If I stretched to my tiptoes, I could see into the queen's day chamber through a crack just above her looking glass.

She rarely looked into the glass these days; she didn't like what she saw.

I flinched when I heard Grandam's voice.

"Majesty, your son's tutor would like a word with you."

"Again?" Queen Zirconia arched a weary eyebrow at my grandmother.

Grandam Dobb's lips pruned up into a disapproving pucker. "Never you mind, Majesty. Slag has nothing better to do than nit-pick his betters. Maybe if he spent some of that idle time cleaning his teeth, or giving that shaggy head of his a good trimming ... Shall I tell him you're indisposed?"

"No." The queen's voice was level, but there was a hint of pain in her dark eyes. "No, we mustn't use that word, Polly. Not yet. Not until I truly am."

"Which will be just this side of never, Majesty," Grandam said stoutly. She gave the white apron spanning her ample waist a brisk shake. "You've got a son to see settled, future grandchildren to dandle on your royal knees."

The queen closed her eyes and Grandam Dobb fell silent.

At last Zirconia drew a deep breath. "Send in Master Slag, Polly. I'm ready to see him."

"Nasty creature," Grandam muttered as she left the queen's day chamber, "bothering our beautiful queen with his tattles and tale-telling, and our Jacot a good lad with a stout heart and a proper twinkle in his brown eyes. Not everyone is cut of scholar's cloth..."

The queen's pale lips curved, her smile fond.

My Grandam Dobb was a fixture in the castle long before Queen Zirconia came to the kingdom of Coalveign as a new bride. She bullied King Merrit all through his childhood as freely as she'd bullied her own son, and wept over both of them when they died together in the mines ten years ago. She was Queen Zirconia's most loyal subject, and the one to whom all the other servants came when they craved a few moments with the royal ear. It was Polly Dobb who decided who was worthy of the queen's fast-shrinking time, and no dragon could have guarded this treasure of Coalveign more fiercely.

Slag, as Grandam Dobb had said more times than I could count, no more deserved these frequent audiences with the queen than the rodent he so closely resembled, but the queen was adamant where the education of her son was concerned.

Like Julian and me, Jacot was a tender sprout of five when King Merrit died, and, though destiny hung heavy as a storm cloud over his brown curls, it didn't seem to keep him from mischief.

When he snitched tarts meant for the queen's tea, the royal cook was up in arms, but Zirconia simply shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. A growing boy needed to eat, didn't he?

When he pulled the lever to the sluice gate and flooded the dungeons, the castle steward was outraged, but Zirconia merely handed her son a wooden pail and instructed him to commence bailing.

There were scrapes and escapades, pranks and distractions, but Zirconia knew better than anyone that Jacot had no malice in him. He was prince of the impromptu, a spur-of-the-moment monarch-in-training, with a heart as big as Matrinko Mountain and an imagination for mischief to match it.

Zirconia pressed her fingers to her aching forehead.

I could guess what she was thinking. She had murmured it aloud many times within my hearing.

She was thinking that it wasn't that Jacot was a simpleton. No, he was brighter than most, and this was not a mother's bias, for we all saw it. He was lively and quick, always three mental steps ahead of everyone else in the kingdom. No wonder he could never sit still for the dusty lessons of Millwood Slag. Why, he could think rings around that tiresome man!

"Your Majesty." The tutor's unctuous voice brought Queen Zirconia's head up, her best maternal monarch face in place, no sign of the pain occupying her head.

"Master Slag." She nodded carefully. "You have come to report on my son's progress?"

"His progress right out the library door, Your Majesty," Slag said, then heaved a sigh that was far too dramatic to have any basis in honesty. "Prince Jacot would rather be jumping over a candlestick than using its light by which to learn."

Zirconia couldn't keep her lips from twitching.

I had to stifle my own giggle.

Slag, probably thinking it was due to his attempt at wit, smiled an ingratiating smile. "He would rather stick his thumb into a pie to see what is inside, than go through the scholarly process of deduction. He would rather be a jack-a-dandy in search of candy than a studious prince in search of wisdom. He would rather fetch a pail of water with those low-born Dobb twins than sip from the cup of knowledge--"

"You have made your point." Zirconia was no longer smiling.

"I crave pardon, Your Majesty," Slag said, though the twist of his lips said otherwise. "I only come to you to tell you that I cannot teach him if he will not sit still to learn."

"Must all learning be done sitting still?" the queen asked. "Perhaps a change of venue might be in order." She smiled again, but it was the kind of smile designed to send a chill through Slag's walnut-sized heart. "Or perhaps a change in tutors?"

"Oh, no, Your Majesty!" Slag did a hasty back step. "No, I am sure I can craft a suitable learning environment for His Highness. I merely draw your attention to his lack of regard for our schedule."

"Revise your schedule," Queen Zirconia suggested, her voice cold. "That will be all."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Slag bowed as he backed away. "As you wish, Your Majesty."

"Indulgent fool," the tutor muttered as he passed by the looking glass, dodging Grandam Dobb's scowl, and headed back to the library.

"Inept dolt," the queen murmured as she closed her eyes. "Still, I must speak to Jacot. He must be made to see the importance of these lessons, however bitter a brew they are to swallow. If only there were another tutor I could engage, but the royal tutors have always come from the house of Slag."

This, I knew, was a convention Queen Zirconia didn't have the strength to challenge. And even if she had the strength, where would she look? Coalveign was a small kingdom, and isolated, except for King Gambol's Nimblick to the south.

And we would all sooner have an ignorant prince than one tutored by a subject of King Gambol, a king whose court was rife with weakness and greed.

I shuddered at the thought, then scurried like a rat to the stables, my instinct humming.