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Pip. “Does this . . . animal need anything?”
    I grinned at her, and she backed away a step. “No,” I said. Not unless she had some pigeons flying around in the kitchen. I took two of the hot rolls from the plate and ate a big bite. Mmmm. “Thanks,” I said to the cook, who nodded and went back into the kitchen. I held a roll out to the guards. “Want some?” I asked.
    They didn’t eat while on duty, they said.
    Munching on breakfast, with Pip still asleep on my shoulder, its snout nestled against my neck, I headed out of the Dawn Palace. At the front gate, standing on the gravelly drive, I stopped and looked back.
    â€œAh, sir?” one of the guards asked.
    I ignored him. The Dawn Palace. A fancy prison. Rowan wanted me to give it a chance, and I’d done that. I wasn’t coming back to live in those too-hot, too-cold ducal magister’s rooms, with the nasty fancy food, and closets full of silk-stiff clothes, and guards outside every door, and Miss Dimity bulging her eyes at me. If Nevery wouldn’t let me come back to Heartsease, well, I’d figure something else out.
    That decided, I headed down the hill. The guards followed. The air was chilly, the streets bustling with people and carriages and hansom cabs.
    When they saw I was heading for the bridge, one of the guards cleared his throat. “Sir?”
    Him calling me sir was about the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. I ignored him and swallowed down the last bite of buttered-and-jammed roll.
    â€œDucal Magister Connwaer?” he said.
    I stopped. “What.”
    One of the guards stayed behind me; the other stepped in front, blocking my way. People passing us on the street stared as they walked by. It probably looked to them like I was being arrested. The guard said, “Magister, we’re supposed to report with you to Captain Kerrn if you attempt to go into the Twilight.”
    It really was starting to sound like I was a prisoner. I glared at the guard. “I’m not going to the Twilight. I’m going to a meeting at Magisters Hall.”
    â€œThat’s all right, then,” said the guard behind me.
    They let me go on, following me across the bridge and down the steps to the tunnel that led under the river to the wizards’ islands. We came to one of the tunnel gates. I plucked sleeping Pip off my shoulder and held it up to the gate’s magic lock and said the opening spell. Pip twitched and blinked, giving me a surly look, and then touched the lock with its snout. The lock clicked open. We went through the gate, then two more gates, then through the Magisters Hall gate and up the stairs to the building itself.
    At the top of the stairs was a long, stone hallway, and it was filled with wizards and apprentices and magisters in their fine robes, all talking in little groups, waiting for the meeting to begin. When they saw me with the two guards looming up behind me and Pip on my shoulder, they stared, whispering. Stolen , I heard, and thief .
    Annoyed, Pip lashed its tail and snorted out a puff of gray smoke. I put my hand into my pocket to be sure Sandera’s stone was still there.
    I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me— step step tap —and then Nevery was beside me, leaning on his cane. “Good morning, Connwaer,” he said mildly.
    I was annoyed, too. “Not really, Nevery,” I said, and I wanted to ask him if he was missing me, but he didn’t seem to be, so I kept quiet.
    He snorted. “The morning is not going to get any better, either.” He started down the hallway. “Yet another locus magicalicus stone went missing during the night. Brumbee’s. Come along. It’s time to start the meeting.”
    The other magisters headed for the meeting room, too, Brumbee in his bright yellow robe looking rumpled and worried, and sharp Trammel who ran the medicos, and Periwinkle with her gray hair in its usual messy bun, and