'Because if the intelligence had come too easily, she might have scented a ruse,' the wizard explained. 'Whereas, believing she risked her life for it, she'll trust it. That's human nature.'
'Well, why didn't you at least warn me that harpy was the very woman I'm supposed to have poisoned?' Audra demanded. 'After I confessed to it, and she revealed herself, I thought she was going to kill me on the spot.'
'Had I informed you, would you have consented to help me stage this little piece of make-believe?' the masked man asked. 'Besides, I reckoned that if you knew her identity in advance, you might have difficulty pretending to be surprised should she disclose it. You're scarcely accomplished thespians, you know.'
'Maybe not,' Audra said, 'but I got the job done. Even when the plan had come apart, when your Lady Uskevren was sitting on me threatening to pour essence of slithering tracker down my throat, I kept my head.' Regained it, actually, but there was no point telling him that for a few moments there, astonished by the other woman's ferocity, she'd panicked. 'I told her it was her husband who'd wished her dead and made her believe it, too. Now I want my money.'
'Of course,' the masked man said, producing a kidskin purse from beneath his mantle.
Audra took the bag and untied the lacing securing the mouth. Inside were platinum suns, golden five-stars, and a number of sapphires and pearls. She grinned, and Pedvel and Sawys got up and limped over to inspect the booty.
'Satisfactory?' the wizard asked.
'Yes,' said Audra, liking the man a good deal more than she had a moment ago.
'Good,' the wizard said. 'We're quits, then. But now we have a new piece of business to transact.'
'Have you got another job for us?' Pedvel asked, leering over Audra's shoulder at the gleaming treasure in her hands.
'Unfortunately not,' said the mage. 'I've thought it over, and I'm afraid I don't trust you to depart Sel-gaunt as you promised. You just don't seem like very reliable people, and should you linger, spreading your newfound wealth around, regaling your whores and drinking companions with the tale of how you acquired it, word could get back to the Uskevren. And that would ruin everything.'
Audra frowned. 'We gave you our word and we'll keep it.'
'That's very reassuring,' said the masked man, 'but even so, I see no reason why I should allow you the chance to change your minds. You see, a fellow like me only has to deal gently with people like you if they're likely to be of further use or have powerful friends to avenge them, and sadly, you fall in neither category.'
Audra abruptly grasped that the sorcerer was saying he meant to murder them. Which meant they'd better dispatch him first, this instant, before he could start casting spells. 'Get him!' she screamed. She threw a handful of jewels and specie at the wizard's face, then lunged at him.
The makeshift missiles clattered on the sickle-shaped mask but seemingly without startling him or penetrating the eye holes as she'd hoped. He stepped nimbly backward, taking himself out of reach of her clutching hands, and brushed her on the shoulder with his staff.
Magenta light danced and crackled on the wood. Wracked by an agonizing power, her muscles twitched and shuddered. Paralyzed by her spasms, she fell to the floor.
From there, she saw that her confederates had finally begun to attack. Though favoring his injured foot, Sawys did his best to charge the mage while holding a three-legged stool above his head. The wizard retreated once more, giving himself time to recite a rhymed couplet, produce the severed gray tip of a squid's tentacle from one of the hidden pockets in his cloak, and swing it in a small circle.
Inky tentacles erupted from the floorboards all around Sawys's feet. They flailed at him, coiled around his limbs, and dragged him down. He shrieked briefly, then fell silent. His bones cracked and crunched as the tentacles squeezed him.
Perhaps profiting from his comrade's unfortunate example, Pedvel fought more warily, popping up from behind a pile of boxes or other cover to hurl a burner or flask, then ducking down again, making it difficult for his adversary to target him. The magician murmured and brandished a scrap of tortoiseshell, and after that Ped-vel's missiles rebounded harmlessly from an invisible shield. Pacing deliberately, the ferule of his staff bumping softly on the floor, the masked man advanced with the obvious intention of cornering his opponent.
But it looked like it might take him a minute, a minute during which Audra could escape into the night. Her muscles were still jumping, but not as badly as before. She thought she could move, and when she tried, she found she was right.
She crawled on hands and knees, staying so low that the mage shouldn't be able to see her. After what seemed an eternity, she came in sight of the door. She sprang to her feet and ran for it.
Darkness fell across the exit like a curtain, with two yellow eyes and a grinning maw in the center of it: the wizard's familiar, barring the way.
Audra dodged toward the window, but the spirit swayed to the side and cut her off. She pivoted back toward the door, and he was there. He let her lurch left and right a few more times, always interposing himself between her and freedom, then, evidently tiring of the game, widened his body so it covered both means of egress at once.
Behind her, magic hissed and chilled the air. Red light flickered. Pedvel screamed.
'I'll let you in on a joke,' the familiar said. Tm no more solid than fog. You could have fled right through me.'
For an instant, Audra failed to comprehend what he was saying. Then she flung herself at the door.
The spirit's shadowy substance felt vile in a way she couldn't describe, but he hadn't lied. She was reaching clear through him, opening the lock, and then she heard the wizard murmuring.
Just as she yanked open the door, daggers, arrows, or something else equally pointed and lethal slammed into her back. Suddenly choking on warm, coppery fluid, she fell, and, peeling himself off the wall, the familiar crouched over her to watch her die. The last thing she saw was his murky grin.
Chapter 5
Shamur pulled on the cabinet door and was not surprised to find it locked, Thamalon being the prudent soul he was. She picked up one of the long pins she'd bent into something vaguely resembling a proper thief s tool and set to work. Since her interlude with Audra Sweet-dreams the night before, Shamur had been hard-pressed to contain her fury whenever she encountered her husband. Her mind boiled with fancies of bloody retribution, and her hand fairly twitched with the impulse to drive a blade into his flesh. Yet at the same time, some small part of her, a part that recalled the sweetness she had occasionally discovered in his arms and the way he'd gobbled and made faces to amuse their infant children, still sought to avoid the confrontation to come. She despised that weak, equivocating portion of her nature, and to silence it, she'd crept to Thamalon's receiving room to search for more evidence of his guilt, for all that she'd proved it beyond a doubt already.
It had been obliging of him, she sardonically reflected, to absent himself from home tonight. He'd claimed he had to make sure that one of his merchantmen was loaded and ready to sail with the morning tide, but she suspected he was visiting one of his doxies. Perhaps wide-eyed little Larajin had begun to bore him.
The parlor smelled of lemon oil, a testament to the diligence of the servants. Since Shamur had only bothered to light a single sconce, it was rather dark, and certain of the shapes around her, like the white bearskin rug from the Great Glacier and the harp that Thamalon vowed he would learn to play someday, looked strange and subtly unreal swimming in the gloom.
All was silent, inside the room and beyond. Shamur knew that elsewhere in the mansion, a handful of guards and lackeys were performing various tasks while the rest of the household slumbered, but she couldn't hear them up here on the second floor.
Then something did make a noise. Just as the cabinet yielded to her efforts, the latch securing the door to the passage clicked. The brass handle turned.
Shamur fleetingly considered hiding, but wasn't sure she could manage it in the split second remaining, not with the sconce burning, anyway. So she simply closed the cabinet, scooped up her makeshift lockpicks, and concealed them beneath the blue sussapine sleeve drooping over her hand. An instant later Erevis stepped through
