The cooper frowned. The wizard seemed more to want the crowd closer than to get another copper. Kharl glanced past the stall. Jeka was moving past a cart with scarfs tied around a polished wooden rod, slowly toward the wizard and his booth. Kharl hobbled in toward the crowd, then left, toward Jeka. She slipped right, as if to avoid Kharl.
“Got a copper, brat?” he asked in a louder voice that was half growl, half whine.
Jeka stiffened at the tone.
“Get back,” Kharl whispered. “Same wizard. Looking for you…”
Jeka darted off to the north.
Kharl hobbled quickly, as if Jeka had taken something. “Stop! Brat!”
Behind him, there was a flash of light, bright enough that he had to blink, even though his back was to the wizard. Screams filled the air, and Kharl looked back.
A column of smoke filled the space around where the wizard’s booth had been. More had happened than just a flash of light. Those around the smoke had their hands to their eyes. Some staggered. Two women had collapsed, as had a man.
As Kharl watched, the wizard’s guard emerged from the smoke, carrying a bundle of some sort-a very long bundle. To the right of the guard was the wizard, but his figure was blurred, and Kharl had trouble looking at the mage, as the wizard and his guard slipped away from the smoke and the booth it had shrouded.
For a moment, Kharl stood frozen, his eyes flicking from the guard to the almost invisible figure of the wizard, then back to the guard in the burgundy jacket.
The wizard stopped, turned, and looked directly at Kharl. His eyes seemed to burn. “You will not thwart me again, half creature. Next time, the weather will not favor you, and she will repay me.”
Although the words were spoken from more than thirty cubits away-a good two rods-Kharl heard them clearly, and wondered how he had.
The wizard turned and strode swiftly away from the market, moving more quickly than the guard burdened with the large and long bundle.
Sellers and would-be buyers alike were turning toward the column of dissipating smoke and the booth emerging from the smoke, a squarish stall that looked only vaguely like the burgundy-walled stall before which the wizard had performed. More illusion? Kharl wondered how the stall could have changed so much, then looked back toward the wizard and the guard. They had reached a coach waiting east of the market.
“She’s gone! Gone!”
Kharl turned back toward the stall where one of the women had staggered upright. “She’s gone!”
Belatedly, Kharl realized that the bundle must have held a body-a small live body, and probably that of a girl. He glanced back to find the two men, but both the coach holding the guard and the wizard had already vanished.
The cooper began to hobble back uphill, even as the wizard’s words echoed through his thoughts…. not thwart me again…
Kharl kept moving. He would have liked to tell someone, even the Watch, about the girl, but there wasn’t much he could do, not now, and who would believe him if he told anyone there?
Slowly, he made his way back to the wall shelter adjoining the rendering yard. He did not enter the serviceway until the nearby street was empty. He quickly scaled the wall, then settled down to wait.
As time passed, Kharl began to worry, but he had no idea where he might find Jeka, none at all. She did not return to the space between the walls until close to sunset, but Kharl could smell the fowl she carried as she dropped over the wall.
“I got some-at for you,” Jeka announced.
“What about you?” asked Kharl.
“Had some already. That dustup at the market…found some coppers. Bought fowl for us both. You always buy.” Jeka did not quite look at Kharl as she handed him the fowl in stale bread.
Kharl kept from frowning. Jeka was telling the truth. That he knew, although he could not have said why. She had eaten, and she had found coppers, but he was missing something.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Something’s bothering you,” he observed, before taking a bite of the fowl.
Jeka did not reply, instead settling down with her back against the ancient brick wall.
Kharl did not press her as he ate several more bites, before holding out the fowl. “Sure you wouldn’t like some?”
“Had more ’n enough.”
After finishing the bread and fowl, Kharl licked his fingers as clean as he could. For the first time in days, his stomach felt comfortably full. Yet he couldn’t enjoy it. Something was bothering Jeka. Still. “You’re worried. You can’t hide it.”
Jeka just sat in the early twilight, not looking at Kharl.
He waited.
Finally, Jeka began to speak, slowly at first. “Enelya had a sister. She was younger’n me, lots younger. She was doing the morning dishes…when we went to the White Pony…”
Kharl knew what Jeka was going to say, but he said nothing.
“She was at the tub…and like as disappeared…”
“Did anyone find her?”
“Enelya looked…much as she could.” Jeka took another bite of the fowl. “Found her this morning. In the harbor…say she drowned, ’cause there wasn’t a mark on her.”
“You don’t think she did?”
“Enelya says she was scared of water. She almost drowned in the creek where they grew up backhills…always stayed away from the harbor.”
“The wizard. He took someone else this morning at the market,” Kharl said. “He wanted to take you at the White Pony. He talked about two being better than one. And he said you owed him.”
“Heard that.” Jeka shivered, although it was not that cold. “Today, I woulda gone there. Felt like I was bein’ called. Didn’t know you for a moment…”
“I wondered about that,” Kharl said. “That’s why I was harsh.”
“Saved me…maybe…” She shivered again. “He’s gonna keep lookin’…”
“He wants young ones, girls almost…” Kharl murmured, more to himself, thinking that the wizard was worse even than Egen. But owing?
“Must need ’em for his wizardry…”
“The Watch doesn’t say anything?” asked Kharl abruptly.
“They don’t care. Not about street girls. Don’t even care about poor ones. Safer as a boy than a girl.”
“How do you owe him?”
“Don’t. Not him.”
Although Jeka was lying, Kharl just nodded. What good would it do to press her? Except get him in more trouble. There wasn’t much he could say. But he worried about the wizard’s words. Had the wet weather helped him in dealing with the wizard before? Why?
His lips curled into a wry smile. Until he’d thought over the wizard’s words, he hadn’t been aware of anything that seemed to favor him these days.
His eyes dropped to the rag-wrapped black staff. Would it, too, help against the wizard? Would anything help enough?
XXXIII
Kharl kept worrying on twoday, but he had a feeling that threeday or fourday would be when the wizard resumed looking for him-or for Jeka. He still had no idea why the wizard was seeking out one young woman disguised as a beggar boy, but it was clear that he was.
On twoday, Kharl checked the harbor, as he had most days, but there was no sign of the Seastag, or either of the other two ships whose masters he knew, if less well than he did Hagen. He tried to push aside the worry that he might not be able to avoid Egen until a captain he knew ported in Brysta.
Jeka woke Kharl early on threeday, even before dawn. “Feel that…like a cord I can’t see, tuggin’ at me.”
The cooper looked at the shivering young woman posing as a ragged boy. As he saw the light frost on the stones, he couldn’t help feeling guilty for his warm jacket, even if he only dared sleep in it. For a moment, her words didn’t mean anything. Then he stiffened and lurched up. “We need to leave here. Now.” He tried not to wince. His back and limbs were sore and stiff, as they had been every morning he had awakened between the walls.