“And if she does notice?” Regin asked.
“Then we’ll have to hope another bit of luck leads us to her again.”
Regin nodded, then looked at Sonea. She shrugged. “Not much else we can do for now. If anyone can find her again, Cery will.”
Cery felt a flush of pleasure, followed by a niggling anxiety that she might be wrong. He had spotted the rogue by chance. It might not be so easy to find her again. The four of them moved around the room quickly, making sure everything was in order, then left the way they had come. Sonea relocked the front door with magic. They slipped out the back way. Once in the main street again, they exchanged glances but remained silent. The two magicians raised hands in farewell before they walked away. Cery and Gol returned to the empty shopkeeper’s house.
“Well, that was disappointing,” Gol said.
“Yes,” Cery agreed.
“Do you think the rogue will come back?”
“No. She’ll have had something set up to tell her if anyone came visiting.”
“So what do we do next?”
“Watch and hope I’m wrong.” He looked around the room. “And find out when the owner of this place is due back. We don’t want to scare him and his family half to death at finding a Thief in his house.”
The slave master looked surprised to see Dannyl and Ashaki Achati, before he threw himself to the ground at their feet. His surprise was not because a powerful Sachakan and Kyralian magician had come visiting. The estate had been expecting them, or someone, to arrive.
“You came faster than we hoped,” the big man said when Achati explained that they were looking for an escaped female slave and a Kyralian man dressed as a slave.
“You have seen the pair I described?” Achati asked.
“Yes. Two nights ago. One of the slaves thought they were people we’d been warned about, and when we came to question them they had run away.”
“Did you search for them?”
“No.” The man bowed his head. “We were warned they were magicians, and that only magicians could catch them.”
“Who gave you this warning?”
“The master, in a message.”
“When did the message arrive?”
“A day before the pair arrived here.”
Achati glanced at Dannyl, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“How long ago did you send your message warning your master of their appearance here?”
“Two nights ago – straight after they disappeared.”
Achati turned to Dannyl. “If he is on his way he won’t arrive for another day, even if he rides rather than taking a carriage. I’m afraid we’ll have to wait. I don’t have the authority to read the minds of another man’s slaves.”
“Do you have the authority to question them?” Dannyl asked.
The magician frowned. “There is no custom or law preventing me. Or you.”
“Then let’s question them.”
Achati smiled. “We’ll do it your way? Why not?” He chuckled. “If you do not mind, I would like to watch and learn from you. I would not know what questions to ask that might trick a slave into revealing more than he or she wanted to.”
“There really isn’t any trickery involved,” Dannyl assured him.
“Which do you want to question first?”
“This man, and anyone who saw Lorkin and Tyvara. And most of all, the slave who saw them and thought they might be the people they’d been warned about.” Dannyl drew out his notebook and looked at the slave master. “And I need a room – nothing fancy – where I can question them alone without others overhearing.”
The man looked from Dannyl to Achati uncertainly.
“Arrange it,” Achati ordered. As the man hurried away, the Sachakan magician turned to smile crookedly at Dannyl. “You really must learn to phrase your requests as orders, Ambassador Dannyl.”
“You have the greater authority here,” Dannyl replied. “And I am a foreigner. It would be rude of me to assume I could take control.”
Achati looked at him thoughtfully, then shrugged. “I suppose you are right.”
The slave master returned and then led them into the building to a small room that smelled of grain. The floor was covered in a fine dust patterned with the sweeping grooves of a broom. Particles hung in the beams of sunlight streaming in from a high window. Two chairs had been placed under the window.
“Well, it’s definitely not fancy,” Achati said, not hiding his amusement.
“Where would you suggest we question them?” Dannyl asked.
Achati sighed. “I guess it would be presumptuous if we’d questioned them in the Master’s Room, and guest rooms would have made it obvious we aren’t in charge here. No, I suppose this is an appropriate setting.” He moved to one of the chairs and sat down.
Dannyl took the other seat, then ordered the slave master to enter. The man related how two slaves had arrived with an empty cart, the male apparently new but lacking in muscle for a delivery slave, and the woman there to show him the route. While they’d loaded the cart one of the kitchen slaves had suggested to him that the pair might be the people they’d been warned to watch out for. She suggested drugging their food, as they would be less dangerous asleep.
At the mention of drugged food, Dannyl had to hide his dismay. Fortunately Lorkin and Tyvara hadn’t fallen for the trap. They’d slipped away.
He then questioned the woman who had suspected the pair weren’t who they said they were. As she entered the room, Dannyl noted that her gaze was sharp, though she gave him only one quick look before bowing her head and prostrating herself. He told her to get up, and she kept her gaze lowered.
Her explanation matched the slave master’s, including the contents of the message warning of two dangerous magicians posing as slaves.
“What made you think they were the people you’d been warned about?” Dannyl asked her.
“They were as described. A tall man with pale skin and a shorter Sachakan female.”
Had the dye worn off, or was this woman feeding him the information she thought he expected?
“Tall, short, male, female – none of these things would make them stand out from other slaves surely. What made you notice they were different?”
The woman’s gaze, fixed on the floor, flickered. “The way they moved and talked. Like they weren’t used to following orders.”
So not the pale skin. Dannyl paused, writing down her answer as he considered what to ask next. Perhaps it was time to be more direct.
“A slave I spoke to a few days ago thought the woman was a Traitor and that they mean to kill the man she has abducted. Do you think it likely they will kill him?”
The woman was very still as she answered.
“No.”
“Do you know of the Traitors?”
“Yes. Every slave does.”
“Why do you believe it is unlikely the Traitors intend to kill the man?”
“Because if they wanted him dead they would have killed him, not abducted him.”
“What do you think they intend to do with him then?”
She shook her head. “I am only a slave. I do not know.”
