The girl made a protest Kennan couldn’t hear, and for a moment the two argued, but the man clearly won. The girl turned and began walking away from the square, into the darkness of Aristocrat Circle.
Several of the people who had been standing or sitting around arose and followed-including the redheaded whore, and two others who flew rather than walked.
Kennan hesitated only briefly, then followed. “You’ll do what I tell you!” Elken the Beggar bellowed, hovering above the Hundred-Foot Field, pointing down at the thirty or so people he had gathered.
“Elken, this is stupid,” Tanna the Thief said. “If you’re such a powerful magician now, why are you stayinghere}” She pointed at Wall Street. “Why don’t you go into the city and make a placethere}”
“Shut up!” Elken said. “I know better than that. Iwent into the city, and I came back. There are hundreds of magicians in the city, and lords ordering them around. Buthere, there’s just me— me, and the bunch of you, and you’re all going to be my slaves now.”
“All right, fine,” an old woman said. “What do you want us to do?”
“That’s better,” Elken said, mollified. “I want you to put together the tents and make a place worthy of me! And I want all the food you’ve got stashed away. And if anyone has anyoushka, I want that, too.”
The others looked at one another. A few whispered comments were exchanged, empty palms turned up.
Twenty minutes later Elken lay on a pile of mismatched bedding-abig pile, collected from at least a dozen of the residents of the Hundred-Foot Field-beneath a canopy made out of Old Man Kelder’s tent stretched across the poles from Anaran the Thief’s hut. He had a strip of dried salt beef in one hand, a half-full bottle ofoushka in the other.
He took a gulp of liquor and smiled broadly. “The gods have smiled on me,” he said. “It’s as if they wanted to pay me back for making me suffer through that nightmare.”
The memory of the dream, of the sensations of falling and burning and being buried, was unpleasant; his smile vanished and he took another long draught ofoushka.
“The gods are just,” Tanna said, from where she sat-just out of his reach, deliberately so.
“Of course,” Elken said, then drained the rest of the bottle. “Come here, woman.”
Reluctantly Tanna came, before Elken could use his mysterious magic to drag her. She cuddled up beside him.
As she had expected, though, he was now too drunk to do anything more than give her a squeeze before falling into a booze-induced stupor. After a few fumbling moments his head rolled back, his eyes closed, and he began snoring.
Tanna waited another five minutes, just to be sure.
Then she took the sharp little paring knife from her belt, reached around, and neatly sliced open Elken’s left carotid artery.
He jerked awake, and she cut his throat from ear to ear as he stared up at her and clapped a hand to the initial wound.
She was flung back by his magic, smashing through the jury-rigged framework of his beggar’s palace and landing on hard ground. She rolled aside-she had had years of practice dodging attacks, and a magical one wasn’t really so different.
By the time she got to her feet and made her way cautiously back inside, Elken was still and limp, his eyes staring and lifeless.
“It’s all right,” she called. “He’s dead.”
The others emerged from their refuges to gather around her and look at Elken’s corpse.
“I’m sorry about the ruined bedding,” Tanna said as she stared down at the body. “What a waste!”
No one was sure whether she meant the bloodstained bedding or Elken’s magic.
“I can’t believe you sent her out there!” Nerra said, staring at her uncle.
Faran pointedly did not stare back, but instead studied the reports Captain Vengar had given him.
“She’ll be fine,” he said. “She just has to go a few blocks, and she’ll have Hanner with her, and then they’ll both be safe at my house.”
“You really have a house in the New City?”
“I really do. I’ve had it since you were a baby.”
“That’s where you go when you aren’t here and don’t take us with you?”
“Usually, yes.”
“So Hanner and Alris will live there from now on?”
Faran put down the reports. “I certainly hope not,” he said. “I expect Lord Azrad will come to his senses once he’s had some sleep and daylight has brightened the World, and then Hanner and Alris will come back here where they belong, and my house will be private again.”
“But now they’ll know where it is.”
Faran sighed. “Nerra, there are scores of people in this city who know where it is. Anyone who really wants to know could find out easily enough. I don’t think anyone reallycares, though.”
“Then why didn’t you ever tellus about it?”
“Because it wasn’t any of your concern.”
“But...”
Faran had had enough of her questions-and he hadnot had enough sleep. His temper gave out, and he glared at her as he cut her off.
“Go to sleep, Nerra,” he said. “If you reallymust ask me impertinent questions, do it in the morning.” He got to his feet and marched into his bedroom.
Nerra watched him go, then looked around, realizing that she was alone in the room.
And she would be alone in her bedroom, with Alris out of the Palace. She would be alone, and these mad magicians, or demons in human guise or whatever they were, were roaming the streets and skies. The city guard was out in force, keeping the plaza clear-but what could they do against a demon? What good would they be if a mad magician flew across the canal to Nerra’s bedroom window?
She shuddered at the thought-but she didn’t have much choice. Reluctantly, she wandered back to her own bed, climbed in, closed the curtains, and buried herself under the coverlet, certain she would get no more sleep that night.
Ten minutes later she was snoring quietly.
Chapter Eleven
Hanner stood in the shadows of Coronet Street and looked up at the looming black facade beyond the garden wall.
“It’s the entire house?” he asked.
“That’s what he said,” Alris replied.
Hanner grimaced. He should have known, he told himself. Fitting his entire party-himself, his sister, his fifteen recruits, and his four prisoners-would not be a problem. It was entirely possible there would even be enough beds for each to sleep alone. Lord Faran’s unofficial residence stood four stories high, and the garden wall extended along Coronet Street from High Street almost to the corner of Merchant Street.
“Where’s the gate?” one of the warlocks asked.
“Who needs a gate?” Rudhira asked, flying over the wall.
“Someof us do,” Yorn replied grumpily. “It’s on High Street,” Alris said, pointing.
They trudged on up Coronet Street, and around the corner onto High Street. The garden wall that had hidden the ground floor from them ended a few feet from the corner, to be replaced by an iron fence topped with spikes. Peering between the bars of the fence Hanner could see broad, many-paned windows in a brick and black stone wall just the other side of a dooryard perhaps five or six feet wide. Rudhira was in the dooryard, moving quickly toward the front door, but Manner took a moment to look the place over.
All the windows were dark, and no torches or lanterns hung at the entrance, but that was hardly a surprise.
