Then the street was completely still for several seconds, the only sound the distant buzz of the rest of the city going about its business.
Faran and Manrin and Hanner stared out at the sprawled guardsmen; some of the soldiers tentatively moved to sit up while others lay still, fearing that any motion might provoke another attack.
“Go away!” Rudhira shouted over the heads of the three men, her voice seeming impossibly loud to Hanner. “We’re magicians, and we demand the respect due to magicians! You can’t just run in here with your swords and spears as if we were a bunch of drunken rowdies smashing up a tavern!”
Hanner smothered a sudden urge to laugh hysterically. He was quite sure that Rudhira was not speaking theoretically, that she had seen guardsmen deal with rowdies smashing up taverns at least once before.
Captain Naral got carefully to his feet, brushed himself off, picked up his sword, brushedthat off, then turned and looked over his men. Most of them were sitting up now; a few had even retrieved weapons.
He turned back toward the doorway.
“Lord Faran,” he said. “Captain Naral,” Faran acknowledged.
“It appears you intend to defy the overlord’s orders, and that we can’t stop you.”
“Captain, we could kill the lot of you quite easily. Please don’t force us to demonstrate.”
Naral turned up a palm. “I won’t,” he said. “But I will have to report back to Lord Azrad, and he may try something more drastic next time.”
“I would be happy to negotiate with the overlord’s representative; I understand that there are serious matters at stake here, and I’m eager for a peaceful resolution.”
“Of course.” Naral hesitated, then added, “Leaving the city would be peaceful.”
“I’m afraid I’m not eager for thatparticular peaceful resolution,” Faran said. “I hope we can find another.”
“I hope so, my lord,” Naral said. Then he turned and bellowed at his men, “All right, you, up on your feet! Let’s see some order here!”
Hanner watched silently at Faran’s side as the soldiers got upright and organized, and started to march off, with Naral at the rear.
“Wait a minute!” the persistent old man in the street shouted. He no longer looked satisfied; he looked distraught. “You can’t give up! Get them! Arrest them! My son disappeared two nights ago, and they’re responsible!”
“We arenot” Hanner shouted back.
Captain Naral pointedly ignored the exchange as he and his men marched away.
Hanner watched them go and kept an eye on the civilians in the street as well as the departing guardsmen; the expressions he saw there were mostly sullen and angry, though that one man appeared truly outraged.
The warlocks had driven off the overlord’s men and avoided exile for the moment, but it was plain to Hanner that they hadn’t made any friends.
“Thank you, Rudhira,” Faran said as he gently pushed Hanner aside and finally managed to close the door. “That was well timed and neatly done.”
Rudhira smiled and curtsied-a flouncing little-girl curtsy, not the subtler, more graceful dip of a noblewoman. Hanner supposed it was something she’d learned to please her customers, since ordinary folk hardly ever bothered with such formalities.
“Uncle,” Hanner said, “they’ll be back with magicians.”
“I know,” Faran said. “I hope that without me there to insist on speed that they won’t be quick about it-you know how lazy Azrad and Ildirin and the rest are.”
“But if Lord Azrad’s angry...” “Yes. Then he wants it over as quickly as possible.” He turned to Manrin. “What wizardry can you still perform?”
Manrin snorted. “Not much. Even if I could rely on it, where would I get the ingredients for anything more potent than Fel-shen’s First Hypnotic?”
“Upstairs,” Faran replied. “I should have everything you need.”
Manrin stared at him silently for a moment.
“Oh,” he said at last.
Hanner listened but said nothing more just yet. He was beginning to see just how completely his uncle was cutting himself off. He was defying the overlordand the Wizards’ Guild, disobeying the city guard, and openly admitting that he had studied forbidden magic. There could be no possible return for Lord Faran-either he would triumph as something new, as a master warlock no longer bound by the old rules, or he would almost certainly die, as a traitor and rogue magician.
Hanner just hoped that if Faran lost he wouldn’t take the entire family down with him. The Hegemony of Ethshar had never believed in punishing the family of a criminal for his crimes, but Uncle Faran was a special case- the city’s second-highest official, committing the highest of crimes.
And Hanner and Alris were here, helping him.
More than ever Hanner wished he were safely home with Nerra in their palace apartment, and that he wasn’t a warlock.
“Wizardly ingredients are stored in the rooms on the west side of the third floor,” Faran said. “I think you’ll find everything properly catalogued; the index is in the bound volumes in the room where we spoke earlier.” His full attention was apparently focused on Manrin, but Hanner knew his uncle well enough to be sure that he knew other people were listening. Rudhira and Ulpen and half a dozen other warlocks were in fact listening intently.
Faran was deliberately letting them know about his dabbling in magic, and that Manrin, a wizard, was on their side-presumably to hearten them in the face of the knowledge that the overlord knew where they were and wanted them gone. Knowing that they had resources beyond their own mysterious and untrained magic...
Untrained. Hanner thought about that for a moment.
“Uncle,” he said as Manrin and Ulpen started toward the stairs, and Faran turned to follow them.
Faran turned back to his nephew. “Yes?”
“I think that you had best leave the wizardry to the wizards— but if you’re expecting a confrontation, shouldn’t you find out just what other resources we have?”
“We have a houseful of warlocks,” Faran said.
“Yes, but shouldn’t you find outhow many warlocks, and what they can do? We really don’t know what they’re capable of.” He waved at Rudhira. “They can’tall stop a dozen guardsmen in their tracks the way she can- but some of them may be able to do other things.”
Faran looked at Hanner, then around at the clustered warlocks listening in, then wistfully at Manrin and Ulpen as they mounted the stairs.
“You’re right,” he said. “We should do that. Better an army than a mob, eh?” He gestured and called, “All right, everyone! Into the dining hall, so we can see just who we have here.”
As the crowd began to move in the indicated direction someone knocked on the door, the rapping barely audible over the shuffling feet. Hanner looked at Faran.
They could both hear shouting out in the street, but it was not close to the door.
Faran looked at Rudhira, who brushed her hair back from her face and said, “I’m ready.”
Hanner bit his lower lip. Faran and Rudhira obviously thought there might be another enemy out there, but Hanner thought it far more likely it was either Bern, his hands too full of groceries to work the latch, or another warlock arriving.
But there were those people who hung around, watching. It was probably just as well to have Rudhira ready to use her war-lockry to defend the house.
Faran nodded, and Hanner opened the door.
The shouting was suddenly louder, and for the first time Hanner made out words.
“Where’s my husband? What did you warlocks do with him?” a woman was shrieking.
She was not at the door, though, nor anywhere near it. The shouters were all outside the fence, on the street. The only personinside the fence was a black-haired girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, wearing a drab grey dress. She stood in the dooryard just outside, her knuckles raised to knock again.
Rudhira made a derisive little snort and turned away.
Hanner was annoyed by this rudeness and determined to make up for it. “Good afternoon to you,” he said. “I’m Lord Hanner; may I help you?”
