"Edmund?" asked Doyle, looking at the young man who was standing between Rose and the Valkyrie. "Have we picked up a stray?"

"He's the mapmaker's son," Jack said, "and a better than fair mapmaker himself. We'll tell you about it on the way."

"Where are we going, anyway?" said John warily. "Who are you taking us to meet?"

"The person we came here to find in the first place," Houdini said as the group marched out the door. "We're taking you to meet the Dragon's apprentice."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

The Heir

The meeting at the bookbinder's shop was full of old history. Almost everyone in the room had been connected to Madoc in one way or another, for good and for ill. Of them all, only Edmund and Coal saw nothing but a one-armed bookbinder, who was large and still in the prime of his life, and who simply wished to be left alone to do his work.

To Fred and Laura Glue, he was the man out of legend, the mythical Winter King, whose Shadow had returned again and again to wreak havoc on their world.

To Burton, Houdini, and Doyle, he was the martyred brother of Merlin, the betrayer, who prevented Madoc from becoming the ruler of two worlds, united in peace.

The last time John and Jack had seen him, he was plummeting over the edge of a waterfall, having tried his level best to kill them.

And the last time Rose and Archie had met him, which was the first time she had ever seen her father in the flesh, he helped them repair the sword of Aeneas, so they could defeat his own Shadow-self and save the Archipelago and the Summer Country from a devastating war.

The Caretakers and their motley entourage filled the small shop, where they sat with Madoc, who kept his distance from all of them except for one.

"Rose," he said quietly, extending his good arm. "Come to me."

She walked to her father and wrapped her arms around him. He embraced her, then stood back, indicating that she should sit on the stool next to him.

He looked her up and down, appraising her, and then his eyes narrowed and his expression grew dark. "Rose," he said slowly. "Where is your shadow?"

Rose blushed furiously, embarrassed. "It-it's outside, under a bench, I think. It should be coming in soon."

He leaned back, looking from her to the Caretakers. "So. You didn't give it up, then? It's still yours?"

"Oh no!" Rose exclaimed. "I mean, yes. It's still mine. There was an accident, and it came loose. But it's still mine."

Madoc nodded, and his expression softened. "I was not chastising you, daughter," he said. "It's not my place, not after all that I have done. But I was just ... I was ..."

"I understand," Rose said, laying her hand on his.

Madoc looked up at the others. "I agreed to this meeting in order to see my daughter again," he said brusquely. "She kept her word to me, and because of her, I have a new life. But I don't see any reason why I should speak to the rest of you."

Burton's face colored, and he turned away, chagrined.

"We are here because we were told to seek your help, Madoc." Jack spoke the last word with deliberate emphasis. He had once been swayed by this man's magnetism, and the promises he offered for power and influence in the world. He was wary about speaking with him again, however good the reason.

Madoc turned his eyes to Jack, and they glittered as he spoke. "Yes, Jack, so I'm told. You need the help of a Dragon. But as I told your two associates, there simply aren't any left."

"No Dragons, perhaps," said John, "but you were Samaranth's apprentice, were you not?"

Madoc bowed his head. "I was. A poor one, I'm afraid."

"Are all the Dragons really gone?" Rose asked. "We have come back in time, after all."

Madoc rubbed his chin and thought a moment. "It seems I have seen some, now and again. But not for some time."

"They would have been captured and taken back through the same door we used," said Jack, "so if there was a Dragon here, it would have been taken by the Shadow King."

"How long have you been here?" Rose asked her father.

"Nearly two years," he answered, "although if you used the same door, you should have followed right on my heels."

"There is a discontinuity," said John. "A rift in time. That's why we've come here, Madoc."

The bookbinder sighed. "All right," he said, looking at Rose. "Tell me what's happened."

Between Rose's accounting of her visit from Mother Night, and the others' mishmash retelling of the events since the party at Tamerlane House, it was almost two hours before Madoc spoke again.

"I don't know enough about cartography to help you with mapping time," he said when they had finished. "That became my dear brother's specialty. But I know why you were told to seek out a Dragon to solve your riddle.

"Samaranth told me there were certain things that could only be known as a Dragon," he continued, "things that I could not know as a man. He promised me that if I ever chose to ... If I ever became a Dragon, then I would understand.

"It was the Dragons, did you know?" he said to no one in particular. "The Dragons who made the doors for the Keep of Time. So I'd imagine that only a Dragon would be able to tell you how to harness those energies again. If," he added, "it can be done at all."

"If that's true, then why didn't Samaranth just tell us himself, or leave us instructions?" asked John. "Why force us to go searching for you?"

"Either his idea of a joke, or my final lesson as his apprentice," Madoc said darkly, "and as I told you, I was a very poor student."

"Or because he simply chose not to," Jack said, "given what the Watchmaker said."

Madoc shrugged. "He moves in mysterious ways. But you probably know that better than I."

"You said you had seen other Dragons," Doyle said hopefully. "Maybe it's one of them we're meant to find. What kind did you see?"

"Dragonships, mostly," said Madoc, "but none I knew too well. The last one I saw had the look of a sea serpent. A long neck, which rose high into the air. Sleek. It moved through the harbor and disappeared. But I have no doubt it was a Dragonship."

"Which one?" John asked. "What color was it?"

"Color?" said Madoc. "If I had to call it anything, I'd say it was green."

"The Green Dragon then?" asked Rose.

"No," John said, shaking his head. "The Green Dragon is mostly blue. If the one Madoc saw was green, then it was quite possibly the Violet Dragon."

"Dragonships, maybe," said John, "but no other Dragons, then."

Madoc got up from his stool and moved to the window. He could see the Thames from there, and smell the tang of moisture in the air when the wind blew east.

"There were Dragons younger than Samaranth who had taken apprentices," he said at length, not turning from the window, "but they had taken no new apprentices in almost five thousand years. I think the last was during the Bronze Age, well before my time. Even so, I was not taken in as a student by Samaranth until I was quite old myself, chronologically speaking."

Archimedes nodded and squawked in agreement. "It was right around the time of the tournament, I believe."

"It was," Madoc acknowledged, returning the nod. "But you weren't there. How did you know?"

The bird shrugged. "I read things. I keep up."

"Hah!" Madoc laughed. "Of course you would. Anyway, it was after I left in a fury. I felt angry, betrayed. And Samaranth saw this, and decided to do something about it. So he approached me and made the proverbial offer you can't refuse."

"What does that mean?" asked Doyle.

"It's an old expression, coined by people conquered by Attila the Hun," explained Archimedes. "Basically, every time he approached a new country, he did it in the spirit of friendship, cooperation, and civilized, mutual progress."

"Really?" said Doyle. "How did that go over?"

"If his overtures were rejected, he'd basically order his armies to behead everyone until they changed their minds. It got a lot easier to offer his friendship to countries after he had a few of those under his belt."

"An offer they can't refuse," Doyle repeated. "So Samaranth threatened to behead you?"

"Not in so many words," Madoc replied, "but he made it clear that he thought I needed his guidance, and that were I to decline, the consequences would be drastic."

"We've had some experience with that ourselves," said Houdini.

"And the riddle?" asked Rose. "It doesn't mean anything to you?"

"It means one thing to a man," Madoc said, echoing his earlier remarks, "and another to a Dragon. To give you the answers you're seeking, I would have to ..."

"Ascend?" said Jack.

"Call it what you like," said Madoc, "but I refuse to do it. Not for any reason. I am finally a whole man again-I will not give that up to become a Dragon."

"You were willing to sacrifice yourself once for a great cause," Rose said. "I know. I was there."

"I could never be that selfless," Madoc said, his voice subdued. "Not ... again, at any rate.

"Once in my life, all that I sought was entry back into the Summer Country. But I chose poorly, in so many things, and eventually the reasons I wanted that so badly were forgotten. Only the idea of the prize remained. And then, when I lost it, and everything else, I started to remember. Then, miraculously, I was given a second chance-and I took it. And now, now that I truly understand what I have, I'm hard-pressed to ever give it up again."

Burton stepped forward. "I understand. Everything I have done, everything I have sacrificed," he said, spreading his hands in supplication, "has been in your service, Lord Madoc."

Madoc looked at Burton, blinking impassively, then belched loudly enough to rattle the tools on the wall. "You chose your deity poorly then," he finally said, drawing out the words for emphasis. "I'm merely a bookbinder here, and a one-armed one at that. I'm no one to be worshipped."

"You were, once," Burton said, unwilling to drop his arguments, "and you could be again. I know. We are very much alike, you and I."

"We," said Madoc, "have very little in common."

"More than you think," Burton replied, as he pulled open the curtain. Through the rear window they could see into the courtyard, where Coal and Laura Glue were watching Edmund draw in the dirt with a stick. "That one, there," Burton said, indicating Coal. "That's our common link, Lor-Madoc. He is your nephew many generations removed, the heir to the Silver Throne, and my own descendant."

Madoc started, then peered more closely at the pastoral scene outside before turning around. He shook his head. "I've not had too much luck coming to the defense of my nephews," he said, holding up his hook. "I can count on one hand the number of times that choice turned out to be terribly wrong.

"Take it from one who knows," Madoc went on. "Your life will be what you make of it, and you draw to yourself that which you truly believe in. I've stopped searching for things that only cause me grief and pain. You ought to do the same."

"Twice I've been drawn to you," Rose said. "You helped us before. Will you please, please consider it again?"

He looked at his daughter's eyes-they were innocent, trusting. Hopeful. Then a movement at her feet distracted him. It was her shadow, shimmering, writhing, moving from darkness to darkness inside the shop. He could barely suppress the shudder that came over him, and the memories that came with it.

"It-It's too big, my dove," he said. Rose almost smiled-he'd never used an endearment with her before. "This is my final word. I have finally found a life that I ... love. A work that gives me pleasure. And a peace I have never known. I have paid my debts, and more. So I want nothing more to do with the Archipelago, or the Caretakers, or any of it. I wash my hands of the whole thing."

With that, Madoc stood and walked out of the bindery. He did not look back.

Franklin's library was a treasure-house of knowledge, and even more crammed with books, maps, papers, and scrolls than his office downstairs had been. The windows were shuttered, so that the sunlight didn't fade the bindings on the books or the ink on the maps, and every other wall was covered with shelves that were full to spilling over with more books. The room had become much more organized since Myrret and the other animals had arrived-but the effect they had was to make the library more like the only other one they had ever known.

It was possibly the only place Coal could have been in all of London that felt like the Warren where he was raised back in the palace at Paralon. After the little escapade with the kite, John had given Myrret strict instructions to keep an eye on him-which, since the fox could not really leave Franklin's house, meant the little prince could not either. So to him, the jaunt to visit the mysterious bookbinder had been all too short.

"That was either a brilliant command performance," Houdini said as he slumped into a chaise in the library, "or we've just been dismissed as completely irrelevant."

"The latter, I'm afraid," said Doyle. "He's not going to be any help to us whatsoever."

Burton hadn't spoken for the entire walk back to Craven Street. Back at Franklin's house, he simply sat in a corner of the library, glowering.

"Would you like to read me a story now?" Coal asked, not really directing the question at anyone. "I've been very good, and I waited to ask."

"We've been giving you short shrift, haven't we, lad?" Houdini said as he knelt and tousled the boy's hair. "That's the way it is with grown-ups sometimes. We become too focused on the things that are urgent, so we forget the things that are truly important."

"We'll have time for that later, Coal," said Jack.

"I'm not surprised that he wouldn't help us," John said as he sat next to Burton. "All things considered, we're part of the reason he's had such a struggle all these years. We did play our part, however well-intentioned our motives were."

"He didn't seem too impressed by any of us, don't you agree, Burton?" asked Jack.

"He is," Burton said, then paused as his expression darkened, "... not the man I was expecting."

"This will sort itself out, Burton," John said as he laid a supportive hand on the other man's shoulder. "It will."

Burton glared at him and roughly pushed off John's hand. "When I need comfort from the likes of you, little Caretaker," he growled, "I'll ask. But don't count on that ever happening."

"So," said Houdini, diplomatically trying to change the subject, "Hank Morgan really trained Edmund's great-grandfather in mapmaking?"

"Nice to see you've been paying attention," said Doyle.