Magic Steps

Sandry turned, to see a line of her silk squares dotting the walkway back to the barricade. “Oh, that,” she said.

“Yes, that,” Wulfric told her mockingly. He raised bushy eyebrows. For a moment he reminded Sandry of Niko, the gray-haired mage who had brought her to Emelan and served as one of her teachers. “Are you worn out?” Wulfric wanted to know.

“Or can you help more? I’d like to get all this collected, and go over the house.”

Sandry hesitated. Did she really want to go in that place? Hadn’t it been bad enough, seeing Jamar Rokat in pieces?

But there was the matter of the unmagic smears. Every fiber of her being protested leaving them where they were. She rubbed her temples. “I need to send a note to Uncle,” she finally said. “And if there’s any tea about, I’d appreciate a cup.” The lieutenant took a flask from her belt, opened it, and offered it to Sandry; fragrant steam scented with rosehips and lemon curled from it. “You’re a lifesaver,” Sandry told the mage-lieutenant, who grinned shyly.

“She’s Ulrina,” Wulfric said, tearing a sheet of paper from his notebook and giving it to Sandry. “He’s Behazin. They’re my team for this sort of work.”

When she had drunk her fill of Ulrina’s tea, Sandry told Wulfric, “If I have to do for each spot what I did for that unmagic on Gury and Lebua, I’ll collapse from exhaustion before we get near the house.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he admitted. “Here’s my idea: instead of you weaving magic to bind this stuff, let’s use these cloths you’ve put down as well as our own. Then we could mix up a blend of sweet pea, patchouli, and ylang-ylang oils—,”

“Equal parts of each,” suggested Captain Behazin. “So they’re in balance.”

Lieutenant Ulrina nodded.

“And we work that into these cloths,” Wulfric contin ued. “They’re all attractors.”

Sandry nodded. “That might do it. This unmagic is sticky to begin with. It wants to hold onto things.”

Wulfric sent Ulrina for the supplies they would need. Behazin offered Sandry a bottle of ink and a brush for her note to Duke Vedris. As she wrote it, Wulfric ordered two watching Provost’s Guards to move the barricade out to the intersection at Silver Street. All of Sandry’s cloth squares were safe from the onlookers who gathered there now that the fire was under control.

When Sandry finished her note, she looked up. Wulfric was crouched by one of the bowl-shaped cloth guards—he seemed immune to Sandry’s avoidance-spells. He was smiling. “What’s so funny?” Sandry asked as she blew on the paper to dry her ink.

“I’m not laughing, my lady. I’m pleased at the turn in out luck. Our killer slipped up here, bleeding on the stones.”

Sandry looked at him with interest. She’d been taught that things like hair, blood, and even clothing still had a magical connection to the person they carne from. The kind of tracking that Wulfric could do was considered to be advanced, specialized magic—she had yet to learn how it was done. “Is there enough blood to use?” she wanted to know.

His grin broadened. “There wouldn’t have been if everyone and his auntie trailed through before I got to it. Your quick thinking may have weighted the balance in our favor. We’ve enough here, and it’s almost untainted. I. should be able to track him quite nicely with this.”

The: image of Pasco dancing to’ call up fish rose in her’ mind

“Isn’t there something else you could do?” inquired Sandry, her note forgotten,’ “Call him to you, if you have some, piece of him?”

Wulfric shook his head. lt don’t work that way. People don’t want to regain whatever part of themselves they’ve: lost—unless it’s a limb. I could do it if he’d left a hand or foot behind. Otherwise it’s the part that wants to go back where it came: from, blood or hair or so on. Spelled right, and put in a kind of compass, I’ll hunt this lot to their lair.” His grin broadened unpleasantly.

“Then they’ll answer for what they’ve done.”

With the arrival of their supplies, the four mages—Sandry, Wulfric, and his two assistants—got to work. Wulfric and Behazin mixed the oils and called on their powers for attraction. While they did, Lieutenant Ulrina cut fresh squares so precise that Sandry knew she had spent hours learning to do just that, as Sandry herself had learned to make squares and circles. Once the mixed oil was ready, Sandry applied it to every fiber of her squares, and Ulrina treated the new ones.

When everything was ready, the assistants took a pile of cloths and headed for the site of the stable fire. Like Wulfric, they had spelled lenses that would help them to see the dark smears, now that they knew what to look for. Their job was to see if the fire had been set by an accomplice—,”Elsewise,” Behazin informed Sandry, “it’s just too convenient”—and to gather up all the unmagic that he’d left there.

“Too much to hope the accomplice got hurt and is bleeding, too,” Wulfric remarked, watching his assistants hurry off. “Still, no sense in overlooking the chance.”

He and Sandry began to gather up the spots that Sandry had already covered. They worked their way back from Silver Street, entering the Rokat house and tracing the killers movements inside. They did not enter the nursery. Instead they followed the set of tracks that led into that room on up to the roof, and to the building next door. They backtracked the killer further still, across a succession of rooftops. The trail led to another stable, down through a loft, and out onto the street, where it ended in a pool of unmagic.