The Spell of the Black Dagger

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  But if the alternative was the Wall Street Field—well, she could at least take a look at the room. And maybe she could demand additional payment, or simply take it when the man was asleep. He was bound to sleep heavily after drinking so much.

  In fact, he might be too drunk to really bother her, once they got to his room. She marched back across the muddy street, moving as quickly as she could without slipping.

  She slowed as she neared the alley and saw the big man’s face again. There wasn’t anything she could point to that was obviously wrong with it, beyond drunkenness—he wasn’t deformed or even particularly ugly, he appeared to still have both eyes and all his teeth—but still, there was something about him that made her very uneasy. His nose was very red, and his eyes very dark.

  She brushed at her skirt, as if trying to knock away the mud on the hem, and her hand came away with the black dagger tucked in her sleeve. One advantage of that weapon, she reminded herself, was that it didn’t sparkle in the torchlight.

  Then, with a false smile pasted across her lips, she stepped up to the man in the alleyway. “Where’s this room of yours?” she asked. “I’ll be glad to get in out of this mist.”

  “This way,” he said, beckoning her into the alley. She smelled cheap oushka on his breath—lots of cheap oushka. Warily, she followed him into the shadows.

  “How far is it?” she asked.

  He turned abruptly, and caught her in his arms. “Right here,” he said. He drew her to his chest, breathing great clouds of alcohol and decay in her face, and the grease on his tunic stained her own. His hands slid down, trapping her arms against him.

  “Let me go!” she demanded.

  “Oh, pretty, now, you were ... you were happy enough to come with me when you thought I could put a roof over your head,” he said, in a tone that was probably intended as wheedling. “You’ll have just as good a time here in the alley.”

  “Let go!” she shouted.

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “I live in the Field with the others, and over there we’d have shared...”

  She didn’t wait to hear any more. He was holding her arms down, so that she couldn’t reach up far enough to pull anything from her belt, but she didn’t need to; she yanked the dagger down out of her sleeve and slashed.

  The knife was really amazingly sharp. She wasn’t able to put any real strength into the blow, with her arms almost pinned, but the black blade sliced neatly through the red kilt and into the leg beneath, leaving a dark red line, almost as black in the shadows as the blade that had made it, a line no wider than a hair across the outside of her captor’s thigh.

  Tabaea felt an odd tingling as the knife cut flesh; her head seemed to swim, as if the alcohol on the man’s breath were suddenly affecting her, while at the same time she felt a surge of strength and well-being.

  The excitement, she told herself, it was the excitement and fear getting to her. She had never been in a serious fight, had never cut anyone before.

  Even as she thought that, the drunk reacted instinctively, flinging his arms wide and stumbling backward the instant he felt the first cut; that allowed her arm more freedom, and with that odd feeling of strength flooding through her, with that strange light-headedness giving her irrational courage, she thrust with the dagger, plunging the blade deep into the meat of her attacker’s thigh.

  He gasped, and a sensation of power overwhelmed her as he fell back against the bricks of the Drunken Dragon’s wall.

  Then she realized she was free, and habit took over; she whirled, clutching the knife, and ran out onto Wall Street, her feet sliding in the muck as she turned the corner. She caught herself with one hand and got upright again, then headed for Grandgate Market at full speed.

  Behind her, the man in the red kilt looked down at his leg, at his ruined kilt; the thin line of the initial slash was slowly widening as blood oozed out, but he ignored that.

  The stab wound was spilling blood as a burst barrel spills beer. He took a few steps, out to where torchlight turned his tunic from black to brown, his skin from gray to orange, and his entire left leg redder than his veteran’s kilt. Drunk as he was, the pain cut through the alcohol.

  He tried futilely to wipe away the blood, and only opened the gash wider; blood spilled out in a thickening sheet, and the dim knowledge that he was badly, perhaps fatally hurt finally penetrated.

  He let out a gurgling squawk, and fainted, face down in the mud.

  Tabaea saw none of that as she ran, slipping and stumbling, along Wall Street. She rounded the S-curve where the Field wrapped around the north barracks tower, and from there it was a straight three blocks to the market. The torches of the gate watch glowed before her.

  With safety in sight, she allowed herself to slow. She caught her breath and tried to compose herself—and to her own surprise, succeeded quite well.

  She was, she realized, completely awake and alert—and at the same time, she felt light-headed, as if she were drunk.

  But she had only had the one pint of ale. And she had been exhausted—why else would she have ever considered sleeping in Wall Street Field?

  She wasn’t exhausted now. She felt fine.

  She felt better than fine; she felt strong.

  With wonder in her eyes, she looked down at the bloody knife she held.

  Chapter Nine

  In the opinion of his fellow guardsmen, Deran Wuller’s son was prone to work too hard. He had been known to deliberately volunteer for various duties; he kept his boots polished even when no inspections were anticipated. And when a citizen asked for help—well, any guardsman was required provide aid, but Deran would do it cheerfully, without griping or delaying or trying to pass the job on to someone else.

  If he hadn’t been just as eager and cheerful when losing at three-bone, or when helping one of his mates back to barracks after a brawl or a binge, or when dodging the officer of the watch to illicitly collect a few oranges from the groves north of the city, he would have been insufferable. And he had never been known to betray a trust or let down a comrade.

  Thus he got along well enough, but got more than his share of odd and unpleasant duties—such as escorting Lieutenant Senden’s sister home after she was found drunk and naked in the Wall Street Field.

  She had been safely delivered, and had even showed signs of sobering up, when Deran had departed and headed back toward the north barracks tower. It was well past midnight, perhaps as much as two hours past, when Deran passed the Drunken Dragon and noticed the footprints in the muddy surface of Wall Street.

  He did not ordinarily go about staring at the ground, but the mist had turned back to rain, and he had not bothered with a hat or helmet or cloak, so he was hunched forward a little, and noticed with mild interest the patterns of footsteps. There were several lines that ran along middle of the street; that made sense. There were lines running in and out of the Drunken Dragon—mostly out; that, too, made sense, as the Dragon was still open, despite the hour. There were a few lines in and out of the Wall Street Field, each one alone—the Field never slept, as the saying had it, but most of its inhabitants did, so traffic in and out was light and scattered at this time of night.

  And there were steps leading in and out of the alley beside the Drunken Dragon. The line coming out was widely-spaced and smeared, as if whoever made those marks had been running and slipping.

  That was odd.

  Most guardsmen, and virtually all citizens, would have shrugged and kept walking. Deran, though, was Deran. He stopped and peered into the shadows of the alley.

  Something was lying on the ground in there, and it didn’t look like garbage.

  If it was someone sleeping there, then whoever it was was fair game for slavers, and Deran should either wake that person up and shoo him across the street to safety, or he should go fetch a slaver and collect a finder’s fee, depending on whether he wanted to be benevolent, or to be paid.

  If it was anything else...

  Well, it bore further investi
gation, and the light in the alley was terrible. Deran turned back a few steps to the door of the inn and took one of the signboard torches from its bracket.

  Being in the city guard did have its little privileges, he thought as he carried the hissing brand over to the mouth of the alley. If an ordinary citizen took down a torch from an open place of business it would be theft, and good for a flogging.

  Dim as it was in the damp weather, the torch made the scene in the alley much clearer. Deran stared down at the man lying there in a spreading pool of blood, blood that had mixed with the muck so that it was hard to tell where the edge of the pool actually was.

  There wasn’t as much blood as he had first feared, actually; much of the red was the man’s kilt.

  A red kilt usually meant a soldier or a veteran; if there had been any question about leaving the man where he was—and for Deran, there really wasn’t—that put an end to it. The man in the alley was not anyone Deran recognized, but soldiers looked out for their own.

  Whoever the unconscious person was, he was a big man, and Deran was not large for a guardsman, and it was late and he was tired and the mud was slippery. He sighed, and headed for the door of the Dragon, torch in hand.

  A tavern crowd, Deran knew, generally had a distinctive sound of its own. It chattered, or hummed, or buzzed, or even shouted. The patrons of the Drunken Dragon muttered, a sullen, low-pitched sound that quickly faded when a guardsman in uniform stepped in, holding up a torch.

  “I need a hand here,” Deran announced. “We’ve got a wounded man just around the corner.”

  The half-dozen customers who still lingered stared silently at him. Nobody volunteered anything, by word or motion.

  That didn’t trouble Deran. “You,” he said, pointing at the individual who looked least drunk of those present. “And you,” indicating another.

  “Oh, now...” the second man said, beginning a protest.

  “Five minutes, at most,” Deran snapped, cutting him off. “And if you don’t ... well, we don’t need to worry about what would happen then, do we? Because you’re going to cooperate.”

  Grumbling, the two men got to their feet.

  Deran wasn’t stupid enough to walk in front of them; he had never been in the Drunken Dragon before, but he knew its reputation. He directed the two “volunteers” out the door and followed them as they slogged around the corner.

  The wounded man was so much dead weight; he showed no sign of life at all as the three men—one taking his feet and the others a shoulder apiece—hauled him into the tavern and dumped him on a table.

  That done, Deran dismissed his two assistants, paying them for their trouble by telling them, “I owe you a favor—a small one. If you ever get in trouble with the guards—small trouble—you tell them Deran Wuller’s son will speak for you.”

  The two men grumbled and drifted away, leaving Deran and his prize alone. Deran turned his attention to the bloody figure before him.

  There were only two wounds that he could find, both in the fleshy part of the man’s thigh—a long, shallow slash and then a deep stab wound that had missed the artery, Deran judged, by no more than an inch. Most of the blood came from the stab; the slash had already started to scab over.

  “Are you going to leave him there dripping all over my floor?” demanded a voice from behind Deran. The guardsman turned and found himself facing an aproned figure a bit shorter than himself.

  The innkeeper, of course—or rather, Deran corrected himself, the innkeeper’s night man; Deran doubted that the broad-shouldered fellow with the ferocious mustache was actually the proprietor.

  “Until you find me a bandage, that’s exactly what I intend,” Deran answered. “And a clean rag to wipe the wound first would be a good idea, too.”

  Grumbling, the night man retreated, while Deran checked the stabbing victim over.

  There were no other recent wounds; his heartbeat was strong and regular, his breathing steady and reeking of oushka. He was, Deran concluded, unconscious as a result of his drinking, not from the wound. While bloody, the injury just wasn’t that serious.

  The innkeeper’s man returned then with a handful of reasonably clean rags, and Deran set about cleaning the man up a little. As he worked, he questioned the night man and the remaining customers.

  Nobody knew the man’s name. Nobody knew what had happened to him. He wasn’t exactly a regular, but he had been there before. He might have been seen with a girl, a black-haired girl wearing dark clothes.

  And that was all anyone would tell him.

  When Deran pulled the bandage tight, the drunk opened his eyes.

  “Am I dead?” he asked blearily. “Am I going to die?”

  “You’re fine,” Deran said. “You might limp for awhile.”

  The drunk tried to raise his head from the table to look at himself, but couldn’t manage it. He moaned.

  “What happened?” Deran demanded. “Who stabbed you?”

  “Nobody,” the wounded man muttered. “Was an accident.”

  Deran shrugged. “Fine. You owe the Dragon two bits for the bandages and the use of their table. If you change your mind about who stabbed you, tell the magistrate...” He hesitated, turning to the night man. “This is Northangle, right?”

  “Grandgate. Northangle starts at the corner.”

  “All right, tell the magistrate for Grandgate, then. And if you need me to testify, I’m Deran Wuller’s son, Third Company, North Barracks.” He yawned. “And that’s where I’m headed—I need to get some sleep.” He waved, and departed.

  By the time Deran was out the door the night man was trying to get his wounded customer off the table and back on his own feet.

  At the north tower he almost headed straight for his bed, but his sense of duty stopped him. He checked the lieutenant’s room first.

  Sure enough, Lieutenant Senden was waiting up for him.

  “Is she all right?” the lieutenant asked anxiously.

  “She’s fine,” Deran said. “No problem at all.”

  “Then what took so long?”

  “When I was on my way back I practically tripped over this boozer lying in an alleyway.”

  The lieutenant grimaced. “You called the slavers?”

  Deran shook his head. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t entirely his fault. He’d been stabbed. So I hauled him into the nearest tavern and got him bandaged up. Wasn’t anything serious, just a flesh wound in the leg.”

  “Did he say who did it?”

  “No. Might’ve been a girl he was bothering.”

  “All right. Good night, then, Deran—and thanks.”

  “My pleasure, Lieutenant.”

  Deran judged that he had no more than three hours until dawn when he finally fell into his bunk.

  Senden, too, was quickly asleep.

  The following day he was somewhat irritable, as a result of a late night largely spent in worrying, and carried out his duties in perfunctory fashion; his monthly report to Captain Tikri, a recently-added requirement that Senden did not care for, was brief and sketchy. He did note down, “Guardsman Deran reports tending to stabbing victim in tavern. No accusations or arrests made.”

  Late that afternoon, at the overlord’s palace, Captain Tikri had just finished going through the reports from all the guard lieutenants when Lady Sarai stepped into his office. The captain leapt up and saluted, hand on chest.

  Lady Sarai waved an acknowledgement, and Tikri relaxed somewhat. “Is something wrong, my lady?” he asked.

  “No, no; I just wanted to get out of that room for a few minutes,” Sarai explained, “so I came myself instead of sending a messenger. I’m here in both my official roles today, Captain, as Minister of Investigations and as Acting Minister of Justice. Is there anything I should know about?”

  Captain Tikri looked down at the reports he had just read. He turned up a palm.

  “Nothing, my lady,” he said. “Nothing of any interest at all.”

  Chapter Ten

&n
bsp; Tabaea had expected the feeling of strength and power to wear off within a few minutes, like the excitement after a narrow escape.

  It didn’t.

  Instead, the strength stayed with her. The lightheadedness faded fairly quickly, but the added strength stayed. If anything, it increased, at least at first.

  She had hidden behind a merchant’s stall in Grandgate Market, crouched down between a splintery crate and the brick wall of a granary—not a place for long concealment, by any means, but she was out of sight, able to think and plan, until the merchant arrived for the day’s business. For the first several minutes she had just sat, waiting for the weird feeling to pass.

  Eventually, though, she had realized that this was not working. She began thinking about it.

  She felt strong. Most especially, her left leg seemed to be almost bursting with vitality. She knew she had stabbed the kilted drunk in his left leg, so the connection was obvious. Was it an illusion, though, or was she really, truly stronger than before?

  Measuring strength, especially in a leg, was not something that Tabaea had any easy method for doing; she tried out a few kicks at the crate beside her, and then hopping, first on her almost-normal right leg, then on her empowered left.

  It was hard to be sure; she knew, from her work as a thief, how people could fool themselves without meaning to. All the same, she concluded at last that yes, the feeling of strength was genuine; somehow, she had become stronger.

  And it was fairly obvious how—when she had stabbed that man in the left leg with her dagger, her left leg had become stronger. The connection could hardly be coincidence.

  The black dagger, which she had known for four years to be enchanted, had somehow given her that strength because she had stabbed the drunk.

  This was serious magic.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t yet know the details. Was this added strength permanent? Would the magic work again, or had she used it up? Where had the strength come from—the dagger’s magic, or the drunk? Had the dagger created it, or only transferred it? And what else did the dagger do? How dangerous was it? Had it stolen the man’s soul? Would it eat her soul?