“Hm,” he said. “That is news. A barrier of sorcery, that is news indeed. How do you know of this thing?”
“I get around.”
“Indeed. Yes, well, a question costs nothing.” He raked his eyebrows. “A barrier. I must examine this for myself.”
“The big question is ‘who’.”
“Oh, my, indeed yes. Who indeed? A good barrier takes much power, much skill. This is a good barrier?”
“The way I hear it, yeah. Real good.”
He stood and hobbled furiously around the room, rubbing one hand across his eyebrows and using the other for support. “Political, it must be political. It must be connected with …”
“You’re the best magician in town, aren’t you? Could you have done it?”
“Me?” He looked at me for a second, caught between ego and the needs of honesty. “No, not I, certainly not. Such a barrier requires too much power. Not my specialty either. And myself as the most powerful in Roosing Oolvaya? At times, perhaps. Currently, perhaps not.” He stopped suddenly, staring out the milky surface of the river-beast bladder that covered the solarium dome. “Such a barrier is employed by a sorcerer against other sorcerers. It is a sign that says, ‘Beware! Enter this area at your own risk! Secret work in progress!’”
“To me, that sounds like more of an invitation for anybody who’s curious to come take a look.”
“You do not understand. This is a serious affair. Such a barrier is usually a preliminary when one expects an attack. Or a duel. It says, ‘Bystanders - fall back or perish!’”
I was starting to get the idea. “If it isn’t yours, whose is it? I know the local talent, and I’d say if you couldn’t do it, none of them could either.”
“It could be Rounga, perhaps, but that is most unlikely. I must make inquiries, gather the adepts of the city. We will meet. Perhaps we may need to take joint action. This is a serious situation.”
I went to the door. “Let me know. I’d better be there.”
“Certainly.”
The door was large and brass and highly polished. I began to push it open and then said, “What about strangers? Is there anybody new in town?” In the reflection of his image in the door I thought I saw him stiffen, just barely.
“If so, we must find this out,” Carl said.
I strode off down Fresh Breeze, turned a corner, and then took an alley quickly back through the center of the block. I was just in time to see Carl Lake, fully dressed now and leaning on a cane made from the large straight tusk of a moose-slasher wolf, hobble out of the door of his home and set out for the north. The manservant had appeared right behind him. Locking the door, he hurried off in the opposite direction. I made a quick decision and slid after Carl.
Carl stopped every minute or two to look around, but there were plenty of doorways and stalls for me to edge into out of his line of sight. For a guy with a permanent limp, he was acting remarkably agile. Given the usual crowds in the narrow streets, each person bustling back and forth with their purchases, haggling with the open-air merchants, and generally following their own errands and missions, and with the need to stay back so he couldn’t actually see me each time he abruptly turned, it was all I could do to keep him in sight. I thought I’d lost him twice in the first ten minutes. Those times I had no excuse; tailing was supposed to be part of my expertise. When I really did lose him, of course, there were other more urgent things going on.
It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes since Carl had left his house. We hadn’t come that far, especially for the trouble I’d been having. I was following him north on Mosk Field, where it straightens out for a quarter-mile and gets wide enough for two carts to pass at the same time. One of the Guard outfits that had become ubiquitous after the coup, a squad of about ten guys, was working their way south toward us. Carl gave them a glance and then moved around to pass on the right. A solid stone wall about twice my height ran down that side of the block, several sharp-eyed beggars reclining in the gutter at its foot, and Carl was forced to edge right up to it, his shoulder on the rock and his tusk-cane forcing the beggars to scuttle out of the way. I waited a few seconds and headed after him.
The street and the gutter were surfaced with uneven flagstones, but the gutter was also covered on top of the stones by the standard sheath of trash and mud. Carl had moved the beggars back, at least, but I still needed to keep an eye on my footing and one on Carl at the same time. Just at the second, the footing was first in my mind - I always hate to slip in the goop. The approaching Guard squad forced me up a bit closer to the wall, my foot hit a slick spot and began to slide, and so I raised my right hand to steady myself against the wall. I’m right-handed, and that’s the hand I favor for my sword; I use a cross-body draw with the sword slung on my left hip. Just at that second a trooper from the Guard squad moved against the wall in front of me with his sword out and pointing in my direction. Simultaneously, another man had done the same thing right behind me, and still others had filled the space between the first two, all of their swords out as well, and the swords of their backups behind them. It had to be luck, and certainly not my own, that precisely when this happened my sword hand was splayed out on the surface of the tall rock wall with the rest of me leaning against it, several feet and a shift of body weight away from actually getting my own sword free and available for use.
Points poked my back and another one poked my side. A hand reached in, pulled my sword out from my belt, and withdrew. By the time one of them said, “You’re under arrest. Violation of curfew. Contempt for martial law,” it was almost anti-climactic.
“That was one of the slickest moves I’ve seen in a long time,” I said.
“Shut up,” said the corporal.
The whole thing had taken about six seconds. Up ahead, Carl Lake was still disappearing around the next corner. Just as he did, I thought I saw something impossible. I put it down to overwork. Unfortunately, the enforced vacation I now had coming up was not the sort that promised much chance of rest and relaxation. I was headed for the dungeons.
7. SHAA CONVERSES
The afternoon was creeping onward. Roosing Oolvaya would shortly begin to come alive with the pad of muffled footfalls, the slink of stealthy passages, and the whisper of watchwords. Knives would flash and men would fall, while decent folk would stay indoors. Overall, it would be a typical night.
Actually, though, it probably wouldn’t, at least if Zalzyn Shaa had anything to say about it, and it looked increasingly as though he would. Shaa considered himself a decent person (as, he had discovered, most persons felt about themselves) but nonetheless he would be out in the streets. That is, he would start by being out in the streets. Shaa collapsed his spyglass, stowed it away under his cloak, and turned back to Jurtan Mont. Mont was barely visible to him, in the thick shadow behind a dark chimney, but would be totally concealed from anyone on the ground or even on the surrounding rooftops, which were lower. “Let me get this straight,” Shaa said. “Four days ago the Venerance clutches his throat and dies. This twerp Kaar proclaims himself Venerance, locks up his father’s government as a precautionary move, and starts rounding up everybody who’s ever looked at him wrong under the cover of martial law. That’s the outline. Not,” he added in an aside apparently aimed at no one in particular, “that it is remarkably unique.”