white skin and pink eyes. Otherwise, they were squat and chunky as farm girls, hearty enough to wrestle an ox. As the men gawped, Magdon spoke, 'No, we're not cursed, merely albinos. What do you require?'
Magdon's blue robe was triply wrapped by a black belt, and her bone-white fingers were stained odd colors. Ophelia's yellow gown was unbelted but embroidered with flames at hem and sleeves. She yawned and sat on a bench and scratched her hair. Helara handed Magdon the silver triangle-cut coins and some instructions, and departed the parlor. Magdon told the men to wait and followed. Ophelia yawned and scratched. When Tamlin asked what she did, she replied only, 'I have hidden talents.'
With nothing to see or do, the guests slumped onto twisty-backed settles and slanted stools. Borrowing the page as a runner, Escevar gave her a coin and a message for Cale, the butler of Stormweather Towers, emphasizing she not bother Lord Uskevren. Less than an hour passed before three burly men arrived in Uskevren livery, blue with the gold badge of horsehead and anchor. The house-carls came with boar spears so tall they couldn't stand upright in the parlor.
Magdon returned. From her ivory hand dangled a jangly contraption. The sixteen silver coins were alternately threaded on a silver chain with a black bead, an owl's skull, a scallop shell, three blue feathers, a cork, a lumpy gray stone, and other bits. From the bottom hung a curved strip of gold foil beaten so thin it shivered in no breeze at all. The device looked like a child's windchime.
'What is it?' asked Escevar.
'A compass.' Hoisting the charmed chain, Magdon puffed at the gold foil. As it shimmied and bobbed, blue sparkles sizzled up and down the chain. Gradually the gold foil settled and pointed. 'It doesn't point north but at a larger hoard of triangle coins.'
'Really?' Refreshed by a nap, Tamlin reached to touch, but Magdon steered it away.
'The magic is delicate as a spiderweb. I'll hold it.'
'You'll go with us?'
'We all will. Apprentices need guidance.' Helara promenaded into the room like a queen. A floor-sweeping robe of red was quilted with a purple lining and hemmed with tiger hide that set off her wild tawny hair. Magdon and Ophelia donned plain cloaks of gray with gathered hoods that almost covered their heads. Escevar nodded to see them. In Sembia, peasant girls bound for 'service in the city' were invariably given such cloaks as a going-away present. No doubt the girls' talents had been discovered in some village and they bound over to the Wizards' Guild. Yet if Magdon were a 'gadget wizard,' as Escevar thought, he wondered about Ophelia's 'hidden talents' and flaming embroidery.
Passing into a bitter night wind ripe with sea salt, the three men, three women, and three housecarls found Magdon's windchime-compass jingled and jangled, blown every whichway. The three mages had to cluster with their cloaks to shield the flimsy artifact. Settling, it pointed up Rampart Street and onto Rose.
Whipped by winter winds, they pursued tedious rounds of walking, huddling, waiting, and moving on. Slowly, the women assured them, they steered to a trove of triangular coins. The seekers weren't so sure, but Escevar reflected they needn't pay the magicians if they flubbed the magical tracking.
Occasionally they spotted friends scurrying from pub to pub in the cold. By Ironmonger's Lane, a small, lithe woman attached herself to Tamlin. The noble had dallied with Iris a time or two, and smiled as she rubbed against him. Rail thin, Iris wore only a jacket and trousers of rabbitskin, and tilted the neck to show nothing beneath.
'Lovely, dear, if goose-bumpled. We're in a hurry, but I'll stop by later. I hope.' Plodding onward, Tamlin mused, 'For some reason, Iris reminds me of Longjaw. Where's she at these days?'
'Haven't seen her since the Sahuagin Wars,' said Escevar. 'But pirates and smugglers don't live long even in peacetime. What was the name of that artist? She'd make a tasty morsel if you fattened her up.'
Rambling, the young men speculated about various women they knew, oblivious to the albino sisters and tawny-haired Helara, who sniffled either in disgust or from the wintry wind.
The keen lessened in the shadow of the Hulorn's Hunting Garden. Not-so-high on a crag was perched the Hulorn's spired palace like a quiver of upright arrows, and at its feet ran a high stone wall enclosing a ten-acre hunting garden of wild weedy woods. Whether any animals lurked within, and whether the Hulorn actually hunted them, no one knew. No one had seen the erstwhile governor for quite a while, and the usual strange stories circulated. Hunting Street ran along the wall, lit in spots by glow-globes to discourage poachers. Opposite the wall, the snobby neighborhood sported houses gaudy even by Selgauntian standards. Mismatched towers, archways, curved staircases, hedged gardens, turrets, tricolor chimneys, false fronts, frescoes, balconies, and other ridiculous trappings decorated the block.
'That's it.' Helara pointed to a two-story house of brick and timber behind a jig-jog brick wall with deep arches. A large house shrouded by trees and gardens. As proof, the red-robed mage and the albino sisters shielded the magic compass. Peeking over their shoulders by the light of glow-globes, the men saw the slip of gold foil curled rocksteady toward the house. 'It's the only place in the city those triangle-cut coins can be.'
'Splendid!' Tamlin stared at the shadowed house. 'Uh, now what?'
No answers.
Escevar said, 'Perhaps if we tell the Hulorn's Guards that the house owner… might know hillmen with flying dogs… No, I guess not.'
Shivering and sniffling, the statuesque Helara said, 'Why not knock on the door and see who answers?'
Lacking a better plan, the nine hunters trooped through a brick archway and bumped into an ornate iron gate, locked. Vox swung his axe's thick poll and the gate popped open. Without speaking, the nine mounted a narrow gallery that ran half around the silent house. Winter shutters rimmed by felt sealed in sound and light, if any. The door was red with a simple iron thumblatch. With no signs of life, the searchers began to feel foolish, like children caught spying. Everyone looked to Helara.
'All right. I'll knock. But if no one-Yowl'
One rap set off a shower of yellow sparks that sizzled and skittered across the door's face. Thrown backward, Helara nearly pitched off the gallery before Vox caught her. The door was marred by a smoking scorch mark. Hissing, Helara found her knuckles and fist blistered and her gown's sleeve charred past her wrist.
'You bastards!' she panted. 'I'll show you!'
Eight companions reared back as Helara pulled back her sleeves, spat on her palms, and uttered a low spell like a curse. Bracing her feet, the mage slapped both palms against the door. Flashing yellow light blossomed. It lit the gallery, frizzed Helara's hair, and made her clothes smoke. Over the sputtering and spitting of sparks, the mage shouted in a gravelly voice, 'Ras-pal sky-y! Ras-pantle a-too! Ras-pah sen ma-nan-tal!'
Either her spell worked, or its power merged with the door's charm, or together they doubled and tripled, for Helara got results.
The door and most of the front wall exploded.
Broken bricks and hunks of wood shot in all directions like catapulted missiles. Only Helara's personal shield, her first muttered spell, kept Tamlin and friends from being killed by flying flinders, for the deadly rain blew around the mage in a soaring arc like an invisible bubble. Chunks of wall collapsed, crunching inside the house and on the gallery, though no one saw much because brick dust, smoke, paint chips, and other debris swirled like trash caught in a dust devil. Portions of the second floor collapsed alarmingly, then the house corner slumped with a creak and crunch. People shouted and screamed as the gallery let go, dipping toward the missing door. The companions skidded downslope and blundered into a crumbling brick wall. More dust roiled and boiled, making people sneeze and choke.
Tamlin and the albino sisters were tangled in a gap in the wreckage. Vox gained his feet and yanked them free of the hole. Two Uskevren housecarls tumbled into bushes, and now stayed on the ground to guard. Helara kicked and swore and tore her red robe on iron nails jutting from the door's threshold, which suffered a big, blackened bite.
Above the scuffling and grousing, Escevar called, 'Someone's home!'
A foyer and staircase were smothered in laths and plaster and broken tiles. Floorboards jutted over black space. A swarthy black-bearded man in a green robe had slunk down the stairs to peek at the enemy. Stunned by the destruction, he lingered too long.
Handed up by Vox, the tall Helara gained the crumpled littered floor. Batting back her smoking red-and- tigerhide cape, the mage saw the skulker. 'Ratigan? You fumble-fingered pie-thief! You snake-eyed cross-patch! I warned you never to crawl back into my city!'
Screeching an arcane curse, Helara crossed her forearms. Trapped on the stairs, Ratigan reeled as a
