“You beat Luke in a race?”

“Yes. I’m a very good runner.”

“You must be.”

“Anyway, he took Nayda and me sailing a few times, and on some long hikes. Where is he now, anyway?”

“Drinking with a Cheshire cat.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’d like to hear it. I’ve been worried about him since the coup.”

Mm… I thought quickly about how to edit this so as not to tell the daughter of the Begman prime minister any state secrets, such as Luke’s relationship to the House of Amber… So, “I’ve known him for quite some time,” I began. “He recently incurred the wrath of a sorcerer who drugged him and saw him banished to this peculiar bar…”

I went on for a long while then, partly because I had to stop and summarize Lewis Carroll. I also had to promise her the loan of one of the Thari editions of Alice from the Amber library. When I finally finished, she was laughing.

“Why don’t you bring him back?” she said then.

Ouch. I couldn’t very well say that his shadow-shifting abilities would work against this until he came down. So, “It’s part of the spell; it’s working on his own sorcerous ability,” I said. “He can’t be moved till the drug wears off.

“How interesting,” she observed. “Is Luke really a sorcerer himself?”

“Uh… yes,” I said.

“How did he gain that ability? He showed no signs of it when I knew him.”

“Sorcerers come by their skills in various ways,” I explained. “But you know that,” and I suddenly realized that she was smarter than that smiling, innocent expression indicated. I’d a strong feeling she was trying to steer this toward an acknowledgment of Pattern magic on Luke’s part, which of course would say interesting things about his paternity. “And his mother, Jasra, is something of a sorceress herself.”

“Really? I never knew that.” Damn! Coming and going…