Magic Steps - Пирс Тамора - Страница 6

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"Admit her," the duke said to his uniformed companion. The man began to argue as they closed the windows.

Sandry waited and tried not to drum her fingers on her saddle horn.

After a couple of minutes, the man who had tried to argue with the duke yanked open the door and spoke quietly to the guards. They looked at him, startled, then parted. The man, who wore a captain's pair of concentric yellow circles on his sleeve, waved Sandry in sharply.

She dismounted and passed her mare's reins to Kwaben. "Stay with the horses," she told her guards. "I think the rest of Uncle's escort are on that side street." They nodded.

The provost's captain stood aside as she walked into the building, then closed the door and lowered the thick oak bar that locked it. To her eyes door and bar gleamed with the pale traces of magic. So did the dimly lit hall that went to the rear of the building on this floor, and the narrow stair that reached the upper stories.

"Please reconsider, my lady," the man told her gruffly. This is not an occasion for noble sightseers."

Sandry met his eyes. "You are Captain Qais?" she inquired.

He bowed stiffly.

"I will not reconsider," she said flatly. "My great-uncle has been ill. He tends to forget it, so I remember for him—and, it seems, for you. Where is he?"

"Upstairs, my lady."

Turning her back on him, Sandry climbed. The gleam of spell-signs lit her way; none of the stair lamps were burning. Since the captain didn't have her power to see magic, he missed the next step—they were uneven, to trick robbers into banging their toes just as he did. He cursed; when she looked back at him, he waved her on.

When she reached the top of the stairs, two hallways lay before her. One led to the rear of the building; the other cut across it. In the hall to her right, she saw only a flagstone floor, lamps in wall sconces, and closed doors. In the section to her left, the hall sported complexly patterned silk carpets—spelled, like everything else she had seen, with magic to protect and confuse anyone who was not allowed there. The lamps on this side were set in polished brass fixtures and circled with precious glass. Two mahogany benches were placed here. On them sat the three surly bodyguards who had attended Jamar Rokat earlier that morning, all in manacles. They looked confused, bewildered, and angry. Three Provost's Guards stood over them, baton weapons in hand.

"Why won't you believe us?" demanded the youngest of the three when he saw the captain. "We heard nothing, nor saw it neither. He went in, the door was locked—we never so much as heard a scream!"

"And the evidence shows you as liars," replied Captain Qais. "You'll give up the facts when our truthsayers have a go at you." To Sandry he said, "Why don't you wait for his grace here?"

She walked ahead of him into the open room past the captives. He mustn't know that she was nervous; she did her best to hide it. She was no hardened—what had Pasco called them—Harrier, that was it. She was not one of those, but if her great-uncle was in this mess, that was where she had to be as well.

Inside was a plain office belonging to Jamar Rokat's secretary or assistant, it would seem. Sandry walked through the open door at the back of the room into the next office and halted. Her uncle sat on the window seat, keeping out of the way of the Provost's Guards who were going over the room inch by inch. They each wore the silver braid trim on their sleeves that marked then as investigators, not street Guards.

There was blood everywhere. The hacked body of the man who had greeted them so smoothly that morning lay on the floor. His fine clothes were slashed and sodden rags. His jewels lay in a bloody heap atop his desk, as if whoever killed him had wanted to say they were too disgusting to steal. Worst of all, the man’s head had been placed in a sling made of his turban and hung from an overhead lamp.

A tiny woman in brown and blue stood by the dead mans feet, shaking her head. For all her small size, she had the lightly seamed face of someone in her fifties. "I can only guess they were waiting for him when he come in, cap'n, your grace," she said absentmindedly, staring at bloody slippers. "His guard spells never warned him."

"You can see from the furniture he never put up a fight," added another investigator as he went over a bookcase. "Even when his guards let them in. That don't make sense, 'less it was family done it."

"But the spells weren't released to let someone else in," Sandry blurted. Everyone looked at her. Sandry folded her hands. "Can any of you see or feel magic?" They all shook their heads. "Most spells like this, if you can see them, they turn colors, depending on whether someone broke through, or tried to erase them, or just released their effects for a while. Using a password just releases—it halts the protections, it doesn't end the spell. And this" — she waved a hand to take in the spells all around them—, "it hasn't been touched. I can tell that just by looking at it. Even though Rokat wasn't a mage, he'll have owned a key to these spells. He would have been able to look at that and know their status. The keys are usually made like jewelry-"

"Here." A sergeant whose almond-shaped eyes and gold skin showed his ancestors were from the Far East went to the desk. He used a wooden rod drawn from a quiverlike container hung on his belt to separate a piece of jewelry from the sticky heap of gems and precious metal. It was a long oval pendant on a chain. "Don't touch it, my lady," he cautioned. "Not till our mages have a go at it. We knew he had spells on the place, of course, though we can't see them. His kind always does."

She nodded and leaned closer. The pendant was inlaid with a number of minute squares, each made of black, pale, or fire opal. A thin slice of clear crystal was laid over them. A hair-fine thread of magic stretched away from each square. "He would have paid a fortune for this," Sandry murmured. "Yes, it's his key. Each square must be tied to a different set of spells, so he'd know exactly where somebody tried to break in. But look at it." She glanced at the Guards and their captain, all of whom stared at her without understanding. There was a tiny, ironic smile on the duke's lips. He gave her a slight nod. "Like I said, the spells were never touched. This whole pendant is dark." Sandry told them. "Nothing's glowing, and it's made to be read by someone with no magic whatever. No one broke through these spells."

"The killers' spells were better, that's all," said Captain Qais bluntly. "Someone always has better magic. Or the guards, or one of the family, must have given the right passwords to whoever they let in."

"But we had no trouble comin' in without passwords," the tiny woman pointed out.

"You had no trouble because Jamar Rokat is dead," Sandry replied. "The main power of the spells would be keyed to him."

The duke rubbed his chin. "Surely after he went to the expense to have these spells laid on, he'd only give passwords to a few. He was a careful man with many enemies. He'd keep the password to this room for his own use."

"Coulda come in over the roof," said the bald, chunky man who was the third investigator.

"He'd've spelled the roof, too," the sergeant told them tersely. "He never left no loopholes, not him."

Sandry looked at the ceiling, though she was really inspecting the magical fabric above it. There were store rooms on the floors upstairs, all with their own protections. The roof was a solid mass of untouched magic. She shook her head. "You're right. The roof is absolutely covered with spells, and none show signs of tampering."

Captain Qais crossed his arms. "Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but you are versed in weaving and needlework. We have mages who know just this kind of thing, magic used by criminals and magic used to keep criminals out. They will be able to explain. And I still think those guards will talk plenty once they're sweated."

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