Free Winter Witch by Elaine Cunningham

you,” she said. “And you already have all the brimstone you need. I smelled it when you cast the summoning spell behind the astronomer’s manor, and the stink’s still on you.”
    His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see you there.”
    “You weren’t intended to.”
    “Neither did my infernal servant.”
    “Oh, it saw me,” Ellasif said. When the wizard raised an eyebrow, she added, “It probably didn’t consider me much of a threat.”
    “Yes, that’s probably it. Now, about the cost of the other components ...”
    Ellasif curled the fingers of her right hand around the hilt of her dagger. “Two choices: You can cast the spell as agreed, or I’ll send you to a place where you’ll find brimstone in surplus.”
    The little necromancer shrugged as if to indicate that he expected this outcome but felt compelled to bargain as a matter of custom. He flipped back one side of his crimson cloak and unbuckled the satchel strapped over his shoulder. He sat down on the edge of the bed. After a moment of rummaging, he put the satchel on the floor and rose with a half-burned candle and a lump of acrid yellow coal in one palm.
    Ellasif dropped the amulet into his extended hand and watched impatiently as he cast the spell. It was not, as she understood such matters, an exceptionally difficult feat of magic, but the necromancer performed the spell as theatrically as if he envisioned himself surrounded by leaping flames and a choir of grim-faced men chanting in a forgotten tongue.
    “And here you have it,” he said at last, handing her the amulet with a flourish. “When you find a suitable corpse, put this around its neck.”
    Ellasif took the filigreed locket, gave the chain a twirl around one finger, and let fly. It opened into a circle as it spun toward the necromancer and settled around his neck before he could move away.
    He gazed down at his prize with a satisfied smirk. The soft hiss of a weapon sliding free of its sheath drew his gaze up to Ellasif. Terrified understanding dawned in his eyes.
    Ellasif hurled the knife at the necromancer. It spun once and buried itself deep in his gut. She stepped close, yanked the knife out, and plunged it in again, under the ribs and angled up to pierce the heart.
    The necromancer was dead before he hit the cot. Ellasif knew this for a certainty when his face gradually transformed into the likeness of her own.
    For a moment she stood over the bed and regarded her double. To her relief, she’d judged the weight correctly. She was small, but solid with muscle. The wizard was slightly taller but almost certainly weighed a little less than she did. That was important. She’d heard that if the corpse were significantly larger than the person it was intended to mimic, the spell took what was needed for the transformation and left the extra flesh behind. A pile of surplus meat, she reflected, was precisely the sort of detail that prompted people to stop and think more than was convenient for her present purposes.
    A glance at the open window revealed a night sky fading toward the deep sapphire of early dawn. Time was running short. She went to work setting the scene, first cutting away the wizard’s rich clothing and stuffing it into his satchel. She uncorked a bottle of cheap wine she’d bought from a Shingles vendor and splashed some around. An empty coin purse, embroidered in the Ulfen style with a circle of entwined wolves, she dropped on the floor. She followed it with two small copper coins, one of which she toed under the bed to make it appear that it had dropped and rolled when someone hastily emptied the purse. On the bedside table she left a scrap of paper that guaranteed passage for two on a northbound ship due to set sail from Korvosa around midday.
    She left the knife in the necromancer’s heart.
    To be stabbed by a robber while sleeping off city wine was no way for an Ulfen warrior to die. Ellasif wasn’t sure whether Olenka would find this end tragic or appropriate.
    She