“Oh.”
“I think I know where Ezak is, though.”
“Go on, then,” she said, gesturing with the weapon.
Kel went, leading the way through a broken gate at the back of the alley, across a shadowy courtyard that stank of things Kel did not care to think about, along a stretch of alleyway that had been walled off and no longer connected to any other streets, through the ruins of a building where the roof had fallen in years earlier, along another alley, and then down a set of steep steps into a dim, damp, stone-walled tunnel. The sandy floor squashed wetly beneath their feet.
Now that she had been alerted to the situation, Dorna grew more apprehensive as this journey through the maze of Smallgate wound on; in that first alley at least the eyes watching them from those upstairs windows had been human. By the time they crossed the ruin the only living creatures she saw were rats and spiders, and the rats were bolder than any she had ever encountered, staring at her, making no move to hide or flee.
“How can a place like this exist in Ethshar?” she whispered, as she ducked into the tunnel. “A place this deserted and decrepit?”
Kel looked back at her, startled. “It can’t all be palaces,” he said.
“I know that, but this…”
“We wanted a place the slavers couldn’t get us,” Kel said. “Somewhere with more privacy than the Wall Street Field.”
“Well, you found that,” Dorna said.
They were far enough into the tunnel now that the only faint light came from her gently glowing talisman. Kel was feeling his way along one wall; then he stopped, and whispered, “What does your sorcery say?”
“What? Oh.” She peered at her magical boot-heel. Then she pointed. “Five yards that way.” She held up the talisman so Kel could see her finger in its light.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. “Wait here.”
“What, wait? Are you…” But then Kel was gone, and she was alone in the tunnel.
Ezak had long ago cleaned and oiled the hinges on the secret door into the old cellar, and Kel had been careful to keep them in good shape, so he was able to slip in without a sound, but that had been wasted effort; Ezak had the shutters to the air-shaft open, and enough of the setting sun’s light made its way down the shaft to dimly illuminate most of the room’s familiar confines, from the sand spilling through the crumbling east wall to the pile of rags in the northwest corner where Kel sometimes slept. Kel was plainly visible to anyone in the room.
So was Ezak. He was crouched ten feet from the door, holding a knife ready to throw, looking directly at Kel. For a moment Kel froze.
Then Ezak relaxed. “Oh, it’s you!” he said. He smiled, and tossed the knife aside. “It’s good to see you, Kel! I thought you were killed in that explosion!”
“I’m fine,” Kel said. He looked around, and immediately spotted Dorna’s bag; Ezak had made no attempt to hide it. It was sitting on the floor, midway between the door and the air-shaft. It looked just as full as Kel remembered it; Ezak had clearly not yet sold much, if any, of its contents.
Ezak noticed his gaze. “It’s still all there,” he said. “I looked through it when I made camp, but I couldn’t make any sense of any of those things. I didn’t do much experimentation; I didn’t want anything to start screaming. I’m planning to take a few of them to Wizard Street tomorrow, and see what they tell me. I’m going to say I found them in the ruins of a sorcerer’s house after an explosion, I think. Or maybe the sorcerer should be my grandfather, so I’ll have a real claim to them, and not just salvage rights?”
“That sounds good,” Kel said.
“So what happened back there? What exploded? Was Dorna killed?”
“The Northern sentry thing exploded,” Kel said. “When Dorna blasted it with her husband’s sorcery.”
“She died, though, didn’t she? Did you get the fill-dirt-presses back, or was it smashed, too?”
“We got it back,” Kel said.
“We?” Ezak was suddenly wary.
“She wasn’t killed,” Kel said, as he swung the door behind him wide, letting the dim light spill out into the tunnel beyond.
Dorna stepped in, the black weapon in her hand. She pointed it at Ezak.
“You have some of my belongings,” she said.
Ezak stared at her for only an instant before diving for the canvas bag, grabbing it up, and cradling it in his arm as he scrambled for the cellar’s other exit. Kel had not yet decided what he should do about that when the weapon went off.
This time Kel was upright and watching, not diving for the grass; he saw the eerie blue gobbet of magic that shot from the talisman, struck the stone wall behind Ezak, and exploded. Kel closed his eyes, but there was no blinding white flash following the blue flash this time, and the sound was loud, like a sledgehammer shattering a stone block into gravel, but not the earth-shaking roar that the Northern device’s destruction had produced. Apparently most of that explosion’s power had come from the Northern magic, rather than the weapon that destroyed it.
Ezak screamed, dropped the bag, and fell to his knees on the sandy floor. “Don’t kill me!” he said.
“Get away from the bag,” Dorna said.
Ezak shoved the bag toward her, then backed away. “Why did you bring her here?” he asked Kel.
Kel did not answer; he simply stood and watched as Dorna crossed the room, snatched up her bag, and slung it on her shoulder. She dropped the boot-heel talisman into the bag, but kept the weapon ready in her hand.
“Thank you,” she said, as she straightened up. “Kel asked me not to kill you, so for his sake, I won’t. I won’t even turn you over to the magistrates. But if you ever try to take anything of mine again, I will kill you. You understand that?”
Ezak nodded vigorously.
Then for a moment the three of them remained where they were-Kel standing by the door to the tunnel, Dorna standing in the middle of the room with her bag and weapon, Ezak kneeling near the hole in the wall where one could climb up to the next level-each waiting for someone else to do or say something. Finally, Dorna turned and headed back toward the tunnel. “Come on,” she said.
“What?” the two young men said simultaneously.
“Not you,” Dorna said to Ezak. “Him.” She pointed at Kel.
“Me?”
“Yes! I need you to show me the way out of this place.”
“Oh,” Kel said, hurrying to follow her through the door. He had not realized she was one of those people who could not reliably retrace her steps. He knew such people existed, and had met them before, but he did not really understand them; he might not always know where he was, but anywhere in the city he always knew how he got there, and how to get back out. It was part of his nature.
But Dorna wasn’t from Ethshar, she was from a little village somewhere, and her nature apparently differed from his. Besides, she had been so intent on her talisman that she probably hadn’t really seen the route.
Once out of the room Kel took the lead. Neither of them spoke as they trudged back out and up the steps to the alley. Dorna paused to glance up at the narrow strip of sky visible above them; it was noticeably darker than when they had come the other way. Then she turned to Kel, who was watching her. “I could probably have found my own way out, especially now I have my bag back, but I wanted to talk to you.”
That was mildly surprising. Kel looked at her expectantly.
“You thought I was going to just go off and leave you here, didn’t you?” she asked.
She seemed to want an answer. “Yes,” he said.
“I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t just walk away and leave you in a place like this.”
Kel looked around. The alley was a rough, ruinous place, but it was one he knew well. “I live here,” he said. “Sometimes, anyway.”
“Well, you shouldn’t.”