Тамора Пирс - Magic Steps

The tea was just cool enough to gulp. Sandry took a large swallow, then replied, "I'm sure the experience was good for you."

"Why do people always say too much work is good?" complained the boy. "I never thought so!"

"But you are lazy to the bone, my lad," replied Lark. "And that's one of my best friends you're calling a 'little monster. " She gave Sandry two thick pieces of bread with ham and a sliced-up tomato between them. Sandry ate gratefully.

"But she is a monster," Pasco argued. "She's trying to kill me." He helped himself to a slice of the iced cake that sat on a counter.

"Can you do that dance exactly?" Sandry wanted to know.

Pasco grinned, smug. "Yazmнn says if she puts a mark on the floor I can land on it on my toes ten times of ten. She says I have perfect body memory."

Sandry glanced at Lark, who winked at her. For someone who called her a monster, Pasco seemed very pleased by Yazmin's praise.

"You have to get it absolutely right," Sandry told Pasco solemnly. "You won't be able to see my net at all."

"I know? he said impatiently. "I've only been told a thousand times!"

"Actually, we found a way to cope with that," Lark told Sandry. "Come." She led the girl and Pasco through a doorway as Sandry continued to eat. They entered what had probably been a dining room before the furnishings had all been taken out. Now there were only whitewashed walls, candle sconces, and a tile floor. The entire room—floor, walls, and ceiling—had been thoroughly cleansed by Winding Circle's mages.

Sandry blinked at the floor and began to smile. She doubted that the central pattern of red and white clay tiles—a pattern that matched her net precisely—had been part of the original floor.

"Are you ready to start?" Lark asked her. "It's after one. We fixed the starting time for when the Citadel clock strikes two. That's when Durshan Rokat will leave the inner keep." When they had worked out their plan, the mage council had suggested the Dihanurs would be less suspicious of a trap if they had a reason to come to the net, like following a quarry on his way home.

"He is a volunteer?" Sandry wanted to know.

Lark nodded. "His grace talked to Durshan himself. Your uncle insisted on making sure we had a genuine volunteer."

Sandry took a deep breath. "I need something sweet," she told Lark, "another mug of tea, and time to use the privy. After that, I'll be as ready as I can ever be." She had a case of the shakes. Somehow she had the feeling they weren't going to go away—she would just have to work around them.

Lark walked them back to the kitchen. As she cut a slice from the cake, she looked at Pasco. "Go through that door and find the musicians—they're in the front parlor. Tell them we're almost ready. And once your part is done, go home with them. No one will think anything of servants leaving the house."

"Leaving?" cried Pasco. "But I want to see what happens!"

'Absolutely not”

Sandry had never heard herself use that tone before, though it sounded like a combination of the duke and Tris. "You are to get away and stay away, understand?" she demanded, holding the boy's eyes with hers, "This isn't a game. I will not tell your parents you got killed because I let you stay and watch like this was a performance!"

"For one thing," Lark pointed out, “we don't know they'll even come now. We hope the net will bring them quickly, but if they aren't in this part of the city when Durshan Rokat leaves the Citadel, it may take them a day or two to hear about him…"

"Please, Lady Sandry,” whined, the boy.

Lark took, him by the shoulders, turned him around, and thrust him through the door that led to the front hall, "Musicians. Go," she said firmly.

Pasco looked back, hesitated, then obeyed.

As Lark, poured a fresh cup of tea and. added honey, she asked gravely, "Was it' very bad, dear? Spinning the unmagic. Tying the net."

Sandry shivered. "It likes real magic more than any thing," she whispered. "It isn't happy if it can't cat what you have, and it never stops trying to get in."

Lark smoothed her hair with a gentle hand. "I would have given anything to spare you that."

Saedry hugged her teacher. "I know."

She finished her cake and her tea, went to the privy, then washed her hands and face in a bucket of water. When she next entered the empty dining room, the musicians stood in the door that led to the front of the house. Pasco waited in a corner. Other council mages came to watch: Crane, Winding Circle's Dedicate Superior, Moonstream, the Duke's healer, Comfrey, and Sky- fire, who was the head of the Fire temple, and a handful of others. Sandry knew the plan was that these mages would be outside the house, concealed within spells, standing guard. When Pasco finished the net dance, they would sprinkle the lines of ash across the ways into the house. There was a chance the Dihanurs might leave footprints. If they did, the watchers could give Sandry some warning of the killers approach.

The Guildhall clock struck two. Up at Duke's Citadel the play they were staging for the Dihanurs was just starting. It was Skyfire, a one-time general, who had devised this part of the plan with the help of the duke and Erdogun. They had no way to know where the assassins were they might be in the duke's residence, trying to get at the Inner keep once more, in the outer bailey of the Citadel, or somewhere between the Citadel and the waterfront. With that in mind, everyone had to act as if their quarry could see them at any moment, from the time Durshan Rokat walked out of the inner keep and demanded to go home. The handful of people who were to create the charade and keep it going had orders to make as much noise and fuss as possible. That way, even if the killers were not watching they would hear Citadel Guard or city gossip about the crazy old man who turned down, the duke's hospitality.

Durshan Rokat would be walking out of the inner keep now. It was time for Sandry and Pasco to add the power of their net to the killers' discovery that one Rokat was available to be murdered.

"Have we soldiers to arrest the Dihanurs?" Sandry asked Lark as she opened the ebony box where the net was kept.

"In

the cellar and upstairs," Lark replied.

Sandry looked down into the box. Her shadowy creation was invisible against the black wood, but she could feel it there. Tying and knotting the net, she had become attuned to unmagic. It was stronger now, the knots in creasing its power as it fed back on itself.

Her skin ringing with fear, she gathered her net in her arms. She had left bits of her own power like yarn ties at the corners so she could find them. Taking the first corner, she placed it on the north point on the pattern, over a round socket in the floor. Lark knelt and fitted an ebony peg into the socket to anchor that corner of the net. Sandry then went to the eastern point of the tile pattern and set another corner of the net there; Crane anchored it with an elderwood peg. South came next; Dedicate Skyfire anchored the unmagic with an oak peg. Last was the west corner; Sandry nodded her thanks to Healer Comfrey, who placed a hawthorn peg to hold the net.

Now Sandry moved back from her creation, trying to ignore the dark film that lay over her clothes. Everything she had worn or used for this working would be burned when this was over. In her vision the dark cords of the unmagic net were stark against the red and white tiles of the floor pattern. Best of all, they matched it perfectly.

“Pasco," she whispered.

As he walked in, Dedicate Skyfire stopped him and pressed a leather pouch into his hand.

"Once you complete the center square," Lark said, pointing, "drop that in the middle, understand?"