Wizard (The Key to Magic) (11 page)

"More than Kendis work?"

"A
lot
more. A port bracelet configured with maximum distance protocols costs more than forty-seven thousand Bazaar tokens and the price is on the rise."

"What about the spell that you use to see in the dark? Was it very expensive?"

"I don't use a spell for that. I just use my eyes. I thought that as a sorcerer you could tell."

"Sorry, I don't know what you mean."

"I'm a
freak
."

This word, not included in his magically acquired vocabulary, had no meaning. "What's a
freak?
"

"You don't really speak Common, do you?"

"No, it's a spell."

"How much do you know about the Commonwealth?"

"Practically nothing."

She harrumphed. "A
freak
is a human and animal cross. What do they call them where you're from?"

"They don't. We don't have people like that."

"Is that so? Huh. Well, I can see in the dark because my
genes
have been messed with."

As she had said this, her voice had become flat and hard.

"You don't see as well in the light?"

"No, my vision is better than normal, night and day. The problem is that the Faction -- to be honest, I should say a lot of people in general -- won't tolerate
freaks
. Faction regulations don't recognize us as human and it's impossible to live in the open as a
freak
. All the ones that look normal, like me, try to pass as normal. The rest hide. There aren't very many of us here in the Commonwealth. Except for chance, I wouldn't be here myself."

"How's that?"

"My mother was a research assistant in a Kendis lab that was hidden in the mountains around Llorton. When the Faction took over the Duchy, they found the lab and burned it to the ground with everything inside, both experiments and people. My mother was in town doing an errand when the sorcerers attacked. After I was born, she raised me on a farm out in the boondocks and managed to keep my extra abilities a secret until I was fifteen. One day I was chasing a pig that had gotten out along the highway and I laid my foot open on a piece of glass. It was bad enough that I had to have stitches in the parish clinic. A routine diagnostics spell gave me away and one of the nurses was a Faction snitch. My mother died in prison and I spent two years under observation in a cage."

"How did you get out?"

"The sorcerer in charge of observing me got a new plaything. I'd pleased him well enough that he released me rather than have me put down."

He knew that there had to be much more to the story, but he also knew that he had no desire to hear it, so he fell silent.

Her hand still locked in his, Nali led him through the tunnel, then along a short passage filled with piping and magical devices, and finally to the foot of a circular stair illuminated by light spilling down from above. Here she released his hand in order to grasp both rails as she climbed the narrow steel treads.

For a moment, he paused. His old Khalarii'n instincts told him that it was foolhardy to take anything that Nali had said, including her professed motive for helping him get out of the Bazaar, at face value. If the Compliance Officers had posted a bounty on his head, which seemed to him very likely, then she might simply be luring him to the nearest guard post in order to collect the reward.

Without much further thought, he decided that the possibility that she would put him in contact with a wizard that could teach him how to navigate through undertime was worth the risk that she would betray him and then followed her up into the open.

It took him a couple of seconds to realize that he was not outside but actually within a gargantuan chamber. The roof was so far above that he wondered why there were no clouds. Filled with all manner and size of crates and boxes, unsupported floors like giant shelving rose up all around.

An
automaton
the size of horse with long tailing arms whizzed by near to his left and he flinched so hard that he stopped.

"The drones are harmless," Nali chided from a few paces away. "They're just stevedores and are programmed with unbreakable failsafe routines. They can't do harm, even by accident."

He took a look around. Hundreds if not thousands of the
automatons
were in sight, scurrying about, both on the floor and in the air, lifting, shifting, and moving cargo.

A larcenous impulse prompted him to ask, "What's in the crates?"

"Anything. Everything. Household goods mostly, I suppose. I've never bothered to look."

"No curiosity?"

"Not about things that would just be a distraction."

Ignoring the trajectories of the
automatons
, she darted across the gray, not-quite-stone floor. The devices changed course to avoid her, creating a looping flow in their otherwise direct paths, but showed no other reaction to her presence.

It took twenty minutes to walk to the side of the building. Here a number of frames built of metal beams and trusses gave shelter to a multitude of dormant
automatons.
A passage clearly meant for people, its floor painted with blue and green stripes, pierced the framework. Nali entered this, but instead of continuing to the doorway in the outer wall that was directly ahead, she turned right to descend an open stairway. In the corridor below, she took a left, a right, and then another left to stop at a closed metal door.

His suspicions again aroused, Mar asked, "What's this place?"

"It's
my
place."

She touched a particular spot on the upper left corner of the door and it opened. As she walked through, lamps came on within.

"Or one of them anyway. I can't get permits for an apartment so I've appropriated rooms around the city."

Watchful, he followed.

The room was six paces square and its furnishings were denominated in one: one cot, one chair, one table, one wardrobe, and one ceramic and copper bathtub. While the first four were mundane wood and metal, the last had an ethereal presence that indicated a number of complex spells.

As she opened the double doors of the wardrobe, Nali saw him look at the tub. "You're welcome to get a quick bath while I change."

"No, thanks. You're changing your hair?"

"And my clothes. I can't move around the city looking like
this
. The yellow jackets would be on us the first time we passed a surveillance ward."

Using one hand to sort through the clothing hanging in the wardrobe, she used the other to thumb open a catch at her shoulder. If he had had any doubts about the firmness and sleekness of her form before, they were entirely dispelled when her not-quite-there garment slithered to the floor.

She took out a short gown of bright blue brocade and cream lace, turned about to face him, and draped it across the smooth skin of her breast and hip. "What do you think?"

"I don't really know, but my guess would be no. Don't you have anything plain?"

She looked at him for a long moment, showed a flash of exasperation, then re-hung the dress and took out gray trousers and a matching jacket. After dressing with marked speed, she gleaned combs and pins from her crown of purple hair, took a brush from a drawer, and began to pull it through the tangled tresses. As she did so, the purple faded to a mousy brown. Quick, efficient, and perhaps slightly angry strokes removed all trace of tangle and purple. Clasps to hold her hair off her ears and a pair of soft leather shoes completed her ensemble.

"
Well?"
she demanded, almost glaring
.

The cut and style of her clothing still looked odd to Mar, but he thought that it probably would not to people of this time and place. As a matter of fact, with the distraction of her garish former clothing and hair style removed, she looked quite fetching.

He nodded. "It should do."

"Well, yours won't." She rummaged in the bottom of the wardrobe and then tossed him a man's threadbare brown coat and scuffed boots.

He put on both without comment. The coat was large enough to fit over his brigandine, but the boots were a bit too small. He forced his feet into them anyway.

She examined him with a critical eye. "You still look like a vagabond, but at least you won't be walking around barefoot. It'd be better if you got rid of that leather vest whatever-it-is."

"No, I need to keep it."

"Alright, but keep the coat buttoned up all the way. Let's get going."

The door on the ground floor let them out onto a promenade splashed with mid-morning sun. A few people were moving along the promenade, but not many, and all wore durable-looking clothing that he took to be workman's attire. Most had an in-a-hurry pace and none gave the two of them a second glance.

Nali went left a dozen steps along the side of the warehouse, then stopped. "Wait here. I'm going to make a comm to the people I know."

She went far enough away so that he could not overhear and spoke briefly into a device about the size and shape of a scone. Her conversation amounted to only an exchange or three, then she waved for him to join her.

"Luck is on your side. The people I know were able to arrange a meeting today with the people they know."

He let a smile conceal his instantly resurgent suspicion at this very convenient happenstance. "Good. When?"

"In two hours. That's barely enough time to get to the meeting spot. Let's go."

He matched her long strides and felt the boots chaff his heels. "We're walking all the way?"

"No, there's a public port station that's not far away."

"We'll get bracelets there?"

"No, the magic is built in to the stations. The system doesn't cover the whole city, but if you make smart connections you can get most anywhere."

After a few minutes, the promenade rose gradually and made a graceful turn to provide a view of the city that he could scarce deny was magnificent.

"First time in Dhiloeckmyur?" Nali asked. She had caught him gawking.

He laughed off his embarrassment. "As a matter of fact, it is."

"I've always thought Dhiloeckmyur utilitarian and dull. Everyone calls Pyra the 'Golden City.' It must look wonderful."

"I suppose that you're right."

"I'd like to see it one day. Maybe you could take me there?"

He frowned. The Pyra that he knew was nothing more than ruins worn to nearly nothing. "I won't be returning to Pyra."

"Ah."

His gruffness clearly having put off her desire to chat, she left him to his own thoughts as they turned from the promenade and hiked along increasingly crowded ways that wandered over bridges and through building-piercing tunnels. After a quarter of an hour, they reached a plaza with a large, open rotunda built upon a raised platform. A large number of other pedestrians were entering and exiting from the rotunda between the supporting columns. When the two of them climbed the circling steps, he watched as the people entering ahead of them spread across the platform. Each spoke something aloud and vanished.

Nali took his hand again as they reached the top step. "As long as we're touching, we'll port together."

She pulled him off at an apparently random angle across the platform, quietly said, "Ball Harbor," and then they were walking in a different place.

Two more ports and a brisk walk brought them by increasingly less decorous ways to the base of a slab-sided building of burnished metal and glass. The narrow, unadorned street that ran alongside the building was empty and no doors were in evidence. Except for its spotless appearance, he would have considered it an alley.

Nali brought out her scone-sized device and spoke into it. "We're here."

Without delay, a waxy-purple lozenge half a fingerlength in its long diameter appeared on the pavement at her feet and she immediately stooped to retrieve it.

"This is an automated water treatment plant and there's no public access. You'll have to port inside." She handed him the lozenge. "This is coded to pass the wards. It's only good for one trip in and one trip out. Get rid of it right after you exit. It will decompose ten seconds after the second port and these things have a tendency to catch fire as they break down."

"You're not coming in?"

"No. This is as far as I go. Someone will meet you."

He held the lozenge between thumb and index finger and peered at it. "How does it work?"

She gave him a sour look and instructed in an irritatingly pedantic tone, "Put it on your palm smooth side down. Press the center of the rough side with your fingers."

"Got it. Thanks for your help."

Turning to walk away, she patted the trouser pocket containing his Bazaar tokens. "Any time."

As if conscious of his eyes upon her, when she reached the end of the building she turned and blew him a mischievous kiss, then rounded the corner and was gone.

Shaking his head at the peculiar ways of these ancient phantoms, he activated the port.

TWELVE

2170 by the Common Reckoning

(3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

Secured City of Dhiloeckmyur

Nali rested her head on the high rim of the tub and let the steaming, neck-deep water soak away the tension that had given her a splitting headache.

When the wizard materialized no more than a step away, she did not jump. "Do you always have to visit when I'm naked?"

Zso awarded her an obligatory but perhaps unenthusiastic ogle and then took a seat on her chair. "No, but I do derive a number of delightful benefits from my profession. How was your day?"

"He wasn't interested. Without a philter, he won't give me a second glance."

"You underestimate your considerable charms, my dear Nali. A love potion will not be required. You must have patience. All is going according to plan. The probability that he would suffer instant infatuation was less than three percent and the plan is designed accordingly."

"He said that he has a wife. You didn't tell me about her."

"That minor detail is irrelevant. It will be taken care of."