“Just send the message, please, Captain.”
Naral bowed. “As you wish, my lord.” He turned away, beckoned to a guardsman apparently at random, and explained the errand.
While he did, Hanner turned to his own party.
“It appears we’ll have a wait, at the very least,” he said. “I’d suggest sitting down and getting a little rest.” He pointed at the curbstones surrounding a shrine set in the corner of the wall at Arena Street and Aristocrat Circle. “I’ll be right here if anyone needs me.”
With that, he settled himself on the nearest curbstone and leaned back, his head just touching the underside of the shrine’s offering shelf.
Just getting his weight off his aching feet for a moment felt wonderful. Yorn settled beside him, but had to duck slightly and lean forward to avoid banging his head on the shelf. He looked out at the neat lines of guardsmen and remarked, “I don’t see anyone from my company.”
“Well, that’s good,” Manner said. “Then you probably aren’t disobeying any orders by being here with me.”
Another of the warlocks, a weather-beaten fellow in gray homespun, settled on Manner’s other side, not on the curbstones but squatting with his back against the wall.
“We could all go out to the Hundred-Foot Field,” he said. “No one there would bother us once they realized we’re magicians.”
Manner looked at him. “I don’t think I heard your name,” he said.
“Zarek,” the other replied. “Zarek the Homeless, for the past few years.”
“Then you’ve slept in the Hundred-Foot Field before,” Manner said.
“Every night,” Zarek replied. “That’s where I was tonight when the screaming started, over in Westwark. I went to the Wizards’ Quarter thinking I might be able to trade the news of mysterious screaming for a free meal, but then I found out the whole city had been affected and everyone already knew. Andthen I found out that I could do this new magic, and while I was trying to think of some way to use it you made your announcement, and I came along with you in hopes it might mean a roof over my head for the night.”
Hanner stared at him.
Like everyone in Ethshar of the Spices, Hanner knew about the Hundred-Foot Field. More than two hundred years ago Azrad the Great had decreed that no permanent structure could be built in the hundred feet between Wall Street and the city wall-the area was to be kept clear so that troops could move freely along the defenses in time of war.
Of course, the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars hadn’t been in a real war for two centuries, not since the Great War finally ended, and empty space inside the city walls was too precious to be left empty. The law said no permanent structures could be built there, but it made no mention oftemporary ones, and Ethshar was crowded; accordingly, within days of the edict the city’s poor and homeless had begun to set up crude huts and flimsy tents in that hundred-foot gap.
The entire length of the Hundred-Foot Field, estimated at nine or ten miles, was a refuge for the outcasts of the Hegemony. Beggars, thieves, cripples, madmen-and those honest people who, for one reason or another, couldn’t afford to rent a room and had no wealthier friends or relatives who would take them in.
Hanner had seen the Hundred-Foot Field on those few occasions when his business had taken him to any of the city’s gates or within a block or so of Wall Street, but he had never gotten any closer than he had to. He had no intention of sleeping in the Hundred-Foot Field or even of setting foot in it. Zarek might be safe enough there, but Zarek wasn’t one of the city’s lords. Walking into the Field wearing silk embroidery and bay-leaf insignia was asking to be robbed; wearing worn homespun would attract far less interest.
On the other hand, Zarek wasn’t as filthy and miserable as Hanner would have expected a dweller in the Field to be. His hair and beard were desperately in need of washing and trimming, but they weren’t tangled or matted, and his hands and face were fairly clean, his skin clear of any lesions. He certainly looked far better than that rag-clad fellow Hanner had seen back in Witch Alley-that person Hanner would expect to sleep in the Hundred-Foot Field.
Legend had it that at one time the Field was green with grass and wildflowers, but now it was all bare dirt-hard-packed and dusty in dry summer heat, a sodden mass of sticky mud in the spring rains, icy in winter- trodden by hundreds, or more likely thousands, of feet. Despite that Zarek, while hardly dapper, was reasonably clean and presentable, and his account of his actions was direct and clear. He had plainly kept himself mentally and physically intact, despite the hardships of his life.
Perhaps, Hanner thought, Zarek knew secrets for living relatively well in the Hundred-Foot Field-or perhaps he had somehow managed to clean himself up tonight before venturing into the Wizards’ Quarter.
Asking him directly how he had achieved this seemed rude, and Hanner was too tired to really take that much of an interest. Instead he said, “I think we can find somewhere better to stay than the Field.”
Zarek turned up a hand. “I can’t afford to pay anything.”
“Ican,” Hanner said. “But I hope we won’t have to.” He looked toward the Palace, hoping to see his uncle or a messenger approaching.
Instead he saw the ranks of spear-carrying guardsmen, standing ready to face the strange magic that threatened the city’s peace.
Hanner wondered just how effective those spears would be against warlocks. Oh, some warlocks were undoubtedly too weak or unskilled to fend off a solid thrust or well-aimed throw, but he had no doubt that Rudhira, for one, could have easily turned aside any single attack.
At that thought he looked around for Rudhira and spotted her perched, catlike, atop a garden wall, looking not out at the waiting soldiers, but inward, into the darkened garden of one of the mansions facing upon the square.
Hanner wondered what she saw there-hedges and fountains and flowers, presumably. Hanner took a moment to orient himself and realized that the garden belonged to Adagan, Lord of the Shipyard. Hanner knew Adagan, of course, but had never seen his gardens. They had no special reputation for excellence.
Rudhira, though, was a Camptown streetwalker-or had been until tonight, at any rate. She might well have never seen a real garden before.
A streetwalker. And Zarek was a homeless beggar. Hanner frowned. What was he doing among these people? He was a lord, an assistant to the overlord’s chief advisor, specializing in the relationship between government and magic; what business did he have with these beggars and whores?
But of course, they were magicians now. Whoever was responsible for this new magic had certainly shaken up the natural order of things.
Hanner did not appreciate that. Apparently Lord Azrad didn’t much like it, either. Hanner wondered how long this warlockry business would last-hours? Days? Years? Forever?
Short of divination there was no way to know, and Hanner had no intention of waking up a wizard or theurgist at this hour to buy a divination that might not even work, as predictive magic about magic was notoriously unreliable. Tomorrow he might go back to the Wizards’ Quarter and inquire, but now he just wanted to sleep.
He wasn’t quite as exhausted as he might ordinarily have expected after staying up so late and walking all over the city, but he supposed that was just the excitement.
He stood up and stretched, and was about to settle back on the curbstone when the line of soldiers parted, and his sister, Lady Alris, appeared.
“Hanner?” she called uncertainly, eyeing the warlocks scattered around the intersection. Hanner realized that he was standing in the shadow of the little shrine, where the soldiers’ torchlight didn’t really reach; he stepped forward and called, “Here I am!”
“Oh!” Alris hesitated, then ran to him, stopping a few feet away.
“Uncle Far an sent you?”
Alris nodded. “He can’t leave the Palace.”
That wasn’t really a surprise; Hanner supposed his uncle was closeted with the overlord somewhere, discussing the situation— though Naral had said the overlord had retired.
Well, perhaps Faran was talking to underlings, preparing them for whatever was to be done in the morning.
“May we enter, then?” Hanner asked.
