Lawrence Watt-Evans: The Sorcerer's Widow

“I can do that,” Vezalis agreed. “The Three Feathers?”

“On Gatehouse Lane, off Wall Street north of the market.”

“I can find it.”

“Good! Then I’ll see you there.” Dorna offered her hand again, then stepped back off the stoop and headed up Archer Street.

Kel started to follow her, but Vezalis called, “Kel! Wait a minute!”

Kel stopped, and turned back to Ezak’s uncle. He was actually glad to be called back; he wanted to ask after Ezak.

“What’s going on?” Vezalis asked quietly, with a glance at Dorna. “What are you two up to?”

“I’m helping her open a tea shop,” Kel said.

“No, I meant you and Ezak. What are you up to?”

“Nothing. I haven’t seen Ezak in a sixnight. Hasn’t he been to see you ?”

“Yes, he has, but when I asked where you were he said it didn’t concern me.”

Kel turned up an empty palm.

“Are you two all right?”

“I’m fine. I don’t know about Ezak.”

Vezalis glanced at Dorna, waiting for Kel ten yards up the street. “Are you two planning to rob her?” he asked quietly.

“No.”

“This tea shop thing-I could use a regular customer, and if you steal from her…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“I’m not going to steal from her,” Kel said flatly.

“ You aren’t. What about Ezak?”

“Don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

“Is he angry with you about something?”

“Don’t know.”

Vezalis stared at him for a moment, then said, “Kelder, I know you don’t like to talk if you don’t need to, because your mouth got you in trouble when you were a kid, but please, tell me what’s happening. Ezak is my only family, and if you two are going to do something stupid, I want to know about it.”

Kel stared back, then looked at Dorna, who was waiting patiently. Then he turned back to Vezalis and said, “We went out to her village to try to steal her husband’s magic, because you told Ezak about this dead sorcerer, only she figured out why we were there. She’s much smarter than Ezak. She figured it out right away. But she needed some help moving stuff, so she pretended she hadn’t, and we helped her while Ezak looked for a chance to steal all the magic. Except when he tried to steal it, he set off something with a name I can’t pronounce that went and fixed up an old Northern thing that cut off part of Ezak’s ear. I helped Dorna stop the Northern thing and get her magic back, and while we were doing that Ezak stole some of her other sorcery, but she had a magic tracker, so she came to Ethshar and found him and took it all back and said she’d kill him if he ever bothered her again. But I didn’t steal anything from her, and I helped her, so she hired me to help with her tea shop, and I haven’t seen Ezak since we took back her bag of magic.”

“I saw the ear,” Vezalis said. “He said it was cut off by a magic sword.”

“Sort of,” Kel said. The Northern sorcery had not been a sword, but he didn’t have a better word for it.

“So you two-you argued? When you helped the sorcerer’s widow get back her things?”

Kel shook his head. “Didn’t argue. I went with Dorna.”

“But you and Ezak-he’s the closest thing to a family you have.”

“He protected me,” Kel agreed, nodding. “He took care of me. But he got me in trouble, too. A lot.” He suddenly felt his eyes stinging, though he didn’t know why. “I miss him, but I’m tired of being in trouble. I don’t want to be a thief any more. I want to be Dorna’s assistant. I wasn’t a very good thief, but I think I can be a good assistant.” He wiped a tear from his cheek; he was unsure how it had gotten there. “Tell Ezak I miss him, but as long as Dorna pays me, I’m not coming back to Smallgate.”

Vezalis considered him for several seconds, then held out a hand. “I’ll tell him,” he said. “Good luck, Kelder.”

Kel did not understand why Vezalis was using his full name, but he shook the offered hand, then turned and hurried to catch up with Dorna.

They walked several blocks up Archer Street in silence, but then Dorna said, “I wonder why he didn’t invite us in?”

“He never invites anyone in,” Kel said. “Not like that.”

“Why not?”

“Watchdogs, partly,” Kel said. “Not very well trained.”

“Watchdogs?”

Kel nodded. “Three of them. Azrad, Anaran, and Gor.”

Dorna smothered a laugh upon hearing that Vezalis had named his dogs for the founding overlords of the three Ethshars. “What do you mean, not well-trained?”

“They attack anyone except me, Ezak, Vezalis, and his two girlfriends,” Kel explained. “Even if Vezalis is with them. If he had been home he would have locked them in the back room, but where he was outside with us…”

“…it would have been awkward,” Dorna finished for him. “I see.”

Kel knew he probably shouldn’t say any more, but Vezalis had loosened his tongue, and he was not quite ready to tighten it again. “There’s the merchandise, too,” he said.

“What merchandise?”

“ All his merchandise. Doesn’t have a warehouse anymore. Keeps everything in his house. That’s why he needs so many dogs.”

Dorna glanced back at the house. “He keeps everything in there ?”

Kel nodded. “He used to have a warehouse, long ago. But he took all his money and bought a ship and it sank, so he didn’t have any money when there was a fire at the warehouse, so he couldn’t rebuild it, and…well, now he keeps everything in his house and does all his traveling on land, with his cart, the way he came to your village.”

“That explains a lot,” Dorna said.

“He was traveling when his sister died-Ezak’s mother. They’d had a fight when she took up whoring, so they hadn’t spoken in years. He hadn’t even known she had a baby. By the time he got back and heard from the magistrate that she was dead and that he had a nephew, Ezak was living in an alley. He’d been turned away from his uncle’s house when he first went there. Vezalis found Ezak, but they didn’t get along very well. Later he got Ezak an apprenticeship, even though no one was sure whether he was really only twelve, but it didn’t work out, and Vezalis blamed Ezak for messing it up, and Ezak blamed Vezalis for trying to make him do something he didn’t want to, and they haven’t had much to do with each other since then. We stayed in his attic sometimes, because he didn’t trust us around his merchandise in the other rooms, but Ezak never liked it.”

“I can understand that,” Dorna said quietly. “You and Ezak and Vezalis have had more than your share of misfortune, haven’t you?”

Kel turned up an empty palm.

“Well, you don’t need to live in alleys or cellars or attics anymore,” she said.

Kel smiled happily at that.

Dorna’s Tea Shop had been open for business for a little over a month, and the worst of the summer’s heat had settled over the city like a thick blanket, when Ezak finally came to see the place. It was the middle of a cloudless, scorching afternoon. The big double door in the corner, facing out onto the intersection of Harbor and Aristocrat, was standing wide, and the windows on either side were open as well, to catch whatever breeze might reach so far into the city. Kel was sitting behind the counter on a stool in the back corner, idly waving a paper fan at himself as he gazed out at the dusty streets.

There were no customers; it was too warm to drink hot tea, and Kel did not yet know how to operate Dorna’s sorcerous cooling device, so he could not offer the chilled version that was becoming popular. Dorna herself was down at the docks in Seagate with Vezalis, overseeing the arrival of the latest shipment from Londa, and Irien was over in the Merchants’ Quarter, inspecting Ozya the Cabinetmaker’s latest handiwork, so Kel had the place to himself.