Free The Stranger's Magic: The Labyrinths of Echo: Book Three by Max Frei

save me a trip to that blasted palace, anyway.”
    “Will you listen to him?” said Juffin. “‘That blasted palace.’ Any normal person would be thrilled to live in that luxurious place and wouldn’t come out for
years.”
    “Well, you know me,” I said. “I love a cold yurt at the outskirts of the Barren Lands, a hard wooden barstool in the Armstrong & Ella, or, if worse comes to worst, the
armchair in this office. Luxury items only overload my impoverished intellect.”
    “Then I hope you’re going to love the simple interiors of the Refuge for the Mad,” said Juffin. “Sir Shurf, you’re under arrest, so off you go to the cell. And if
your Rider pops his head in, try to follow my advice. Will you be able to sense the right moment?”
    “I have reason to believe that I might be able to accomplish this task,” said Lonli-Lokli.
    He walked over to the farthest wall of our office, to the Secret Entrance to our “detention cell.” The cell was just as good as Xolomi: you couldn’t leave, you couldn’t
perform magic, and you couldn’t even send a call to anyone from it. On the upside, however, you could easily hide from someone else’s magic in it. Juffin had built this magic room at
the dawn of the Code Epoch, right in the very beginning of his present job. A regular prison cell, you understand, couldn’t keep even a minor Magician of some worthless Order, and back then
the Secret Investigative Force had to deal with much more serious clients on a daily basis.
    For as long as I could remember, the detention cell had mostly stood empty. Only once did we have to lock up the dead-but-quick Jiffa Savanxa from the Magaxon Forest there. Even so, as it had
turned out, we should’ve known better.
    “Precisely,” said Juffin to Shurf as he locked the Secret Door. “I, too, believe that you are capable of accomplishing this task.”
    “Okay, so we’ve arrested Lonli-Lokli. Now we can head to the Refuge for the Mad,” I said. “Boy, are we having fun!”
    “I’m liking it, too,” said Juffin. “Let’s go, Sir Max.”

    “Where to?” I said as I was getting behind the lever of the amobiler.
    “First to the New City through the Gates of Three Bridges, then straight down parallel to the Xuron. I’ll show you the way when we reach the outskirts.”
    “It’s a bit far,” I said.
    “With you behind the lever, the distance doesn’t matter.” Juffin was unusually generous with his compliments, but he soon composed himself and added the proverbial fly to the
ointment: “Just try not to get us into some silly fatal accident, or instead of doing time, poor Shurf will do life.”
    “Yeah, I guess the sentence for attempted murder would be too long for Shurf. Well, instead of scaring me, why don’t you tell me what we’re going to do in the Refuge for the
Mad? Or is that another one of your secrets?”
    “No, rather a review session for poor students such as yourself. Do you remember what I taught you about finding out about the past of things?”
    “Do I? I’m a good learner and almost an A student. How can I forget the very basics of your lectures? You probably won’t believe me, but I even practice on occasion.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t think you’ve had much time for practicing lately,” said Juffin. “But maybe it’s all for the better and you’ll be able to help me
tonight. That would be mighty fine.”
    “Are we going to interrogate furniture again?”
    “No, not furniture. My latest lecture on this fascinating topic explains that people can be treated much the same as any inanimate object. The only difference is that an object will tell
us about the events that occurred in its surroundings and a person will divulge information about himself. Sometimes he will even reveal things he didn’t know he knew. Granted, it’s
much more difficult to work with people, and sometimes this kind of sorcery will only work on a sleeping person. We’re in luck, though. It’s close to