The Spell of the Black Dagger

CHAPTER 1

The house was magnificent, its dozen gables high and ornate, the cornerposts elaborately carved and painted, the many panes of the broad windows neatly beveled and arranged in intricate patterns. Some of the window glass was colored, but most was clear and of the highest quality; through the crystalline casements Tabaea could see only tightly drawn curtains and drapes— draperies of velvet and silk and other fine fabrics, no simple cotton shades or wooden shutters here.

The house faced onto both Grand Street and Wizard Street, its front door at the corner, angled to face northeast into the intersection. Small shrines were carved into the stone archway on either side of this door, each shrine equipped with both a fountain and an eternal flame. The substance of the door itself was unidentifiable under its thick coat of glossy black enamel, but it was bound and trimmed with polished brass, with gleaming bolt heads forming a complex spiral pattern.

Despite its prominent location, there were no shop windows, no signboards—it was obviously a residence, rather than a business. Curious, that anyone would build so fine a house here in the Grandgate district, Tabaea thought—and worthy of further investigation. She had walked past it many times, of course, but had never paid much attention before.

She admired the shrines, then wandered on down Grand Street as if she were just another ordinary young citizen out for a late stroll on a summer evening, or perhaps an apprentice returning from an errand. She paused at the rear corner of the house and glanced back, as if trying to remember something; what she was actually doing, however, was studying the street to see whether anyone was watching her.

About a dozen people were scattered along the four long blocks between herself and Grandgate Market, but none of them seemed to be looking in her direction, or paying any attention to her. No one was leaning out any of the windows or shop doors. The market itself was crowded, but at this distance that hardly mattered; even in the bright torchlight, the people there were little more than faceless blobs. None of them would be able to identify her later.

Thus reassured, she turned and ducked into the narrow alley behind the great house.

Grand Street was reasonably well lit, thanks to the torches and lanterns illuminating the various shops and taverns, but there were no torches in the alley, and no light came from either the house on her left or the shuttered tea house on her right.

That meant that the only light in the alley came from the cold and distant gleam of the stars overhead, and the firelight of Grand Street behind her. Such limited illumination was not enough; the alley appeared utterly black.

She hesitated, hoping her eyes would adjust, but the longer she lingered this close to Grand Street, the more likely, even with the tea house closed, that she would be spotted and questioned. She crept forward into the darkness, moving by feel, as if blind. The wall of the house felt solid and smooth and unbroken, and as she advanced into the darkness she began to worry that she might have made a mistake. There might not be any entrance back here.

She set her jaw. The whole point of an alley, she reminded herself, was to let people in the back of a house. And even if this particular alley wasn’t here to let people into the back of the big comer house, there must be windows—houses need ventilation, and the larger the house the more windows it would need.

Of course, her pessimistic side reminded her, those windows needn’t be within reach of the ground, especially for a girl her size.

Maybe she should have planned this out more carefully, she thought, taken a look at the house by daylight, maybe found out whose house it was, instead of just yielding to a whim like this.

But she was here now, and it would be cowardly to turn back.

All the same, she thought, if she didn’t find an entrance soon she might do best to just head home and try again another day.

Then, finally, her hand struck a doorframe, and a smile crept unseen across her face.

She stood and waited, and at last her vision began to adjust.

Yes, it was a door, though she could just barely make out the outline and could see no details at all. She tried the handle.

It was locked, naturally.

She grinned, drew her belt knife, and fished the lockpick from her hair. The darkness didn’t matter for this; picking a lock was all done by feel anyway. This was her chance to put her lessons with old Cluros and all her practice at home to the test.

Five minutes later she had the door open and had slipped carefully inside, moving as quietly as she could. The lock had been a simple one; only inexperience, the weight of the bolt, and Tabaea’s natural caution had kept her from springing it within seconds. Whoever owned this house had not wasted money on fancy locks and bars.

That was not necessarily a good thing, of course; sometimes a simple lock meant other precautions had been taken—spells, guards, any number of possibilities existed.

Tabaea saw no sign of any of them. Of course, she wasn’t at all sure what to look for to spot protective spells; nobody had taught her any of that yet. Still, she didn’t see anything unusual.

In truth, she didn’t see much of anything at all. The mudroom behind the door was even darker than the alley. She felt her way across the little room, almost tripping over a boot scraper, and found an inner door.

That was unlocked, and the chamber beyond just as dark as the mudroom. Reluctantly, Tabaea decided it was time to risk a little light.

She had tinder and flint and steel in her pouch, but it was dark and she was wary of making too much sound—the house might be deserted, or it might not. It took several tries before she had a good steady light.

When she had the tinder burning, she looked around by its flickering light for something more permanent, and spotted a candle by the alley door. She lit that, then blew out the tinder and tucked it away.

Candle in hand, she looked around the mudroom.

As one might expect, there was nothing of any interest. Half a dozen assorted pairs of boots were ranged against one wall; below there was a line of hooks, about half of which held cloaks or jackets; at the other end of the room three heavy wooden chests took up most of the available space, but a quick glance in each showed that they held only scarves, gloves, and other appurtenances. She was not disappointed; this was just the mudroom, and there was plenty more house to explore. Besides, there were plenty of people in Ethshar of the Sands who couldn’t afford gloves and scarves and coats. In any case, it wasn’t as if the winters here were so long or cold, as they were said to be in Sardiron or the other Ethshars, that they were truly necessary. A house so rich in winter wear would surely be rich in more marketable goods, as well.

Cautiously, moving as stealthily as she could, Tabaea opened the interior door and peered through, candle in hand.

A smile spread across her face as she saw what lay beyond. This was more like it.

The next room was a dining salon, and the light of her candle sparkled from brass and gold and crystal and fine polished woods. Catlike and silent, she slipped around the door and into the room.

The table was heavy and dark, gleaming almost black in the candlelight, its edges carved with intertwined serpents and the corners with songbirds, wings spread; above it hung an ornate brass and crystal chandelier. The six surrounding chairs were of the same dark wood, carved with serpents and eagles, seats and backs upholstered in wine velvet.

Cherry wood cabinets stood against every wall, and the image of Tabaea’s candle was reflected back at her by a hundred panes of leaded glass set in the cabinet doors. Behind the glass panels glittered cut-crystal goblets and fine bone china.

Something moved in the corner of her vision, and for a moment Tabaea froze. Then she realized that the movement came from inside one of the cabinets. Warily, she crept closer, and peered through the glass of the cabinet door.

The cabinet held an elaborate silver tea service, and the teapot was moving, walking about on three long, birdlike legs. Tiny metal toes tapped gently on the shelf as it strolled. Then, as Tabaea watched, it sank down, folding its legs beneath it, and settled into motionlessness.

Tabaea smiled and tugged at the empty sack under her belt, but did not yet remove it from concealment. A magic animated teapot was a very pretty prize indeed; such things cost a fortune. Unfortunately, since they were so rare and expensive, and each was a unique piece, they were almost impossible to fence.

The crystal would be worth plenty—but this was merely the beginning. There was plenty more of the house yet to explore.

Three other doors opened into the dining salon, one on each side. For no particular reason, Tabaea chose the door on the left, heading more or less toward the front of the house—as much as this curiously angled corner house had a front, at any rate.

This brought her into a parlor or drawing room, just as dark and deserted as the dining salon; the fireplace was empty even of ash, the windows at the far end shuttered and heavily curtained. Chairs and settees stood here and there; a potted palm was waving in the breeze.

Except, Tabaea realized, there was no breeze. She froze again, watching.

The palm continued to wave, swaying steadily back and forth; Tabaea noticed that it seemed to be fanning a particular armchair.

Well, of course—it was fanning the armchair! More magic, clearly—a little something to help stay cool on a hot summer day, that was all. Another wizard- or sorcerer-created domestic amenity, like the teapot.

Whoever owned this house was clearly very, very rich, to own two such animated household objects, both devoted to ordinary tasks. Tabaea lifted her candle and looked around again.

Something on the mantelpiece was staring at her.

She stared back for a second, startled, and then realized it was probably a small idol of some sort. It was vaguely human-oid, vaguely froglike, roughly the size of a small cat, greenish brown, with great big pointed ears. She crept toward it for a closer look—maybe it had jewels or gold on it somewhere.

It squealed, bounded to its feet, sprang to the floor, and ran off, squeaking noises that might have been words.

Tabaea almost yelped in surprise, then caught herself and looked around guiltily.

That was how Telleth the Housebreaker had gotten himself caught, flogged, and exiled from the city last year, she remembered; he had dropped a statuette on his foot and sworn at it, and someone asleep upstairs had heard and awoken and come to investigate, with a sword in hand. She knew better than that.

Well, she had caught herself, she hadn’t made a sound beyond a sort of strangled gasp. Now, if only that weird little creature didn’t raise the alarm...

What was that thing, anyway? She frowned.

It must be some sort of magical creature, she decided. Tabaea glanced at the waving palm. Well, this house had more than its share of magic, certainly.

She wouldn’t mind having a little magic. Like every child in Ethshar, she’d dreamed sometimes of becoming a wizard or warlock, wearing fancy robes, and having people step out of her way in the streets.

It hadn’t happened, of course.

Maybe someday, if she got rich enough, she would buy herself magical things, the way whoever owned this house had.

She decided to take a look at the next room, and stepped through an arch into a broad hallway, paneled in dark rich woods. Stairs led to the upper floors—the house was an ostentatious three stories in all, though she suspected the uppermost might be a mere attic—but she was not yet ready to ascend; if anyone was home, he or she was most likely asleep upstairs, and poking around up there was best left until last.

As she stood at the foot of the stairs, a door to her right caught her eye; it was half-closed, whereas the others were all either wide open or tightly shut. That was intriguing; shading the candle with her other hand, she crept over and peered in.

The dining salon and the parlor and the hallway were spacious and elegant, richly furnished, uncluttered, and, so far as she could see by candlelight, spotlessly clean; the room behind the half-closed door was the utter opposite. It was large enough, but it was jammed to overflowing with books, papers, boxes, jars, bottles, and paraphernalia of every kind. The walls were almost completely hidden by shelves and drawers and pinned-up charts. Spills and stains, old and new, adorned the floor and various other surfaces.

Somebody’s workroom, clearly—this would be where the household accounts were kept, and all the little things that go into running whatever business the house’s owner was in. Those jars were probably old preserves, spare pins, and other such things.

There was sawdust, or some other powder, on the floor, she noticed, and tiny web-toed footprints making a beeline through it. That was probably where that creature had gone when she startled it. She raised the candle higher, to see if the little beast might be lurking somewhere amid the clutter.

For the first time she noticed what hung from the ceiling and paused to stare at it in wonder.

Why would someone have a dried bat hanging in his workroom?

She looked a bit more closely at the contents of the room, and saw an assortment of bones on one shelf, from tiny little bits that could have been from a mouse or shrew, up to what was surely the jawbone of a good-sized dragon. A large jar nearby, she now realized, held not pickles or preserves, but mummified spiders the size of her hand. The red stuff that she had taken for jellies and jams was an assortment of blood—she could read the labels. The biggest jar was dragon’s blood, the next one was virgin’s blood...

She shuddered in sudden realization. No wonder this place had that magical teapot, and the waving palm, and the little web-toed creature.

She was in a wizard’s house.

CHAPTER 2

Tabaea crept silently toward the door at the far end of the workshop.

The sensible thing to do would be to flee, of course. Messing with magicians was dangerous. Everyone knew that, and Tabaea was no exception. A tempting but slightly riskier alternative would be to snatch a few nonmagical treasures, and then flee.

But she was unable to resist. She was not going to be sensible at all. Wizardry had always fascinated her, and here she was in a wizard’s house. She couldn ’t leave without exploring further!

She would never have dared enter if she had known it was a wizard’s house. Since she had noticed the house on her way to and from Grandgate Market, where she had gone in hopes of picking up a few valuables, she had thought of the house as being on Grand Street, and had forgotten that it was also on another major thoroughfare—Wizard Street. Ordinary people didn’t antagonize magicians; that was very probably why there weren’t better locks and other safeguards. Shops and houses on Wizard Street didn’t need them.

She would never have broken in if she had known—but now that she was inside, she just had to see more.

There was light coming from beneath that door—not very much, just a little—and she wanted to see what was causing it. Very slowly, very carefully, very silently, she knelt and lowered her eye to the crack.

Behind the door were stairs going down, stone stairs between gray stone walls. She blinked and looked again.

Stairs going down?

Most buildings in Ethshar of the Sands did not have cellars; the sands on which the city was built, and for which it was named, made digging difficult. Excavations had a tendency to fall in on themselves. That was also why structures were almost never more than three stories in height: anything taller than that tended to sink or fall over. Some people had cellars dug for cold storage—root cellars, wine cellars, and the like—but such extravagances were generally small, and reached by ladders rather than by stairs.

Tabaea had heard about cellars and basements all her life, in tales of faraway places, but had never been in one, unless you counted crawlspaces or the gaps between pilings. The whole idea of cellars tended to put her in mind of the overlord’s dungeons—she had heard about those all her life, too, or at any rate as long as she could remember—and of secrets and exotic places. She stared at the stone step and wished she could see more; from her vantage point at floor level she could see the iron rail, the walls, the sloping roof, but nothing below the topmost stair.

However, she could, she realized abruptly, hear something.

She held her breath and listened intently, trying to ignore her own heartbeat. An older man’s voice, speaJdng quietly and intently—she couldn’t make out the words.

Could it be the wizard in whose workshop she was?

Of course; who else would it be?

Could he be working a spell? Was that an incantation she heard, the invocation of some spirit, the summoning of some supernatural being? She could only hear the one person, no answering voice, but he seemed to be addressing someone, not just muttering to himself.

A shiver of excitement ran through her.

He had to be doing something secret, down there in the cellars. He couldn’t just be fetching a bottle; he wouldn’t be talking like that, and she’d be able to hear him moving around. His voice was steady, as if he were standing or sitting in one place. And he wouldn’t be doing his regular work, or just passing the time, in the cellars—cellars were for secrets and mysteries, for concealment, and protection. Something rustled, and she leaped away from the door, sprang to her feet, the candle in her hand almost, but not quite, blown out by her sudden motion.

That little greenish creature was watching her from atop a stack of papers. It squeaked and scurried away into the darkness, scattering papers as it went.

She watched it go in the dimness and made no attempt to follow. All around her, the shadows were flaring and wavering crazily as her candle flickered; she feared that if she moved anywhere she might trip over something unseen, or bump into something, in that tangle of black and shifting shapes.

Worse, her candle might go out, and the wizard emerge from the cellars before she could relight it. She stood by the cellar door, shielding the candle with her hand, until the flame was strong and steady once more, and the animal, or imp, or whatever it was, was long gone.

At last she turned back to the door, intending to listen again, and caught her breath.

The line of light across the bottom had become an L She had bumped the door when she sprang up, and it wasn’t latched; it had come open, very slightly.

She knew she shouldn’t touch it. She knew she should just go, get out of the house while she could—but a chance to watch a wizard at work was too much to give up.

Who knows, she thought. Maybe if things had gone a little differently for her, she might have been a wizard. She might have had the talent for it; who could say?

Well, she supposed a master wizard could say, but she’d never had the chance to ask one.

Or maybe she’d just never had the nerve to ask one.

She snorted, very slightly, at that. She was Tabaea the Thief, she’d taken the cognomen for herself just last year, she was a promising young cutpurse, burglar, and housebreaker, and she was here in a wizard’s house planning to rob him, but she’d never had the nerve to talk to one.

Of course, it was too late now, anyway. She was fifteen, and nobody would take on an apprentice who was past her thirteenth birthday.

If her family had been willing to help out when she was twelve, if her stepfather had offered to talk to someone for her...

But he hadn’t. And when she’d asked he was always too busy, or too drunk. He promised a dozen times that he’d get around to it later, that he’d do something to set her up, but he never had. And her mother hadn’t been any better, always busy with the twins, and on those rare and precious occasions when both the babies had been asleep she’d been too tired to go anywhere or do anything, and it wasn’t an emergency, Tabaea was a big girl and could take care of herself. She could help Tabaea’s sisters and half-brothers with their reading and numbers, but she couldn’t leave the house, what if the twins woke up?

And then Tabaea’s thirteenth birthday had come and it was too late, and old Cluros was the only one who’d been interested in her, and maybe it wasn’t an official apprenticeship, maybe there wasn’t any guild for burglars and lockbreakers, but it was better than nothing. And better than a bed in the brothels in Soldiertown.

Besides, she wasn’t sure she even had the looks or personality for a brothel; she was always nervous around other people. She might have wound up walking the streets instead and sleeping in the Wall Street Field when she couldn’t find a customer who would keep her for the night. Maybe she should have run away, like her big brother Tand, but she never had.

So now she was a sneak thief. Which suited her just fine; she was good at not being noticed. She’d had plenty of practice, all those years staying out of her mother’s way and avoiding her stepfather’s temper when he was drinking.

At least she hadn’t disappeared completely, like land, or their father. And her thieving had kept her fed when her stepfather wouldn’t anymore. Thennis had taken to begging in Grandgate Market, and Tessa was spending a suspicious amount of time in Soldiertown, but Tabaea was taking care of herself just fine. Being a wizard or something else respectable and exciting would have been much better, certainly, but Tabaea wasn’t going to complain. Her career in burglary had gotten her plenty of nice little things over the past two years.

For one thing, it had gotten her here, with a chance to spy on a wizard at some secret business in his cellar. Carefully, inch by inch, holding the knob so the hinges wouldn’t creak, she opened the door.

Yes, there were stone steps going down, between gray stone walls. The glow of a distant lamp spilled in through an archway at the bottom, and threw Tabaea’s shadow down the full length of the room behind her.

Cautiously, she descended the stairs, pausing on each step, watching and listening. The man’s voice—the wizard’s voice, she was sure—grew louder with each advance, droning on and on. And with each step she could see a little more of what lay beyond that arch.

There was a small square of stone floor and then steps to either side and a black iron railing straight ahead—the cellar went down even further into the ground!

At the bottom she hesitated. Straight ahead she could see through the archway into an immense chamber, lit by a great three-tiered chandelier. That chandelier was directly ahead of her, beyond the archway and the landing and the iron railing. She couldn’t really see much of the space below.

But if she advanced any farther, out onto the landing, she would be terribly exposed.

She paused, listening, and realized she could make out words now.

“...it’s a part of you,” the wizard was saying. “A part of your soul, your essence. It’s not just some random energy, something mat anybody could provide, or that you could get from somewhere else.”

For the first time Tabaea heard a second voice answering, a higher-pitched voice, a woman or a child. She didn’t catch the words.

That was simply too fascinating to miss. She crept forward, crouching lower with each step. By the time she passed through the arch she was on her knees, and by the time she peered through the railing she was lying flat on her belly, hands braced to either side, ready to spring up if she was spotted. The cellar, or crypt, or whatever it was lay before her, a single huge space. The stone-ribbed ceiling arched a dozen feet above her, and the floor twenty feet below—she realized that that floor must be thirty feet below ground, and marveled that the sea had not flooded it.

But then, the walls were massive stone barriers, sloped and buttressed to hold back the sand and water. Those great braced walls enclosed a square thirty or forty feet on a side—the room was almost a cube, she decided. In the center of the far wall was a broad slate hearth below a fine smooth stone chimney; there were, of course, no windows. Heavy trestle tables were pushed against the walls, four of them in all.

The floor was more stone, and in the center a thick carpet was spread, and seated cross-legged on that carpet, facing each other, were two people—a man perhaps half a century in age, and a girl two or three years younger than Tabaea herself. The man wore a red silk robe and held a silver dagger; another dagger and a leather sheath lay on the carpet by his knee, and several other small objects were in a clutter to one side. The girl wore a simple white robe and sat with her hands empty, listening intently; the man was speaking.

“The edge will never dull, as long as you remain whole and strong,” he said. “And the finish will stay bright as long as your spirits do.” The girl nodded.

Tabaea stared. This was a wizard, beyond question—and his apprentice.

“If you can so much as touch it, it will cut any bonds put upon you, even heavy chains,” the wizard continued. “Physical bonds, at any rate—while it can dispel a minor geas, or ward off many spells, there are many others it will not affect.”

Tabaea let the muscles of her arms ease a little. The two were intent on their conversation and would only notice her if she were to somehow draw their attention.

“Those are just side effects, of course,” the wizard said. “Incidentals. I’m sure, after these past four months, you understand that.”

“Yes,” the girl said, in a hushed voice. “So, if you understand what an athame is, and why a true wizard must have one, it’s time you learned how to make yours, is it not?”

The girl looked up at the wizard’s face and said again, “Yes.” “It will take several days to teach you, but we can at least make a start tonight.”

The apprentice nodded. Tabaea folded her hands beneath her chin and settled down to listen, her heart fluttering in her chest.

She had never heard that word the wizard used, but if it was something every wizard needed—well, she had never heard of such a thing. It must be one of the secrets of the Wizards’ Guild, something only wizards were permitted to know— probably one of the most important of their secrets.

Knowing such a secret could be very, very useful. Blackmailing a wizard would be impossibly risky, but it might be possible to sell the information somewhere. Or just possibly, if she could learn the trick, she could make one of these things for herself.

Perhaps she could even become a wizard herself, without a master, without anyone knowing it. If she could learn how to work magic...

She listened intently.

CHAPTER 3

Sarai, a little nervous, looked around the justice chamber.

She was seated at her father’s left hand, just off the dais, a foot or two in front of the red velvet drapery that bore the overlord’s seal worked into it in thick gold braid. The chamber was long and narrow, deliberately built with a slight slope to the floor, so that prisoners and petitioners would be looking up at the Minister of Justice as if from a pit, or as if they dared to look up at a god descending from the heavens—but would probably not consciously notice the slope at all.

The overlord’s palace was full of tricks like that. The Great Council Chamber, under the overlord’s Great Hall, was arranged so that all the doors were partially hidden, to make it easier for people to believe that what they said there was secret, when in fact there were spy-holes in several places; the Great Hall itself was open to the huge central dome to overawe petitioners; there were any number of clever constructs. The justice chamber hadn’t been singled out.

What the architects had never considered, however, was that this slope left the minister, her father—and herself, at the moment—looking down. Or perhaps they considered it and dismissed it as unimportant, or thought it would enhance the minister’s self-confidence.

She couldn’t speak for her father, but the effect on her was to be constantly worried about falling. She felt as if at any moment she might slip from her chair and tumble down that hard gray marble floor into that motley collection of brigands, thieves, and scoundrels waiting at the far end of the room. She clutched the gilded arms of her seat a little harder. This was the first time she had ever been allowed in here when her father was working, and she didn’t want to do or say anything that would embarrass him or interfere in any way, and, she told herself, that was why she was nervous. She knew that she was being silly, that the slope was really insignificant, that she was in no danger of falling from her chair. After all, she had been in this room dozens of times when it was empty, starting when she was a very little girl, little more than a toddler, and she had never so much as stumbled on that subtle slope—but still, the nervousness persisted.

Maybe, she thought, if she paid more attention to what was going on in the room, and less to the room itself, she’d forget about such foolishness.

“... and really, Lord Kalthon, how you can take the word of this... this peasant, over the word of your own third cousin, is utterly beyond me!” said Bardec, the younger son of Bellren, Lord of the Games, in a fairly good imitation of injured dignity. “It is not, however, beyond me,” Lord Kalthon replied dryly, “since I have the word of our theurgist that you did exactly what this good woman accuses you of.”

Bardec threw a quick, angry look at old Okko; the magician stared expressionlessly back, his long forefinger tracing a slow circle on the evidence table beside him. His white velvet robe hung loosely on him, his forearm was thin and bony, but dkko somehow looked far more dangerous sitting there at Lord Kalthon’s right hand than the young and brawny Bardec did standing before them.

“I take it,” Sarai’s father said, “that you do not choose to plead any mitigating circumstances? You do not ask for the overlord’s mercy?”

“No, Lord Kalthon, I most certainly do not, because I am not guilty!” Bardec persisted. “I am completely innocent and can only assume that some enemy of mine has somehow cozened this woman into making this absurd charge and that some sort of malign magic has fooled our esteemed Lord Okko into believing it...”

“I am no lord,” Okko said, cutting Bardec off with a voice like imminent death.

“I wish I could say the same for our young friend,” Lord Kalthon said loudly. “He is, alas, a true noble of the city, born of our overlord’s chosen representatives. He is also a fool, compounding his original crime with perjury and false accusations. Stupid ones, at that.” He sighed, and glanced at his daughter. She was watching the proceedings closely, saying nothing.

Well, he had wanted her to see how the job was done.

“Very well, then,” he said. “Since you show no remorse, or even comprehension, I hereby require, in the overlord’s name, that this woman’s losses be restored threefold from your own possessions and estates—that would be...” He lifted the notes dangling from his left hand to where he could read them, and continued, “Three sound hens, three dozen eggs of the first quality, three oxcarts, and six oxen, or the equivalent value in silver. I further command that you receive ten lashes from a guardsman’s whip, as a reminder that the nobility of the city are not, as you seem to think, the rulers of the people but only the servants of our beloved overlord, and that by insisting on bringing this case this far you have wasted the time of everyone in this room. In the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, Triumvir of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, Commander of the Holy Armies, and Defender of the Gods, let it be done.”

Bardec began to protest, but the guardsmen at either side did not let that interfere as they dragged him away, kicking and struggling.

“Young idiot,” Lord Kalthon muttered, leaning toward Sarai. “If he’d had the sense to pass it off as a boyish prank, he’d have got off with simple restitution and a small fine.”

She glanced up at her father, startled.

“But that isn’t fair—that means the woman’s benefiting from Bardec’s stupidity...” Sarai whispered.

“True enough—but that’s not what’s important. This isn’t the place; we’ll discuss it later.” He sat up straight and called, “Next case.”

The next case was a property dispute; such things were generally handled by a local magistrate or a guard captain, but in this case one of the parties was a guard captain, so the affair had been kicked up the hierarchy to the Minister of Justice. Nobody questioned the facts of the case, so no magician had been called in, though old Okko remained in his place at the minister’s right; Lord Kalthon was called upon to determine not what was true, but what was just.

Sarai listened to the tedious details, involving an unclear will, a broken business partnership, a drunken surveyor, and a temporarily dry well, with half an ear or so, while thinking about other concerns.

Bardec was suffering for his stupidity, and that was fair and just. If he had the wit to leam from his mistake, to change his attitudes, this might be the lesson he needed. If he had not, then at least this punishment might discourage him from gallivanting off with someone else’s cart from Grandgate Market next time he got drunk. The money was nothing to him, or at least to his family, but a flogging would register on anybody.

But the woman with the cart was coming out ahead. Perhaps she deserved some compensation for the inconvenience—but why should it be higher when Bardec behaved stupidly in court than if he had been contrite?

Well, it was undoubtedly more annoying for the victim to have Bardec calling her a liar—and perhaps the greater satisfaction was therefore just.

But just the flogging would have been equally satisfying, Sarai was sure.

She listened as the explanation of the property dispute wound up, and her father began asking questions.

It seemed to her that the basic uncertainty in the case derived from the lost contract between the long-dead partners, but Lord Kalthon was not asking about that, nor was he asking Okko to use his magic to determine the contents of the contract; instead he was looking at the diagram one party had provided and asking, “Your family has used the well these past twenty years, then?”

The guard captain nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, standing stiffly at attention.

“And you never had any doubt of your right to it?”

“No, sir.”

“But the new survey—do you doubt its accuracy?”

Unhappily, the soldier said, “No, sir.”

The merchant began to smile; Lord Kalthon turned to him and demanded, “Did you ever object to Captain Aldran claiming the well before this year?”

The smile vanished. “No, my lord. But my father’s will...”

“Yes, I know.” Lord Kalthon waved that away and looked at the diagram again. “Okko, lend me a pen, would you?”

Sarai watched as her father drew a line on the diagram and showed it to the two claimants. “As Minister of Justice to the city’s overlord, I hereby claim this parcel here...” He pointed with the borrowed quill. “...as city property, to be compensated for according to law and custom at the value of its last transfer of ownership, which I hereby determine to be five rounds of silver, payable in full from the city’s treasury. I also hereby direct that the city shall sell this property to Captain Aldran, in compensation for his years of faithful service to his overlord, at a price of five rounds of silver, to be paid by deduction from his salary. All interest and carrying charges are hereby waived, by order of the Minister of Justice.”

“But that well’s worth more than that!” the merchant objected.

Lord Kalthon asked him wearily, “And the rest of that land isn’t?”

“Uh...”

“In the name of Ederd the Fourth, Overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, Triumvir of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, Commander of the Holy Armies, and Defender of the Gods,” Lord Kalthon said, “let it be done.”

Sarai admired the decision.

If she had been in her father’s place, she would have had Okko determine the contents of that original contract; then either the captain or the merchant would presumably have won outright. Either the captain’s family would be left without the water source they had relied on for decades, or the merchant would be deprived of the inheritance he had depended upon and had borrowed money against. One man would have had more than he needed, the other nothing.

And making a compromise—well, neither man had been particularly interested in a compromise, surely, or the question wouldn’t have reached her father. By invoking his power as the overlord’s agent he had removed any possibility of arguing with the results or renegotiating the agreement later. Quite possibly neither man was happy—the merchant had less than he hoped, and the soldier would be paying for what he had thought he already owned—but the matter was settled, and both had come away with what they needed, if not what they wanted.

It wasn’t necessarily exactly what the law demanded, but it settled the matter.

And, it occurred to her, Bardec’s case had done the same thing. Giving the woman the extra money had helped to settle the matter. It might, perhaps, have been fairer if the overlord’s court had taken the additional payment as a fine and kept it, since in fact it was a penalty for perjury and for accusing the court, in the person of Okko, of incompetence—but that might have looked greedy.

The important thing, Sarai saw, was to settle the question, one way or another, and without leaving anyone any more angry about it than necessary. If Bardec’s money had gone to the city treasury, he could have accused Lord Kalthon of greed, of being more concerned with money than with justice; if the merchant had simply been required to sell the well to the captain, there could have been any number of delays and complications, arguments about price and interest, and so forth. Her father was avoiding all that.

She remembered something that had been said at the dinner table once, when they had had Lord Torrut, commander of the city guard, as their guest. Her father had joked about how Lord Torrut might as well be called the Minister of War, since that’s what soldiers do, they make war—but men everyone would want to get rid of him, since there hadn’t been a war for two hundred years. Lord Torrut had countered that perhaps Kalthon should be called Minister of Peace, since his job was to make peace— but there hadn’t been all that much peace in the past two hundred years, either.

Both men had laughed, and Lord Kalthon had said, “We both keep the peace, Torrut, and well you know it.”

It was true, Sarai saw—they both kept the peace. The city guard was the whip to threaten the horse, and the city courts the apple to reward it. People had to be reasonably satisfied with the results, when they took their disputes to the overlord’s courts; they didn’t really care what the laws said, only whether the disputes went away and the results looked fair.

Looked fair.

That was something she really hadn’t thought about before.

And she’d completely forgotten about the sloping floor until she looked down at the next pair, defendant and plaintiff.

Her mouth fell open in a way most unbecoming a young noblewoman as the case was described. Kallia of the Broken Hand, a demonologist, accused Heremon the Mage of stealing certain esoteric substances from her workshop; Heremon denied the charge.

A wizard, accused of theft? And no mere apprentice, but a mage?

“Very well, Okko,” Lord Kalthon said, turning to his the-urgist, “what actually happened here?”

Okko frowned, and his nervous fingers finally stopped moving.

“My lord,” he said, “I have no idea.”

Lord Kalthon stared at the theurgist.

“I’m sorry, Lord Kalthon,” Okko said, “but the differing magical auras surrounding the alleged crime are sufficient to confuse even the gods. I cannot get a plain and trustworthy answer to even the simplest question.”

“I hate these cases,” Kalthon muttered; Sarai didn’t think anyone heard him save herself and perhaps Okko. Then he sat up straighter and announced, “Let the accuser stand forth.”

Kallia of the Broken Hand strode up the long room, her long black cloak swirling behind her, her face hidden by a deep hood and her hands concealed in black suede gloves. She stopped, gathered her cloak, and stood before the Minister of Justice.

“Show your face in the overlord’s palace, magician,” Kalthon said, irritation in his tone.

Kallia flung back the hood; her face was thin and pale, her straight hair was black and worn long and unadorned. The three vivid red scratches that ran down one side of her face, from temple to jaw, stood out in shocking contrast to her colorless features. She glared defiantly at Lord Kalthon.

“Speak,” Kalthon told her.

“What would you have me say?” Kallia demanded. “’I’ve told my story and been called a liar. I know what you people all think of demonologists, and it’s true we deal with creatures even worse than humans, but that doesn’t make us all murderers and thieves.”

“Nobody here said it did,” Kalthon said mildly. “If the overlords of the Hegemony believed demonology to be inherently evil they would have outlawed it. We accept that your occupation does not condemn you—and at any rate, you’re here as the accuser. I’ve been given a summary of your claim, but I’d like to hear it all from your own mouth.”

“It’s simple enough,” Kallia said, slightly mollified. “Her-emon robbed my shop—I woke up when I heard the noise, and I looked down the stairs and saw him leaving with his arms full. He didn’t see me, and I didn’t say anything, because I was unarmed and defenseless, and he’s a powerful wizard. When I came downstairs I found that several of my belongings were missing.”

“What sort of belongings?”

Kallia hesitated, and Kalthon allowed his expression to grow impatient.

“Blood,” Kallia said, “jars of different kinds of blood. And gold, and a few small gems, and some small animals—a ferret, some mice, certain rare insects.”

“These are things you need in your, um, in your business?” Kalthon asked, stroking his beard.

“Does it matter?” Kallia asked wearily. “It might.”

Kallia frowned. “Then yes, I need them in my work. Demons often demand payment for their services—blood, or gold, or lives, usually.” She turned and shouted at the observers at the room’s lower end, “Not always human lives!”

Sarai, perversely, found herself grinning at the woman’s defiance and forced herself to stop.

Kalthon nodded. “And you believe the thief to have been this Heremon the Mage?”

“I know it was he, my lord!” Kallia insisted. “I saw his face plainly and his robe, the same one he wears now! I see him almost every day; there could be no mistake. And who but a wizard would want things like virgin’s blood?”

“Anyone who thought to sell them,” Kalthon said calmly. “Particularly when there’s gold, as well. So you know Heremon?”

“Of course! Our shops are across the street from one another, on Wizard Street in Eastside.”

Kalthon stroked his beard again. “And you are rivals, perhaps?”

Kallia looked perplexed. “I had not thought so, Lord Kalthon, but why else would he choose to rob me?”

Sarai watched as the interrogation continued. The question of how the thief had gotten into the shop came up; the door had been broken. Kallia was asked why she had had no magical protections for her gold and gems, and she explained that she did have protection: a minor demon, a nameless imp, really, served as her nightwatch. The creature had been found dead— further proof, if any beyond the sight of Kallia’s own eyes was needed, that the thief was a magician of some power.

Several of the observers were growing visibly bored; most trials were much briefer, with Okko settling matters of fact in short order, allowing Lord Kalthon to get directly to the matter of setting the penalty. This case, on the heels of the boundary dispute over the soldier’s well, was dragging things out unbearably.

The next area of questioning was a little more delicate. Given that Kallia was a demonologist, with many of the resources of Hell at her beck and call, why had she resorted to the courts for justice, instead of simply sending a demon after Heremon?

It took some coaxing before she would admit that she was afraid. Heremon was not some mere apprentice; he was a mage and was reputed to be high in the local hierarchy of the Wizards’ Guild, a Guildmaster perhaps—though of course, no outsider could ever know for sure anything that went on in that Guild. Kallia feared that if she took personal vengeance upon Heremon, the Guild would retaliate—if, indeed, whatever demon she sent succeeded in the first place; there was no telling what magical defenses the mage might have, particularly since he would surely be expecting some sort of reaction.

She had not cared to risk the enmity of the Wizards’ Guild. People who angered individual wizards might live; people who angered the Wizards’ Guild did not. So she had resorted to the overlord’s government and appealed to the Lord Magistrate of Eastside, who had passed the whole affair on to the palace.

And here she was, and what was Lord Kalthon going to do about it?

Lord Kalthon sighed, thanked her for her testimony, and dismissed her. Heremon the Mage was called forward.

“My lord,” he said, “I am at a loss to explain this. Kallia is my neighbor, and I had thought that we were friends, after a fashion, and there can be no doubt that her shop was robbed, for I saw the broken door and the dead demon myself, but why she should accuse me I cannot guess. I swear, by all the gods and unseen powers, that I have never set foot in her shop without her invitation and that I did not break her door, nor slay the demon, nor take anything from her shop.”

“Yet she says she saw you there,” Kalthon pointed out. “She lies,” Heremon said. “What else can it be?” The questioning continued, but nothing else of any use came out. Heremon would not speak of the Wizards’ Guild, insisting that he had sworn an oath to reveal nothing about it and that it was not relevant.

Lord Kalthon sighed again, more deeply this time, and waved the wizard away. When the participants were out of earshot he leaned over and asked Okko, “Who lied?”

The theurgist looked up at him and turned up an empty palm. “My lord,” he said, “I don’t know. By my divinations, the wizard spoke nothing but truth—but there are spells that would conceal lies from me, simple spells that even an apprentice might use, and that a mage of Heremon’s ability...”He didn’t bother finishing the sentence.

“What of the woman?” the Minister of Justice asked. Okko shook his head. “Lord Kalthon, she is so tainted with demon scent that the gods I confer with will not admit she exists at all, and can say nothing about whether she lies.”

“Damn.” He considered. “Okko, you know something about the other schools of magic, don’t you?”

Okko eyed the minister warily and hesitated before replying, “A little.”

“Who can tell if a demonologist is lying? Who can’t a wizard fool?” Okko thought that over very carefully, then shrugged. “I would guess,” he said, “that one demonologist could tell if another were engaged in trickery. And I’m sure that one wizard, properly trained, can detect another’s spells.”

“Then can you find me a demonologist we can trust? One who has no prior connection with this Kallia? And we’ll need a wizard, one who’s not in the Wizards’ Guild...”

Okko held up a hand. “No, my lord,” he said. “All wizards are members of the Guild. For anyone not in the Guild, to practice wizardry is to commit suicide.” “Well... do your best, then.” “As you wish.” Okko bowed his head. Lord Kalthon straightened in his chair and announced, “This case cannot be decided today. All parties hereto will return here tomorrow at this same time. Failure to appear will be accounted an admission of guilt and a crime against the Hegemony, punishable at the overlord’s pleasure; if there is anyone who has a problem with that, tell my clerk. Next case.”

Sarai sat, only half listening, as the next case, a local magistrate’s son accused of rape, was presented. She was thinking over the two magicians’ statements.

If Heremon was lying, then why had he robbed Kallia? A successful wizard didn’t need to resort to theft, not for the sort of things taken from Kallia. Even dragon’s blood was not so rare or precious as all that. There were supposed to be substances wizards used that would be almost impossible to obtain, but they weren’t anything a demonologist would have.

But then, if Heremon had not robbed Kallia, why would she say that he had? What could she hope to gain by making false accusations? Could she perhaps have some use for Heremon? Might she need a wizard’s soul to appease some demon?

Sarai shook her head. Nobody knew what demonologists might need except other demonologists. That might be the explanation, but she wasn’t going to figure it out; she didn’t know enough about the so-called black arts.

Could there perhaps be something else at work?

The case before her father impinged slightly upon her thoughts, and she considered the fact that Kallia, while not young and of no remarkable beauty, was a reasonably attractive woman, while Heremon was a dignified and personable man of late middle age. Could there be some sort of romantic, or at any rate sexual, situation involved here? Nobody had mentioned spouses on either side of the dispute.

But both Kallia and Heremon had plenty of resources at their disposal; why would either of them resort to robbery, or false accusations of robbery?

If Heremon were, in fact, the thief, why did he break in through the front door and generally make such a mess of the job? He might not have any experience at burglary, but he wasn’t stupid, to have attained his present status—the title “mage” was only given to a wizard of proven ability, one who had trained apprentices and who had demonstrated mastery of many spells.

And if Heremon was not the thief, who was? Had Kallia broken her own door and killed her own demon, to fake the theft? Killing a demon did not seem like a trivial matter, especially not for a demonologist, who would need to deal with other demons on a fairly regular basis. Sarai mulled the whole thing over carefully.

When court was finally adjourned, she and her father returned to their apartments for a late supper. Kalthon the Younger and his nurse had waited for them, so the meal was hurried, and afterward Lord Kalthon settled at little Kalthon’s side to tell him a bedtime story.

Sarai might ordinarily have stayed to listen—she loved a good story, and her father’s were sometimes excellent—but tonight she had other plans. Instead, she put on her traveling cloak and headed for the door.

Her father looked up, startled. “Where are you going?”

“I just want to check on something,” she said.

Kalthon the Younger coughed; he was a sickly child, always down with one illness or another, while Sarai was a healthy young woman, able to take care of herself. “All right,” Lord Kalthon said, “be careful.” He turned back to his son and continued, “So Valder the king’s son took the enchanted sword...”

Sarai closed the door quietly on her way out, and a few minutes later she was riding one of the overlord’s horses down Smallgate Street toward Eastside, toward Wizard Street.

CHAPTER 4

Lord Kalthon drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“Let’s go through it once more,” he said angrily. “You, the demonologist—what happened here?”

“Rander of Southbeach, my lord,” the demonologist said, with a tight little bow and a twitch of the black-embroidered skirts of his black robes.

“I didn’t ask your bloody name” Lord Kalthon shouted. “I asked what happened! Did Heremon the Mage rob Kallia of the Broken Hand or not?”

Rander’s attempt at an ingratiating smile vanished. He glanced hesitantly at the others, then said, “My lord, my arts show that Kallia has spoken the truth as she knows it.”

Lord Kalthon glared at him. “And?” he said.

“And so has Heremon the Mage,” the demonologist admitted reluctantly.

“And you can’t resolve this contradiction?”

“No.”

Lord Kalthon snorted and turned to the plump woman in the green robe. “I know you; you’ve testified before me before. Mereth of the Golden Door, isn’t it?” “Yes, my lord.” She bobbed politely. “Well?”

“My lord,” she said, in a pleasant contralto that Sarai envied, “like the demonologist, my spells have achieved confusing and contradictory results. I, too, find that both Kallia and Heremon speak the truth as they know it. Further, I can detect no distortion of memory in either of them. I used a scrying spell to see the crime with my own eyes, and I saw what Kallia described— Heremon taking the gold and other things; but when I used another divination, I was told that Heremon did not. I fear that some very powerful magic is responsible.” Kalthon turned to Okko and said, “Now what?” Okko hesitated, and looked very unhappy indeed. “Perhaps a witch...” he began. Sarai cleared her throat.

Kalthon turned an inquisitive eye toward his daughter. “Sarai,” he asked, “was there something you wanted to say?” “My lord,” she said, secretly enjoying her father’s startled reaction to this formal address from his daughter, “I have undertaken a little study of my own involving this case, and perhaps I can save everyone some time and further aggravation by explaining just what I believe to have happened.”

Lord Kalthon stared at her, smiling slightly. “Speak, then,” he said.

“Really, it’s not as difficult as all that,” Sarai said, stalling for time as her nerve suddenly failed her for a moment. What if she was wrong? Her father’s smile had vanished, she saw, replaced with a puzzled frown.

She took a deep breath and continued. “Kallia swears that she saw Heremon commit the crime, and every indication is that she speaks the truth, that that’s exactly what she saw. Furthermore, Heremon swears that he did not commit the crime, and chamber, and then ran for it. One of the warlocks burst his heart.” He glanced at Kalthon the Younger, who was listening intently, and then added, “I told her to.”

“What happened to the demon?” little Kalthon asked. “The one he conjured in the chamber.”

“The guards killed it,” the Minister of Justice replied. “Cut it to pieces with their swords, and eventually it stopped struggling.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that Irith isn’t very happy about it.”

“Who’s Irith?” Sarai asked.

“She’s the servant who cleans the justice chamber every night,” Lord Kalthon explained. “I told her that if she couldn’t get the stain out, not to worry, we’d hire a magician to do it.”

“Will you really?”

“Maybe,” Kalthon said. “We’ve certainly used plenty of magic already on this case.” He sighed. “More than I like. There are too damn many magicians in this city.”

Sarai nodded.

“And that reminds me, Sarai,” her father said, picking up the last drumstick. “Have you been dabbling in magic, perhaps?”

Sarai blinked, astonished. “No, sir,” she said. “Of course not.”

“So you really figured out that it was this Katherian all by yourself, then? Just using your own good sense?”

Sarai nodded. “Yes, Father,” she said.

Kalthon bit into the drumstick, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. “That was good thinking, then,” he said at last. “Very good.” “Thank you,” Sarai said, looking down at her plate.

“You know,” her father continued, “we use Okko and the other magicians to solve most of the puzzles we get. I mean, the cases where it’s a question of what the facts are, rather than just settling an argument where the facts are known.”

“Yes, sir,” Sarai said, “I’d noticed that.”

“Every so often, though, we do get cases like this one, with Kallia and Heremon and Katherian, and sometimes they’re real tangles. They usually seem to involve magicians, which doesn’t help any—such as the one where a man who’d been turned to stone a hundred years ago was brought back to life, and we had to find out who enchanted him, and then decide who owned his old house, and whether he could prosecute the heirs of the wizard who enchanted him, and for that matter we couldn’t be sure the wizard himself was really dead...”He shook his head. “Or all the mess after the Night of Madness, before you were bom—your grandfather handled most of that, but I helped out.” He gestured at Kalthon the Younger. “Yjur brother will probably be the next Minister of Justice, you know—it’s traditional for the heir to be the eldest son, skipping daughters, and I don’t think Ederd’s going to change that. But I think we could use you—after today, I think it would be a shame not to use wits like yours.”

“Use me how?” Sarai asked warily.

“As an investigator,” her father said. “Someone who goes out and finds out what’s going on in the difficult cases. Someone who knows about different kinds of magic, but isn’t a magician herself. I’d like to ask the overlord to name you as the first Lord—or rather, the first Lady of Investigation for Ethshar of the Sands. With a salary and an office here in the palace.”

Sarai thought it over for a moment, then asked, “But what would I actually do?”

“Usually, nothing,” the Minister of Justice replied. “Like the Lord Executioner. But if there’s ever anything that needs to be studied and explained, something where we can’t just ask Okko or some other magician, it would be your job to study it and then explain it to the rest of us.”

Sarai frowned. “But I can’t know everything,” she said.

“Of course not,” her father agreed. “But you can learn as much as you can. The overlord doesn’t expect his officers to be perfect.”

Sarai, remembering what she had heard of Ederd IV, overlord of Ethshar of the Sands, wasn’t any too sure of that. “What would I do when I can’t...”

“You would do the best you can,” her father interrupted. “Like any of the city’s officials.” “I’d need help sometimes,” Sarai said. “You’d be given the authority to call on the guard for help— I’ll ask Lord Torrut to assign you a regular assistant. And you could hire others.”

“Father, if we need someone to figure out these things, why hasn’t anyone already been given the job?”

Lord Kalthon smiled wryly. “Because we never thought of it. We’ve always improvised, done it all new every time.” “Have you talked to the overlord yet?”

“No,” Lord Kalthon admitted. “I wanted to see whether you wanted the job first.”

“I don’t know,” Sarai admitted.

There they left the matter for a sixnight; then one evening Lord Kalthon mentioned, “I spoke to the overlord today.”

“Oh?” Sarai asked, nervously.

Her father nodded. “He wants you to be his investigator, as I suggested. And I think he’d like the job to include more than I originally intended—he was talking about gathering information from other lands, as well, to help him keep up with events. He doesn’t like surprises, you know; he wasn’t at all happy that he had no warning about the rise of the Empire of Vond, in the Small Kingdoms, two years ago.”

“But I don’t know anything about...” Sarai began.

“You could learn,” Kalthon replied.

“I don’t know,” Sarai said. “I don’t like it. I need time to think about it.”

“So think about it,” her father answered.

In truth, she found the idea of being paid to study foreign lands fascinating—but the responsibilities and the fact that she would be reporting to the overlord himself were frightening.

Still, a sixnight later, she agreed to take the job.

CHAPTER 5

“We’ll go on to the next step tomorrow,” the wizard said, putting the dagger aside. The apprentice nodded, and Tabaea, watching from the landing, got quickly and silently to her feet and padded swiftly up the stairs. Her candle had gone out, and she dared not light another, so she moved by feel and memory. She knew she had to be out of the house before the two came upstairs and found her, so she wasted no time in the thefts she had originally planned. Her sack still hung empty at her belt as she made her way back through the workshop, the hallway, and the parlor.

It was in the parlor that she stumbled over something in the dark and almost fell. Light glinted from the hallway; the wizard and his apprentice were in the workroom. Frightened, Tabaea dropped to her knees and crept on all fours through the dining salon, and finally out to the mudroom. There she got to her feet and escaped into the darkness of the alley beyond.

It was later than she had realized; most of the torches and lanterns over the doors had been allowed to burn out for the night, and Grandgate Market’s glow and murmur had faded to almost nothing. Grand Street was empty.

She hesitated. She had come down to Grandgate Market in unfulfilled hopes of filching a few choice items from the buyers and sellers there; the wizard’s house had caught her eye as she passed on her way to the square, and she had turned down the alley on her way home. All she should do now was to go on the rest of the way, north and west, back to her family’s house in Northangle. But it was so very dark in that direction, and the streets of Ethshar weren’t safe at night. There were robbers and slavers and, she thought with a glance eastward at Wizard Street, quite possibly other, less natural, dangers. But what choice did she have?

Life didn’t give her very many choices, she thought bitterly. It was no more than a mile to her home, and most of it would be along two major avenues, Grand Street and Midway Street; it would only be the last two blocks that would take her into the real depths of the city. One of those blocks was along Wall Street, beside Wall Street Field, where all the thieves and beggars lived. That was not safe at night. But what choice did she have?

She shuddered and set out on her way, thinking as she walked how pleasant it would be to be a wizard, and to be able to go fearlessly wherever one pleased, always knowing that magic protected one. Or to be rich or powerful and have guards—but that had its drawbacks, of course; the guards would find out your secrets, would always know where you had been, and when.

No, magic was better. If she were a wizard, like the one whose house she had been in...

She frowned. Would he know someone had been in the house? She hadn’t taken anything, hadn’t even broken anything—the lock on the alley door had a few scratches, and a few things might be out of place, but she hadn’t taken anything, and really, it had been that weird little green creature that had disturbed the papers and so forth.

Even if the wizard knew she had been there, he probably wouldn’t bother to do anything about it.

As long, that is, as he didn’t realize she’d been spying on him while he taught his apprentice about the athame thing. That was obviously a deep, dark Wizards’ Guild secret; if anyone found out she had heard so much about it she was probably as good as dead.

Which meant that so far, no one had found out. And even with his magic, how could the wizard find out? She hadn’t left any evidence, and he wouldn’t know what questions to ask.

She wished she had heard even more, of course; she had heard a little about what an athame could do and the instructions for preparing to perform the ritual to work the spell to create an athame, but not much more than that. It was obviously a long, complicated procedure to make an athame, and she didn’t really know just what one was.

It had to be a magic knife of some kind, obviously a powerful and important one, but beyond that she really wasn’t very clear on what it was for. The wizard had described several side effects, little extras, but she’d come in too late to hear the more basic parts.

If she had one with her, though, she was sure she would feel much, much safer on Wall Street. It was a shame she hadn’t heard all of the instructions for making one. She had only heard the beginning. To get the rest she would have to go back the next night.

She stopped abruptly and stood motionless for a long moment, there in the middle of Grand Street, about four blocks west of Wizard Street. The new-risen lesser moon glowed pink above her, tinting the shadows, while a few late torches and lit windows spilled a brighter light across her path, but nothing moved, and the night was eerily silent.

If she went back the next night, she could hear the rest.

And if she learned the procedure, or ceremony, or spell, or whatever it was, she could make herself an athame.

And why not go back?

Oh, certainly there was some risk involved; she might be spotted at any time. But the reward would be worth the risk, wouldn’t it?

She threw a glance back over her shoulder, then started running onward, back toward home.

She made it without incident, other than dodging around drunkards and cripples on Wall Street and briefly glimpsing a party of slavers in the distance, their nets held loose and ready.

She got home safely. And all the way, she was planning.

And the next night, when darkness had fallen, she again crept into the alley behind the wizard’s house, listening intently, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. This time, though, she carried a small shuttered lantern that she had appropriated from a neighbor in Northangle. Entering on a whim was all very well, but it was better to be prepared.

If she found any sign at all that her earlier visit had been detected, she promised herself that she would turn and flee.

The lock was just as she remembered; she opened one lantern-shutter enough to get a look at it and saw no scratches or other marks from her previous entry. Unlocking it again took only a moment.

The mudroom beyond was just as she remembered, and, as she glanced around, she realized that she had, in fact, stolen something—the candle she had burned for light. In a household as rich as this, though, she was reasonably confident that the loss of a single candle would go unnoticed.

The dining salon was also undisturbed; when she shined her lantern about, however, the teapot raided in its cabinet and turned away in annoyance.

The plant in the parlor was still waving; the mantel where the little creature had sat was empty.

A few things had been moved around in the workroom, but she assumed that was just a result of normal use. Nothing seemed to be any more seriously disarrayed than before.

At the entrance to the cellars she encountered her first real obstacle: the door was locked.

She put her ear to it and listened intently and heard the wizard’s voice. He was beginning the night’s lesson—his voice had that droning, lecturing tone to it.

Frantically, she set to work on the lock, and discovered, to her relief, that it was no better than the one on the alley door. Really, it was disgraceful the way the wizard was so careless about these things! If she ever became a rich and powerful wizard, she would make sure that she had better locks than these. Relying entirely on magic couldn’t be wise.

And she hadn’t even seen any sign of magic; really, the wizard appeared to be relying entirely on his reputation, and that was just plain foolish.

The door swung open, and she slipped through, closing it carefully behind her, making sure it neither latched nor locked. With the lantern shuttered tight she crept down, step by step, to the landing.

And just as the night before, there sat the wizard and his apprentice, facing each other across the center of that rug. The wizard was holding a silver dagger and discussing the qualities important in a knife—not magical qualities, but basics like balance, sharpening, and what metals would hold an edge. Tabaea placed her lantern to one side and settled down, stretched out on her belly with her chin on her hands, to listen.

It was scarcely ten minutes later that the wizard finished his disquisition on blades and began explaining the purification rituals that would prepare a knife for athamezation. Tabaea watched, fascinated. Night after night, she crept in and watched. Until finally, there came the night, after studying this one ritual, this one spell, for over a month, when the apprentice— her name, Tabaea had learned, was Lirrin—at last attempted to perform it herself.

Tabaea returned for the conclusion of the ceremony, the grand finale in which the apprentice would trap a part of her own soul in the enchanted dagger that the wizards called an athame. She settled down, once again, on her belly and lay on the stone landing, staring down at the two figures below.

Lirrin had been at it for more than twenty-three hours, Tabaea knew, without food or rest. Her master, Serem the Wise, had sat by her side, watching and calling what advice he could the entire time.

Tabaea, the uninvited observer, had not done anything of the sort. She had watched the beginning of the spell, then slipped away and gone about her business. Throughout the day she had sometimes paused and thought, “Now she’s raising the blade over her head for the long chant,” or “It must be time for the third ritual cleaning,” but she had not let it distract her from the more urgent matter of finding food and appropriating any money left sufficiently unguarded. When she at last returned, the silver knife was glittering white, and Tabaea really didn’t think it was just a trick of the light. The spell was doing something, certainly.

She could hear fatigue in the master’s voice as he murmured encouragement; the apprentice was far too busy concentrating on the spell to say anything, but surely she, too, must be exhausted.

Perhaps it was the certainty that the objects of her scrutiny were tired, or fascination with this climax, or just overconfi-dence acquired in her many undetected visits, but Tabaea had crept further forward than ever before, her face pressed right against the iron railing. The black metal was cool against her cheek as she stared.

Lirrin finished her chant and placed her bloody hands on the shining dagger’s hilt; blood was smeared on her face, as well, her own blood mixed with ash and sweat and other things. It seemed to Tabaea that the girl had to force her hands down, as if something were trying to push them back, away from the weapon.

Then Lirrin’s hands closed on the leather-wrapped grip, and her entire body spasmed suddenly. She made a thick grunting noise; the dagger leaped up, not as if she were lifting it, but as if it were pulling her hands upward.

Something flashed; Tabaea could not say what it was, or just where, or what color it was. She was not sure it was actually light at all, but “flash” was the only word that seemed to fit. For an instant she couldn’t see.

She blinked. Her vision cleared, and she saw Lirrin rising to her feet, the new-made athame in her right hand, any unnatural glow vanished. The dagger looked like an ordinary belt knife— of better quality than most, perhaps, but nothing unreasonable. The girl’s face was still smeared with black and red, her hair was a tangled mess, her apprentice’s robe was wrinkled, stained, and dusty, but she was no longer transfigured or trembling; she was just a dirty young girl holding a knife. She looked up, straight at Tabaea. Tabaea froze.

“Master,” Lirrin said, tired and puzzled, “who’s that?” She pointed.

Serem turned to look, startled.

When the wizard’s eyes met her own, Tabaea unfroze. She leaped to her feet and spun on her heel, then dashed up the short flight of steps. She ran out through the wizard’s workroom as fast as she could and careened out into the utter darkness of the hallway. Moving by feel, no longer worrying about making noise or knocking things over, she charged down the hall, through the parlor and dining salon, banging a shin against the animated fanning plant’s pot in the parlor, sending one of the ornately carved dining chairs to the floor.

The door to the mudroom was open; she tumbled through it, tripping over somebody’s boots, and groped for the door to the alley before she even regained her feet.

Then she was out and stumbling along the hard-packed dirt toward the light of Grand Street. She was breathing too hard to seriously listen for pursuit, but at any rate she heard no shouting, no threats, none of the unnatural sounds that accompanied some spells.

At the comer she hesitated not an instant in turning toward Grandgate Market, even though that meant passing in front of the house. The marketplace crowds were unquestionably the best place to lose herself. She hoped that Serem and Lirrin hadn’t gotten a good look at her and that Serem had no magic that could ferret her out once she was lost.

By the time she had gone three blocks she felt she could risk a look back over her shoulder. She saw no sign of Serem or Lirrin and slowed to a walk.

If they spotted her now, she would just plead innocent, claim they had mistaken her for someone else.

Of course, if they insisted on taking her anyway, and if they had some magical means of discovering the truth, or if they had none themselves but took her to the overlord’s Minister of Justice, who reportedly kept several magicians around for just such matters... well, if anything like that happened, she would just have to throw herself on somebody’s mercy and hope that the penalty wasn’t too harsh. After all, she hadn’t actually stolen anything.

She glanced back again and saw lights in the windows of Serem’s house; the shutters had been opened, and light was pouring out into the streets.

Maybe they thought she was still inside somewhere—but that was silly. She hadn’t even taken the time to close the alleyway door behind her. Well, whatever they thought, they weren’t coming after her, as far as she could see. She let out a small gasp of relief. And the market square—which was called that even though it was six-sided and not square at all—was just ahead. In only seconds she would be safe.

Then the arched door at the corner of Grand and Wizard opened, spilling light, and even from four blocks away Tabaea could see that Serem stood silhouetted against it, peering out. Tabaea shuddered and forced herself not to run, and then she was in Grandgate Market, in the milling crowds.

Even so, even after she had seen Serem march out into the street, glare in all directions, and then go back inside, it was hours before she felt at all safe. It was two days before she dared go home, and two sixnights before she dared pass within a block of Serem’s house.

CHAPTER 6

During the days following Lirrin’s athamezation, Tabaea reviewed the ritual repeatedly, both silently and aloud. Tessa and Thennis heard her mumbling the incantations and mocked her when she refused to explain—but that was normal enough.

The whole question of how to use what she had learned was a baffling one. The secret of the athame was clearly one of the most important mysteries of the Wizards’ Guild, and therefore tremendously valuable—but how could she cash in on it? There was a word that described people who crossed the Wizards’ Guild, by stealing from them, or attempting to blackmail them— the word was “dead.”

So she couldn’t do anything at all that would bring her to the attention of the Guild. That left two other options: sell the secret elsewhere, or use it herself.

And where else could she sell it?

Wizards and sorcerers were traditional enemies, so one afternoon in Summerheat she strolled over to Magician Street, in Northside, and wandered into a sorcerer’s shop. The proprietor didn’t notice her for several minutes, which gave her a chance to look around.

The place didn’t look very magical; there were no animated plants, no strange skulls or glowing tapestries or peculiar bottles. There were some tools, but they looked as appropriate for a tinker or a jeweler as for a magician—pliers and hammers and so forth. Assorted colored wires hung on one wall, and crystals were displayed on another, but Tabaea, who had a competent thief’s working knowledge of precious stones and metals, quickly concluded that none of these were particularly valuable.

The sorcerer finally realized she was there; he took in her youth and ragged appearance in an instant, and said, “I’m not looking for an apprentice just now, young lady.” “I’m fifteen,” Tabaea replied, annoyed. “My apologies, then. What can I do for you?” Tabaea hesitated; she had thought over a dozen possible openings without definitely choosing one, but now she could put it off no longer.

Might as well be direct, she thought. “I think I might have something to sell you,” she said. “Oh?” The sorcerer was a black-haired man in his thirties, with thick, bushy eyebrows that looked out of place on his rather pale and narrow face. Those eyebrows now rose questioningly. “What might that be? Have you found an interesting artifact, perhaps? Some relic of the Northern Empire?” “No,” Tabaea said, startled. “There were never any Northerners around here.”

“True enough. Then it was around here that you found whatever it is? ”

“Yes. It’s not an artifact—it’s a piece of information.” The sorcerer frowned, his eyebrows descending. “I am not usually in the business of buying information,” he said.

“It’s about wizards,” Tabaea said, a note of desperation creeping into her voice.

The sorcerer blinked. “I am a sorcerer, young lady, not a wizard. You do know the difference, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course, I do!” Tabaea replied angrily. Then, calming, she corrected herself. “Or at least, I know there is a difference. And I know that you people don’t like wizards, so I thought maybe... well, I found out a secret about wizards.” “And you thought that it might be of interest to sorcerers?” Tabaea nodded. “That’s right,” she said.

The sorcerer studied her for a moment, then asked, “And what price were you asking for this secret?”

Tabaea had given that some thought and had decided that a hundred pounds of gold would be about right—a thousand rounds, that would be, equal to eight hundred thousand copper bits. That was most of a million. She would be rich, she wouldn’t need to ever steal again. Magicians were all rich—well, the good ones, anyway, most of them; surely, they could afford to pay her even so fabulous a sum as that.

But now she found she couldn’t bring herself to speak the numbers aloud. Eight hundred thousand bits—it was just too fantastic.

“I hadn’t decided,” she lied.

The sorcerer clicked his tongue sympathetically and shook his head in dismay. “Really, child,” he said, “you need to learn more about business. Let me ask, then—would this secret help me in my own business? Would it let me take customers away from the wizards?”

Tabaea hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Attempting a recovery, she added, “But the wizards really don’t want anyone to know about it!”

The sorcerer frowned again. “In that case, isn’t this a dangerous bit of knowledge to have? How did you come by it?” “I can’t say,” Tabaea said, a trifle desperately. “Well, all right, then,” the sorcerer said. “I’m not usually one to buy a closed casket, but you’ve caught my interest.” Tabaea caught her breath.

“I’ll pay you four bits in silver for your secret,” the sorcerer said.

Tabaea blinked. “Four bits?” she squeaked. “Half a round of silver,” the sorcerer confirmed. Tabaea stared for a moment, then turned and ran out of the shop without another word.

Later, when she could think about it clearly, she realized that the sorcerer had really been making a generous oifer. Tabaea had given him no hint of what her secret was, no reason to think it would be profitable for him to know it—and in fact, she saw now that it would probably not be profitable.

Wizards and sorcerers were traditional rivals, but they weren’t blood enemies. Sorcerers weren’t about to wage a full-scale war against wizards—for one thing, there were far more wizards in the World than sorcerers. And what possible use would knowledge of athamezation be to any magician who was not prepared to use it against wizards?

Selling her information, she saw, simply wasn’t going to work. That left using it herself as the only way to exploit it. And the only way to use it was to make herself an athame. That certainly had its appeal; she would be a true wizard, then, according to what Serem the Wise had said, even if she didn’t know any spells. And if she ever did learn any spells, the athame would make them easier to use, if she had understood correctly. The knife would be able to free her from any bonds, if she could touch it. It would mark her as a wizard to other wizards, but not to anyone else—and yet she would not be a member of the Guild.

And she had the impression that there was far more to it than she knew. She hadn’t heard all of Serem’s teachings to Lirrin. She had learned the entire twenty-four-hour ceremony, but had missed a fair amount of the other discussion about the athame. So, one bright day early in Summersend, two months after Lirrin completed her own athame, Tabaea slipped out of a shop on Armorer Street with a fine dagger tucked under her tunic, one that she had not paid for.

The next problem, now that she had the knife, was to find a place where she could perform the spell. Her home was out of the question, with her sisters and her mother and her stepfather around—if her stepfather had turned up again, that is.

The people of the Wall Street Field had a reputation for minding their own business, but there were surely limits, and the all-day ritual with its blood and chanting and so forth would draw attention anywhere. And what if it rained? Right now the summer sun was pouring down like hot yellow honey, but the summer rains could come up suddenly.

She needed someplace indoors and private, where she could be sure of an entire day undisturbed, and such places were not easy for a poor young woman to find in the crowded streets and squares of Ethshar of the Sands. Maybe, she thought, if she left the city... But no, that was crazy. She wasn’t going to leave the city. There wasn’t anything out there but peasants and barbarians and wilderness, except maybe in the other two Ethshars, and those would be just as unhelpful as Ethshar of the Sands. There were places that most people never went, such as the gate towers and the Great Lighthouse and all the towers that guarded the harbor, but those were manned by the overlord’s soldiers.

She wandered along Armorer Street, vaguely thinking of the South Beaches, but with no very clear plan in mind; she squinted against the sun and dust as she walked, not really looking where she was going.

She heard a man call something obscene, and a woman giggled. Tabaea looked up.

She was at the corner of Whore Street, and a man in the yellow tunic and red kilt of a soldier was shouting lewd promises to a red-clad woman on a balcony.

Those two would have no trouble finding a few minutes’ privacy, she was sure—though of course they’d have to pay for it. That was a thought—she could pay for it. She could rent a room—not here in Soldiertown, of course, but at a respectable inn somewhere. She was so accustomed to stealing everything she needed that the idea of paying hadn’t occurred to her at first.

But she could, if she wanted. She had stashed away a goodly sum of money in her three years of thievery and had never spent more than a few bits. Maybe making herself an athame would be worth the expense.

It took two more days before she worked up the nerve, but at last she found herself in a small attic room at the Inn of the Blue Crab, with the proprietor’s promise not to allow anyone near for a day and a half.

She had tried to convince him, without actually stating it, that she was a wizard’s apprentice and that her master had assigned her some spell that required privacy; fear of wild magic was about the only thing she could think of that would reliably restrain the man’s natural curiosity. She wasn’t at all sure it had worked.

She had laid in a good supply of candles for light, and a jug of reasonably pure water—the inn’s well, the innkeeper boasted, had a permanent purification spell on it, but Tabaea suspected it was just not particularly polluted. She couldn’t have any food, she knew, but she was fairly sure that water was permissible. She had brought a change of clothing, for afterward. She had fire and water and blood, and of course, she had her dagger. She had rested well and was as ready as she knew how to be.

Still, she trembled as she began the first chant, the dagger held out before her.

The incantations, the gestures, the eerie little dance, she remembered them all. She had no master or teacher in attendance urging her on, nor any other helper to light candles for her, so parts of the spell had to be performed in darkness, but she continued, undaunted.

The attic room was warm and close, and as the candles burned down it grew hotter and stuffier. When the candles died, it was almost a relief—but then the sun came up, and by midmorning the heat was worse than ever. She would have opened the window, but to do so would have meant stepping outside the pattern of the ceremony. The innkeeper would have come up and opened the window for an ordinary customer, if only to help cool the inn as a whole, but she had forbidden him entrance.

If she had thought ahead, she realized, she would have had the window open all along. She hadn’t, and she had to make the best of it; she couldn’t stop now.

In fact, she was unsure whether it was literally possible to stop; she could sense the magical energies working around her, a strange, new, but unmistakable sensation. She was afraid that the magic would turn against her if she stopped, so she ignored her thirst, ignored the heat, ignored her fatigue, and continued with the spell, sweating heavily.

Worst of all, she could see her jug of water, and she had the bowl of water used in purifying the metal of the knife, but this part of the ritual did not allow her a chance to drink so much as a drop.

Her voice gave out by midday; she hoped that didn’t matter. By that time exhaustion, dehydration, and heat had driven her into a state of dazed semiconsciousness, and she continued with the spell more out of inertia than anything else. Around midaftemoon she came to a part that she could not do without conscious effort. The spell called for her to draw her own blood, pricking her right hand, her throat, and the skin over her heart with the dagger.

Hands trembling, she drew the necessary blood, and used it to paint the required three symbols on the blade, marking the weapon as eternally hers.

The worst was yet to come, though; for the final section of the spell she would need to slash open her forehead and use the point of the knife to smear the blood across her face, mixing it with the sweat and ash. That would mark her as belonging to the knife, just as the three runes marked the knife as belonging to her. She dreaded that part; she had an irrational fear that in her weakness, she would lose control and cut her own skull open.

Still, she struggled on.

The moment came; the blade shook as she raised the dagger to her brow, which terrified her still more. Even if she didn’t cut too deep, what if she slipped and cut an eye?

She closed her eyes as she drew the blade across the tight skin.

At first she thought she had somehow missed, and she reached up with her free hand. It came away red.

Quickly, she continued with the ceremony.

She could feel the magic around her—but somehow, even in her unthinking state, she began to sense that something had gone wrong.

Hadn’t Lirrin’s knife been glowing at this point?

Tabaea’s wasn’t. In fact, though it was hard to be certain in the deepening twilight, the knife seemed to have gone dark, as if blackened by smoke. But she hadn’t managed to light a candle or other fire in hours; there was no smoke in the room.

She placed the knife before her, as the spell required, and it seemed almost to disappear in the gloom.

She had no choice but to continue, though. She had the final chant to get through, and then she would pick up the knife and the spell would be over—if she could pick up the knife. She remembered Lirrin forcing her hands down as if against strong resistance.

She hurried through the chant as quickly as she could in her weakened, frightened, and voiceless condition, thinking all the while that this had been an incredibly stupid thing to try all on her own, that it was fantastically dangerous, that it couldn’t possibly work, that the knife might kill her when she picked it up—and at the same time, underneath her terror, she exulted in the knowledge that she was working magic, that if she came through this she would be a wizard, that the dagger would be her athame, and she would be the World’s only Guildless wizard.

She spoke the final word and pressed her hands down toward the dagger. They met no resistance at all.

She closed her eyes against the flash as her fingers closed on the hilt. There was no flash. The eerie sensation of magic at work faded quickly away, and she was just a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor of a hot, airless attic room, holding an ordinary dagger.

But that couldn’t be true, she told herself, it wasn’t possible. She blinked in the darkness, trying to see the knife, but the daylight was gone, and the light from the window, compounded of lanterns and torches and the lesser moon’s pink glow, wasn’t enough.

She dropped the dagger and groped for the candles and her tinderbox. In a moment she had a light going, and looked down at the knife that lay on the bare planks.

It was blackened all over, a smooth, even black; the silver blade still gleamed, but with the dark shimmer of volcanic glass.

Tabaea felt it. It wasn’t glass; it was still metal.

But it was black.

Hilt and guard were black, as well.

The entire dagger was utterly, completely black, totally colorless.

That wasn’t right. Tabaea didn’t know much about wizards, but she had seen them in the streets, she had seen the athame that Serem carried and the athame that Lirrin had made. All those athames were perfectly ordinary and natural in appearance, not this unearthly black.

Something had gone wrong.

She remembered the tests that Serem had described, but which she had not seen Lirrin attempt because of her need to flee. She couldn’t try any of the ones that involved other people or other athames, but...

She wrapped a leather thong from her belt around one arm, tied it off with a simple knot, then touched the black dagger to it.

Nothing happened.

The cord was supposed to untie and fall away, but nothing happened.

She touched the blade of the dagger to her forehead, gently; it came away bloody, but there was no glow, not so much as a flicker of color. The gash on her brow did not heal.

She held the dagger out by the blade, on the flat of her palm; it did not tremble, did not turn its hilt to her, did not prepare to defend her.

It did nothing that an athame was supposed to do.

It was not an athame.

It was nothing.

Staring at the worthless black dagger, hungry, thirsty, exhausted, Tabaea felt her eyes fill with tears. She fought back the first sob, but then gave in and wept.