The next morning, Aurora met with her castellan, a large dark-skinned man with cropped hair and a scar that ran across his cheek, pulling up one corner of his mouth. Everyone called him Smiling John, a name Aurora found sinister, since the allusion was to a badly healed wound. He entered the great hall with two men-at-arms. All three of the soldiers were heavily armored and grim-faced.

“We have some news of the boy, Simon,” Smiling John said. “Hugh, give her the report.”

A solid wall of a soldier, pale with straw-colored hair, spoke. “We believe he fell in with a band of brigands.”

“Brigands?” Aurora echoed, shocked. “But his father said—”

“It’s a sad state of affairs when one’s own family don’t know the lay of the land,” the man continued, “yet all too common. Seems that he liked a bit of dicing and that’s how he got into debt. From there, he turned to stealing to make the money. Only a matter of time before he stole from the palace.”

“So there is a dish missing?” Aurora asked.

“A large jardiniere,” said Hugh.

She thought of Simon’s family denying even the possibility he’d been involved in wrongdoing. Believing he’d been taken by faeries. They wouldn’t want to believe this.

“So where is he?” Aurora asked. “Thief or not, he’s still missing. And he’s still very young.”

Smiling John shook his head. “We found the stolen horse—which led us to one of the brigands, who was trying to pass it off as his own. He’s imprisoned now and claims not to know Simon’s whereabouts. Our people are still looking. The boy could be lying low. But there’s the more likely possibility that the brigands, once done with him, did away with him, if you catch my meaning, Your Majesty.”

“Do you think that’s what happened?” Aurora demanded.

“No way to know,” said the castellan, “until we find him, alive or dead.”

Aurora nodded. The day had just begun and already she was weary. “Then do so,” she said. “Find him. And soon, before the trail goes cold.”

Many more meetings followed.

Three boys had caught a flower faerie in the Moors and were keeping her in a birdcage. They’d been spotted exiting back into Perceforest, and one had gotten cursed with a foxtail and a pair of fox ears. The Fair Folk were demanding the flower faerie be released, and the boy was demanding that his curse be removed. The faerie herself was demanding a seven-year supply of honey for her trouble.

A cow had gotten lost and then wandered home with braided flowers around its neck and a tendency toward producing more cream than milk. The cow’s owner wanted to know if something would happen to her if she drank it.