Magic Steps (7 page)

“It’s all Pasco’s fault!” snapped Vani. He thrashed as if he thought he could swim through the air to claw at his young cousin. “He did this!”

Gran’ther’s tufted eyebrows rose. “Did he indeed?”

“I didn’t mean it,” babbled Pasco. “I—I was scared, and he’s going to beat me up again—,”

“Beat you up?” Gran’ther looked at Vani and then at Pasco. “Again?”

“He’s lying to get himself out of trouble,” growled Vani, but the girls were shaking their heads.

“He’s beaten Pasco before,” Gran’ther repeated, to confirm it.

“Yes, sir,” replied Haiday, shamefaced. “And you, future harriers all, you said nothing? You allowed him to do it?” Gran’ther asked it as if he were simply confirming a report. Now all of the cousins but Vani and Pasco nodded, staring at their feet.

“Well,” the old man said at last. “Once we have solved the matter at hand, we must talk about this. We cannot turn a bully harrier loose on the people of Summersea. They deserve better care.” To Pasco he said, “Can you bring them down?”

Pasco looked at the three captives. Raising, then lowering his arms, he tried to feel magical. Nothing hap pened. He then hummed the tune, and raised and lowered his arms. That didn’t work, either. He was afraid to try dancing—he’d probably just make it worse.

“There’s—I have to

” he stammered. Gran’ther scowled, and Pasco tried to get his voice under control. “There’s someone I need to get,” he said. “She—she knows what’s wrong with me.” If she’ll come, he thought, shivering. What if she refused?

“Then fetch her at once,” Gran’ther ordered. Pasco hesitated. “I have to go a ways. I’ll be a while.” Gran’ther sat on a bench, folding his hands over the grip on his cane. “No one’s going anywhere.” When Pasco still hesitated, the old man’s heavy brows snapped together. “Now, boy!”

he said sharply. Pasco fled.

It was late when Sandry had returned the night before, and fretting over Pasco had kept her awake long after midnight. As a result, when she woke in the morning, it was nearly ten. She dressed hurriedly and went in search of the duke. She found him in the workroom with Baron Erdogun.

“Uncle, I’m sorry about last night,” she said, kissing his cheek before she took a chair. “I had to talk to Lark. I didn’t get home until late. And why didn’t you wake me for your ride this morning?”

“I am aware you came back late, and before you scold, I heard it this morning. I was abed when you returned.” He smiled at her and offered her a plate of muffins. The baron yanked the bell pull. “When you didn’t come this morning, I assumed you were still asleep,” the duke con tinued. “Since you’re usually up early, I thought you must need your rest. As for my ride, instead of having to make excuses to my taskmaster”—he reached over and tugged one of her braids, which she had left hanging down her back that morning—,”I confined my explorations to the Arsenal.”

A servant arrived and took breakfast instructions from Erdogun while Sandry grinned at the duke. The Arsenal dockyards—where Emelan’s navy was built, housed, and repaired—was large, but it was nearby. A visit there would not have lasted as long as their ride of the previous morning had.

He must have been tired, to go to bed early and to stick to the Arsenal today, she thought, breaking up a muffin. So he’s listening to the healers after all, maybe.

“I trust you found Dedicate Lark in good spirits?” asked Erdogun.

Sandry nodded, her mouth full. When she finished her first muffin, she began on her second. Looking up as she buttered it, she saw that both men were watching her. It seemed they were curious about what had taken her up to Winding Circle, but they were too polite to ask her outright.

She giggled, then told them about the success of Pasco’s net-spell, and Larks advice. As she talked, servants brought in a small table and set her breakfast out on it. Once they were gone, she continued as she ate.

When she finished, the duke chuckled. “I’m sure teaching will be an eye-opening experience,” he said, picking up the sheaf of papers he’d been reading when she came in. “It always was for me.”

“Oh, splendid,” Sandry told him drily. “Was there any news about Jamar Rokat?”

“Not a word,” said the duke. “It’s as if they appeared in that room, did their work, then vanished.” He leafed through the papers until he found three, and passed them to her. Sandry read them quickly. Captain Qais was as stiff in writing as he was in person, but the facts were clear. So far the bodyguards refused to admit to helping the killers enter the countinghouse. She understood that: if they did, they would be executed as accomplices. The Provost’s Mages were still picking apart the spells of pro tection and detection on Rokat House, with nothing to report. Everyone who worked in the building was being questioned by the Guard. The dead mans brother was making a nuisance of himself, hovering over Captain Qais and demanding results.

Sandry returned the papers to her uncle, and contin ued to eat her breakfast in thoughtful silence. Just as she finished, a maidservant came to the open door.

“Forgive me, your grace, my lord, but there is a boy here.” In her mouth the word boy sounded like a disease. “He says he must speak to my lady immediately.”

Sandry frowned. Could it be Pasco? “Does he have a name?” she asked.

Pasco darted in past the servant, coming to an abrupt halt when he saw the two men at the table. His face, al ready ashy, went dead white.

Sandry took pity on him and got to her feet. “Pasco, good morning,” she said calmly, putting her napkin on her chair. “You met my uncle yesterday, of course—,”

Pasco bowed jerkily to the duke.

“And this is the Lord Seneschal, Baron Erdogun fer Baigh.”

Pasco gave the same wooden-puppet bow to Erdogun, then fixed pleading eyes on Sandry. “Lady, my cousins are hanging in midair and I can’t get them down!”

Sandry heard the duke smother a chuckle. She ignored it as she fixed Pasco with her best teacherly stare. “I take it you danced them up there?”

Pasco nodded, wringing his hands.

“So you agree you have magic,” Sandry told him sternly.

“I’ll agree anything, lady, if only you’ll fetch them down!”

Sandry looked at the maid. “Please inform Oama and Kwaben that I require their company, my own horse, and a mount for Pasco.” The woman dipped Sandry a curtsy and left, her back stiff with disapproval.

Sandry thrust Pasco into a chair and put a muffin in his hands. “Tell me exactly what happened,” she ordered.

House Acalon was not what Sandry had thought it would be when Pasco told her that four families of harri rs lived there. She had expected something gloomier than this tall, airy building with its tiled roof and plastered walls, built around a large central courtyard. Bright, colorful hangings decorated the walls inside and soft carpets lay underfoot. The walls had been white washed recently; wooden furniture gleamed under coats of wax. It wasn’t cold enough yet for a hearth fire in the front parlor where Pasco led her, but a brazier took the chill off the room and released a whiff of sandalwood to perfume the air.

When they entered the front parlor, a woman got up from a chair next to the brazier, closing the book she had been reading. She was tall and strong-looking, with di rect brown eyes and a firm jaw. When Pasco saw her, he gulped audibly.

“Mama,” he said, looking down.

“I am Sandrilene fa Toren.” Sandry offered a hand to the woman, who grasped it lightly, bowed—she wore loose breeches—and released it.

“Zahra Acalon,” the woman replied. “I understand my son has been keeping a few things from us.”

Sandry gave Zahra her best smile. “Don’t blame him,” she said, resting a hand on Pasco’s shoulder. The boy quivered like a nervous horse. “I only told him yesterday he had dancing magic. I can’t scold him for not believing in e. My teacher, Dedicate Lark at Winding Circle, has never heard of dance magic the way he does it.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought Zahra softened a lit tle. “He should have told us,” she said gruffly. Looking at “Pasco she added very firmly, “Immediately.”

“It’s not harrier stuff,” muttered Pasco.

Zahra looked rueful. “It’s true, my lady,” she confessed to Sandry. “Most of what gets talked of here is harrier business —Provost’s Guard,” she explained.

Sandry nodded. “I understand. When I lived at Discipline, almost all we talked about was magic.” It wasn’t quite true, but it might help mother and son to relax, if she didn’t act critical. “Now, perhaps we should get to the problem.

Once we’ve sorted that out, we can talk about Pasco’s education.”

“This way,” said Zahra, leading them through the house. They walked into a gallery around the inner courtyard. From there Sandry could see the airborne captives, three young people in their teens, all in breeches and shirts, each holding a padded baton. They seemed to be practicing a defense against two attackers on the open ground, Watching them intently from a bench near the low fountain at the center of the courtyard was a tall, slender old man with gray hair combed straight back, a long straight nose and heavy brows.

He thumped the ground with his cane. “No, no, Reha! You’re leaving yourself open for a side attack! Pay attention,!”

Sandry ducked her head to keep anyone, from seeing her grin., She felt a.

prickle of respect for Pasco. By her reckoning from, his story, his cousins had been, in, the air for at least ninety minutes. He must have been really determined when he danced them, up there, she thought.

Zahra stepped forward. “Excuse me, Gran’ther,” she announced. “Lady Sandrilene fa Toren has come to help Pasco unravel this”—she glanced at the hanging trio—,”

difficulty.”

The Acalons turned and bowed to Sandry. Even the three in the air tried to bow.

This time she’d thought ahead; she raised her handkerchief to her nose to hide her grin at the sight of those three swaying bows.

The old man shot a look at Pasco. “Was there no one of our own standing you could bother with this?” he de manded sharply. “I am sure my lady is far too busy to undo your tangles.”

Sandry curtsied to the man Zahra had called “Gran’ther.”’ “Actually, I’m honored to be the mage who discovered Pasco’s talent,” she remarked solemnly. “Not everyone gets to find unusual magics.” Perhaps a white lie on her part would make Pasco feel better, and get his family to think of this as an opportunity, not an embar rassment. “I look forward to being his teacher.”

“Teacher!” barked the old man. “Since when does the nobility teach?”

“My lady, this is my husband’s father, Edoar Acalon,” Zahra said quietly. “He is the head of our house.”

Sandry walked over to the three who hung in the air. Halting beside the old man she answered him. “Since the is the mage who discovered his talent, and there no dance-mages at Winding Circle.”

With a nod, she turned her back on Edoar Acalon, making it impossible for him to argue with her. Focusing on the captives, Sandry walked around them, thinking hard.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this before,” she remarked slowly. She had Pasco’s measure by now. He was capable of forgetting his scare the moment his cousins were earthbound again. She had to reinforce his fright, or he would be skipping lessons before she could say “Duke’s Citadel.” “None of us ever hung anyone in midair.”

Pasco gulped: she could hear him. “You can’t fix it?” he cried. “But you have to! I don’t know how to get them down!”

She wanted to take pity on him, but something warned her not to let him relax just yet. It’s not what I would have chosen for his first lesson, she admitted to herself, but it’s what we have—and maybe it’ll stick longer this way Sandry shook out her skirts, letting Pasco stew a little more. His mother Zahra stood at parade rest, her eyes never leaving Sandry’s face, while the old man leaned on his cane.

“lf you didn’t know how to get them down, you shouldn’t have put them, up there,”’ Sandry remarked at last.

“It was an accident!” cried Pasco. “I told you how it happened!”

“It’s all right if you don’t know you’re a mage,” a girl pointed out.

“Don’t help, Reha,” muttered Pasco.

“But he does know,” replied Zahra woodenly. “Lady Sandrilene told him. He was supposed to tell us, and take lessons with her.”

“Of course he knew,” Sandry added, her voice cool. “You had to dance, didn’t you? You had to think of a tune and hum.”

“I want him arrested!” cried Vani, pointing at Pasco. “He knows magic and he did it to me, and that’s against the law! I want him harried!”

“You will be silent, Vanido Acalon.” Gran’ther Edoar’s voice was splinters of ice. “You have said more than enough today.”

“Please get them down,” Pasco begged Sandry. “I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll take lessons, whatever you want. Please”

Sandry looked at Zahra. “Have you a private room we can use?” she asked.

The woman nodded, and led them back into the house. Sandry followed, towing Pasco. When Zahra showed them into a small chamber just off the gallery, Sandry thanked her and closed the door.

“Sit,” she ordered Pasco. “Take some deep breaths. It’s just you and me here.

Calm down.”

Pasco nodded and sat on the floor, inhaling and exhaling loudly. Sandry looked around. From the scent of Incense and the statues of gods in wall-niches, she guessed they were in the family chapel. She recognized most of the gods: Larks own patroness, Mila of the Grain, the earth goddess, and her consort the Green Man; Yanna Healtouch, the goddess of water and health; Shurri Firesword, the goddess of fire and warriors; and Hakkoi the smith, god of forges and the law.

She paused before the only unfamiliar statue: a man with a hawks head, feet, and wings in brown and blue feathers, and a long black coat. A sword and dagger hung from the belt at his waist. In one hand he carried a lantern, in the other a set of manacles. From the number of votive candles and half-burned sticks of incense around the niche, he seemed to be very popular in this household.

“That’s Harrier the Clawed,” Pasco informed her. His voice was steadier. “The god of provosts, guards, and thief-takers. He takes apart secrets and puts them away against the starving time. There’re shrines to him. in every coop—every guardhouse. And here.”’