Magic Steps

Fast as a snake, she whirled and swung overhand at Reha. The girl blocked her strike with her baton, almost as quick as Zahra herself. With her attention on that descending baton, Reha did not see Zahra reach out with a booted leg and hook the girl's feet from under her. Down Reha went, still remembering to keep her own baton between her and any attack from overhead.

"Well enough," Zahra said with approval. "But look at the weapon just long enough to tell its direction. Your main attention should have been on my chest. My body's movement there would have warned you of my kick."

"Fat chance," muttered Reha.

Zahra gri

Her baton flashed up and to the side. This time Pasco was ready—he'd seen the muscles in Zahra's legs, out lined by her breeches, shift. He blocked her with his baton and grabbed her wrist with his free hand. Twisting it, he dragged her down and across his body. Once she was facedown on the ground, he shoved the arm he had captured up behind her back. Half-kneeling, he pressed one knee into his mother's spine.

"I could've fought the takedown, boy," she said, her voice muffled by the bricks of the courtyard.

Pasco released her. "I know, Mama." When she struggled to rise, he offered her a hand. She took it and in a heartbeat he went flying.

Tucking himself into a ball, he unfolded and struck feet first, skidding to a halt before he smacked into the columned gallery that ran around the edge of the court yard. Rising on tiptoe, he gave her his fools bow, the one that was much too deep. Straightening, he rose to the very top of his toes, stumbled forward as if he were out of control, then flipped in the air and came back to his feet, arms spread.

Zahra glared at him. "Was that meant to charm your way out of a drubbing?" she wanted to know.

Pasco bowed his head. "I live to be drubbed," he said meekly.

She could only be cross with him for so long. "Get your baton. All of you, line up. We'll do the patterned strike-and-block combinations until time for midday."

Pasco shook his black hair out of his eyes and took the baton Reha held out to him. "Say, Mama, did you ever hear of magic dancing? Well, mages that dance, and the dancing is a spell."

"Ridiculous," Zahra said flatly. "Take your place in line, now"

Pasco did as ordered. As his mother called off the movements of the combinations, he concentrated on that, at least until the midday bell rang.

As the young people washed up before eating, Pasco's cousin Haidaycie elbowed him. "When are you going to grow up?" she demanded. "Dancing magic, Pasco, of all things! What's next? Dancing a fortune into our pockets?"

"Come on, Haiday. He'll say anything to get the family to let him play tippy-feet with half-naked dancing girls," jeered one of his older male cousins, Vani. "It beats working for his supper."

"The sooner you face facts, the happier you'll be," Reha informed Pasco with all the wisdom of her sixteen years. "You're an Acalon and a Qais. Harrying is your life."

"There's plenty of Acalons and Qaises who aren't harriers!" argued Pasco.

They all looked at him as if to say, Don't waste our time.

"If you ever want a say in the family, you'll go for harrier," Haiday informed him as she dried her hands.

"She's right," said Reha. "Besides, you're Macarin's and Zahra's only son. You have to harry." She followed Haiday inside.

"Tippy-feet," jeered Vani. He flicked his drying-cloth at Pasco hard, lashing the younger boy's cheek.

Pasco yelped. Holding the weal left by the cloth, he glared at Vani as the older boy ambled into the house. Someday, Pasco told himself, he would make Vani pay for all his towel-flicking.

The duke emerged from his parlor, looking better, and joined Sandry and Baron Erdogun for lunch. After that, they all applied themselves to the affairs of Duke's Citadel and the realm. In the weeks after the duke's heart attack, when he had rested all afternoon, Erdogun and Sandry fell into the habit of meeting in a nearby study to deal with the work that built up. In the quiet afternoon hours, Sandry took the household accounts over from Erdogun, with his blessing. It gave her something useful to do and gave him less work

Once the duke grew well enough for Healer Comfrey to agree that a little business would not tax him, he joined Sandry and Erdogun for an hour, then two, then three. When it was judged that he was strong enough to leave the second floor and go downstairs, they set up a workroom there. The baron labored over heaps of documents while the duke read reports and Sandry attended to the ru

The afternoon that followed Jamar Rokat's murder sped by. All too soon it was time for Sandry to meet Pasco at the fishing village. Oama and Kwaben awaited her with her mare, Russet, when she emerged from the residence. Riding through the city in mid-afternoon was a slower matter than at dawn. There were horses and wagons to be got around, stray animals, and all kinds of people. The talk on every corner seemed to be about the merchant's very messy death.

She had meant to be early for the fishers' return, but to her surprise most of the boats were home and in the process of unloading their contents. Each crew had brought in as much fish as their boats might carry. The entire village had turned out to help load baskets of fish into carts that would take them to the city for sale.

Pasco Acalon stood on the beach, his jaw hanging open.

Sandry drew rein beside him. "Now do you believe you have magic?" she asked.

He started with surprise—he had not heard her ride up—and bowed hastily. "Lady, my mother has never heard of dancing mages. She was once a captain of the Provost's Guard. If she never heard of a thing, then how can it exist? This, this was just luck, pure and simple. It had to turn sometime. Whatever drove the fish off—,"

A burly man in fisherman's clothes strode toward them, a grin on his dark face. He grabbed Pasco's hands and folded them around a leather pouch. "Well, lad, you did the trick." He looked at the boats, shaking his head. "This day's work puts food on our plates through Death's Night, once it's smoked. And Gran says the charm holds till the next full moon—enough to make up what we've lost this year." He thumped Pasco on the shoulder, bowed quickly to Sandry, then strode back toward the workers.

The boy poured the contents of the bag into his palm and gasped. "Five silver crescents!" he cried. "Master Netmender, you said only one crescent!"

"It's bad luck to underpay a mage," the fisherman called back over his shoulder. "Just don't get greedy next year! Hi, Osa, be careful with that basket!"

"Mage?" whispered Pasco. "Next year?"

"Well?" Sandry asked the boy, nudging him with a booted foot as he continued to stare at the boats. "I know magic when I see it. So do these people. You need proper training, before your power starts breaking out in ways you don't want it to. And it will. Power's fu

"Power or none, it don't matter, lady," Pasco said gloomily. "You don't know my family, begging your pardon. If I was a harrier-mage, that would please them no end—but even if there is such a thing as dancing magic, it's still dancing, get it? The moon'll drop plumb out of the sky afore my family lets me dance for my supper."