When Thisbe studied it this time, she noticed the girl’s face was much clearer than it had been in the past. With a start, she thought the girl looked a lot like Fifer and her. The memory of what Frieda Stubbs had said in Artimé came pounding back too, as well as the suspicion she’d felt but hadn’t had time to linger on. Frieda had said that Thisbe’s mother was a pirate who’d come to Quill as a girl around Frieda’s same age, before their group had gone through the purge. That would have made them twelve or so. The girl in the image could totally pass for twelve.

What if Thisbe’s mother hadn’t actually been a pirate? But instead she’d been torn from this land before the worlds split and had somehow arrived in Quill by pirate ship? What if the girl in the image wasn’t Maiven Taveer, whose name was being screamed by someone Thisbe couldn’t see? What if the girl was . . . Thisbe’s mother?

Willful Ignorance

Frieda Stubbs, head mage of Artimé, couldn’t access the mostly secret hallway. So in order to get the grand living quarters she felt she deserved, she evicted the people in the apartments on either side of hers, busted down the walls between them with a magical sledgehammer, and turned the space into a giant suite for herself.

While her supporters and opponents clashed daily on the lawn outside the mansion, Frieda ignored them all and took to collecting as many weapons as she could find around the magical world, taking a great number of them from the theater auditorium, much to Samheed’s chagrin. She decorated her extra-large space with them, happily making up stories about how she’d used each piece in a previous battle . . . though she’d never actually participated in any battles. She counted the stories as real when she began retelling them to her faithful followers. Some of them believed her. Others didn’t, but they let her tell them anyway.

Florence struggled to control the two factions fighting in Artimé, and Simber sank into a deep depression. The only thing keeping him sane was a lie he’d told Frieda—that he couldn’t access the family hallway where she lived because he wasn’t part of anyone’s family. It was a weak excuse and totally untrue. Simber could go anywhere in Artimé as long as he could fit. But he almost never went down that hallway—not that anyone could remember, anyway—so his plan worked, at least for now. It kept him from having to spend so much time with the mage.