Magic Steps

  Now Sandry moved back from her creation, trying to ignore the dark film that lay over her clothes. Everything she had worn or used for this working would be burned when this was over. In her vision the dark cords of the unmagic net were stark against the red and white tiles of the floor pattern. Best of all, they matched it perfectly.

  “Pasco,” she whispered.

  As he walked in, Dedicate Skyfire stopped him and pressed a leather pouch into his hand.

  “Once you complete the center square,” Lark said, pointing, “drop that in the middle, understand?”

  Pasco opened the pouch. Moonstream said, “Don’t,” and Skyfire barked, “Careful with that, boy,” as he peeked inside.

  Pasco glanced at them, then lowered his nose close to the mouth of the pouch and gave the tiniest of sniffs. When he looked up, he surveyed everyone with eyes that were huge with reproach. “This is dragonsalt.”

  “That it is,” replied Skyfire crisply.

  “It’s illegal,” the boy persisted. “Having it gets you ten years in the granite quarries up north.”

  Skyfire uttered a bark of laughter. “Nonsense, young Acalon — no one survives ten years in the quarries.”

  Pasco stared at the tall dedicate, his mouth stubborn. “Selling it gets your guts ripped out on Penitence Hill.”

  Sandry put her hands on her hips. “We know it’s bad, Pasco,” she said quietly. “It’s how their mage has done so much damage without his unmagic eating him alive. It’s bait, all right? Otherwise he’ll see the net and never step onto it. We’ll have the other two and not him.”

  Pasco nodded and closed the pouch, tucking it into his pocket. He came to stand at the north corner of the net. As the musicians played the opening of the dance tune, Sandry heard him whisper, “Come to me, rats!”

  When Pasco heard his cue, he jumped lightly into the center of the first net square. He danced beautifully, his toes flicking one way and another, pointing to each corner. Then he was on to the next square, and the next.

  Sandry watched and sweated, terrified he would miss a step and brush the nothingness. Soon she realized there could as well have been yards of space between his feet and those invisible cords for all the closer he came to them. Yazmín had given him movements for his arms and torso that seemed to add to his magic. With each change of position, the silver fire left in his wake grew brighter.

  Sandry’s other fear, that leaving the dragonsalt pouch in the center square might throw the boy off, was soon banished. She didn’t even see him reach for it, but as he jumped to the next square, the pouch slid from his hand. It struck the midpoint of the center square with a soft thump.

  Almost before Sandry realized it, Pasco was skipping lightly over the north peg. He stopped, twirled, and bowed deeply to her. The silver fire that had trailed him knotted and sprang back into the pattern of his dance, enclosed on all sides by the unmagic.

  “Very good,” Skyfire told the boy. “Your part’s done now. Scat.”

  “You heard him,” added Moonstream, her face kind. “Very nice work, young Master Acalon. Now go, before your fish swim into this net.”

  Back inside the duke’s residence, Alzena scouted the inner keep again. Perhaps there was a route she had missed, one not so closely watched. She left Nurhar and the mage in a tower room that gave them access to the roof. Then she went to see what she might find, after taking a second dose of dragonsalt. It was amazing stuff. She thought so much better with it in her veins, even if it did make her irritable. Maybe she wouldn’t give it up, once she returned home.

  What she found was enough to make her start killing everyone she saw, if it hadn’t been for her family duty. There were three ways to come at the inner keep — she learned that by listening to servants. When she tried them, she found that entire squads of the Duke’s Guard were actually camped in the halls — bedrolls, equipment, and even the Guards themselves clumped so closely together that an approach was impossible. No matter how careful she was, the litter of soldiers and possessions guaranteed she would bump into something or someone and rouse the others.

  She stood there, hands clenched with fury, glaring at these insects that were ruining her plans. It took a few moments for her to realize that something had stirred the insects up. When their officers were not looking, they were muttering to one another. The subject was the mad old man who had just stalked out of the inner keep, declaring he would go home.

  Alzena listened. Could it be? Had a Rokat walked out of his hiding place?

  She trotted off through the palace corridors, listening to the talk as she went. When she reached the main hall, she found all the gossip she’d heard was true.

  “I have business matters that will not wait!” A richly dressed man in his sixties was shaking his walking stick at a tall, bald black man whose nostrils curved as if he smelled something bad. The crossed keys badge on his tunic marked him as the duke’s seneschal, Erdogun fer Baigh. “If those murdering beasts have not struck by now, it’s because they’ve given up. What do they care for us little fish, anyway?”

  “Master Rokat,” began the bald man.

  “Don’t you ‘Master Rokat’ me, Baron fer Baigh!” cried the older man. “My kinfolk will huddle in that dungeon you call the inner keep if they wish, but Durshan Rokat is going home!” He turned to a cluster of muscled women and men who could only be bodyguards. “I don’t pay you to gorge on his grace’s food and laze!” he snapped. “We are leaving. Call my chair at once!”

  A bodyguard ran to do as he was ordered. Erdogun fer Baigh snapped his fingers for a footman. “Since Master Rokat no longer desires our hospitality,” he said, his voice clipped, “tell the watch commander I require two squads of Duke’s Guards to accompany him home. Two squads, mind. I want all Summersea to know this man is under the duke’s protection.” He turned away and began to climb the broad stair that rose from the hall. “You’d think these people didn’t want to stay alive,” he muttered.

  Alzena watched the old man and his guards leave, wondering. They were so close to the inner keep and all those Rokats. But there was that carpet of guards to think of. Perhaps no one here had thought to watch the keep’s upper stories as well as the ground floor, but it didn’t seem likely. And here was a Rokat — an old one, as old as Palaq Dihanur had been when Rokats cut off his head — who insisted that he return to his house.

  Every instinct clamored for her to go after the old man. Her Dihanur masters had taught her that as one of her first lessons: take the weak and easy prey first. No matter that his was one of the houses they hadn’t scouted before they killed Jamar Rokat — tracking Durshan would be as easy as breathing, with all those guards around him. People would talk of their passing for hours: the Dihanurs need only follow the gossip.

  Take the weak, easy, and stupid prey first. Those families in the inner keep were going nowhere, and finding that carpet of guards had discouraged her. A killing today would improve her mood. Letting this prey escape was mad. What if he reached his house, stayed a few hours or a day, lost his courage, and returned? She wouldn’t even have his head to display somewhere — somewhere like this large, drafty entrance hall. Maybe the sight of a fresh head would give this cursed Duke Vedris another heart attack. In the confusion of his collapse, who was to say they wouldn’t relax their guard on the inner keep?

  This sense of rightness was the most powerful feeling she’d had in a long time. She knew it in her gut: Durshan Rokat’s killing would break this cycle of frustration.

  When she reached the room where she had left her husband and the mage, she found Nurhar wild with energy and the mage shivering. Quickly she told them about the old man and the human carpet. “He’s a spoiled elder with no more brains than a rabbit,” she told Nurhar. “I want his head.”

  Nurhar caught fire over the idea, too. He hoisted the mage into his carry-frame. “Cover us well,” he told their charge as he tightened the straps. “No slip-ups.”

  “I never slip up,” mumbled the mage. ?
??I’m not the one who got cut and needed a healer you had to ki—”

  Alzena slapped his face. “If you are not silent, I will cut out your tongue,” she whispered.

  He stared at her with eyes that were set in deep black circles, with no trace of white remaining. “How’re you different from the pirates?” he wanted to know. “They hit me when they felt grumpy, too.”

  Nurhar crouched beside him. “She didn’t mean it,” he told the mage. “She’s just frustrated. We’re all frustrated.”

  The mage hid his face in his hands. “There is something about this place,” he whispered through his fingers. “All these spells. Centuries of them. Centuries … Take me out of here. Closer to Durshan Rokat’s house, perhaps I can do something. Yes.” He looked at them, black eyes glistening. “Yes, get me closer. The air here is bad for me — too many spells. Once in the city I can work better.”

  “You’d better find a way to handle all the spells here,” Nurhar said, his voice ice. “Once we’ve got the old man, we’re coming back.” He picked up the mage’s carry-frame and slung it on his back. “You’ll get us into that inner keep if I have to use your head as a battering ram.”

  Pasco was following the musicians out when he rebelled. This wasn’t right. He wanted to see his net work. They were treating him like a child, when they might have no chance to get these rats without him. He was going to stay, that was all there was to it.

  But how? In a moment those mages would come out of the net room. They would disappear within spells to make them look like part of the house, or the garden, or the street outside. He’d heard them talk about that. If they saw him, they would make him go.

  Suddenly he remembered something from the day before. Yazmín had been teaching allurement dances. One had a movement that caught his imagination: the dancer held an arm straight out with the hand at right angles to the arm. The dancer then pulled the other hand over her face with the fore and middle fingers parted in a sideways arrow. While one hand traveled across the eyes, the dancer looked sidelong at the outstretched hand. Yazmín had called it a “flirt.” Pasco thought it also looked like something that — with a bit of magic behind it — might achieve the opposite result. It could make people look away from the person who made it. Their eyes might slide off the mage; they might never see him.

  Standing in the hall, he closed his eyes and took his seven-count breaths, holding them and letting them go as he’d been taught. The feeling he was beginning to know was his magic, a kind of fizzy tingle, filled him almost instantly. He gracefully lifted his left arm, holding it out palm up and outward, as he let his power roll down it. Now he raised his right hand, forming the arrow with forefinger and middle finger. He drew it across his eyes as he looked sidelong at his left hand. While he did these things, he cast some of that fizzy sense out through his left arm, and poured more through his right hand, making it flow away from him.

  The woman they called Moonstream emerged from the dining room, talking to redheaded Skyfire. “I hope this works,” she said. “Otherwise we may have to do something drastic.”

  Skyfire bark-laughed. “Any ideas on what this drastic thing will be?”

  Moonstream shook her head. “Not a one,” she said ruefully. They walked right by Pasco. “How often are we called on to deal with a mage like this, anyway?”

  They didn’t see me! I did it! Pasco thought gleefully, struggling to hang on to his power. I worked a magic all by myself!

  Now for a place to hide. The corner of the kitchen between the hearth and the cupboards seemed best. No one would stand guard in that part of the house at all, in case the rats came in that way, and Pasco could hear everything that went on in the dining room from there. Just now Dedicate Lark was telling Lady Sandry, “I’ll be downstairs with the guards. Call if you need help.”

  “Of course,” Lady Sandry assured her. “Pasco did a good job, didn’t he?”

  Pasco beamed.

  “The boy has talent,” Lark said. “Don’t forget to conceal yourself, my darling. You don’t want them to see you until they’ve stepped into the net.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Lady Sandry assured her.

  Dedicate Lark walked in from the dining room. For a moment she hesitated, frowning. Pasco felt the tiniest, most delicate shift under him, as if someone were tugging a rug from under his feet. Hurriedly he called up his power again, and drew his hand over his eyes once more. Look away, look away, he thought.

  At last Dedicate Lark shrugged, and went to the cellar door. She stopped, checked around one last time, then went downstairs.

  14

  Alzena, Nurhar, and the mage caught up with Durshan Rokat just past the Arsenal gates, in a snarl of people and horses caused by an overturned wagon on Spicer Street. Once they would have been amused by the Guards’ frustration over the delay and their fear that the Dihanurs might try to kill the old man there. Alzena thought they could have spared themselves that worry. Seeing all those people in the halls to the inner keep had made her jumpy. There were too many chances here to collide with someone and be caught. Instead they watched the old man and his protectors dully, waiting until the tangle cleared.

  When it did, they kept well back from Rokat, but followed him all the way home. They went a scant block away when he entered the gateyard of his house, leaving the Duke’s Guards to position themselves on the street side of his property wall. None of them looked happy; they heard one woman tell her lieutenant, “May as well draw a target on his head, the old fool.”

  Half of the hired bodyguards went into the house ahead of Rokat to make sure no one lay in wait. When they signaled, Durshan trotted inside. The rest of his bodyguard sat around the gateyard. From the looks on their faces, they were not happy with the situation. They grumbled to one another, sharpened weapons, and kept an eye on the gate.

  Alzena disliked the thought of passing among them on her way to the front door as much as she had disliked making an attempt on Spicer Street. She and Nurhar conferred in the softest of whispers, still a block away from their target’s house. They knew that the chances were the back door and roof were watched, since the guards would know how Alzena had entered Fariji Rokat’s house. It was Nurhar who remembered they still carried the hooks and ropes meant for use at Duke’s Citadel. Within minutes they had stolen into a garden belonging to Durshan Rokat’s neighbor, and climbed over the high wall into the old man’s garden.

  Alzena and Nurhar were giddy: after days of frustration and dead ends, they were close to a kill. Even the mage seemed to catch the fever. He softly urged them to hurry inside.

  Pantry and kitchen alike were empty. They hesitated, wondering where the old man might have gone. Then Alzena distinctly heard his voice in the next room. She started for it, but stopped when she felt Nurhar’s hand on her arm. She couldn’t have seen it if he had pointed, so he turned her chin until she saw the corner beside the hearth. A slice of cake hung in midair. Crumbs dripped from it as an invisible mouth took a bite.

  Alzena lunged for the cake and pressed a body into the corner. She guessed where that mouth was and covered it with one hand. Magic evaporated. A wide-eyed boy appeared. He scrabbled at her with clutching hands, able to feel her if not see her.

  She felt Nurhar against her back and heard his softest whisper: “Cover him, mage.”

  There was a creak of the carry-frame and a ghostly spell-whisper. The boy vanished, this time cloaked in unmagic. Alzena gripped his waist with one arm, using her free hand to keep his mouth covered.

  He fought her madly now. Of course, she thought. He doesn’t even have an eye slit to show him the real world is still here. For all his struggles, she easily kept him under control as she maneuvered him through the door into the next room.

  It was empty, as bare as if no one lived here. No, that wasn’t true. A pouch lay at the center of the tiled floor.

  Hidden by woven air that made her seem like part of the wall, Sandry was absently unweaving and reweaving a part of her skirt when someth
ing thumped in the kitchen. It wasn’t Durshan Rokat. He was upstairs, ringed by guards; he had obeyed orders and gone straight to his protectors. Sandry was the only one on the ground floor of the house.

  She sat up, all her senses alert. None of the sentry mages had warned her, but the chance that they would detect the killers’ approach had always been small.

  Come on, she thought, not daring to twitch, hoping it was them and not a mouse. You feel the net calling you. If it does what I think, you’ll believe what you want most is right in here…

  Dark-smeared air rolled into the dining room from the kitchen and passed over her spell-net. From its position on the floor the net began to ripple and rise, shaping itself around solid forms.

  She heard feet scuffle, then a grunt. Wood creaked; cloth rustled. A chunk of shadow separated from the main body of it and fell hard, as a body falls, beside the pouch of dragonsalt at the heart of the net. There was a snarl from the larger darkness. The pouch rose in the air, opened, turned over to spill out a mound of the drug, then straightened. The mound disappeared, as if someone unseen had popped it into his mouth.

  “Alzena, I’m caught!” whispered a man’s voice. “I can’t pull free!”

  “Curse you for a useless piece of mule dung, mage,” a hoarse female voice said. “Take the spells off now.”

  Sandry felt a touch of panic before she remembered that she was hidden from view. The woman was talking to someone else.

  “I don’t want to,” a high, trembling voice said from the unmagic near the dragonsalt pouch. “I like the spells. I like it here.”

  The shadow patterns of the spell-net rippled while the unseen people talked. Its cords draped and twined around the larger mass, then sent out a number of tendrils. Each turned into a small fan at the tip. Not fans, she realized as dark hair on two heads slowly appeared at the top of the tallest shadow. My net isn’t spreading out; it’s sucking the unmagic in.