Light through the door the king had flung open was dazzling to eyes adapted for the citadel's normal gloom. "What's the matter?"
An under-cellarer, one of the freemen now accompanying the royal family, pointed toward the smith.
"When I came here searching for the boys this morning," the servant said/accused, "he told me he had to see all three of you right away!"
"Where are Bran and Brech?" Stella asked in a glassy, echoing tone. She would have stepped to the barrier, but her husband's armored body blocked her away from the danger.
"Where are my sons?" Hermann shouted.
"I don't see why I have to be here!" Miriam said shrilly.
"Your Majesties?" the prisoner said. He clung to the bars to hold his torso upright, blinking and apparently bewildered. "Has something happened to the boys? I only asked you to come because I've made wonderful presents for all of you."
"But I thought—" the queen said. The quivering distress of a moment before gave way to her more usual look of cruel anger as she stared at the under-cellarer.
"But he said—" the servant blurted before terror dried his voice in his throat. Other freemen in the entourage, most of them carrying bows or edged weapons, backed away from their fellow.
"I know nothing of this!" Platt cried from as far out of the way as he could cringe. "I didn't speak! I didn't see the boys!"
Platt had awakened this noon to sunlight, a pounding head, and the toe of the cellarer's boot kicking him. The freeman was demanding something about the boys—might they freeze in Hell, wherever they were—which Platt was too nauseously hung over to understand. Sparrow had called something to the questioner, but Platt hadn't caught that either.
"I didn't really notice what your servant said when he came here," apologized Sparrow, no longer the focus of his visitors' eyes. "I've spent the entire night in the Matrix, creating your presents. But of course I know nothing of your sons, King Hermann. Perhaps it's a prank of theirs."
"I said, 'Are the princes here?' and he said I must bring you at once!" the under-cellarer bleated.
He looked from the king to his wife. There was no more mercy in Stella's expression than there was on the steel faceplate of Hermann's battlesuit.
The queen drew a gold-toothed comb from her hair and raked it toward the freeman's face. He lurched sideways. The king's armored fist crushed his skull.
In the sudden silence, Princess Miriam said, "What's this present you made for me, prisoner?"
Before Sparrow could reply, the princess clutched the mirror against her heart and added, "But I'm not giving this up! It's mine!"
Platt's head rang with each beat of his pulse, but the death had set his mind to working again. He had seen Bran and Brech . . . when? A day ago, the previous noon; but they'd been their normal selves, vicious and cruel, when they left.
And they had hidden the liquor as Sparrow said they would, so above all things Platt must know nothing of what the boys did or thought or went. . . .
"Of course you won't, princess," Sparrow said.
He turned, rotating awkwardly on his buttocks. His legs swept aside the remains of the materials he had worked into his latest creations, merely powder and grit.
"This is for you," the smith continued, holding a glittering something to a gap between bars, "because so fine a lady as you deserves to have it."
Miriam stepped forward.
"No!" her mother said with a voice like a whiplash.
Hermann raised his hand. An arc licked from the gauntlet, out and back and out again in snarling threat.
Platt threw his forearms across his face so that he would not see Death come if it were coming for him.
"I ask your pardon, Majesties," said the smith calmly.
Sparrow raised his hands—one empty and the other holding a pattern of lights and motion between thumb and forefinger. He set the object on the floor between the bars and slid himself backward, away from the barrier.
The dog, brighter-eyed than usual, dragged itself to Sparrow and licked his great, calloused hand.
King Hermann switched off his arc weapon. He bent forward and picked up the thing the smith had made.
The object was a doubled loop of golden light. The circles tilted at a slight angle to one another along a hidden axis. They pulsed with increased brightness in a pattern like that of the surf, never quiet but never the same.
The loops encircled Hermann's armored forearm without touching the metal at any point.
"It's a necklace for the princess," Sparrow explained softly.
"It's mine!" Miriam cried and snatched at the object before either of her parents could stop her.
The necklace came away in her hand as if it were a material thing, but the golden light had slipped through the battlesuit.
Hermann flexed his gauntlet. He had felt nothing. He tested his arc. It snarled out with full lethal intensity.
Miriam raised the necklace over her head. Stella caught the girl's arm, but the necklace dropped past and through the queen's flesh as easily as it had King Hermann's armored forearm.
The joined lights pulsed their perfect circles around Miriam's neck. They woke rich color from her complexion and the sable trim of the dress she wore.
"Oh!" the princess cried, delighted even before she saw the result. She lifted the mirror on its chain and used the polished bronze surface to view herself with still greater enthusiasm.
"And for you also, King Hermann," the smith said with a courtier's diffidence, "and your lady wife. Just call for it, Your Majesty. Call, 'Come, chair.' "
"What?" said the king.
" 'Come, chair,' " Sparrow repeated. "No more than that."
"Wha . . . ?" King Hermann began. After a pause, his voice grunted from the battlesuit, "All right: come, chair."
Dust stirred within Sparrow's cell. Stella screamed.
A network of silvery filaments rose through the filth and litter beyond the barrier. The wires were so fine that they looked for a moment like the sheen of oil on water. They spread into an interlocking pattern of lines describing a three-dimensional object, a chair with back and legs and curving arms. The creation slid toward the bars.
Hermann's arc blazed out in readiness.
Sparrow seized the object with one powerful hand. "Only a chair for your comfort, Your Majesty," he said. The chair tried to move away from him, but the smith's arm was too strong.
"Only a chair, Your Majesty," Sparrow repeated.
He levered his body onto the seat. The sketchy cushions sank and shifted, molding themselves to the heavy body they now supported. The chair resumed its motion toward the barrier and stopped only when it touched the bars.
The smith raised himself again and swung onto the floor. "A gift I think you will treasure," he said.
As he spoke, the chair's wire fabric tightened. The shimmering construct squeezed between the bars and halted expectantly behind King Hermann.
The king turned to look at the chair. It scuttled on hollow, castored feet to stay in back of him.
"Don't . . ." the queen said. Her eyes were on the chair also, and her voice trailed off without completing the warning.
"Hell take you, woman!" Hermann grunted. "I'm in my armor."
Hermann lowered himself cautiously. The chair remained motionless until the battlesuit touched it. Then it deformed into a perfect match for the armored curves, accepting the weight and holding it as easily as light lies on the surface of a pond.
King Hermann leaned back.
"It would carry you if you wanted it to," the smith said in an obsequious tone. "It was a pleasure to create it for you, Your Majesty. One of the greatest pleasures of my life."
The king jumped up in a sudden fit of terror. The chair helped him rise, lifting his torso and buttocks until he was planted firmly on his feet again.
"And another for you, my lady queen," Sparrow continued. "As fine as the first."
Stella licked her lips. "Come, chair," she said in what was little more than a whisper.
The ores and waste material shifted as a second chair surfaced and slid toward the barrier. The filaments were so fine that when the chairs were at rest, they quivered like pools of liquid rather than solid objects.
"You'll never sit in anything else so comfortable," the smith said. His voice was soft, and it trembled with unholy joy.
"I only ask, Your Majesties," he continued as those outside the iron barrier stared at the wonders that had taken their minds off the missing children, "that you think of the service I have done you every time you use these marvels."
A terrible blue light moved in Sparrow's eyes as he spoke.