For the first time Tabaea heard a second voice answering, a higher-pitched voice, a woman or a child. She didn't catch the words.

That was simply too fascinating to miss. She crept forward, crouching lower with each step. By the time she passed through the arch she was on her knees, and by the time she peered through the railing she was lying flat on her belly, hands braced to either side, ready to spring up if she was spotted.

The cellar, or crypt, or whatever it was lay before her, a single huge space. The stone-ribbed ceiling arched a dozen feet above her, and the floor twenty feet below-she realized that that floor must be thirty feet below ground, and marveled that the sea had not flooded it.

But then, the walls were massive stone barriers, sloped and buttressed to hold back the sand and water. Those great braced walls enclosed a square thirty or forty feet on a side-the room was almost a cube, she decided. In the center of the far wall was a broad slate hearth below a fine smooth stone chimney; there were, of course, no windows. Heavy trestle tables were pushed against the walls, four of them in all.

The floor was more stone, and in the center a thick carpet was spread, and seated cross-legged on that carpet, facing each other, were two people-a man perhaps half a century in age, and a girl two or three years younger than Tabaea herself. The man wore a red silk robe and held a silver dagger; another dagger and a leather sheath lay on the carpet by his knee, and several other small objects were in a clutter to one side. The girl wore a simple white robe and sat with her hands empty, listening intently; the man was speaking.

"The edge will never dull, as long as you remain whole and strong," he said. "And the finish will stay bright as long as your spirits do." The girl nodded.

Tabaea stared. This was a wizard, beyond question-and his apprentice.

"If you can so much as touch it, it will cut any bonds put upon you, even heavy chains," the wizard continued. "Physical bonds, at any rate-while it can dispel a minor geas, or ward off many spells, there are many others it will not affect."

Tabaea let the muscles of her arms ease a little. The two were intent on their conversation and would only notice her if she were to somehow draw their attention.

"Those are just side effects, of course," the wizard said. "Incidentals. I'm sure, after these past four months, you understand that."

"Yes," the girl said, in a hushed voice. "So, if you understand what an athame is, and why a true wizard must have one, it's time you learned how to make yours, is it not?"

The girl looked up at the wizard's face and said again, "Yes."

"It will take several days to teach you, but we can at least make a start tonight."

The apprentice nodded. Tabaea folded her hands beneath her chin and settled down to listen, her heart fluttering in her chest.

She had never heard that word the wizard used, but if it was something every wizard needed-well, she had never heard of such a thing. It must be one of the secrets of the Wizards' Guild, something only wizards were permitted to know- probably one of the most important of their secrets.

Knowing such a secret could be very, very useful. Blackmailing a wizard would be impossibly risky, but it might be possible to sell the information somewhere.

Or just possibly, if she could learn the trick, she could make one of these things for herself.

Perhaps she could even become a wizard herself, without a master, without anyone knowing it. If she could learn how to work magic…

She listened intently.

CHAPTER 3

Sarai, a little nervous, looked around the justice chamber.

She was seated at her father's left hand, just off the dais, a foot or two in front of the red velvet drapery that bore the overlord's seal worked into it in thick gold braid. The chamber was long and narrow, deliberately built with a slight slope to the floor, so that prisoners and petitioners would be looking up at the Minister of Justice as if from a pit, or as if they dared to look up at a god descending from the heavens-but would probably not consciously notice the slope at all.

The overlord's palace was full of tricks like that. The Great Council Chamber, under the overlord's Great Hall, was arranged so that all the doors were partially hidden, to make it easier for people to believe that what they said there was secret, when in fact there were spy-holes in several places; the Great Hall itself was open to the huge central dome to overawe petitioners; there were any number of clever constructs. The justice chamber hadn't been singled out.

What the architects had never considered, however, was that this slope left the minister, her father-and herself, at the moment-looking down. Or perhaps they considered it and dismissed it as unimportant, or thought it would enhance the minister's self-confidence.

She couldn't speak for her father, but the effect on her was to be constantly worried about falling. She felt as if at any moment she might slip from her chair and tumble down that hard gray marble floor into that motley collection of brigands, thieves, and scoundrels waiting at the far end of the room.

She clutched the gilded arms of her seat a little harder.

This was the first time she had ever been allowed in here when her father was working, and she didn't want to do or say anything that would embarrass him or interfere in any way, and, she told herself, that was why she was nervous. She knew that she was being silly, that the slope was really insignificant, that she was in no danger of falling from her chair. After all, she had been in this room dozens of times when it was empty, starting when she was a very little girl, little more than a toddler, and she had never so much as stumbled on that subtle slope-but still, the nervousness persisted.

Maybe, she thought, if she paid more attention to what was going on in the room, and less to the room itself, she'd forget about such foolishness.

"… and really, Lord Kalthon, how you can take the word of this… this peasant, over the word of your own third cousin, is utterly beyond me!" said Bardec, the younger son of Bellren, Lord of the Games, in a fairly good imitation of injured dignity. "It is not, however, beyond me," Lord Kalthon replied dryly, "since I have the word of our theurgist that you did exactly what this good woman accuses you of."

Bardec threw a quick, angry look at old Okko; the magician stared expressionlessly back, his long forefinger tracing a slow circle on the evidence table beside him. His white velvet robe hung loosely on him, his forearm was thin and bony, but Okko somehow looked far more dangerous sitting there at Lord Kalthon's right hand than the young and brawny Bardec did standing before them.

"I take it," Sarai's father said, "that you do not choose to plead any mitigating circumstances? You do not ask for the overlord's mercy?"

"No, Lord Kalthon, I most certainly do not, because I am not guilty!" Bardec persisted. "I am completely innocent and can only assume that some enemy of mine has somehow cozened this woman into making this absurd charge and that some sort of malign magic has fooled our esteemed Lord Okko into believing it…"

"I am no lord," Okko said, cutting Bardec off with a voice like imminent death.

"I wish I could say the same for our young friend," Lord Kalthon said loudly. "He is, alas, a true noble of the city, born of our overlord's chosen representatives. He is also a fool, compounding his original crime with perjury and false accusations. Stupid ones, at that." He sighed, and glanced at his daughter. She was watching the proceedings closely, saying nothing.

Well, he had wanted her to see how the job was done.