“That’s true,” Magda said, “but the thing is, how would a dream walker have known that in the first place? Why would he have been hiding in my mind to begin with?”

“I see your point,” he said as he clasped his hands behind his back while pacing off a few steps as he thought about it. “Maybe with Baraccus dead, the dream walker was simply trying to find out what you may have known about the First Wizard’s business, his plans for fighting the war, weapons we’re developing, things of that sort.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Magda said. “I don’t know how it could be possible for me to be important to the future of our people, but Baraccus believed it. The dream walkers obviously had to have thought I was important enough to be worth watching in the first place, and then certainly after I found that note. Once I saw what it said, they would have seen it, too.

“But before that, why would they care about the thoughts of a nobody?”

“You aren’t a nobody,” Merritt said in a surprisingly compassionate voice as he looked over at her. “They may have cut your hair after Baraccus’s death, but that doesn’t change you into a nobody. You are still Magda Searus, the same as before, with the same abilities, the same potential, the same mind, the same capacity to think for yourself.”

“I wasn’t born noble or gifted. That makes me a nobody in the minds of most people in the Midlands.”

Merritt stopped before the table and again stood gazing down at the gleaming sword lying on red velvet. “As long as their cutting your hair doesn’t make you a nobody in your own mind then it doesn’t make any difference what others think, now does it?”

Magda had to smile. “That’s always been my attitude. It frequently gets me into trouble, though. Before I met Baraccus, people often told me that I didn’t know my place. I’ve never much cared what most people thought about me, or what they thought my place should be. I always believed that I should think for myself and act accordingly. My status sometimes hinders me, but I don’t ever let it guide me.”

“Good.” He turned away from the sword and folded his arms as he leaned back against the table to face her. “So what did you do next?”

“I talked to a number of the people who had been closest to Baraccus, trying to find clues. That got me nowhere.

“So I went to the spiritist hoping that her unique abilities could help. Isidore told me that she was only the spiritist’s assistant and that the spiritist couldn’t see me.