Sandry hesitated. She would like to see Provosts Mages—whom Pasco had called "harrier-mages." They would be academic mages, taught at places like the university in Lightsbridge, their ways different from those of craft-mages like Sandry and her friends. While she had been taught academic methods and had learned about different specialties in academic magic, she had never seen a Provost's Mage at work.
The duke offered Sandry his arm. She had a choice, she realized—she could stay, or she could get her uncle back to Duke's Citadel. Her uncle came first, so she took the offered arm, Perhaps she could get him to introduce her to some Provosts Mages before she went home to Winding Circle.
Sandry and the duke made their way out of the building in silence. Two of the guards stationed before the door escorted them to their horses and their own soldiers. Sandry kept a wary eye on the press of human beings that folded away from them, but there were no weapons in the fingers that brushed the duke's tunic or arm and there was only respect in the whispers of "Gods bless your grace."
Their approach was so quiet that they surprised one of the Duke's Guard telling some Provost's Guards, " — took an hour to cut them out of her cocoons. They growed into the very walls and floor—,"
Someone cleared her throat and the guards snapped to attention. Their mounts were brought forward as the Provost's Guards melted back through the side door to Rokat House.
"Some got nothing better to do than gossip," Kwaben said to no one in particular.
Sandry peered at her uncle and saw the corner of his mouth quiver with amusement. She almost smiled herself. Perhaps it was bad of me, she thought as she mounted her horse. Still, at least I taught them who they're dealing with. No one will keep me away from Uncle again.
Once in the saddle, there was a delay while the duke spoke to their guard sergeant. The knowledge of what she'd seen in that building hit Sandry without warning. The copper stink of blood returned to her nose; the sight of a man she'd met with his head cut off lingered in her mind's eye. She gripped her saddle horn with hands that trembled. For once in her life she wished passionately that she carried smelling salts, or even a scented ball as some nobles did, to clear her nose and chase off the shudders.
A brown hand wrapped around an open water bottle entered her vision. Oama had brought her mount up close to Sandry's. "It's all right," she told the girl quietly. "It's just water with a bit of lemon for cleaning out the mouth."
Sandry drank and returned the bottle with a shaky smile.
"Was it bad?" Oama asked softly.
Sandry nodded.
"We reap what we sow," murmured the duke. He had finished his conversation with the sergeant. "It sounds cold," he told Oama and Sandry, "but Jamar Rokat sent enough people into the next world before their rightful time that he must have known someone might grant him the same." The duke patted Sandry's arm. "Ready to go?"
She nodded.
The moment they clattered into the inner courtyard of Duke's Citadel, the seneschal, Baron Erdogun fer Baigh, walked briskly out of the duke's residence and down the steps. He was a whippet-lean man with light brown skin and brown eyes set under a cliff of forehead. Above that he was as bald as an egg; what little black hair remained on the sides of his head was cropped painfully short. He was fussy, precise, and arrogant, but he was devoted to Vedris, which countered his flaws as far as Sandry was concerned.
"Your grace, I had begun to worry if some accident had befallen you," he said, bowing. He hovered as Vedris dismounted, but like Sandry, he had learned not to help.
"We would have sent word of an accident, Erdo," replied the duke. "There was a problem, of course. Jamar Rokat was murdered this morning."
"Good riddance to bad rubbish," the baron said crisply. He fell in half a step behind the duke as Vedris began to climb the residence steps.
"I need to return to the fishing village this afternoon," Sandry told Oama and Kwaben. "Meet me here at three?"
They bowed to her from the saddle and took the reins of her mare. Sandry ran to catch up with the duke and Baron Erdogun. The baron was saying, " — and your plans; for the remainder of the morning?"
The duke sighed. "I believe I will lie down until lunch."
Two weeks before, when he was allowed to leave his quarters and go downstairs, they had set up a couch for him in one of the parlors opening into the entrance hall. It said a good deal for how tired he was that he simply walked into the ground floor parlor and shut the door.
Erdogun turned on Sandry, his hands on his hips. "He just happened to stop by a murder?" he asked tardy.
"There was nothing I could do about that," Sandry informed him. "You know how he is."
Erdogun sighed and rubbed his bald crown. "The mail's arrived," he said. It wasn't his nature to apologize for being sharp, as Sandry had already found. "I honestly don't know what to tell Lord Frantsen anymore."
Sandry didn't like the duke's ambitious oldest son. They had met in the past, and since the duke's heart at tack the tone of Frantsen's letters had grown arrogant—as if he had already inherited. "Tell him and that grasping wife of his that Uncle cut them from his will."
The parlor door opened. "Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind," the duke said quietly. The door closed again.
"Wonderful," Erdogun muttered and stalked down the hall to the large workroom from which he oversaw affairs at Duke's Citadel.
Sandry followed him wearily. She missed her old life, before she had found herself watching the health of a man who didn't want to be fussed over and dealing with a hundred retainers, each more prickly than the last.
She thought dreamily of Discipline cottage at Winding Circle. By this time her teacher Lark would be at her loom, at work on her newest creation. She even envied Pasco, by now he must be sauntering through the marketplace with his friends, without a care in the world.
"Pasco!" The padded end of a baton thumped the side of his head firmly enough to make him stagger. "Scorch it all, boy, pay attention! Knowing the baton might save your silly skull in a dark alley one day!" Exasperated with her youngest child, Zahra Acalon pushed a lock of dark, wavy hair out of her face. She was a tall woman in her late thirties, handsome rather than pretty, with strong black brows, dark eyes, and a wide, decided mouth. Sweat glued her cotton shirt to her back. Impatiently she twitched the cloth away from her chest, flapping it slightly to cool her skin. "If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times—,"
"Daydreams will be my death," he said along with her. "Sorry, Mama."
"Pasco got thu-umped, Pasco got thu-umped," sang his cousin Rehana wickedly. Five of the residents of House Acalon who were Pasco's age or a little older had gathered in the courtyard. There his mother Zahra taught them the Provost's Guards' traditional weapons—staff, baton, weighted chain—and hand-to-hand combat.
"I'll thump you, Reha," Pasco muttered out of the side of his mouth.
A baton tapped him under the chin. "Learn to keep from being thumped yourself, before you deal out knocks of your own," his mother advised. "And the rest of you, you aren't doing so well that you can torment him."
Fast as a snake, she whirled and swung overhand at Reha. The girl blocked her strike with her baton, almost as quick as Zahra herself. With her attention on that descending baton, Reha did not see Zahra reach out with a booted leg and hook the girl's feet from under her. Down Reha went, still remembering to keep her own baton between her and any attack from overhead.
"Well enough," Zahra said with approval. "But look at the weapon just long enough to tell its direction. Your main attention should have been on my chest. My body's movement there would have warned you of my kick."
"Fat chance," muttered Reha.
Zahra grinned evilly at her. "Perhaps not." She swept their small group with her eyes. "The point of all this is to make sure you come home from your watch alive. To do that you have to pay attention. Live the moment you're in. Stay open to all the things around you, be they smell, sound, or sight—,"
Her baton flashed up and to the side. This time Pasco was ready—he'd seen the muscles in Zahra's legs, out lined by her breeches, shift. He blocked her with his baton and grabbed her wrist with his free hand. Twisting it, he dragged her down and across his body. Once she was facedown on the ground, he shoved the arm he had captured up behind her back. Half-kneeling, he pressed one knee into his mother's spine.
"I could've fought the takedown, boy," she said, her voice muffled by the bricks of the courtyard.
Pasco released her. "I know, Mama." When she struggled to rise, he offered her a hand. She took it and in a heartbeat he went flying.
Tucking himself into a ball, he unfolded and struck feet first, skidding to a halt before he smacked into the columned gallery that ran around the edge of the court yard. Rising on tiptoe, he gave her his fools bow, the one that was much too deep. Straightening, he rose to the very top of his toes, stumbled forward as if he were out of control, then flipped in the air and came back to his feet, arms spread.
Zahra glared at him. "Was that meant to charm your way out of a drubbing?" she wanted to know.
Pasco bowed his head. "I live to be drubbed," he said meekly.
She could only be cross with him for so long. "Get your baton. All of you, line up. We'll do the patterned strike-and-block combinations until time for midday."
Pasco shook his black hair out of his eyes and took the baton Reha held out to him. "Say, Mama, did you ever hear of magic dancing? Well, mages that dance, and the dancing is a spell."
"Ridiculous," Zahra said flatly. "Take your place in line, now"
Pasco did as ordered. As his mother called off the movements of the combinations, he concentrated on that, at least until the midday bell rang.