Magic Steps

by Tamora Pierce

  She was still wondering as she told Yazmín how to activate the wards on the room without a mage present. Yazmín tried it a couple of times, raising and lowering the protections that would keep Pasco’s magic from spilling out. Then she rested a hand on Sandry’s arm.

  “I know you’re worried about precision,” she said quietly in her odd, cracked voice. “But really, take my word for it — enough practice with an accurate drawing of the net, and he’ll hit his marks every time. He’s got body memory, better maybe than mine. I don’t know if that’s because he’ll be a fine dancer or if the magic helps him. Either way, you won’t be taking a foolish risk, using him.”

  A bit of Sandry’s worry evaporated. “Thank you, Yazmín.”

  The dancer flapped a hand — no thanks necessary — then entered the warded room with Pasco. “Come on,” she cried gleefully. “I’ve got you all to myself. We’ll do some real work now!”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” muttered Pasco.

  Sandry’s visit to the fishing village turned out better than she had hoped. Grandmother Netmender was quite willing to let her examine the net that Pasco had used to dance for fish. Able to inspect every inch of it, Sandry found that some of the net’s power lay in the unusual knots that held the rope squares in place. The old lady taught her how to tie them, making her practice until Sandry could do each of the three different knots perfectly. Sandry could see that when she tied these with unmagic and combined them in her net, she would double her spell’s power.

  From the fishing village she rode to the Market Square coop, where Wulfric’s office and workroom had been. There she talked to Behazin and Ulrina, who promised to distill the unmagic from the silk they had gathered at Rokat House the day before. She also looked at the stuff collected earlier, which was kept in spelled glass bottles. Since there was no weight to the nothingness, there was no way to tell how much they had, but Sandry was sure that with the unmagic from Rokat House, she would have enough for her net.

  When they finished, they tidied up and went to the temple of Harrier the Clawed for Wulfric’s last rites. Harrier’s worshippers saw no point to burial or to preservation of a body for several days while mourners came to view it. They expected to join their god the day after their deaths. With the other mourners at the temple, Sandry made an offering of feathers and incense in Wulfric’s name. A priest called for testimony of his service to the god. Then the lady provost Behazin, even two dedicates from Winding Circle — Moonstream, the dedicate who ruled the temple city, and Crane, head of the Air temple and a friend of Wulfric’s — all spoke about his honors and the work he had done on behalf of Summersea.

  The duke spoke last, and simply. “Murderers have taken the best harrier-mage I have ever known,” he said, his voice ringing from the temple’s stone walls. “They shall pay for it.”

  Sandry fought tears all through the ceremony. Tears would just make her weak, she thought, and she had to be strong for the work ahead. They came anyway, as the acolyte set Wulfric’s funeral pyre ablaze. Sandry hadn’t realized the duke and Baron Erdogun had come to stand with her until Vedris put his arm around her. She leaned against her great-uncle for a moment, then straightened, and blew her nose. Watching the flames rise around Wulfric’s body, Sandry made him a promise: she would snap the trap on the killers and their mage.

  That night she dreamed she drowned in unmagic, trying to scream when it flooded her mouth. She got out of bed and worked on her plans for the net until dawn. She rode with the duke, took breakfast with him and Erdogun, then went straight to Yazmín’s. There she sketched the dimensions of the net on the workroom floor, using a measuring cord and chalk to lay out the design. Once it was perfect, she took a roll of scarlet ribbon and laid it over the chalked lines, then smoothed it down with her magic. Pasco, ever curious, tried to peel the ribbon off the floor, without success. He couldn’t even get a corner free of the wood.

  “I’ll take it up again, after,” Sandry promised Yazmín.

  “I don’t know,” the dancer said, raising the wards on the room so they could get to work. “It’s a bit of pretty.”

  They meditated first — to Sandry’s surprise, Yazmín had been trained in it. Then Yazmín and Pasco showed her what they had done on the net dance. The three worked on shaping it, crafting each step. They stopped to eat their midday and then returned. With the dance itself set, Yazmín went to work on Pasco. This was the time for him to learn precision. If he so much as brushed the edge of a ribbon square, Yazmín was on him like a tiny wildcat, scolding furiously and positioning his feet and body with rough hands.

  That night Sandry dreamed again of the lake of darkness swallowing her. This time she sat up, walked around the room, splashed her face with water, then tried to go back to sleep. Twice more she dreamed of unmagic, waking in the dark as she gasped for air. She fell asleep again near dawn and slept for several hours, dreamless at last. Her attempts to scold the servants, Erdogun, and her uncle for letting her sleep late were ignored. When she got to Yazmín’s, she discovered that the dancer and Pasco had already meditated in the protected room and were working on the dance-spell.

  When they came back from midday, the boy Wamuko gave Sandry a note. It was from Captain Behazin: he and Ulrina had distilled and bottled all the nothingness they could find. Two hours later a courier from Winding Circle arrived with a package for Sandry. Wrapped in canvas, it had spells of protection and cleanliness laid so thickly on it that looking at it too often left spots on Sandry’s vision. She sighed. Of course they would spell everything for this working with all the strength of the Winding Circle mages — she just hadn’t realized what that would do to her poor eyes. She cleared her mind, then drew a kind of veil over her sight, one that would shade her eyes from the brightest magical fires.

  When she opened them, the blaze on the package was dimmed to a pearly shimmer. Opening the canvas wrap, Sandry found a note:

  The tent is being raised on the spot we discussed on Wehen Ridge. Unless I hear from you otherwise, I will meet you there at eleven of the clock tonight with your remaining supplies.

  Gods bless

  —Lark

  “What is it?” Pasco reached for the sturdy, pointed, two-foot-long dowel rod that was part of the package’s contents.

  “Don’t touch that!” She smacked his hand gently. Pasco jerked it away and stuck his fingers in his mouth. “Oh, stop it,” Sandry told him, exasperated. “You aren’t hurt.”

  He took his fingers from his mouth and asked, “So what’s all this for?”

  “The rod’s the stem for a drop spindle. It fits through here—” She picked up the second piece of wood in the canvas, a flat round piece six inches in diameter with a hole in the center. She inserted the pointed end of the rod through the hole. Three inches down the rod’s length, the round stuck. Assembled, the spindle looked like a very large top with an extra-long stem.

  “My aunts and cousins and the maids use those, but theirs are smaller,” Pasco remarked.

  “Mine’s bigger because I’m doing cord, not thread.” Sandry ran the oversized spindle through her fingers. “And I’m in a hurry.”

  Winding Circle’s carpenters had done a beautiful job. First they had carved strips of ebony, elder, and willow, all magically protective woods, to fit together into a rod and a disk without using glue. They had done so precise a job that Sandry couldn’t take the pieces apart. The rod and disk might as well have been made of solid wood. Moreover, the carpenters had laid more signs of protection, strength, and cleanliness on their work. When Sandry spun the unmagic, all of it would go into her cord and only her cord.

  “It’s beautiful,” commented Yazmín, leaning over Pasco’s shoulder to look at it. “They do nice work at the temple.” Her brown eyes met Sandry’s. “This is it, right? You have to start.”

  Sandry nodded. She wrapped her spindle in canvas and tied the package up again. “I should be ready for Pasco tomorrow.” If nothing goes wrong, she thought nervously. If I
don’t mess things up.

  “Well, then, Pasco, come on — enough loafing.” Yazmín rapped the boy’s head with her knuckles and moved out to the corner of the ribbon net. “I want to see that jump again, and you’d better hit the mark clean this time.”

  “You turned me over to a monster,” Pasco grumbled to Sandry as he got up.

  Sandry patted his bare feet. “But she’s doing you so much good,” she told her student in her cheeriest warm-and-supportive voice.

  By now Pasco knew her well enough to know she was teasing. He sneered at her and walked up to the ribbon set. Sandry got to her own feet again, and left them to their practice.

  The duke rode with her to the ridge that night. She had argued fiercely against it — rain had already begun to fall, drumming on roof tiles, cobbles and on the canvas hood of the cart that held the bottles of unmagic — but in the end she had to admit defeat. Duke Vedris had decided to keep watch with Lark as Sandry did her dangerous work, and there was nothing Sandry could say that would make him remain at home.

  They rode in silence beside the cart, which was driven by Kwaben. Oama sat beside him. When Sandry saw them on the driver’s bench, cloaked and hatted against the rain, she tried to protest that as well. The look they gave her, as if they dared her to comment on two of the most elite unit of the Duke’s Guard serving as common wagoners, convinced her that she would be as successful at talking them out of it as she had been with her great-uncle.

  If the truth were to be told, she took a great deal of comfort from their presence and the duke’s during the long, wet ride through Summersea and the Mire. The squad of the Duke’s Guard behind and on either side of them was also welcome.

  It’s not as if I’ve never been terrified out of my wits before, she thought as they began to climb up the road between Summersea and Winding Circle. Even before the year of disasters — earthquake, pirate attack, forest fires, and plague — that cemented her bond with her three friends, she had known trouble. Her parents had died in another plague almost exactly five years ago. As travelers her family had survived gales at sea, ice storms, pirates, and robbers. Sandry knew fear and disaster well.

  But this is the first time I’ve ever grabbed danger with both hands and hugged it close, she thought, craning to see through the veils of rain ahead. “There,” she said, pointing at a line of lamps off the road to their left.

  “I see them,” Kwaben replied evenly. His big hands were steady on the reins.

  “It isn’t raining that hard, my dear,” added the duke.

  Sandry looked at him and shook her head. Even in a broad-brimmed hat to shed the wet he looked dignified, even solid. It was hard to think he would let anything go wrong — except, of course, it wasn’t up to him. It was up to her.

  “You couldn’t ask for a better night,” Oama commented drily. She turned to look at Sandry. “Pity your mate Tris isn’t here. She’d whisk all this damp off like a maid with a feather duster.”

  Sandry had to smile. She’d seen Tris do exactly that, with the same cross expression on her face that she wore when dusting. “She might disappoint you,” Sandry told Oama. “These days she worries a lot about not interfering with the natural order of things.”

  “Exactly as I suspected,” remarked the duke. “Too much education does ruin a perfectly good mind.”

  Sandry giggled as Kwaben clucked to the mules and turned them onto the path marked by the lanterns. She and the duke followed. When the cart drew to a halt, Sandry dismounted from Russet, taking the canvas package with her spindle out of her saddlebag. Robed and hatted dedicates came to take charge of the spindle and of the bottles in the cart while Sandry viewed the newest part of Winding Circle’s contribution to her working.

  It was a large tent with a smaller one attached to it as a lobby. They were anchored to a single flat slab of the rock that shaped Wehen Ridge, a barrier between Winding Circle and the slums of the Mire. The bonds that held the tents to the rock glowed silver in Sandry’s vision, as did the tents themselves. They had been spelled so powerfully for protection that once more Sandry had to shape a magical veil to protect her sight.

  “Sandry, welcome,” said a cloaked and hooded figure. It was Lark. She looked startled when she realized who had come to stand next to the girl. “Your grace, you — you shouldn’t—”

  The duke looked at her mildly.

  “Oh, what was I thinking — of course you would come,” Lark said with a rueful smile. “But you’ll have to part company here.”

  “I know it,” replied Vedris. He wrapped Sandry in a tight, warm embrace. “If you get yourself killed, I shall be very disappointed in you,” he said quietly, for her ears alone, and kissed her forehead.

  Sandry attempted to smile, and gave it up when she felt her mouth wobble. “You know I try never to disappoint you, Uncle.” She turned to Lark. “Shall we start?”

  Lark led her to the smaller tent and kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry about his grace,” she told Sandry quietly. “Those of us who are standing guard have a snug shelter right behind this tent. We’ll try to send him home, of course, but at least he’ll be warm and dry until then.”

  “Thank you so much,” Sandry replied as she stepped into the tent. “That is good to know.”

  “Hand out your clothes,” Lark said as she closed the opening. “And gods bless.”

  This tent was divided in two: half was the kind of rough shower used by those who worked with the sick and wanted no taint of disease to cling to them. Sandry pulled the flap shut, then hurriedly stripped off her clothes and undid her braids. Her teeth were chattering by the time she finished.

  “Lark?” she called.

  Hands came through the opening in the flat. Sandry filled them with her clothes and shoes. Lark took them away.

  Putting it off won’t make me any warmer, Sandry thought, shivering, as she stared at the rope pull that would start the shower. I have to be cleansed.

  Drawing the gods-circle on her chest, she gave the pull a hard tug. Slats on the wooden platform that roofed this tent opened. She was doused not with buckets of water, as she had expected, but with tubs of it. She sighed in gratitude: the water was just hot enough for comfort, and warmed her nicely. It had been mixed with yarrow, agrimony, willow, and elder for cleansing and magical protection. From the way it shone even through her closed eyes, Sandry guessed that Lark had taken the herbs from stores laid up by Briar and Rosethorn before they had left. It was like being home at Discipline again, and comforted her just as much as it warmed her.

  The slats overhead closed and Sandry waited for the tubs to be filled again. Everyone had agreed that two rinses would serve to get all outside influences from her skin. Looking around, she saw that the tent was floored in more cloth. Like everything else around her, it was spelled to keep bad influences out, and any stray magic she did in.

  No wonder the temple-mages had needed three days to prepare — they were leaving no room for mistakes, and no chance that the unmagic would escape Sandry. That made her feel better, too. Working alone, she might have forgotten something. Instead, all she had to worry about was her spinning and the net. She prayed she could do it quickly: she wouldn’t be able to eat, drink, or leave the larger tent until her finished work was safely packed in the box that had been made for it.

  “Ready again,” a voice called. Sandry yanked the rope pull, bringing the next flood of water down.

  Once that was done, she opened the flap that divided the small tent in two. In the dry half, a long, sleeveless robe of undyed cotton was draped over a stand. She put that on and walked through into the large tent.

  It was floored in cloth and secured to the rock platform, with no openings but the one she had just used. At the center was a chair and a stool on which a large, shallow iron dish was set. The bottles of unmagic were placed by the dish. Beside the chair was a wooden stand with sockets into which six long spools had been fitted. She also saw the box that would hold her net: it was ebony and spelled like ev
erything else for protection.

  Placed at regular intervals around the tent were round crystal globes that threw off both light and warmth. Seeing them was like feeling Rosethorn and Briar in the shower herbs. Those globes had been Tris’s and Daja’s work all last winter, as Tris supplied the light in the crystal and Daja the warmth. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make this place homelike. On impulse Sandry reached with her magic to touch the cloth of the tent and its floor. It had been woven by Lark; the signs and oils that coated the fabric and kept out the damp were hers.

  “Thank you, Lark,” Sandry whispered.

  Resting a hand on the flap that covered the opening to the smaller tent, she voiced the word “Secure.” Winding Circle’s mages had set the wards for her as she had done for Pasco and Yazmín, putting more strength into their guardian spells than Sandry could spare just then. Once she spoke the key word, Secure, the flap merged with the cloth walls and the wards blazed into life. She needed to draw yet another magical veil over her vision to keep from being half-blinded.

  “Now comes the hard part,” she murmured, but somehow the prospect wasn’t as scary as it had been earlier that day. Rosethorn, Briar, Tris, and Daja were all around her; Lark was in the tent and holding vigil outside with the duke. Winding Circle’s mages had done their best to shape this place for complex magics. In putting forth so much time, effort, and power, they had as much as told Sandry that they believed in her.

  Don’t make a muddle of this, she told herself now, picking up a bottle. There are fifteen children in the inner keep at Duke’s Citadel. Whatever their parents and uncles and second cousins have done, they don’t deserve to die for it, and you won’t let them. You’ll do this right, that’s all there is to it.

  She broke the wax seal on the bottle and pulled out the stopper, then upended it over the iron dish. Out flowed darkness like syrupy ink. One bottle filled the dish.

  Earlier Sandry had prepared her spindle with a length of undyed, purified cotton thread. It was called the leader, and it anchored the new thread as it was spun. Now she took the spindle and held the leader in one hand.