“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Mug stifled a small gagging sound. Donchen chuckled and lowered his cup.

“As long as I’m breaking my homeland’s laws, Mage, I might as well give you this, as well.” He reached into his shirt and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “Each of these persons had a butterfly relaxing on their doors or windows this afternoon,” he added. “Some are Hang. Some are Vonat. Some, I fear, are Tirls.”

Meralda took the paper.

“I would be most appreciative if that list found its way to both your king and my countryman, Loman,” said Donchen. “Of course, you need not tell Loman where you got it. After all, ghosts can’t make lists of traitors, can they?”

“How many names?”

“Thirty-seven. Nineteen are Vonats. Twelve, sadly, are my countrymen, arrived with me. Six are Tirlish, of various stations, mostly palace staff simply paid to look the other way so spells can be laid. Disturbing, is it not?”

“Deeply.” Meralda put the list in her desk.

Donchen merely nodded and refilled her cup.

The Hang tea banished the heaviness from Meralda’s limbs and left her feeling, if not fresh and alert, at least not weary and sluggish.

By the time Donchen’s tea was gone, she and the Hang had covered three large pages of drawing paper with notes, and Meralda was finally beginning to see how the curseworks had remained in motion about the flat for so long without failing.

She caught herself chewing on the end of her pencil and blushed at Donchen’s grin. “So each cursework is actually falling.”

The Hang nodded. “But doing so sideways. That’s the part I can’t understand.”

Meralda stabbed at a corner of the topmost paper with her pencil. “It’s right here,” she said. “He put a right angle on gravity. On gravity.” She shook her head. “History just tells us the man was ruthless and powerful. But he was brilliant, more than anything else he might have been. The man turned gravity on its side just to make his spell more efficient.”

“Thus keeping the entire structure turning without requiring a latched spell of any kind,” said the Tower. “Well done, Mage Ovis. That single surmise escaped me for seven centuries.”

Mug blew a fanfare of trumpets and bugles until Meralda silenced him with a glare.

“But we’re no closer to repairing it than we were an hour ago. Tower, how long until the tethers fail?”

“Two hundred and eight hours, Mage. Give or take seven hours.”

Donchen pointed to the image in the glass. “The damage to the tethers seems irreparable, at least to my untrained and ignorant eye.”

“Hah,” said Mug. “Untrained. Ignorant. Pull the other leg, won’t you?”

Donchen pretended not to hear.

“It seems to me, though, that Mage Ovis has a certain detailed understanding of the structures involved.”

Meralda shook her head. “I’m a long way from being able to repair them,” she said. “Certainly longer than two hundred hours.”

Donchen nodded assent. “Repairing them seems an impossible task.”

“I must concur,” said the Tower. “Perhaps it is time to consider an evacuation of the city and surrounding countryside.”

“If the tethers cannot be repaired, they must be replaced,” said Donchen. He turned to face Meralda. “Do you agree, Mage Ovis?”

Shivers ran up and down Meralda’s spine. “He laid gravity on its side,” she said, quietly. “I am not Otrinvion. I could live to be five hundred and I still wouldn’t be Otrinvion.”

“No. But you are Meralda Ovis. You enchanted Mug to life when you were thirteen. You entered college that same year. You alone, of all Tirlin’s mages, found the Tower’s secret. We believe in you, Mage Ovis. Now you must only find a belief in yourself.”

“What he said,” piped Mug. “Who says you couldn’t make right-side up go sideways? You figured out a way to bend sunlight just a few days ago.” Mug sent his eyes toward Meralda. “You can do this, mistress. You’ve got to. I despise the country. Bloody bugs everywhere.”

Meralda took a deep breath. First thing I do, she decided, is put a picture of Tim the Horsehead in here. Right where I can see it. That way, if I have any more moments like this, I can look Tim right in his big brown horse eyes and think to myself ‘Tim managed, and the man could only neigh.’

“All right,” she said loud. “Tower, how are the tethers attached to the curseworks?”

Night fell, and Meralda worked. Dawn found her asleep at her desk. The captain came with letters from the king, and departed with a copy of Donchen’s list and an explanation that the Tirls listed should quietly be directed to duties far beyond the palace.

Meralda sent Donchen’s original note to Fromarch, ordering Kervis to place it in Fromarch’s hand and no one else’s.

“He’ll ask me where I got it,” said Kervis. “What do I tell him?”

“Tell him a stranger slipped it under my door,” said Meralda. “Tell him we caught sight of a fat man dressed all in a white-trimmed red coat running down the stair, and that moments later we heard reindeer on the roof.”

Kervis ogled. “Father Yule?”

Meralda nodded gravely. “That’s as good as any, Guardsman. Say that and nothing more.”

I wonder what will happen to the Hang on the list, Meralda wondered, when Loman learns of this. Which he surely will. She considered asking Donchen, but then rejected the idea. It’s really no concern of mine.

Or is it, said a little voice deep in her mind, that you don’t want to risk angering Donchen by asking him?

Meralda felt herself blushing. “Nonsense,” she muttered, stabbing at the paper with her pencil. “Nonsense.”

“Mistress?”

“Nothing, Mug. I’m just tired.”

“No surprise there. Shall I send for more coffee?”

Meralda sighed. How many pots, in the last few days?

“Why not,” she said. “Send for two.”

Meralda began to measure the passage of her days by the arrival and departure of Donchen and his silver serving cart.

The mysteries of the cursework tethers fell away, inch by inch. By midnight of the second day of her self-imposed exile inside the laboratory, Meralda began to understand how the tether spells were integrated into the much larger array of the Tower’s structural spells.

By two in the morning, Meralda found a way to use the twelve original latching points to tether new spells.

By four, she could see a way to overlay new spells onto the old, and activate them when Otrinvion’s tethers began to fail in earnest.

Mug slept. The spark lamps in the laboratory were too dim to keep him alert. Meralda poured the dregs of her last cup of coffee into Mug’s pot, smiled when he muttered something about beetles, and then fell asleep herself with her head down on her desk.

Donchen knocked softly at the laboratory doors. A moment later, he opened them and looked inside.

Meralda did not awaken. Donchen and Tervis crept past the door, Donchen as silent as snow, Tervis rattling and scraping with every step. Still, they managed to reach Meralda’s desk without disturbing her slumber.

“Should we wake her?” whispered Tervis.

Donchen shook his head. “I think not.”

Tervis wriggled out of his red guardsman’s coat and draped it gently over Meralda. She shifted, but did not wake.

Donchen motioned toward the door. Tervis followed, attempting without success to tip-toe in his steel toed boots.

Outside, Donchen pushed the doors closed, and then put his back to them.

“I’ll be glad to stay, if one of you gentlemen would care to nap,” he said. “Tomorrow is likely to be another very long day.”

The Bellringers exchanged glances.

“Pardon, sir, but we’ll remain at our posts,” said Kervis.

Donchen smiled and shrugged. “As you wish. I’ll stay too. Have I ever told you gentlemen the story of Murdering Hosang and the Five Wandering Grooms?”