The Vondish Ambassador

He was fairly sure he had been in Shiphaven for hours. Lar might already be dead.

This might be partly his fault, he thought as he trotted up the slope toward High Street. If he hadn't talked to A

Or they might have been even quicker – who knew? They had been following Lar in any case. He hadn't told them anything about pla

Still, he felt somehow responsible. He turned the corner onto High Street and broke into a run again.

As he crossed Merchant Street into the New City he began worrying about what he would do if he encountered the assassins. He was big and strong, but he had no training in how to fight, no weapon except his belt-knife. He glanced at the headquarters of the Council of Warlocks as he passed, and wished he had a warlock to help him – or any kind of magician, really.

And he hoped that the assassins Neyam had hired were just thugs, and not magicians. There were magical assassins, he knew that; some demonologists were said to specialize in assassination. Warlocks could kill without a trace, and it was rumored that some of them would do that for a price. Wizards were picky about who they killed, but they, too, had lethal magic at their command.

Witches never killed anyone, so far as he knew, and he had never heard of ritual dance causing anything much worse than a headache. To the best of his knowledge the gods no longer answered prayers to kill people under any circumstances, so priests and other theurgists couldn't be assassins. Herbalists had a wide variety of poisons on hand, everyone knew that, but he couldn't see how anyone could use those against Lar. Scientists, well, who knew what scientists could do?

And sorcerers – during the Great War, Northern sorcerers had been the subject of nightmares and terrified whispers. No one knew how many of the horrible old weapons modern sorcerers might still have hidden away.

Emmis tried to remember all the other kinds of magic he had ever heard of. Most of them seemed harmless – prestidigitation and prophecy and the rest had no obvious lethal applications – but who knew what a clever magician might do? He estimated that at least half the schools of magic could definitely be used for assassination, and except for theurgy he couldn't be sure any of them were entirely safe.

A

Morkai, that was it.

He made the turn onto Arena Street, and almost collided with a woman eating a sausage. "Sorry," he said, a little breathlessly, as he pushed past her.

If the Lumethans had hired magicians to kill Lar, Emmis didn't think there was anything he could do. It took magic to fight magic. That was why the Small Kingdoms had ba

The sun was almost down, the shadows stretching the full width of the avenue, the sky starting to darken when he turned onto Through Street and slowed to a stop, panting.

The yellow house was still there, unchanged. The door was closed. The street was largely deserted; a cat sat in a neighbor's window, a woman several doors down was puttering with her doorway shrine, and a man sat slumped against a stoop, apparently asleep.

There were no obvious assassins to be seen, no ominous sword-wielding figures in black cloaks. There was no brown-robed Lumethan, either. But there were dozens of places where they might be concealed, in doorways and alleys or behind corners – not all the houses were built directly against one another, or with their facades aligned.

Cautiously, Emmis crossed the street to the door of the rented house. He fished the key from the purse on his belt, thanking whatever gods or fates might be responsible that he hadn't left that on the floor of the Crooked Candle with all his other belongings.

The door was locked, just as it should be, and the key turned in the lock, just as it should. He opened the door slowly and carefully, and looked inside before stepping through, making sure there was no assassin lurking there.

Then in a sudden moment of inspiration he turned, and found the man from the stoop not asleep at all, but on his feet, belt-knife drawn, and hurrying across the street toward him.

Emmis snatched his own knife from his belt and stepped backward into the house. He slammed the door in the other man's face, but before he could latch it he heard footsteps.

He whirled, the knife in his right hand raised, just in time to duck a swinging blow from a walking stick. The stick smacked into the wall above Emmis's head, and he heard plaster crack.

There was a stranger in the house, a tall, thin man in a dark blue tunic and black wool breeches, his black beard trimmed to a point, his raised hands wielding a black and silver cane like a club. As Emmis took this in, a wooden cap fell from the end of the stick, revealing a sharp steel blade at least six inches long – the weapon was now as much a sword as a club.

Emmis dived at him, keeping his head down, below that sword-stick, and butted the intruder hard, sending them both tumbling backward onto the bare wood floor. They landed with Emmis on top, and he reached out his left hand, fingers spread, and grabbed his opponent's face, shoving it back so that the stranger's head hit the floor hard.

Then he scrambled over his dazed opponent, got back to his feet, and ran toward the back of the house.

He was not here to fight; he didn't know how to fight, not really. He had been in a few brawls in bars or on the docks, but he was no fighter, not really. The one thing he knew which had stood him in good stead here so far, was to do the unexpected – if someone came at you, go at him as well, don't retreat. Don't hesitate – better to do the wrong thing quickly than the right thing too late.

And the other rule he used in fighting was that when you get the chance, put anything you can between yourself and your foe – doors, furniture, or just distance. Don't try to beat anyone, just try to get away.

With that in mind, he didn't look for a weapon, or turn to face the man with the stick; he just ran to the back door and out into the courtyard.

A few of the neighbors were there, and glanced at him as he ran out of the house, stumbling across the little back porch and down the single step onto the hard-packed earth. A half-formed thought of shouting for them to call for the guards crossed Emmis's mind, but he let it go unheeded as he sprinted toward one of the narrow passages leading out of the courtyard to the streets.

Lar was not dead yet, he was sure. The assassins wouldn't have been lingering in and around the house if they had already murdered their target. He wouldn't have been hiding from them. That meant he hadn't yet returned home. The assassins had been lying in wait, expecting him any moment, expecting their unprepared victim to walk in, completely unaware of any danger.

At least, Emmis hoped that was what it meant.

And they had gotten Emmis instead, a younger, stronger, more prepared opponent, and he had survived their initial attack.

But that meant that the would-be killers would be more prepared now, as well. It was more important than ever that Emmis find Lar first, and warn him.