wouldn’t want the ambassador’s job, either. He looked down at the plates, both now empty. “Shall we head back to the house?” he asked. “There’s still plenty of unpacking to do.”
“No,” Lar said. “We came this way to eat for a reason. We’re going to the Wizards’ Quarter for a look around. And if our robed friend follows us, well, so be it.” He pushed back his chair and reached for his purse.
“As you please,” Emmis said. He didn’t see what visiting the Wizards’ Quarter at this hour would accomplish, but he was in no hurry to haul boxes hither and yon.
Together the two men ambled out the door of the inn, and turned south, toward the Arena. When they had gone half a block Emmis glanced back over his shoulder.
As he had expected, Hagai was following them, fifty feet back.
Chapter Seven
The Arena was unlit; the next show was not scheduled until the first of Newfrost, more than a sixnight away. Even so, Lar was visibly impressed by the vast dark shape that loomed above them as they passed.
The notice boards on the corners were lit, though, with two lanterns hung above each of them. They stood out all the better against the blackness behind them.
“What’s that?” Lar asked.
Emmis explained. “Didn’t you see the one in Shiphaven Market?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Lar admitted. “There was so much happening there!”
“Don’t they have notice boards in Vond?”
Lar shook his head. “Most people in the Small Kingdoms can’t read.” He looked at the tangle of messages and advertising tacked to the rough boards. “Do you think there might be anything there about warlocks?”
Emmis turned up a palm. “Openings for apprentices, perhaps.” He glanced over his shoulder at Hagai, who was hanging back, trying to blend with the other pedestrians and not doing a very good job of it. “Stopping to look would be awkward for our friend.”
Lar grimaced. “I wouldn’t want to be rude. Perhaps another time.” They strolled on past without stopping.
The incident got Emmis thinking as they walked, though. If Hagai was a witch, he ought to be able to do a better job of not being noticed. Witches could usually sense what other people were going to do before they did it; the good ones could allegedly actually hear people’s thoughts. If Hagai was a witch then he surely knew he had been spotted, but he was still pretending to be just another passerby.
So he probably wasn’t a witch.
He might be some other sort of magician, though.
Emmis wondered whether he should say any of this to Lar. The ambassador had said witches were fairly common back where he came from, though, so he ought to be able to figure it out for himself.
Or perhaps not. Just because witches were common didn’t mean Lar knew anything about them.
He had not reached a conclusion by the time they crossed Games Street five long blocks later.
“This is the Wizards’ Quarter,” he said. “The next cross-street is Wizard Street. Warlock Street is a little further on.”
“I see,” the Vondishman said, looking around with interest.
In most respects this stretch of Arena Street was much the same as the rest — a broad avenue of hard- packed dirt lined with three- and four-story buildings, most of them stone for one or two floors and half-timbered above, with tiled roofs and assorted gables and overhangs. Balconies were common but not universal. Large torches were mounted in brackets at every corner, providing light; Emmis knew the city guard replaced those daily, as they usually burned away to nothing somewhere between midnight and dawn. Many of the ground-floor doors had signboards or lanterns or both above them; many of the windows were big, many-paned things holding displays of one sort or another. Some were lit, while others were not — not every magician stayed open for business this late.
North of Games Street the window displays had generally been of fabrics, or furniture, or kitchenware, or other commonplace goods. Here, though, they were a little less ordinary. One window held strangely-shaped bottles of multi-colored liquids, while another displayed only a dusty stuffed dragon — a mere baby, perhaps seven feet from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail, and a wingspan Emmis judged to be no more than ten feet, though it was hard to be sure, since the wings weren’t extended. A third held nothing but a dinner plate that was inexplicably sending up an endless shower of sparks, a spray reaching perhaps a foot high, and that changed color every few seconds.
One did display kitchenware, in the form of a teapot and half a dozen cups, but the teapot was ambling about on stubby little china feet.
Several windows had no displays at all, just velvet curtains.
And some held cards listing spells offered for sale, often in runes so ornate they were hard to read. A few of these glowed without need of any visible light source. Lar stopped to read one of these cards, and Emmis stopped beside him.
It was a fairly modest list — Fendel’s Rune of Privacy, the Spell of the Spinning Coin, the Greater and Lesser Spells of Invaded Dreams, Eknerwal’s Preserving Spell, Fendel’s Infatuous Love Spell — concluding with, “and Many Diverse Others.”
“That’s a wizard’s shop?” Lar asked.
“Yes,” Emmis replied, even before looking up at the signboard over the door that announced, “Edarth of Ethshar, Master Wizard.”
“What about that?” The Vondishman pointed at a shop window illuminated by a glowing sphere about a foot in diameter. The globe was surrounded by a dozen gleaming constructions of crystal and metal ranging from a thumb-sized amulet to an open-work contraption the size of a large dog, none of them with any recognizable purpose.
“I think that’s a sorcerer,” Emmis said.
Lar stared for a moment, then turned away shaking his head. “We don’t have anything like that in Vond!”
The two of them continued down the street, with Emmis occasionally looking over his shoulder to be sure Hagai was still there, and soon reached the corner of Warlock Street.
“There it is,” Emmis said, gesturing.
Lar frowned. “It’s dark,” he said.
Emmis had to admit that he had a point; where about half the shops on Arena were lit, almost none on Warlock Street were. “I suppose they don’t want to work as late,” he said. “You know the proverb — working on Festival means good money but it’s bad advertising.”
“Bad what?”
“Advertising.” Emmis sighed. “I don’t know the word in any other languages. Signs, notices, things like that.”
Lar looked confused. “I don’t think that’s a proverb back in the empire,” he said. “At least, I can’t place it.”
“Maybe not.”
“And it isn’t Festival for months, so I don’t...”
“Never mind,” Emmis interrupted. “Just forget it. All I meant is, warlocks don’t seem to work late. I suppose they don’t need to; they don’t need to pay for any ingredients, or buy herbs, or appease any demons.”
“They still need to buy food and pay taxes, don’t they?”
Emmis grimaced. “Honestly, I’m not sure. There’s a rumor that warlocks can live on their magic, like someone with a wizard’s bloodstone, and if I were a tax collector I don’t think I’d press a reluctant warlock very hard.”
Lar’s expression changed. “And... well, they try not to use more magic than they must.”
“Yes. The more magic they use, the sooner they’re Called.”
Lar walked along Warlock Street and looked over the unlit signboards and darkened windows, with Emmis
