Then a thought struck her. Spriggans were drawn to wizardry. Presumably that meant that they could sense wizardry, and the bench was enchanted. She turned her head and stared at the spriggan on her shoulder.
“Oooh!” it said. “Pretty eyes.” It grinned.
Kilisha blinked again. No one had ever told her she had pretty eyes before, and she wondered whether it was the spriggan half of the creature’s personality, or the Ithanalin half, that had spoken.
But it didn’t matter. “Do you know which way the bench went?” she asked.
“Oh, yes!” it said happily. “Down, down down! With spnggans.”
She was sure, now, that Hillside was farther up; then it hadn’t been looking for Ithanalin’s customer. Winding up on Steep Street had just been a coincidence. “Why didn’t you say so sooner?” she demanded angrily.
“Didn’t ask,” the creature replied.
“Augh!” She had no intention of riding the chair down the steps of Steep Street; she got up, carefully keeping a solid hold with one hand. She looked down the slope and reached to pick up the chair again.
Her muscles ached at the very thought.
“No,” she said-and then she belatedly remembered that she had come equipped. She reached up and slid the coil of rope from her shoulder.
As she snugged the first knot down tight against one of the two slats in the seat back she prayed to whatever gods might be listening that none of the essence of Ithanalin’s athame had wound up in the chair.
Her prayers appeared to have been answered; a moment later one end of the rope was securely tied to the chair, the other end wrapped around her wrist, with no indication that the chair could escape as the spriggan had.
She set the spriggan on the seat of the chair and said, “Ride there for a while; my shoulder’s tired.”
“Yes, yes!” the spriggan said. “Ride chair.”
The chair did not seem happy with this; it tried to pull away, but Kilisha tugged on the rope.
“It’s just for a little while,” she said. “It won’t hurt you; you share the same soul.” Then she straightened up and looked down Steep Street.
The bench had had plenty of time to build up a lead by now, but she didn’t see where it could have gone. Two blocks down Steep Street would bring them to Old Seagate Street and the foot of the cliffs. If it had doubled back to the east Kelder might well have seen it and caught it; if it had turned west again the road wound its way up to the Fortress in no more than a quarter of a mile. She set out down the steps at a steady trot, trailing the rope behind her.
The chair hesitated, then followed, keeping a comfortable slack in the line.
Half a block from the corner Steep Street straightened out, and she could see the ocean ahead, sparkling in the afternoon sun. She smiled at the sight; then her smile vanished as a horrible thought struck her.
What if trie bench had dived off into the sea?
It couldn’t drown, not being capable of breathing in the first place, but she would never find it if it were underwater!
And that assumed the waves hadn’t pounded it to bits against the rocks, and the tide hadn’t swept it out of reach of land.
Well, she told herself, she would just have to hope it hadn’t done anything so foolish. Even if it thought it would survive a plunge into the sea, salt water would ruin its finish, and surely it would realize that.
She crossed the intersection with Straight Street, pausing just long enough to glance in both directions. Straight Street was not level, but it was straight; to the right she could see right up the slope to the east door of the Fortress, the massive structure’s gray stone walls blocking out the western sky at the end of the street. To the left she could see down past houses and shops and warehouses into the shipyards.
She saw a few people going about their business on the shipyard side, but no ambulatory bench. She continued on down Steep Street without stopping-until she heard a sudden clatter behind her and felt the rope go slack.
She turned to see that the chair had tumbled down several steps, dumping the spriggan. The little creature now yelped, “Sorry sorry sorry!”
Kilisha couldn’t be sure what had happened, but she supposed the spriggan had moved at the wrong time and thrown the chair off balance on the steep steps. She hurried back up and righted the chair, petting it on the back.
“There, there,” she said. “I’m sorry. These steps must be hard for you!”
The chair tapped a leg, just once.
Then she looked for the spriggan, and spotted it two steps up.
“Hop back on,” she said, gesturing toward the chair.
“Don’t want to,” it said, thrusting out what would have been its lower lip if spriggans had actual lips. “Too bumpy!”
Kilisha glared at it. “Get on the chair!” she growled.
The spriggan took a step back, but crossed its arms across its chest and said, “No.”
Kilisha glowered, hoping that Ithanalin wouldn’t remember any of this when he was restored to himself.
“All right,” she said. “Get back on my shoulder, then.” She held out her arm.
The spriggan cheered up instantly and hurried up her arm, settling comfortably on her shoulder, one hand clutching her hair. Once it was securely in place she once again headed down Steep Street, being careful not to go fast enough to overbalance the chair again.
The odd little party reached the corner of Old Seagate Street without further incident. Kilisha hurried across to the far side, where the land dropped away to the sea.
At the moment the tide was mostly in, so most of the rocks at the foot of the fifteen-foot drop were partially submerged. Waves were breaking noisily across the exposed stone, sending plumes of spray into the air, and a few stubborn tufts of seaweed washed back and forth across the broken rock.
If the bench had plunged down there it would have landed on rocks, not open water. It might have survived such a fall and scrambled on to open water, but Kilisha doubted it would have any reason to...
And then a thought struck her. The bench was wood. Heavy oak, yes, but still wood. It wouldn’t sink to the bottom, out of sight; it would float.
She shaded her eyes and peered out to sea, and saw no sign of a drifting bench or anything like one. She could sec ships at the piers of Seagate, and another at sea rounding Seagate Head, and in the distance beyond the headland, almost lost in haze and spray, she thought she could see the masts of more ships docked in South-port- though those last might have just been her imagination.
But she didn’t see the bench.
She looked down Old Seagate Street, where it wound its way down the rocky verge toward the Fortress Docks and the shipyards; for once the curvature of the road favored her, so that she could see past the two docks and almost to the Throat. A crowd of men was hauling on ropes, securing a barge to the nearer of the docks, and a few other people were watching this labor, but she did not see the bench.
A guardsman was coming up the street past the docks, the mustard yellow tunic and blood red kilt unmistakable even at this distance, but she wasted no time trying to determine whether this was Kelder or someone else. She turned the other way, to where Old Seagate Street zigzagged up the rocky slope toward the Fortress.
The cliffs loomed above her, and the Fortress loomed above the cliffs. From her current position most of it was hidden behind the shops and warehouses that lined the inland side of Old Seagate Street, but the southern end thrust out from behind the other buildings, a sheer wall of sunlit gray stone that seemed to tower impossibly high into the western sky.
She did not see the bench-but because of the twisting course of the street, that did not mean much. The bench could easily be somewhere around one of the several curves.
She turned to the spriggan on her shoulder. “The bench went that way, up toward the Fortress, didn’t it?” She had to shout to be heard over the crashing of the waves.
“Don’t know,” the spriggan said.
