When Demons Walk

2

Sham began to run when she saw the door of the Old Man’s cottage lying broken on the dirty cobbles of the street. She was still running, the dagger from her arm sheath in her hand, when she heard Maur scream in a mixture of rage and terror that echoed hoarsely in the night.

As she reached the dark entrance she stopped, ingrained wariness forcing her to enter cautiously when she wanted to rush in howling like a Uriah in full hunt. She listened for a moment, but other than the initial cry the cottage was still.

As she stepped across the threshold, the tangy smell of blood assailed her nose. Panicked at the thought of losing the old wizard as she had everyone else, she recklessly flooded the small front room with magelight. Blinking furiously, her eyes still accustomed to the dark, she noticed that there was blood everywhere, as if a cloud of the stuff had covered the walls.

The Old Man was on his knees in the corner, one arm raised over his face, bleeding from hundreds of small cuts that shredded clothes and skin alike. There was no one else in the room.

“Master!” she cried out.

At the sound of her voice, he turned toward her. Urgently he said, “Go child, hurry. This is not your battle.”

As he spoke, a broad red slice appeared on his upraised arm as if drawn there by an invisible artist. Though she had caught a bare glimpse of something moving, it was gone before she could tell what it was.

His command was voiced so strongly that Sham took a step backward before she caught herself. The last magic her master had wrought was twelve years before. Blind and crippled, he was as helpless as a child—she wasn’t about to leave him.

Her mouth firmed as another wound appeared, weeping blood down the side of his crippled hand. She gestured, calling a simple spell of detection, hoping to locate the unseen attacker, but the magic in the room was thick and obscured her spell. The assailant seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

She tried a spell to discover the kind of magic the assailant used so that she could try unworking his magic. A cold chill rolled its way down her spine as her spell told her that whatever else it was, it was not human. It was also not one of the creatures who could use natural magic, for what she’d sensed had no connection to the forces stirred by the Spirit Tide. That left only a handful of creatures to choose from, none of them very encouraging.

She dropped the useless dagger to the ground. When the blade clattered to the floor, the flute slid into her hand, as if it had taken advantage of her inattention to slip out of the pocket in her sleeve.

As her fingers closed about its carved surface, it occurred to her that a thing did not have to be sharp to be a weapon. She set the mouthpiece against her lips for the second time that evening and blew softly through the instrument, letting the music fill the air. She would never be a bard-level musician, but she was thankful for the years the Old Man had sought to instill his love of music in her.

As the first notes sounded in the room, she could feel the magic gathering, far more than she would have been able to harness alone. It surrounded her, making her blood sing like rushing water with the heady vortex of power. She would pay for it later, of course—that was the secret of the flute. More than one mage had died after using it, not realizing until it was too late the cost of the power the flute called. Others had died when the magic grew too strong for them to control.

She fought to ignore the euphoria spawned by the rapidly mounting tide of magic. When she felt it push at the edge of her control, she took the flute from her lips.

Her body was numb from the forces she held, and it took more effort than it should have to raise her arms and begin a spell of warding. She watched her hands move, almost able to see the glow of the magic she wrought. She was so caught up in her weaving that when it began to unravel, Sham didn’t immediately understand the cause.

The Old Man had come to his feet and moved close enough to touch her neck with one of his scarred and twisted hands.

“By your leave, my dear,” said the old sorcerer softly as he drew the magic she had gathered.

For a moment she was startled by his action.

All apprentices were bound to their masters. It was necessary to mitigate the risk that the fledgling mages would lose control of the power they called and burn anything around them to cinders.

The bonds of apprenticeship had not been severed when she passed to journeyman as was the usual practice, since only the master can break such a bond, and the Old Man had been unable to summon magic since his crippling. Sham had never considered the possibility that he could work magic already gathered.

“Take as you will,” she said, letting her hands fall to her side.

As the power she had drawn together gathered in the Master’s hands, the old mage smiled. For a moment she saw him as she had the first time: power tempered with wisdom and kindness.

She watched with a keen appreciation the deft touch of the King’s Sorcerer as he wove a warding spell similar to her own but infinitely more complex without resorting to any obvious motion to aid his work. The continued slashes failed to break his formidable concentration. When he finished his spell, the cottage vibrated from the force of his attacker’s frustrated, keening wail. It tested the warding twice before Sham could no longer sense its magic.

The Old Man collapsed on the floor. Sham knelt almost as swiftly as he had fallen, running gentle hands over him. She found no wounds that could be bound, only a multitude of small, thin lines from which the old man’s lifeblood drained to the floor. Her motions grew more frantic as she realized the inevitability of his death was spattered on the walls, on the floor, on her.

There was no magic she knew that could heal him. The runes of healing she drew on his chest would promote his body’s own processes, but she knew that he would be dead long before his body could even begin to mend. She tried anyway. The effort of working magic so soon after she’d played the flute caused her hands to shake as she drew runes that blurred irritatingly in her vision as she cried.

“Enough, Shamera, enough.” The Old Man’s voice was very weak.

She pulled her hands away and clenched them, knowing he was right. Carefully, she drew his haltered head into her lap. Ignoring the gore, she patted the weathered skin of his face tenderly.

“Master,” she crooned softly, and the Old Man’s lips twisted once more into a smile.

He would be sorry to leave his little, contrary apprentice. He always thought of her as he had last seen her, at that point where child turns to woman—though he knew she was long since grown, a master in her own right. She hadn’t been a child since she’d rescued him from the dungeon where he lay blinded, crippled, and near death. He had to warn her before it was too late. With hard-won strength he reached up and caught her hand.

“Little one,” he said. But his voice was too soft: It angered him to be so weak, and he drew strength from that anger.

“Daughter of my heart, Shamera.” It was little more than a whisper, but he could tell by her stillness that she had heard. “It was the Chen Laut that was here. You must find it, child, or it will destroy ...” He paused to grasp enough strength to finish. “It is ... close this time or it wouldn’t have chanced attacking me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” she answered softly. “Chen Laut.”

He relaxed in her embrace. As he did, a wondrous thing happened. The magic, his own magic, which had eluded him for so many years returned across the barrier of pain as if it had never been reft from him. As he stopped fighting for breath, the power surrounded him and comforted him as it always had. With a sigh of relief, of release, he gave himself to its caress.

Blank-faced, Shamera watched the old mage leave her, his body lax in her arms. As soon as he was gone, she set his head gently on the floor and began straightening his body, as if it mattered how the Old Man lay for his pyre. When she was finished, she knelt at his feet with her head bowed to show her respect. She let the magelight die down and sat in the darkness with the body of her master.

The sound of boots on the floorboards drew her from her reverie. She watched numbly as four of the city-guards flooded the small room with torchlight.

Belatedly, she realized she should have left when she could have. Her clothes were soaked with blood. Without witnesses, she was the most likely suspect. But this was Purgatory; she could buy her way out of it. Money was not a problem; the Old Man wouldn’t need the gold in the cave.

Sham stood up warily and faced the intruders.

Three were Easterners and the fourth a Southwoodsman, easily distinguished from the rest by his long hair and beard. They all had familiar faces, though she’d be hard put to name any but the apparent leader—he answered to Scarf, named for the filthy rag he tied over his missing eye. She relaxed a little: The whisper was that he could be bought more easily than most.

Scarf and one of the other Easterners, tall for his race and cadaverously thin with large black eyes, looked at the blood that splattered almost every surface of the room with dawning respect. While the other two looked around, the Southwoodsman and the third Easterner kept their eyes on Sham. She carefully kept her arms well away from her body so she presented little threat.

Scarf put the torch he held in one of the empty wall brackets and motioned to the Southwoodsman to do the same with the second torch. Scratching at his forehead, Scarf turned in a full circle to assess the room again before letting his gaze come to rest on Sham.

“Altis’s blood, Sham—when you decide to kill a bastard, you have a right pretty touch.” He hawked and spat—a tribute of soils, thought Sham once she’d deciphered his fragmented Southern.

Before she could answer, a fifth man walked into the room, this one dressed in the garb of a nobleman. She took a step back at the wide smile on his face.

Scarf looked up and spoke in his native Cybellian. “Lord Hirkin, sir, I think you’ll find this one more helpful than the other. This is Sham the thief—I’ve heard the Shark watches out for him.”

“Good, good,” said Lord Hirkin, the man who ruled of the guardsmen of Purgatory.

He made a gesture toward Sham and Scarf stepped behind her, securing her by wrapping his massive hands around her upper arms.

Tide save her, Sham thought, this wasn’t going to be easy alter all. She set her grief aside for later, turning all her attention to the situation at hand.

“I have been looking for just such a murdering thief,” Hirkin continued, switching to Southern for Sham’s benefit. “This man who calls himself the Shark. You will tell me where to find him.”

Sham raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know where he stays; no one does. If you want him, leave a message with one of the Whisperers.”

Actually she was probably the only person outside of the Shark’s gang, the Whisper of the Street, who did know where the Shark was most of the time, but she had no intention of sharing that information with anyone. The Shark had his own ways of dealing with such problems, methods bound to be much nastier than anything this man could dream up—besides, he was a friend.

Hirkin shook his head with mock sadness and turned away to address the three guardsmen behind him. “It always takes so long—” he spun on his heel and backhanded her across the mouth “—to get any truth out of Southwood scum—too stupid for their own good. Perhaps I ought to turn you over to my man here.” He nodded at the cadaverous one who smiled evilly, revealing a missing tooth. “He likes boys about your size. The last one he got to play with I killed afterwards—out of mercy.”

Sham looked suitably impressed by Hirkin’s threats: that is, not at all. She snorted and smirked around her cut lip. She had learned early that the scent of fear only excited jackals and made them more vicious.

“I’ve heard about that one,” she commented with a jerk of her chin toward the guard that Hirkin had indicated. “Whisper has it that he can’t tie his own shoes without help. Throw me to him and you might find the pieces of him afterward.”

She was expecting the next blow and turned her head with the strike, averting some of the force. They hadn’t searched her for weapons. Her dagger lay where she had thrown it, but several of her thieving tools were almost as sharp. Scarf’s grip wasn’t as secure as he thought it was—not when he held a wizard. She just had to pick the best time to make her move.

Watching the proceedings, Talbot, the lone Southwoodsman guard, ground his teeth. This was the fourth such beating this night. The first two he’d only heard about. The third one he’d come upon after the victim was already dead.

It wasn’t that he had trouble with a beating or two in the name of justice, but this interrogation had nothing to do with the body lying forgotten in the corner of the room—no way a lad that size could rip a door out of the frame that way. Then too, the sight of the Easterners hitting a Southwoodsman brought back an anger he thought long buried.

This was the first steady job he’d found in five years, but he wasn’t going to watch Lord Hirkin beat a boy to death in order to keep it. With a silent apology to his wife, he turned and slipped out the door at a moment when the other’s attention was focused on the little thief.

Once in the silent street, Talbot headed for the nearest thoroughfare at a brisk trot with the vague idea of finding a few other of the Southwoodsman guards. Hirkin’s control wasn’t as strong with them, and he knew of several who wouldn’t mind a chance to kill a few Cybellians, be they guardsmen or nobles.

He toyed briefly with the idea of sending a message to the Shark, but dismissed it. The Shark generally avoided direct contact with the guardsmen; he would avenge the lad’s death, but Talbot hoped to save it instead. Vengeance wasn’t worth losing a steady job.

The nearest busy street was several blocks away. At this time of the night there were fewer people, but Purgatory was never quiet. Once on the busier thoroughfare, Talbot caught his breath and looked around for any of the guardsmen that he knew, but the only one he saw was Cybellian. He swore softly under his breath.

“Trouble?” asked a nearby voice in Southern.

Talbot whirled and found himself face to face with a war stallion. Prudently he backed out of range of the horse’s eager teeth, and tipped his head back to meet the eyes of a man who, by his dress, could only be the Reeve of Southwood.

“Yes, sir.” His voice was steady. He had been a hand on the ship that sailed under the old King’s son. He was used to people of high rank, and the Whisper had it that Lord Kerim wasn’t as high in the mouth as most of his breed. He’d even heard that the Reeve concerned himself with all of the people of Southwood, Easterners and natives alike.

For the first time Talbot felt some hope that he’d get through this night with his job intact. “If ye have a minute, messire, there’s a crime that ye might be interested in.”

“Indeed?” Lord Kerim sat back on his horse and waited for the other man to continue.

Talbot cleared his throat and took a chance. “There’s been a murder, sir. When we came upon the body, there was a boy there with it. Normal procedure, sir, would be having us take him in for questioning and trial. But Lord Hirkin showed up an’ is proceeding with the questioning. I don’t think he intends to hold the lad for trial, if you get my meaning.”

Kerim looked at him a moment before saying softly, “‘Lead on then, man, and I’ll take care of it.”

With Kerim at his back, Talbot made good speed back to the little cottage. At the entrance, Kerim kicked his feet free of the stirrups and swung one leg forward over the saddle before sliding off his horse. Dropping the reins on the ground to keep the stallion in place, he followed Talbot to the open doorway.

“If you’re a good boy, there will be no need to meet the headsman just yet,” purred Lord Hirkin.

He had begun alternating his threats with outright bribery. Sham wasn’t sure why he was hunting the Shark, but it must be a matter of great importance to cause the urgency that he was demonstrating.

“I’d rather meet him than you,” she returned somewhat thickly from her abused lips. “At least he’ll smell of honest work. That’s better than what you’ll smell like when the Shark gets through with you. He doesn’t like people who poke around in his business—they usually end up feeding his brothers in the sea.”

Peripherally she was aware that someone had entered the room from the outside, but she assumed that it was only more guards.

This time the blow bloodied her nose. Eyes watering from the pain, Shamera knew that she needed to find a way to distract him soon. If she didn’t make her move before the pain got too bad, she wouldn’t be able to use her magic safely.

Obvious magic was out, unless her life was threatened. She wasn’t eager to be responsible for one of the periodic witch hunts that even now swept through Purgatory. But there were things that she could do that would even the odds a little.

She glanced at the door and froze, not even listening to Lord Hirkin’s verbal response to her insult. She was too busy staring at the Reeve of Southwood, standing inside the door just ahead of the Southwoodsman guard she’d seen leave a short time ago. When he noticed Sham’s intent stare, Hirkin swung around to see what had caught her attention.

“So,” said Lord Kerim, softly.

When he spoke the guards who had been looking at Sham turned to see the Reeve. She saw one of them take two quick steps forward and turn, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Southwoodsman just behind Lord Kerim—declaring silently where his loyalties lay.

“Lord Kerim, what brings you here?” asked Lord Hirkin.

“Did you see the boy kill this man?” The Reeve glanced casually down at the still form on the floor.

“No, my lord,” answered Hirkin. “One of the neighbors heard screams and sent his son to the nearest guard station. I happened to be there and joined my men in the investigation of the disturbance. We arrived to find this boy next to the body of the old man.”

Sham wondered at the lack of respect in the young lord’s tones. She had heard that Kerim was more popular among the merchants and lower classes than he was among the nobles, but this was more than she’d expected.

Scarf released her and stepped away, his eyes on the conflict between Hirkin and the Reeve. Sham let herself collapse to her knees and wiped blood out of her right eye, using both movements to shift a sharp little prying tool into her hand. The tool was small, but heavy and relatively well-balanced—almost as good as a throwing knife.

The Reeve shook his head lightly at Hirkin and said in the same dangerously soft voice he had used previously, “I met the young lad out on the docks less than an hour ago. He could not have made it back here in time to inflict this kind of damage.”

“I had no way of knowing that,” defended Lord Hirkin. “It is my duty to question all obvious suspects in a crime. This may be a quieter section, but it is still Purgatory. They wouldn’t tell the truth to their own mother, let alone guardsmen, without a little persuasion.”

“Perhaps,” Kerim nodded thoughtfully. “But from what I overheard just now, it sounds as if you are not overly concerned with the young man’s guilt. Indeed a listener might be excused for believing you are not even concerned with this crime.”

“My lord ...” Hirkin’s voiced died off when he met the Reeve’s eyes.

“It sounds as if you are questioning him regarding an entirely different crime. The theft of a logbook perhaps?” Lord Kerim looked at Hirkin with gentle interest and smiled without humor. “I believe that I can help you with that crime as well. Someone left a very interesting present with my personal servant just after dinner this evening.”

Hirkin whitened and slipped his hand down to grip the sword that hung from his belt.

Kerim shook his head with mock sadness. “I haven’t had time to go all the way through it, but someone was most helpful and marked certain entries. The most damaging entry, as far as your fate is concerned, was the kidnapping of Lord Tyber’s daughter and her subsequent sale to a slaver—he was not happy to hear that you were involved. I don’t know that I would return to the Castle if I were you.”

The Reeve’s lips widened into a smile that never touched his eyes and his voice softened further as he continued. “Many of these things had already come to my attention, but I lacked the evidence that someone so generously provided. In light of the fact that Lord Tyber would make certain that you do not live to face a trial, I have already passed sentence with the consent of the council. You are banished from Southwood.”

Hirkin’s face whitened with rage. “You would banish me? I am the second son of the Lord of the Marshlands! Our oldest title goes back eight hundred years. You are nothing! Do you hear me? Nothing but the bastard son of a high-bred whore.”

Kerim shook his head, managing to look regretful as he drew his sword from the sheath on his back. His voice abruptly iced over as he said, “High-bred whore she might be, but it is not your judgment to give. I cry challenge.”

The sight of the Reeve’s sword distracted Sham momentarily. She had heard that the Leopard fought with a blue sword, but she had assumed that it was painted blue—a custom that was fairly prevalent among the Easterners.

Instead it was blued as was sometimes done with steel intended for decorative use. She’d never heard of true bluing done on the scale of the Reeve’s massive blade. A lesser process was occasionally used to prevent rust on swords, but the blades came out more black than blue.

The Reeve’s sword was a dark indigo that glittered evilly in the dim light of the little cottage. It was edged in silver where the bluing had been honed away. Thin marks where other blades had marred the finish bore mute testimony that this was no ceremonial tool but an instrument of death.

Hirkin smiled and drew his own sword. “You make this too easy, my lord Reeve. Once you might have bested me, but I hear that two days out of three you can’t even lift that sword. You have no one to help you here—these are my men.”

Apparently he didn’t count Sham, who was definitely opposed to Hirkin—but she was surprised that he didn’t notice that two of his guardsmen were also backing the Reeve, leaving only Scarf and the cadaver still loyal.

Kerim smiled gently. “The order of banishment has already been listed in the temple and with the council. My death will not nullify that.” He twisted the sword around in a shimmering curtain of lethal sharpness, then smiled ferally and said, “We are in luck, it also appears that this is the one day of three I am able to fight.”

Apparently tiring of the posturing, Hirkin growled abruptly and sprang at Kerim, sweeping his sword low and hard. Without visible effort, Kerim caught the smaller blade on his own and turned it aside, destroying a table that stood against the wall.

As Sham winced away from the destruction, her attention was caught by a slight movement on her left. Without turning her head further from the flashing swords, she glimpsed Scarf edging slowly forward, a large, wicked knife in his hands. She frowned in disparagement at his choice of weapons—in the right hands a small dagger killed as surely and it was much easier to hide.

Knowing what little she did about Scarf, she would have thought he would wait to see who was winning before committing himself firmly to either side, but perhaps he had a greater interest in Lord Hirkin than she knew. She flinched again when Hirkin’s sword crashed into one of the cheap little pots that lined the crude wooden shelf set into the wall.

Sham knew she should take advantage of the fight and leave. The back door of the cottage was behind her, and no one was watching.

She waited until Scarf chose his position before selecting her own. Judging the distance with an experienced eye, she took a two-fingered grip on the handle of her thieving tool, careful to keep it out of sight in the length of sleeve that dangled below her hand. Then she settled in to wait for Scarf to make his move.

She missed most of the fight, though she could hear. The clash of metal on metal was overshadowed by Hirkin’s full-throated cries: Her father had done the same in battle. Kerim fought silently.

Slowly, Lord Hirkin backed to the corner where Scarf waited and for the first time since the initial strike, Sham got a clear view of the fight.

Time after time the blades struck and sparks flashed in the flickering torchlight. Lord Kerim moved with the lethal grace of one of the great hunting cats—unusual in a man so large. Sham no longer wondered how such a burly man had won the title of Leopard. Though Hirkin was without a doubt a tremendous swordsman, it was obvious he was no match for the Reeve. Hirkin stumbled to his left and Kerim followed him, leaving the vulnerable side of his throat an easy target for Scarf’s knife. Sham waited until the guardsman pulled his arm back before sending her tool spinning through the air. It slid noiselessly into Scarf’s good eye at the same time that a knife buried itself to its haft in his neck.

Startled, Sham raised her eyes to meet those of her fellow Southwoodsman, who raised his hand in formal salute. Near him the Cybellian who had supported Kerim was wrestling on the floor with Hirkin’s remaining henchman. Satisfied that the situation was under control she turned to watch the sword fight.

Hirkin’s sword moved with the same power that Kerim’s did, but without the Reeve’s fine control. Again and again, Hirkin’s sword hit wood and plaster while the blue sword touched only Hirkin’s blade.

Both men were breathing hard and the smell of sweat joined the smell of death that lingered cloyingly in the air. The blades moved more slowly now, with short resting periods breaking up the pace before the furious clash began again.

Abruptly, when it seemed that Hirkin was certain to lose, the tide of the fight changed. The Reeve stumbled over one of the old man’s slippers, falling to one knee. Hirkin stepped in to take advantage of Lord Kerim’s misfortune, bringing his sword down overhand angled to intersect the Reeve’s vulnerable neck.

Kerim made no attempt to come to his feet. Instead, he braced himself on both knees and brought the silver-edged blade up with impossible speed. Hirkin’s sword hit the Reeve’s with the full weight of its wielder behind the blow.

With only the strength of his upper body, the Reeve took the force of Hirkin’s blow and redirected it, slightly twisting as he did so. Hirkin’s sword sliced a hole in the Reeve’s surcoat before embedding itself in the floorboards.

Still on his knees, Kerim stabbed upward as if he held a knife rather than a sword. The tip hit Hirkin just below his rib cage and slid smoothly upward. Hirkin was dead before his body touched the floor.

The Reeve wiped the blade on Hirkin’s velvet surcoat. Showing little of the litheness he had displayed in the battle, he slowly regained his feet.

“Thought you might be slowing down, Captain.” The Eastern guard who’d supported Kerim spoke casually from his position on top of the man he’d been wrestling. He held the cadaver’s twisted legs under one knee and used both hands to secure an arm he’d pulled up and back. The position looked uncomfortable for both men to Sham, but she seldom indulged in such sport.

Kerim narrowed his eyes at the man who addressed him and then grinned. “It’s good to see you again. Lirn. What is an archer of your caliber doing working in Purgatory?”

The guardsman shrugged. “Have to take what work’s offered. Captain.”

“I could use you, training the Castle guards,” offered the Reeve, “but I have to warn you that the last man to hold the post of captain quit.”

The guard’s eyebrows rose. “I wouldn’t have thought that Castle guards would be that difficult.”

“They’re not,” returned Kerim. “My lady mother, however is.”

The guard laughed and shook his head. “I’ll do it. What do you want me to do with this one?” He gave the captive’s wrist a twitch and the man beneath him yelped.

“What was he doing when you caught him?” asked Kerim.

“Running.”

The Reeve shrugged. “Let him go. There is no law against running, and he is no worse than most of the guards around here.”

The Easterner untangled himself, letting his prisoner scramble out the door.

“What is your name, sir?” asked the Reeve turning to the Southwoodsman guard.

“Talbot, messire.” Sham saw the older man straighten a little at the respect that Lord Kerim had shown him.

“How long have you been a guard in Purgatory?” Kerim asked.

“Five years, sir. I was a seaman on the ship that served the son of the last king. Since then I’ve worked as a mate on several cargo ships, but the merchants like to change crew after each voyage. I have a wife and family and needed steady work.”

“Hmm,” said Kerim, and smiled with sudden mischief that animated his broad features to surprising attractiveness. “That will mean that you are used to proving yourself to those that you command. Good. My health problems have kept me from attending to Lord Hirkin as he should have been. I have need of someone who can keep an eye on such as he, without being subject to the consideration of politics. I would be pleased if you would accept the post of Master of Security—Hirkin’s recently vacated post plus a few extra duties.”

Lord Kerim raised his hand to forestall what Talbot would have said. “I warn you that it will mean traveling to the outlying area and keeping an eye on the way that the nobles are running their estates as well as managing the city guards. You will be the target of a lot of hostility—both because of your nationality and your common birth. I will outfit you with horse, clothing, and arms, provide living quarters for you and your family, and pay you five gold pieces each quarter. I tell you now that you will earn every copper.”

Talbot looked at the Cybellian and smiled slowly. “I’d like that.”

The Reeve turned to speak to Sham and then took two steps forward until he could peer into the windowless bedroom. “Did you see where the boy went?”

The newly appointed Captain of the Guard shook his head.

“Nay,” said Talbot, “but that one’s a wee bit canny.”

At the Reeve’s puzzled look, he explained further. “I mean he has the reputation of being a magician. I’ve seen him here and there, and asked around. Most of the folk in Purgatory leave him alone because he’s a right hand with magic—that includes the guardsmen.” Talbot hesitated then nodded his head at the old man’s slight form. “He seemed pretty upset by the old man’s death. Wouldn’t want to be in the killer’s shoes right now. I’d rather face a crazed boar than anger a sorcerer.”

Sham watched from a corner of the room that the three men had ignored, thanks to her magic. She wished they would hurry and go; she wasn’t certain how much longer she could hold the spell.

The Reeve knelt to examine Hirkin’s body. “After the way he threw this thing at Hirkin, I’d be more worried about his knife.”

Talbot shook his head and muttered something that sounded like “Easterners.”

Long after the three men had left, Sham huddled on a nearby rooftop and watched the old man’s cottage burn to ashes without scorching either of the buildings next to it. She closed her eyes wearily and shivered in the warmth of her magical flames.