a…different woman.”
Ishwarin laughed. “What? You’re asking me about your love life?”
Tashnark frowned. “I don’t have a love life.”
“I noticed.”
“For god’s sake, just listen.”
“Sorry.”
“I want to find a woman, a particular woman, and I don’t know how to go about it. You’re good at all that bureaucratic horseshit. You got any ideas?”
Ishwarin grinned at him stupidly. It irritated Tashnark.
“Well?”
“I’m amazed, that’s all.” Ishwarin swiveled his eyes in a dismissive gesture. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know. She was at The Binge last night. I watched her, on and off, for maybe half an hour. Now I can’t get her out of my mind.”
“Love at first sight, eh? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
An old woman in a long brown robe materialized with their drinks. Tashnark took a heavy gulp and let the smooth bland liquid course down his throat. Was it love at first sight? Or perhaps lust? No doubt there was a sexual side to it, but that wasn’t what it was about. He met many women, felt drawn toward their shapeliness or their long, inviting legs. Yet he rarely pursued them. What was different with this one?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I felt.…” He shrugged. “Actually I don’t know what I felt, but she got in my mind and now worries at its edges like a damn cat with a mouse.”
Ishwarin stared into his eyes thoughtfully for a moment. It was a disconcerting habit and one that normally irritated the hell out of Tashnark. Today, however, it unsettled him instead. He glanced away.
“What is it you want, brother?” Ishwarin almost whispered.
“Want? You mean, from this woman?”
“From your life. You have to admit, it’s not in the best shape.”
Confusion flowed through Tashnark, numbing his arms, hollowing out his chest. Something he recognized as a sob ballooned into his throat, but he cut it off before it could be expelled into the air and give him away.
“I want to find this particular woman at the moment, that’s all. Is it too much to ask you for simple help, without a cross-examination?”
Ishwarin would have recognized this response as evasion, but he let it pass. He nodded. “Seriously, though, this is just what you need, Tashnark. An obsession.”
“Can you give me any useful advice?”
Ishwarin let his broad mouth smile knowingly. “Her name? That’d be a start.”
“I didn’t talk to her.” When Ishwarin’s face produced a look that contained both amazement and scorn, Tashnark added: “I was drunk at the time. I kept my distance.”
Ishwarin gazed at him with an amused smirk.
“She was dressed well but in clothes that were slightly out of fashion. Too much pattern.” Tashnark frowned, concentrating. “And she moved her hands when she talked in a very studied way, but beautifully, like it was a dance.”
The bread, cheese and bacon arrived and Tashnark ate it while he told Ishwarin what he could remember of the encounter, such as it was. Thinking of it must have distracted his stomach from its earlier disquiet, for the food stayed down.
“Maybe the publican knows her,” Ishwarin suggested.
“She was totally out of place. Her first and last time in The Binge, I’d guess.”
“Her unwelcome companion then, the Houseman? Could you track her through him?”
“The emblem on his cloak was a round object—a ring perhaps—with three wavy lines in the center—”
“Lanaris Family. From your description—especially the hand movements—she’s probably a magic-worker. It fits. Lanaris’s interest would suggest a spellbinder. No doubt newly graduated. Lanaris aims to maintain a monopoly on the employment of the Seminary’s best students. They want her and she’s resisting.” He waved his hand like a street performer. “Simple.”
Tashnark squinted at his brother. “You’d make an excellent legal advocate, if you could just learn to be suitably corrupt. So how do I find her?”
Ishwarin swallowed a mouthful of ocar, unaccountably yet obviously savoring the light creaminess of the beverage. It left a scum of brown foam on his upper lip. “Ask Lanaris House,” he said.
iii.
Despite her sense that bridges had been burned behind her, Remis continued with plans to find independent work. In the morning, she woke bleary-eyed and lethargic and had to force herself to wash, have breakfast, dress and head out from her thin, cluttered rooms into the City. Everywhere it was the same: officials who had previously welcomed her enquiries now turned her away without explanation, agreements nearly signed were found to be faulty and lapsed or were discarded, no new custom approached her door. Over the following days, she would go to the docks to meet incoming ships, hoping to keep ahead of the spreading conspiracy that isolated her from her future, and there approached captains and foreign merchants, offering her skills. Some would express interest. But within the hour a richly attired figure would come to them with whispers and nods, and they would send her away.
“I’m sorry. We can’t use your services,” they’d say.
“Why?” she’d ask. “I can be competitive and guarantee the result.”
“I’m sorry.”
Once, pushed beyond self-pity into anger, she let go her restraint and accused a fat merchant’s agent of conspiring with Lanaris House to ruin her. The man laughed and had her removed from his office by force. When she threatened to go to the Ruling Council, he gestured carelessly for her to do so. He knew as well as she that it would get her nowhere.
Her shop, so lately a symbol of her new, expanding life, suddenly felt like a prison, its dark narrow workrooms cold with discouragement and failure. She spent some time binding minor power-spells into worthless trinkets, which she then hawked at a nearby market. One sold, but word got around somehow and before she knew what was happening, she was jostled and items were stolen in the crush; thugs appeared to channel passersby away from her. When she complained to a Sumis law enforcement officer, he commented that the markets were like that—not a fit place for someone of her status to peddle their wares.
“It’s more than that,” she insisted. “This is organized intimidation. I’ve been threatened by Lanaris House.”
The officer studied her intently. “You do have a permit to sell in open market, do you?”
“I’m a trained spellbinder. That gives me the right.”
Darkly, he insisted she accompany him back to the main Sumis offices at Mallos House, where he checked her credentials. After a delay of about three hours, she was told that her
