Pasco bowed to Duke Vedris. "My father and my grandfather, your grace."
"Then your mother was Zahra Qais before her marriage, and your maternal grandfather is Abbas Qais." The: dukes quiet voice was soothing. With a smile he added, "'Were all my servants as faithful and thorough as the Qaises and the Acalons of the Provost's Guard, I would be the most fortunate ruler on earth. My dear," he said to the young lady, "is it possible you are mistaken?"
"No, Uncle," the lady replied. She slid cool fingers under Pasco's chin and forced him to look up, to meet her eyes. "I didn't mean to startle you, but you do have power, if you didn't know it, then you need a teacher."
"My dear, before you began to rearrange his life, did you introduce yourself to this poor lad?" inquired the duke.
The lady stared up at him, startled, then started to grin. Quickly she bit on her lip until she was able to look at Pasco with a straight face. Her fingers never so much as twitched from their position under his chin. "I'm sorry. I'm used to everyone already knowing who I am. I'm Lady Sandrilene fa Toren, the duke's great-niece."
Pasco blinked at her for a moment, dazed. It was such a pretty name, as pretty as she was—then his mind began to work again. Sandrilene fa Toren. Any resident of Summersea over the last four years would know that name, and know it well. She was part of a quartet of young mages who had come to live in the temple city of Winding Circle, outside Summersea. First, they had managed to survive an earthquake while trapped under ground. They had next destroyed a pirate fleet, then gone to the northern mountains to tame entire forests as they burned. They came back to the coast in time to help end the blue pox plague of 1036. Everyone told stories about them, including tales of the girl who wove bandages with the power to heal and veils that made the wearer as good as invisible. In a world in which mages were as common as architects or jewelers, Lady Sandrilene and her three friends were on their way to becoming great mages, the very best of their kind.
"Not meaning any disrespect, your ladyship," Pasco told her earnestly, "but rnaybe the magic's in the net. I'd’ve known if I was magic, 'deed I would." My family would never let me hear the end of it, he thought.
Her eyebrows, fine gold-brown crescents, rose. "You may not have," she replied firmly. "I didn't know until I was ten—just before I came here, in fact. My three friends didn't know until they came here, either, and Tris was inspected by a magic-finder. Some talents run very deep, Pasco Acalon. I think yours is one."
"Your grace!" A boy on a pony galloped onto the sand from the Harbor Road. He'd been riding hard, the pony was covered in sweat as they drew up next to Vedris's horse. The messenger wore the provost's colors. "They told me you rode this way," he gasped. "Captain Qais on dawn watch requests your grace's attendance at Rokat House, on Harbor Street."
Pasco frowned, thinking, This Qais would be his uncle Isman, who was not the man to send a boy out at full gallop without very good reason. Isman was so unflappable that if he were to see a tidal wave roaring down on him, he would blink and order his sergeants to find boats.
The duke and his great-niece traded looks. "And the nature of the emergency?" the duke asked coolly,
Perhaps Uncle Isman isn't the only one who'd take a tidal wave in stride, thought Pasco, envious. That duke don't startle easy. Me, I'm like this messenger—too excitable,
"It's Jamar Rokat, the myrrh trader from Bihan, your grace," replied the messenger. "He's been murdered. It's a terrible sight, begging your grace's pardon."
Again the duke and his great-niece exchanged looks, the girl's startled, the duke's level. "Uncle," said Lady Sandrilene, reaching for the duke's reins.
He shook his head at her. "This is something that requires my attention, my dear. You have a problem of your own to solve just now."
She frowned up at him. "I suppose so, but—," She looked at Pasco, then back at her great-uncle.
The duke leaned down to cup her cheek in one hand and spoke too quietly for Pasco to hear. She replied, her voice just as soft; he spoke again. At last—very reluctantly, it seemed to Pasco—she nodded, and stood back. Immediately a man and a woman detached themselves from the squad of guards, moving their horses to stand by hers. They looked at Pasco, Osa, and Grandmother Netmender in a tough, memorizing way that Pasco knew very well. Hey seen it often enough on the faces of his own family: that habit of weighing people they'd met to decide who might be trouble, and who might not.
"Join me when you have concluded your business here, Sandry," the duke told her. To the messenger he said, "Come along." He rode off, the boy and the squad of guards at his heels. A barrel-chested man who sported a sergeant's twin yellow arrowheads on his sleeve caught Sandry's eye and nodded to her before he followed the duke.
Pasco watched them go, thinking of what he'd over heard, murder at Rokat House was a serious matter. He crossed his fingers and flicked them at the departing riders, sending luck for Uncle Isman in their wake. He would need all the luck he could get, particularly once Summersea's rich folk heard of the death of one of their own.
Sandry looked at Pasco thoughtfully as her uncle rode off. There were no two ways about it—something would have to be done with this boy. Untrained magic broke out in uncontrollable ways and could do consider able damage. She'd had that lesson drummed into her head over the past four years. From the glow of magic she'd seen as Pasco danced, his power wasn't such that it might flare up without warning, but that could change at any moment.
Sandry was no stranger to the ways of charming clever boys. This one would bolt the moment he thought he could do so without offending a noble, and he wouldn't come back unless she did something to make him. Besides, she had the duke to think of. She did not want him putting his hard-won health in danger again, not on his first day outside Duke's Citadel.
"Murder at Rokat House," Pasco murmured. "That's got a jagged edge to it." How would Papa look into it? he wondered. Who might have done such a crime? There were all kinds of possibilities, as he knew from listening to the harriers in the family talk about their work. There were all sorts of angles to consider.
"How so?" asked Sandry. She needed to decide what she could do about the boy right at this moment and what she could put off to another, more convenient time.
"Only that Rokat House is the biggest importer of myrrh around the Pebbled Sea," Pasco explained, thinking aloud. Working it out as he'd been taught, he briefly forgot her nobility and her prettiness. "They're from Bihan, but they've houses in every big port. That's serious coin, and headaches for the harriers—,"
"Harriers?" she interrupted. "What does that mean?"
"Provost's Guards are called harriers," he told her, still trying to remember his lessons on crime. "For the brown leather and the blue shirts they wear. Folk say it's a bit like some harrier hawks. And the watch-houses, in each district, they're called coops."
Sandry nodded, to show her understanding. This was an aspect of town life that she had never considered.
"Anyway, they got to get right to the case and catch who done Jamar. Killed him, that is. The other Rokats here in Summersea'll be on his grace like pods on peas till the murderers gathered up. Begging your ladyship's pardon." He yawned, and excused himself again. "Not that you need worry. Like as not, they'll have the killer in a cat's whisker."
Sandry looked at him, amused. "You sound very sure of that."
Pasco shrugged. "Mostways, a murderers known to the one they killed—that's what my kinfolk say. Family, a friend. It's easy enough to track 'em down."
"So are you going to take up provost's work, too?" Sandry inquired.
The boy grimaced. "Both sides of my family are in it. It's not like I have a choice."
"If you were a mage, you'd have a choice," Sandry remarked slyly. If she could make learning magic attractive to him…
Pasco shook his head, his face set. "Lady, you don't know my family. The only kind of mage they'd want me to be is a harrier-mage, one that tracks blood back to the one that shed it. One that can lay a truth-spell on folk I never heard of no harrier mages dancing what they do. I never heard of no dancing mages, either, not ever."
Sandry fidgeted. She had to catch up to her uncle. Before she could do that, she had to make this boy understand what had happened to him and his need for study. He didn't seem very convinced. If she could prove he was a mage, though, he would have to give in. "Make a bargain with me," she suggested.
"A bargain for what?" he asked warily.
"I'll meet you here, tonight, when the boats come in," she said. "If their catch is better than it's been in the last month or so, will you agree to talk some more about magic?"
He shook his head. "And I'm telling you, lady, you're plain mistook. I've got no magic."
Sandry frowned. "You say the word like it's a disease."
He bowed. "Beg pardon, lady. I meant no disrespect."
"Have we a bargain? We'll meet here tonight, and we'll see who has the right of it." If he'd had any training, he would have felt her magic hooking into his. With an invisible hand she teased out a strand of his power and pulled it to her, attaching it within herself. It was as fine as a single thread of silk, but with it in her grasp, she would always be able to find him. "Pasco, I want to catch up with my uncle," she said tardy. "Have we a bargain?"
He nodded reluctantly.
Sandry mounted her horse once again. Her guards drew up beside her, looking down at Pasco with level brown eyes. "Until the boats come home, Pasco Acalon," Sandry told him.
Again he bowed deeply to her.
Sandry nodded to her escorts, and turned her mare back toward the city. Once they reached the road, she set off at a smart trot, hoping to find the duke before he got too involved in this murder.
Pasco watched her ride off, shaking his head. He had little experience with nobles or mages, but he'd never heard of those people behaving as she did. Was she even as pretty as he'd thought, or was it just her bearing, and her dress, and those lovely blue eyes?
He oughtn't to meet her back here when the boats came in, Would a lady even know so commonplace a thing as the time a fishing fleet returned? If she didn't see him that afternoon, she would forget this idea of him and magery. Everyone knew the nobility was flighty, except for Duke Vedris.
Pasco looked around and found just Osa, napping beside his rowboat. Osa's father had gone off fishing without paying forthe dance.
So I'll have to come anyway, to see if they still want to pay me, thought Pasco, wandering over to the sand where he'd danced. Dawn had. come: in the sunlight he could see the patterns made by his feet and the rope net.