Magic Steps

"Wulfric," the duke said, quietly amused, "if we may continue with your report? You and my niece may talk of magical practice another time."

"My report. Oh, right." Wulfric buttered a scone. "Well, if our mage is a dragonsalt addict, it could be his supplier is in Summersea. My lady provost has the street Guards looking for a 'salt peddler. My guess is, whoever brought the mage brought the drug. The locals won't sell it, not with your grace's penalties."

"Dragonsalt is the most vile drug brewed. I won't have it here," the duke said firmly. "You claim a problem and a half, Wulfric. If dragonsalt is the half, what is the whole?"

"We've a mage who deals in—," Wulfric hesitated. "Unmagic' is the best term. Its—nothingness."

"The absence of all else—of light, magic, existence," Lark said, her eyes troubled. "You're certain, Master Snap trap?"

“I've been at this for thirty years, Dedicate," Wulfric informed her tardy. "I'm not likely to mistake something that marked."

"My apologies," replied Lark. "It's just so rare…"

"You never mentioned it," remarked Sandry, puzzled. "None of you mentioned it to us." She meant herself and her three friends.

"There was no reason to," Lark replied. "None of you showed the least aptitude for it, Mila and Green Man be praised. Unmagic is so rare we never thought you'd encounter it."

"It's a blight as much as magic," Wulfric muttered.

"What can you do with it?" Sandry asked.

"Murder people in plain view, it would seem," remarked the duke, grim-faced. "Walk past human guards and protective spells with no one to suspect you're there."

"People also use it to collapse distances and walk between places, if they can bear it," Lark added. "One man who jumped from Lightsbridge to Nidra through unmagic lay in a fever for a year, raving. Later he wrote that his senses all went dead; he was trapped inside his own mind."

"Can you find who's using it, now that you know what it is? inquired Yazmнn. "If no one minds my asking," she added when they all looked at her.

"It's not that simple," Wulfric replied.

Lark nodded. "It's an absence more than anything. It's hard to track nothing down. I'll bring it before our mage council, but I don't believe there's any way to pick it out, because it isn't really here."

Yazmнn shivered, "It sounds like you'd have to be crazy to use: it."

"That's the one thing we can be sure of," replied Wulfric. "The poor bleater that's using it is going mad. That's the nature of it, don't you see. When you have magic, you have life itself. That's what it's made of but this nothingness, it's the absence of life, isn't it?»

"The absence of hope, feeling," continued Lark, "The more it's used, the greater its hold on the mage. And if he's taking dragonsalt to manage it, that just makes it worse. The gods help anyone who gets close. His madness will spread, infecting those around him."

'"Me, I handle it with gloves and glass instruments," said Wulfric, his eyes bleak. "'I don't want it getting under my skin."

Lark, got to her feet with a, sigh, "You were right, Master Snaptrap, I need to let the mage council know as soon, as possible."

She returned to Winding Circle, but the rest of them stayed, and Baron Erdogun joined, them. Sandry heard then that those Rokats still in Summersea were being placed under increased guard, one that even killers spelled to be nothing would have to be wary of.

They were getting clever, Alzena thought as she watched the house on Tapestry Lane. It was the home of Fariji Rokat, one of the Rokat House clerks. In their inspection the previous night, she and Nurhar had sensed watchers. Two large beggars dozed near the corner of Yanjing Street, in a neighborhood where servants quickly sent riffraff on their way. The maids who opened the doors and shutters on the houses facing Rokats were very muscular. They didn't look like civilians at all, but like guards out of uniform. Archers patroled the rooftops along the street. A trip through Cod Alley behind the house showed gardeners and menservants who played dominoes with hands that were blue-knuckled and callused from fighting.

It was to be expected after the first two murders. Alzena and Nurhar had provided for it. This Rokat's protectors were no more imaginative than the Rokat guards in Bihan and Janaal had been.

They had not thought to put more than one disguised guard in front of the stable on Cod Alley that served the Tapestry Lane houses. They had not thought that Nurhar could pass the guard unseen, to leave a small keg of the very flammable jelly called battlefire in the hayloft.

They had not thought that the bunch of rough types—draymen, coal carriers, and the like—that came roistering down Tapestry Lane now, after a night of spending Nurhur's coin in a nearby wineshop, might have an argument not far from Rokat's house. Hiring the rough folk had been the trickiest part, unless watched they would drink up their fee before they were needed. Nurhar had stayed with them until half an hour ago, doling out coins one at a time, buying food to make sure a few heads would be clear enough to remember their orders,

Alzena stepped onto a window ledge on Rokat's neighbors house. Her target's roof was less than a story below. Scouting the areas around some of the less wealthy Rokats' homes had been a task she and Nurhar had done before they went near Jamar. This location had been the best; they had saved it for when Duke Vedris decided to give protection to the Rokat scum. Before dawn Alzena had. walked across roofs; to get here, unseen and unsuspected, by the 'archers, and had entered her current place: through the rooftop door. The house's occupants were up and around, but Alzena ignored them. Her sanctuary was their unused nursery. No one had entered it yet that morning, which saved her the trouble of killing them. From here it was a, four-foot leap to her target's flat roof.

The roughs were a hundred yards away, lurching closer' as they argued.

Peering through the slit in the spells that hid her, Alzena saw a cloud of smoke rise behind the houses. Nurhar's fire arrows had set the Cod Alley stable roof ablaze.

The roughs were fifty yards off. A hamlike fist swung; Alzena heard furious snarls. Two of them waded into each other. Their friends tried to pull them apart, then joined in. Alzena watched. A few house doors opened: those suspicious looking servants peered out. If they were Provost's Guards in disguise, they would be uneasy. This was a prosperous street. Peacekeepers here moved troublemakers on in a hurry. It would go against their training to stand by during a brawl.

Here came the supposed beggars to watch, maybe to interfere. Now all of the roughs were punching, kicking, wrestling. One of the beggars moved in and went flying. A manservant ran out of a house and dove into the fight, as did the second beggar.

Alzena gri

Hot air patted her; a flat boom sounded from the alley. The keg of battlefire in the burning stable had caught and exploded. Bells pealed and horns called, summoning everyone to fight the blaze. The archers on top of Rokat's house ran to the back of the fiat roof.

Alzena checked her rope to make sure it was properly anchored, then jumped out and across from her window to her target. She landed with a thud that went unheard in the fire alarms' racket. Off with the rope. Walking cat-footed, Alzena reached the door to the house, and eased herself inside. The archers, watching the fire as it tried to jump from the stable to the neighboring buildings, never looked behind, them.

Two guards in the garret below had gone to stare out of the tiny dormer window at the fire. Alzena was past them and down the stairs, into the house proper, with no one the wiser.