“Why a telephone, in the name of the saints?” I cried, using an exclamation I trusted he would understand.

He lifted his eyebrows at me. “The queen has found telephones extremely convenient the times she has been in the City. She thought that if we had a system here, she could phone here and talk to the king wherever she is, in the City or visiting her parents, rather than having to rely on carrier pigeons.”

The queen was clearly an important presence here in Yurt. I wondered if she could possibly be as old and bent as the king, since she seemed to take frequent trips, and when she would be returning.

The chaplain hesitated for a moment before speaking again, taking unnecessarily long over a sip of wine. It was probably Christian tact failing again to control his words. “I don’t like this talk of telephones,” he said brusquely.

“Neither do I,” I said cheerfully, but he didn’t hear me.

“The queen herself tried to persuade me that it’s only white magic, that it involves no dealings with the devil, but I can’t be sure. There must be black magic in being able to hear someone’s else’s voice over hundreds of miles.”

Since it could have been pink or purple magic for all I knew about telephones, I responded to a different aspect of his comment. “If you had been more friendly with my predecessor, surely he would have persuaded you there’s no such thing as either white magic or black magic. That’s only a popular perception. Didn’t they teach you that at seminary? Magic is neither good or evil in itself, only natural, part of the same forces as the world and mankind. The only good or evil is in the people who practice it.”

“And you don’t practice magic with evil intent?”

“Of course not,” I said self-righteously. A few student pranks hardly counted.