The next day I’m wearing a new wizard’s robe. Or rather, it was the robe sent by Lily's old workplace, enhanced with magic. It had a void pattern anti-fire-spell ward and self-cleaning enchant woven in. We ended up using the original self-cleaning enchantment Lily had prepared a few days ago. Rebecca helped with the anti-fire-magic ward. I produced the buffer enchant between the two other layers that used a void pattern to prevent interference. It was a little tricky since Rebecca’s enchant was also a void pattern, but as hers is the outermost layer, any fire spell would hit it first. I only had to prevent Lily’s enchantment from being destroyed by Rebecca’s enchantment.

I was hoping that the formal attire would impress the crown prince more than the somber void-black robes I’d been wearing the day before. It was a little warm though, and I began to think about adding a self-cooling enchantment next time I had a chance. It was lucky that the runic patterns didn't need to cover the whole layer of cloth, otherwise the robe would also be needing an weight reduction enchantment from all the gold, I thought to myself.

Rebecca and Lily were accompanying us today, as well as Lance and Conrad, so again the carriage was somewhat fuller than I’d like. But I planned to drop off the two girls at the palace before heading out to the crown prince’s hunting lodge. Conrad handed out some communication devices.

“You don’t need these right now,” he explained, “but it’s a bit silly that none of you have any. I tapped into our budget and ordered a few. James sent a few too,” Conrad added with a slight look of distaste.

I ended up taking three such devices, one linked to a device Conrad carried, one linked to a device Lily now carried, and one linked to a device James carried. They were all silver and gold with a tiny crystal embedded in the middle, about the size and shape of a large coin.

“Why do I need one?” Lily asked.

“I want you and Rebecca to go hang out with the princess. If she asks why tell her since you and she are both my apprentices, I’ve sent you to share some homework.” I hand over a heavy book. “Keep trying to push your mana into the gold threads, there’s a section in that book towards the middle on how to make your mana threads stick to gold.”

“You want me to hang out with the princess?” Lily asks, nervously, “Why?”

“Partly to keep the three of you out of trouble,” I admit with a shrug, “Also because I want to keep you all safe, so it’s easier to do that if you are all together. But mostly because this way, I can have you hand that communicator over to the princess and I can talk to her if I need to,” I explain.

“Why not just give the communicator to the princess?”

“I’d never get it back and she’d probably throw it away?” I reply with a quirked eyebrow. “I think she’s annoyed at me. I did seal away her magic.”

“How is she going to do the mana control exercises if you sealed away her magic?” Rebecca asks.

“Good question.” I admit, “There’s a section in the back of the book that deals with purging foreign magic from your body. Tell her to practice that, she can probably break free of my restraint if she works on it for a few days, since the restraint spell will weaken over time anyways if I don’t keep refreshing it. She can speed up that gradual decay, that can be her homework.”

“And if she refuses to let us into her suite?” Lily asks, visibly concerned about the idea of interacting with royalty.

“Call me up on the communicator and I’ll try talking to her,” I suggest with a shrug. In all honesty, I wasn’t that concerned. If it didn’t work out, I’d send Lily back to the mansion, but I felt there was at least some chance that Elizabeth would feel bored enough to let the two slightly older girls in to keep her company.

“Can I take charge of the royal guards stationed with the princess?” Rebecca asks her uncle.

Conrad shrugs, “Sure why not,” he agrees easily, sounding like an indulgent uncle granting a favor.

Lance and I exchange a look, nepotism at its finest, I think to myself, but see no reason to object.

“Oh, and your homework to practice setting up anti-mental magic wards on both you and Lily,” I tell Rebecca. “Idlewing should be able to tell when that’s been done correctly, as there’s some degree of overlap between soul and mental magics,” I tell her. “That’s mostly just in case Elizabeth does break free of her magic seal, I don’t want you two getting accidentally magically persuaded.”

Rebecca nods in agreement.

“You know, the kingdom has jewelers who make blank rings for enchantment,” Conrad points out, “I can place an order, have some rings ready for you in a couple of days. Just tell me what wards you want etched on them, then you can provide the enchantment. That’s how it’s supposed to work. Not having to physically craft the rings should make your job of supplying magic items for the royal guards easier. But you can use that same system to get yourself and your apprentices, including Rebecca, equipped.”

I think about it, “Ok, get me a half dozen blank fire resistance rings, half dozen mental magic resistance wards, and maybe three more pairs of communication devices, I want to make my own.”

I send tiny threads of mana into one of the communicator devices, try to get a feel for how they work. I’d covered them in school, of course, but examining a working one was a helpful refresher.

“That’s odd,” I mutter, “This communicator has something like a tenuous extra connection. As if…” I pause and choose my next words carefully. “It almost seems as if someone could connect some sort of recording spell to it. It would bypass anti-divination wards.”

“What are you saying?” Conrad asks.

“I might have some idea of how James knew what the eldest prince is up to,” I mutter, angrily, as I form a tight knot of mana threads to block off the remote connection. “Let me see all the communicators you have on you,” I tell Conrad.

Conrad hesitates, then begins removing various magic communicators from his pouch. Each one is marked with a different etched illustration on the back, so that it is possible to identify them at a glance. Carefully I repeat the process of blocking off the extraneous connection on all of them. When that is done, I tell Conrad, “Where did you order these from? I think they’ve got some sort of… I don’t know how to describe it… a back door? A special way in for someone to attach a recording spell. It would make it extremely easy to spy on what people are talking about using these devices. Although, you’d need to ensure that the recording device is somewhere near the communication device.”

Conrad’s face flushes red. “Damn inquisitors! How long have they been spying on us?”

“I’m not even sure the inquisitors are the only ones who could do this…” I say with a shrug. “But yeah, whoever sold these to you, left an unguarded channel anyone could use to listen in to your conversations and make recordings of them.”

“I’ll have to get every communicator in the palace and bring them over to you sooner or later,” Conrad says with a sigh, still looking angry.

“You trust me that much? I could be lying and somehow tampering with these myself,” I point out.

“Towards what end?” Conrad scuffs, “The king was right, a commoner graduate fresh out of the academy didn’t have enough time to form connections with all the interested noble factions. I trust you not to be on the same side as the inquisitors or you’d not have resisted bringing them in. I trust you to be interested in saving the king, or you wouldn’t have told us that his soul was missing. Healer Nigel did actually check this morning, just before I left; he found the right tools sooner than expected. He said you were right. Besides, I’ve got a good instinct about these sort of things; you’re too innocent to be a spy.”

“Thanks, I guess?” I snort in amusement.

"Well, you do seem to be shaping up to be a good counter-spy though. I'm impressed you figured this out," Conrad congratulates me.