Sandry took a deep breath. "I need something sweet," she told Lark, "another mug of tea, and time to use the privy. After that, I'll be as ready as I can ever be." She had a case of the shakes. Somehow she had the feeling they weren't going to go away—she would just have to work around them.
Lark walked them back to the kitchen. As she cut a slice from the cake, she looked at Pasco. "Go through that door and find the musicians—they're in the front parlor. Tell them we're almost ready. And once your part is done, go home with them. No one will think anything of servants leaving the house."
"Leaving?" cried Pasco. "But I want to see what happens!"
"For one thing," Lark pointed out, “we don't know they'll even come now. We hope the net will bring them quickly, but if they aren't in this part of the city when Durshan Rokat leaves the Citadel, it may take them a day or two to hear about him…"
"Please, Lady Sandry,” whined, the boy.
Lark took, him by the shoulders, turned him around, and thrust him through the door that led to the front hall, "Musicians. Go," she said firmly.
Pasco looked back, hesitated, then obeyed.
As Lark, poured a fresh cup of tea and. added honey, she asked gravely, "Was it' very bad, dear? Spinning the unmagic. Tying the net."
Sandry shivered. "It likes real magic more than any thing," she whispered. "It isn't happy if it can't cat what you have, and it never stops trying to get in."
Lark smoothed her hair with a gentle hand. "I would have given anything to spare you that."
Saedry hugged her teacher. "I know."
She finished her cake and her tea, went to the privy, then washed her hands and face in a bucket of water. When she next entered the empty dining room, the musicians stood in the door that led to the front of the house. Pasco waited in a corner. Other council mages came to watch: Crane, Winding Circle's Dedicate Superior, Moonstream, the Duke's healer, Comfrey, and Sky- fire, who was the head of the Fire temple, and a handful of others. Sandry knew the plan was that these mages would be outside the house, concealed within spells, standing guard. When Pasco finished the net dance, they would sprinkle the lines of ash across the ways into the house. There was a chance the Dihanurs might leave footprints. If they did, the watchers could give Sandry some warning of the killers approach.
The Guildhall clock struck two. Up at Duke's Citadel the play they were staging for the Dihanurs was just starting. It was Skyfire, a one-time general, who had devised this part of the plan with the help of the duke and Erdogun. They had no way to know where the assassins were they might be in the duke's residence, trying to get at the Inner keep once more, in the outer bailey of the Citadel, or somewhere between the Citadel and the waterfront. With that in mind, everyone had to act as if their quarry could see them at any moment, from the time Durshan Rokat walked out of the inner keep and demanded to go home. The handful of people who were to create the charade and keep it going had orders to make as much noise and fuss as possible. That way, even if the killers were not watching they would hear Citadel Guard or city gossip about the crazy old man who turned down, the duke's hospitality.
Durshan Rokat would be walking out of the inner keep now. It was time for Sandry and Pasco to add the power of their net to the killers' discovery that one Rokat was available to be murdered.
"Have we soldiers to arrest the Dihanurs?" Sandry asked Lark as she opened the ebony box where the net was kept.
Sandry looked down into the box. Her shadowy creation was invisible against the black wood, but she could feel it there. Tying and knotting the net, she had become attuned to unmagic. It was stronger now, the knots in creasing its power as it fed back on itself.
Her skin ringing with fear, she gathered her net in her arms. She had left bits of her own power like yarn ties at the corners so she could find them. Taking the first corner, she placed it on the north point on the pattern, over a round socket in the floor. Lark knelt and fitted an ebony peg into the socket to anchor that corner of the net. Sandry then went to the eastern point of the tile pattern and set another corner of the net there; Crane anchored it with an elderwood peg. South came next; Dedicate Skyfire anchored the unmagic with an oak peg. Last was the west corner; Sandry nodded her thanks to Healer Comfrey, who placed a hawthorn peg to hold the net.
Now Sandry moved back from her creation, trying to ignore the dark film that lay over her clothes. Everything she had worn or used for this working would be burned when this was over. In her vision the dark cords of the unmagic net were stark against the red and white tiles of the floor pattern. Best of all, they matched it perfectly.
“Pasco," she whispered.
As he walked in, Dedicate Skyfire stopped him and pressed a leather pouch into his hand.
"Once you complete the center square," Lark said, pointing, "drop that in the middle, understand?"
Pasco opened the pouch. Moonstream said, "Don't," and Skyfire barked, "Careful with that, boy," as he peeked inside.
Pasco glanced at them, then lowered his nose close to the mouth of the pouch and gave the tiniest of sniffs. When he looked up, he surveyed everyone with eyes that were huge with reproach. "This is dragonsalt."
"That it is," replied Skyfire crisply.
"It's illegal," the boy persisted. "Having it gets you ten years in the granite quarries up north."
Skyfire uttered a bark of laughter. "Nonsense, young Acalon—no one survives ten years in the quarries."
Pasco stared at the tall dedicate, his mouth stubborn.
Sandry put her hands on her hips. "We know it's bad, Pasco," she said quietly "It's how their mage has done so much damage without his unmagie eating him alive. It's bait, all right? Otherwise he'll see the net and never step onto it. We'll have the other two and not him."
Pasco nodded and closed the pouch, tucking it into his pocket. He came to stand at the north corner of the net. As the musicians played the opening of the dance tune, Sandry heard him, whisper, "Come to me, rats!"
When Pasco heard his cue, he jumped lightly into the center of the first net square. He danced beautifully, his toes flicking one way and another, pointing to each corner. Then, he was on to the next square, and the next.
Sandry watched, and sweated, terrified he would miss a step and brush the nothingness. Soon she realized there could as well have been, yards of space between his feet and those invisible cords for all the closer he came to them. Yazinin had given him movements for his arms and torso that seemed to add to his magic. With each change of position the silver fire left in his wake grew brighter.
Sandry's other fear, that leaving the dragonsalt pouch in the center square might throw the boy off, was soon banished. She didn't even see him reach for it, but as he jumped to the next square, the pouch slid from his hand. It struck the midpoint of the center square with a soft thump.
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
* * *
Pasco was following the musicians out when he rebelled. This wasn't right, He wanted to see his net work. They were treating him like a child, when they might have no chance to get these rats without him. He was going to stay, that was all there was to it.
But how? In a moment those mages would come out of the net room. They would disappear within spells to make them look like part of the house or the garden, or the street outside, He'd heard them talk about that. If they saw him, they would make him go.
Suddenly he remembered something from the day before. Yazmнn had been teaching allurement dances. One had a movement that caught his imagination the dancer held an arm straight out with the hand at right angles to the arm. The dancer then pulled, the other hand over her face with the fore and middle fingers parted in a sideways arrow. While one hand traveled across the eyes, the dancer looked sidelong at the outstretched hand. Yazmнn had called it a "flirt." Pasco thought it also looked like something that—with a bit of magic behind it—might achieve the opposite result. It could make people look
Standing in the hall, he closed his eyes and took his seven-count breaths, holding them and letting them go as he'd been taught. The feeling he was beginning to know was his magic, a kind of fizzy tingle, filled him al most instantly. He gracefully lifted his left arm, holding it out palm up and outward, as he let his power roll down it. Now he raised his right hand, forming the arrow with forefinger and middle finger. He drew it across his eyes as he looked sidelong at his left hand. While he did these things, he cast some of that fizzy sense out through his left arm, and poured more through his right hand, making it flow away from him.