Old Mars

So that was the way I took, while Dair went out the front. I passed a greasy scullery and someone washing pans; she did not look up. The staff were probably used to it. I sped through an alley, seeing no one, and met Dair again outside the bar, standing in the shadows.

“They’re here. The sorcerer is, anyway.”

“Did you see her? Why would he have brought her back here and not to the Tribes?”

“I don’t know. Negotiating on neutral ground? Or maybe he thinks it’s safer now that he’s found out we’re on the scene. I only saw him. I don’t think he saw us, though. But I can’t be sure.”

“Did you see where he went?”

“No.”

“I want my tope back,” I told him. A quick trip round the town’s stables seemed in order, and, in the second, belonging to one of the cheaper guesthouses, we found my mount. He bellowed a welcome when he saw me, looking up from his steaming bucket of entrails and enveloping me in a blast of fetid breath. Dair said that he thought it was sweet. I did not bother to reply. We took the back stairs, weapons at the ready. Dair took a phial from his pocket, broke off the top, and threw it into the corner; after a moment, smoke billowed out, seeping under the doors.

“Fire!” Dair shouted, with a convincing note of panic.

We waited until there were a series of gratifying cries and people in various stages of undress bolted forth. At the far end of the hall, however, a door remained firmly closed. I ran through the clouds of smoke and kicked it in.

The sorcerer was standing by the window, in the act of throwing open the shutters.

Hafyre cried out, muffled by a gag. Her hands were tied behind her back. I sliced through the bonds while Dair fired a bolt at the sorcerer, who flung himself to one side. I stood up to get a clear shot with the barb gun, aiming at the sorcerer’s face, but at that moment the room crackled with the cast of a spell.

I felt it hit me, and it felt as though it should have brought me down, but it broke over me like a fiery wave and was gone. There was a cry of fury and I turned to see the priestess, Hafyre’s aunt, standing in the doorway. Her hand was outstretched; her face, bewildered. The sorcerer gave a sudden caw of laughter.

“That’s the trouble with women’s spells!”

My magic can fry any man at seven paces. Being a poet, I really should pay more attention to figures of speech, especially in other people’s languages.

The sorcerer flung out a hand of his own. Dair tackled me low, clutching me around the waist and bringing me to the floor.

The bolts shot over my head like twin comets: one green and one blue. There was a sharp cry, a curse from Hafyre, then the ringing silence that follows concussive-weapons fire. The pressure of Dair’s body on mine was abruptly released. He pulled me to my feet. A scorched outline against the opposite wall was all that remained of the sorcerer: Evidently rage had lent force to that particular spell. In the doorway, the body of the Ynar priestess, Hafyre’s aunt, had slumped lifelessly to the floor. And a window banging against its own shutters was the only trace of Hafyre herself.

She’d stolen my tope, we discovered shortly. But there were no prizes for guessing where she was headed: Cadrada, decent restaurants, and a lifetime of business opportunities. We could have gone after her, but I couldn’t help feeling that she deserved to have a free run.

Later, though—later I would return to Cadrada. Maybe with money in my pocket. The hope in my heart was already there, however misplaced.

Aloud, I said I thought that she was more trouble than she was worth. So Dair and I split the proceeds along gender lines: He took the sorcerer’s cash bag and poison store, while I stripped the priestess’s body of her coin belt and the wealth-beads in her hair. Then we dumped her body in the Yss and gave the guesthouse proprietor a bit over the cost of the room to keep her quiet. Even with this unexpected expense, over another bottle of Ylltian white, we calculated that we’d made slightly more than the finders’ fees.

“Of course,” Dair said sourly, a couple of hours later, “failure’s not good for the reputation.”

“True. But at least we don’t have to go all the way back to Cadrada empty-handed. Although I don’t think that the north is a very healthy place to be anymore.” I was remembering the priestess’s warriors. Dair turned the glass in his fingers.

“I was thinking of Yllt. Lovely at this time of year. And they do make a nice wine.”

I smiled.

“Do you want a companion for the ride?”

“Not fussy, are you? Although I’m reminded that you no longer have a mount.”

And so the next morning I once more rode out of Scarlight, on Dair’s black tope, with the Jharain wind at my back, money in my pocket, and the vision of a girl’s face before me, her eyes the color of forests.

HOWARD WALDROP