Magic Steps

"I heard you was more than that," he said, scrambling to his feet. He offered her a hand. She took it, and let him pull her to her feet. "I never thought you'd fuss with plain old thread."

She led the way out. "Thread's as important to me in magic as dance steps will be to yours," she told him as they emerged into the courtyard gallery.

"— why the gods gifted a flibbertigibbet like my grandson with magic," Edoar Acalon was telling Zahra, who was seated beside him.

The girl Reha made a shushing noise and flapped a hand wildly at Sandry and Pasco. Sandry shook her head. It seemed there were reasons why her new student thought that nothing he did mattered.

"Oh, look, it's tippy-feet, finally? Vani cried. "You'd better get me down from here, Pasco!"

Sandry halted before the three airborne Acalons, eye ing Vani as if he were a bug she might swat. "What did you do to reach this point?" she asked Pasco.

He moved to a spot three yards in front of the captives. "I did a triple step left and a triple step right," he said, half to himself, half to her. "I was humming music. And then I did that beautiful swan leap the Capchen dancers were practicing—,"

"I knew it!" shouted Vani. "You were ogling dancers while I did the work—,"

Sandry had heard enough. She pointed at him and ordered, "Be silent," putting a twist of her power into it. Vani's mouth snapped shut. Everyone could hear sounds in his throat; he fought to move his jaws, but he could not open his mouth. "A swan jump?" Sandry asked Pasco. "A jump goes up. Aren't your cousins up enough already?"

"He should jump down," offered the dangling girl, interested in spite of everything.

"Haiday, shush," said Zahra.

"If you think about the results before you try some thing, you can save yourself problems," Sandry told Pasco. "It sounds like you really need to look before you leap."

"Jump down, jump down," Pasco muttered, turning to view the courtyard.

Sandry could tell when he realized the benches were too short, and followed his eyes as they rested on the gallery wall. Its waist-high top was the same height as his cousins' dangling feet. Pasco ran over and climbed onto it. "I do the steps, and the humming, and I jump down," he said triumphantly.

"And while the ones in the air touch the ground, what happens to those of us who are on the ground already?" Sandry inquired, thinking, Maybe he has some brains after all.

Reha and her sister ran into the gallery. Pasco's mother and grandfather stayed where they were, their eyes calmly on him.

"What do you do when you aren't sure you can control magic?" asked Sandry patiently. He'd never work things out if she fed him the right answers. Of course, that meant she had to think of the right kinds of questions, those that would lead him to the answers. "What if you don't want the power getting away from where you wield it?"

"But—," Pasco began to protest. He went quiet. Sandry waited, hoping this meant that he'd learned he shouldn't argue, but use his head.

It seemed she was right. Pasco closed his eyes and inhaled, counting, and held, counting, and let go, counting. Twice more and his lips began to move as he talked silently to himself.

Then he opened his eyes. "I don't know how to, to put that warding thing on, that you do with the string," he pointed out. "Do I have to learn now?"

Sandry gri

Pasco bowed his head. "Lady Sandry, please will you ward them?" her asked.

She drew her red thread from her belt-purse. "Stay right there. I have to include you in the ward." He obeyed, holding his position atop the gallery wall, as relaxed as if he stood on solid ground.

Here there was no way she could lay her thread flat as she had when they meditated. Instead she walked through the gallery and around the captives, letting her thread drape over the low wall. When her circle was complete, she stood back and called on her magic. The scarlet thread rose until it stopped six feet above the ground, at waist level on the cousins in the air. Sandry let her power surge, enclosing her, Pasco, and the captives in an unseen bubble. Everyone else was outside.

"Now, Pasco," she told him quietly.

He took a deep breath, then began to hum. Nimbly he danced three quick steps left and three more right, then leaped. It seemed as if he floated to the ground, touching as lightly as a feather on the ball of one foot.

Vani and the girls did not land that gently. They dropped.

Pasco faced Sandry. "It worked!" he cried, giddy with excitement. "We did it!"

She plucked at her thread. It broke, still hanging in midair, and she wound it onto her fingers. "That's what happens when you think it through," she told him. "Now, lets go talk about lessons." She, Pasco, and Zahra had reached the door to their part of the house when Gran'ther thumped his cane imperiously on the courtyard tiles. They turned. Vani was clawing at his mouth, trying to get it open.

"He really shouldn't be left that way, my lady," Zahra murmured.

Sandry shrugged, and snapped her fingers. Vani's mouth flew open. He lunged forward, bent on mischief, only to fall flat on his face. Gran'ther had reached out with the head of his walking stick to trip him. "You will come with me," he told Vani, getting to his feet. "I have several things to say to you, and to your parents."

Sandry curtsied to the old man, then walked into the house with Pasco and his mother. "We need to set a time and place for Pasco's next lesson,” she told Zahra. "I think he's seen that he really needs to study."

Alzena raced up the rickety steps of the i

"Be more careful," Nurhar told her once she was in side. "What if you draw attention?"

"Two roughs are trying to cut each other to pieces downstairs," she snapped, at him. "They wouldn't notice aught else if the place was on fire. She turned to the mage." The brother, Qasam Rokat. He's come out of his Silk Place house. We can take him easily when he returns." Her grin, bared long, yellow teeth. "He is sweating."

The mage looked up at her. There was an emptiness in his eyes that gave her the jitters. "Is there salt for me?"

"No," she said cruelly. The dragonsalt they fed him kept him dreamy for most of the time. "It's time for you to wake up and earn your next dose."

"Yes," he replied. "But a taste will clear my mind."

"Work first," she told him, sharp-voiced. "When we have Qasam Rokat's head, then you can have salt."

He had not blinked. That made her uneasy. "I have to see the place."

"We know that," she snapped.

"I don't like it," mumbled Nurhar as he positioned the carry-frame on the rickety bed. "It's too public." He lifted the mage into the frame. There was so little of him—he had no legs and his body was skeleton-thin from his long use of dragonsalt—that Alzena could pick up the mage at need.

"It has to be public," Alzena retorted, fastening the buckles that held the mage to the left side of the frame as Nurhar did the right. "The Rokats have to know that nothing will stop us."

Once the mage was settled, Alzena and Nurhar dressed in beggars' rags. They covered their clothes and their curved swords with long, patched cloaks that could be stowed in a carry-sack once they were clear of the i

Once Nurhar had settled his cloak, Alzena helped him to strap the carry-frame on his back. "All ready for a stroll, Grandpa?" she asked the mage.