“The king isn’t as old as you may think. When he married the queen, only four years ago, no one thought of them as an extremely ill-matched couple.”

A sudden vision flashed into my mind of a girl married to a much older man, excited at first at the power of being queen, but soon made irritable when she discovered she was not supposed to have a mind of her own, but only be the king’s pliant companion. It shouldn’t be hard for her, on one of her trips to the City, to find an unscrupulous wizard willing to sell her a powder or spell to sicken her husband.

“It must be the queen, then,” I said. “She has bewitched him somehow.”

A low rumble began somewhere in his barrel chest and emerged in an angry, “No! It’s not the queen. It couldn’t be anyone at court. It must be a malignant influence from outside.”

I modified my vision to have the queen and the royal heir secretly in love, plotting to have the king die so that they could rule together. But I stopped myself. This made no sense. If Dominic were partially responsible for putting an evil spell on the king, he certainly wouldn’t tell me about it.

“Thank you for this warning,” I said in a deep voice. “The power of magic to conceal itself is often great, but the skill of the forewarned wizard is potent indeed.”

To my surprise, he treated this statement perfectly seriously. “Good. I knew we had done well to hire you.” He started to rise.

“But how about my other duties? The king’s talked to me about a telephone system, the constable’s said you need more magic lights-”

He waved these away with his broad hand. I was fascinated by the ruby ring on his second finger. Its setting was a gold snake supporting the jewel on its coils. It looked like a perfect ring for a wizard, and I coveted it for myself. “Those are a facade for your real work.” He pulled his coat back on, picked up his umbrella, and left without saying Goodbye.