“Duke Verrakai could ask it,” Camwyn said. They all stared at him again; he felt his face heating. “She could,” he said. “Why not?”

So could you. The voice was so clear in his head he expected to see them all react to it, but no one did.

“What was that?” his tutor asked.

“Um?”

“You looked as if you’d sat on a hot horseshoe nail.”

“I just thought—if it can talk to Duke Verrakai, whom else can it talk to?”

“What, do you think it would talk to you? Isn’t it more likely to talk to the king, if anyone other than the Duke?”

Camwyn felt the heat on his face.

“Now don’t sulk,” Master Danthur said. “You surely realize the king is more important than you are—you may be a prince, but you’re only a boy. Did you really, seriously, think a magical item would prefer to talk to you?”

“No,” Camwyn muttered. The men all stared at him; he felt himself going redder by the instant. He would have to say something more to divert them but couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t make things worse. “I just … I just worry that if it can talk to one person, it could talk to another. What if it did talk to the king? We don’t know whose it was or what its purpose is. Is it even safe to have it here?”

“That’s what I said,” the steward said. “Granted it’s not a Verrakai plot. But just that it’s here … If it started talking to the king—or the prince—or you or me—and no one else could hear it, that would be a foreign influence.”

All the men were staring at the box now, not at him; Camwyn edged toward the door but made only two careful steps before being noticed. “Where do you think you’re going?” Master Danthur asked.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “And I thought I heard the gong.”

“You’re always hungry,” Master Danthur said. “But enough of this time wasting. Back to the schoolroom with you this instant.”

Camwyn didn’t argue. He now knew the way to the treasury and the order in which its locks must be unlocked. He had seen the keys for each lock; he had seen them hooked back onto the steward’s belt. The guards didn’t have keys; no use befriending them. The treasury had no windows, of course … but it did have, high overhead, what looked to him like a skylight. Lucky the dragon hadn’t landed there, Camwyn thought.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Arian arrived in Vérella after a journey far different from what she had expected; the forest she was used to dwindled quickly to strips of woods, giving long views of cultivated land. But nothing compared to Vérella. At Westbells, where they paused to greet Marshal Torin, Arian first heard the faint sound of bells.