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"RHION!" THE SHARP RATTLE of pebbles striking the jalousies startled him from sleep The roo, theat the far end a blurred screen of silver-shot grisaille, the air tender The voice had been hu atte tones of Jaldis&039; box
And indeed, all that was visible of Jaldis was a hunched twist of bone and white hair beneath the single sheet of the other cot, rising and falling with the slow, steady rhyth his own bed sheet about hi his spectacles onto his face, hurried to theOutside, Shuttlefly Court was drowned in shadows still, though the sky overhead was the color of peaches, the hills beyond the roofs like solass
Tally was down in the square, standing up in hermermaid-like from under her cap
"Could you really hit myfrom down there?" Rhion asked softly, as - decently robed and scratching at his beard - he let her in downstairs a few moments later
"Of course Can&039;t you?"
"I couldn&039;t hit it from inside the rooht your horse You rarely see good horseflesh in this part of the city People will notice"
"I left the charave me tucked under the saddle blanket" She dropped into one of the rickety kitchen chairs and disengaged a s habit "I brought coffee"
"Dinar of Prinagos has just won enht, word, deed, spell, and incantation" Rhion tweaked open the bag and, holding it cradled in his hands, inhaled deeply and lovingly Their small stock of coffee - copiously adulterated with dried acorns - was another of the things left behind in Felsplex Beans like these they had not been able to afford since their days in Nerriok, when they&039;d been patronized by nobles of the court
"I also brought all the little doings," she added, getting up to fetch cups from the shelf while Rhion set the sack down and went to dip water into the kettle frorinder and a strainer and sugar and cinnamon"
"Will you marry me?" The jest was out of his mouth before he could stop it, and she looked around swiftly, their eyessecond it wasn&039;t a jest
"Forget I said that," he apologized quickly, which only made it worse She looked away and he saw the color rise to the roots of her hair He knew he should say soht remark to cover his own confusion and hers, but the air between them teemed with unsaid words, with possibilities unthinkable, like tinder which a spark would set ablaze
The woun in the knowledge that, as a wizard, he was legally a dead man with no position in the laws of any of the Forty Realms - unable to marry, unable to hold property, unable to enter business or trade or to sign a binding contract And yet looking at this girl
She took a deep breath after far too long, set down the cups on the table, and staave rown horse?"
"I&039;ht line "Ithalf of it but then the rest would be awfully conspicuous"
She giggled, her painful blush fading; to the relief of both, the hter
"Where&039;d you learn to make coffee like this?" she asked a few minutes later, when he poured the inky, bittersweet liquid into the bottoo cups which were e for the tiny quantity to be consu, you really will be welcome in my father&039;s service"
"What do you ?" Rhion de, as you may have noticed, wizardry doesn&039;t pay, and for another, ood coffee is wizardry Why do you think I&039;ve been apprenticed to Jaldis for ten years? Because I like cli in another lidded pot for yesterday&039;s bread and putting it and the small jar of honey on the table between the ravely spooned enough honey onto her bread to satiate a regiment of bees "My deportment master used to crack me over the elboith his stick if I didn&039;t curve ar or added the cinnamon My brother Syron has to put up with all that now" She held the spoon high above the bread for the sheer joy of watching that lucid athe ruby doublet buttons which he&039;d cut off to buy the opals and gold for Jaldis&039; spectacles Somewhere in the maze of courts, a rooster crowed The mare nickered outside their door, the sound loud in the thin cool ofOther than that, the square was silent Even Mistress Prymannie had not come out to unshutter her schoolrooled with the faintly prickly velvetiness of dust, the steamy whiff from the laundry in the next street, the odor of privies and stale cheap cooking, a strange, slubbed tapestry of fustian and silk
"Well," Rhion went on more briskly, "did you just come to see me because your father&039;s cook can&039;t make a decent cup of coffee, or"
"My father&039;s cook ood cup of coffee and would demand that you be beheaded for treasonable utterances if he heard you say different But," she went on, "I&039;ve figured out what to do about Dareed"
"I&039;ll have to talk to her about that," he warned, and Tally nodded
"You will" She set down her coffee, cradling the round s about herher hands in the stealy of his sister, and he felt a curious pang when he realized that he still thought of her as a girl of fifteen She o, with children
"There&039;s a disused pavilion at the end of the kitchen gardens of Father&039;s palace," Tally was saying "You can reach it through a postern in Halberd Alley Daht,I&039;ve told her you don&039;t knoho she is"
"Thank God she didn&039;t see us e rescued her daughter"
She ducked her head shyly, then looked back at hiht that, yes The house is right on the palace wall If you didn&039;t knoas actually connected to the palace, you couldn&039;t tell it by looking It really could be anywhere That should lay to rest her fears about being black back to Esrex I told her that I told you that she was a rich merchant&039;s wife and I was her ht?"
"Sure thing, laiest street dialect, and she laughed and shoved hiravity there was a sparkle of hu like a wildflower in a bed of well-bred tuberoses, and he suspected she spent a good deal of her tiretfully, he gave her his hand "I think you&039;d better be getting back They really will be wondering where you are"
"I told the up and shaking out her long green skirt "And I really aet there I told Marc - Marc of Erralswan, the Captain of the Palace Guard, who&039;s supposed to belady Amalie there - that I had some business to attend to in the kennels and that we&039;d be late A the hawks and will tell them at the mews"
"You&039;re full of tales today, aren&039;t you?" he teased, as they passed beneath the suspended thickets of drying herbs towards the door "First you&039;re posing as your sister&039;scross questions with your escort"
"Well" When she averted her face that way she looked like a very dignified ten-year-old caught raiding the jam "Didn&039;t you do that?"
She put her hand to her cap, ahis sister would have called paltry He&039;d seen the wealthy virgins of Bragens that would have lifted them out of the saddle if they&039;d ridden at any speed, had soht heavier than they should have been, that is But not Tally She was too thin, if anything, with scarcely ht of the open door, strong now that the sun was slanting down over the tiled roofs, cast a gauzy crescent against her cheek and low like the honey that still dabbled the plates on the table behind the his eye, Tally laughed again, brightness passing across her face like spring sunlight in the Drowned Lands, breathtaking, fragile, and swiftly dihed "There&039;d be a hideous to-do if I was found out"
"To put it mildly, yes"
Across the square beyond her shoulder, boys and girls were arriving to school, loitering outside in their clu stray chickens in the weeds Knowing fro other than lessons will hold a child&039;s attention, Rhion drew about hi with reins hitched to the cottonwood post, a thin, numinous aura of Look-Over-There
Tally&039;s htened, the diain into a tired line "It&039;s just that They want so esture failed, half- his face helplessly, not sure, in fact, what it was that she did want
"To be alone?" The incessant grind of his father&039;s de the corridors of his ht men and be sure to be friends with their sons And histhe already-perfect set of his sleeves, her fussy disappoint hiain "And sometimes" She broke off once more, her eyes on his, and he understood, and she knew he understood It had to do with music, some of it, and some of it with silence, but there was no clear word for what it was that she sought His hand ht twice and closed his fist instead
She turned quickly from hi out withfit of self-importance, so that she fussed the last of her pupils into the building and got theht of Tallyaway across the court
As Tally had proardens could have been any small house in the Upper City, with its modestly slanted roof of red tiles and its pale stucco bleached silver by the light of the bright spring stars After the eternal htness of the air in the Mountains of the Sun htly unreal, like a child&039;s drawing; every weed ste the alley walls and every pothole and broken brick in the road were distinct, even in this wan and shadowy light The air was redolent with the flower and vegetable markets a few streets aith the smells of the Duke&039;s extensive stables, and with dust and garbage Here at the back of the palace complex, the walls lacked the intricate ornamental brickwork, the tiled niches, and the uessed as they climbed the tiled steps from the little pavilion&039;s hall that the place had been built originally to house some ht of the single candle in Tally&039;s hand darted fitfully over painted rafters and bright frescoes on the walls and glinted on the spectacles hidden deep within the shadows of Jaldis&039; concealing hood "Can we get ourselves seated before she comes into the room?" Rhion whispered "That ith luck, she won&039;t see hi up at all to know he&039;s crippled"
Tally nodded They were all cloaked and hooded like conspirators in a cheap street-corner melodrama - Jaldis had shifted his voice-box up onto his back, so that its smooth roundness, coave the impression that he was hunchbacked; in place of his crutches he leaned on a long staff, and upon Rhion&039;s arm
"Good idea Drat this mask - it won&039;t stay tied" She set her candle on a pine hall stand to tangle with the ties of herto help her Under her cloak he saw she wore the plain, black frock and short petticoat of a serving-maid, her ankles slender as itches above sensible shoes "There The light&039;s pretty low in there; I don&039;t think there&039;s et your ht when he and Jaldis entered the roole candle in a crude brass holder provided all the illumination - if such it could be called - available; the candle, moreover, placed not on the oak table in the center of the rooloould leave everyone&039;s faces in deepest shadow "Why do they always have the lights so low they won&039;t be recognized?" wondered Rhion aloud, helping Jaldis to his chair at one end of the table andthe candle to the far end of the sideboard so that its light was al visible of his face but a black shadoithin his hood "Don&039;t they realize wizards can see in the dark?"
He took his own seat and re on the scarlet ht for three dequins with so up his hood again Carnival had been over a o - in the slop shops of the Lower Town masks were cheap this time of year His back was to the candle, his face toward the door, which at this distance was only a ht suddenly, what do I do if I can&039;t tell Tally and Damson apart at this distance ?
But the concern was set at rest a moment later, as the hall door opened and he sao nebulous figures fraotten: one forood seven inches taller than the other
"Mistress" Rhion deepened and hoarsened his voice as much as he could and half rose to his feet to bow Jaldis, to noneborn eyes a black form almost invisible in the dark, merely inclined his head
"My roped around for the chair back in order to sit - as far as visibility went, her identity, Rhion thought, would be safe from this potential blackmailer, anyway Without his spectacles, at a distance of three feet only the fact that the boiled leatherher face was silvered let him know she was masked at all He could make out the blurred shape of lips where a cut-out had been made for speech, but couldn&039;t have taken oath whether they were long and squared, like Tally&039;s, or round and pouty - only that they were darkened with a considerable quantity of rouge A dark shawl the size of a bed sheet concealed her hair She wore a cloak over her dress, and the only way he knew there was any kind of decoration on either covering hen an occasional sequin or geht and flash in the dark like a purple star
"A philter, she said," Rhion replied "To win the love of a man"
Damson leaned forward Her scent was patchouli with a heavy dollop of aris and touches of lily and spikenard Any wizard, trained as all were in the identification of herbs by scent, could have picked it out froht about "These are his" Fro cloak she pushed a silken scarf containing a big knot of ivory-fair hair-cos, and a rolled-up linen shirt The scarf itself orked with a pattern of red pouise, Sis
"I want him to be drawn to me, to love me"
"You understand," Rhion said, "that such a philter will only work for a short ti drawn to your bed, he ry with you? May even hate you?"
"No" The plump woman shook her head so that the amethysts flashed in the silk of her shawl "He thinks he hated me before, but I made him love me He&039;s only a boy - I knohat his needs are, better than those callow hussies Better than he does hih his pride won&039;t let him admit it And in any case, what he thinks doesn&039;t matter If I can bear his son, he&039;ll not be able to have me put aside"