Wild Magic

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There were people in the wynds and the byways, trudging to work in the first light. She hurried across Verakay Lane and turned down Vallaree Wynd; it was dark and empty except for the occasional sleeper recovering from a spree in a Mulehouse on Verakay. She relaxed and slowed. “Almost home, Liki. Ooooh, I would love a long hot bath. Well, I’ll have to be satisfied to crawl into bed and sleep a week. “

Ailiki made a sound, another of her almost-words, then pricked up her ears. She scratched into an all-out run, vanished around a bend in the walkway.

“Huh? I do wish you could talk, Aili my Liki.” She rubbed drowsily at her eyes. “Save a lot of^-trouble.”

Ailiki came racing back, every hair on her body standing erect. She scrabbled to a stop in front of Faan, reared on her hind legs, pawed the air, dropped to four feet, reared again. “Ne ne ne,” she squealed at Faan. “Ne ne ne.”

“Not something else! Abeyhamal! Hai! God! I need information. You don’t have to DO anything, just tell me what’s going on?”

Nothing.

“Verna, vema, Riverman was right. You can only depend on them for muddle and messing up.” She listened. “I don’t hear anything. Ah well, Liki, we’ll go along slow slow till you start having fits again. Hmm. I suppose I could climb up the back of Emaur’s Mule-house and see what’s happening… you understand what I’m saying?” She chuckled as Ailiki sat up, clapped her delicate black hands together. “I suppose that means you do. Let’s go, my Liki.”

She left Vallaree Wynd, followed Ailiki deeper into the Edge through several shadowy silent ways, then back again until she was behind Emaur’s, stepping cautiously over the sprawled drunks that were as ordinary here as the dead weeds along the back wall. She rested her head a moment against the wall. Tired. So tired. Sighing, she caught hold of a protruding brick, levered herself to a foothold on the sill of a shuttered window.

As she picked her way across the cluttered roof-broken tables, cracked jars, all kinds of debris from the bar, Emaur was a compulsive hoarder, never threw anything away-she was starting to hear an intermittent rhythmic roar; it was far off still, but it made her nervous.

She knelt by the parapet overlooking Verakay Lane, scowling toward the Sokajarua, the rising sun in her eyes. The roar grew louder and more ominous and the morning wind brought her whiffs of burning oil.

Ailiki ran up her body, jumped onto the parapet and stood hissing, her body arched, her tail stiffly straight.

For a moment longer the Lane was full of people, beggars, street singers, Utsapisha and her grandaughters, Louok the Nimble, Mama Kubaza and her band, Muth Maship and his dancers, porters and sweeps, traders from the ships, workers plodding along to the factories on the far side of the Iron Bridge, shopkeepers sweeping dust off their stoops and unlocking their shutters-then they were gone, as if some magus had snapped thumb against finger and banished them.

BURN BURN BURN. There was a flicker of light beyond the bend. faint, nearly lost in the brightness of the sun. BURN BURN BURN. And a thunder of boots beating the hard dry dirt of the Lane. BURST BURN