was also guarded.
Teza hesitated. The presence of the guard was unusual, but the fact that he wore the emblem of the clan family, Vrul, seemed strange. Most of the Vrul lived in Mulptan. Not that it really mattered. The Vrul were well known in Rashemen for their fine taste in horses.
It took the horse thief just a moment to slip back her hood, loosen her long dark braid, and find the small bag she always wore. Within, among the other tools of her trade, were the circles of fabric permeated with a quick- acting sedative. Very useful for unsuspecting guards.
She stumbled out of the trees close to the inn and ambled, in her best drunken fashion, toward the guard by the door. He watched her approach with some amusement.
“Sir, I was looking for the outhouse,” she slurred, stumbling closer. “Do you know where it is?”
He lifted his hand to point, his head turning naturally in that direction, and in that instant Teza leaped forward and pressed the fabric to his nose. He took one gasp and fell like a stricken rothй.
Teza solicitously dragged him into the barn where he would not freeze. As she hoped, the grooms were in the inn and the stable was empty of humans. One by one she began a rapid inspection of the stalls’ inhabitants.
“Teza!” a whispered voice called to her from the door.
Teza and the horse she was patting leaped sideways as one and crashed into the wooden partition. “Kanlara!” Teza snarled. “What are you doing here?”
The wizardess, cloaked and booted, strode forward, her face pinched with cold and annoyance. “I followed you,” she said. “I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t catch up with you. I had a feeling you were going to do something like this.”
“Of course I am!” Teza stormed out of the stall and into the next where a creamy white mare rolled her eyes nervously. “I told you from the beginning I was a horse thief. It’s what I am.”
“But it’s not what you can be!” Kanlara insisted. “You are intelligent, strong, and beautiful. You could be anything you set your mind to.”
Teza made a rude noise of disbelief. Those words, coming from a woman with exquisitely beautiful features, long red hair, jewel-green eyes, and the advantage of being wizard-trained, did not carry a great deal of weight with an untalented street rat. There were some realities of life Kanlara had never had to face-like starvation and loneliness and poverty.
Teza had learned to be a thief to survive and now it was all she knew. She threw her hands up. “You want me to change. You want us to leave Immilmar. You want a new wizard’s staff and spell components. Well, all of that takes money. How do you propose we get it? You are forbidden to practice magic while you are in the jurisdiction of the Rashemi witches and the only jobs the Rashemaar will give an outlander are menial… they barely pay for our room. So that leaves me.”
She realized her voice was rising with every word, and she quickly lowered it so as not to draw outside interest. “I can’t sew. I hate serving in taverns. I have no learning or talent. I cannot be a witch, and I won’t be a berserker. There is little left for someone like me in Immilmar. How can I make you understand?” She ended her tirade and leaned against the mare, breathing heavily.
“I am trying to understand,” Kanlara replied sadly. “But please stop before something happens to you. I couldn’t bear to lose you. You are the only family I have.”
Something in Kanlara’s tone rang true to Teza. Nonplused, she left the mare’s stall and walked into the next without looking.
To Kanlara, the stall looked empty. But Teza found more than she bargained for. Her foot caught on something solid and heavy on the stall floor, and she stumbled forward into the manger. “By Mask! What is that?” she gasped. She squatted down and pushed the straw off a dark form.
Kanlara hurried in and the two women knelt together in the straw. They carefully rolled the form over onto its back. The strong smell of fresh blood filled their nostrils. Their hands slipped in the warm, dark fluid that covered the man’s neck and chest.
“Oh, gods, he’s been stabbed,” Kanlara cried. “We must get some help. Run to the inn and have someone summon the guards.”
“What?” Teza yanked her hands away and frantically wiped them on cleaner straw. “The guards,” she hissed, appalled at the very suggestion. “Don’t be a fool. We have to get out of here, now!”
Kanlara stiffened. “There’s been a crime committed,” she said firmly. “We have to report it.”
“Like the Abyss we do. One look at us, sneaking around where we don’t belong, blood all over our hands, and they’ll arrest us without a blink.” She grabbed her friend’s arm to pull her to her feet. “Come on!”
Kanlara yanked free. “Don’t be ridiculous, Teza. There is nothing here to tie us to this. We simply found the body.”
“You are so naive. I have lived in the thieves’ world all my life. I know how this will look to the Elders. We must go…now!”
A sudden call outside the door brought Teza to her feet like a panicked horse. “Kanlara,” she begged, “please! He’s a
Footsteps crunched on the snow outside.
“Kanlara, come on!” Teza cried one last time.
The wizardess stood still, staring down at the dead man, then she lifted her eyes to Teza’s. Before either could react, someone pushed open the wide front door. Lanternlight spilled into the stable.
Teza’s will broke. Like a fox bolting for cover she whipped around the stall door and fled silently into the shadows and out the back door. She did not hesitate a step until she was well back into the trees. Belatedly, she slowed. She turned, against all her instincts, and angled toward the road and the front of the inn. Through the trees she could hear the uproar of voices and the blare of a horn as a guard signaled to his captain.
The sounds of authority approaching and the noise of the angry crowd were more than Teza wanted to face. Let Kanlara handle it. She could explain far better than Teza. The guard would question her and let her go. Teza decided to go home and wait. Kanlara would surely be along soon.
But she wasn’t.
By midmorning the next day, Kanlara still had not returned and Teza had paced and worried to the point of nausea. As angry as Kanlara probably was, if she was able, she would have come back by that time.
Just before noon Teza tied her hair into a tight braid, piled it up on her head, and pulled a loose fur hat over the whole thing. She dressed in a pair of men’s pants and boots and strapped a dagger to her side. Her smooth cheeks were dusted with a shadow of charcoal dust and, to finish off her disguise, she added a false mustache carefully crafted from horse hair. It was a disguise she had used successfully before and one few in Immilmar had seen. With luck it would get her safely where she wanted to go.
Teza hurried outdoors and strode just a few short blocks to the communal longhouse. The morning was overcast; the air cold and biting. Quite a few citizens were out on their daily business, and quite a few more were heading in the same direction as Teza, for the daily
The squat longhouse sat on a short hill overlooking one of the main roads leading to the busy docks on the Lake of Tears. It was a large, if rather plain building used by the citizens of Immilmar for all the meetings of the Elders who ran the city, as well as gatherings of various guilds and parties. Every day at noon, or when needed, the Elders held the kohrtar to charge suspects of crimes and to hold trials for those already charged.
Teza knew if Kanlara had been arrested for the murder that she would be brought before the judges this noon. Keeping quiet, Teza mingled with the crowd moving through the open doors. Obviously, word of the murcler had already spread through the city, and curious onlookers were coming to have a look. The young woman squeezed into an open space by the back wall and waited, her heart in her throat.
In just a few minutes a Fang guardsman slammed his sword on his shield to signal the arrival of the Elders. The noisy room fell silent. At the far end of the long room, three Elders practiced in the rudiments of Rashemi law (and law in Rashemen was rather rudimentary), entered and took their seats at a table placed on a dais. A fyrra, wearing the emblem of the Vrul clan stood to one side, his hawk glance fastened intently on the proceedings.
A second Fang guard read the day’s charges from a roll of parchment. Several minor infractions were quickly dealt with by imposing fines or several days in the Iron Lord’s dungeon.
