Across the room his small pretty wife, Esme, was struggling to carry a huge frothy pitcher of ale. Two men were pushing and shoving each other for the honor of carrying it for her. Just beyond them, leaning back on a rough bench with her shoulders against the wall, Sparthera was laughing and yelling at the two combatants.
Sparthera. Bayram Ali grinned broadly. The slim young thief was just what he had in mind. She was daring without being reckless, and had no morals to speak of. They had made more than one bargain in the past.
He pushed his way across the room, pausing to grab up the pitcher his wife was carrying and slam it down in front of a customer. He knocked the combatants’ heads together, sending them into hysterical laughter, and sent Esme back to the kitchen with a hearty slap on her firm round backside.
“Ay, Sparthera!”
The thief laughed up at him. She was finely built and slender, with a tangled mass of tawny hair and high firm breasts. Her large hazel eyes were set wide over a short straight nose and full red lips.
“Well, Bayram Ali, have you come over to knock my head against something too?” She hooked her thumbs in the belt of her leather jerkin and stretched out a pair of lean leather-clad legs.
“No, little thief. I wondered if you had noticed a certain stranger among my guests.”
“Oh?” She had lost the smile.
Bayram Ali sat down on the bench next to her and lowered his voice. “A smooth-skinned man from the East, with bulging saddlebags. His name is Sung Ko Ja. Old Kasan says he came riding a unicorn, with the beast’s horn cut off to disguise it.”
“A sorcerer!” Sparthera shook her head firmly. “No. I’d as soon try to rob the statue of Khulm. I don’t want anything to do with sorcerers.”
“Oh, I hardly think he’s a sorcerer,” the innkeeper said soothingly. “No more than a magician, if that. A sorcerer wouldn’t need to disguise anything. This man is trying to avoid drawing attention to himself. He must have something a thief would want, hmm?”
Sparthera frowned and thought for a moment. No need to ask the terms of the bargain. It would be equal shares, and cheating was expected. “All right. When he comes down to the common room for dinner, or goes out to the privy, let me know. I’ll go up and look around his room.”
It was several hours before Sung Ko Ja came back down the stairs. The sun was just setting and Esme and her buxom daughters were beginning to serve the evening meal. Sparthera was sitting at one of the small tables near the kitchen door. Bayram Ali brushed by her with a pot of stew.
“That’s the one,” he whispered. “With the slanted eyes. His room is the third on the left.”
Only Sparthera’s eyes moved. Around forty, she thought, and distinctly foreign: round of face, but not fat, with old-ivory skin and dark almond eyes, and the manner of a lord. He seemed to be settling in for dinner. Good.
Sparthera moved quickly up the stairs and along the hall, counting doors. The third door didn’t move when she pushed on the handle. She tried to throw her weight against it, and couldn’t; somehow she couldn’t find her balance.
A spell?
She went along to the end of the hall where one small window led out onto the first story roof. Outside, a scant two feet of slippery thatch separated the second story wall and a drop to the cobblestones in the stableyard.
The sun had set. The afterglow was bright enough to work in…perhaps not dark enough to hide her? But behind the inn were only fields, and those who had been seeding the fields were gone to their suppers. There was nobody to watch Sparthera work her way around to the window of the magician’s room.
The narrow opening was covered with oiled paper. She slit it neatly with the tip of the knife she always carried, and reached through. Or tried to. Something blocked her.
She pushed harder. She felt nothing, but her hand wouldn’t move.
She swung a fist at the paper window. Her hand stopped jarringly; and this time she felt her own muscles suddenly lock. Her own strength had stopped her swing.
She had no way to fight such magic. Sparthera hung from the roof by her hands and dropped the remaining four feet to the ground. She dusted herself off and re-entered the inn through the front.
Sung Ko Ja was still eating his meal of roast fowl, bread, and fruit. Bayram Ali was hovering around with one eye on the magician and the other on the stairs. Sparthera caught his eye.
He joined her. “Well?”
“I can’t get in. There’s a spell on the room.”
The innkeeper’s face fell, then he shrugged. “Pity.”
“I want very much to know what that man has that he thinks is so important.” She bit one finger and considered the ivory-skinned man dining peacefully on the other side of the room. “He doesn’t have the look of the ascetic. What do you think? Would he like a woman to keep him warm on such a cold night?”
“Sparthera, have you considered what you’re suggesting? My inn’s reputation is important to me. If I offer, you’ll…well. You’d have to do it.”
“Well?”
“The one time I myself made such a suggestion, you nearly cut my throat.”
“That was years ago. I was…it had been…I’d only just thrown that damned tinker out on his ear. I didn’t like men much just then. Besides, this is different. It’s business.”
Bayram Ali eyed her doubtfully. She was dressed more like a young boy than a woman. Still, the magician was a foreigner. Probably all of the local women looked odd to him. Bayram shrugged and pushed his way across the room.
Sung Ko Ja looked up.
The innkeeper smiled broadly. “The wine is good, eh?”
“Drinkable.”
“And the fowl?
