by Paula Guran
Something bubbled and churned beneath the golden pool. A small hemisphere rose from the surface, continued rising, became a tall, narrow, humanoid shape. The liquid drained away smoothly, revealing a dove-pale albino woman with flawless auric eyes and hair composed of a thousand golden butterflies, all fluttering elegantly at random.
“Good afternoon, Amarelle,” said the wizard Ivovandas. Her feet didn’t quite touch the surface of the pool as she drifted toward the bed. “I trust you slept well. You were magnificent last night!”
“Was I? I don’t remember . . . uh, that is, I remember some of it . . . am I wearing your clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t I have a hangover?”
“I took it while you slept,” said Ivovandas. “I have a collection of bottled maladies. Your hangover was due to be the stuff of legends. Here be dragons! And by ‘here,’ I mean directly behind your eyeballs, probably for the rest of the week. I’ll find another head to slip it into, someday. Possibly I’ll let you have it back if you fail me.”
“Fail you? What?” Amarelle leapt to her feet, which sank awkwardly into the mattress. “You have me confused with someone who knows what’s going on. Start with how I was magnificent.”
“I’ve never been so extensively insulted! In my own foyer, no less, before we even adjourned to the study. You offered penetratingly savage elucidation of all my character flaws, most of them imaginary, and then you gave me the firmest possible directions on how I and my peers were to order our affairs henceforth, for the convenience of you and your friends.”
“I, uh, recall some of that, I think.”
“I am curious about a crucial point, citizen Parathis. When you purchased sanctuary from the Parliament of Theradane, you were instructed that personal threats against the members of said parliament could be grounds for summary revocation of sanctuary privileges, were you not?”
“I . . . recall something with that flavor . . . in the paperwork . . . possibly on the back somewhere . . . maybe in the margins?”
“You will agree that your statements last night certainly qualified as personal threats?”
“My statements?”
Smiling, Ivovandas produced a humming blue crystal and used it to project a crisp, solid image into the air beside the bed. It was Amarelle, black-coated and soaked with steaming magic rain, gesturing with clutching hands as she raved:
“And another thing, you venomous milk-faced thundercunt! NOBODY drops a dead vorpilax on my friends, NOBODY! What you fling at the other members of your pointy-hatted circle jerk is your business, but the next time you trifle with the lives of uninvolved citizens, you’d better lock your doors, put on your thickest steel corset, and hire a food taster, you catch my meaning?”
The image vanished.
“Damn,” said Amarelle. “I’ve always thought of myself as basically a happy drunk.”
“I’m three hundred and ten years old,” said Ivovandas, “and I learned some new words last night! Oh, we were having such fun, until I found myself personally threatened.”
“Yes. So it would seem. And how were you thinking we might, ah, proceed in this matter?”
“Ordinarily,” said Ivovandas, “I’d magically redirect the outflow of your lower intestine into your lungs, which would be my little way of saying that your sanctuary privileges had been revoked. However, those skills of yours, and that reputation . . . I have a contract suited to such a contractor. Why don’t you get dressed and meet me in the study?”
A powerful force struck Amarelle from behind, knocking her off the bed, headfirst into the golden pool. Rather than swimming down she found herself floating up, rising directly through the floor of Ivovandas’ study, a large room full of bookshelves, scrollcases, and lacquered basilisk-skin paneling. Amarelle was suddenly wearing her own clothes again.
On the wall was an oil painting of the bedroom Amarelle had just left, complete with a masterful rendering of Ivovandas floating above the golden pool. As Amarelle watched, the painted figure grew larger and larger within the frame, then pushed her arms and head out of it, and with a twist and a jump at last floated free in the middle of the study.
“Now,” said Ivovandas. “To put it simply, there is an object within Theradane I expect you to secure. Whether or not your friends help you is of no concern to me. As an added incentive, if you deliver this thing to me quietly and successfully, you will calm a great deal of the, ah, public disagreement between myself and a certain parliamentary peer.”
“But the terms of my sanctuary!” said Amarelle. “You got part of my tithe! You know how it works. I can’t steal within the boundaries of Theradane.”
“Well, you can’t threaten me either,” said Ivovandas. “And that’s a moot point now, so what have you got to lose?”
“An eternity not spent as a street lamp.”
“Admirable long-term thinking,” said Ivovandas. “But I do believe if you scrutinize your situation you’ll see that you’re up a certain proverbial creek, and I am the only provisioner of paddles willing to sell you one.”
Amarelle paced, hands shoved sullenly into her coat pockets. She and her crew needed the security of Theradane; they had grown too famous, blown too much cover, taken too many interesting keepsakes from the rich and powerful in too many other places. Theradane’s system was simplicity itself. Pay a vast sum to the Parliament of Strife, retire to Theradane, and don’t practice any of the habits that got you in trouble outside the city. Ever.
“Have some heart, Amarelle. It’s not precisely illegal for me to coax a master criminal back into operations within the city limits, but I can’t imagine my peers would let the matter pass unremarked if they ever found out about it. Do as I ask and I’ll gladly smash my little blue crystal. We’ll both walk away smiling, in harmonious equipoise.”
“What do you want me to secure for you?”
Ivovandas opened a tall cabinet set against the right-hand wall. Inside was a blank tapestry surrounded on all sides by disembodied golden hands not unlike the ones that had hauled Amarelle across the threshold. The hands leapt to life, flicking across the tapestry with golden needles and black thread. Lines appeared on the surface, lines that rapidly became clear to Amarelle as the districts of Theradane and their landmarks: the High Barrens, the Sign of the Fallen Fire, the Deadlight Downs, and a hundred others, stitch by stitch.
When the map was complete, one hand stitched in a final thread of summer-fire crimson, glowing somewhere in the northeastern part of the city.
“Prosperity Street,” said Ivovandas. “In Fortune’s Gate, near the Old Parliament.”
“I’ve been there,” said Amarelle. “What do you want?”
“Prosperity Street. In Fortune’s Gate. Near the Old Parliament.”
“I heard you the first time,” said Amarelle. “But what do you . . . oh, no. You did not. You did not just imply that implication!”
“I want you to steal Prosperity Street,” said Ivovandas. “The whole street. The entire length of it. Every last brick and stone. It must cease to exist. It must be removed from Theradane.”
“That street is three hundred yards long, at the heart of a district so important and money-soaked that even you lunatics don’t blast it in your little wars, and it’s trafficked at every hour of every day!”
“It would therefore be to your advantage to remove it without attracting notice,” said Ivovandas. “But that’s your business, one way or the other, and I won’t presume to give you instruction in your own narrow specialty.”
“It. Is. A. STREET.”
“And you’re Amarelle Parathis. Weren’t you shouting something last night about how you’d stolen the sound of the sunrise?”
“On the right day of the year,” said Amarelle, “on the peak of the proper mountain, and with a great deal of help from some dwarves and more copper pipe than I can—damn it, it was very complicated!”
“You stole tears from a shark.”
“If you can figur
e out how to identify a melancholy shark, you’re halfway home in that business.”
“Incidentally, what did you do with the Death Spiders of Moraska once you’d taken them?”
“I mailed them back to the various temples of the spider-priests who’d been annoying me. Let’s just say that confinement left the spiders agitated and hungry, and that the cult now has very firm rules concerning shipping crates with ventilation holes. Also, I mailed the crates postage due.”
“Charming!” cried Ivovandas. “Well, you strike me as just the sort of woman to steal a street.”
“I suppose my only other alternative is a pedestal engraved ‘Now I Serve Theradane Always.’ ”
“That, or some more private and personal doom,” said Ivovandas. “But you have, in the main, apprehended the salient features of your choices.”
“Why a street?” said Amarelle. “Before I proceed, let’s be candid, or something resembling it. Why do you want this street removed, and how will doing so calm down the fighting between you and your . . . oh. Oh, hell, it’s a locus, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Ivovandas. Her predatory grin revealed teeth engraved with hair-fine lines of gold in arcane patterns. “Prosperity Street is the external power locus of the wizard Jarrow, my most unbeloved colleague. It’s how he finds the wherewithal to prolong this tedious contest of summoned creatures and weather. Without it, I could flatten him in an afternoon and be home in time for tea.”
“Forgive me if this is a touchy subject, but I thought the nature of these loci was about the most closely-guarded secret you and your . . . colleagues possess.”
“Jarrow has been indiscreet,” said Ivovandas. “But then, he understands the knowledge alone is useless if it can’t be coupled to a course of action. A street is quite a thing to dispose of, and the question of how to do so absolutely stymied me until you came calling with your devious head so full of drunken outrage. Shall we go to contract?”
The cabinet of golden hands unstitched the map of Theradane, and in its place embroidered a number of paragraphs in neat, even script. Amarelle peered closely at them. They were surprisingly straightforward, describing a trade of one (1) street for one (1) blue crystal to be smashed, but then . . .
“What the hell’s this?” she said. “A deadline? A year and a day?”
“It’s the traditional span for this sort of arrangement,” said Ivovandas. “And surely you can see the sense in it. I prefer Jarrow de-fanged fairly soon, not five or ten or some nebulous and ever-changing number of years from now. I require you working with determination and focus. And you require some incentive other than simple destruction for failure, so there it all is.”
“A year and a day,” said Amarelle, “and I deliver the street, or surrender my citizenship and worldly wealth to permanent indenture in your service.”
“It would be a comfortable and exciting life,” said Ivovandas. “But you can avoid it if you’re as clever as I hope you are.”
“And what if I were to quietly report this arrangement to the wizard Jarrow and see if he could do better for me?”
“A worthwhile contemplation of treacherous entanglement symmetrical to my own! I salute your spirit, but must remind you that Jarrow possesses no blue crystal, nor do you or he possess the faintest notion of where my external locus resides. You must decide for yourself which of us would make the easier target. If you wish to be ruled by wisdom, you’ll reach into your pockets now.”
Amarelle did, and found that a quill and an ink bottle had somehow appeared therein.
“One street,” she said. “For one crystal. One year and one day.”
“It’s all there in plain black thread,” said Ivovandas. “Will you sign?”
Amarelle stared at the contract and ground her teeth, a habit her mother had always sternly cautioned her against. At last, she uncapped the bottle of ink and wet the quill.
7. Another Unexpected Change of Clothing
The usual tumult of wizardly contention had abated. Even Ivovandas and Jarrow seemed to be taking a rest from their labors when Amarelle walked out of the High Barrens under a peach-colored afternoon haze. All the clocks in the city sounded three, refuting and echoing and interrupting one another, the actual ringing of the hour taking somewhere north of two and a half minutes due to the fact that clocks in Theradane were traditionally mis-synchronized to confuse malicious spirits.
Amarelle’s thoughts were an electric whirl of anxiety and calculation. She hailed a mechanavipede and was soon speeding over the rooftops of the city in a swaying chair tethered beneath the straining wings of a flock of mechanical sparrows. There was simply nowhere else to go for help; she would have to heave herself before her friends like jetsam washed up on a beach.
Sophara and Brandwin lived in a narrow, crooked house on Shankville Street, a house they’d secured at an excellent price due to the fact that it sometimes had five stories and sometimes six. Where the sixth occasionally wandered off to was unknown, but while it politely declined their questions about its business it also had the courtesy to ask none concerning theirs. Amarelle had the mechanavipede heave her off into a certain third-floor window which served as a friends-only portal for urgent business.
The ladies of the house were in, and by a welcome stroke of luck so was Shraplin. Brandwin was fussing with the pistons of his replacement left foot, while Sophara sprawled full-length on a velvet hammock wearing smoked glasses and an ice-white beret that exuded analgesic mist in a halo about her head.
“How is it that you’re not covered in vomit and begging for death?” said Sophara. “How is it that you consumed three times your own weight in liquor and I’ve got sole custody of the hangover?”
“I had an unexpected benefactor, Soph. Can you secure this chamber for sensitive conversation?”
“The whole house is reasonably safe,” groaned the magician, rolling off the hammock with minimal grace and dignity. “Now, if you want me to weave a deeper silence, give me a minute to gather my marbles. Wait . . . ”
She pulled her smoked glasses off and peered coldly at Amarelle. Stepping carefully around the mess of specialized tools and mechanical gewgaws littering the carpet, she approached, sniffing the air.
“Something wrong, dearest?” said Brandwin.
“Shhhh,” said Sophara. She rubbed her eyes in the manner of the freshly-awake, then reached out, moved Amarelle’s left coat lapel aside, and pulled a gleaming gold thread out of the black wool.
“You,” she said, arching her aquamarine eyebrows at Amarelle, “have been seeing another wizard.”
Sophara clapped her hands and an eerie hush fell upon the room. The faint sounds of the city outside were utterly banished.
“Ivovandas,” said Amarelle. “I ran off and did something stupid last night. In my defense, I would just like to say that I was angry, and you were the one mixing the drinks.”
“You unfailingly omni-bothersome bitch,” said Sophara. “Well, this little thread would allow Ivovandas to eavesdrop, if not for my counterspell and certain fundamental confusions worked into the stones of this house. And where there’s obvious chicanery, there’s something lurking behind it. Take the rest of your clothes off.”
“What?”
“Do it now, Amarelle!” Sophara retrieved a silver-engraved casket from a far corner of the room, clicked it open, and made urgent motions while Amarelle shed her coat.
“You see how direct she is?” Brandwin squeezed a tiny bellows to pressurize a tube of glowing green oil within Shraplin’s leg. “We’d never have gotten anywhere if she’d waited for me to make the first move.”
“You keep your eyes on your work,” said Sophara. “I’ll do the looking for both of us and give you details later.”
“I sometimes think that ‘friend’ is just a word I use for all the people I haven’t murdered yet,” said Amarelle, hopping and twirling out of her boots, leggings, belts, vest, blouse, sharp implements, silk ropes, smoke capsules, and smallclothes. When the las
t stitch was discarded, Sophara slammed the casket shut and muttered spells over the lock.
As a decided afterthought, smiling and taking her time, she eventually fetched Amarelle a black silk dressing robe embroidered with blue-white astronomical charts.
“It seems to be my day to try on everyone else’s clothes,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry about your things,” said Sophara. “I should be able to sweep them for further tricks, but Ivovandas is so far outside my weight class, it might take days.”
“Never let a wizard get their hands on your clothes,” said Brandwin. “At least not until she promises to move in with you. It ought to be safe to talk now.”
“I’m not entirely sure how to say this,” said Amarelle, “but the concise version is that I’m temporarily unretired.”
She told the whole story, pausing only to answer Sophara’s excited questions about the defenses and décor of Ivovandas’ manse.
“That’s a hell of a thing, boss,” said Shraplin when Amarelle finished. The clocks within the house started chiming five, and didn’t finish for some time. The city clocks were still sealed beyond Sophara’s silence. “I thought we were up against it when that shark tears job landed on us. But a street!”
“I wonder how Jarrow figured out it was a locus.” Sophara adjusted the analgesic hat, which had done her much good over the long course of Amarelle’s story. ”I wonder how he harnessed it without anyone interfering!”
“Keep it relevant, dreamer.” Brandwin massaged her wife’s legs. “The pertinent question is, how are we going to pull it off?”
“I only came for advice,” said Amarelle hastily. “This is all my fault, and nobody else needs to risk their sanctuary because I got drunk and sassed a wizard.”
“Let me enlighten you, boss,” said Shraplin. “If you don’t want me to follow you around being helpful, you must be planning to smash my head right now.”
