"But he can," Lark insisted. "The nature of his magic is the absence of ours, don't you see? We could grip him with all we have, and he would not only walk away, but his magic would consume ours. Sandry got a taste of that when the Dihanurs escaped. His unmagic almost pulled her into the door he'd opened."
"Then how will anything that my lady does trap him?" demanded Erdogun.
Sandry told the baron, "I'm going to spin his unmagic into a rope and knot it into a net. Then Pasco will dance the spell to bring the mage and the two killers to us. They won't be able to fight it, any of them, because they're all so tainted with the nothingness that it's like their own lifeblood. The unmagic net will pull them in."
"Once we have them, we can cleanse them," said Lark. "You'll have the killers for trial, and we'll keep the mage in custody. And it must be soon, before they can work their way through the layers of spells on the inner keep."
"What?" cried Erdogun, offended. "The inner keep is
* * *
Alzena was getting very tired of Duke Vedris. Putting all of the Rokats in one place for safekeeping should have been perfect for her and Nurhar, but this duke was an old fox who knew the ways of hunters. He had brought them into his own residence. Now they hid in the castle's very heart—a stone tower hundreds of years old, with more layers of spells to ward it than there were stars.
Why do this? Alzena wondered as she slid by the guards at the last gate to the duke's residence. Everyone knew Vedris only tolerated the Rokats for their myrrh. If he hated them, why bring them here?
She would kill him, when she was done with the Emelan Rokats—or she would if she wished. She cared about so little except that one goal, the end of these Rokats. The family had invested so much to send them here, the expense greater than that spent on the teams in any of the other Pebbled Sea countries. Jamar and Qasam had been the brothers of the Rokat who had killed Palaq Dihanur and displayed his heacbin dishonor; many of those now in the inner keep were the grandchildren of Jamar and Qasam Rokat. Their deaths came first; they had to. Only when the last Ernelan Rokat was dead could Alzena tell this duke what she thought of his interference.
The numbers of people in this Citadel were a nuisance, but only that. She simply had to be careful that no one blundered into her.
At first the palace spells were laughable, cobwebs against her face as she climbed the steps to the duke's residence, The main doors were closed and guarded. Alzena waited. Sooner or later they would open—as they did now. A woman, in servant's gray emerged, arguing with a pair of guards. Alzena slipped around them and, went inside.
Today was a scouting mission only with no palace maps; available for study one of them had to explore the place. Next time when they were ready to finish their work, Nurhar would come to help with the killing. It was time that he did. Even she would not be quick enough, to slaughter them all before someone thought to attack the place where she,
That would happen, the mage had said. She would never meet anything so complicated as the inner keep's layers of spells unless she penetrated some other ancient kingdom's private stronghold. They could slow her, but as long as she pressed forward, they would not halt her.
The air pressed more thickly against her body. She fought to go on—why? Was there a point? Yes, she remembered dully, the killing to come. Once it was done, she could stop. She could do nothing. No one would insist that she get up, walk about, eat, dress. They would leave her alone. That would be good.
She knew, in the part of her that said she used to love Nurhar, that she owed everything to the family. House Dihanur had saved Alzena when her parents were murdered, had raised and taught her, had given her a husband. Dihanurs had gone to the expense and loss of family lives it took to capture the mage and ensure he would obey her. They had bought dragonsalt to keep him dependent on Alzena and Nurhar. Without it, who could say whether he would stay grateful to those who'd saved him from the pirate who crippled him?
Alzena halted, fighting to breathe under the weight of magic that encased her. The hall had opened onto a broad, wide corridor that followed a curved stone wall. She could see that wall only near the ceiling. Its stones were so black and pitted that they had to be the stones of the inner keep. The rest was hidden behind a wood barricade ten feet high. It reached as far as she could see in both directions; she would have bet that it went all the way around the inner keep.
How dare they add one more obstacle, even one as stupid as a wooden fence? It could only slow her down, but it could never stop her. Alzena's eyes were fixed on the thing, already examining it for weakness. If she could not wait until someone opened the lone door in the barricade and slip in that way, she might have to climb it. Calculating, she didn't see the low, treacherous step down to the floor that wrapped around the inner keep. When she missed it and stumbled, she made a perfectly audible thud.
The six guards loitering around the door through the barricade sprang to their feet, drawing their swords. They spread until they were within sword's reach of one another, sweeping in front of them with their weapons.
One of them blew a shrill blast on the whistle that hung around his neck.
Oh, they had been well briefed, and she had been a fool to let a sound escape. They knew they might not see her, but they could slice her, just as the arrow had punched through the spells and into her flesh. If she had been quiet, if she had not missed that step, she might have worked her way around them. She could have gotten to the door and slipped in, just as she had walked into this building. They were ready for her now. The guard at the end of their line stayed within sword's reach of the door.
She turned away in disgust, and blundered into three guards who had been hidden by yet more spells. The sight of their comrades coming to alert had brought them out of their concealment—or had they, too, heard that stupid noise of hers?
The layered magics dragged on her as she drew her sword and cut down the one she'd run into. She chopped at his neighbor's leg; the woman fell to the floor. The third guard who had been hidden swept his blade from side to side, feeling for her. Only a few inches lay between Alzena and his weapon, and she could hear running footsteps. Reinforcements were on the way.
She oozed back from the guard whose blade sought her flesh. The guards on the barricade were advancing carefully. Older and wiser than the one she had killed, they were leaving no room for her to get by them and through the barricade door. She backed down the hall, her sword ready, glancing back twice to make sure she walked into no one else. Fresh guards poured into the area around the barricade from an adjoining hall.
"There.” one of them said, pointing. Alzena looked down and shook her head. Her sword was dripping, leaving a blood trail. She dropped it and continued to back out, moving faster as she put distance between her and those cursed spells.
She had to stop in the main hall, when a trickle of warmth down her leg told her she was bleeding. One of the guards had cut her side. Cursing under her breath, she filched a lace runner from a side table and wadded it against the cut, tightening her belt over it until the thing pinched. Only when she was sure that she wouldn't leave a trail did she make her way out of the residence.
She had plenty of think about as she inched by milling guards, placed on the alert by their comrades at the inner keep. She and Nurhar could manage the layered spells, but what of the barricade? The guard on that small door would be doubled, and it would be alert—these people were
* * *
For a long, long minute after the messenger told the duke that one guard was dead and another wounded in the inner keep, no one made a sound. Sandry rested her hands on the duke's shoulders, not liking the expression in his eyes. She knew this had to cut deeply. An assassin had made his or her way to the very heart of Vedris's power. Erdogun's brown face was tinged scarlet with humiliation at being proven wrong almost as soon as he had called Lark an alarmist.
At last the duke looked up at Sandry and gave her a thin smile, patting one of her hands. "Must you do this with Pasco?" he inquired. "The boy is nice enough, but he doesn't seem very reliable."
Sandry glanced at Lark. "We did talk about another way, but—," She swallowed. "Truly, Uncle, I prefer this."
The duke frowned. "What is this other way that you find so distasteful?"
Lark sighed. "We discussed shaping the unmagic as a web, rather than a net, and blanketing the inner keep with it, like a spiders web. When the assassins come, they'll touch it and—well, they won't stick to it, exactly. The nothingness in them would become part of the web."
"Then I could take the web and unravel it, maybe even spin it into one cord," Sandry explained. "The problem is, Uncle, I couldn't save the parts of them that are still real. If I had to do it that way, I'd kill them—if it even worked."
"We
* * *
“I could help catch rats?" Pasco demanded, eyes alight. It was the next morning, at Yazmin's school. "By
Sandry looked at her hands and smiled. She had thought Pasco might see it that way. "We're not
"We'll see," she replied. "It may come to nothing if I can't work that stuff into a proper net. Now settle down. Let's try meditation."
He did a little better today. Sandry could see his magic did not stray so far from him. It also didn't flicker as much as it had, which told her that his attention wandered less. Maybe he just needs something useful to do, she thought as the city's clocks chimed the hour. Some thing his family thinks is useful, anyway.
As she took up her ward and Pasco stretched his legs, Yazmнn walked in. "You said when you got here that you've something important to discuss?" she asked Sandry.
"We're going to make a net-dance for rat-trapping," Pasco told her cheerfully. "And I'm going to dance it."
"It's a way to catch these killers," explained Sandry. "If you don't mind, we'd like your help with creating the dance, and getting Pasco ready for it. Everything has to be planned to the inch. One wrong step—if he so much as brushes the unmagic—," Sandry gulped. "I think the net would devour him."
"Never fear," Yazmнn said cheerfully. "I can get him so he'll be able to hit a dot on the floor, blindfolded, every time. A small dot." Pasco sat with his left leg straight out in front of him as he tried to grip his foot and touch his forehead to his knee. Yazmнn pressed down on his left knee with one hand as she pulled back on his toes, forcing him to stretch an extra inch. He whimpered, then touched his forehead to his knee and held the position to a count of ten.
Sandry watched them solemnly. "If you've any doubt he'll be able to do it, I have to know right now," she told Yazmнn quietly.
The dancer looked at her and smiled. "You're using that dance he showed me the other day as the basic, right?"
Sandry nodded.
"How long till you're ready to go?"
"I want another look at the net he used for the fishing spell," Sandry replied. "I'll do that today, and I'm to help Behazin and Ulrina—the harrier-mages—distill the rest of the unmagic out of what Master Wulf—," a lump rose in her throat. She coughed to clear it, blinked rapidly until her eyes didn't sting any more, and went on—, "out of what was gathered yesterday. Tonight I'll sketch a rough net for us to look at in the morning. We'll work on the dance while everything else is being made ready at Winding Circle—two more days, I think. And you can work with Pasco some more while I spin and make the net. Will that be enough time? Three or four days?"
''I'll spend every waking minute with our friend, here," Yazmнn said with a wink to Sandry. "I'll give him all the personal attention he can stand."
Pasco, sitting to stretch his right leg, muttered, “I'm doomed."
Do they really understand how serious this is? Sandry wondered as she set about creating a permanent warding on a room for Pasco and Yazmнn to work in. Do they understand that if he touches this net he can't even see, the power of his dance combined with the net will eat him up? Should I talk to them about it some more?
She was still wondering as she told Yazmнn how to activate the wards on the room without a mage present. Yazmнn tried it a couple of times, raising and lowering the protections that would keep Pasco's magic from spilling out. Then she rested a hand on Sandry's arm.
"I know you're worried about precision," she said quietly in her odd, cracked voice. "But really, take my word for it—enough practice with an accurate drawing of the net, and he'll hit his marks every time. He's got body memory, better maybe than mine. I don't know if that's because he'll be a fine dancer or if the magic helps him. Either way, you won't be taking a foolish risk, using him."