Magic Steps (22 page)

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 al most 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 every thing 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.

Azena, 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 Rokats neighbor, and climbed over the high, wall into the old mans 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 unrnagic. 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 apart of her skirt when something 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 some one 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.

She was beginning to see one forehead when the female voice said, “Take the unmagic off us or I’ll cut you up, you ungrateful ratbirth.”

“Suit yourself,” replied the high voice, now a little slurred.

Four people appeared at the heart of the net. One, hidden by two standing adults, was struggling wildly. Of the two who kept still, one was a man, brown-haired, brown-eyed, dressed in the plain breeches, shirt, and boots worn by many commoners. Sandry recognized him vaguely from the fight in Jamar Rokat’s countinghouse.

On his back was a frame like those that woodcutters used to carry their wares.

Empty straps dangled from it. He bent over a smaller person on the floor—their mage, thought Sandry uneasily—grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him upright.

Looking at the mage, Sandry realized why she had thought he was sunk into a pool of unmagic that day at Rokat House. He had no legs. His coarse breeches were folded and pinned around stumps that ended at mid-thigh. He clutched the dragons alt pouch tightly with both hands. He was dark-haired and sallow, terribly thin.

He’s Pasco’s age, thought Sandry in horror. She hadn’t realized that at their first meeting.

“Show yourself.” growled the other standing adult. “I know there are mages here.” It was a woman, big-hipped, black-haired, dressed in the same anonymous clothing as the man. Her back was to Sandry. Now she turned, revealing the fourth member of the group. “Too bad your kitchen sentry couldn’t keep his hands off the cake.”

She held Pasco easily. She had wrapped an arm around his neck, the crook of her elbow under his chin. Now she yanked, pulling the back of Pasco’s head, against her shoulder. Her free hand held, a dagger to the boy’s unprotected throat.

There was a wild look in her black eyes; her grin bared all of her yellowing teeth

She, looked like a furious mule.

‘“‘Oh, Pasco,” whispered Sandry. She picked up the spindle that she’d been keeping on her lap and stood, shedding the magical veil that had made her corner of the room seem empty.

“You?” the man asked scornfully. “You’re barely more than a child yourself! What have you to do with this?”

He and the woman struggled to yank free of the net’s clinging strands, without success. It held them in place as firmly as if they were glued there.

Sandry knew better than to tell them Pasco was her student. That would simply give them more power over her than they already had. “Did these people cut off your legs?” she asked the boy on the floor, keeping her voice gentle.

He looked up at her, and Sandry took a step back. There were not whites to his eyes, no pupils or irises—just nothingness. Unmagic riddled his entire body.

Very few spots left were untainted. He was draining into the cords of her net.

“Pirates done my legs,” he said lazily, his voice slurred with dragonsalt.

“Alzena ‘n Nurhar’re my frien’s. They give me this.” He hoisted the drug pouch and frowned. “But they keep takin’ it away. They want my magic like the pirates done”

“I’ll bet they do,” whispered Sandry. She turned her eyes on the adults—Alzena and Nurhar, the boy mage had called them. “Surrender,” she told them.

“I think not,” Alzena said, drawing the knife-point down Pasco’s neck. A thin line of blood followed it as Pasco whimpered. “I can make this killing last.”

She shifted her grip on Pasco to hold him more firmly still. “This net here is your doing? You let us go, and he’ll live.”

Sandry watched Alzena and Nurhar. Both were striped with unmagic. They had worn the spells too long without being cleansed, if they had even known cleansing was necessary. Before long the shadow would devour them as it had this boy.

If she let them go to save Pasco, who else might they kill before they stopped existing? Would they even keep their word not to kill him? They had to like what they did, surely, to do so much of it.

Her palms were damp. “I beg you, let him go. He’s nothing to you.”

“Sure enough,” replied Alzena with that teeth-baring grin. “But he’s something to you, isn’t he? Free us.” Again the dagger trailed down Pasco’s throat, leaving a second cut to ooze blood. Pasco screamed and thrashed against her imprisoning arm. The cry was strangled; she had jerked against his chin, closing his mouth.

“We don’t want the guards to hear our little talk. And they’re about, aren’t they?” Alzena wanted to know. “Not in earshot, or they’d hear us now, but upstairs, maybe? Downstairs? Free us. We’ll loose the boy once we’re out the gate, and run like lightning.”

Coldness settled in Sandry’s mind. Everything was very still and clear. Will you really? she thought, weighing their deeds against Alzena’s words. Or will you just keep taking hostages until someone puts an arrow through you? How many will you slaughter before an archer gets a killing shot?

Pasco’s eyes met hers, pleading. Blood trickled in two streams down his neck. He was her student. She should have known he would try to stay behind and watch.

“I have to take up the pegs at the corners,” Sandry replied. She didn’t have to pretend to be frightened, her fear was close enough to grasp and use. “Once that’s done, I can roll up the net. Just—please, don’t hurt Pasco. Please don’t.” If she pleaded, she knew, they would think her weak.

“Don’t beg, wench,” Alzena told her. “It just makes me angry. Get your pox-rotted pegs.” The dagger flicked along the line of Pasco’s jaw, opening a third cut.

That chilled Sandry to the bone. She went clockwise around the edges of the net, removing the pegs from their sockets with her free hand. The other hand, the one on the side turned away from the captives, held her spindle.