Magic Steps

by Tamora Pierce

  “I got it,” the duke said grimly. “Bring her inside,” he ordered Kwaben. Turning, he bellowed, “Take these people in, now! Their goods may come later, but get them into quarters! Once they’re in, put that barricade up!”

  Two colonels, one in the uniform of the Duke’s Guard, one in the uniform of the Provost’s Guard, rode up to the duke and saluted. “We’re ready, your grace,” the Duke’s Guard said.

  “Then go to the city and relieve the day watches in the Mire and East District,” the duke commanded. “My orders remain the same. I want those districts turned out for anyone who might be these killers. A house-to-house search, understood? Your people are under the authority of the coop commanders in each subdistrict. If you need additional help, send for it. Make sure watches are put on the sewers, in case they try to escape that way. Now go!”

  “You see what kind of mischief he gets up to, when you’re not here?” Erdogun muttered to Sandry.

  She tried to sit up in Kwaben’s hold. “Uncle,” she said, raising her voice, “this does not look like resting to me.”

  He came back and laid a hand on her arm. “I will rest once these Rokats are safely housed in the inner keep,” he told her. “It’s the oldest part of the Citadel, one that’s been spelled and respelled for protection for eight hundred years. Once I wake the magics, they will be safe until these murderers are caught.”

  “Whenever that may be,” grumbled the baron.

  “Uncle?” Sandry asked. She was afraid of what she would hear, but she had to know. “The — the man’s head? Fariji Rokat’s?”

  The duke knew exactly what she meant. “Fountain Square,” he replied quietly. “It was left on top of the memorial sundial.”

  9

  The healer examined Alzena’s wound carefully, her watery eyes nervous. “Very clean,” she said, drawing vials from her bag. “No splinters, any dirt washed out by blood. No sense taking a chance, a’ course.”

  She drew the cork from a thin glass vial and tapped a measure of powder first onto the wound in the left side of Alzena’s calf, then the right. The powder foamed and hissed as Alzena’s head jerked. She bit down hard on the leather strap in her mouth, smothering a scream.

  “Well, that will do its work.” The healer took a roll of linen from her kit and began to wrap Alzena’s calf, keeping a watchful eye on Nurhar. She could not see the mage, hidden by his spells in the corner, but something was making her nervous. “All done,” said the healer, tying the bandage off. “Give the medicine five days, then remove the bandage. I’ll have my fee now — three gold majas, you promised.”

  Alzena clenched her hands in the bedclothes. The woman knew they were illegal, and had demanded a price to match it.

  Nurhar tapped Alzena’s shoulder. “Is it well?” he asked. He could be asking about her leg, though he was not. She gave her head a tiny shake, and tugged the leather moneybag from her pocket. Her sword lay just under the blanket at her side like a promise.

  Nurhar upended the bag in the healer’s palm and fifteen gold astrels dropped out. “Count it,” he advised. “You brought someone as guard?” The healer nodded. “There’s a gold astrel in it for the guard if you can help us to Fortunate Wharf.”

  “Call him up. The man in green with the red cap,” said the healer, too intent on the gold in her hand to use common sense.

  Nurhar summoned him. The man hesitated at the doorstep, but entered when he saw Alzena facedown on the bed, the healer counting a heap of gold coins, and the gold coin that Nurhar offered him.

  Nurhar was fast, nearly as fast as Alzena. The guard was dead in the moment between the closing of the door and his taking the coin. The healer started to turn when she heard him drop. Alzena flung the blanket aside as she rolled, brought out her sword, and beheaded the woman. She felt nothing but mild disgust: now they would have to wash the coins.

  “Get rid of them,” Nurhar told the mage, who came out of the shelter of his spells. “Someplace where they won’t be found.”

  “Salt,” whispered the mage. His olive skin was ashen; he trembled. “I need a dose. My head’s all woozy.”

  “Get rid of them,” ordered Nurhar. He went to sit by Alzena as the mage began to chant.

  “Boots,” whispered Alzena. The pain in her leg was fading. The healer’s powder was doing its work. Her groping hand found one boot: she tugged it onto her good leg.

  Nurhar reached for the other and dragged it to him. “What’s this?” he asked, frowning. A dark stain ran down the leather into the crack where sole met upper. He glanced at Alzena, at her bootless foot. “Not blood?” he whispered. “You bled outside your boot?”

  “So?” she demanded.

  “So?” he cried, lurching to his feet. “Have you lost your mind? You left blood somewhere! They’ll track us!”

  Somehow it hadn’t seemed important. It still didn’t. “They have to find it first,” she said, yanking the boot on.

  The air in the room flexed, making her stomach lurch. They looked at the bodies, to find them gone. Only the blood of their victims remained, and the gold. “You have to get us out of here,” Nurhar told the mage, sweat gleaming on his forehead. “She left tracks in her own blood for the harriers to find.”

  “If they find them,” Alzena murmured.

  “You promised salt,” whispered the mage. He turned his gaze on Alzena. When had all the white vanished from his eyes? Now it was like staring into two vast pits. She turned dizzy, as if she might fall, when she met his gaze. Slowly she turned her head away.

  “You’ll have a full dose when we get somewhere else, mage,” Nurhar barked. He frantically stuffed their belongings into packs.

  “I don’t know the town,” the mage objected. “I don’t know what’s safe. I’ve only been to a few places, and I need salt.”

  Alzena reached into a pocket and produced a tiny silk bag. She waved it, letting the drug’s pungent scent drift into his nose. “There’s a safe place,” she told him. “And you get this the moment you take us there, I swear on my family’s honor.”

  The mage licked his lips. “Tell me,” he whispered. Alzena did.

  Nurhar gave the packs to her, and hoisted the carry-frame on one shoulder. He dumped the contents of two oil lamps on the bed and struck a spark with flint and steel. The oil caught, and started to burn. “Now,” he said, coming to stand beside the mage.

  In her dream she was back at the corner of Tapestry Lane and Silver Street. The pool of unmagic — But we gathered it all, didn’t we? her dreaming mind wondered — had grown, spilling into the lane. She needed to soak it up.…

  She tripped. Down she fell, into that pool of nothingness. When she struggled to her feet, the dark stuff clung to her.

  The pool was far deeper than she remembered, up to her waist. She fought, trying to wade out, but in this dream the shadowy mess was thick and gooey, like syrup. It embraced her, pulling her back into its depths.

  She flailed and sank. It rose to chest level — no, to her neck — no, her chin. Her fight to keep her head up seemed to go on forever, until weariness made her body ache. Suddenly Uncle was at the pool’s edge. He waded knee-deep into the unmagic, straining to reach her. She opened her mouth to warn him, and the nothingness flooded over her tongue; it poured down her throat. Sandry gasped and choked. She couldn’t breathe. Unmagic flooded her nose. She gagged, and felt it roll into her lungs…

  Sandry woke. The nothingness loomed on every side to swallow her bed.

  She seized her crystal night lamp from the table, holding it against her chest as she panted. The light turned shadows into bed curtains. The dark at the foot of her bed was the coverlet, turned back for this warm Barley-month night. Her hands and nightgown showed pale, not dark. Sandry bowed her head over her lamp and waited for her nerves to calm.

  When she felt more in control of herself, she got out of bed. Her small treasure chest was on a table by the window. She padded over to it, silently undoing the magic that locked it.

  The
item she sought lay at the bottom of the chest, under some ribbons, a few seashells, and what jewelry she kept with her. To most eyes the thing she lifted out of the box was only a circle of thread with four lumps spaced equally apart. To those who could see magic, the circle blazed with power, each lump showing a different color for each of four friends. To anyone who knew the laws of magic, it represented an achievement so great that it was already legend. Trapped underground with her friends during an earthquake, knowing they would die unless they could be made stronger together than they were singly, Sandry had taken their magics and spun them into one. This thread circle was the result of that, and the symbol of friends who were closer than family.

  I wish you were here, she thought passionately, touching the lumps that represented Briar, Daja, and Tris. In those hard rounds of thread she could feel their powerful spirits. If we were together, we could stop these monsters. Instead it’s just me, and I can’t even talk to you. However am I going to deal with this unmagic?

  She put the circle away and redid her locking spells. I don’t have to manage the unmagic, she told herself firmly, settling into the window seat. The provost’s mages will do that. All I have to do is teach a silly boy to keep a thought in his head longer than a sneeze.

  Outside, the Astrel Island beacon shone over the harbor. The waning moon laid a silver blanket on the islands and the sea wall. She let the view calm her mind. She couldn’t help Master Wulfric beyond what she had done already. Perhaps if she concentrated on Pasco, she would keep the boy from adding to the sum of all that was going on. Keep him out of trouble, she thought drowsily, cradling her night-lamp. Leave crime to the experts. And no more dreams about nothingness.

  The next day Pasco was at Fletcher’s Circle when Sandry and her guards arrived. Sandry eyed her student with dislike: she was still weary from gathering unmagic the day before. She had slept badly once she returned to her bed, and only the knowledge that Pasco had to be taught had gotten her on a horse that morning. He looked every bit as grumpy as she felt.

  Sandry took him into the garden beside the eating-house — deserted at that hour — ordered him to sit, then placed her magical wards. Once they were protected, she sat beside him. “Let’s begin. Close your eyes and inhale. One … two … three …” She stopped.

  Pasco’s shoulders were slumped, his face glum.

  “You’re not inhaling,” she pointed out.

  Pasco sighed, not looking at her.

  Sandry gave a sigh of her own. “What is it now?”

  Pasco shrugged sullenly.

  “That’s not an answer,” she informed him.

  “Uncle Isman came to supper last night,” grumbled the boy. “He told Papa and Mama I must have talked you into saying my magic only works with dancing. He says nobody he’s asked ever heard of dancing magic. He says, if I have magic, send me to the harrier-mages at Lightsbridge. He says they’ll make me put my magic to the proper use.”

  “No, they won’t,” Sandry replied irritably. “You can only do that with certain kinds of magic. Others — the kind I have, the kind you have, only work through the path chosen by the magic. Your uncle may know all there is to harrier work, but he’s no mage. He oughtn’t to talk about things he doesn’t understand.”

  Pasco scuffed his feet on the ground. “Why couldn’t I be a truthsayer, or a tracker, or something? Then maybe they’d care. But no, what I have isn’t good for anything real. I can’t chill a riot or tell where thieves are hunting. So what’s the point?”

  “The point is, there is no point, not yet!” she cried, out of patience with the whole world today. “We don’t know what you can do, you silly bleater! We’re going to craft what you can do, and for that you’ll have to help!”

  Pasco stared at her. “You talked street,” he whispered, shocked. “Bleater’s no word for a lady to use.”

  “Mila of the Grain, give me patience,” Sandry begged the goddess. It was time to try bribes again. “Pasco, if you don’t work on meditation, I won’t take you to your dance teacher today.”

  His gloom evaporated like mist in the sun. “A dancing teacher? With steps and music and costumes?”

  “Meditation first,” she told him firmly.

  He sat straight on his bench, eyes blazing. “Meditation, definitely. I’m ready. I’m going to start now, watch.”

  They began again, and this time Pasco actually seemed to be trying. Sandry murmured instructions to clear his mind of all thought, and watched as his power trickled out of his skin, flowing away until it struck her magical barrier. It flickered and twisted or even went out completely, telling her he was thinking of something else. At moments like that, she began to see why some teachers were eager to use a switch on skittish students. She chided herself for the thought: that was just her weariness speaking, or at least she hoped it was.

  Her own concentration was poor. Concerns about Wulfric’s progress distracted her. She’d sent him a note asking if Rokat House and Qasam Rokat’s home should be checked and cleansed of nothingness, with her offer of help. If he’d been right about the blood, Wulfric might actually have the killers by now. That would be a relief.

  The clang of the Guildhall clock brought her to her surroundings with a start. The hour was done. Pasco’s eyes were open and eager. “Lady—?” he asked.

  Sandry took up her warding circle. Returning her thread to her purse, she asked, “Walk or ride? It’s not far.”

  Pasco looked at her guards and the horses waiting in front of the garden. “Walk. So who is it?” he begged as Sandry mounted Russet. “Is the teacher expensive? I can’t pay, you know.”

  “We have an understanding,” replied Sandry, clucking to Russet. “Come on.”

  “But where?” he pleaded, trotting alongside her. “Who?”

  “He’s chattery,” commented Oama, looking down at the boy. “You sure he’s harrier-bred? Usually they don’t have two words to rub together.”

  Pasco grinned up at her. “That’s ‘cause they don’t want the Duke’s Guard blabbing their secrets.”

  “We’d have to be interested to steal them, boy,” replied Oama with a wink at Sandry.

  Festival Street was like most city roads, lined with homes and businesses. The largest building on Festival between Market and Yanjing Streets sat behind a ten-foot-high stone wall. Sandry thought it may have been a warehouse at one time. Now there was nothing to indicate what use the building had. Its only marker was a painted sign over the gate — HEBET— in gold letters on a red background.

  “Here we are,” Sandry announced, guiding Russet into the courtyard. Oama and Kwaben followed. When she didn’t see Pasco, Sandry turned. The boy was still in the street, goggling at the sign.

  A girl came to take the horses when they dismounted. As she led the animals away, Sandry called, “Pasco.”

  “I’ll get him,” Oama said. She grabbed the boy’s arm and towed him back to Sandry.

  “Do you know whose place this is?” Pasco asked, his eyes fixed on the building.

  “It’s Yazmín Hebet’s school, yes, I know,” Sandry replied. Her earlier impatience was turning into amusement. I might have acted the same if I’d heard of Lark before she took me as her student, she thought. “I believe school was the idea. May we go in, please? There’s an inside here. I’m sure you’d like to see it.”

  “She danced for seven kings in Aliput, and eight queens,” Pasco babbled as they walked toward the open doors. “She danced for the emperor in Yanjing, just for him, for a whole year, and he made her a dress covered in blue pearls. Blue pearls, can you imagine! For dancing for one year for him and no one else!”

  Inside, the door hallways pointed straight ahead and to either side. Open rooms on the halls emitted bursts of music from various instruments, many thuds, bumps, and squeaks, and shouts in male and female voices. At the end of the hall directly ahead, a dancer in leggings and a loose tunic tightly belted around the waist did a handstand, her legs pointed straight at the ceiling.

&n
bsp; A boy in leggings and belted tunic raced by, stopped, and came back to them. “Was you lookin’ for someone especial, my lady?” he asked, bowing low. His accent came from south of the Pebbled Sea; his skin was coal black like that of the tribesmen there.

  “Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, and student, to see Yazmín Hebet,” said Oama sternly.

  The boy grinned. “Come.” He raced up a narrow stair at the end of the right-hand hallway.

  Following him, Sandry pretended not to hear Pasco’s hissed, “I have a name, you know!”

  She thought she was in fairly good physical condition, but she was panting when she reached the top of the stair. Their guide was not even breathing hard. He beckoned them down a long hall, past various rooms on either side.

  “No, no, no, Thandi,” cried a voice Sandry knew. “It’s turn turn turn jump, not turn turn jump. It’s by threes, how many times do I have to — yes, that’s right.”

  The boy led them to the room where Yazmín was shouting. He leaned in and said, “Noble in the buildin’, Yazmín.”

  “Noble what in the building? Noble guard, noble lord …” Yazmín leaned out the door. “Wamuko, you have the manners of a goat,” she told her messenger. “Lady Sandrilene, welcome.” She came out and curtsied to Sandry, ran an appraising eye over Kwaben and Oama, then looked at Sandry’s pupil. “Come on, Pasco,” she said. “We’ll start with stretches.” She pulled him into the room.

  “She knows my name!” Pasco whispered as he followed her.

  The practice room was large and bare, paneled in golden wood and lit by large windows. The shutters were open, admitting a breeze. Benches were arranged around the walls. Sandry took a seat on one. Oama sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, while Kwaben leaned against the wall. Yazmín was giving instructions to three young people. When she finished, they nodded and trotted out. The flute player who had been in the corner went with them.

  “Sit,” Yazmín ordered Pasco. She pointed to the floor. Pasco obeyed. “Spread your legs as wide as you can. Wider. Here.” She sat opposite him and stretched her own legs out until the balls of her feet pressed against the insides of Pasco’s legs just above his knees. “Give me your hands,” she ordered; Pasco did. She clasped him by the wrists and pulled him steadily forward, forcing his legs open wider. Finally he yelped. “Oh, you baby,” chided Yazmín. “Look at you, not even a decent spread, and you’re whimpering. Now hold that position.”