It reflected his image well enough for what he wanted. For a moment he stared at his suspicion proved true. Then a white-hot fury mastered him and he began to curse aloud, until the sound of Silvertop's voice speaking Koseth's words, the sight of Silvertop's face twisted with his anger, made him trail off into befuddled silence.
He sat staring into the bottom of the tray until he realized that his stupefied expression didn't sit well on Silvertop's features, either. He put the tray down.
The little bastard had done it in the Tiger's Eye, of course. Walking all the way around him, the touch on his hair—had he only touched him, or had he left something there? Koseth reached up to feel the back of his head and realized only as his fingers touched the fine pale hair that this was, of course, the wrong head. That prompted another fit of cursing.
So, he decided, once he'd started thinking again, if I'm in Silvertop's body, then is he in mine? For his sake, I hope he is. If he's in any other body, /'m going to break its arms. Then he looked down at Silvertop's delicate hands and realized that arm-breaking was not one of his options.
He thrust his hands through his hair, found the wrong hair once again, and went, muttering, in search of clothes.
•
Koseth's heart plummeted at the sight of his townhouse. It was neat, quiet, and two of the Levar's Guard were posted at the front door. He found two more at the kitchen entrance. What had Silvertop done? Koseth had been sure, at first, that this was just another of Silvertop's experiments, done purely in a spirit of magical inquiry. Had Maseka spotted the imposture and called the Guard?
He started up the low stone steps to the front door, and the two gray-clad guards drew together before him. The one on the right, a lean woman with broad shoulders, nodded. "Pardon, master, but may I ask your business?" She was polite, but not conciliating, and Koseth scented trouble.
"I wish to see"—he couldn't help it; he stumbled over his own name—"the Margrave of Trieth."
"I must ask you why."
"I have something of his I'd like to return," Koseth smiled. He wondered what effect a Silvertop smile had, and hoped it was reassuring.
"Wait a moment, please," the guard said with a frown, and turned to wield the heavy bronze knocker. Her companion kept his eye on Koseth.
Maseka opened the door, and Koseth saw the expression that usually met his guests. Or, at least, something close to it; Maseka was gracious and dignified, but there was a canted look to his brows and the slightest air of hopeful appeal about his features. This dissipated as soon as his gaze fell upon Koseth.
Before he could speak, the lean guardswoman asked Maseka, "Is this man known to you?"
"No, mistress."
"You're certain? You've never seen him before?"
"Not to the best of my knowledge." Maseka turned to Koseth and touched two fingers to his forehead with grave politeness. "May I be of assistance, master?"
"Not now," the guard said firmly. "We'll want to ask this man a few questions." At this, the second Gray Guard detached himself from the doorpost and took Koseth, as politely as possible, by the arm.
Maseka cloaked himself in the icy and impenetrable dignity that he employed only in the face of the most awful transgressions of etiquette. "The gentleman has come seeking hospitality of the Margrave of Trieth. Which of you will tell His Grace, when he returns, that you mauled his guests on his very doorstep?"
Returns? thought Koseth.
"Do you think we're standing here for the air?" snapped the guardswoman. "Damn it, man, we're dealing with a kidnapping!"
"We're dealing with a what?" said Koseth, and the second guard's hand tightened on his arm.
The woman turned and scowled at him. "The Margrave of Trieth was kidnapped last night, and if you don't stay out of this, I'll arrest you out of sheer annoyance."
"Maseka, is this true?" Koseth said.
Maseka blinked. "Your pardon, master?"
Koseth remembered that he didn't look like anyone Maseka knew. "May I come in?"
"No!" said the guard, and "Certainly, master," said Maseka. Koseth looked at the guard. "I...may have some information that will prove useful."
"Then you can give it to me, here or at the nearest City Guard post."
Koseth frowned. It would be a daunting look on his own dark features, but he suspected it wasn't of much use on Silvertop's. "Maseka, I'm Trieth. I'd prefer not to explain it here. How can I prove it to you?"
The guard protested, but he paid no attention. He was watching Maseka's face, where disbelief and hope chased each other across the copper-colored features. The butler drew a deep breath, let it out, and studied Koseth. At last, he said, "If you really are His Grace...tell me in what object His Grace has invested his luck."
Koseth stood stunned for a moment before he found his voice and roared, "I'll see us all in jail first! I'd as soon print it in the Cat Street Crier as tell it to these two lumps of dung—and it wouldn't do you a damn bit of good, since I've never told it to you!"
The change that came over Maseka was astonishing. He beamed, he glowed, he seemed close to weeping. "Welcome back, Your Grace," he cried, "oh, welcome back!"
Surprise seemed to root both guards to the stone steps and loosen the grip on Koseth's arm. He stepped through his front door, and Maseka closed it firmly behind him.
When they stood in the cool tile-paved front court, Koseth asked, "Maseka, what, by the Levar's future...womanhood, possessed you to ask me that?"
Maseka's air of pleasant dignity had returned; he nodded and smiled gently. "I am sorry, Your Grace, but I could not be certain we shared any...privileged knowledge. I could only ask a question that would elicit a characteristic response. And if you will forgive me, your response was very much characteristic."
"I...see," said Koseth. "I think. Now, where was I kidnapped from?"
Maseka raised his eyebrows. "Then you were kidnapped, sir?"
"This is not an illusion, Maseka—it's someone else's body. I'm assuming the someone else has mine. I'd like it back. If he, and it, are not here, then I have to start looking for them somewhere."
"Yes, Your Grace." Maseka looked taken aback. "Well, you were...he was...the kidnapping occurred in your bedchamber."
On the way up the curve of stairs to the second floor balconies, Maseka added what he knew. He had, as instructed, given the staff the night off after dinner, and retired to his own quarters behind the kitchen. He'd sat down to work on the household accounts. All he could remember after that was the popping sound of pottery breaking, and scraps of a succession of ugly dreams. At dawn Maseka woke slumped over his writing table, his ledger stopped in mid-entry and ink dry on the pen. When he searched the house and found Koseth missing, perhaps three-quarters of an hour ago, he called the Guard.
"How did you know I hadn't simply left the house early?" Silvertop, after all, would never have thought to tell the servants he was going out.
"I'm familiar with your wardrobe, Your Grace—you'll pardon me if I say that it is not extensive. All that was missing was your dressing-robe."
No, not even Silvertop would have left the house in a dressing-robe.
The bedchamber, the rearmost of the rooms in Koseth's private suite on the second floor, was undisturbed, except for the unmade bed. There was no sign of a struggle or a search.
If it hadn't been for Maseka's familiarity with Koseth's clothes, the disappearance might not have been recognized until hours later.
"Have the City Guard brought in a magician yet?"
"Yes, Your Grace. The magician came immediately; the inspector has not yet arrived to do a physical search."
"Find anything?"
"Unfortunately, the trail seems to be rather cold. The magician could tell that magic had been used both here and in the servants' quarters, but could not identify a spell or its maker."
Not, then, any great outpouring of magic, such as rendering Silvertop—or Koseth—immaterial and whisking him out through a second-story wall. That would
leave a trace that could linger for a day or more. Koseth doubted that he could do better than a Guard magician, but he had to try. "Maseka," he said, "brew some kaf for me, would you?"
Maseka looked startled for an instant, then nodded. "Yes, Your Grace." He touched fingers to his forehead and went away. Koseth waited until he heard Maseka's steps on the stairs. Then he went to the marble-topped washstand near the bed and opened a drawer.
For an instant he felt a disorienting lack of something. Then he realized what it was, and a drowning terror seized him. His luck was gone. He felt for its hiding place anyway, but without hope; he was well within three paces of where his invested object should be, and there was none of the comfortable resonance he'd grown used to, his particular manifestation of the bond between magic and its owner. Could the kidnappers have known what his luck was invested in, and taken it, too? But if they thought they had Koseth, they would have done better to leave it where it was, much too far away for their victim to draw upon it. Unless they'd destroyed it....
At the back of the drawer, in its crevice, his fingers met the soft leather of the coin pouch that held his invested luck. He pulled it out and stared at it. It was the same one: thin, glossy black leather, a little scarred with use, drawn closed with a red silk cord. He could feel the weight of the polished ball of rose quartz inside, but he could feel no magic. He rolled the tassel between his thumb and forefinger—
His pale-skinned thumb and forefinger.
The thing was brimming with invested luck, ready to be tapped...but not by Silvertop, and not by Koseth in Silvertop's body. Perhaps he could use Silvertop's invested object, but finding it in that disaster that passed for Silvertop's living quarters would have meant playing a grown-up version of Hot and Cold for hours.
Koseth tucked the pouch into his heavy cotton sash and began to examine his bedchamber. Perhaps familiarity would give him an edge that the Guard, searching later, would lack.
The grillwork over the window was painted wrought iron. He looked for scratches in the paint or flakes of rust on the sill, and found none. They hadn't taken the grill off, then, and hadn't gone in or out that way. The bedclothes were rumpled, but clean. Nothing had been taken from the dressing table or the ornate cedar-lined clothes press except, as Maseka had said, his dressing-robe.
There was no sign of a struggle, which probably meant that Silvertop had been drugged. Maseka's account indicated that he'd been. Maseka had also said that he'd heard crockery breaking. Koseth left his chambers, went to the top of the stairs, and shouted, "Maseka!"
The butler popped out the arched red door from the kitchens. "Yes, Your Grace?"
"You said you heard something breaking last night?"
"It seemed so to me, Your Grace—not a shattering sound, but a sort of pop, like a cup breaking."
"Did you find anything broken this morning?"
Maseka shook his head. "I looked, Your Grace, after I called the Guard."
Koseth went back to his bedchamber. It was a maddeningly tidy crime, difficult enough to solve without the raveled end of his and Silvertop's identity switch. Had the kidnappers intended to take Koseth? Or had they intended to take Silvertop in Koseth's body? His only route to the kidnappers' identity was motivation, and without knowing who they thought they were kidnapping, he couldn't determine that, either.
Since they hadn't come in the window and hadn't used any great magic, they must have gotten in downstairs and come in the sitting room door. Koseth sighed and got down on hands and knees to study the polished ebony floor and the carpets. He followed a straight route to the bed, ranging a few feet to either side in his search. When he reached the bed, he lifted the nearest bed curtain and shook it out, then raised the bed skirt. Nothing on the floor under the bed. Then his eye was caught by a reflection in the folds of the hanging on the other side of the bed. He scurried over and lifted the other bed curtain.
What rolled out was a piece of broken stoneware. It seemed to be a rough cross-section fragment of a jar, with some lip on one end and base on the other. The outer glaze was a glossy green painted with the outlines of clouds and birds in black and gold. Koseth cupped it in his hands for a moment, then, very delicately, sniffed the inside surface.
The smell, faint as it was, was associated in his mind with being dizzy and falling down, and he was a little surprised when the floor didn't tilt beneath him. Oil of green satinbark, mixed with some volatile liquid and sealed in a breakable jar, would produce a sort of narcotic gas bomb. A very small spell could make a patch of window immaterial, just long enough to levitate the jar through. When the magic was withdrawn, the jar would fall to the floor and break, and the vapors would do their work quickly and be gone, and leave no clue. One in Maseka's room, to keep him out of the way, and one here—then the kidnappers could gather the fragments, and leave nothing behind but a mystery.
But here was the piece of jar. Koseth scowled at it. Had he been meant to find it, or had the kidnappers really overlooked it when they gathered up the rest of the fragments? The chemists and apothecaries of Ka Zhir used such jars, stoppered with porcelain and sealed with melted wax, to hold volatile liquids and oils, and herbs that deteriorated quickly in air or sunlight.
Koseth was not certain how he came to the resolution, but he acted on it at once. He pulled a large square of silk from a drawer of the dressing table and wrapped the bit of pottery in it. Then he went headlong down the stairs and into the kitchen.
Maseka raised his eyes from a neatly arranged tray and blinked. "Yes, Your Grace?"
"I may have found something. Tell whoever shows up from the Guard that they should meet me at the Tiger's Eye."
"Very good, Your Grace," Maseka sighed. As Koseth swung out the back door, he saw Maseka shaking his head over the pot of kaf.
•
The ride to the Tiger's Eye was neither long enough nor fast enough to work the fidgets out of his horse. The chestnut was inclined to make the entire journey sideways. Koseth was past the Levar's Park before he remembered that the horse thought he was a stranger—and he felt like one. Silvertop's thighs began to ache almost immediately from their unaccustomed grip on the saddle, and his slender hands threatened to blister under the chestnut's nervous pulling at the bit. When Koseth slid out of the saddle at the door of the Tiger's Eye, his legs quaked with weariness.
He was inside the shop before he realized that Snake was home.
She was surrounded by bales and baskets of things, very much as Koseth had imagined she would be. She was not, however, still in riding clothes. Her hair was freshly washed and still damp. It was pulled back from her face and bound high on the crown of her head with an enameled gold ring, from which it fell to her shoulders in a cascade of tiny black braids. One long gold earring hung from her right ear. She wore a sleeveless calf-length tunic of persimmon-colored wool that pleated and draped from a beaded yoke as if it were no heavier than fine linen. Beneath the tunic she wore a tight-sleeved blouse and narrow trousers of heavy bronze silk. Her slippers were black leather painted with morning glory vines.
She looked up at him and smiled, her face full of gentle amusement, and he realized that he'd been standing dumbstruck since he'd seen her.
"Don't tell me," she said in that kaf-with-honey voice, sharp and sweet at once. "You came to elope with Thyan, and my presence has sunk the whole scheme."
"What?" he said finally. He had outbargained the Tilandre horse breeders, but the sight of this tall, elegant woman in her shop reduced him to unprecedented stupidity.
"It was a joke," Snake said patiently. "Hello, Silver. What can I do for you?"
"I'm not Silvertop," he said, and his words sounded bald, foolish, and completely unbelievable. "I'm Koseth."
Snake nodded and stroked the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. "And I am His Scarlet Eminence."
"Blast it, Snake, it's true!"
"Is this Thyan's idea?"
"It's the sort of crack-brained thing Thyan would think up, but she gets no cred
it for this one. I'm not joking. It's a vile tangle, but I am Koseth."
Snake propped her elbows on the lid of a waist-high basket, and her chin on her knuckles. "I may be over-cautious...but I've lived with Thyan for six years, and it's ruined my disposition. Prove it."
Had he been thinking coolly, he would have been able to summon up any number of more temperate ways to prove himself. As it was, he stalked scowling over to Snake, took her face in both his hands, and kissed her with ferocious intensity.
When he drew back, he was certain for an instant that she'd boxed his ears; he felt as disoriented as he had when he woke in Silvertop's body. Snake blinked and gave her head a quick shake.
"Well!" she said, a little gruffly. "I'm convinced."
"You are?" said Koseth.
Snake grinned. "It didn't feel at all like you, of course. But you're the only person on this side of the Sea of Luck who would do that and expect me to leave his skull intact."
"I seem to have a lot of...singular characteristics. I must remember to thank Silvertop when I see him."
"How is it," Snake said with a tip of her head—a question mark personified—"that you haven't seen him, if you're wearing his skin?"
Koseth flung himself down in one of the wicker chairs that Snake kept by the hearth for guests and leisurely customers. "A fine question. I woke up this morning in Silvertop's body, in his rooms. I assume he woke up in my body. Some poor fool certainly did."
"You haven't checked?"
"I tried. Someone seems to have kidnapped me."
Snake's dark eyes grew round as half-levar pieces. Then she frowned, bit her upper lip, and said, "Why?"
Koseth nodded; it was like Snake to ask the most important question first. "I don't know. It depends on whether they thought they were getting me, or Silvertop in my body."
"Why would they think that?"
Koseth shrugged. "The body-switch was Silvertop's doing. If I knew why he'd done that, it would be a help. Could he have known that someone planned to carry me off, and thought, for some luck-bereft reason, that it would be better if they got him instead?"
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