Trapped

The Sorcery-Lord made no effort to remove herself from the fire zone. As the shots continued, she stepped over the low windowsill and into the room itself. Bullets zinged through the air; a few passed through Dreamsinger's crimson cloak, tearing several holes in it before the cloak was ripped to rags… but the majority of shots were directly on target, plowing straight into Dreamsinger's body.

The bullets had no effect; they never quite made contact.

A violet glow had sprung up around the Spark Lord's outline, like a fringe of indigo fire. Each time a shot hit the glow, the bullet was met with violet flame-a blazing hot flame that dissolved the chunk of lead into spittles of molten metal. Stinking smoke filled the air as drops of liquefied lead fell to the floor… but none of it touched Dreamsinger. She just stood with a placid smile, waiting for the barrage to end.

Lying on top of me, Impervia whispered, "That glow around her… is it sorcery?"

"No," the Caryatid replied. "I've heard it called a force field. Projected by her armor."

"She's wearing armor?" I asked.

"What do you think she's wearing, idiot?" That was Impervia again.

"She's wearing Kaylan's Chameleon. Total coverage. I can't see a square millimeter of who she really is."

"Vanity, vanity," Impervia murmured. She shifted her body slightly against my back. "So, uhh, Phil… what do you see?"

I didn't answer.

The shooting dwindled to an anticlimax of prissy little clicks: firing pins hitting on empty chambers. A woman inside the house growled, "For God's sake, assholes, give it up. Xavier, will you please call off your dogs?"

A grunting sigh. "You heard her." An old man's gristly voice. "Stand down… but reload."

Both the man and the woman spoke with accents: something Central European. Teaching at the academy, I'd heard lots of accents from my students-but those accents were all upper class. The people in Nanticook House sounded rougher… more ragged and throaty.

"Warwick Xavier?" Dreamsinger asked.

"You know who I am," the man answered. A statement, not a question.

"She's a Spark," said the unknown woman inside. "She knows everyone." A pause. "Judging by the crimson armor, you're the female Sorcery-Lord. Serpent's Kiss."

"Serpent's Kiss was my predecessor. I'm Dreamsinger."

"Ach, such a fancy name," said Xavier. "Fine women, always so pretentious."

Impervia slid off me. On hands and knees she peered over the windowsill, into the room beyond. The Caryatid and I joined her-like the comic relief in a Shakespeare play, the three of us poking our noses up in the background while more important characters played the main action downstage.

Xavier stood beside the unknown woman at the far end of the room. He was white-haired, big-eared, stoop-shouldered, an imposing jowly man who might be as old as seventy, dressed in formal black-and-white; she was black-haired, fierce-eyed, sharp-boned, an imposing skeleton-thin woman in her early thirties, wearing gray silk pants and shirt, cut so loosely they seemed tailored for someone four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier. If Warwick Xavier was the Smuggler King, this woman might be his Queen or Crown Princess… either a wife half his age or his daughter. Maybe even granddaughter. Or perhaps she was his heir-apparent, ruthless in her own right and ready to take over as soon as the king showed weakness.

Before Dreamsinger's entrance, Xavier and the woman had been examining papers spread on a table-records, I assumed, of ill-gotten gains. Two gunsels stood nearby: big men who'd now holstered their pistols and stood with razor spikes bristling along their arms, ready to slash anyone who got too close. The sort of men who didn't know when they were out of their depth.

Dreamsinger ignored the enforcers. She gazed only at Xavier and the woman… smiling in what I thought might be recognition.

"You're a long way from home," Dreamsinger said.

It was the woman who replied. "I have many homes."

"And home is where the heart is," Dreamsinger observed. "Or within a few kilometers. Which came first, dear sister? This operation or Feliss Academy?"

"This operation, of course. I chose Feliss Academy only because I had an outpost nearby."

"Did your daughter know?"

The woman beside Xavier shook her head. "Rosalind is happier thinking she's not completely under my wing. But I don't send her to a school unless it's close to my holdings… and wherever she goes, I follow."

Dreamsinger smiled. "Dear sister, she's gone somewhere you can't follow. Your daughter died several hours ago."

The thin woman-Elizabeth Tzekich, Knife-Hand Liz-caught her breath. That was all. Then she clamped her jaw tight.

I saw no tears.

Where Elizabeth Tzekich was gaunt, Rosalind had been plump-possibly in rebellion, the daughter fattening herself to look as little like her mother as possible. Yet the mother's tight face, the way she suppressed all grief, reminded me of Rosalind concealing her own emotions: the careful hiding-behind-walls of a girl who'd given up making friends.