Magic Steps (17 page)

“Lady Sandry?”Oama whispered. She drew close to the girl, but didn’t touch her.

Summersea residents knew very well that it was a bad idea to bother a mage in the middle of a working. “Colonel Snaptrap’s assistants came. They’re gathering all the—the unmagic, they called it—on the stairwell, and on the ground floor.

They said you should know.”

Relief. Sandry rolled the top of her linen bag to close it. An order to the fibers in the cloth sent them weaving through one another. At last the bag was sealed as well as if she had sewn it shut with fine, tight stitches. Once that was done, she put the bag next to its mates, and found a chair for herself.

What next? she wondered, resting her head on her hands.

“Lady Sandry?’ It was Oama again. She offered her water flask. “Captain Qais and his investigators are here. They got statements from the others and from Kwaben and me. You’re all that’s left.”

She’d forgotten the Provost’s Guards. “Tell them to make it quick,” Sandry whispered. She accepted the water flask and drank deeply. If she hadn’t thought it would be disagreeable, she might have poured water down her nose in the hope of rinsing away the stink of blood and death.

It wasn’t the captain who questioned her, but the tiny woman with the seamed face and the old eyes. A scribe took notes as the investigator got Sandry to tell her story, from Wulfrics arrival at the Bountiful Inn to that very moment, Once done, she took Sandry over it again, making changes as Sandry added things she had forgot ten, or barely spoken of.

When she was done, the woman laid a hand on her arm. “You’ve been a very brave girl, my lady,” she told Sandry warmly. “Captain Behazin and Lieutenant Ulrina said, you were true to the heart and would, never falter, and they were right.”

Sandry blinked. “Oh. Thank you.”

“My lady.” Captain Qais had come in he bowed to hen “All done?” he asked the investigator who had questioned Sandry. She nodded. He jerked his head toward the door. The woman bowed to Sandry and left, taking the scribe with her.

“Well,” the captain said, his dark face wooden. “I must say, my lady, it would have been better if you had left this—unmagic—to Master Wulfric’s assistants.”

The captain tucked his thumbs in his belt. “I am sure his grace will be most displeased when he learns of your involvement here.”

Sandry rubbed her hands over her face. “At least you had the sense not to interrupt me while I was working,” she informed the man, ignoring his indignant gasp. “And my uncle will understand why I involved myself. Pasco really is related to you? Because he’s not at all stiff.” She was being rude, as rude as her friend Tris. She would probably spend days writing a properly apologetic note after this was all over, but just now she didn’t care.

“You are under a strain, lady.” Qais appeared more wooden than ever. “I have told you, violent scenes like this are no place for a gently reared young woman.

And while our family is gratified by your interest in my scape grace nephew, it does no good to encourage him in his odd imaginings. Dancing, even dancing magic, whatever that means, will not clothe him or feed his children when toe is a man. It would be better for you to send him to Lightsbridge or Winding Circle for lessons, and for him to settle once and for all into the training he needs for real work.*

Sandry got to her feet. This time she trembled with fury as she stared up into the captains eyes. “Until you know more of magic, you will not voice opinions about it,’ Each word dropped from her lips like a chunk of ice. ‘For your information, I am proud and honored to be Pasco’s teacher. He will be a credit to me. If he’s a ‘scape grace’ with ‘odd imaginings,’ perhaps it’s because no one gave him reason to think he had anything good to offer.” The captain came to a jarring halt against a windowsill, She had backed him out of the inner office and across the outer one, “He will settle for wherever his power takes him. And if the mages of Winding Circle temple can’t tell where that is, I really don’t think you should even hazard a guess. Am I done here?’”’

The. captain nodded., tight-lipped.

“Then I have business; that will not wait.’ Sandry looked around to see if she had forgotten anything, “Good day to you, Captain Qais.” She strode out of the room, and, down, the hall, ignoring the Provost’s Guards who were there.

Wulfes assistants were on the ground floor. She stopped, to tell them where she had left the unmagic she collected. Even, in the dim lamplight on that floor Sandry could see that Ulrina’s eyes were red and swollen from weeping. Captain Behazin’s voice was hoarse. At Sandry’s request they agreed to hold on to the stores of recovered unmagic that Wulfric had kept, as well as what they had gathered that day, until they heard from her.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to them. “I wasn’t quick enough—we had no idea they were here—,” She squeezed her hands so tightly that her nails bit into her palms.

Both the captain and the lieutenant shook their heads. “It’s this curst magic they’ve got,” Behazin told her roughly. “We’ve no way to register it like we have other magics. He said he thought if anyone could think of a way to handle the unmagic, it would be you.”

That was too much for Sandry. She bolted for the door, not even thanking Kwaben as he held it open. A Provost’s Guard was holding their horses; when Sandry mounted Russet, the Guard gently patted her hand. She managed a smile for the woman, then turned her horse east.

“Shouldn’t we go to Duke’s Citadel?” demanded Oama, trotting her mount to catch up. “His grace will be fit to be tied if he hears of this—“

“I know, and I can’t help that,” replied Sandry, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

“I need to talk to the mage council at Winding Circle.” She glanced over at Kwaben.

“You must see a healer about that cut,” she said flatly. “Why don’t you take word back to the Citadel that I’m all right?”

He shook his head. There are healers at Winding Circle, aren’t there?” he asked.

“We can send a messenger bird to his grace.”

“You have to keep us with you, Lady Sandry,” Oama said. “Otherwise we could end up hanging over the inner gate by our ankles for letting you walk into a trap.”

“I didn’t—,” protested Sandry. “You couldn’t have—oh, never mind.” She kicked Russet into a trot. The sooner she got to Winding Circle, the sooner she would know if they’d found a way to handle a mage who dealt in unmagic, or if she would have to try something of her own.

Please, gods, she thought fiercely, let them have a way to settle this. Please don’t make me do it.

there was no way Sandry could break the news gently to Duke Vedris. “I’m going to lay a trap for the Dihanurs. The mages at Winding Circle think I have a chance.”

For a moment there was only silence as the duke’s eyes met hers. Then he said, “No. We have provosts mages, even battle-mages, with more experience in the taking of killers than you.”

“This is different, Uncle.”

“I forbid you to put yourself in such danger,” the duke said tightly.

Sandry gulped and stood her ground. “I don’t like it either, but I don’t see another way. They must be stopped.”

The duke turned his gaze to Lark, who stood just behind Sandry. “How cart this be? Of all the mages at Winding Circle, how is my great-niece the only one who can handle this monster?”

“Not just me, Uncle,” Sandry told him. “Pasco’s going to help.” The moment she spoke the words, she wished she could unsay them—or at least unsay her student’s name.

The duke rested his shaved head on his hands. “That feckless, rattle-pated

Well. Knowing that he will assist you makes all the difference. Now, instead of wishing to throw Winding Circle’s mage council into the harbor, I will do so.

Immediately.”

“Your grace, you know we can’t allow that,” Lark said gravely.

He looked up, and raised a finger. “Ah. You are powerful enough to stop me from tossing your council bodily into my harbor, but you tell me you cannot stop the Dihanur assassins and their mage. Can you see that I might feel somewhat—confused?”

Lark settled herself in a chair in front of Duke Vedris’s desk. “You may as well get comfortable, dear,” she advised Sandry. “He’s going to be difficult.” Sandry obeyed, taking the seat beside hers. To the duke Lark said, “We will do all we can—prepare the materials she needs, guard her and Pasco when the time comes, and dispose of what remains of the enemy’s work. We won’t send a fourteen-year-old girl and a twelve-year-old boy naked to do battle with a blighted mage.”

“Strange,” remarked Erdogun. He sat just behind the duke’s chair. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

Lark folded her hands. “You know I am classed as a great mage.” The duke nodded.

“I work spells by passing them through my thread. I must bind my power to real thread and whatever I use to handle it, or none of my spells work. That’s true of every weaver-mage I know—except Sandry. She handles magic itself like I work thread. She can spin magic. She can weave it. She can embroider, or knot, or even tie a fringe with it, if she wants to—,”

“Lark,” Sandry protested.

“No, my dear, it’s important that people know how unique your gift is. In this case it’s vital—I’d hate to have to fight the Dihanur mage and his grace.”

The duke smiled, but his eyes were grim. “I’m honored that you would think the task difficult.”

“But why?” Erdogun demanded. “You’re a great mage—your fellows on the council are great mages, legendary for power and craft. You have an arsenal of capture-magics and spells to drain the power of other mages. Do you really expect us to believe you people can’t take this—fellow—and turn him into a tea cozy, if that’s your fancy? However powerful this madman may be, I do not believe that he can stand against all of you.”

“But he can,” Lark insisted. “The nature of his magic is the absence of ours, don’t you see? We could grip him with all we have, and he would not only walk away, but his magic would consume ours. Sandry got a taste of that when the Dihanurs escaped. His unmagic almost pulled her into the door he’d opened.”

“Then how will anything that my lady does trap him?” demanded Erdogun.

Sandry told the baron, “I’m going to spin his unmagic into a rope and knot it into a net. Then Pasco will dance the spell to bring the mage and the two killers to us. They won’t be able to fight it, any of them, because they’re all so tainted with the nothingness that it’s like their own lifeblood. The unmagic net will pull them in.”

“Once we have them, we can cleanse them,” said Lark. “You’ll have the killers for trial, and we’ll keep the mage in custody. And it must be soon, before they can work their way through the layers of spells on the inner keep.”

“What?” cried Erdogun, offended. “The inner keep is impregnable once the protective spells are activated!”

“It isn’t impregnable to this mage, haven’t you been listening?” Lark demanded.

“Thank your lucky stars that he doesn’t know the rooms where the families are kept, or he would simply walk through from where he’s hiding now into those rooms. Once he tires of trying that, he’ll just bring the Dihanurs here and send them through the spells. It may take them time to go through each and every layer—think of acid eating its way through a bolt of cloth—but eventually they’ll get through.”

“Are there are no spells against nothingness in the layers?” asked the duke quietly.

Lark shook her head. “To spell against it, you would have to use it—and then it would spread and eat all of the other spells.” To Erdogun she said, “Must they break into this castle before you re convinced?”

“They can’t,” Erdogun said flatly. “You Winding Circle people are alarmists.”

Someone hammered on the study floor. “Your grace! Your grace, please open up!”

Alzena was getting very tired of Duke Vedris. Putting all of the Rokats in one place for safekeeping should have been perfect for her and Nurhar, but this duke was an old fox who knew the ways of hunters. He had brought them into his own residence. Now they hid in the castle’s very heart—a stone tower hundreds of years old, with more layers of spells to ward it than there were stars.

Why do this? Alzena wondered as she slid by the guards at the last gate to the duke’s residence. Everyone knew Vedris only tolerated the Rokats for their myrrh. If he hated them, why bring them here?

She would kill him, when she was done with the Emelan Rokats—or she would if she wished. She cared about so little except that one goal, the end of these Rokats.

The family had invested so much to send them here, the expense greater than that spent on the teams in any of the other Pebbled Sea countries. Jamar and Qasam had been the brothers of the Rokat who had killed Palaq Dihanur and displayed his heacbin dishonor; many of those now in the inner keep were the grandchildren of Jamar and Qasam Rokat. Their deaths came first; they had to. Only when the last Ernelan Rokat was dead could Alzena tell this duke what she thought of his interference.

The numbers of people in this Citadel were a nuisance, but only that. She simply had to be careful that no one blundered, into her.

At first the palace spells were laughable, cobwebs against her face as she climbed the steps to the duke’s residence, The main doors were closed and guarded. .Alzena, waited,. Sooner or later they would open—as they did now. A woman, in servant’s gray emerged, arguing with a pair of guards. Alzena slipped around them and, went inside.

Today was a scouting mission only with no palace maps; available for study one of them had to explore the place. Next time when they were ready ‘to finish their work,’ Nurhar would come to help with the killing. It was time that he did,. Even she would not be quick enough, to slaughter them all before someone thought to attack the place where she, might be, or to throw a net over her.

Alzena found her way by feel, choosing her direction by the number of cobweb-magics that brushed her as she walked. The thicker they felt, the closer she was to her quarry. On she trudged, eyes straining as she peered through the slit in her spell-rnask. The feel of cobwebs got heavier; it took more and more effort to walk through them. The very air gained weight, until she could manage just one labored step at a time.