Marigold did as she was told. She didn’t sneak or snoop or protest. She nailed wooden boards across the broken kitchen window, cleared away the forgotten plates in the dining room, and ran through the fortress on errands for Vivien, Elgin, and the other wizards, who had returned laden with cases of magical supplies. She helped Horace haul something that looked like a heavy stone birdbath through the front door, untangled a dozen jumbled spools of spider silk for Petronella, and made up imp-size beds for the Twice-Times Witch’s two assistants. She didn’t dare do otherwise: the Miseries prowled the fortress, giving commands and shouting at anyone whose work displeased them. “Wake up, you lazy lump!” cried Vivien, pinching Collin’s ear when he dozed off over the stove. “You’re burning my flapjacks. And, you” — she scowled at the short and warty wizard, who was coming in with an armload of purplish plants — “is that all the fresh blissbane you brought? A few measly stalks?”
From her spot scrubbing dishes at the sink, Marigold watched the short and warty wizard tremble. “There’s more in my garden, Vivien,” he said, “but it’s not quite ready to pick, so I thought —”
“Go and get it!” said Vivien. “Now! We’re going to need at least twice that much to ruin Imbervale.” She glared at the short and warty wizard until he shuffled back the way he’d come. Then she snatched three flapjacks off Collin’s frying pan, pinched his other ear until he yelped, and swept out of the room.
As soon as she was gone, Marigold set down her sponge. “Collin,” she whispered, “are you all right?”
When Collin pushed his hair away from his face with an egg-spattered hand, Marigold could see his eyes were red. “This isn’t exactly the sort of adventure I hoped for,” he said in a small voice.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here with me.” Marigold gave him a dishwater-damp hug. “Did you hear what Vivien said?”
“About Imbervale?” Collin nodded and rubbed his ears. “I thought the wizards were only mad at Rosalind. I didn’t think they were going to ruin the whole kingdom!”
“I didn’t, either.” Marigold pulled the stopper out of the sink drain and watched the soapy water rush down in glugs. As unhappy as she’d been in Imbervale, she couldn’t allow the wizards to unleash their spells all over it. What would happen to her family? To Cook and all the servants? Even the steward, whom Marigold would have happily sprinkled with tongue-tying powder, didn’t deserve to be cursed with big magic. Pettifog had warned her not to disobey the Miseries, and Torville had told her not to interfere with their plans, but Marigold had never been much good at doing what she was supposed to.
“I don’t know how to stop big magic,” she whispered, “but Torville might. Do you have any idea where he is?”
Collin frowned. “I haven’t seen him since Elgin took him away.”
“Then we’ll find him,” Marigold said. “Maybe Pettifog knows where he’s gone.”
Pettifog was in the back hallway, soaked to the skin. “Oh, no!” said Marigold. “What happened to you?”
“The cursed toilet was rude to Vivien, and she told me to take a plunger to it.” Pettifog wrung out his wings. “Don’t ask me how it went.”
“Have you seen Torville?” Marigold asked instead.
Pettifog shook his head. “I’ve been looking everywhere the wizards send me. He’s not in the dungeon, the storeroom, or the room full of raspberry jam. And I’m getting worried. It’s been hours since he’s eaten.” He squeezed water out of his handkerchief. “There are too many places in this fortress to hide a blob of glop.”
“We’ll keep searching, all three of us. As soon as the wizards leave us alone —”
“You there!” The sharp-tooth wizard swept toward them down the hall. “Yes, you. The housemaid, or whoever you are.” She pointed at Marigold. “Fetch some water for our scrying spell, and bring it to the room of creaks and whispers. Ten bucketfuls should be enough.”
Marigold sighed and went to get water. The wizards, she discovered as she hauled buckets back and forth through the fortress, had divided themselves into three groups. A few were in the room of creaks and whispers, pouring the water Marigold brought them into the stone birdbath, staring into it, and then arguing about what each of them had seen reflected on the surface. “That grove of beech trees is ten miles outside Imbervale,” Horace complained as Marigold delivered her seventh bucket. “We won’t get a good view from there.” He straightened up from the birdbath and looked over both his shoulders. “Who’s whispering?”
“It’s the room,” Marigold reminded him, taking care to slosh water on his feet.
A second group had gathered in the dining room. These wizards kept demanding coffee, which Collin had to brew in the fortress’s largest saucepan, and they helped themselves to plenty of Torville’s traveling powder. Bangs echoed through the halls as they poofed out of the fortress and back again. When they weren’t traveling, they sat around the dining table, studying a large scroll that Elgin had snatched from Torville’s storeroom.
The scroll, Marigold saw as she passed coffee around, seemed to be a map of Imbervale Palace and its grounds, though it was marked all over with squiggly lines that didn’t look like any roads or rivers she knew. When Gentleman Northwinds wasn’t exercising his curiosity in the fortress hallways, he sat by the tall dining room windows, sipping coffee and listening to the conversation around the table. “That map is at least two decades old,” Marigold overheard him saying at one point. “You shouldn’t rely on it. There must be dozens of fortifications along the north wall by now, if the magician is any good at her job.”
The remaining wizards, led by Vivien, were secreted away in Torville’s workroom. Since they wouldn’t allow her inside, Marigold didn’t know exactly what they were doing, but they were always hollering down the staircase, ordering her to collect the spell-casting ingredients they needed: a sack of pink toadstools from the garden, a bottle of slug juice from the workroom, and five ripe biletree nuts, which Marigold had to hike a quarter mile into the wildwood to collect. As she came upstairs with the biletree nuts, she was surprised to see Pettifog coming down from the workroom. He had taken off his jacket, and his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows.
“They let you inside?” Marigold asked him.
“They needed me to stir their cauldron. I don’t know what spell they’re cooking up, but if it requires a demon’s help, it’s not anything mild or mellow.” Pettifog stalked toward his bedroom, then stopped in the center of the hall. “Marigold? Why is the closet of regrets unlocked?”
Marigold set down the biletree nuts. It was true: the door to the closet of regrets, which had been shut tight for as long as she’d been in the fortress, was now ajar. Pettifog rushed to close it again, but Marigold got there first. She pulled the door open even farther.
“What are you doing?” Pettifog cried. “You can’t go in there! That’s Torville’s private space! He doesn’t let anyone else inside.”
“But someone else has been inside,” Marigold said. The closet of regrets was deep, almost cavernous; instead of ending sensibly with a wall as most closets did, this one stretched so far into the darkness that she couldn’t see the end of it. The walls on either side were lined from floor to ceiling with shelves, and each shelf was packed full of jumbled objects that Marigold could barely make out in the light from the hall. Near the door were the sorts of things anyone might stash away: a matted toy elephant, a stack of old books, dented sports racquets, and blurry photographic prints of people and places Marigold didn’t recognize. As she stepped farther into the closet, though, the light grew dimmer, and the items on the shelves grew stranger. She thought she saw a glass sphere with a torrential storm raging inside it; a tidy bundle of bones; a fishbowl full of murky, writhing creatures; a half-empty jar of molasses. “What is all this?” Marigold asked.
“It’s none of your business!” Pettifog trotted after her, trying to pull her back toward the hall. “You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here!”
“Hello?” Collin stuck his head inside the doorway. He was holding an enchanted candle, which filled the closet with an eerie green light. “I thought I heard your voices!” he said, ducking inside the closet as Pettifog groaned. “What are you doing in here?”
“Not listening to imps, apparently,” Pettifog complained as Marigold crept forward. She could see everything a little more clearly in the candlelight. On one shelf, pushed far to the back, was a wadded-up baby’s blanket embroidered with faded letters — was the first one R? Marigold reached out for it.
Pettifog swatted her hand away. “Don’t touch!” he said. “And close your mouth. You shouldn’t gawk at someone else’s regrets.”
The shelves farther from the doorway weren’t quite so jumbled. On one sat a half-empty jar of something called Doctor Mountebank’s Whisker Pomade. On another, coiled up like a snake, was a very long and sturdy rope. Its ends had been neatly cut, and someone had tied knots along its length to make it more useful for climbing. For a moment, Marigold couldn’t understand why it was there.
Then she saw the blob of glop. It was still on its dinner plate, which had been shoved to the back of the lowest shelf. When the light from Collin’s candle flickered over the blob, it trembled and moved into the shadows.
“Torville!” Marigold snatched up the plate. “Did Elgin leave you in here? He forgot to close the door behind him.”
The blob edged away from her fingers.
Pettifog pushed forward to peer at Torville. “He looks all right,” he said, “considering the circumstances. I don’t suppose there’s a mirror anywhere in here that Torville’s regretted owning?”
“Will this work?” Collin set down his candle and pulled a large silver bowl down from a high shelf. The bowl was tarnished, but some of the black splotches came away when he rubbed them with his sleeve. Then he passed the bowl to Pettifog, who placed Torville gently inside it. The wizard’s face, murky and petulant, appeared in the spot that Collin had polished.
“I stole this bowl from Blumontaine Palace last year,” said Torville’s reflection. His voice sounded thin, though Marigold supposed it might have been on account of the tarnish. “It was a gift to Queen Hetty from her dear departed mother. Completely useless to me, of course, but that iguana bit my ankle and I wanted revenge.” He glared out of the bowl. “What are you all doing in my closet of regrets?”
“I told them not to come inside!” Pettifog said quickly. “I tried to warn them off!”
“And it’s a good thing we didn’t listen,” Marigold told him, “or we’d never have found Torville.”
