“What do you think, should we call this off?”
“There’ll always be something.”
“You’re right. How’s your energy level?”
“The cold and the wet are pulling me down. I could use a shot.”
“And I’m more dangerous when I’m hungry. Take my hand, yell if it gets too strong.”
Brann fed him till he started to glow and she felt a hollow pulse inside her. A Need. When he pulled free, she touched his shoulder. “If you see anything I should know about, give me a tweak, hmm?”
“Bramble!”
“I know, I don’t need to say it. Go on, get!”
After he left she stripped to undershirt and loincloth, stuffed her clothing and sandals into a waterproof bag and plunged out of the passage into the rain. She ran along the street, settling to a long easy lope, her feet splatting steadily on the muddy cobbles; she was in her original body again, the old woman banished for the moment. The rain beat into her face, half-blinding her, but she wasn’t bothered by that, there wasn’t much to see. Most of the street lamps were out, either water or wind had got at them. Splat and splat. On and on, feeling good because the waiting was over, feeling good because her body was fire and iron, working like a fine timepiece, alive, alive, so alive.
She loped past the doulahar’s gatehouse, a glassed-in lamp putting out enough light to show her where she was. She slowed, moved closer to the wall and followed it until it turned and she could no longer see the lamp. She unwound the rope from her waist, swung the end with the climbing claw several times, then threw it up. The claw caught. She tugged. It held. She walked up the wall, switched the claw over and slid down, landing up to her ankles in the sloppy mud of a flowerbed. Leaving the rope dangling, she ran for the house, jumping low hedges, plowing through more flowerbeds, swerving to avoid ornamental trees she could barely see, laughing idiotically as she ran, riding the kind of high she hadn’t felt for a century or more.
She slapped her hands on the stone railing at the edge of the terrace, vaulted over and ran across the slick streaming tiles; her feet slapped down noisily, she was panting like a swayback mare at the end of a race, but she didn’t care, the wind was howling, the rain came swooshing down, the storm was loud enough to cover a stampede, let alone the small sounds she was making.
When she reached the array of glass doors, she looked up into the murk and waited for any comment Jaril wanted to make. Nothing. Good enough. She swung her pack down, reached into an outside pocket and took out a *love; the back was plated with iron and the tips were curving claws. With that on her left hand, she smashed a pane, reached through, and unlatched the door.
As soon as she was inside, she closed it again, threw the latch, and stuffed a wad of drape into the hole. It was black as a coal cellar in there, cold and silent, the sounds of the storm muffled by the thickness of the walls and the heavy draperies drawn across the doors. Working by touch, she took off the claw and dropped it on the rug, then stripped off her sopping clothes and dressed in dry things from the pack. She rubbed her feet, then her hands and head on the draperies, removing much of the wet, enough so she wouldn’t drip on the stairs and betray her position by the noise she was making. She hesitated a moment, then pushed the pack behind one of the drapes. Her hands were her best weapons, her empty hands. No point in cluttering them or weighing down her body with unnecessary paraphernalia. Move fast, move clean, she told herself, momentum’s the word.
There was a splotch of gray on the far wall, a night-light filtering through a tightly netted doorweb. She moved cau-
tiously across the room, stopped before the web and ran her fingers lightly over it. It was beaded, with beaded fringes, a misery to get past without enough clatter to break through the storm noise. She swore under her breath, gathered a handful of webbing and eased it aside enough so she could edge through. Keeping the fringe still, she spread the web out again until she could take her hand away without shaking the beads.
She listened. The storm sounds were a muted background; there were the usual night noises from a large old house. Nothing more. She ghosted away from the door and plunged into a nest of interconnecting rooms; there were small nightlights scattered haphazardly about, wicks floating on aromatic oil in glass bowls shaped like half-closed tulips. Annoyed and disoriented, she slowed. Jay, you’ve got it easy, luv. Sheeh! if I just had wings I could cut all this nonsense.
She emerged finally into an immense atrium three stories high with a graceful staircase curling around the rim like a climbing vine, its steps and rails made of white-painted wrought iron with more of the tulip bowls set on the outside edge of the steps, a shimmering loveliness in the tall dark. She listened again. Nothing. All right, she thought. Let’s get at it. She glided across the black and white tiles and started up the stairs.
She was wary at first, but by the time she reached the first turn she was running, her bare feet making no sound on the lacework iron steps. Up and around, up and around, first floor, second. She stopped, stared into the murk; she couldn’t see anything, but there was no point taking chances she didn’t have to. She swung over the rail, hung for a moment until she found footing on the end of the step. Hand over hand, feet feeling for holds, she moved up the outside of the stair, ignoring the abyss below her.
The guard was restless; she could hear him kicking at the floor mat. She hung where she was and peered through a lacy panel. The staircase ended in a dark hole, made all the darker by the faint light from one of the tiny lamps. She couldn’t see the guard, not even as a blotch in that blackness, but from what she could hear, he had to be a few steps down the hallway. She shifted her grip and went on.
When she reached the top, she rested a nioment, mind-shouted intent at Yaril, then gathered herself and pushed off, using the strength of her legs to counter the relative weakness of her arms and shoulders. She went flying over the rail, landed running. Before the guard had a chance to react, she was on him, her hands slapped against him, drawing the life from him.
At first he went limp, then he began to dissolve; it felt like she had her hands on a sack full of hot-tailed scorpions. She increased the drain until she was taking in at her limit. The dissolution went faster, he was losing his shape, parts of him struggling to escape. He wasn’t fast enough. She took everything he had and left him as dust on the mat.
Jaril met her at the door to the Chuttar’s suite. He was glowing and grinning, wild and strange, more alien than she’d ever seen him. He nodded at her, shaped his hands into a parabola and shot a stream of fire at the lock, melting it and a good portion of the door around it.
Brann kicked the door open and plunged inside, running at the women who sat near a bank of windows, her hands folded over a black velvet cushion on her lap. The Chuttar Palami Kumindri, smiling and unconcerned. The other smiglar in the room, a big man with black mustaches hanging from the ends of his mouth, stood beside her. Cammam Callam, the Housemaster. He smoothed his mustaches, stepped in front of the chair and raised his hands, palm out. Brann slammed into something as resilient as a sponge, strong as oiled silk. Jul’ changed and a blazing lightsphere hit the resilience beside her, rebounded, came at it again and yet again; each time he was flung back, each time he punched a deeper hollow in it. Brann flattened her hands against the shield and drew; somewhat to her surprise, she began pulling in a trickle of power. She laughed and pulled harder; she’d never managed to tap into a magic shield before; apparently this one was so much a part of that smiglar, was maintained so intimately out of his inner strength, she could attack it as if it were his flesh. Callam staggered, paled. He shrunk, grew denser, braced himself and shoved out the sags in the shield.
The Chuttar Palami Kumindri watched calmly for several minutes, then she began unfolding the black velvet. It wasn’t a cushion. The milky, flawed moonstone that was Yaril sat on the velvet, pulling in light from all around her. Palami Kumindri lifted an elegant pale hand and splayed it out an inch or so above the Yaril stone. “Be still,” she said. Her voice was low and lovely and full of the consciousness of her power. “Stop what you’re doing or watch me eat her.”