Free Ash and Silver by Carol Berg Page B

that proclaimed its importance with four carved wood pillars and evidence of paint. My morning’s exploration had identified it as the town’s common hall. One of the men-at-arms accompanied the master and the pureblood inside, while the other made a circuit of the building before taking his post outside the door. The official hurried back to the drying house.
    I watched and waited. The rain intensified. Nine small boats returned to the docks empty. The fishermen trudged away, several into houses along the lane, others continuing on toward a taphouse farther down the lane.
    Then my every sense flared to life. The pureblood emerged from the commons house. He looked up and down the street, then crouched and touched the churned-up muck of the lane. What was he looking for? Me?
    After a moment, he wiped his hands on a kerchief, stared at the ground in brief contemplation, then rose and trotted up the lane . . . but only as far as the potter’s house. He knelt yet again and touched the stoop before going inside.
    I held my breath, fascinated.
    Moments later, the pureblood emerged in company with one of the women travelers. She was tall and slender, draped in a long blue cape. She raised her hood, but not before I glimpsed pale hair and smooth flesh. She was no crone.
    The two dashed through the rain to the commons hall.
    Instinct . . . training . . . everything in me screamed that this was not some royal fancy to while away the time by bedding a random traveler. Perhaps it was my vantage, observing so much from this height. This was the next move in a single game and it was not a game about dried fish.
    My descent from the chimneys took only moments. Perhaps the pureblood’s moves were naught but usual caution, but I had to assume he’d sensed the veil I’d worked at the drying house. That left my choice of tactics slim.
    Veils were powerful magic. A veil confused the observer’s eyes so they failed to see an object. An
obscuré
was quieter. It made the eyes slide away with little or no impression of the object. A suspicious sorcerer could detect either one. Neither prevented ordinaries from bumping into the hidden person’s limbs, hearing his steps, or sticking sharp objects in the approximate area of his gut. The sorcerer could tell a swordsman exactly where to find that gut.
    Inek had said this wasn’t worth dying for. So, how was I to get inside undetected?
    Without a good answer that avoided bloodshed, I had one alternative. Force them out. I wanted a better view of the woman and an idea of who she was. If I did it right, no one would notice the magic until I was well away.
    I swung by the deserted docks and set a fire spell smoldering atop a broken cask. With some damp scraps of wood and rope arranged beside to feed it, and an infusion of extra magic to ensure the rain didn’t douse my sparks, it should make a pretty blaze by the time I finished my other preparations.
    Shouldering a hoop of rope and tugging my hood low, I trudged down the lane past the commons house, as if on my way to the taphouse. Instead, I turned into the alley between the bread stall and the commons house. Circling around as the prince’s careful guard had done, I traced a line along the wall, my touch scribing a conduit for enchantment.
    Now, a little work with my bracelets. I bound a spell of heat, one of smoke, and one of penetration into a single construct and linked that backto the bracelet. Like the other bracelet spells, it would be available for my use, just waiting for an infusion of magic to bring it to life. My plan would have to unfold fast, before the pureblood could react. He would be expecting something, so I’d let him have it. But first, some bread from the stall.
    â€œFive loaves for the noble guest,” I said, as the hollow-cheeked woman’s gaze fell away from my
obscuré
-spelled mask to the coins in my hand. “Your freshest—in a