In Gash’s hand, where the walking stick had been, a small sparkling whirlwind the length and shape of the stick had sprung up and was now fading. The form it was leaving behind was long and sharp with the colors of pure-minted metal and glistened with the sinuous lines of complicated etchings and mysterious runes. “I believe you said you needed something like this,” Gash said. It was a sword.
My jaw was open to my chest, but I didn’t care. I turned slowly around to face it. I didn’t want to reach out for the thing. The sword was like every last one of the most beautiful things I’d ever imagined had suddenly been wrapped up all in a single material object, the gold at the end of dreams, and here I was, being confronted with the thing, without warning out of nowhere, concrete and solid and genuinely real. Jewels shone on the hilt and sparkled like lenses on the flat of the blade, flush with the metal. Hues and bright waves washed along the surface of what looked like steel but couldn’t possibly be; no steel was that perfect. “Take it,” Gash said. “You were looking for one, and you’re going to be late.”
“Ulp,” I said, but somehow I managed to stick out my hand.
“Grasp it here, like this,” said Gash, moving his hand back on the hilt and leaving room for my fingers. As my skin neared the sword, sparks leapt between my palm and the hilt. A force took hold of my hand and inverted it, trying to contort it into a small flat ball. I gritted my teeth and gave a short lunge, my fingers wrapped around the hilt, and with a last audible spark and sharp sting the sword settled into my grip.
“From the matching of auras, my metabolism to yours, it will know you.” Gash released his hold. The sword was alive in my hand, trying to flip me over and bash me against the wall. I set my feet and concentrated on keeping my balance.
“Thanks,” I said, for once meaning it. At the moment, the problem of what Gash was making me do and being thrown in jail and me probably finding some nasty way to get myself killed before the evening was out seemed not to matter. As I stood there, though, fighting that stunning sword, I realized that, dazzling though it was, I wouldn’t be able to keep hold of it and even walk at the same time. “Is there any convenient way of putting this thing away?” I asked him.
“Remember this word,” Gash said, and spoke something in one of the tongue-twisting ancient languages. The sword seemed to writhe in my hand, waves of radiating power trying to mash my arm down to bone pulp, and then suddenly it was a walking stick again. The emanations were gone.
I tried the word. Nothing happened. Gash pronounced it again, slowly, emphasizing each syllable. I tried it again, and this time I was rewarded by a biting shock that numbed my arm halfway to the elbow.
“Don’t insult it,” Gash said. “Monoch is fairly intelligent for a sword.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, climbing back to my feet. I closed my eyes and concentrated, then said the word. My hand holding the walking stick vibrated and grew hot, and with a fiery sensation as if the skin on my fingers was being peeled back to my wrist, the outline of the stick flowed like molten iron pouring into a sword-shaped mold and the form of the sword was back. I quickly said the word again. The condensing sword paused, almost exasperated it seemed, heaved a metallic sigh, and again subsided into its traveling form.
“It is not necessary to fully vocalize the word,” Gash told me. “You can mouth it silently and Monoch will hear. Now go.”
“Right,” I said. I turned away and I made my way back to the street, leaving him there behind the building, and headed off toward Carl Lake’s place. I would certainly be called to account for anything that happened to his sword, so I was treating the walking stick gingerly; who knew how strong the thing was when it was in disguise. Still, with a sword like this one I could get out of some pretty tight spots. Of course, with a sword like this one I’d have more of a tendency to get myself into those spots in the first place. Hopefully if the situation came to it, I’d actually be able to keep my feet and swing Monoch at the same time. I’d deal with that if I had to, but overall I figured my chances had gone up. Now a decent bookie might only laugh for a quarter-hour before taking a bet on me.
I approached Carl’s house from two streets behind, trying to make every sense I might have act alert. As I moved in, maybe I was starting to feel an odd sensation in my stomach, or maybe it was just that I hadn’t eaten all day. The closer I got, though, the stronger the feeling grew, like my stomach was circling the outermost currents of a whirlpool. What are you up to, Carl? I thought.
The ends of the half-timbers stuck out from the wall of the building just behind Carl’s and one to the side. I stuck the walking stick down the back of my tunic and climbed up the timbers three stories to the roof. The roof had gables and came to a shingled peak, unusual for Roosing Oolvaya, but I found a rain gutter and edged along it around to the back. Carl Lake’s second-floor lodgings came into view, lamplight clearly shining through the translucent hides covering his streetfront solarium. Shapes moved within. From my position I had the advantage of height, but I wanted better. I dropped gently onto the rear of Carl’s roof and moved closer in a slow crouch. The entrance I’d used in my visit that morning opened on the Street of Fresh Breeze, and it was from this street that I now heard the approach of a small party of people, and then the rapping of a fist on the door. The shadow in the solarium moved again and vanished. I had taken cover behind a double-barreled chimney and withdrawn the small knife from my boot, and now I crawled quickly up to the solarium roof, slashed a small hole in the hide at a spot screened by the shadow of a palm tree within the room, and stretched myself out flat. I applied my eye to the hole.
The solarium proper occupied the floor below me, so I was looking down on it from a position above the heads of any standing occupants. The fronds of the palm spread out in front of my eyehole, but I could see around their edges into most of the corners of the room. The room at the moment was empty. I got the walking stick out of my shirt and arranged it next to me, with one hand on the handle just in case. A clumping of boots on stairs grew, and a small party filed into the solarium from the staircase at the far end.
Carl Lake himself led the pack, followed by a half-dozen or so magicians. I knew Flora, of course, and I’d dealt with Rounga and Italio Ignachi from time to time, but I recognized some of the others as well. They settled themselves around the furniture and Carl’s servant entered with a tray of tea and finger refreshments: small cakes and smoked fish on crackers. I could have used some of them myself. I told my stomach to shut up; we were on a case. There was another knock from the street, the servant descended the stairs and returned with another small group, they took their share of the tea and cakes, and then Carl got back to his feet and started to talk.
“You are wondering why this meeting, yes, why have I asked you here. Surely nothing of much import could happen here in our small, peaceful city of Roosing Oolvaya, hm?
“Sadly this is not the case.” He clasped his hands behind his back and started to pace. There was something strange about that, but I couldn’t immediately identify what it was. “All of you are certainly aware of Kaar and the, hm, related political developments, and may have indeed speculated upon them. What may still be news is that the maneuverings of politics have been joined by similar activities in our own field. Perhaps the developments in our field were indeed the primary, and Kaar himself merely a manifestation. Shall I be concrete, hm? Have any one of you had need to leave the city in the past day? No? Then, yes, you do not know. There is now a barrier around our city.”
A hum of conversation arose, then quickly quieted as Carl waited. My stomach had begun to lurch again, but now it didn’t feel like I was hungry. That whirlpool sensation I’d gotten as I approached was back, and it was getting worse.