Magic Steps

Almost before Sandry realized it, Pasco was skipping lightly over the north peg.

He stopped, twirled, and bowed deeply to her. The silver fire that had trailed him knotted and sprang back into the pattern of his dance, enclosed on all sides by the unrnagic.

“Very good,’ Skyfire told the boy. “Your part’s done now. Scat. ‘

“You heard him,” added Moonstream, her face kind. “Very nice work, young Master Acalon. Now go, before your fish swim into this net.”

Back inside the duke’s residence, Alzena scouted the inner keep again. Perhaps there was a route she had missed, one not so closely watched. She left Nurhar and the mage in a tower room that gave them access to the roof. Then she went to see what she might find, after taking a second dose of dragonsalt. It was amazing stuff. She thought so much better with it in her veins, even if it did make her irritable. Maybe she wouldn’t give it up, once she returned home.

What she found was enough to make her start killing everyone she saw, if it hadn’t been for her family duty. There were three ways to come at the inner keep—she learned that by listening to servants. When she tried them, she found that entire squads of the Duke’s Guard were actually camped in the halls—bedrolls, equipment, and even the Guards themselves clumped so closely together that an approach was impossible. No matter how careful she was, the litter of soldiers and possessions guaranteed she would bump into something or someone and rouse the others.

She stood there, hands clenched with furry glaring at these insects that were ruining her plans. It took a few moments for her to realize that something had stirred the insects up. When their officers were not looking they were muttering to one another. The subject was the mad old man who had just stalked out of the inner keep declaring he would go home.

Alzena listened. Could it be? Had a Rokat walked out of his hiding place?

She trotted off through the palace corridors, listening to the talk as she went, When, she reached the main hall, she found all the gossip she’d heard was true.

“I. have business matters that will, not wait!” A richly dressed man in his sixties was shaking his walking stick at a tall, bald black man whose nostrils curved as if he smelled something bad. The crossed keys badge on his tunic marked him as the duke’s seneschal, Erdogun fer Baigh. “If those murdering beasts have not struck by now, it’s because they Ve given up. What do they care for us little fish, anyway?”

“Master Rokat,” began the bald man.

“Don’t you ‘Master Rokat me, Baron fer Baigh!” cried the older man. “My kinfolk will huddle in that dungeon you call the inner keep if they wish, but Durshan Rokat is going home!” He turned to a cluster of muscled women and men who could only be bodyguards. “I don’t pay you to gorge on his grace’s food and laze!” he snapped. “We are leaving. Call my chair at once!”

A bodyguard ran to do as he was ordered. Erdogun fer Baigh snapped his fingers for a footman. “Since Master Rokat no longer desires our hospitality,” he said, his voice clipped, “tell the watch commander I require two squads of Duke’s Guards to accompany him home. Two squads, mind. I want all Summersea to know this man is under the duke’s protection.” He turned away and began to climb the broad stair that rose from the hall. “You’d think these people didn’t want to stay alive,” he muttered.

Alzena watched the old man and his guards leave, wondering. They were so close to the inner keep and all those Rokats, But there was that carpet of guards to think of. Perhaps no one here had thought to watch the keeps upper stories as well as the ground floor, but it didn’t seem likely. And here was a Rokat—an old one, as old as Palaq Dihanur had been when Rokats cut off his head—who insisted that he return to his house.

Every instinct clamored for her to go after the old man. Her Dihanur masters had taught her that as one of her first lessons take the weak and easy prey first.

No matter that his was one of the houses they hadn’t scouted before they killed Jamar Rokat—tracking Durshan would be as easy as breathing, with all those guards around him. People: would talk of their passing for hours the Dihaeurs need only follow the gossip.

Take the weak, easy, and stupid prey first. Those families in the inner keep were going nowhere, and finding that carpet of guards had discouraged her. A killing today would improve her mood. Letting this prey escape was mad. What if he reached his house, stayed a few hours or a day, lost his courage, and returned? She wouldn’t even have his head, to display somewhere—somewhere like this large, drafty entrance hall Maybe the sight of a fresh head would give this cursed Duke Vedris another heart attack In the confusion of his collapse, who was to say ‘they wouldn’t relax: their guard on the inner keep?

This sense of Tightness was the most powerful feeling she’d had in a long time.

She knew it in her gut Durshan Rokat’s killing would break this cycle of frustration.

When she reached the room where she had left her husband and the mage, she found Nurhar wild with energy and the mage shivering. Quickly she told them about the old man and the human carpet. “He’s a spoiled elder with no more brains than a rabbit,” she told Nurhar. “I want his head.”

Nurhar caught fire over the idea, too. He hoisted the mage into his carry-frame.

“Cover us well,” he told their charge as he tightened the straps. “No slip-ups.”

“I never slip up,” mumbled the rnage. ‘I’m not the one who got cut and needed a healer you had to ki—,”