had crawled up the pilings in the harbor. 'Then my hair caught fire! And my clothes, too. I was burning up!'
Zaranda stared at him.
He dropped his eyes. 'Well,' he said, 'I was smoking pretty good. Feh.' He spat out muck.
'It's time we paid her back for her tricks!' cried somebody from the back of the small mob. The others growled assent-an ugly sound, though without any perceptible move to put it into effect.
'What's your name, girl?' Zaranda asked.
'Scab.'
'How attractive. Did you really do that to him?'
She nodded. 'I woke up to find him pawing me as I slept in the a-s-straw!' The dam of her defiance burst, and her face flooded with tears.
Beyond her sobbing, the silence in the alley grew even thicker than the fog.
'No, child,' Zaranda Star said for what felt like the hundredth time. 'I don't need an apprentice. Besides, it's not exactly healthy to be in my vicinity at the best of times, and these are far from that.'
Scab stuck out her underlip in a truly impressive pout. Zaranda said nothing. The girl produced a tremor in the projecting lip, and when that elicited no more response, a shine of moisture appeared in an eye visible between clumps of dirty hair.
They sat on the steps of what had once been a fine residence of green granite blocks, between a pair of stone guardian beasts that had long since weathered to couch-shaped lumps. The building had been converted to a carpet warehouse; the arched doorway at her back was bricked over. Zaranda had her long trouser-clad legs drawn up before her and her arms around her knees, and, still ignoring her companion, gazed off across the Carpet Mart.
The sun was high in the sky. The broad plaza, flagged in yellow sandstone worn to a shiny and treacherous polish by generations of feet, was dotted with the rug merchants' kiosks, hung like flags with their colorful wares. Despite the troubles, buyers still flocked to Zazesspur from the north of Faerun to purchase excellent Tethyrian wool carpets, as they did to buy the finely finished furniture and cabinetry for which Zaz itself was famous. Myratma was better known for other textiles; but Zazesspur was the place for rugs.
Of course, the buyers would go back home with lurid tales of having purchased their wares from camelback, from hawk-faced bearded men with flowing robes and headcloths, and would sell them as 'Calimshite' rugs. In fact Calimshite silk rugs, though pretty, were inferior in craftsmanship and durability to Tethyrian wool carpets; the real gems of the great bazaar in Calimport were silken rugs from far Zakhara-wondrous indeed, if of the nonflying variety, since the Zakharans exported few of their magic carpets willingly. Still, to most of the folk of the Heartlands and farther north, all fine rugs from the South were Calimshite, and that was that, just as Amn and Tethyr were called Empires of the Sands, in spite of not having any sand to speak of. People are like that, and not just on Toril.
Still avoiding Scab's piteous gaze, Zaranda sighed and stretched. It had been an eventful morning.
When Zaranda and her self-proclaimed charge arrived, a brief but vigorous skirmish had been in progress between some of Earl Ravenak's bullyboys and a patrol of civic guard blue-and-bronzes armed with iron-shod cudgels, evidently bribed by the carpet merchants to take an interest in Hairhead doings, which they were notorious for overlooking. The square had subsequently hosted two outbreaks, a jostling, and a battle royal among the colorfully caparisoned retainers of the various city council members. The last of these, from which the rug merchants were just finished righting kiosks and dusting off rugs knocked sprawling by the festivities, had pitted the minions of Anakul the Just against the goons of Jinjivar the Sorcerer.
Anakul was something of an oddity: a professed devotee of evil who, though he wore the silver wrist-chains of Cyric, used as his personal symbol the black hand on red field of dead Bane. Even for Zazesspur in the years after the monarchy's overthrow, it might seem a little much to have a man who was openly nostalgic for Bane on the ruling council, but so obsessive was Anakul in his zeal for order and the rule of law that he was widely known as one of the most honest men in the city. It was said that he only cheated you if he had the full force of law on his side, justifying his only half-sardonic nickname. Of course, not even his passion for order prevented him from employing a robust corps of head-knockers. That was sheer survival.
Jinjivar the Sorcerer didn't hire head-knockers, as far as anyone knew, though he paid claques to spread rumors in the streets about his magic prowess. The son of a Calim Desert chieftain and-again, he claimed- the pasha's daughter by a concubine, Jinjivar had grown to adulthood among the nomads. He still maintained many contacts in his homeland, and though Tethyrians tended to disdain handiwork other than their own, had grown rich selling them magical and fanciful doodads for which their neighbors to the south, were known, such as sand-clocks that turned themselves and brooms that swept of their own accord. Since his men wore blue and purple while Anakul's livery was the black and red of Bane, the latter conflict had been particularly trying for Zaranda's eyes.
The one thing Zaranda hadn't seen was any sign of the one-armed man. You've done it this time, her internal voice chided. You stuck your nose where it didn't belong and went saving the world again, and now you've lost your chance to regain your goods.
Scab emitted a sigh so gusty that she must have almost burst herself drawing in the air for it. 'That's it, then,' she announced in doom-filled tones. 'If you won't take me as your apprentice, I shall stop eating and starve myself to death. Quicker in the long run.'
Despite growing disappointment and desperation, Zaranda had to press her lips hard together to keep from smiling. 'Come, now. Surely it's not so bad as that.'
'Yes, it is. I'm an orphan. I have no home. I can't work or sleep at the stable anymore, and no one will apprentice me. Death is all that remains.'
Zaranda frowned and rubbed her chin. To be sure, the girl was in a hard way. It's no concern of yours, the voice inside her said. Sometimes that voice seemed to represent good sense-sounding not unlike Goldie, in fact-and other times something darker. Just now she had to admit the truth of what it said. Yet there was something about this girl that drew her.
'Why can't you keep an apprenticeship?' she asked.
The girl drew her head down between the shoulders of her burlap smock, which seemed to have as much filth and grease in it as jute. It had taken all of Zaranda's skill at maneuvering to get the girl to sit downwind of her, and the occasional shift in the wind's direction still made her wince.
'Come now,' Zaranda said in response to Scab's mumble. 'You can't expect me to consider taking you on if you won't be candid with me.'
'Things… happen,' the girl said, as if the words were being drawn from her on a rope knotted bigger than her throat.
''Things'?'
'Like what happened at the stable. Strange things… magic things, I guess.'
'Like spells?'
The girl shook her head. She had lowered her face, and tears dripped from beneath the obscuring curtain of her hair. 'No. I only know one or two spells, little things. That's all I've ever had time to learn.'
'Then what?'
'I don't know. I get worried, or scared, or mad, and things just happen. Then I get sent away again. I can't control it. That's why I want to study magic. So I can figure out what's happening to me.'
She raised her head and looked at Zaranda through lakes of tears. 'It's just as well this way. You'd just get mad and send me away too!'
No, girl! the voice in Zaranda's head cried. Not a challenge!
She surveyed the square a final time. No sign of a one-armed man or anyone taking interest, undue or otherwise, in the tall swordswoman and her scruffy companion. She had missed the one-armed man-if indeed he ever existed.
From an alley debouching onto the north side of the square issued a party of shaggy youths in black and brown: Earl Ravenak's toughs. Merchants and buyers scattered as the youths marched determinedly upon a Hedgeblossom crowd, brandishing cudgels and steel-singing lengths of chain.
Zaranda stood. It was time to admit she had come on a fool's errand and get on with her business. Indeed, the vague outlines of a plan were taking shape in her mind. She would still take what steps she could to regain her
