Magic Steps

He bowed. “Beg pardon, lady. I meant no disrespect.”

“Have we a bargain? We’ll meet here tonight, and we’ll see who has the right of it.” If he’d had any training, he would have felt her magic hooking into his.

With an invisible hand she teased out a strand of his power and pulled it to her, attaching it within herself. It was as fine as a single thread of silk, but with it in her grasp, she would always be able to find him. “Pasco, I want to catch up with my uncle,” she said tardy. “Have we a bargain?”

He nodded reluctantly.

Sandry mounted her horse once again. Her guards drew up beside her, looking down at Pasco with level brown eyes. “Until the boats come home, Pasco Acalon,”

Sandry told him.

Again he bowed deeply to her.

Sandry nodded to her escorts, and turned her mare back toward the city. Once they reached the road, she set off at a smart trot, hoping to find the duke before he got too involved in this murder.

Pasco watched her ride off, shaking his head. He had little experience with nobles or mages, but he’d never heard of those people behaving as she did. Was she even as pretty as he’d thought, or was it just her bearing, and her dress, and those lovely blue eyes?

He oughtn’t to meet her back here when the boats came in, Would a lady even know so commonplace a thing as the time a fishing fleet returned? If she didn’t see him that afternoon, she would forget this idea of him and magery. Everyone knew the nobility was flighty, ex cept for Duke Vedris.

Pasco looked around and found just Osa, napping be side his rowboat. Osa’s father had gone off fishing without paying for the dance.

So I’ll have to come anyway, to see if they still want to pay me, thought Pasco, wandering over to the sand where he’d danced. Dawn had. come: in the sunlight he could see the patterns made by his feet and the rope net.

Pasco grinned. Suddenly the idea of an Acalon who danced magic was as funny as anything, a joke and a half.

“I have it,” he told the air and a few seagulls that had landed to pick for clams as the tide went out. I’ll be a dancing harrier, only ‘stead of putting my hand on the lawbreakers, I’ll—I’ll dance ‘em into my coop!”

“Are you done being foolish?” Osa demanded, getting to his feet. “I’ve chores to do yet today. And don’t you have law and baton-fighting lessons?”

Pasco yelped, and ran to his friend. “No lessons till later,” he told Osa, helping the other boy to push the boat into the water. “But I promised Mama I’d help sort one of the storerooms this morning!”

They jumped into the boat as it floated free. Each of them took an oar this time, and began to row.

CHAPTER 3

When Harbor Street filled up with gawkers a block from the scene of the murder, Sandry’s guards did not ask whether she wanted to push on or not. Like the other residents of Duke’s Citadel, Kwaben and Oama had learned weeks ago what happened when Sandry wished to join her uncle and was kept from doing so. They urged their mounts ahead of hers and began to open a path with their booted feet and with their horses. People com plained until they saw who barged through so rudely. Then they made room for the girl and her escort.

The four Provosts Guards at the door of Rokat House were less willing to help.

Their leader, whose sleeve bore a corporal’s single yellow arrowhead badge, was not impressed by Sandry’s rank. “It’s not a fit sight for a lady,” he said, his face expressionless.

Oama dismounted so she could speak quietly to the man, ” Corporal, think about this.”’ She was a straightfor ward young woman with bronze skin, a long, straight nose, and sharp brown eyes, who wore her black hair rolled and pinned tightly at the back of her head. Her skills as a Duke’s Guard and part of the elite Personal Guard were considerable: Sandry had watched her and her partner, Kwaben, at combat practice and had been impressed. “You don’t want to vex her,”

Oama continued. “Really.”

The corporal shook his head. “Captain Qais would boot me for it, and he’d be right.”

Now Kwaben dismounted to support his partner. He was over six feet tall, black as sable, and honed like an axe. His shaved head, combined with sharp cheekbones, lean cheeks, and wide-set eyes, made him look as sleek and deadly as a panther. He was as dangerous as he ap peared.

Sandry stayed on her mare. She would impress no one if she dismounted—the stubborn corporal was taller than she by a head. Instead she sorted through her magic until she found a particular cord. Shaped from her own power, it connected her to Duke Vedris.

“Uncle, ” she said clearly, feeling her voice roll down that magical tie, “I want to be let in, please.”

Everyone stared at her, even Kwaben and Oama. Onlookers in the crowd drew the gods-circle on their chests. The Provost’s Guards were made of sterner stuff.

Their hands stayed by their weapons.

Overhead, on the next story of the building, glass windows swung outward on hinges. The duke and a man with the same light brown skin, lean cheeks, and quirky eyebrows as Pasco leaned out.

“My dear, this is not the kind of thing a young girl should see,” called Vedris.

He could hear Sandry when she used the power she had bound to him, but without magic of his own he could not reply the same way.

Sandry looked up at him. He seemed tired, though she doubted anyone who did not know him well would guess that. He was also shaken, though that was some thing she felt rather than saw. “I’m no stranger to bad things, uncle. I really must insist.”