She knocked the sword aside, held up the Black Dagger, and smiled a very unpleasant smile.
"It's not going to be that easy," she announced, grinning. "If I were you, I would throw down my weapons and run."
"Elner, call the magicians," a guardsman said. Tabaea turned and smiled at him.
"I am a magician," she said. Then, moving faster than any human being could without magical assistance, she slashed the soldier across the chest-not fatally, just a nasty gash that would weaken him, and in so doing would strengthen her. He gasped, and stepped back, his hands flying up to stop the blood, his sword falling to the dirt at his feet.
She thought she understood, now, what had happened. That sword thrust should have killed her, obviously, but it hadn't-or rather, not completely. She was fairly sure she had lost one life. But the Black Dagger had stolen a dozen for her-including dogs, cats, magicians, and the life of the man who had led this party to capture her.
She didn't know whether dogs and cats carried as much life as people, and she did not particularly want to find out; she wasn't going to throw her lives away recklessly. Still, she was stronger and faster than anyone else in the World, and as long as she took a life for every one she lost, she could not die. She liked that idea very much.
"I am the magician," she said. "Not just a witch or a warlock or a wizard, but all of them!" She suddenly remembered what she had heard, listening to the Guildmasters at the Cap and Dagger; she laughed, and said, "Bow, you fools! Bow before Tabaea the First, Empress of Ethshar!"
"She's crazy," someone said.
The Black Dagger moved again, faster than any other human hand could move it, fast as a striking cat, and the guardsman who had impaled her fell back, bleeding. The bloody sword fell from his grasp.
"You think I'm crazy?" she shouted. "Then just try to stop me! Didn't you see! He put a sword right through me, and it didn't hurt me!"
"Call the magicians, Elner," someone called mockingly from the crowd of civilians.
More guardsmen were arriving, pushing through the crowd; behind them came the robed figures of magicians.
"Magicians?" Tabaea stooped and snatched up the sword, left-handed, and flung it upward with all the speed and strength and skill of her dozen stolen lives.
The warlock shrieked, and the light went out; the orange glow vanished like the flame of a snuffed candle, plunging the Field into darkness.
When the shriek ended, silence as sudden as the darkness fell. Cloth rustled as the warlock fell out of the sky, and then he landed with a sodden thud, off to one side, upon a mixed group of soldiers and bystanders.
"You think I'm afraid of magicians'?" Tabaea screamed over the sudden tumult.
In fact, magicians were about the only thing she was still afraid of-she had no idea whether she could defend herself against all the different kinds of magic. Warlockry, yes-she could hold off another warlock indefinitely. Witchcraft, absolutely-she had greater vitality, and therefore more power, than any other witch that had ever lived.
Gods and demons and wizards, though-who knew? Sorcery, any of the subtler arts, she could not be sure of. She was bluffing-but she didn't think anyone would dare to test her. She stood, dagger ready.
Something came sweeping toward her out of the darkness, something Tabaea could not describe, with a shape and a color she couldn't name; reflexively, she raised her knife, and the black blade flared blue for an instant. Then whatever it was was gone.
Magic-it had been magic, certainly. Wizardry, probably. And the knife had stopped it. She was safe from magic other than witchcraft and warlockry-at least some of it.
She could do anything-and she knew what she wanted. She had already said it.
Tabaea the First, Empress of Ethshar! "Listen, you people!" Tabaea shouted, "you people who live here in the Wall Street Field, listen to me! Why are you here?" She paused dramatically and sensed half a hundred faces turned attentively toward her-soldiers and magicians and beggars and thieves.
"You're here because the fat old overlord of this stinking city, the man who claims to protect you, has sent you here!" Tabaea proclaimed. "He's taken your homes with his taxes, stolen your food to feed his soldiers, and given you nothing in return but dungeons and slavery!" She pushed aside a soldier and stepped up atop a makeshift wooden shelter. "Haven't you had enough of this? Haven't you had enough of seeing the rich get richer, seeing them buy your friends, your neighbors, your sons and daughters from the slavers, when they've stolen a few coins in order to eat? Haven't you heard enough of girls and boys tortured in the Nightside brothels to please the perverted tastes of some wealthy degenerate?" The words seemed to be coming from somewhere deep within her, of their own accord; one of her victims, she realized, someone she had killed, must have been skilled in oratory. And she could augment that, now that she had seen how; she warmed the air about her, then let a feint orange glow seep out.
A warlock and an orator both; she suppressed a smile. Self-delight would win no converts; only anger would do that. "Haven't you had enough!" she screamed at the people of the Field.
Some of the soldiers were backing away; some of the civilians were muttering.
"I say that Ederd has had his chance!" Tabaea shouted. "I say his time is over! Let the old man step aside, and let a woman of the people see justice done in this city! Not the justice of slaver and swordsman, but true justice! Not Lord Kalthon's justice, but my justice! The justice of one who has no need to fear nor favor, because I cannot be harmed! Beholden to no one save those who aid me now, I am the Empress of Ethshar! Who's with me?"
A dozen voices shouted.
"I said, who's with me!"
This time, a hundred chorused in reply.
"Then let's show old Ederd who's in charge here! Come with me to the palace! We'll throw Ederd and his lackeys out in the Wall Street Field and take the palace for our own! Come on!" She turned and stepped off the shelter, but not down to the ground; instead she caught herself in the air, warlock fashion, and propelled herself forward, above the crowd.
Using too much warlockry wasn't safe, of course; she doubted she was any more immune to the Calling than anyone else was. But warlockry was showy, and that was what she needed right now.
The soldiers had mostly faded away, falling back into the darkness, out of sight of the angry crowd; Tabaea and her followers marched unimpeded out of the Field onto Wall Street and down Wall Street to Grandgate Market. Many of the people behind her had torches or makeshift clubs, she saw with pleasure; one had picked up a soldier's fallen sword. She was at the head of an army.
The Empress Tabaea, at the head of her army. She smiled broadly.
"Come on!" she called. "Come on!"
CHAPTER 24
It was Alorria of Dwomor who rousted Lord Torrut out of his bed; the soldier who had guarded the bedchamber door stood nervously beside her, holding a lamp.
"She said it was an emergency, sir…"
"It is an emergency," Alorria said, tugging at the bedclothes. "There's an uprising!"
Lord Torrut was not a young man anymore and did not wake as quickly as he once had; he looked up Wearily at the unfamiliar but unmistakably attractive face and smiled. "Ah, young lady…" he began. Then his head sank a little, and he saw the rest of her. His eyes widened. "Is it the baby?" he said. "Soldier, go fetch a midwife!"
"No, it's not the baby," Alorria snapped. "The baby's fine and not due for sixnights. There's an uprising! They're marching on the palace!"
Torrut sat up and shook his head to clear it; then, speaking as he reached for his tunic, he asked, "Who's marching? What's going on?"