“Old mother, are you ill?” someone asked.
“Drunk, more like it,” another passerby laughed. “Get up, you old hag!”
Gentle hands helped her to her knees. “Kiriar!” she gasped, recognizing the young man. “Are you still with Dylias?”
“Yes, Mistress.” He’d been an apprentice the last time they’d met. He had a proper beard now and a few lines on his face, but his clothes were as ragged as a beggar’s. Only the Harrier badge at his throat marked him for what he was. His number was ninety-three.
He was looking at hers, as well. “Two hundred and twenty-two? It took them longer to find you, I see.” He gave her a rueful look. “It’s something we notice nowadays, sad to say. Are you feeling better? What happened?”
Iya shook her head as he helped her to her feet. Kiriar and his master Dylias had always struck her as good sorts, but she was still too badly shaken to judge or trust. “It’s a hard business, getting old,” she said, making light of it. “I could do with a drink, and a bite to eat.”
“I know a good house, Mistress. Let me stand you a hot dinner for old times’ sake. It’s not far and the company’s good.”
Still wary, but intrigued, Iya leaned on his arm and let him lead her out of Dolphin Court.
She felt a moment’s alarm when Kiriar turned his steps back toward the Palatine. Was he a clever betrayer after all, luring her to the Harrier stronghold?
A few streets later, however, he turned aside into one of the goldsmith’s markets. Hard times had struck here as well, she noted; many of the shops were deserted. She’d passed half a dozen before it struck her that most of them had belonged to Aurënfaie artisans.
“Gone home, a lot of them,” Kiriar explained. “The ’faie don’t hold with the new ways, as you can well imagine, and it’s growing clear that the Harriers don’t trust them. Now, if you’ll just stop a moment.”
He disappeared into a darkened stable. A moment later he returned and led her through a lane behind it. This in turn led to a narrow alley, overhung by sagging balconies and the strange, spicy aromas of ’faie cookery.
Narrow side ways branched off among the buildings here and there. Reaching one such juncture, her guide stopped again. “Before we go any farther, Mistress, I must ask you this. What do you swear by?”
“By my hands and heart and eyes,” she answered, catching sight of a crescent moon scrawled on the wall just above his shoulder. The telltale shimmer of a blast aura flickered around it as she spoke. “And by the Lightbearer’s true name,” she added for good measure.
“She may pass,” someone whispered from the shadows to their right, as if that wasn’t already evidenced by the fact that the blast aura had not struck her down. Iya looked at her ragged companion with new interest. He hadn’t left that powerful spell there, or his master; she could count on one hand the wizards she knew who could have.
Kiriar gave her an apologetic shrug. “We have to ask. Come, it’s just down here.”
He led her into the dirtiest side street she’d yet seen. The smell of piss and decay was strong. Skinny, notch-eared cats slunk past in shadows, or hunched watching for rats in the garbage piled along the wall. The buildings on either side nearly touched overhead, shutting out the waning winter light.
Three cloaked figures emerged from the murk just ahead. Another appeared from a doorway behind them as they passed. They looked like footpads, but all four bowed to her, touching their hearts and brows.
“This way.” Kiriar pointed her down a set of steep, crumbling cellar stairs. The door at the bottom looked ordinary enough, but magic of some sort tingled pleasantly through her fingertips as she lifted the rusty latch.
To an ordinary person, the blackness beyond would have been impenetrable, but Iya easily made out the long blades protruding from the walls at various heights along the subterranean passage. Anyone blundering blindly here would soon come to harm.
At the far end she opened another magically warded door and found herself blinking in the cheerful firelight of a tavern. A dozen or so wizards turned to see the newcomer and she was delighted to find familiar faces among them. Here was Kiriar’s master, stooped old Dylias, and beside him a pretty sorceress from Almak named Elisera, who’d turned Arkoniel’s head one summer. She didn’t know the others, but one of them was Aurënfaie, and wore the red-and-black sen’gai and facial tattoos of the Khatme clan. The blast aura was probably her work, thought Iya.
“Welcome to the Wormhole, my friend!” Dylias cried, coming to greet her. “Not the most elegant establishment in Ero, but surely the safest. I hope Kiriar and his friends didn’t give you too much of a turn.”
“Not at all!” Iya looked around in delight. The paneled oak walls gave back a cozy golden glow from the brazier flickering at the center of the room. She recognized bits and pieces from many of their old haunts—statues, hangings, even the golden brandywine distillers and water pipes that had been the pride of the now deserted Mermaid Inn. There was no menu board, but she smelled meat roasting. Someone put a silver mazer of excellent wine in her hand.
She sipped it gratefully, then raised an eyebrow at her guide. “I’m beginning to suspect you didn’t just happen upon me today.”
“No, we’ve watched you since—” Kiriar began.
Dylias silenced him with a sharp look under his beetling white brows, then turned to Iya and laid a finger to the side of his nose. “Less known, the better kept, eh? Suffice it to say the Harriers aren’t the only ones who keep an eye out for wizards in Ero. It’s been years! How are you, my dear?”
“Not well when I found her,” Kiriar told him. “What happened, Iya? I thought your heart had failed.”
“A momentary weakness,” Iya replied, not yet daring to say more. “I’m fine now, and better for being here with all of you! Still, isn’t it risky, gathering like this?”
“Those are ’faie-built houses over our heads,” the Aurënfaie woman told Iya. “It would take an army of those paltry Harriers to even find all the magics here, and another army to break through them.”
“Bravely stated, Saruel, and we all pray your trust is well-founded,” said Dylias. “All the same, we are cautious. We have a number of guests who depend upon it. Come, Iya. We’ll show you.”
Dylias and Saruel led Iya through a series of cramped cellar rooms beyond the tavern where more wizards were living.
“For some of us, this stronghold is a prison, as well,” Dylias said sadly, pointing out a hollow-eyed old man asleep on a pallet. “It would be worth Master Lyman’s life to show his face in the city. Once you’re on the Harriers’ hunting roster, there’s little chance of escape.”
“Twenty-eight have been burned on Traitor’s Hill since the madness started,” Saruel said bitterly. “And that’s not counting the priests murdered with them. It’s hideous, how they kill the Lightbearer’s servants.”
“Yes, I have seen it.” Iya now knew better than most what a death that was.
“But is it any worse than being buried alive here?” Dylias murmured, closing the sleeping man’s door.
Returning to the tavern, Iya sat with the others and listened to their stories. Most were still at large in the city, carefully pretending loyalty and earning their living in the small ways the king’s ordinances still allowed. They could make useful items and cast helpful