The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

against the king’s life at the same time.
    Later that day, as she packed up the last of the unsold food—not much, for the capital citizens and visitors had all been hungry and jovial, quite willing to send money on such an auspicious occasion—Jaylor had come to her, wrapped in an enveloping cloak of magic. She’d seen through his delusion and known him for the head of the now exiled Commune of Magicians. He’d asked her to spy for him and offered to begin training her as a magician in return.
    Apparently Jack had noticed something important about her when she stood up to the foreign spy.
    Margit appreciated the irony of the Council of Provinces trying to outlaw magic in Coronnan when their king’s best friend from childhood led the most powerful group of magicians in all of Kardia Hodos.
    Margit’s mother had threatened to lock Margit in the pantry with a cat when she announced that she would give up selling meat rolls, pasties, and baked sweets in the market in favor of serving as the new queen’s personal maid. Her mother didn’t know that Margit had learned to open every lock in the city years ago. She had only just learned that magic had enhanced her senses to allow her to do that.
    Thank the Stargods her three years as Queen Rossemikka’s maid had ended. She couldn’t stand being cooped up in the palace any longer. She had trouble breathing indoors, especially in the queen’s apartments which always smelled of cat.
    “Time to improvise.” With three swift slashes of the dagger, she cut her blond locks level with her shoulders. Then she bound her hair back into a masculine queue with a bit of blue string. She couldn’t get her clumsy gown and shift off fast enough.
    “Finding and rescuing Marcus will be much easier if I’m disguised as a boy. I certainly won’t remain here any longer than I have to. And I certainly won’t babysit any more apprentices.”

Chapter 3
     
    A low rumbling ripple along the floor and walls shattered the veil of forgetfulness that encased the woman’s mind. She braced herself instinctively against the waving motion and counted to ten. At four, the quake drifted away to a memory. Her mind told her that this was not the first kardiaquake that had rocked Queen’s City. Nor would it be the last. Some instinct she did not have the strength to comprehend told her that the intensity had lessened. But she could not remember how or why she knew that.
    How long had she been wandering the halls of this damaged palace without being aware of herself?
    Her stomach growled. When had she eaten last?
    She remembered nothing: not why she wandered these once-magnificent halls; nor why she haunted this huge building like a ghost, alone and lost to everything and everyone she held dear.
    Somehow that aloneness seemed almost . . . not quite, but almost . . . right.
    She imagined what the passageways must have been like when they were filled with courtiers and politicians, ladies and gentlemen who spent their days—and nights—pretending to agree with the king’s demands. Then she imagined herself, a wispy ghost, drifting behind them, eavesdropping, laughing at the truths they would never admit to themselves. The king listened to no one and those who agreed with him, more often than not, met with disfavor.
    They were all small dogs chasing their own tails in a fruitless race. But she was not part of that and never would be.
    How did she know that?
    A brilliantly colored tapestry on the wall caught her attention. Women sitting at lace bolsters concentrated deeply on their bobbins and the yards and yards of floating thread-work. The scene seemed familiar. She reached out to caress the woven picture. Her broken fingernails snagged a thread. Immediately she halted her quest to touch some part of her past through the picture and worked the jagged edge of her nail free without pulling the entire thread loose.
    Something was wrong. She stared at the dirt encrusted in the cuticle and beneath the nail. Never before had she allowed her hands to become so filthy. No lacemaker did.
    Lace.
    Her hands curved as if lifting two pairs of bobbins for an intricate stitch. The sensuous feel of carved bone and wood crawled through her. Deep satisfaction at the creation of delicate and airy fabric expanded in her lungs and gave her a sense of lightness.
    Lace! Her world revolved around lace.
    But not a scrap of it graced her night robe, shift, or the tops of her slippers. If she did not wear lace, she