“It’s part of the magic Kilisha’s doing to help your father. I need to have something to shout at. I may sound like I’m mad when I do it, but FU just be pretending. All right?”
“All right,” Pirra said.
“And we may go some other places, too,” Yara said.
“I found the spoon and bowl on Cross Avenue, and the coat-rack in an alley between Wizard Street and the East Road,” Kilisha offered helpfully.
“We’ll take Cross Avenue down to Norcross, then. Eat up, children.”
“Can I shout for the rug, too?” Telleth asked.
“No,” Yara said, “you didn’t drink the potion last night. But you can keep an eye out for all the missing furniture.”
Telleth smiled, and Lirrin said, “Me, too!”
“You, too,” Yara agreed. Then she looked at Kilisha. “Will you be coming, or do you have more magic to work?”
“Magic,” Kilisha said hastily.
Actually, she had no idea what she intended to do, but accompanying Yara and the children to the market did not appeal to her. Surely there was something more useful she could be doing!
She had the feeling there was something she had intended to do, but she could not think what it was. The three Adaptable Potions needed to be completed, but she could not do that until evening, a full day after she began them. Hunting furniture through the streets at random didn’t seem like a useful idea.
If the love spell succeeded in luring the rug home, then perhaps she could use it again on the others, if she could find splinters or threads or flakes of varnish from the other pieces-but she wasn’t going to waste time working on that until she saw whether or not it worked on the rug.
Perhaps she could practice Javan’s Restorative. After all, it was a fairly difficult spell that she had never before attempted; trying it for the first time with her master’s life in the balance was not exactly prudent.
That, she decided, was an excellent idea.
“I’m going to practice the spell that will restore the master, once we have all the furniture back,” she said. “I want to be sure I know it.”
“Oh,” Yara said. “That’s very sensible. Pirra, don’t put the ham in your nose, put it in your mouth.”
“In fact, I think I’ll start now,” Kilisha said hastily.
“You haven’t eaten.”
“I’ll eat later.”
“Pirra!”
Kilisha escaped to the workshop.
At first she was pleased to be back in the familiar room, but then she noticed the crouching shape of Ithanalin. He seemed to be glaring at her.
“I’m working on it,” she said, though she knew he couldn’t hear her. “Really I am.”
He said nothing, of course. She turned away from him, and looked at the still-bubbling goo in the brass bowl.
It was thicker, and didn’t smell as savory anymore; she hoped it wasn’t going to do anything disastrous. It had shown no signs of supernatural activity since that one clear chime, but it had to be some sort of magic-her athame had reacted, and there had been the chime, and what else could it be? Ithanalin hadn’t done any non-magical cooking since the squid gravy incident.
She needed to restore Ithanalin before this stuff, whatever it was, did something dreadful. She looked up Javan’s Restorative in her master’s book once more, and began gathering the ingredients for the spell.
She had already found most of them-peacock plumes, incense, athame....
She turned back to the kitchen. “Mistress Yara?” she called.
“Lirrin, put that down! Yes, Kilisha?”
“Could you stop by the herbalist and get jewelweed? I need... oh, I don’t know. A bag or a jar or a bundle or whatever it comes in.”
“Jewelweed?” Yara stuck her head through the door. “What’s jewelweed?”
“I have no idea,” Kilisha admitted, “but the spell calls for it.”
“Is it expensive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hmph. Well, I’ll see.”
“Thank you.”
Yara withdrew, and Kilisha looked around at the drawers and shelves and cabinets, Ithanalin might already have jewelweed tucked away somewhere. It wasn’t an ingredient in any of the spells Kilisha had learned as yet, but presumably he might have kept a supply on hand in case he ever wanted to perform Javan’s Restorative.
Where would it be, then?
Kilisha began exploring the workshop, with special attention to the less-familiar areas-though she was not foolish enough to open anything with a visible rune or seal on it. Unless (jewelweed had some very special properties, she couldn’t see why Ithanalin would have put magical protections on it.
She had gone through perhaps half a dozen drawers, and was sneezing uncontrollably at some fine gray powder she had stirred up when a sticky drawer finally popped open, when Yara and the children trooped past her and out the front door.
Wiping her nose on the back of her hand, Kilisha blinked her watering eyes and stepped into the parlor to make sure they were safely on their way, and that the door had been closed behind them.
The coatrack rattled enthusiastically at the sight of her, and the door latch popped open.
“Stop that,” she said. She had forgotten that the latch, too, was animated; she would need to be careful to include it in the spell when she attempted Javan’s Restorative on her master. She crossed to the door and was about to close it when someone knocked on the frame.
Startled, she said, “Mistress?”
“Open, in the name of the overlord!” a deep male voice said.
Astonished, Kilisha opened the door a crack and peered out.
A guardsman in full uniform-red kilt, yellow tunic, gleaming helmet and breastplate-was standing there, one fist resting on the doorframe as he looked her in the eye. Her own gaze dropped, and that was when she saw the big leather pouch on his belt, the overlord’s seal prominently displayed on the flap.
A tax collector.
Well, that was no surprise, really; the one who had come yesterday had not managed to collect what Ithanalin owed.
“My master isn’t in,” Kilisha said.
“You’re an apprentice? A wizard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’ll speak with you, if you’ll let me in.”
Kilisha blinked in surprise. “I-I don’t think I’m allowed to pay the taxes...”
“That’s not why I’m here.” The soldier hesitated, then said, “Well, it’s not the only reason I’m here, anyway. Could you let me in, please?”
Puzzled, Kilisha opened the door and moved aside. The guardsman smiled and stepped into the parlor. He looked around at the almost-empty room, and at the coatrack leashed in the corner.
“I see the furniture isn’t back,” he said.
“No,” Kilisha said. “You’re the tax collector who was here yesterday?”
“Yes. My name’s Kelder.”
“I’m Kilisha.”
“You said your master isn’t in? But he’s all right?”
“Well-not exactly.”
“He looked sort of frozen yesterday.”
“He was. A spell went wrong.”
“I thought so, when all that furniture came charging out. Will he be all right?”
Kilisha hesitated, then admitted the truth. “He will be if I can get all the furniture back.”
“Ah. Well, that’s why I’m here. When I left here yesterday, I followed the furniture-I thought maybe it wasn’t supposed to be running loose like that. It split up, though, and I lost track of some of it, but I did catch a chair and a bench.”
“You did?” Kilisha’s face lit up. “Where are they? Do you have them with you?”
He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t manage both of them- they squirm.” After dealing with the coatrack, Kilisha could sympathize. “I had some of the other guards help, and I cornered them, and they’re locked in a storeroom.”