"Master Rokat," began the bald man.
"Don't you 'Master Rokat me,’ Baron fer Baigh!" cried the older man. "My kinfolk will huddle in that dungeon you call the inner keep if they wish, but Durshan Rokat is going home!" He turned to a cluster of muscled women and men who could only be bodyguards. "I don't pay you to gorge on his grace's food and laze!" he snapped. "We are leaving. Call my chair at once!"
A bodyguard ran to do as he was ordered. Erdogun fer Baigh snapped his fingers for a footman. "Since Master Rokat no longer desires our hospitality," he said, his voice clipped, "tell the watch commander I require two squads of Duke's Guards to accompany him home. Two squads, mind. I want all Summersea to know this man is under the duke's protection." He turned away and began to climb the broad stair that rose from the hall. "You'd think these people didn't want to stay alive," he muttered.
Alzena watched the old man and his guards leave, wondering. They were so close to the inner keep and all those Rokats, but there was that carpet of guards to think of. Perhaps no one here had thought to watch the keeps upper stories as well as the ground floor, but it didn't seem likely. And here was a Rokat—an old one, as old as Palaq Dihanur had been when Rokats cut off his head—who insisted that he return to his house.
Every instinct clamored for her to go after the old man. Her Dihanur masters had taught her that as one of her first lessons take the weak and easy prey first. No matter that his was one of the houses they hadn't scouted before they killed Jamar Rokat—tracking Durshan would be as easy as breathing, with all those guards around him. People would talk of their passing for hours the Dihaeurs need only follow the gossip.
Take the weak, easy, and stupid prey first. Those families in the inner keep were going nowhere, and finding that carpet of guards had discouraged her. A killing today would improve her mood. Letting this prey escape was mad. What if he reached his house, stayed a few hours or a day, lost his courage, and returned? She wouldn't even have his head to display somewhere—somewhere like this large, drafty entrance hall. Maybe the sight of a fresh head would give this cursed Duke Vedris another heart attack. In the confusion of his collapse, who was to say they wouldn't relax their guard on the inner keep?
This sense of Rightness was the most powerful feeling she'd had in a long time. She knew it in her gut Durshan Rokat's killing would break this cycle of frustration.
When she reached the room where she had left her husband and the mage, she found Nurhar wild with energy and the mage shivering. Quickly she told them about the old man and the human carpet. "He's a spoiled elder with no more brains than a rabbit," she told Nurhar. "I want his head."
Nurhar caught fire over the idea, too. He hoisted the mage into his carry-frame. "Cover us well," he told their charge as he tightened the straps. "No slip-ups."
"I never slip up," mumbled the rnage. 'I'm not the one who got cut and needed a healer you had to ki—,"
Alzena slapped his face. "If you are not silent, I will cut out your tongue," she whispered.
He stared at her with eyes that were set in deep black circles, with no trace of white remaining. "How're you different from the pirates?" he wanted to know. "They hit me when they felt grumpy, too."
Nurhar crouched beside him. "She didn't mean it," he told the rnage. "She's just frustrated. We're all frustrated."
The rnage hid his face in his hands. "There is some thing about this place," he whispered through his fingers. "All these spells. Centuries of them. Centuries… Take me out of here. Closer to Durshan Rokat's house, perhaps I can do something. Yes." He looked at them, black eyes glistening. "Yes, get me closer. The air here is bad for me—too many spells. Once in the city I can work better."
"You'd better find a way to handle all the spells here," Nurhar said, his voice ice. "Once we've got the old man, we're coming back." He picked up the mages carry- frame and slung it on his back. "You'll get us into that inner keep if I have to use your head as a battering ram."
Pasco was following the musicians out when he rebelled. This wasn't right, He wanted to see his net work. They were treating him like a child, when they might have no chance to get these rats without him. He was going to stay, that was all there was to it.
But how? In a moment those mages would come out of the net room. They would disappear within spells to make them look like part of the house or the garden, or the street outside, He'd heard them talk about that. If they saw him, they would make him go.
Suddenly he remembered something from the day before. Yazmнn had been teaching allurement dances. One had a movement that caught his imagination the dancer held an arm straight out with the hand at right angles to the arm. The dancer then pulled, the other hand over her face with the fore and middle fingers parted in a sideways arrow. While one hand traveled across the eyes, the dancer looked sidelong at the outstretched hand. Yazmнn had called it a "flirt." Pasco thought it also looked like something that—with a bit of magic behind it—might achieve the opposite result. It could make people look away from the person who made it. Their eyes might slide off the mage; they might never see him.
Standing in the hall, he closed his eyes and took his seven-count breaths, holding them and letting them go as he'd been taught. The feeling he was beginning to know was his magic, a kind of fizzy tingle, filled him al most instantly. He gracefully lifted his left arm, holding it out palm up and outward, as he let his power roll down it. Now he raised his right hand, forming the arrow with forefinger and middle finger. He drew it across his eyes as he looked sidelong at his left hand. While he did these things, he cast some of that fizzy sense out through his left arm, and poured more through his right hand, making it flow away from him.
The woman they called Moonstream emerged from the dining room, talking to redheaded Skyfire. "I hope this works," she said. "Otherwise we may have to do something drastic."
Skyfire bark-laughed. "Any ideas on what this drastic thing will be?"
Moonstream shook her head. "Not a one," she said ruefully. They walked right by Pasco. "How often are we called on to deal with a mage like this, anyway?"
They didn't see me! I did it! Pasco thought gleefully, struggling to hang on to his power. I worked a magic all by myself!
Now for a place to hide. The corner of the kitchen between the hearth and the cupboards seemed best. No one would stand guard in that part of the house at all, in case the rats came in that way, and Pasco could hear every thing that went on in the dining room from there. Just now Dedicate Lark was telling Lady Sandry, "I'll be downstairs with the guards. Call if you need help."
"Of course," Lady Sandry assured her. "Pasco did a good job, didn't he?"
Pasco beamed.
"The boy has talent," Lark said. "Don't forget to conceal yourself, my darling. You don't want them to see you until they've stepped into the net."
"I'll be fine," Lady Sandry assured her.
Dedicate Lark walked in from the dining room. For a moment she hesitated, frowning. Pasco felt the tiniest, most delicate shift under him, as if someone were tugging a rug from under his feet. Hurriedly he called up his power again, and drew his hand over his eyes once more. Look away, look away, he thought.
At last Dedicate Lark shrugged, and went to the cellar door. She stopped, checked around one last time, then went downstairs.