The Sorcerer's Widow

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Kel started to follow her, but Vezalis called, “Kel! Wait a minute!”

  Kel stopped, and turned back to Ezak’s uncle. He was actually glad to be called back; he wanted to ask after Ezak.

  “What’s going on?” Vezalis asked quietly, with a glance at Dorna. “What are you two up to?”

  “I’m helping her open a tea shop,” Kel said.

  “No, I meant you and Ezak. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. I haven’t seen Ezak in a sixnight. Hasn’t he been to see you?”

  “Yes, he has, but when I asked where you were he said it didn’t concern me.”

  Kel turned up an empty palm.

  “Are you two all right?”

  “I’m fine. I don’t know about Ezak.”

  Vezalis glanced at Dorna, waiting for Kel ten yards up the street. “Are you two planning to rob her?” he asked quietly.

  “No.”

  “This tea shop thing—I could use a regular customer, and if you steal from her…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I’m not going to steal from her,” Kel said flatly.

  “You aren’t. What about Ezak?”

  “Don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

  “Is he angry with you about something?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Vezalis stared at him for a moment, then said, “Kelder, I know you don’t like to talk if you don’t need to, because your mouth got you in trouble when you were a kid, but please, tell me what’s happening. Ezak is my only family, and if you two are going to do something stupid, I want to know about it.”

  Kel stared back, then looked at Dorna, who was waiting patiently. Then he turned back to Vezalis and said, “We went out to her village to try to steal her husband’s magic, because you told Ezak about this dead sorcerer, only she figured out why we were there. She’s much smarter than Ezak. She figured it out right away. But she needed some help moving stuff, so she pretended she hadn’t, and we helped her while Ezak looked for a chance to steal all the magic. Except when he tried to steal it, he set off something with a name I can’t pronounce that went and fixed up an old Northern thing that cut off part of Ezak’s ear. I helped Dorna stop the Northern thing and get her magic back, and while we were doing that Ezak stole some of her other sorcery, but she had a magic tracker, so she came to Ethshar and found him and took it all back and said she’d kill him if he ever bothered her again. But I didn’t steal anything from her, and I helped her, so she hired me to help with her tea shop, and I haven’t seen Ezak since we took back her bag of magic.”

  “I saw the ear,” Vezalis said. “He said it was cut off by a magic sword.”

  “Sort of,” Kel said. The Northern sorcery had not been a sword, but he didn’t have a better word for it.

  “So you two—you argued? When you helped the sorcerer’s widow get back her things?”

  Kel shook his head. “Didn’t argue. I went with Dorna.”

  “But you and Ezak—he’s the closest thing to a family you have.”

  “He protected me,” Kel agreed, nodding. “He took care of me. But he got me in trouble, too. A lot.” He suddenly felt his eyes stinging, though he didn’t know why. “I miss him, but I’m tired of being in trouble. I don’t want to be a thief any more. I want to be Dorna’s assistant. I wasn’t a very good thief, but I think I can be a good assistant.” He wiped a tear from his cheek; he was unsure how it had gotten there. “Tell Ezak I miss him, but as long as Dorna pays me, I’m not coming back to Smallgate.”

  Vezalis considered him for several seconds, then held out a hand. “I’ll tell him,” he said. “Good luck, Kelder.”

  Kel did not understand why Vezalis was using his full name, but he shook the offered hand, then turned and hurried to catch up with Dorna.

  They walked several blocks up Archer Street in silence, but then Dorna said, “I wonder why he didn’t invite us in?”

  “He never invites anyone in,” Kel said. “Not like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Watchdogs, partly,” Kel said. “Not very well trained.”

  “Watchdogs?”

  Kel nodded. “Three of them. Azrad, Anaran, and Gor.”

  Dorna smothered a laugh upon hearing that Vezalis had named his dogs for the founding overlords of the three Ethshars. “What do you mean, not well-trained?”

  “They attack anyone except me, Ezak, Vezalis, and his two girlfriends,” Kel explained. “Even if Vezalis is with them. If he had been home he would have locked them in the back room, but where he was outside with us…”

  “…it would have been awkward,” Dorna finished for him. “I see.”

  Kel knew he probably shouldn’t say any more, but Vezalis had loosened his tongue, and he was not quite ready to tighten it again. “There’s the merchandise, too,” he said.

  “What merchandise?”

  “All his merchandise. Doesn’t have a warehouse anymore. Keeps everything in his house. That’s why he needs so many dogs.”

  Dorna glanced back at the house. “He keeps everything in there?”

  Kel nodded. “He used to have a warehouse, long ago. But he took all his money and bought a ship and it sank, so he didn’t have any money when there was a fire at the warehouse, so he couldn’t rebuild it, and…well, now he keeps everything in his house and does all his traveling on land, with his cart, the way he came to your village.”

  “That explains a lot,” Dorna said.

  “He was traveling when his sister died—Ezak’s mother. They’d had a fight when she took up whoring, so they hadn’t spoken in years. He hadn’t even known she had a baby. By the time he got back and heard from the magistrate that she was dead and that he had a nephew, Ezak was living in an alley. He’d been turned away from his uncle’s house when he first went there. Vezalis found Ezak, but they didn’t get along very well. Later he got Ezak an apprenticeship, even though no one was sure whether he was really only twelve, but it didn’t work out, and Vezalis blamed Ezak for messing it up, and Ezak blamed Vezalis for trying to make him do something he didn’t want to, and they haven’t had much to do with each other since then. We stayed in his attic sometimes, because he didn’t trust us around his merchandise in the other rooms, but Ezak never liked it.”

  “I can understand that,” Dorna said quietly. “You and Ezak and Vezalis have had more than your share of misfortune, haven’t you?”

  Kel turned up an empty palm.

  “Well, you don’t need to live in alleys or cellars or attics anymore,” she said.

  Kel smiled happily at that.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Dorna’s Tea Shop had been open for business for a little over a month, and the worst of the summer’s heat had settled over the city like a thick blanket, when Ezak finally came to see the place. It was the middle of a cloudless, scorching afternoon. The big double door in the corner, facing out onto the intersection of Harbor and Aristocrat, was standing wide, and the windows on either side were open as well, to catch whatever breeze might reach so far into the city. Kel was sitting behind the counter on a stool in the back corner, idly waving a paper fan at himself as he gazed out at the dusty streets.

  There were no customers; it was too warm to drink hot tea, and Kel did not yet know how to operate Dorna’s sorcerous cooling device, so he could not offer the chilled version that was becoming popular. Dorna herself was down at the docks in Seagate with Vezalis, overseeing the arrival of the latest shipment from Londa, and Irien was over in the Merchants’ Quarter, inspecting Ozya the Cabinetmaker’s latest handiwork, so Kel had the place to himself.

  Ezak seemed to appear out of nowhere in the doorway, but Kel was not impressed; he knew that trick himself. Ezak had taught him when they were both just boys. “Hai!” he called, with a wave of his fan. “Come in out of the sun!”

  Ezak sauntered in, looking around appraisingly at the elegant little tables, the stylish silk-upholstered chairs, the shelves of cups and teapots and canisters—and the bare spaces
that had once again sent Irien to Ozya’s shop; they had not yet finished furnishing the place.

  “Very fancy,” Ezak said. “Uncle Vezalis said I could find you here.”

  “I’m glad to see you,” Kel said. “How are you?” He was gradually learning to talk more freely, now that he had no secrets to hide and needed to please customers. It was hard to make out details with the sun silhouetting Ezak against the door, but Kel could see that Ezak was wearing an unfamiliar tunic, one that fit better than most. His boots were still reinforced with rags, though, and the fact that he was wearing boots at all in this heat meant he had no sandals. The top of his ear was still missing, but the wound had healed, and the missing hair had mostly grown back.

  “I’m doing just fine,” Ezak said. “See this?” He plucked at the front of his tunic. “Look at that embroidery!”

  Kel, who knew the tunic had almost certainly been snatched off a clothesline somewhere, was no more impressed by this than by the appearing-around-the-corner trick. “It’s nice,” he said. He did not point out his own new tunic, which was plain white cotton, but had been acquired legally.

  “We haven’t seen you in Smallgate lately,” Ezak said. “Nor in Grandgate Market.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Kel said. “I live here in Nightside now. My room’s upstairs.”

  “She’s keeping you prisoner?”

  Kel blinked in surprise. “No,” he said.

  “Then why are you still here?”

  “I like it here!”

  Ezak snorted. He looked around appraisingly, then he came closer and leaned across the polished wooden counter. “Some of this stuff looks expensive.”

  “Some of it was,” Kel agreed.

  “The door’s wide open, and the nearest guard’s at least three blocks away.”

  Kel simply stared at him. He realized he shouldn’t be surprised that Ezak’s immediate reaction was to think about robbing the place, but somehow he was surprised. Maybe he really had stopped thinking like a thief.

  “Does she still have any of her husband’s magic?”

  Kel carefully did not look at the cooling talisman under the counter not three feet from his knee. “Yes,” he said. “But it’s all safely locked away.”

  Ezak nodded, and looked around the shop again, completely failing to see what was going through Kel’s mind.

  Kel, for his part, was realizing that he had just lied to Ezak, and Ezak had accepted it immediately. He had never been able to fool Ezak before.

  “So if you took one of those fancy teapots and came home with me, could she track you?” Ezak asked.

  “Probably,” Kel said. He suppressed a smile at the idea of stealing a teapot when the cash box was right there under the counter, and held at least ten rounds in copper and a few bits in silver—not to mention that there was the cooling talisman, and the various sorcerous devices in the back room, that he could take.

  For that matter, the savings he had tucked away under the floorboards of his room upstairs might be more than the teapot was worth, and were almost certainly more than they could get for it from a fence.

  Now, if the animated teapot Dorna had ordered had been there, that might have been worth stealing, but it wasn’t due to be delivered for another twelvenight.

  “That explains why you’re here alone, I guess,” Ezak said. “She knows you don’t dare steal anything.”

  “I guess,” Kel said. He saw no point in trying to explain to Ezak that it wasn’t fear that restrained him.

  Ezak stepped closer and leaned on the counter, looking down at Kel. “So when are you coming home? Aren’t you tired of this yet?”

  Kel blinked up at him, and thought for a moment before replying honestly, “No.”

  “Oh, come on, Kel! She has you running stupid little errands and sitting here all day and saying please and thank you and bowing to all these rich bastards who come in here paying ridiculous prices for a bunch of boiled leaves. How can you stand it?”

  “I like it,” Kel said. “I like sleeping in a good bed, and eating three meals a day, and talking to people who aren’t afraid I’m going to steal their purses. I like not having to run and hide, and not worrying whether I’m going to be dragged in front of the magistrates and sentenced to another flogging.”

  “But you’re trapped here!”

  “I can leave any time I want, Ezak. I just don’t want to.”

  “How can you not want to?”

  “I’m comfortable here.”

  “But people are telling you what to do all the time!”

  Kel turned up a palm. “I’m used to that, Ezak. It’s just that it always used to be you telling me what to do.”

  “I did not! I’m your friend! I always took care of you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did,” Kel agreed. “But I’m a grown man now. I can take care of myself.”

  Ezak stared at him. “You didn’t think so a couple of months ago.”

  “I know,” Kel said. “I was scared.”

  “Well, yes! It’s a big nasty world, and you’re a small fellow. You need someone to protect you.”

  Kel shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said.

  “Of course you do,” Ezak said bitterly. “You just think the sorcerer’s widow can do it better than I can now.”

  “No,” Kel said. “She doesn’t take care of me; she showed me that I could take care of myself.”

  “I took care of you!”

  “You did,” Kel agreed again. “But I don’t want you to anymore. I do it better myself.”

  “Better? You call this better?” He waved at the shop.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a trap! A prison! You’ll need to work your whole life, until you fall over dead!”

  “At least I won’t starve, or get a knife in the back,” Kel replied.

  “You’ll certainly never get rich!”

  “I didn’t get rich with you, either.”

  “Not yet, but one of these days I’ll find a way, and I’ll do it without taking orders from anyone.”

  Kel looked at him. “You never wanted to be a potter, did you?”

  “What? Of course not! My uncle made me take that apprenticeship.”

  “You got kicked out on purpose.”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “You didn’t really try to join the guard that time, did you?”

  “No, I just told Uncle Vezalis that.”

  “I tried, when I was about sixteen. I was too short.”

  “I…you did?” Ezak stepped back from the counter.

  Kel nodded. “I don’t want to be a thief, Ezak. I never wanted to be a thief.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Ezak stared at him. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  Obviously shaken, Ezak said, “I don’t believe you!”

  Kel turned up both palms.

  For a moment Ezak simply stared. Then he stepped forward and leaned on the counter again. “She has you under a spell, doesn’t she?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “No,” Kel said, amused.

  “But you might not know,” Ezak insisted. “She could have ensorcelled you without you knowing it.”

  Kel shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He thought, but did not say, that if he had been under anyone’s spell, it was Ezak’s—his words and attention had been as effective as magic in keeping Kel’s loyalty. But the spell was broken now. All it had really taken was some time away from him, in the company of honest people. That, and watching how Dorna had set about building a new life when her husband’s death destroyed her old one.

  “Well, I think so,” Ezak said. “I’m going to find a way to get you out of here, and then you’ll help me steal Nabal’s talismans, and we’ll go to Ethshar of the Spices, or Ethshar of the Rocks, and use them to get rich. She knows too much about our places here.”

  Kel looked sadly up at Ezak. “We might be able to find you a job,” he said. “Maybe you could still joi
n the guard after all.”

  “I’m not taking anyone’s orders! If you weren’t enchanted, you’d know that!”

  “I’m not enchanted. I grew up.”

  “Well…well, stop it!” To Kel’s astonishment, he saw tears in Ezak’s eyes. “You can’t grow up! You’re younger than me!”

  “I’m…I’m twenty, I think. About that. That’s grown up.”

  “It doesn’t have to be!”

  “I want to be,” Kel said quietly. “I’m sorry, Ezak.”

  “You can rot, Blabbermouth!” Ezak said. He straightened up and spat at Kel. “If you never wanted to be a thief, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I was scared.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of everything. Including you.”

  Ezak looked around. “I should smash all this crockery. Then Dorna would throw you out and you’d have to come back to Smallgate.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I’d find someplace else. I’m not coming back.”

  Ezak glared at him.

  “If you break anything, I’ll call the guard,” Kel added.

  “You’d do that?”

  Kel nodded.

  “You’d do that to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You took a flogging for me last year!”

  Kel nodded again.

  “You aren’t coming back? There’s no way I can convince you?”

  “No.”

  For a moment, the two men stared at each other. Then Kel said, “I’ll miss you. I’ve missed you ever since you stole Dorna’s bag.”

  “Well, you can go on missing me!” He turned to go.

  “If you ever change your mind and want a job, I’ll try to help,” Kel called after him.

  Ezak paused in the doorway. “If the spell ever breaks and you come to your senses, and you want to be free again, you know where to find me.”

  “I do,” Kel agreed.

  “Goodbye, Kel.”

  “Goodbye, Ezak.”

  Kel got to his feet and stood behind the counter, his hands on the smooth polished wood, and watched as Ezak marched across Harbor Street, and turned the corner onto Tapestry. Then he sighed, and returned to his stool.