Obsidian, Duke of Westother, paced through his garden, keeping an eye on the locksmith.
He also kept an eye on his daughter, who was sitting on a rustic bench next to that rag-tag soi-disant prince. Obsidian did not believe the “prince” thing for one minute. But he couldn’t disprove it, so he just monitored the situation. Agate was entirely too interested in that boy. The boy, as far as Obsidian could tell, was only interested in what he could get. Two days ago, that was a way through the Wizard’s wall. He probably would not stop after one failure.
“This key might work,” said the locksmith, holding up an old, slightly corroded object. “But I can only really tell if I open the door.”
“Don’t open the door,” said the Duke.
“Just enough to verify that the key works, your grace.”
“Don’t open the door.”
The locksmith twisted the key back and forth in the lock. “I can feel the tumblers drop. But the only way to be sure…”
The Duke sighed. “Step away,” he said. “I’ll try it.”
He motioned the locksmith back – far back – and grasped the key with one hand and the wooden door handle with the other. The Duke pulled the door tighter shut. He turned the key slowly, feeling the tumblers shift and fall. At this point, the door should open.
“Step farther away,” he warned. He wished now that he had brought a weapon. But if anything came through that door, a sword or even a pistol would likely not stop it.
The Duke took a deep breath, and pushed against the door.
There was a musical creak of hinges, and the door opened a crack. Blinding light poured through in a fan of knife-like rays. The Duke pulled the door back shut, and twisted the key. Something wrestled against him, as if tiny hands had entered the lock. The door vibrated and shuddered. Then the tumblers clicked over, and the vibration stopped. He exhaled, and slumped against the wall.
Duke Obsidian turned to face the other three – locksmith, daughter and that so-called prince – and dropped the key into his coat pocket. “That’s done, then,” he declared. “Master Styles, my agent will see to your pay. Mind you don’t go gossiping about this in the village.”
The locksmith nodded. “Mum’s the word, your grace. But, with all due respect, sir…”
The Duke looked at him. “Yes?”
“I do a tidy job of brickwork when there’s no locks to fix. Why not just wall up the door?”
Why not, indeed? Obsidian had formed some ideas on this subject when his late grandmother, the Duchess Chalcedony, taught him the principles of magic. But it was not the sort of thing he could explain to a tradesman, or his curious daughter, let alone that “prince”.
“It’s better like this,” he said, patting his pocket. “And next time, the key will not be as easy to find.” He shot a pointed glance at “Prince Erik,” who had the decency to look away.
—
Obsidian, Duke of Westother, slumped before the fire, wondering how to hide the key.
Around him loomed the clutter of his study. On the walls hung his hunting trophies and souvenirs of war, among framed dusky landscapes and ancestral portraits. Before him stood a carved marble fireplace, six feet high and broad in proportion, with andirons in the form of dragons. Behind him, his locked desk sheltered deeds and ledgers and valuable correspondence, as well as his own, deeply private, journal. Around him bookshelves loomed ceiling-high above locked cabinets, lining the room with a packed diversity of leather spines.
It should have been a simple thing to hide, this key. For years he had used the “hide in plain sight” approach, with the garden key on a clearly labeled hook in the butler’s closet, one key among dozens. And this had worked until a stray adventurer arrived, and his daughter found him charming.
That sort of thing would only get worse as Agate blossomed into full, impetuous womanhood. And yet the key could not be destroyed. It had to be kept safe, but not so well hidden that it would be lost after his, Obsidian’s, death. And so he had decided that it ought to be kept somewhere in his study. Somewhere accessible, but not casually obvious.
There was a light scratching sound at the diamond-paned window. Obsidian rose and confirmed his suspicion: the black cat had returned. It was a sleek beast, a mature female, obviously well-fed. But his household staff had disavowed any knowledge of it. The nearest farmhouse was several miles away. And in any case, it did not look like a farm cat. It was too healthy, and too used to human attention. So where did it come from?
There was one obvious solution to this puzzle: the cat lived on the other side of the Wall.
Obsidian opened the window, and the cat slipped in. “I do hope you were not trapped here when we locked the Door,” he said.
The cat rubbed against his legs, then leapt onto the seat of his chair and curled into a comfortable lump.
“My seat, not yours, moggie.” Obsidian picked the cat up and sat down himself. He set the cat down, letting it find a comfortable perch among the unoccupied parts of the chair. After a few experiments, it settled onto the chair’s broad back, purring just behind the Duke’s right ear.
“So, puss,” said the Duke over his shoulder, “how would you conceal a key?” He held up the object in question.
The cat purred, and rubbed its muzzle against his hair.
“You’re no help. Should I ask my grandmother?”
Obsidian gazed at the portrait over the fireplace. The late Duchess Chalcedony gazed back, clad in mourning, perpetually disapproving.
“I know, Gran – I never really took up the family business. That runs more in the distaff side of the bloodline. I have great hopes for Agate, once she comes of age.”
Did the painted eyes narrow ever so slightly? Probably not. It was not a magical picture.
Obsidian mused. “So, the three main ways of hiding something are: One, in plain sight. That didn’t work so well. Two, among a collection of similar objects. We have sort of tried that already, and I have no other key collections at hand. Three, disguised as something completely different.” He nodded at the portrait. “See, Gran, I was actually paying attention back then. Now, what is very different than a key?”
He looked around the room. What things here could be a hiding place? The trophy heads and upholstered furniture could easily conceal a small metal object. But they might conceal it too well, and it would never be seen again. The desk drawers were an obvious place. But they were too obvious. If Agate were persuaded to find the garden key by her next adventurous suitor, that would be the first place she would look.
“Like the Three Black Bears,” Obsidian mused. “One place too obscure, the next too obvious. So what place is Just Right?”
The black cat purred in his ear. Obsidian looked at the books.
Well, why not? Lord knows there were other objects hidden in hollowed-out volumes in his library. He himself had discovered some of his grandmother’s concealed poison-bottles, on rainy days when he was riffling through old books at random. And one day, he had found a dagger.
Obsidian scanned his memory for the most boring book he had found. He nodded, walked to the far corner of the library and pulled it off the shelf: A Brief Survey of Westother: Volume 2: The Lesser Noble Houses. A presentation volume, bound in ox-blood leather and inscribed by the author. He remembered when his father had received the book and promptly exiled it to a dusty shelf between a catalog of the Otherlands’ National Museum, and a treatise on viniculture.
He opened his desk and rummaged until he found a penknife.
The black cat leapt onto the desk and watched intently as Obsidian cut a shallow pocket in the center pages. The key fit loosely. Obsidian ripped a strip from his handkerchief and wrapped it around the key. He laid the padded key in the pocket, closed the book and shook it. There was no tell-tale rattle.
The Duke slipped the altered book back into place. He dropped the scraps of cloth and paper into the fireplace and supervised their burning. For good measure, he stirred the ashes with the wrought-iron poker.
“What do you think, puss?” he asked the cat. The cat sniffed at the ashes, then jumped into the window seat, meowing to go out. Obsidian opened the window, and the strange cat vanished into the night.
“Was that you, Gran?” he asked the portrait. “It felt like you. I don’t think it was the Wizard. I can’t see him pretending to be a cat. Certainly not a lady cat. I see him as something more compact and grumpy.”
The portrait did not reply. But then, he hadn’t expected it to. It was just a painting, after all.
—