Magic Steps

The family's protectors had moved them to the nursery, the biggest room on the floor below the garret. A nursemaid was playing with the baby in its crib while the young mother spun and told a story to the little girl. Fariji Rokat paced, his dark, face tight.

Alzena drew her knife and killed the baby first, one cut, while the maid stared. When she screamed, the mother leaped up so quickly that she knocked over the little girl and the spi

Fariji looked right at them. What did he see? Her knife was spelled with unmagic, like the, sword she now drew from, the sheath on, her back, Rokat wouldn't see the blade, only his little girl as she fell over, bleeding.

He gasped and lunged for the child, just as his wife had gone for the baby. Alzena stepped into his rush and cut at his neck, smiling. He had seen his children die. That was good.

She stuffed his head into her carry-pouch and turned to regard the woman and the maid. They stared at Fariji Rokat's headless body, screaming. Alzena hesitated. Was the woman pregnant again? She was young; they had seemed much in love.

No use taking chances, Alzena thought, and ran the woman through. Going to the side window, she climbed out. Below her was a first-story addition to the house. She dropped onto it with a clatter of tiles.

She felt an arrow's bite. It took her in the calf, punching through the bulge of muscle to the other side. Alzena cursed and rolled off the tile roof. She landed easily on the pile of hay that lay on the ground, waiting for the servants to cover the garden for the winter. More arrows flew around her—the quick-witted archer was shooting fast, trying to hit what he couldn't see. She waited until a man ran out the back door, then slipped into the Rokat house. The real servants had been sent away—only warriors in street clothes were here now, and most of them were ru

In the room near the front door Alzena stopped to deal with her injury. First she broke off the arrowhead, then yanked the shaft from her leg. Both went into her carry-pouch with the head; she dared not leave them for any harrier-mages to use. There was some blood, not a lot, and most was going into her boot. If she tried to bandage it here, people would see the bandage apparently floating in midair outside the nothingness spells.

She limped out of the house and into the street. The roughs were still fighting. From the sounds that came from Cod Alley, the fire was out of control. She hobbled down Tapestry Lane, shaking her head.

There ought to be fun in this victory over the hated Rokats. Even the prospect of her family's pleasure in what she did seemed unimportant now. Before corning to the house she had worried about killing the children, but when her work got to that, she had been cold. What was the point to any of this, if she felt nothing?

After lunch, Sandry remembered that she needed some copper beads for a trim on one of her uncle's tunics. Like any noble she could have asked the merchant, whose shop lay on Arrow Road in the eastern part of the city, to send a clerk to her with a selection, but it was too nice a day to stay indoors. The bead merchant, a woman she and Lark dealt with often, was delighted to see her, and had a dozen new types of bead to show her. With a number of packages tucked into her saddlebags, Sandry and her guards turned back toward Duke's Citadel. They decided to crosstown on Yanjing Street rather than tangle in the afternoon crowds on streets like Harbor, Gold, and Spicer. They were a block west of Market Square when Kwaben pointed out a billow of smoke ahead, marking a fire. As they rode closer—the blaze was on one of the little streets that emptied onto Yanjing—they began to hear talk a bunch of drunks brawling had started it, some people argued. Others said that Provost’s Guards were protecting a merchant from assassins, and the killers had started the fire.

Hearing that, Sandry and her guards followed the gossip past the alley where the fire was and onto Tapes try Lane. The Provosts Guards had set wooden barri cades there. Inside them a group of tavern roughs sat, faces sullen, roped together as prisoners under three Guards eyes. Another Guard questioned a young woman in a nursemaid's cap and apron who sat on the steps to a house. She rocked back and forth, weeping, scarlet hands pressed to her face.

The Provosts Guards would have liked to keep Sandry outside the barriers on both ends of the street, but they couldn't refuse a noble who was also a mage. Grudgingly they let her through. Passing the barricade, Sandry glimpsed dark smears on the steps and walkway before the house where the guard questioned the nursemaid. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

She dismounted and took her mage's kit out of a saddlebag. Then she backed Russet to the other side of the barrier, blocking Kwaben and Oamawhen they would have followed. "Stay there," Sandry told them. "There's something I need to see."

"My lady,” protested Oama.

Sandry shook her head. “I’ll be within view unless I go inside—and, there's plenty of provost's folk about, aren't there? Sandry looked at the female Guard holding the barricade, who nodded. "So inside I'll be safe, too. The fewer people who walk around here, the better. Close up," she ordered the Guard.

The woman swung the barricade into place. "I don't know that you should monkey about here, my lady," she said, eyeing Sandry's kit with mistrust.

"Master Wulfric Snaptrap will vouch for me," Sandry replied, though she wasn't sure of that at all. What she was sure of was that those smears of darkness, if they were the same as those on Guryil and Lebua the night before, had to be protected until Snaptrap could look at them himself. Does this stuff rub off on people? she wondered, approaching the Rokat house slowly, inspecting the ground before her and on either side. Would it stick to anyone as it had to Lebua and Gury? She couldn't take a chance on whether it might or might not.

She reached the house without seeing any smears between it and Yanjing Street. "So far, so good," she murmured.

The Guard who spoke to the crying nursemaid turned away from the woman in disgust. He looked at Sandry. "Who let you in?" he growled.

“I’m Sandrilene faToren, the duke's great-niece," she said, examining the steps for dark smears. A number of them stretched from the door along one side of the steps to disappear under the sobbing woman. Sandry glanced at her and swallowed hard. The woman's hands, which from a distance looked as red as paint or dye could make them, were covered in blood. Her cap, apron, skirt, and blouse were splotched and her shoes nearly black with it.

Sandry took a breath to clear her head of the giddiness of shock, thinking, I have got to get smelling salts. To the unhappy Guardsman she said, "Can she move? There are signs of magic here, and she's sitting right on them.”

"Of course there's magic," said the Guard bitterly. "Murdering beasts walk by twenty-four of us to hack up four people, two of them kids—you bet there's magic in it," He bent down and gripped the woman by the elbows, lifting her, "Up, wench—you're sitting on magic."

Sandry stared at him. "Two kids?" she asked, horrified.

"Two little ones. This girl was their nurse," explained the Guard. "Says they all died in front of her, and she didn't see what done it."

Sandry met his eyes. "She probably didn't," she whispered.

"I know," replied the man, grim-faced. "Story's too stupid to be true elsewise."

"You'll have to take my word for this," Sandry told him, "but I can see traces of the magic they used to hide themselves. It comes straight down these steps from the house, and goes that way," She pointed down the street. "I'm going to cover it, to protect it, till your harrier-mages can see it."