Most buildings in Ethshar of the Sands did not have cellars; the sands on which the city was built, and for which it was named, made digging difficult. Excavations had a tendency to fall in on themselves. That was also why structures were almost never more than three stories in height: anything taller than that tended to sink or fall over. Some people had cellars dug for cold storage—root cellars, wine cellars, and the like—but such extravagances were generally small, and reached by ladders rather than by stairs.
Tabaea had heard about cellars and basements all her life, in tales of faraway places, but had never been in one, unless you counted crawlspaces or the gaps between pilings. The whole idea of cellars tended to put her in mind of the overlord’s dungeons—she had heard about those all her life, too, or at any rate as long as she could remember—and of secrets and exotic places. She stared at the stone step and wished she could see more; from her vantage point at floor level she could see the iron rail, the walls, the sloping roof, but nothing below the topmost stair.
However, she could, she realized abruptly, hear something.
She held her breath and listened intently, trying to ignore her own heartbeat. An older man’s voice, speaJdng quietly and intently—she couldn’t make out the words.
Could it be the wizard in whose workshop she was?
Of course; who else would it be?
Could he be working a spell? Was that an incantation she heard, the invocation of some spirit, the summoning of some supernatural being? She could only hear the one person, no answering voice, but he seemed to be addressing someone, not just muttering to himself.
A shiver of excitement ran through her.
He had to be doing something secret, down there in the cellars. He couldn’t just be fetching a bottle; he wouldn’t be talking like that, and she’d be able to hear him moving around. His voice was steady, as if he were standing or sitting in one place. And he wouldn’t be doing his regular work, or just passing the time, in the cellars —cellars were for secrets and mysteries, for concealment, and protection. Something rustled, and she leaped away from the door, sprang to her feet, the candle in her hand almost, but not quite, blown out by her sudden motion.
That little greenish creature was watching her from atop a stack of papers. It squeaked and scurried away into the darkness, scattering papers as it went.
She watched it go in the dimness and made no attempt to follow. All around her, the shadows were flaring and wavering crazily as her candle flickered; she feared that if she moved anywhere she might trip over something unseen, or bump into something, in that tangle of black and shifting shapes.
Worse, her candle might go out, and the wizard emerge from the cellars before she could relight it. She stood by the cellar door, shielding the candle with her hand, until the flame was strong and steady once more, and the animal, or imp, or whatever it was, was long gone.
At last she turned back to the door, intending to listen again, and caught her breath.
The line of light across the bottom had become an L She had bumped the door when she sprang up, and it wasn’t latched; it had come open, very slightly.
She knew she shouldn’t touch it. She knew she should just go, get out of the house while she could—but a chance to watch a wizard at work was too much to give up.
Who knows, she thought. Maybe if things had gone a little differently for her, she might have been a wizard. She might have had the talent for it; who could say?
Well, she supposed a master wizard could say, but she’d never had the chance to ask one.
Or maybe she’d just never had the nerve to ask one.
She snorted, very slightly, at that. She was Tabaea the Thief, she’d taken the cognomen for herself just last year, she was a promising young cutpurse, burglar, and housebreaker, and she was here in a wizard’s house planning to rob him, but she’d never had the nerve to talk to one.
Of course, it was too late now, anyway. She was fifteen, and nobody would take on an apprentice who was past her thirteenth birthday.
If her family had been willing to help out when she was twelve, if her stepfather had offered to talk to someone for her...
But he hadn’t. And when she’d asked he was always too busy, or too drunk. He promised a dozen times that he’d get around to it later, that he’d do something to set her up, but he never had. And her mother hadn’t been any better, always busy with the twins, and on those rare and precious occasions when both the babies had been asleep she’d been too tired to go anywhere or do anything, and it wasn’t an emergency, Tabaea was a big girl and could take care of herself. She could help Tabaea’s sisters and half-brothers with their reading and numbers, but she couldn’t leave the house, what if the twins woke up?
And then Tabaea’s thirteenth birthday had come and it was too late, and old Cluros was the only one who’d been interested in her, and maybe it wasn’t an official apprenticeship, maybe there wasn’t any guild for burglars and lockbreakers, but it was better than nothing. And better than a bed in the brothels in Soldiertown.
Besides, she wasn’t sure she even had the looks or personality for a brothel; she was always nervous around other people. She might have wound up walking the streets instead and sleeping in the Wall Street Field when she couldn’t find a customer who would keep her for the night. Maybe she should have run away, like her big brother Tand, but she never had.
So now she was a sneak thief. Which suited her just fine; she was good at not being noticed. She’d had plenty of practice, all those years staying out of her mother’s way and avoiding her stepfather’s temper when he was drinking.
At least she hadn’t disappeared completely, like land, or their father. And her thieving had kept her fed when her stepfather wouldn’t anymore. Thennis had taken to begging in Grandgate Market, and Tessa was spending a suspicious amount of time in Soldiertown, but Tabaea was taking care of herself just fine. Being a wizard or something else respectable and exciting would have been much better, certainly, but Tabaea wasn’t going to complain. Her career in burglary had gotten her plenty of nice little things over the past two years.
For one thing, it had gotten her here, with a chance to spy on a wizard at some secret business in his cellar. Carefully, inch by inch, holding the knob so the hinges wouldn’t creak, she opened the door.
Yes, there were stone steps going down, between gray stone walls. The glow of a distant lamp spilled in through an archway at the bottom, and threw Tabaea’s shadow down the full length of the room behind her.
Cautiously, she descended the stairs, pausing on each step, watching and listening. The man’s voice—the wizard’s voice, she was sure—grew louder with each advance, droning on and on. And with each step she could see a little more of what lay beyond that arch.
There was a small square of stone floor and then steps to either side and a black iron railing straight ahead—the cellar went down even further into the ground!
At the bottom she hesitated. Straight ahead she could see through the archway into an immense chamber, lit by a great three-tiered chandelier. That chandelier was directly ahead of her, beyond the archway and the landing and the iron railing. She couldn’t really see much of the space below.
But if she advanced any farther, out onto the landing, she would be terribly exposed.
She paused, listening, and realized she could make out words now.
“...it’s a part of you,” the wizard was saying. “A part of your soul, your essence. It’s not just some random energy, something mat anybody could provide, or that you could get from somewhere else.”
For the first time Tabaea heard a second voice answering, a higher-pitched voice, a woman or a child. She didn’t catch the words.
That was simply too fascinating to miss. She crept forward, crouching lower with each step. By the time she passed through the arch she was on her knees, and by the time she peered through the railing she was lying flat on her belly, hands braced to either side, ready to spring up if she was spotted. The cellar, or crypt, or whatever it was lay before her, a single huge space. The stone-ribbed ceiling arched a dozen feet above her, and the floor twenty feet below—she realized that that floor must be thirty feet below ground, and marveled that the sea had not flooded it.
But then, the walls were massive stone barriers, sloped and buttressed to hold back the sand and water. Those great braced walls enclosed a square thirty or forty feet on a side—the room was almost a cube, she decided. In the center of the far wall was a broad slate hearth below a fine smooth stone chimney; there were, of course, no windows. Heavy trestle tables were pushed against the walls, four of them in all.
