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  His step over the threshold managed to convey disdain. Snake wondered what he would think if he looked up and saw the abominable glove. "I wish to see Badu nolo Vashu," he said in tones of polite command.

  Snake heard the little clock on a shelf behind her chime midhour, and realized it was half-past four.

  She tilted her head to one side. "I beg your pardon?"

  "Badu nolo Vashu," he repeated, and frowned at her. Snake had the irksome feeling that she was being taken for a servant.

  "Very sorry. She's not here."

  He raised one eyebrow. "I'm afraid I don't believe you." His voice was chilly.

  "What a pity."

  "I'm prepared to see for myself, Madame..."

  "Snake," she said with a polite smile and a little nod. "And you, sir?" She was suddenly and perversely reminded of her presentation party at the age of fifteen.

  His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to study her face. She returned the stare. "Koseth," he said at last. Snake smiled in what she hoped was a skeptical fashion. It was a fairly common surname. "May I sit down?" he added.

  "I thought you were about to push past me and search the house."

  "I changed my mind."

  "Good." She stepped aside, and he went to the hearth and sat in one of the wicker chairs.

  "Can I help you find something?" Snake asked, gesturing vaguely toward the merchandise.

  Koseth, narrow-eyed and smiling, leaned back in the chair until the wicker creaked. "So, you say Badu nolo Vashu is not here?"

  "I said that."

  "Does that mean you're here alone?" he said softly.

  "Why do you ask?" At half-past four, Badu had begun the rite of investiture. Could magicians sense these things? Was Koseth a magician? Snake wished mightily that she could ask Badu.

  His reply, however, was simply, "To find out how you'd answer. The reason behind any question. And I think I shall be satisfied with 'Why do you ask?'"

  Snake wished that he would do something decisive, if he was indeed Badu's nemesis. If he wasn't, she wished he'd quit behaving suspiciously and go away. "I'm sorry, sir, but if you've come neither to look nor buy, you can go to a cafe to sit. I've work to do."

  "No doubt." Clearly, he was not easily provoked.

  But she was so startled by his next words that she almost forgot Badu. "Did you know Siosh Desoron, before he died? He had three sons and two daughters. The sons learned their father's trade, the outfitting and managing of caravans, out of duty. But he taught his youngest daughter, Galeme, as well. It was said that she could bring a 'van through the Waste in midsummer, with robbers thick as flies in a barn, and never so much as a broken goblet in all the load.

  "Now all that is said of someone named Snake, and the Desorons claim that Siosh had only one daughter. Are you, perhaps, that Snake?"

  Snake replied, with corrosive emphasis on every word, "What business is it of yours?"

  He shrugged.

  "There's no secret of it, however much my mother may wish there was. But Snake is quicker to say, so for your convenience, you may leave the Desorons out of it."

  He rose and made her a bow. There was a great deal of self-congratulation in his smile, and she felt a surge of anger, at him and at herself. Why had she taken his bait, and what possible good could he get out of it?

  She stepped out into the aisle, placing herself where he had to confront her or turn toward the door. He chose the latter. So they both saw the flash of gilded red swoop toward the opening. It was a finch, one of the multitude that lived half-tame on the city's accidental bounty, bright fluttering ornaments on roof peaks and windowsills. It was nearly within the door frame before it beat its wings furiously, veered, and was gone upward and out of sight.

  The face that Koseth turned to her was bland and unreadable; but she had caught a glimpse of it before he'd turned, and his look had been black as the bottom of the sea.

  After he left, the shop had a breathless quiet about it. The finch, Snake knew, could have been quite ordinary. She'd had to catch birds before that had gotten in a door or open window and forgotten how to get out. Its sudden change of direction might have come when it saw the two humans blocking the doorway.

  Or it might have been a magician, wearing bird-shape to enter the Tiger's Eye, who'd discovered the effect of Silvertop's glove. (Which made her wonder, what was the glove's effect? Was it a barrier, like the one Badu had made? Did it return a disguised magician to true shape? Snake wished she'd asked.) If it was a magician, was it an ally Koseth had summoned, or was it the true danger, and Koseth no threat at all?

  The third possibility Snake liked even less: that Badu had two enemies.

  It was Snake's custom to keep the Tiger's Eye open until seven o'clock on business days. She managed to hold to that, though seven had never seemed so late. The traffic was lively as people came in to browse before continuing on to their dinners. Many ascended to the status of customer: A young man with curly black hair bought a coverlet woven in a rare antique pattern called Palm Leaf Shadows known only to an old woman who lived on the Street of Trees; an elegant-looking man in his thirties knocked over a fat little brass bowl and bought it by way of apology; and a shaven-headed ship's captain, who laughed often and without humor, bought herself a large copper earring.

  The little clock chimed seven times, and Snake slumped forward over the counter. Her vigil, she knew, was far from finished. But now she could bar the door and make the Tiger's Eye a fortress. She felt a fleeting longing for previous visits from Badu, when at seven o'clock Snake and Thyan would go upstairs and make dinner, and Badu would entertain them with Ombayan gossip.

  Or further back, when Snake was sixteen, and she and Badu had been herd guards one summer in Ombaya....It was dangerous work, and the two of them had worked and fought well together. Snake wished Badu could be at her back now.

  She had just slid the bar home when she heard a sound behind her. She turned.

  The elegant man, the one who had knocked over the bowl, stepped from behind a tall mahogany cupboard. In his hand was a flintlock pistol, its single barrel pointed unwavering at Snake. He cocked it ostentatiously.

  "And now," said Snake, "I suppose you're going to tell me all about how you did it."

  He flung back his head and laughed. "I confess, that was my intention. Would you prefer me reticent?"

  "Not at all," said Snake. She leaned against the door, trying to look off balance. "Would you mind starting with who you work for?"

  "Ah, no," he said sadly, "I cannot oblige. If you knew that, I would have to kill you. As it is, if you will stay sensibly out of the way, you need take no harm from this at all. My business is with the Ombayan woman upstairs."

  "I'm nothing if not sensible," Snake nodded. The whip was heavy on her left shoulder. "So, how did you get in?"

  "Just as you saw, when I came in as a customer. Your spell kept me out in bird-form—yes, that was I, and quite a setback you gave me then, too." Snake looked at his red-and-gold patterned half-robe. The finch had been a reasonable match. "I made other, more subtle attempts, and found that the spell was proof against them all. I was driven at last to make a dangerous experiment. I came in and, after a suitable time, knocked down the charming brass bowl. Your attention was drawn away from me for barely long enough. I was able to duck behind the cupboard and leave an illusion of myself in my place, which then went through the motions of buying the bowl and left the shop. Had that most excellent spell worked both ways, allowing no magic to cross the boundaries of the house, my illusion would have melted in the doorway, and my last hope for subtlety and stealth would have been gone."

  "At the very least, an aesthetic defeat," murmured Snake.

  "Now I must ask you to unbar your door, if you please. A representative of...my employer will be along presently to verify the fulfillment of my commission." He spoke as if the words tasted bad. "Those without honor assume everyone else to be without it, as well."

  "How true," said Snake absently.
Inwardly, she rejoiced. The man who stood before her was only the arrow; the archer was on the way. And it was the one who drew the bow that she wanted to trap. She turned and pulled the bar back, keeping her hands always in sight of the man with the flintlock.

  "I don't believe we've introduced ourselves," she said when she turned back.

  He looked startled, but made her a sketchy bow. "You may call me Yamodas, Madame, if it please you."

  "Not your real name, I assume."

  "Alas, no."

  "My name is Snake," she said, and began to uncoil the whip from her shoulder.

  He frowned. "Madame—Snake—as I told you, you have nothing to gain and your life to lose by opposing me."

  Snake smiled and flicked the whip hissing along the floorboards.

  Yamodas pulled the trigger.

  Into the silence that resulted, Snake said, "I once lost a valuable piece of porcelain in an accident involving a drunken Scarlet Guard and a pistol. I then found that a spell can be bought that will prevent small quantities of gunpowder from igniting. It takes a long time to prepare and only works in an enclosed space, but the cost is really quite reasonable. I have it renewed annually."

  Yamodas sighed, looked regretfully at his pistol, and thrust it into his belt. "I suppose you have a surpassing skill with that whip."

  "I do. I could put your eyes out with it, or break your wrist, or strangle you. But I'd rather extend to you the courtesy you offered me. If you swear to give up your present, ah, commission, effective immediately, and if you follow the instructions I'm about to give you, you'll go free and unharmed."

  He looked at her measuringly. "I am an honorable man, and I am under a previous agreement."

  "Mmm. I'd hate to have to shame an honorable man in the sight of so dishonorable a slug as your employer sounds. But if you don't cooperate, I'll truss you like a chicken and hang you from the ceiling to greet him when he comes in."

  "On the other hand, I have been paid in advance...."

  Not long after, there was a harsh knocking at the door of the Tiger's Eye. Yamodas opened it and bowed low to the man who crossed the threshold. The newcomer had the meaty fatness of a wrestler, insufficiently disguised by a saffron-yellow robe and a long blue overvest with a pleated back. He wore an abundance of jewelry—necklaces, pins, bracelets, and earrings—and even sported a gold fillet that bound his red-dyed beard just under his chin.

  "Have you killed the Ombayan?" he snapped at Yamodas.

  "I have not. I was delayed with the shop owner."

  "Hah! The deadly Yamodas, tussling with a shopkeeper?"

  "She was rather more than that. I should have been warned."

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  "We knew nothing about her. If you can't do your own research, you're not worth your price."

  "Enough. The Ombayan has had no warning. We will go upstairs now, and you may have your proof firsthand."

  The fat man snorted. "'We' will go nowhere. You were hired to take the risks, and you will take them. I will come nowhere near the Ombayan until she is dead. Go up and do what you were hired for, and call me when you're done."

  "As you will," Yamodas said, and went to the back of the shop and through the curtain.

  From behind that curtain came a muffled thump, as of a door closing, and the fat man's eyes narrowed with suspicion. He hurried toward the back of the shop.

  Snake rose up from behind a display case and snapped out with her whip. It coiled around the fat man's neck and bit deep when she pulled it tight.

  He grabbed at the whip with both hands, and Snake prepared to resist his pull. It didn't come. Instead, the leather began to writhe and twist under her hands, and the hard, heavy butt end flexed and fastened itself to her forearm with a many-fanged lamprey mouth.

  The fat man uncoiled the lash end from his neck, showing an angry wine-red line where it had cut. He whispered to the end he held and tossed it casually toward Snake. It lashed itself around her knees and clung there.

  Laughing, he walked toward her. Snake's hands were still clenched together around her animated whip; she swung them like a club at his temple and connected hard. He staggered back against the display case, which tipped over, spilling jewelry and her attacker onto the floor with a crash. Snake grabbed a small bronze fencing shield off the back wall next to her and jumped at him, hoping to bring the edge down on his throat. But before she could reach him, he raised his arms and shouted. A hail of jewelry pelted her face. The shield was wrenched from her hands.

  He pulled her up by her hair, which was painful, until she was standing. "You sow!" he screamed at her. "You are the offspring of a goatherd and his favorite nanny!"

  "Make up your mind," Snake said through clenched teeth. If she lived through this, she would have to see if Silvertop knew a charm to keep anyone from ever again enchanting her whip. It had let go its grip on her forearm and twined itself around her wrists. She was beginning to lose the feeling in her fingers.

  "You have turned my assassin away from his target, and you have marked me—" He jerked her head around, and she could see, in the beautiful silver-framed mirror set with sapphires, his face behind hers. His left cheek was cut open and bleeding, probably from the edge of the display case. "You shall watch yourself die, and know that the Ombayan woman will die next, and you could not protect her!"

  He began to chant. Snake cursed at him, struggled, tried to kick and would have bit, had there been anything before her but the silver mirror. She could not break his concentration. He raised his right hand before her face, the little finger delicately extended. The fingertip began to shine like a polished knife. She watched in the mirror as he set the fingertip to her throat and began to draw it across the skin with creeping slowness. A drop of blood welled and trickled down where the finger touched, and the fat man's face behind her, shining with sweat and blood, beamed.

  Behind him in the mirror she could see the Tiger's Eye, its precious contents glowing like a loving portrait in the lamplight, the front door open on the empty indigo darkness of Park Boulevard. She couldn't scream—probably part of the fat man's chanting. She hoped Thyan would take good care of the shop.

  Then from behind them, where the mirror showed empty air, a voice said, "Ahem."

  The fat man dropped her and spun to look, and got Koseth's fist in his face, with the rest of Koseth behind it.

  Snake's whip suddenly became a whip again, and fell to the floor around her feet. The fat man, his nose bleeding and his face contorted with fury, flung both arms around Koseth and lifted him off the floor.

  Snake vaulted over the fallen display case and rammed both her heels into the fat man's kidneys. He went down. Koseth rolled clear and squatted on the floor, clutching his ribs and looking pale.

  "Watch him," he gasped. "He's not done yet...."

  Koseth was right. The fat man half-rose and gestured fiercely, screaming something. Snake turned and found the silver-and-sapphire mirror flying off the wall at her. She caught it without bending or breaking the fragile silverwork frame, but it continued to press forward, forcing her slowly toward the fat man.

  Then at the edge of her vision she saw Koseth stagger to his feet, raise both hands above his head, and begin to whistle. A ball of black smoke formed between his palms. He flung it at the fat man, and it streamed out from his hands like a veil and wrapped around the fat man's head. The fat man cursed and gestured, and the smoke became a veil in truth, made of black gauze which tore easily in his fingers.

  All the force went out of the silver-framed mirror. Snake looked from it, inert and shining in her hands, to the fat man, who had begun to chant at Koseth, and felt hot fury begin to rise in her. He couldn't be troubled to defend himself against her? She set the mirror down against the wall, snatched up the broken-off leg, long as her forearm, from the display case, and advanced upon the fat man.

  He was chanting steadily at Koseth, who had dropped, white-faced, to his knees. The room smelled of lightning. Snake jabbed the man in the ribs wi
th the leg. "Hey," she said. He turned.

  She clubbed him, and he slid gently to the floor.

  After a few moments, she heard Koseth clear his throat. "Not a moment too soon. Oh, I hurt. Did you kill him?"

  Snake knelt and rolled the fat man over. There was blood in his hair, but he was still breathing. "No. What shall we do with him?"

  "Disarm him." Koseth stood up slowly and limped over to Snake. "Help me strip him."

  "Strip him?"

  Koseth nodded at the man on the floor. "Something he's wearing or carrying is the vessel of his luck. Do you want him to wake up with his magic to hand?"

  They stripped the fat man and piled his clothing and jewelry in a heap in the middle of the shop. Koseth bent over it and began to sing. With one finger, he traced a circle around the pile; when the circle was closed, he straightened up and clapped his hands. With a crack! and a rush of air, the fat man's belongings were gone.

  Snake said, "Where—?"

  "They're on your roof," said Koseth. ''I'm afraid I didn't have the strength to send them any farther, but that should keep them the necessary three paces away from him."

  "My roof." She shook her head. "Come on, let's tie him up."

  Once they had, Koseth ventured out into the night and returned with four uncommonly deferential soldiers of the Levar's Guard and a donkey cart. It took all six of them to hoist the unconscious assailant into the cart.

  When the soldiers had gone, Snake went back in the shop and dropped into one of the wicker chairs. She looked up, and found Koseth watching her closely.

  "No hysterics?" he said.

  "The time for that was when he was killing me."

  "I find that's exactly when there isn't time for them. I like to have mine later."

  Snake laughed weakly. "Let me know when, and I'll join you."

  "I would be honored," he said, and bowed.

  "Now, make kaf and tell me who you are."

  Snake watched him dip water from the jar and set the kettle heating on the hearth brazier. To her surprise, she didn't resent the easy way that he found and used her things—she was content, for now, to sit quietly and be catered to, and Koseth seemed content to cater.