"Performers learn how to dress quickly, your grace," explained Yazmнn with an impish smile.
Even an ill wind blows some good, as Tris always says, thought Sandry as they walked down the street toward the inn. Pasco may drive me crazy, but I never would have met Yazmнn if not for him.
She would light a stick of incense to Yanna the healer goddess, who was also the goddess of love. If the duke was paying attention to a lovely and spirited dancer, he might not spend so much time on paperwork or on worrying about murderers who seemed to walk through walls.
* * *
That night the dream began with Sandry in darkness up to her chin. She fought to keep it out of her face, but now she could feel unmagic seep through her very pores. She jumped out of bed and stumbled to the window. Leaning out into the cool night air, she gasped for breath.
Only when she was thoroughly chilled did she turn to sit inside her room. There was no sense in rushing back into a nightmare. Instead she got her notebook, ink, and brush pen, Pasco's bitter words about magic that did nothing to arrest criminals had been rattling about her head all day, So had the thought that stitch witches ought to be able to help provost's mages. She needed spells that would make her
* * *
The next day as Sandry, the duke, and Yazinin were finishing their meal at the Bountiful Inn, the door to their private room opened.
"Your grace, I tried to stop him!" protested the girl who had waited on them, trying to halt the intruder.
It was Wulfric Snaptrap. "And I told you I don't care if he's with an assembly of gods, I need to talk to him!" Bowing apologetically to the duke, he said, "Actually, to the lady." He nodded, to Sandry.
She instantly rose. “I'm just finished, Master Snaptrap," she said, "Uncle, Yazmнn, you will excuse me?"
Not waiting for an answer, she grabbed Wulfric and propeled him from the room in front of her. "I hope you didn't have anything drastic to say to Uncle as well, or if you do, you can say it in a note," she told, Wulfric quietly. "I was looking for a polite way to leave. Of course, I really am at your service."
He looked down at her, eyebrows raised. "All I have to report to his grace is failure, and he never likes to hear about that. Do you think he's interested in Mistress Yazmнn?"
"I devoutly hope so," replied Sandry. She steered him into the common room and sat at a table, pulling him down beside her. "Otherwise they'll think I've run mad. How goes the tracking?"
Wulfric propped his elbows on his knees and sighed. "It doesn't, he told Sandry, glum. "That blood's so tainted with unmagic that it's barely human anymore. We labored two straight days without a thing to show for it."
"Cat dirt," whispered Sandry, thumping her knees with her fists. "Cat dirt, cat dirt!"
“I used stronger words," Wulfric told her. "If only I could do something with all that unmagic we collected! There's what we took from Qasam Rokat's, and what my assistants brought from Fariji Rokat's, all nicely bottled, and there's not a thing I can do with it. Winding Circle still hasn't told me how to dispose of it safely, either." He ran his fingers through his gray curls. "My assistants are getting some rest. I thought if you were still willing, we might at least clean up Rokat House. So I'll feel I did something this week besides twiddle my thumbs."
“I know what you mean," Sandry assured him. "I would love to help." The night before, she'd had another dream of drowning in shadows. Maybe cleansing Rokat House would make her stop feeling powerless. "Have you enough supplies?"
"I brought plenty," Wulfric assured her. "Even if we run into a pond of the stuff." Sandry shuddered as he led her out of the inn and into the courtyarci Kwaben and Oama were there already with Sandry’s mare, one of the hostlers held Wulfric's bony cob. "There's more news I didn't want to give his grace," he admitted as they mounted their horses. "The house-to-house search turned up three suspicious characters in East District. Looks like they had a healer up to see to one of them. They murdered the healer and the healer's guard, then set a fire to cover their escape. I'll let Captain Qais tell the duke about that mess." He flipped a coin to the hostler.
"If you could have used the blood to track them it wouldn't matter that they fled the inn?" Sandry guessed.
"Exactly," Wulfric replied as they rode through the gate. "But without even the blood to help, and with them getting away clean like that… His grace is fair, but I think I'll steer clear of him until I have, some real progress to report."
What they had forgotten was that it was Lovers' Day. Long, long before, a noble maiden and a cobbler had drowned themselves rather than let their families marry them to others. For some reason their festival was marked by music, dancing, and a parade. Sandry's group had to muscle through the crowds. The din was worst in front of Rokat House itself, where the parade was passing.
The Provosts Guards on watch stood aside for Wulfric. He voiced the words that would break the magical seal on the door, though the sound was lost in the bang of cymbals and drums. When the wax seal crumbled away—the sign the magical seal had broken—Wulfric, Sandry, and Sandry's bodyguards walked inside and closed the door behind them.
It was pitch dark in the entryway—no lamps had been lit. Sandry pulled her lightstone out so they could see. Its glow revealed smutches of darkness on the stairs, on the wall, and on the railing. Holding the stone up, she could see more smutches along the hall that led to the rear of the building on the ground floor. She guessed the killers had escaped that way on the morning they killed Jamar Rokat.
Even with a wall between them and the parade, it was still hard for her to hear what the provost's mage was saying. Finally Wulfric put his mouth beside her ear. "Lets start with the worst of it this time, shall we?" He pointed upstairs.
Sandry nodded. She warned Oama and Kwaben to stay in the middle of the stair, and to sit on or touch nothing until she had told them they could. They nodded their understanding. Sandry and Wulfric each hoisted a pack of the supplies that Wulfric had brought for the job, and began to climb.
Unbelievably, the noise was louder yet upstairs. Someone had left the shutters open on a window that overlooked the street from the hall.
Wulfric draped a silk square over his hand and opened the outer office door. "Ready?" he asked as he thrust it open.
She nodded and followed him, preoccupied with noting each and every place she could see unmagic smears. We'll be at this till nightfall, she thought ruefully as she waited for Wulfric to undo the seal on the room where Jamar Rokat had died. Once that was done, he stepped inside and halted. Sandry almost walked into his back. She frowned, reached to tap his shoulder—and Wulfric fell forward. Kwaben grabbed Sandry and yanked her away, into the outer office. She went down with a surprised cry.
Kwaben and Oama, swords drawn, jumped over Wulfric's body into the next room. Sandry heard the clang of metal on metal and lunged to her feet, running to the open door. A man and a woman, both strangers armed with curving swords, battled Sandry's guards.
"Mage, do something!" the woman shouted as she hacked at Kwaben. She was very quick. "Get us out of here!"
Once their basic studies were complete, all mages learned a few spells they could trigger in a hurry at need. Sandry used two of hers now. One raised a web of naked power between her guards and the strangers. The other sent a rope of magic snapping down the stairs. It blew open the front door, twined around the guards outside, and dragged them into the building.
Footsteps hammered up the stairs: her rope had worked, at least. Her web was not so effective. A hand with a sword in it darted through to slash at Oama; a hand with a dagger punched through next to the sword. The hands that clutched both weapons rippled with dark smears. Sandry could see a foot, a leg, a head as strangers attacked and retreated through her barrier. Riddled with the essence of nothingness as they were—as Wulfric had told Sandry their blood was—the strangers were able in part to reach through her power as if it did not exist. Kwaben and Oama could not cross her web at all, but they could and did battle the pieces of the enemy that got through.
Something, a rising force of unmagic, surged on the far side of Sandry's barrier. She thrust her web to one side. It yanked the strangers out of the way by pulling the parts not yet consumed by unmagic. Oama and Kwaben shifted with them, to keep fighting and to place their bodies between the enemy and Sandry.
Now the girl could see the rest of the room. Someone was against the far wall. He knelt—no, that wasn't right—he was
"Come," he said. "Come away." He giggled. "Dihanurs, come now!"
Sandry tightened her web on the enemy, but they yanked free. They ran to the giggling man and sank in the dark pool before him. It was just like her dream, except they didn't fight the unmagic. With it marbling so much of their flesh already, they simply melted into the shadowy depths.
Their mage looked at Sandry. "They have the salt," he whispered, blackness rising around him. He toppled for ward, into the pool. Some force—the hunger of unmagic for true magic—dragged Sandry across the floor, toward that empty gap. She screamed.
A hard arm wrapped around her waist and held on. The darkness sucked at her, trying to draw her into the pool. It was shrinking rapidly.
"Kwaben, help!" shrieked Oama as she clung to Sandry. They slid for an inch more; Kwaben stopped them. The unmagic vanished, leaving only a faint scum on the floorboards where it had been. Its grip on Sandry broke. She and Oama sagged onto the floor, panting.
"It was them, wasn't it?" Sandry heard Kwaben whisper. "The Rokat killers."
Sandry nodded. "Their mage called them Dihanurs, did you hear?" she said, when she could talk again. "They figured no one would search for them in a place where they'd already done murder, I bet." Then she remembered. "Wulfric!" Turning over, she broke out of Oama's hold and crawled over to the provost's mage. He lay in a pool of blood.
"Musta cut his throat as he came in the door," muttered one of the guards Sandry had dragged inside to help take the killers. They hadn't been able to get by Oama and Kwaben as they fought. "Bled 'im out afore he knowed it."
"Gorry, they's fast," someone else whispered. "T'nail the ol'wolf like that. I seen him turn a spell on a copper bit, he were that quick."
Sandry rolled Wulfric over as tears streamed down her cheeks. She tugged her handkerchief from her pocket and tried to wipe the blood from his face. "Now you don't have to tell Uncle any bad news," she whispered.
A warm hand rested on her shoulder. It was Kwaben's, blood ran over it in a thin trickle. "Lady," he whispered sadly.
"I
She was no healer, but it was easy enough to lay silk threads from her belt-purse across the shallow gash over his bicep and use them like stitches to pull the wound shut. With that done, the bleeding slowed. Oama wrapped the arm in linen, and it stopped completely.
Sandry couldn't leave. There was the provost to be notified, and investigators to talk to. Waiting for them, she sat on a stool that bore no taint of the killers, and looked at the room. The Dihanurs had left their packs. That would give the Provost's Guards more information about them, maybe. Sandry doubted that any of it could be used for tracking, if their very blood was so corrupted by unmagic that traditional spells didn't work.
Of course these people would slaughter two children. The nothingness they used to slip by watchers and hunters was eating the Dihanurs, just as it had almost devoured the mage whose power came from it. It had taken enough of their life force away that Sandry's magical web could, not capture and hold them. Next time her magic would probably be able to grip still less. Even, if she could, hold a. small part of their bodies captive, how long would that last? And, how on earth could, that mage be captured?