Kolar had said his spell would take an hour, and it was perhaps half an hour’s walk each way between Through Street and the wizard’s shop; allow a little time for other matters, and the ambassador still would have needed no more than three hours to complete his errand and return to the house to begin writing his protocol. Emmis glanced up at the sky, trying to estimate how long it had been since he had headed back toward Shiphaven. The sun was hidden behind rooftops to the west as he jogged down Commerce Street. How long had he spent at the rooming house? How long with his family? The walk back had taken almost an hour all by itself...
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 Annis, she and the Lumethans might not have been so quick to decide Lar had to be killed.
Or they might have been even quicker — who knew? They had been following Lar in any case. He hadn’t told them anything about planning conquest. He hadn’t told them anything about apprenticing to warlocks; they had heard that from Ishta. It wasn’t his fault.
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.
Annis had said Hagai was a theurgist, so he was relatively harmless; he might have used his magic to help find Lar, but beyond that, Emmis didn’t think Hagai was anything to worry about. Neyam, though — was he a magician, too? If so, what kind? Or the third Lumethan, whatever his name was — he could be anything.
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 banned using magic in their endless little wars; it would have made their regular armies useless, and you couldn’t trust magicians. They weren’t reliable. They might change sides, or decide they wanted to be in charge themselves, or they might simply die, and then where would you be, if your entire military depended on their magic?
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, st
ronger, 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.
The more heroic thing might be to stay and fight, to try to take the assassins out of action somehow, but Emmis was no hero. He had no idea how he might single-handedly defeat two men, especially not when one of them had that diabolical sword-stick.
He didn’t even know whether there were just the two. After all, neither of them was Neyam of Lumeth. There might be a whole gang lurking around Through Street.
Emmis squeezed through one of the narrower alleys and emerged onto an unfamiliar street; he paused for only a fraction of a second to get his bearings, then turned and headed for Arena Street, hoping that he had enough of a lead that the two assassins would not be able to follow him to the Wizards’ Quarter.
Chapter Eleven
Emmis saw no sign of pursuit. He attracted a few stares as he ran headlong down Arena Street, but no one seemed to be following him, or taking more than a casual interest.
Still, when he reached the Arena district he turned left onto Camp Street, as if he were heading for Camptown to fetch guardsmen. Once he was around the corner he slowed to a walk and straightened his clothes, trying to look like an ordinary townsman out on business, rather than a fleeing lunatic.
He was not going to Camptown, though; he turned right on Hawker Street, past the Arena, and picked up his pace, hoping as he did that Lar was not walking down Arena Street, a few blocks to the west, as he did. He was assuming that the ambassador was still in the Wizards’ Quarter, that his business there had taken longer than expected, or he had decided to do something else after Kolar’s spell was done. Emmis he was hoping he could find him before he went home and ran into the assassins.
It was a good thing that Lar was so easy to spot, with that red coat and big hat.
Emmis turned right again, across the entry plaza at the south side of the Arena, past the notice boards — and no, Lar was not there reading the notices, nor was he visible in the crowds on Arena Street.
Emmis frowned, and then ran and jumped, pulling himself up on a cornice on the face of the Arena so that he was hanging from the stone three or four feet off the ground, his feet braced against a pillar, as he peered up and down Arena Street.
There were hundreds of people in sight, male and female, young and old. Dozens of them wore hats, from the bright little caps of the fashionable ladies to the battered, broad-brimmed straw hats of farmers in town for the day, but nowhere did he see a big black hat with a red satin band and a curling white plume.
He also didn’t see a tall man in a blue tunic, carrying a black and silver stick; that was a relief. He wished he had gotten a better look at the other assassin, but his only clear impression was that the man had been nondescript, wearing tunic and breeches of some ordinary color like brown or gray.
He dropped back to the ground, hoping he hadn’t drawn too much attention, and hurried on along Arena Street.
Ten minutes later he was on Wizard Street, knocking at the door of Kolar’s shop.
This time Kolar was wearing a proper wizard’s robe when he answered the door, a flowing floor-length black garment with bands of midnight-blue velvet on the sleeves. A rather elegant blue velvet cap adorned the wizard’s head.
“Ah, the assistant!” he said, before Emmis could catch his breath. “Did Lar forget something?”
“He was here?” Emmis demanded. “But he’s not now? When did he leave?”
Startled, Kolar said, “I don’t really know. Some time ago. Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” Emmis said. “Did he say where he was going? Because he didn’t go back to the house.”
“Well, no — he was going to try another wizard first, and if that didn’t work out, perhaps a witch.”
“What?” He blinked. “Why does he need another wizard?”
Kolar sighed. “Because the spell didn’t work,” he said. “I performed it twice, with the wording we agreed upon, and both times it felt just fine, but there was no answer to his question.”
Emmis frowned. “How do you mean, no answer?”
“I mean, the smoke didn’t form runes, just meaningless swirls. It certainly wasn’t any sort of writing I know, and I’m reasonably fluent in three dead languages, as well as Ethsharitic. Lar said it wasn’t anything he knew, either, and he apparently knows half a dozen tongues.”
“But how can that happen?” Emmis asked. “The spell went wrong?”
Kolar shook his head. “I don’t think it did,” he said. “I told you last night that Fendel’s Divination would answer the question if there is an answer and nothing interfered. It didn’t answer, so if there’s an answer, then something interfered.”
“But what? What could have interfered?”
Kolar turned up an empty hand. “How should I know?”
“Because you’re a wizard! Knowing these things is your job!”
Kolar shook his head again. “It’s not like that,” he said. “Knowledge isn’t free. Magic interferes with other magic, and trying to find out exactly which magic is interfering can be difficult and dangerous. Nobody’s paying me to make the effort or take the risk.”
This was frustrating, but Emmis realized it wasn’t really important. “All right, fine,” he said. “Then you don’t know what went wrong, but you sent the ambassador somewhere else. Where did you send him?”
“I suggested he try Imrinira of Sabar, over on Stopped Street,” Kolar said, pointing vaguely in a direction Emmis thought was east.
Emmis had never heard of Stopped Street, and its name did not make its location obvious. “How do I find her?” he asked.
“Turn left at the next intersection — well, it’s Stopped Street in both directions, but Imrinira’s shop is to the left. There’s a very long block, then you’ll cross Flight Street, and it’s the fourth shop on the left.”
“Thank you.” He turned, and hurried up the street.
Kolar’s directions were simple enough, though they hadn’t mentioned how much Stopped Street curved, and a few minutes later Emmis was knocking on the shop door beneath a sign that read “IMRINIRA THE MAGNIFICENT: Truths Uncovered amp; Fantasies Made Real.”
Only while he was waiting for a response did he glance at the broad shop windows on either side; he almost wished he hadn’t. The creatures milling about in the displays were no part of any fantasy he had ever had, except perhaps in nightmares — multi-colored, many-legged things that flickered and shimmered in very discomforting ways. Some of them were undeniably beautiful, particularly the winged ones, but they still weren’t anything he cared to encounter.
He looked up, to avoid watching the things in the windows and to be sure he had not imagined that the lanterns illuminating the sign were still lit, and noticed how big the building was. Four stories high, and wider than most — if Imrinira owned the entire place she was obviously doing well for herself.
He knocked again.
The door finally opened, and a young man peered out — a youth, really, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. “May I help you?” he asked.
“I’m looking for my employer,” Emmis said. “I was told he came to consult with Imrinira of Sabar, at this address.”
“Your employer?”
“Shorter than me, red velvet coat, fancy hat? I’m not sure what name he would have given.”
“Oh, yes. He called himself Lar the Ambassador. Speaks with an accent?”
“Yes. He’s Vondish. Is he still here, by any chance?”
The youth shook his head. “No, I’m afraid he and my mistress went to consult with Zindrй the Pale.”
Emmis wanted to scream with frustration. He had been hoping that they were in a back room somewhere. “When?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say exactly. Less than an hour.”
“Where can I find this Zindrй, then?”
“In Witch Alle
y, of course. You go back that way, turn right on Flight Street, then take the first left. I’m not sure which shop is hers, but the alley isn’t that long.”
“Thank you.” Emmis turned and ran — he did not want to give Lar time to look for yet another magician after this Zindrй.
He found Witch Alley easily — he had seen it once or twice before, though always entering from the other end — and Zindrй’s name was plain enough on a signboard, but the shop was dark, the curtains drawn. He stared at the locked door, then stepped back to look up, hoping to see a light in the witch’s rooms upstairs.
“If you’re looking for Zindrй, she’s talking to Sella,” someone said.
Emmis turned and found a man perhaps twice his age standing behind him, leaning on a stick. Not a slender black-and-silver stick, but a rough wooden one, little more than a tree limb trimmed to the right length.
“Thank you,” he said. “Where?..”
The man pointed down the street.
As Emmis trotted farther down Witch Alley, looking at the signs, he took comfort in the fact that Lar had still been alive and unharmed when he and Imrinira left her shop an hour or so ago, and that if he, Emmis, was having this much trouble catching up, then any assassins would have an equally difficult time of it.
“SELLA THE WITCH, Diviner amp; Seer,” he read, and this shop had lamps lit and the door open. He hurried up to it.
Before he could cross the threshold, though, a thin, black-haired girl of fifteen or sixteen appeared in the door.
“Hello, Emmis,” she said. “I’m Teneria of Fishertown, Sella’s apprentice. Come in, please; we’ve been expecting you.”
Emmis stumbled in surprise. “You have?”
Teneria didn’t smile. “We have,” she said. “Diviner and seer — it says so right on the sign. Would you like a cup of tea?”
Emmis’s mouth twisted wryly. “You don’t already know?”
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