“True enough. Then it was around here that you found whatever it is? ”
“Yes. It’s not an artifact—it’s a piece of information.” The sorcerer frowned, his eyebrows descending. “I am not usually in the business of buying information,” he said.
“It’s about wizards,” Tabaea said, a note of desperation creeping into her voice.
The sorcerer blinked. “I am a sorcerer, young lady, not a wizard. You do know the difference, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course, I do!” Tabaea replied angrily. Then, calming, she corrected herself. “Or at least, I know there is a difference. And I know that you people don’t like wizards, so I thought maybe... well, I found out a secret about wizards.” “And you thought that it might be of interest to sorcerers?” Tabaea nodded. “That’s right,” she said.
The sorcerer studied her for a moment, then asked, “And what price were you asking for this secret?”
Tabaea had given that some thought and had decided that a hundred pounds of gold would be about right—a thousand rounds, that would be, equal to eight hundred thousand copper bits. That was most of a million. She would be rich, she wouldn’t need to ever steal again. Magicians were all rich—well, the good ones, anyway, most of them; surely, they could afford to pay her even so fabulous a sum as that.
But now she found she couldn’t bring herself to speak the numbers aloud. Eight hundred thousand bits—it was just too fantastic.
“I hadn’t decided,” she lied.
The sorcerer clicked his tongue sympathetically and shook his head in dismay. “Really, child,” he said, “you need to learn more about business. Let me ask, then—would this secret help me in my own business? Would it let me take customers away from the wizards?”
Tabaea hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Attempting a recovery, she added, “But the wizards really don’t want anyone to know about it!”
The sorcerer frowned again. “In that case, isn’t this a dangerous bit of knowledge to have? How did you come by it?” “I can’t say,” Tabaea said, a trifle desperately. “Well, all right, then,” the sorcerer said. “I’m not usually one to buy a closed casket, but you’ve caught my interest.” Tabaea caught her breath.
“I’ll pay you four bits in silver for your secret,” the sorcerer said.
Tabaea blinked. “Four bits?” she squeaked. “Half a round of silver,” the sorcerer confirmed. Tabaea stared for a moment, then turned and ran out of the shop without another word.
Later, when she could think about it clearly, she realized that the sorcerer had really been making a generous oifer. Tabaea had given him no hint of what her secret was, no reason to think it would be profitable for him to know it—and in fact, she saw now that it would probably not be profitable.
Wizards and sorcerers were traditional rivals, but they weren’t blood enemies. Sorcerers weren’t about to wage a full-scale war against wizards—for one thing, there were far more wizards in the World than sorcerers. And what possible use would knowledge of athamezation be to any magician who was not prepared to use it against wizards?
Selling her information, she saw, simply wasn’t going to work. That left using it herself as the only way to exploit it. And the only way to use it was to make herself an athame. That certainly had its appeal; she would be a true wizard, then, according to what Serem the Wise had said, even if she didn’t know any spells. And if she ever did learn any spells, the athame would make them easier to use, if she had understood correctly. The knife would be able to free her from any bonds, if she could touch it. It would mark her as a wizard to other wizards, but not to anyone else—and yet she would not be a member of the Guild.
And she had the impression that there was far more to it than she knew. She hadn’t heard all of Serem’s teachings to Lirrin. She had learned the entire twenty-four-hour ceremony, but had missed a fair amount of the other discussion about the athame. So, one bright day early in Summersend, two months after Lirrin completed her own athame, Tabaea slipped out of a shop on Armorer Street with a fine dagger tucked under her tunic, one that she had not paid for.
The next problem, now that she had the knife, was to find a place where she could perform the spell. Her home was out of the question, with her sisters and her mother and her stepfather around—if her stepfather had turned up again, that is.
The people of the Wall Street Field had a reputation for minding their own business, but there were surely limits, and the all-day ritual with its blood and chanting and so forth would draw attention anywhere. And what if it rained? Right now the summer sun was pouring down like hot yellow honey, but the summer rains could come up suddenly.
She needed someplace indoors and private, where she could be sure of an entire day undisturbed, and such places were not easy for a poor young woman to find in the crowded streets and squares of Ethshar of the Sands. Maybe, she thought, if she left the city... But no, that was crazy. She wasn’t going to leave the city. There wasn’t anything out there but peasants and barbarians and wilderness, except maybe in the other two Ethshars, and those would be just as unhelpful as Ethshar of the Sands. There were places that most people never went, such as the gate towers and the Great Lighthouse and all the towers that guarded the harbor, but those were manned by the overlord’s soldiers.
She wandered along Armorer Street, vaguely thinking of the South Beaches, but with no very clear plan in mind; she squinted against the sun and dust as she walked, not really looking where she was going.
She heard a man call something obscene, and a woman giggled. Tabaea looked up.
She was at the corner of Whore Street, and a man in the yellow tunic and red kilt of a soldier was shouting lewd promises to a red-clad woman on a balcony.
Those two would have no trouble finding a few minutes’ privacy, she was sure—though of course they’d have to pay for it. That was a thought—she could pay for it. She could rent a room—not here in Soldiertown, of course, but at a respectable inn somewhere. She was so accustomed to stealing everything she needed that the idea of paying hadn’t occurred to her at first.
But she could, if she wanted. She had stashed away a goodly sum of money in her three years of thievery and had never spent more than a few bits. Maybe making herself an athame would be worth the expense.
It took two more days before she worked up the nerve, but at last she found herself in a small attic room at the Inn of the Blue Crab, with the proprietor’s promise not to allow anyone near for a day and a half.
She had tried to convince him, without actually stating it, that she was a wizard’s apprentice and that her master had assigned her some spell that required privacy; fear of wild magic was about the only thing she could think of that would reliably restrain the man’s natural curiosity. She wasn’t at all sure it had worked.
She had laid in a good supply of candles for light, and a jug of reasonably pure water—the inn’s well, the innkeeper boasted, had a permanent purification spell on it, but Tabaea suspected it was just not particularly polluted. She couldn’t have any food, she knew, but she was fairly sure that water was permissible. She had brought a change of clothing, for afterward. She had fire and water and blood, and of course, she had her dagger. She had rested well and was as ready as she knew how to be.