Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [117]
Alas, that the Wili could not fly! It would have been so much easier if she had been able to drift in the rafters among the battle banners, and float down into the enclosure. There would have been a point where she was exposed, but not nearly for as long.
She slipped out of the minstrel’s gallery and down the stairs to get to the corridor, for although she could pass through the floor, to do so would mean she would fall from the ceiling. It wouldn’t hurt her, but it might make a noise. The guard would be watching the door, of course, but he might not be watching the wall, so that was why she was going to pass through the stones.
Guiliette had already checked the niche in the wall; that was easy for her, and accomplished just in the same way that she found the secret passageways and three other hiding places. It had, alas, been empty, but at least they hadn’t had to go through all the rigmarole of sitting on the throne and finding and pressing nearly invisible jewels in order to check it.
So once Guiliette was out of the minstrel gallery, they waited. And waited. There was no sign of the Wili. Katya began to get impatient, then alarmed. What could be going on?
Then Lyuba chuckled throatily. Katya glanced at her sharply.
“Look at the floor,” the Wolf maiden whispered. “Halfway between the wall and the throne.”
It took Katya a moment to see it, because the stone of the floor was full of irregularities, and because she wasn’t sure what she should be looking for. But then, finally, she made out something, as transparent as a jellyfish, moving along the stone. It was the Wili, who had plastered herself flat to the floor and was crawling toward the throne, taking advantage of the stone to hide her, and the fact that the guard was keeping watch for someone standing or walking, not crawling. This would be why she was taking so long, of course.
“Oh clever!” Katya breathed. “Good for you, Guiliette!”
“Does it seem to you that we are becoming more clever all the time?” Yulya asked. “I mean, I feel cleverer. Not that I’m getting overconfident! But I do feel much cleverer than I was before, and I know I’m thinking of more solutions to things by myself.” Then she frowned. “Or do you think it’s all The Tradition? Is there a Path for this sort of thing? Will I stop being clever when I am back with the flock?”
She really had changed. Katya nodded. “I suppose that being clever is like anything else. If you do a lot of thinking, especially thinking for yourself, you get better at it. I honestly don’t think The Tradition is helping us much here, if at all. It can’t—there’s no Path for this. I think this is all us. I think that we are all getting better and better at finding solutions for problems.”
“Really?” Yulya sounded rather happy about that. “Oh good. I’ve been thinking that I’m tired of having people think of answers for me.”
Katya smiled. “You’re a different girl from the one that was abducted. Yes, a cleverer one. I think you should be proud of that, Yulya.”
You won’t have to depend on anyone else to tell you what to do after this, she thought. “It wouldn’t hurt to show your sisters how to reason things through, when you get back.” She chuckled. “You’re going to be the flock leader now, you realize this, don’t you?”
Yulya giggled a little, embarrassed. “I probably will. There wasn’t one after Oksana was married. She always was the truly clever one—”
Remembering that story, Katya said wryly, with her eyes still on the crawling Wili, “Not all that clever. Not when that husband of hers caught her by stealing her swan-cloak.”
Yulya flushed a little. “Well…some of us suspect that was no accident. She had been saying for a while that she was tired of the flock and wished she could go somewhere alone. We couldn’t understand it—why wouldn’t she want to be with the flock? And of course, when she did get a chance to escape, she came straight back to us, but—”
“But she knew very well that husband of hers would