“This is going to cost me points,” Leif said.
“It’s in a good cause. Oh, come on, Leif. I’ll transfer you some points to cover what we use! I’m not short of score myself.”
“Okay,” Leif said. “Let’s get as close as we can, though. The great hall here is where?”
“In the central keep, I’m pretty sure.”
As casually as they could, they finished their drinks, paid their bill, and headed out into the tiny lane, chatting in a way they hoped would sound normal. It was quiet people moving through the dark who would attract attention on a night like this. “If they’re both in there,” said Leif, “we’re in business.”
“
Around its open front door were gathered what looked like part of several companies of bodyguards, drinking out of good metal cups and talking quietly while looking around them with at least some semblance of alertness. Most of them wore colored surcoats over their armor, and almost all of them had someone’s badge embroidered on the surcoat-breast. They looked at Megan and Leif with only mild interest as they passed by, heading for the shadows off to the side of the keep, where a narrow road ran deeper into the city. As Megan passed, she got the briefest glance through the big door of what was going on inside: a whirl of color, voices muttering and echoing off the room’s high ceiling, huge tapestries at the back of the room moving slightly in breezes from the high slit- windows they concealed.
Leif picked a spot just around the front corner of the keep, where the torchlight didn’t fall, and felt around in one of his pockets. “Game interaction,” he whispered to the air.
Megan felt the slight vibration in the air that told her the games computer was speaking to Leif so as not to be heard by anyone else. “Points transfer,” he said. “Invisibility. Locus for two.” He paused, and his eyebrows went up. He looked at Megan. “Do you know how much this is going to—”
“I don’t care, as long as it’s not more than three thousand,” she said, “because that’s about all the points I’ve got.”
“Oh, no, it’s only two hundred.”
“Fine. Game interaction,” she whispered.
“Listening,” said the computer softly in her ear.
“Transfer two hundred points to Leif.”
“Done.”
“Finished.”
“Okay,” Leif said. “You know how this works?”
“Generally.”
“Don’t get between anybody’s line of sight and a strong light source,” he said. “Fortunately, it’s going to be mostly just torches in there. Stay close to the walls, that’s the best way, and if you do have to cross in front of light, do it low. Keep your voice real low. The locus amplifies sound. And for Rod’s sake don’t bump into anybody.”
“Right.”
“Game intervention,” Leif said.
A brief silence. “Invisibility locus,” Leif said.
Suddenly everything was buzzing, and her skin itched. Megan looked around her. Everything else was normal, but when she lifted her hands in front of her eyes, she couldn’t see them.
She turned, and found that she couldn’t see Leif either. This was a side effect that she hadn’t quite anticipated for some reason. “Okay,” said his voice nearby, sounding unnaturally loud. “Look, I’m going to head in through the front door when the guards aren’t paying too much attention to the space between them, and there’s no one else going in or out. You do the same. Then I’ll make for the nearest hiding place on the right side. You do the same, but cut left. Circulate for a while. Then pick out the biggest tapestry in the place and get behind it. I’ll let the invisibility relax while we’re there — it’s a strain holding it too long.”
“Okay. But what if there’s somebody behind the biggest tapestry already?”
“Pick the next biggest. And pray it isn’t occupied, too.”
They made cautiously for the big front door. Megan had to dodge quickly a couple of times as people brushed past her, nearly touching her. She had to do it a few times more as she stood in front of the open door, waiting for her moment. But finally there came a period of a few seconds when no one was going in or out, and the soldiers guarding the door were both looking in opposite directions.
She slipped in, bumping against something she couldn’t see: Leif. It took her a moment to recover from the shock, and then she was through the door, ducking out of the way of an elegantly dressed nobleman who was coming right toward her. She held still just long enough to scan the room quickly. It was a nobly decorated place, for a chamber that had started out as just four bare walls and a lot of holes to put ceiling-joists in. Now there was a permanent ceiling, instead of the temporary one that would have been there when the keep was built strictly for defense. Tall white polished pillars had been installed down the length of the room. A large patterned red-and-blue carpet ran down the middle of the room, and the skins of various beasts, mostly sheepskins, were scattered over by the far walls, where the tapestries hung to cover the bare stone and keep the drafts out. In the center of the room, people were scattered all over, mostly in small knots of three or four, drinking and talking. Down at the end of the room, in front of the biggest tapestry, was a dais — one hardly worthy of the name, really. It only went up one step, and on it was a white chair. The chair was empty.
That chair spoke, possibly more eloquently than anything else, of the situation here. The city of Minsar had no real owner now: not since Shel was gone. Now its great hall was full of potential owners…people who were looking over the real estate on the assumption that its former owner might very well not come back — or might not come back in time to keep one of them from moving in — and some of whom were not what a real-estate agent would have called “time wasters.”
Megan looked around as she made her way cautiously over toward the left wall and pressed herself up against it to get her breath for a moment, and try to shake some of the buzzing out of her ears. She considered that there might be a bad time coming for Minsar. Unless the city could find itself a powerful protector, and soon, it would shortly find one or another of these people at its door, in front of an army, and the message being delivered would be: “Accept us as ‘protectors’…or lose what you’ve got.” There was a chance that its potential protector was somewhere in this crowd; that, Megan suspected, was why this party was being held. No city wanted to be on the outs with its new owner, or to be accused of having offered him or her inadequate hospitality, after the dust had settled.
She looked around the hall to determine which was the biggest tapestry. That was the one behind the throne: no way around it. At least no one seemed to be gathering there. A lot of people were looking at that throne, from a distance, but no one was going too near it.
She stepped out cautiously and made her way slowly along the left-hand side of the hall toward the dais, listening carefully as she went. Up ahead of her was a big spread of food laid out on a U-shaped array of tables, and the noble guests were in the process of descending on the buffet as if they hadn’t eaten in days. Strolling among them, trying to look casual — or so Megan thought — was a man fairly plainly dressed in dark gray, but with a thick golden chain around his neck, its links the size of fists.
He was the mayor of the town, the only statutory authority left in Minsar now that Shel was missing. To Megan’s eyes, the man had a rather harried expression, despite his casual air; he was watching the guests with a look that suggested he wasn’t sure whether some kind of fight over his town might not break out right here. Fortunately, there was no sign of this. Megan looked around at the nobles and high-caste warriors eating and drinking Minsar’s food, and thought she saw people mostly intent on taking advantage of a good feed. What she didn’t see, though, was the kind of clustering or circling of people that suggested that someone really important was there. She had learned to look for such small status-oriented gatherings, having come to recognize them from the occasional cocktail party her mother and father hosted. The rule was that the most important person at a party inevitably became the center of such bunches, though the people in the “bunch” might cycle as the party went on. The other rule was that sooner or later, everybody ended up in the kitchen…though here, that was unlikely. The kitchen was strictly for the servants.
She passed as close to the buffet as she dared, listening hard, not daring to linger too close for fear someone should bump into her. It was dangerous business, invisibility. There were players who would react to feeling
