“I’m Bern,” the boy said.
“I’m called Kel,” Kel replied.
“Are you a magician?”
Kel shook his head. “No.”
“She is, though?” Bern jerked his head toward Dorna.
“Sort of,” Kel said. “Her husband was a sorcerer.”
“Was? Did he lose his magical powers?”
“He died.”
“Did one of his spells go wrong?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Kel turned up an empty hand. “He just died.”
“Was he hundreds of years old?”
Kel shook his head.
“I heard that magicians can live for hundreds of years.”
“That’s wizards,” Kel said. “I don’t think sorcerers do.”
Dorna looked up from the wagon. She had obviously overheard some of the conversation. “Some of them live a long time,” she said as she turned around. “Not as long as wizards, but over a century.”
“Oh,” Bern said.
“My husband Nabal didn’t, though,” Dorna continued. “He was sixty-three when he died. His heart stopped.”
“Oh,” Bern said again.
“He had magic that might have saved him if he’d ever thought to use it on himself,” Dorna added. “But he didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Kel said.
“He didn’t know there was anything wrong. If he had, he could have healed his heart, the way I healed your friend’s head,” she said, looking directly at Kel.
Kel could not think of anything to say, and just looked back at Dorna. Bern cast a nervous glance at Kel, and decided not to say anything, either.
“He thought he had plenty of time,” Dorna said. “So did I.”
“Have you healed your heart?” Kel asked.
“I checked,” she said. “It doesn’t need healing. Not that way, anyway.”
“I hope it heals the other way,” Kel said.
Dorna stared at him for a moment, then said, “I’ll get the oxen.” Her voice sounded oddly unsteady.
While Dorna was gathering draft animals and Irien was settling the bill, Kel found himself and Bern in the stableyard with the unguarded wagon-or at least, no one obvious was guarding it. He glanced at Bern. “Did you take anything from the wagon?”
Bern considered Kel for a moment, and then said, “No. Did you?”
“No. But my partner did.”
“You have a partner?”
“Ezak of Ethshar. He got away with a whole bag of sorcery.” Kel’s voice rang with pride as he said that, but at the same time he was embarrassed.
Bern thought this over, looking from Kel to the wagon, and back again. “Where is he, then?”
“He got away,” Kel repeated.
“But he’s your partner?”
“Yes.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?”
“I…I was busy,” Kel replied, his pride vanished.
“So he just left you with that woman?”
Kel paused before answering, “Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a partner. Is he going to come back for you?”
“No,” Kel admitted. “But when I find him he’ll give me a share of the loot.”
“It sounded to me like the bossy one was going to find him for herself.”
“Well…yes,” Kel acknowledged. “But when Ezak gets away from her again, if there’s any loot left, I’ll get a share.”
“Does she know that?”
Kel frowned. This conversation was not going the way he wanted it to. He had wanted to brag about being partners with someone clever enough to steal a bag full of magic, but this boy didn’t seem very impressed. It was true that Kel didn’t really think he would get a share of Ezak’s loot, because he didn’t expect Ezak to be able to sell it before Dorna found him and took it all back, but he hadn’t expected Bern to realize that.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“She seems to trust you,” Bern said. “Does she know you’re the thief’s partner?”
“Yes.”
“Then why doesn’t she have you locked up?”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Kel said. “I helped her get that fill-dirt-presses thing back. We blew up a Northern sorcery, too.”
Bern frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Are you on her side, or your partner’s side?”
Kel blinked at the boy. “I don’t know,” he said. He was startled to realize that he really didn’t know. Up until a few days ago he was always unquestionably on Ezak’s side, in everything, but he liked Dorna, and she had treated him fairly-generously, even. No one else had ever done that.
“Kel!” Dorna’s shout broke into Kel’s thoughts and interrupted the conversation before Bern could say anything more. “Get over here and give me a hand with this harness!”
Kel hurried to help, and Bern followed him. When Kel glanced back at the boy, Bern smiled. “Yoking oxen is easier with more hands,” he said. “It should be good for another two or three bits.”
It was indeed good for another three bits. Twenty minutes later Bern stood in front of the inn, waving with one hand while the other clutched his pay, as Dorna and Irien drove their respective wagons out of the stableyard onto the road and turned them to the southeast, toward Ethshar of the Sands.
Kel was riding with Dorna on the lead wagon, and when they had gone perhaps half a mile she handed him the reins and said, “Here. Keep us on the road.”
Kel took the lines and watched as Dorna fished out the boot-heel talisman. “There’s a concentration of gaja ahead of us, in that direction,” she said, pointing ahead and slightly to the right. “It’s moving, so it’s probably him.”
Kel looked in the indicated direction. “There’s a fence,” he said. That side of the road was indeed lined with a rail fence for as far as he could see.
“I know. We’ll stick to the road for now.”
Driving the oxen did not take a great deal of concentration, so Kel had time to think as they rode on.
He thought Dorna was almost certainly going to catch up to Ezak eventually, and reclaim her stolen talismans. She had said she wouldn’t kill Ezak, so after she had her bag back she would probably let them go-or maybe she would have Ezak flogged first, and then let them go. Kel winced at the idea of Ezak being flogged; having been through it himself, he knew how staggeringly painful and humiliating it was. He might have to spend a sixnight or so nursing Ezak back to health; he certainly couldn’t afford to pay for healing magic, and he doubted anyone else was going to provide it.
But Dorna might be satisfied with just getting her things back. That would be nice. Then he and Ezak would go back to their old life, as it had been before Ezak’s uncle told them about the dead sorcerer with a houseful of magic-stealing coins in taverns, running errands for a bit or two, and so on.
Kel looked around at the green fields stretching off in all directions, a flock of birds soaring in the blue sky ahead, a farmer with a tool of some kind poking at the ground off to the left, and for an instant he wondered if he really had to go back to living in alleys or attics, spending his nights grabbing for dropped coins in crowded taverns stinking of sweat and spilled beer.
But how could he possibly do anything else?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They were nearing the great stone towers of Grandgate, the main entrance to Ethshar of the Sands, and Dorna was frowning as she tapped at her talisman. “It’s somewhere over that way,” she said, pointing to the left. “I can’t tell whether it’s in the city or not.”
“Smallgate is in that direction,” Kel said.
She glanced at him. “Smallgate,” she said thoughtfully. “Is there an actual gate in Smallgate? A way into the city?”
“Of course,” said Kel, startled. “Why else would they call it that?”
“Maybe because there used to be one, a couple of hundred years ago,” Dorna answered. “Names don’t always change when they should.”