Twelve Days of Faery Read Online Free

Door-opener has been careless about where they open Doors it shouldn’t be too hard to find out who did it. If they’ve been careful I’ll have to go straight to Faery and ask questions there.”
    She gave him a short, regal nod and turned briskly. She was halfway to the door before Markon realised in some bemusement that she had excused herself and was in fact leaving without his dismissal. Before he could stop himself, Markon darted forward and caught her by the wrist. Althea turned on her toes and looked enquiringly at him.
    “I want daily reports,” he said, releasing her wrist with a faint warmth to his cheeks. “More, if you discover anything of importance.”
    “All right,” said Althea. “Will you be available?”
    “I’m always available for this particular situation.”
    Althea’s back was as stiff as ever, and her face as serious as before, but he thought she was pleased at his reply.
    “One more thing,” said Markon. “If it comes to going into Faery, I’m coming with you.”
    Althea opened her mouth, paused, and seemed to reconsider. “All right,” she said. “But we’ll have to go at night, when you won’t be missed. The last thing we need is a panic because your staff think you’ve gone missing too.”
    “Oh, have you misplaced the odd monarch or two?”
    “Not exactly,” said Althea. To his great amusement she gave him another regal little nod and then swept from the room without answering further.
                  Markon found himself disagreeably busy after that. The neighbouring kingdom of Wyndsor had kindly (or was it cleverly? he wondered) sent their most respected practitioner of magic, accompanied by an excessively large-nostriled emissary who used those unusually large nostrils to look down on everything he could conceivably look down on. The practitioner of magic had been housed with him in the guest wing of the castle for the past three weeks without any more sign of solving Parrin’s problem than the girl with missing hair had shown of the hair growing back. This fact didn’t prevent both Doctor and Emissary from eating the best Montalier had to offer, making a nuisance of themselves around the castle generally, or popping up in inconvenient and highly suspect places.
    Unfortunately, it also didn’t prevent Doctor Romalier from bursting into Markon’s library a bare half hour after Althea had left it, quivering with indignation from the curled up toes of his pointy shoes to the curled up point of his tiny white beard.
    Markon looked up at the rattle of the doorknob, his attention snatched away from contemplation of several proposed export and trade contracts.
    “Your majesty!” uttered Doctor Romalier.
    “I’m beginning to wonder,” said Markon, somewhat coldly. He was prepared to allow Althea to be less than formal because he liked her. He was not prepared to extend the same liberty to the doctor, who already seemed to be taking enough liberties of his own. “Did you lose your way, doctor, and find yourself in my private library through some mistake?”
    Doctor Romalier had the presence of mind to bow at once, apologising stiffly and formally, and somehow managed not to say exactly how he’d managed to bypass Markon’s steward– or the guard on the only set of stairs that led to the library.
    Markon as stiffly accepted the apology, regretfully aware from the gleam of righteous indignation in the doctor’s eye that the interview was far from over. He would have liked to call his steward and throw the man out, but Wyndsor/Montalier relations were already strained enough without the sort of scandal that would bring.
    Instead, he said: “You seem disturbed, Doctor.”
    Doctor Romalier immediately swelled. “I have just learned, your majesty, that you have engaged a female magic user to break the curse on Prince Parrin!”
    “I have,” said Markon.
    “ Well , your majesty!”
    Markon let his eyes fall conspicuously to the trade agreements in his hand