Frank Tuttle - All the Paths of Shadow

The man turned and began to walk back toward the walk and the child. Meralda watched the far-off kite for a moment, expecting it to plummet at any moment. It remained aloft, straining at the string, snapping faintly from high above.

Meralda hung another thread by the time the man reached the child, who still danced with glee. The cabbies rose to their feet and gave the small man a final round of cheers and hoots. The man halted, bowed to the cabbies, placed the string gravely in the boy’s hand, and patted the child’s head once before the lad darted away, kite string in hand.

After a moment, the man put his hands in his pockets, turned his back to the Tower, and ambled away, alone on the walk.

Meralda watched him go while her wand recharged. Soon he reached the Old Oaks, and vanished beneath them, swallowed up by the distance and the dark beneath the boughs.

“What are you mooning about?” said Mug.

“Nothing,” said Meralda, turning back toward her makeshift work bench and Mug. “Just catching my breath.”

“Hmmph,” said Mug. He strained to lift a pair of green eyes over the rail.

Meralda ignored him, and hung another thread.

“That should be most of the primary latchwork,” said Mug, when she was done. “Good thing, too. Six bells.”

Meralda lifted an eyebrow. “Six o’clock? Already?”

“Time flies,” said Mug. Meralda hadn’t heard the Big Bell ring, but she realized Mug was right. The Tower’s shadow had engulfed the stands, and the air had gone damp and cool. I’ll do well to latch to the Tower today, Meralda realized, with a frown. The refractors will have to wait.

Her stomach growled. She walked to the head of the stair and shouted down to Kervis. “Guardsman,” she said, above the din. “Bring up a biscuit, will you?”

Kervis nodded and darted up. “Here you are,” he said, halting just below the top, a paper-wrapped biscuit held forth. “Nearly done, Thaumaturge?”

Meralda took the biscuit. “Nearly so,” she said. Kervis nodded in relief.

A crowd had gathered at the foot of the stair, and Meralda was surprised at how closely they pressed about Tervis. “Has it been like this long?” she asked, with a nod toward the ground.

Kervis sighed. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “Half of ’em are penswifts. We’d like to have knocked a few heads when they decided they could just shove on past,” he said. “The other half are aldermen and civilian Street Watch volunteers,” he said, lowering his voice. “They want to talk about the haint.”

“The haunt,” corrected Meralda, automatically.

Kervis tilted his head. “I told them they wouldn’t be allowed to waste your time talking about such nonsense. I hope that was the right thing to say.”

“Keep saying it. Maybe they’ll listen, sooner or later.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Kervis glanced down. Tervis had been forced by the press of the crowd to retreat a step up the stair.

“I’d better get back,” said Kervis. “Don’t worry about leaving. We sent for help, to get you through the crowd.”

“Thank you,” said Meralda. Kervis nodded and darted down the stair, bellowing.

When Meralda turned, she found Mug’s eyes upon her. “Did you hear?”

“I heard,” he said. “The Post will just make up whatever it is they think you aren’t telling them.”

Meralda tore the paper wrapping from her biscuit. “Do you suppose,” she asked, wearily, “that, before the Accords are done, every storied childhood boogie from every one of the Five Realms will put in an appearance?”

“Sooner or later,” said Mug, cheerfully. “It’s the dragon I’m looking forward to the most.”

Meralda took a bite, marched back to her worktable, and set about hanging the last few threads of the latch.

Meralda lifted her hands, touched the ice-rimed ends of two fat copper wands together, and unleashed the latching spell with a long, loud word.

The spell leaped. Meralda watched it go. To her second sight, it appeared as though an enormous blob composed of tangled, luminous spider’s webs wobbled and darted through the air, rising up against the Tower’s bulk to seek out the Wizard’s Flat.

Meralda looked up and up, craning her head as the latch ascended. Mug’s eyes followed as well, and he began to count aloud.

“One, two, three, four…”

The spell reached the top of the Tower, surrounding the flat. The glowing threads lashed about, flattening into a fat circular disk centered on the top of the flat like the brim of a hat.

“…five, six…”

The hat brim spun, faster and faster, threads straightening and elongating at right angles to the Tower’s axis until the spell was a flat, red-edged blur. Then, with a flash, it vanished.

“…seven.”

The wands in Meralda’s hand went icy cold.

“And done,” said Meralda. She watched for a moment, but the spell remained latched. At last she lowered her face, and met Mug’s gaze.

“Not just done, but well done,” said Mug. “You do realize that you’re the first mage to latch a work to the Tower in the last four hundred years.”

Meralda yawned. She couldn’t stop herself. Weariness fell hard upon her as the latch sailed skyward. Weariness, and a sudden urgent longing for a water closet.

Mug chuckled. “I see,” he said. “I suppose you’re open to my suggestion that we pack up and go home. Even if you hung a refractor tonight, you’d not know if it worked until the morning.”

“Home it is,” said Meralda. She leaned over the rail, cast a despairing eye upon the close-packed crowds still gathered at the foot of the Tower. Waiting for the lights, she thought. Waiting for the shade of dread Otrinvion.

“At least the captain can blame any lights tonight on me,” she said, dreading the walk through the mob.

“I’ve kept a pair of eyes on the flat, but haven’t seen any yet,” said Mug. “But, if our spook sticks to strict ghostly custom, they won’t start until midnight or after. He’s a traditionalist, our Otrinvion. None of these contemporary early evening haunting practices for him, no, ma’am.”

Meralda looked up from the shadowed crowds below, and sought out the flat again. The Tower sulked against a sky gone nearly dark. No stars were out yet, but they would be, and soon.

Meralda thought about the empty space within the Tower, and the darkness on the stair, and she shivered and looked away.

“Let’s go home,” she said, briskly. “Reasonable people don’t stand in the dark and gawk at empty rooms.”

“Indeed not,” said Mug, as Meralda folded papers. “They go home, and read about it the next morning.”

Meralda wrapped her wands with thick cotton pads and shoved them in the bag, well away from the holdstones. “Only if one takes the Post ,” she said. The spent Riggin bottles, which still glowed faintly, went in next. “One wonders what they’ll print when the lights stop and the Hang go home.”

Mug tossed his leaves. “The haunted Tower ought to be good through First Snow.”

Meralda grabbed and shoved and packed until the guild work table was bare. She slung the bag over her shoulder and prepared Mug’s cage and sheet.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” replied Mug. Meralda gently lifted him from the table and made for the stair. “Tervis,” she called, at the first tread. “A hand, please.”

Tervis clambered up the stair. “Coming, ma’am,” he called.

“Take Mug, if you will,” said Meralda.

Tervis reached the top, and carefully took the bird cage handle from Meralda. “There’s a man waiting to see you at the bottom,” said Tervis, in a whisper. “He won’t say who he is, but we think he’s a penswift.”