Magic Steps tco-1 Read online

  The corporal shook his head. "Captain Qais would boot me for it, and he'd be right."

  Now Kwaben dismounted to support his partner. He was over six feet tall, black as sable, and honed like an axe. His shaved head, combined with sharp cheekbones, lean cheeks, and wide-set eyes, made him look as sleek and deadly as a panther. He was as dangerous as he ap peared.

  Sandry stayed on her mare. She would impress no one if she dismounted—the stubborn corporal was taller than she by a head. Instead she sorted through her magic until she found a particular cord. Shaped from her own power, it connected her to Duke Vedris.

  "Uncle, " she said clearly, feeling her voice roll down that magical tie, "I want to be let in, please."

  Everyone stared at her, even Kwaben and Oama. Onlookers in the crowd drew the gods-circle on their chests. The Provost's Guards were made of sterner stuff. Their hands stayed by their weapons.

  Overhead, on the next story of the building, glass windows swung outward on hinges. The duke and a man with the same light brown skin, lean cheeks, and quirky eyebrows as Pasco leaned out.

  "My dear, this is not the kind of thing a young girl should see," called Vedris. He could hear Sandry when she used the power she had bound to him, but without magic of his own he could not reply the same way.

  Sandry looked up at him. He seemed tired, though she doubted anyone who did not know him well would guess that. He was also shaken, though that was some thing she felt rather than saw. "I'm no stranger to bad things, uncle. I really must insist."

  Kwaben and Oama traded looks. They had heard her say that only once, on the day of the duke's heart attack, when his servants had tried to keep Sandry out of his room. After she had lost precious minutes in argument with them, she had finally insisted, in just that tone of voice. When they refused, every thread in the hall outside the duke's rooms—from tapestries, carpets, and even the servants' clothes—unraveled and came to life, cocooning them all. Sandry had gone to her uncle and had spent the rest of that day with the healers, keeping him alive with her magic until they could strengthen his heart. Kwaben and Oama had never forgotten it.

  Now, leaning out of the second floor window, the duke grimaced. He knew that Sandry had seen things girls her age were supposed to be protected from: the bodies of hundreds, including her parents, rotting from plague; people dying in battle of human and magical causes; the survivors of fire, flood, and other disasters.

  "Admit her," the duke said to his uniformed companion. The man began to argue as they closed the windows.

  Sandry waited and tried not to drum her fingers on her saddle horn.

  After a couple of minutes, the man who had tried to argue with the duke yanked open the door and spoke quietly to the guards. They looked at him, startled, then parted. The man, who wore a captain's pair of concentric yellow circles on his sleeve, waved Sandry in sharply.

  She dismounted and passed her mare's reins to Kwaben. "Stay with the horses," she told her guards. "I think the rest of Uncle's escort are on that side street." They nodded.

  The provost's captain stood aside as she walked into the building, then closed the door and lowered the thick oak bar that locked it. To her eyes door and bar gleamed with the pale traces of magic. So did the dimly lit hall that went to the rear of the building on this floor, and the narrow stair that reached the upper stories.

  "Please reconsider, my lady," the man told her gruffly. This is not an occasion for noble sightseers."

  Sandry met his eyes. "You are Captain Qais?" she inquired.

  He bowed stiffly.

  "I will not reconsider," she said flatly. "My great-uncle has been ill. He tends to forget it, so I remember for him—and, it seems, for you. Where is he?"

  "Upstairs, my lady."

  Turning her back on him, Sandry climbed. The gleam of spell-signs lit her way; none of the stair lamps were burning. Since the captain didn't have her power to see magic, he missed the next step—they were uneven, to trick robbers into banging their toes just as he did. He cursed; when she looked back at him, he waved her on.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, two hallways lay before her. One led to the rear of the building; the other cut across it. In the hall to her right, she saw only a flagstone floor, lamps in wall sconces, and closed doors. In the section to her left, the hall sported complexly patterned silk carpets—spelled, like everything else she had seen, with magic to protect and confuse anyone who was not allowed there. The lamps on this side were set in polished brass fixtures and circled with precious glass. Two mahogany benches were placed here. On them sat the three surly bodyguards who had attended Jamar Rokat earlier that morning, all in manacles. They looked confused, bewildered, and angry. Three Provost's Guards stood over them, baton weapons in hand.

  "Why won't you believe us?" demanded the youngest of the three when he saw the captain. "We heard nothing, nor saw it neither. He went in, the door was locked—we never so much as heard a scream!"

  "And the evidence shows you as liars," replied Captain Qais. "You'll give up the facts when our truthsayers have a go at you." To Sandry he said, "Why don't you wait for his grace here?"

  She walked ahead of him into the open room past the captives. He mustn't know that she was nervous; she did her best to hide it. She was no hardened—what had Pasco called them—Harrier, that was it. She was not one of those, but if her great-uncle was in this mess, that was where she had to be as well.

  Inside was a plain office belonging to Jamar Rokat's secretary or assistant, it would seem. Sandry walked through the open door at the back of the room into the next office and halted. Her uncle sat on the window seat, keeping out of the way of the Provost's Guards who were going over the room inch by inch. They each wore the silver braid trim on their sleeves that marked then as investigators, not street Guards.

  There was blood everywhere. The hacked body of the man who had greeted them so smoothly that morning lay on the floor. His fine clothes were slashed and sodden rags. His jewels lay in a bloody heap atop his desk, as if whoever killed him had wanted to say they were too disgusting to steal. Worst of all, the man’s head had been placed in a sling made of his turban and hung from an overhead lamp.

  A tiny woman in brown and blue stood by the dead mans feet, shaking her head. For all her small size, she had the lightly seamed face of someone in her fifties. "I can only guess they were waiting for him when he come in, cap'n, your grace," she said absentmindedly, staring at bloody slippers. "His guard spells never warned him."

  "You can see from the furniture he never put up a fight," added another investigator as he went over a bookcase. "Even when his guards let them in. That don't make sense, 'less it was family done it."

  "But the spells weren't released to let someone else in," Sandry blurted. Everyone looked at her. Sandry folded her hands. "Can any of you see or feel magic?" They all shook their heads. "Most spells like this, if you can see them, they turn colors, depending on whether someone broke through, or tried to erase them, or just released their effects for a while. Using a password just releases—it halts the protections, it doesn't end the spell. And this" — she waved a hand to take in the spells all around them—, "it hasn't been touched. I can tell that just by looking at it. Even though Rokat wasn't a mage, he'll have owned a key to these spells. He would have been able to look at that and know their status. The keys are usually made like jewelry-"

  "Here." A sergeant whose almond-shaped eyes and gold skin showed his ancestors were from the Far East went to the desk. He used a wooden rod drawn from a quiverlike container hung on his belt to separate a piece of jewelry from the sticky heap of gems and precious metal. It was a long oval pendant on a chain. "Don't touch it, my lady," he cautioned. "Not till our mages have a go at it. We knew he had spells on the place, of course, though we can't see them. His kind always does."

  She nodded and leaned closer. The pendant was inlaid with a number of minute squares, each made of black, pale, or fire opal. A thin slice of clear crystal was
laid over them. A hair-fine thread of magic stretched away from each square. "He would have paid a fortune for this," Sandry murmured. "Yes, it's his key. Each square must be tied to a different set of spells, so he'd know exactly where somebody tried to break in. But look at it." She glanced at the Guards and their captain, all of whom stared at her without understanding. There was a tiny, ironic smile on the duke's lips. He gave her a slight nod. "Like I said, the spells were never touched. This whole pendant is dark." Sandry told them. "Nothing's glowing, and it's made to be read by someone with no magic whatever. No one broke through these spells."

  "The killers' spells were better, that's all," said Captain Qais bluntly. "Someone always has better magic. Or the guards, or one of the family, must have given the right passwords to whoever they let in."

  "But we had no trouble comin' in without passwords," the tiny woman pointed out.

  "You had no trouble because Jamar Rokat is dead," Sandry replied. "The main power of the spells would be keyed to him."

  The duke rubbed his chin. "Surely after he went to the expense to have these spells laid on, he'd only give passwords to a few. He was a careful man with many enemies. He'd keep the password to this room for his own use."

  "Coulda come in over the roof," said the bald, chunky man who was the third investigator.

  "He'd've spelled the roof, too," the sergeant told them tersely. "He never left no loopholes, not him."

  Sandry looked at the ceiling, though she was really inspecting the magical fabric above it. There were store rooms on the floors upstairs, all with their own protections. The roof was a solid mass of untouched magic. She shook her head. "You're right. The roof is absolutely covered with spells, and none show signs of tampering."

  Captain Qais crossed his arms. "Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but you are versed in weaving and needlework. We have mages who know just this kind of thing, magic used by criminals and magic used to keep criminals out. They will be able to explain. And I still think those guards will talk plenty once they're sweated."

  Sandry stared at the man, honestly shocked. What did he think magic was, if not a kind of thread? He spoke as though she'd spent the last four years minding a spinning wheel or a tapestry frame, not cudgeling her brain with lessons in arts, sciences, and the theories of how and why mages could get magic to work.

  "Captain," the duke said coolly, "if your mages are coming, we must not remain underfoot." He got up. "You will keep me apprised of all developments?"

  The captain was studying Jamar's head. He glanced at the duke, startled at the interruption, and hurriedly bowed. "Of course, your grace."

  Sandry hesitated. She would like to see Provosts Mages—whom Pasco had called "harrier-mages." They would be academic mages, taught at places like the university in Lightsbridge, their ways different from those of craft-mages like Sandry and her friends. While she had been taught academic methods and had learned about different specialties in academic magic, she had never seen a Provost's Mage at work.

  The duke offered Sandry his arm. She had a choice, she realized—she could stay, or she could get her uncle back to Duke's Citadel. Her uncle came first, so she took the offered arm, Perhaps she could get him to introduce her to some Provosts Mages before she went home to Winding Circle.

  Sandry and the duke made their way out of the building in silence. Two of the guards stationed before the door escorted them to their horses and their own soldiers. Sandry kept a wary eye on the press of human beings that folded away from them, but there were no weapons in the fingers that brushed the duke's tunic or arm and there was only respect in the whispers of "Gods bless your grace."

  Their approach was so quiet that they surprised one of the Duke's Guard telling some Provost's Guards, " — took an hour to cut them out of her cocoons. They growed into the very walls and floor—,"

  Someone cleared her throat and the guards snapped to attention. Their mounts were brought forward as the Provost's Guards melted back through the side door to Rokat House.

  "Some got nothing better to do than gossip," Kwaben said to no one in particular.

  Sandry peered at her uncle and saw the corner of his mouth quiver with amusement. She almost smiled herself. Perhaps it was bad of me, she thought as she mounted her horse. Still, at least I taught them who they're dealing with. No one will keep me away from Uncle again.

  Once in the saddle, there was a delay while the duke spoke to their guard sergeant. The knowledge of what she'd seen in that building hit Sandry without warning. The copper stink of blood returned to her nose; the sight of a man she'd met with his head cut off lingered in her mind's eye. She gripped her saddle horn with hands that trembled. For once in her life she wished passionately that she carried smelling salts, or even a scented ball as some nobles did, to clear her nose and chase off the shudders.

  A brown hand wrapped around an open water bottle entered her vision. Oama had brought her mount up close to Sandry's. "It's all right," she told the girl quietly. "It's just water with a bit of lemon for cleaning out the mouth."

  Sandry drank and returned the bottle with a shaky smile.

  "Was it bad?" Oama asked softly.

  Sandry nodded.

  "We reap what we sow," murmured the duke. He had finished his conversation with the sergeant. "It sounds cold," he told Oama and Sandry, "but Jamar Rokat sent enough people into the next world before their rightful time that he must have known someone might grant him the same." The duke patted Sandry's arm. "Ready to go?"

  She nodded.

  * * *

  The moment they clattered into the inner courtyard of Duke's Citadel, the seneschal, Baron Erdogun fer Baigh, walked briskly out of the duke's residence and down the steps. He was a whippet-lean man with light brown skin and brown eyes set under a cliff of forehead. Above that he was as bald as an egg; what little black hair remained on the sides of his head was cropped painfully short. He was fussy, precise, and arrogant, but he was devoted to Vedris, which countered his flaws as far as Sandry was concerned.

  "Your grace, I had begun to worry if some accident had befallen you," he said, bowing. He hovered as Vedris dismounted, but like Sandry, he had learned not to help.

  "We would have sent word of an accident, Erdo," replied the duke. "There was a problem, of course. Jamar Rokat was murdered this morning."

  "Good riddance to bad rubbish," the baron said crisply. He fell in half a step behind the duke as Vedris began to climb the residence steps.

  "I need to return to the fishing village this afternoon," Sandry told Oama and Kwaben. "Meet me here at three?"

  They bowed to her from the saddle and took the reins of her mare. Sandry ran to catch up with the duke and Baron Erdogun. The baron was saying, " — and your plans; for the remainder of the morning?"

  The duke sighed. "I believe I will lie down until lunch."

  Two weeks before, when he was allowed to leave his quarters and go downstairs, they had set up a couch for him in one of the parlors opening into the entrance hall. It said a good deal for how tired he was that he simply walked into the ground floor parlor and shut the door.

  Erdogun turned on Sandry, his hands on his hips. "He just happened to stop by a murder?" he asked tardy.

  "There was nothing I could do about that," Sandry informed him. "You know how he is."

  Erdogun sighed and rubbed his bald crown. "The mail's arrived," he said. It wasn't his nature to apologize for being sharp, as Sandry had already found. "I honestly don't know what to tell Lord Frantsen anymore."

  Sandry didn't like the duke's ambitious oldest son. They had met in the past, and since the duke's heart at tack the tone of Frantsen's letters had grown arrogant—as if he had already inherited. "Tell him and that grasping wife of his that Uncle cut them from his will."

  The parlor door opened. "Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind," the duke said quietly. The door closed again.

  "Wonderful," Erdogun muttered and stalked down the hall to the large workroom from which he over
saw affairs at Duke's Citadel.

  Sandry followed him wearily. She missed her old life, before she had found herself watching the health of a man who didn't want to be fussed over and dealing with a hundred retainers, each more prickly than the last.

  She thought dreamily of Discipline cottage at Winding Circle. By this time her teacher Lark would be at her loom, at work on her newest creation. She even envied Pasco, by now he must be sauntering through the marketplace with his friends, without a care in the world.

  * * *

  "Pasco!" The padded end of a baton thumped the side of his head firmly enough to make him stagger. "Scorch it all, boy, pay attention! Knowing the baton might save your silly skull in a dark alley one day!" Exasperated with her youngest child, Zahra Acalon pushed a lock of dark, wavy hair out of her face. She was a tall woman in her late thirties, handsome rather than pretty, with strong black brows, dark eyes, and a wide, decided mouth. Sweat glued her cotton shirt to her back. Impatiently she twitched the cloth away from her chest, flapping it slightly to cool her skin. "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times—,"

  "Daydreams will be my death," he said along with her. "Sorry, Mama."

  "Pasco got thu-umped, Pasco got thu-umped," sang his cousin Rehana wickedly. Five of the residents of House Acalon who were Pasco's age or a little older had gathered in the courtyard. There his mother Zahra taught them the Provost's Guards' traditional weapons—staff, baton, weighted chain—and hand-to-hand combat.

  "I'll thump you, Reha," Pasco muttered out of the side of his mouth.

  A baton tapped him under the chin. "Learn to keep from being thumped yourself, before you deal out knocks of your own," his mother advised. "And the rest of you, you aren't doing so well that you can torment him."