The cabinet held an elaborate silver tea service, and the teapot was moving, walking about on three long, birdlike legs. Tiny metal toes tapped gently on the shelf as it strolled. Then, as Tabaea watched, it sank down, folding its legs beneath it, and settled into motionlessness.
Tabaea smiled and tugged at the empty sack under her belt, but did not yet remove it from concealment. A magic animated teapot was a very pretty prize indeed; such things cost a fortune. Unfortunately, since they were so rare and expensive, and each was a unique piece, they were almost impossible to fence.
The crystal would be worth plenty-but this was merely the beginning. There was plenty more of the house yet to explore.
Three other doors opened into the dining salon, one on each side. For no particular reason, Tabaea chose the door on the left, heading more or less toward the front of the house-as much as this curiously angled corner house had a front, at any rate.
This brought her into a parlor or drawing room, just as dark and deserted as the dining salon; the fireplace was empty even of ash, the windows at the far end shuttered and heavily curtained. Chairs and settees stood here and there; a potted palm was waving in the breeze.
Except, Tabaea realized, there was no breeze. She froze again, watching.
The palm continued to wave, swaying steadily back and forth; Tabaea noticed that it seemed to be fanning a particular armchair.
Well, of course-it was fanning the armchair! More magic, clearly-a little something to help stay cool on a hot summer day, that was all. Another wizard- or sorcerer-created domestic amenity, like the teapot.
Whoever owned this house was clearly very, very rich, to own two such animated household objects, both devoted to ordinary tasks. Tabaea lifted her candle and looked around again.
Something on the mantelpiece was staring at her.
She stared back for a second, startled, and then realized it was probably a small idol of some sort. It was vaguely humanoid, vaguely froglike, roughly the size of a small cat, greenish brown, with great big pointed ears. She crept toward it for a closer look-maybe it had jewels or gold on it somewhere.
It squealed, bounded to its feet, sprang to the floor, and ran off, squeaking noises that might have been words.
Tabaea almost yelped in surprise, then caught herself and looked around guiltily.
That was how Deleth the Housebreaker had gotten himself caught, flogged, and exiled from the city last year, she remembered; he had dropped a statuette on his foot and sworn at it, and someone asleep upstairs had heard and awoken and come to investigate, with a sword in hand. She knew better than that.
Well, she had caught herself, she hadn't made a sound beyond a sort of strangled gasp. Now, if only that weird little creature didn't raise the alarm…
What was that thing, anyway? She frowned.
It must be some sort of magical creature, she decided. Tabaea glanced at the waving palm. Well, this house had more than its share of magic, certainly.
She wouldn't mind having a little magic. Like every child in Ethshar, she'd dreamed sometimes of becoming a wizard or warlock, wearing fancy robes, and having people step out of her way in the streets.
It hadn't happened, of course.
Maybe someday, if she got rich enough, she would buy herself magical things, the way whoever owned this house had.
She decided to take a look at the next room, and stepped through an arch into a broad hallway, paneled in dark rich woods. Stairs led to the upper floors-the house was an ostentatious three stories in all, though she suspected the uppermost might be a mere attic-but she was not yet ready to ascend; if anyone was home, he or she was most likely asleep upstairs, and poking around up there was best left until last.
As she stood at the foot of the stairs, a door to her right caught her eye; it was half-closed, whereas the others were all either wide open or tightly shut. That was intriguing; shading the candle with her other hand, she crept over and peered in.
The dining salon and the parlor and the hallway were spacious and elegant, richly furnished, uncluttered, and, so far as she could see by candlelight, spotlessly clean; the room behind the half-closed door was the utter opposite. It was large enough, but it was jammed to overflowing with books, papers, boxes, jars, bottles, and paraphernalia of every kind. The walls were almost completely hidden by shelves and drawers and pinned-up charts. Spills and stains, old and new, adorned the floor and various other surfaces.
Somebody's workroom, clearly-this would be where the household accounts were kept, and all the little things that go into running whatever business the house's owner was in. Those jars were probably old preserves, spare pins, and other such things.
There was sawdust, or some other powder, on the floor, she noticed, and tiny web-toed footprints making a beeline through it. That was probably where that creature had gone when she startled it. She raised the candle higher, to see if the little beast might be lurking somewhere amid the clutter.
For the first time she noticed what hung from the ceiling and paused to stare at it in wonder.
Why would someone have a dried bat hanging in his workroom?
She looked a bit more closely at the contents of the room, and saw an assortment of bones on one shelf, from tiny little bits that could have been from a mouse or shrew, up to what was surely the jawbone of a good-sized dragon. A large jar nearby, she now realized, held not pickles or preserves, but mummified spiders the size of her hand. The red stuff that she had taken for jellies and jams was an assortment of blood-she could read the labels. The biggest jar was dragon's blood, the next one was virgin's blood…
She shuddered in sudden realization. No wonder this place had that magical teapot, and the waving palm, and the little web-toed creature.
She was in a wizard's house.
CHAPTER 2
Tabaea crept silently toward the door at the far end of the workshop.
The sensible thing to do would be to flee, of course. Messing with magicians was dangerous. Everyone knew that, and Tabaea was no exception. A tempting but slightly riskier alternative would be to snatch a few nonmagical treasures, and then flee.
But she was unable to resist. She was not going to be sensible at all. Wizardry had always fascinated her, and here she was in a wizard's house. She couldn't leave without exploring further!
She would never have dared enter if she had known it was a wizard's house. Since she had noticed the house on her way to and from Grandgate Market, where she had gone in hopes of picking up a few valuables, she had thought of the house as being on Grand Street, and had forgotten that it was also on another major thoroughfare-Wizard Street. Ordinary people didn't antagonize magicians; that was very probably why there weren't better locks and other safeguards. Shops and houses on Wizard Street didn't need them.
She would never have broken in if she had known-but now that she was inside, she just had to see more.
There was light coming from beneath that door-not very much, just a little-and she wanted to see what was causing it. Very slowly, very carefully, very silently, she knelt and lowered her eye to the crack.
Behind the door were stairs going down, stone stairs between gray stone walls. She blinked and looked again.
Stairs going down?
Most buildings in Ethshar of the Sands did not have cellars; the sands on which the city was built, and for which it was named, made digging difficult. Excavations had a tendency to fall in on themselves. That was also why structures were almost never more than three stories in height: anything taller than that tended to sink or fall over. Some people had cellars dug for cold storage-root cellars, wine cellars, and the like-but such extravagances were generally small, and reached by ladders rather than by stairs.