Tavern windows varied greatly in Ethshar, in number, size, placement, and nature. The Blue Dancer gloried in a single great bow window, a long, graceful curve made up of several hundred small panes, framed not in lead, but in imported hardwood, an exotic touch that added to the inn’s expensive atmosphere. Three small casements were built into this structure, for ventilation; none of them looked large enough for even a person of Tabaea’s size to fit through.
Tabaea knew that appearances could be deceiving, though. Moving as quietly as she could—which was very quietly indeed—she rose and crept to the edge of the sheltering arch.
There, she reached out with her poorly developed and ill-understood abilities, the witch-sight and warlock sense, and dimly perceived the intruders.
She could distinguish their scents, as well, but identity was not what interested her now. She wanted to know where they were looking, to be sure that she was somewhere else. One was watching up the stairs, very carefully. Another was guarding the door. The one in slippers... that one was a woman, and she smelled of magic. That was bad. She was looking about the room with interest, not focusing on anything in particular.
One of the soldiers was watching the magician; he was no threat to anyone just now.
That left two soldiers and a magician who were looking out into the dining room; one soldier was watching the kitchen door, the other was peering into the dimly lit farther recesses—including the one where Tabaea stood.
She nudged the one in the door, ever so slightly, with a little warlock push; he started, and made a surprised noise.
The others turned to look at him, and Tabaea made her run, fast and smooth and silent, across the room and up onto the broad sill. She was almost there when she was spotted; her distraction had only held for a fraction of a second.
She swung open the nearest casement and thrust her head through; her ears scraped the frame on either side, her hair snagged on the latch. “Damn,” she whispered. She wouldn’t fit out that way. “Hey!” a guardsman called, and Tabaea, desperate, pushed at the wooden frame with the heel of her hand.
She had never really tried her accumulated strength; she had never had any reason to. Most of her killings had been for skill, more than strength. She knew she was strong—she had flung that demonologist, Karitha, around like a doll. But she had not realized until this very moment just how strong she had become. Her hand punched through the polished window frame as if it were paper, spraying splinters of wood and glass into the street beyond.
“Stop her!” someone shouted, and the guards started for her. Frightened, Tabaea kicked at the window.
Debris burst out into Grand Street like spray from a wave-struck rock; the casement itself hung for an instant by one corner, then tumbled onto the street with a shattering of glass.
Tabaea dove through the hole and landed, catlike, on her feet; she leaped up and ran, eastward, without thinking.
Behind her, men were shouting.
Run, hide, run, hide—her years as a thief had drummed that into her. When anything goes wrong, you run; when you have run the pursuit out of sight, you hide. If they find you, run again. No need to think or plan; just run and hide.
And the best places to hide weren’t empty attics or dark alleys; the best places were in crowds and busy streets, where there was always another escape route, were always other faces to distract the pursuers.
And the very best place of all was the Wall Street Field, where the clutter of destitute humanity lay down an obstacle course of ramshackle shelters and stolen stewpots, where most of the people would be on her side, where the soldiers felt outnumbered.
She ran east on Grand Street, straight toward Grandgate Market and access to Wall Street.
Behind her, the soldiers poured out the door of the Blue Dancer; a raised sword whacked the signboard and set it swinging, and even through the shouting Tabaea could hear the metal links creaking. Booted feet ran after her.
The woman, the magician, did not run; Tabaea could vaguely sense her presence, far back and growing farther with every step. She was working a spell, Tabaea was certain, some land of spell that would flatten her, steal her powers, turn her to a statue or a mouse. She ran, expecting to be felled at any instant, by spell or sword.
She was not felled; she ran headlong into Grandgate Market, not even panting, and spun to her left, turning north toward the part of the Wall Street Field she knew best. Late-night shoppers on their way home, the last merchants in the midst of packing up for the night, and a few strolling lovers, turned to stare after her.
The guards were shouting, but they were farther behind than ever; she was outrunning them. Other soldiers were emerging from the towers by the gate, but not in time to cut her off. She was into the Field, into the strip that ran alongside the barracks towers, and no one had touched her yet. Then a man, his red kilt and yellow tunic visible in the light of a nearby torch but his face in shadow, stepped out in front of her, reaching out to grab her; she thrust out an arm and knocked him aside without slowing.
She rounded the corner of the North lower into the wider part of the Field and promptly tripped over a sleeping figure.
She stumbled, but caught herself, arms outflung, balanced like a cat, then was up and running again.
There were no torches here, no lanterns; yellow light leaked from the distant windows of Wall Street; the orange glow of the greater moon limned the top of the city wall above her, and the scattered remnants of the evening’s cookfires made pools of lesser shadow here and there, but most of the Field was in darkness. Its inhabitants, asleep or awake, were but shadowy lumps in the gloom; her cat-eyes, still not yet fully adjusted from the cozy light of the Blue Dancer’s dining room, let her see movement, but not colors or details. She danced through the dark, avoiding bodies and shelters at the final fraction of a second.
Then, abruptly, fire bloomed above her, orange light a thousand times brighter than any moon. She stumbled, stopped, and looked up.
A warlock hung in the air, glowing impossibly bright, like an olf-color piece of the sun itself. She knew he was a warlock, but she couldn’t have said how she knew; the light simply felt like warlockry.
Without thinking, she reached her own warlockry up to counter him, to extinguish the glow, but his power was greater than hers; it was like fighting the tide. She could stop anything he did from reaching her, but she couldn’t put out the light or drive him away.
Around her, she realized as she pressed her power upward, were people, dozens of people, the people of Wall Street Field— the poor and dispossessed, the downtrodden, the homeless, the outlawed.
“Help me!” she called.
No one answered, and she could hear soldiers coming, she could smell leather and steel and sweat. Someone tossed a rock in the general direction of the flying figure, but it never even came close.
It gave her an idea, though.
She could not fight him with warlockry, she was outmatched that way, but warlockry was not all she had. She knelt and snatched up a chunk of brick, still warm from a cookfire, and flung it upward—not with magic, but with the strength of her arm, the strength she had stolen from Inza and Deru and the rest.
The warlock shied away, and the light dimmed somewhat.
The soldiers were coming; Tabaea snatched out her belt knife, intent on giving them a fight.
The knife was like a sliver of darkness in the warlock’s glow; Tabaea held the Black Dagger ready in her hand.