The Sorcerer's Widow

CHAPTER TWELVE

From Grandgate Market Dorna led the way down Soldiertown Street, then hesitated where Barracks Street forked off to the left. She looked at Kel. He pointed to the right, and they continued down Soldiertown, drawing curious glances from passersby.

As they continued almost due south through Soldiertown, Dorna grew steadily more agitated. Finally she stopped, and looked around wildly.

“We’re going the wrong way!” she said. “He’s in that direction!” She pointed ahead and to the left.

“He’s probably somewhere in Smallgate,” Kel said, nodding.

“But none of the streets go that direction!”

“No, they don’t,” Kel agreed, puzzled.

“Why not?”

This question struck Kel as rather like asking why water is wet; the streets went where the streets went, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. “Most of the streets in Soldiertown go either north and south, or east and west,” he said. “Except for the alleys off Gambler Street, there aren’t any curves or diagonals between Whore Street and Smallgate.”

She glared at him.

“There are plenty of crooked streets in Smallgate,” Kel offered helpfully. “That’s how you’ll know when we’re in Smallgate, and not in Soldiertown anymore.”

“Then how are we supposed to get to where Ezak has my things, if none of the streets go there?”

“He’s probably somewhere in Smallgate,” Kel repeated.

“Yes, but how do we get to Smallgate?”

“Straight down Soldiertown to Midway Street is the easiest,” Kel said.

“What’s the fastest?”

“Oh, I don’t…I mean…” Kel looked around for a way to escape, but Dorna grabbed his shoulder.

“Show me,” she demanded.

Kel bit his lower lip, then nodded. “This way,” he said.

They turned left on Gambler Street, then right on Cheaters’ Alley, where Kel popped the hidden latch on Bennimin the Lender’s back gate, so they could cut through a nameless courtyard, ducking under a clothesline and then out a smoke-blackened passage to emerge on Armorer Street, which they followed four blocks further south, past homes and second-hand shops and a tinker’s workshop-the actual armorers were all further to the north. A dry culvert, another courtyard, and another narrow nameless alley brought them to Archer Street, where Dorna’s talisman indicated their target was now almost directly south of them, straight down the road, less than half a mile away; the sorcerer’s widow was visibly relieved by this discovery. “It’s a good thing we left the wagon with Irien,” she said, glancing back at the route they had followed. “But it’s straight from here.” She smiled.

Kel was not quite so cheerful about it. He was somewhat surprised they had not encountered any real obstacles or hazards yet-the shortcuts they had used were not always so cooperative. He knew that “straight” did not always mean “easy,” and in fact their route probably wasn’t going to be straight at all. Archer Street ended at Smallgate Street, just north of a tangle of alleys and byways that Dorna would probably find incomprehensible-not to mention dangerous. That was Kel’s home neighborhood, and where he thought they were likely to find Ezak, but the prospect of bringing a woman there, a small woman who did not know the city or its customs and who did not look at all intimidating, did not appeal to him. She did have her magical weapon, but the people most likely to jump her might not recognize it as a weapon at all. Her only visible protection would be Kel, and Kel did not think his presence was going to seriously deter anyone-especially after dark, and the afternoon shadows were lengthening ominously. As he watched, he saw a woman in a gauzy red skirt step out to light the lantern above her elaborately-painted door.

Dorna looked at her talisman, ignoring the locals. “There’s something over that way that’s interfering,” she said, pointing to the west.

“Wizard Street is about eight blocks in that direction,” Kel said.

“That would account for it,” she acknowledged.

They marched on, past Uncle Vezalis’ house; Kel did not point it out, and the talisman apparently did not react to it. Ten minutes after emerging from the alley they reached the intersection of Archer and Smallgate, where Archer Street ended. Dorna stared at the tenement ahead of them as if its existence was a personal affront, then looked down at the talisman. “It’s still pointing straight ahead,” she said. “About…two hundred yards, maybe?”

Kel nodded. “This way,” he said, turning right.

Dorna reluctantly followed, keeping an eye on the talisman and glancing now and then at the two- and three-story buildings that lined the south side of Smallgate Street.

“Smallgate Street doesn’t actually go to the gate,” Kel remarked, trying to distract her. “It ends at Wall Street maybe a quarter-mile from the gatehouse. It’s just called Smallgate Street because it leads straight from the Palace to the district of Smallgate. The only streets at the gate itself are Wall Street and Landsend Street.”

“All right,” Dorna said, obviously not listening.

Kel sighed. “This way,” he said, turning left into an alley.

Dorna followed, still focused on the golden boot-heel as Kel led her around the corner into the shadowed passage. She was oblivious to their surroundings, trusting Kel and her sorcery to guide her.

“Dorna?” Kel said, as they walked on.

“Right,” she said, staring at the talisman.

“Dorna!”

She looked up, annoyed. “What?”

“You might want to be less obvious about that thing you’re holding.”

Dorna looked around, suddenly realizing that they were in a cramped, crooked alley between two buildings that had seen not merely better days, but better centuries. The plaster walls on either side were webbed with cracks and patches, and the patches themselves were cracked and patched-or sometimes not patched; wattle was exposed several places. The ground beneath their feet was packed garbage, not sand. The few windows within ten feet of the ground were tightly shuttered, or completely bricked up. The windows on the upper floors were more varied-open, closed, shuttered, barred, or broken-and she could see at least two pairs of eyes staring down at them from open casements. Little sunlight managed to find its way through the narrow gap between the roofs overhead. There were no other pedestrians in sight.

“This isn’t a safe place for outsiders,” Kel said. “Or for anyone, really.”

“Oh,” Dorna said. Instead of putting the talisman out of sight, though, as Kel had hoped she would, she merely switched it to her other hand and drew the black weapon from her belt and held that ready.

“It’s going to get worse,” Kel said.

She threw him a glance. “Why? Isn’t there a safer route?”

“To where we usually live when Ezak’s uncle won’t let us in? No.”

“No?”

“We needed a place so bad slavers wouldn’t come in and catch us while we were sleeping.”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Oh.” She looked around the alley again. “How do you know he isn’t at his uncle’s house?”

“Because we went right past it, and your magic didn’t point at it.”

Dorna looked at her talisman, then at Kel. “We did?”

Kel nodded. “Uncle Vezalis lives back on Archer Street,” he said, pointing back the way they had come. “A block north of Smallgate Street. I don’t think Ezak would trust his uncle with stolen magic in the house.”

“Oh.”

“I think I know where Ezak is, though.”

“Go on, then,” she said, gesturing with the weapon.

Kel went, leading the way through a broken gate at the back of the alley, across a shadowy courtyard that stank of things Kel did not care to think about, along a stretch of alleyway that had been walled off and no longer connected to any other streets, through the ruins of a building where the roof had fallen in years earlier, along another alley, and then down a set of steep steps into a dim, damp, stone-walled tunnel. The sandy floor squashed wetly beneath their feet.

Now that she had been alerted to the situation, Dorna grew more apprehensive as this journey through the maze of Smallgate wound on; in that first alley at least the eyes watching them from those upstairs windows had been human. By the time they crossed the ruin the only living creatures she saw were rats and spiders, and the rats were bolder than any she had ever encountered, staring at her, making no move to hide or flee.

“How can a place like this exist in Ethshar?” she whispered, as she ducked into the tunnel. “A place this deserted and decrepit?”

Kel looked back at her, startled. “It can’t all be palaces,” he said.

“I know that, but this…”

“We wanted a place the slavers couldn’t get us,” Kel said. “Somewhere with more privacy than the Wall Street Field.”

“Well, you found that,” Dorna said.

They were far enough into the tunnel now that the only faint light came from her gently glowing talisman. Kel was feeling his way along one wall; then he stopped, and whispered, “What does your sorcery say?”

“What? Oh.” She peered at her magical boot-heel. Then she pointed. “Five yards that way.” She held up the talisman so Kel could see her finger in its light.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Wait here.”

“What, wait? Are you…” But then Kel was gone, and she was alone in the tunnel.

Ezak had long ago cleaned and oiled the hinges on the secret door into the old cellar, and Kel had been careful to keep them in good shape, so he was able to slip in without a sound, but that had been wasted effort; Ezak had the shutters to the air-shaft open, and enough of the setting sun’s light made its way down the shaft to dimly illuminate most of the room’s familiar confines, from the sand spilling through the crumbling east wall to the pile of rags in the northwest corner where Kel sometimes slept. Kel was plainly visible to anyone in the room.

So was Ezak. He was crouched ten feet from the door, holding a knife ready to throw, looking directly at Kel. For a moment Kel froze.

Then Ezak relaxed. “Oh, it’s you!” he said. He smiled, and tossed the knife aside. “It’s good to see you, Kel! I thought you were killed in that explosion!”

“I’m fine,” Kel said. He looked around, and immediately spotted Dorna’s bag; Ezak had made no attempt to hide it. It was sitting on the floor, midway between the door and the air-shaft. It looked just as full as Kel remembered it; Ezak had clearly not yet sold much, if any, of its contents.

Ezak noticed his gaze. “It’s still all there,” he said. “I looked through it when I made camp, but I couldn’t make any sense of any of those things. I didn’t do much experimentation; I didn’t want anything to start screaming. I’m planning to take a few of them to Wizard Street tomorrow, and see what they tell me. I’m going to say I found them in the ruins of a sorcerer’s house after an explosion, I think. Or maybe the sorcerer should be my grandfather, so I’ll have a real claim to them, and not just salvage rights?”

“That sounds good,” Kel said.

“So what happened back there? What exploded? Was Dorna killed?”

“The Northern sentry thing exploded,” Kel said. “When Dorna blasted it with her husband’s sorcery.”

“She died, though, didn’t she? Did you get the fill-dirt-presses back, or was it smashed, too?”

“We got it back,” Kel said.

“We?” Ezak was suddenly wary.

“She wasn’t killed,” Kel said, as he swung the door behind him wide, letting the dim light spill out into the tunnel beyond.

Dorna stepped in, the black weapon in her hand. She pointed it at Ezak.

“You have some of my belongings,” she said.

Ezak stared at her for only an instant before diving for the canvas bag, grabbing it up, and cradling it in his arm as he scrambled for the cellar’s other exit. Kel had not yet decided what he should do about that when the weapon went off.

This time Kel was upright and watching, not diving for the grass; he saw the eerie blue gobbet of magic that shot from the talisman, struck the stone wall behind Ezak, and exploded. Kel closed his eyes, but there was no blinding white flash following the blue flash this time, and the sound was loud, like a sledgehammer shattering a stone block into gravel, but not the earth-shaking roar that the Northern device’s destruction had produced. Apparently most of that explosion’s power had come from the Northern magic, rather than the weapon that destroyed it.

Ezak screamed, dropped the bag, and fell to his knees on the sandy floor. “Don’t kill me!” he said.

“Get away from the bag,” Dorna said.

Ezak shoved the bag toward her, then backed away. “Why did you bring her here?” he asked Kel.

Kel did not answer; he simply stood and watched as Dorna crossed the room, snatched up her bag, and slung it on her shoulder. She dropped the boot-heel talisman into the bag, but kept the weapon ready in her hand.

“Thank you,” she said, as she straightened up. “Kel asked me not to kill you, so for his sake, I won’t. I won’t even turn you over to the magistrates. But if you ever try to take anything of mine again, I will kill you. You understand that?”

Ezak nodded vigorously.

Then for a moment the three of them remained where they were-Kel standing by the door to the tunnel, Dorna standing in the middle of the room with her bag and weapon, Ezak kneeling near the hole in the wall where one could climb up to the next level-each waiting for someone else to do or say something. Finally, Dorna turned and headed back toward the tunnel. “Come on,” she said.

“What?” the two young men said simultaneously.

“Not you,” Dorna said to Ezak. “Him.” She pointed at Kel.

“Me?”

“Yes! I need you to show me the way out of this place.”

“Oh,” Kel said, hurrying to follow her through the door. He had not realized she was one of those people who could not reliably retrace her steps. He knew such people existed, and had met them before, but he did not really understand them; he might not always know where he was, but anywhere in the city he always knew how he got there, and how to get back out. It was part of his nature.

But Dorna wasn’t from Ethshar, she was from a little village somewhere, and her nature apparently differed from his. Besides, she had been so intent on her talisman that she probably hadn’t really seen the route.

Once out of the room Kel took the lead. Neither of them spoke as they trudged back out and up the steps to the alley. Dorna paused to glance up at the narrow strip of sky visible above them; it was noticeably darker than when they had come the other way. Then she turned to Kel, who was watching her. “I could probably have found my own way out, especially now I have my bag back, but I wanted to talk to you.”

That was mildly surprising. Kel looked at her expectantly.

“You thought I was going to just go off and leave you here, didn’t you?” she asked.

She seemed to want an answer. “Yes,” he said.

“I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t just walk away and leave you in a place like this.”

Kel looked around. The alley was a rough, ruinous place, but it was one he knew well. “I live here,” he said. “Sometimes, anyway.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.”

He could think of no sensible reply to that, and blinked silently at her.

“I’m going to open a tea shop,” she said. “I’m going to import my favorite teas from the Small Kingdoms. I used to buy them from a trader named Vezalis who came to deal with Nabal; I’d ask him to bring me a new variety each trip he made, and to bring more of the ones I liked. I hadn’t known there were so many kinds until I met him!”

“That’s Ezak’s uncle,” Kel said. He had no idea why she was telling him about her plans, but he thought she might want to know.

“What?” That seemed to have jarred her out of her planned speech.

“Vezalis, the trader your husband dealt with. He’s Ezak’s uncle. That was how we found you.”

She stared at him. “You’re serious? I thought it was just a coincidence that they were both named Vezalis.”

“Yes. The trader is Ezak’s uncle.”

“That stupid, troublesome…” She stopped abruptly, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then said, “Never mind that. My point is, I’m going to open a tea shop.”

Kel nodded. She had already said that.

“I’m going to spend a lot of my time dealing with tea merchants, and trying out different blends.”

Kel nodded again. He knew almost nothing about running a tea shop, and in fact had never seen a tea shop, but this sounded reasonable.

“I’ll need an assistant to look after the shop when I’m busy elsewhere. I’d like to hire you as my assistant.”

Kel blinked; at first the words didn’t seem to make sense. Eventually he managed to work out their meaning, but it still didn’t seem reasonable. “But I’m a thief,” he said. “No one hires a thief!”

“You wouldn’t be a thief anymore,” Dorna said. “You’d be a tea shop assistant.”

That was too bizarre to grasp immediately, but Dorna was looking at him, clearly expecting a response. “I don’t know,” he said.

“The position would include room and board, and pay a round a sixnight to start,” she said.

“Room and board?” He glanced back at the tunnel mouth, remembering the room they had just visited, where he had so often lived.

She nodded. “A room above the shop, and at least three meals a day,” she said.

That knocked all thought of the room out of his head. Kel had never in his life eaten three meals a day; he had trouble comprehending such luxury. He stared at her, only just barely keeping his jaw from dropping.

“Why don’t you give it a try?” Dorna said. “You can always quit if you don’t like it.”

Kel tried to imagine how someone could dislike eating regularly and sleeping indoors, and decided maybe someone could, but he was not that someone.

On the other hand, he knew someone who would look on this with a great deal of suspicion. “What about Ezak?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m only offering to hire you, Kel. You helped me when you could, and you’ve been as honest with me as a thief could be.” She smiled wryly at that, then continued, “You’re smarter than you realize, and I think you deserve a chance to use your wits for something better than stealing old clothes.”

“But Ezak helped me,” Kel said. “He’s always helped me.”

“But he stole from me. And he did nothing to help me or you after he sent the fil drepessis off looking for something to fix.”

Kel hesitated.

Dorna saw his uncertainty and sighed. “Think about it,” she said. “For now, get me out of here and back to the Three Feathers before it’s too dark to see where we’re going.”

That was something Kel could understand and accept. “This way,” he said.

By the time they got back to Grandgate and found Irien sitting in a quiet corner of the inn, Kel had made up his mind. Three meals a day! A dry room! And some money! How could he resist?

He couldn’t. He didn’t. He was hired on the spot, and given his own room at the inn at Dorna’s expense.

He hoped Ezak wouldn’t be too upset.