Sham sat on a low stone fence in the shadows of an alley pulling on her boots. In the darkness that even the moonlight failed to reach, a sea breeze caressed her hair. She drew in a deep breath of the fresh air.

Even the sea smelled different here in the hilly area of Landsend. The Cybellian conquerors, like the Southwood nobles before them, had chosen to make their homes far from the wharves. In Purgatory, the westside slum where Sham lived, the ocean air smelled like dead fish, old garbage, and despair.

She stood up and ran her hands lightly over the silk of her courier's tunic to make sure that the black and gray material hung properly. She had to fluff the opaque sleeves twice to keep them from revealing odd bulges where she stored the tools of her trade.

It was still early in the winter season, so the silk was warm enough if she kept moving, but she was glad the trousers were made of heavier material. After bundling her other clothes, she tucked them out of sight in the lower limbs of a tree that graced the garden behind a wealthy merchant's house.

Messengers were common on the streets of Landsend, Southwood's capital, even in the darkness of early morning. Female messengers were not, but Sham was lightly built and, on the streets, could pass easily as a boy -- as she had for the last twelve years. Even the long braid that hung down her back was not out of place. Only recently had the Southwood men begun to crop their hair like the Easterners who had conquered them.

As she strode through the empty, moonlit street, she noticed a guardsman standing near a cross street watching her.

The east-city guards were as different from the guards of Purgatory as the smell of sweetsalt was from rotting fish. Most of them were younger sons of Cybellian merchants and traders rather than the glorified street thugs who were supposed to keep order in the less prosperous areas of town.

The guard caught Sham's eye and she waved to him. He responded with a nod and waited for her path to bring her nearer.

"Late night," he commented.

She noticed with hidden amusement that he was even younger than she'd thought -- and bored as well to talk to a mere messenger.

"Early morning, messire," she grumbled cheerfully in Cybellian, not bothering to hide her Southwood accent since her white-blond hair kept her from claiming Cybellian birth -- as long as she chose to leave it uncovered.

He smiled agreeably and she continued past him, careful to keep a rapid straight path and looking neither to the left nor the right until she'd traveled several blocks.

The house she was looking for was on the end of a block, and she waited until she'd turned the corner before giving it more than a casual glance. The hedge was too high for her to see much of the building, but there were no signs of occupation in the upper story. First checking to see if anyone was watching her, Sham dropped to the ground and shimmied under the wall of greenery that enclosed her target for the evening.

The manicured lawn was tiny: Land was expensive in this part of the city. The tall greenery that surrounded it kept out the faint illumination provided by the street torches as well as the somewhat brighter light of the moon. Sham knelt where she was, watching the dark mansion intently for movement that might indicate someone was inside.

The three-storied edifice was newer than the hedge around it; the Eastern noble she was robbing had purchased an old manor and had it torn down and rebuilt in the Cybellian style as soon as the fighting had died down. Open-air windows on the second and third floor might have been useful in the hot, dry climate of Cybelle, but Landsend, despite its southern location, was wet and chilly in the winter months as the ocean currents brought cold waters from the other side of the world to the cliffs of Southwood.

She approved heartily of the new style of architecture, after all, she didn't intend to live in it. The open windows, even shuttered, made her job much easier than the closed, small-windowed native styles. As she studied the building, she warmed her hands against her body. The night air was cool and warm hands gripped better than cold ones.

According to her informant, the owners of this particular house were currently enjoying a se'nnight at the hot pools a day's ride from Landsend. Some entrepreneurial Cybellian had taken over the abandoned buildings there, turning them into a pilgrimage temple to Altis, the god of the Cybellians.

The Cybellians didn't believe in the restless spirits who were responsible for the abandonment of the old settlement. They called the native people "backward" and "superstitious." Sham wondered if the protection of Altis would keep the ghosts under control -- and hoped that it wouldn't.

However, she wasn't going to wait for the Wraiths of the Medicine Pools to attack the Cybellians. In her own small way, she continued the war that had officially been lost twelve years ago to the god-driven Cybellians and their eastern allies who crossed the Great Swamp to conquer the world.

Using almost nonexistent hand-holds, she pulled herself up the walls. Setting her calloused fingers and the hard, narrow soles of her knee-high boots in the slight ledges where mortar separated stone, she climbed carefully to a second-floor window and sat on the narrow ledge to inspect it closer. The lip of one shutter covered the opening where both met, making it more difficult for a thief to release the inner latch.

Her informant, the younger brother of the owner's former mistress, had said that the wooden shutters were held closed by a simple hook-latch. A common enough fastening, but not the only possibility, and it was necessary for her to know exactly what she was dealing with in order to open it.

Closing her eyes, she put a forefinger on the wooden panels and muttered a few words in a language that had been out of use for living memory. The shutter was too thick for her to hear the faint click of the latch hook falling against the wood, but she could tell it was done when they opened slightly.

She slid to one side of the window ledge and used her fingertips to open one of the shutters. Stealthily, she entered the building and pulled the panel closed, hooking the latch behind her. Magic was a useful tool for a thief, especially when her victims, for the most part, didn't believe in it.

She stood in a small sitting room that smelled of linseed oil and wax. With the shutters closed the room was awash in shadows. Without moving for fear of knocking something over, she drew magic from a place that was not quite a part of this world. She pushed aside the familiar barrier and tugged loose a small bit, just enough for her purpose. Holding it tightly she molded it into the shape she wanted, using gestures and words to guide her deft manipulation. In another place and time she would have worn the robes of a master wizard.

Magic had always felt to her as if she held some incredible substance that was ice-cold but warmed her hands anyway. With a pushing gesture she flung it away, watching its white-hot glow with a mage's talent. If there was someone here, she'd know shortly. When nothing happened after a count of twenty, she was satisfied she was the only person in the building.

The magelight that she called was dim, but it lit her way satisfactorily through the sparingly furnished halls. She wandered through the building until she found the room the boy had described as the lord's study.

Drawing a gold piece from one of her pockets, she murmured to it, then tossed it into the air. It spun lightly, and fell, clinking, to the hard floor. The coin spun on an edge before it came to rest -- hopefully on top of the floor vault where the master of the house kept his gold.

Drawing her magelight near the floor, she inspected the parquet carefully. Under the cool glow she could just make out the subtle difference in fit where a group of tiles was slightly higher than the rest. Predictable, she chided the absent lord lightly. Satisfied she'd found the vault, she starting looking for the release lever to open it.

Under the mahogany desk one of the wooden tiles was noticeably higher than those around it. She tried pushing on it to no effect, but it pulled up easily with a click followed by a similar sound from the vault.

She pulled off the loosened section of flooring and peered below. In the small recess there were several leather bags in a neat row next to a stack of jewelry boxes. Lifting one of the sacks, she found it filled with gold coins. With a smile of satisfaction, she counted twenty-three into a pouch that she carried under her silk tunic. Finished, she replaced the bag among its fellows and arranged the sacks so that they looked much as they had before she'd taken her plunder.

She didn't even think of looking through the jewelry. It wasn't that she was opposed to robbery; after all, that was how she made her living -- but tonight she sought retribution and ordinary thievery had no place in it. After shutting the vault she reset the tile under the desk.

She left his study to continue her explorations. The money was only a third of what she came to do here this night.

The house looked odd to her Southwood-bred eyes. The rooms were too big and hard to heat, separated by curtains rather than doors. Floors had been left bare and polished rather than strewn with rushes. No wonder they left their houses to bask in steambaths, haunted or not: the chill air crept through this house as if this were a centuries-old, drafty castle rather than a newly built manor.

She climbed the back stairs to the third floor and found a nursery, the servant's quarters, and a store room. Returning to the second floor, she continued her search. This particular nobleman collected instruments of all kinds, and she'd heard from the Whisper that he'd lately purchased one that was more than it seemed.

She found the music room by the main stairway, a small room dominated by the great harp that sat in the middle of the floor. Several other large instruments were on their own stands, but the smaller ones were arranged on various tables and shelves that lined the walls.

The flute she was looking for rested casually on a shelf next to a lap-harp, as if it were nothing but the finely crafted, eight-holed instrument it appeared. Carved from a light-colored wood and inlaid with small bits of semiprecious blue stone, it looked as ancient as it was. It was more battered than she'd remembered it; several pieces of stone were missing and there was a deep scratch on one side. Even so, she knew it was the Old Man's: There was no mistaking the magic in it.

She shook her head at the ignorance that left such a thing within easy reach of every person who strolled past. It was part of the magic of the flute that it attracted anyone able to use its powers: That the house still stood was proof that the Easterners had no magic in their souls. Impulsively, she lifted it to her lips and blew once, smiling as the off-pitch note echoed weirdly through the house.

She wondered if the nobleman had yet tried to play the instrument and been disappointed by the flat, lifeless tones. She blew again, letting the single tone fill the empty house. The magic the flute summoned made her fingertips tingle, and the note lifted until it was true and bright.

Smiling, she pulled it away from her lips, holding the magic a moment before letting it free, unformed. She felt a momentary warmth that brushed her face before it was swallowed by the cold room.

She'd once heard the Old Man play it with true skill, but he seldom had taken it out, preferring more mundane instruments for casual practice. Until she'd heard of its sale, she'd thought the flute had burned with the rest of his effects when the Cybellians had taken the Castle.

Respectfully, she slipped it into a hidden pocket on the inside of the arm of her undershirt, and inspected the blousy sleeve of her outer shirt to make certain the lump wasn't obvious. One task remained.

The temples to Altis (every Easterner's house had one) were usually built near the entrance where the all-seeing eyes could protect the inhabitants. So, she left the rest of the second floor unexplored and trotted down the staircase.

It took her much less time to find the altar than it had to find the music room. At the base of the stairs was a set of golden velvet curtains. Moving the heavy drapery dislodged a cloud of dust and left her coughing in the sanctuary of the Easterner's god.

It was no bigger than a large closet, and filled with a musty odor. Despite the obvious signs of disuse, the shrine more than made up anything it lacked in size by sheer gaudiness.

Gold and precious gems covered the back wall in a glittering mosaic, creating the feline symbol that represented the god Altis. The emeralds that formed the cat's glittering eyes watched indifferently as Sham palmed three of the coins she'd stolen earlier.

The first time she'd done this, the cat's eyes had frightened her. She'd waited for lightning to strike as she invoked her spell, but nothing had happened then, or since. Still, she couldn't help the chill that crept up her spine. As a warrior recognizes his enemy in battle, she gave a nod to the green eyes that watched her, then she turned to her work.

Gold was the easiest of all of the metals to work magic upon, so it didn't take her long to melt Altis's cat from the back of the coins. Two of them she left blank, but on the third she drew a rune that invited bad luck upon the house.

She held the third coin over the star on the cat's forehead and covered the green eyes with the other two, blinding the cat. Pressing her thumbs on the eyes and her index fingers on the star, she muttered softly to herself until the golden coins disappeared, leaving the cat mosaic apparently unchanged.

She stepped back and rubbed her hands unconsciously. The rune magic she used was not black; not quite -- but it was not precisely good either and she never felt quite clean after working it. Not that it would do much harm: Ill luck took a particularly tricky rune. Still, the Old Man could have made it function for several years; the best that she had done was ten months -- but she was getting better.

At the thought of the man who was her teacher, Sham reluctantly put her hands on the invisible coins and placed a limit to the physical harm the rune could work so that no one would be permanently injured as a result of the spell. Since she was doing this for him, she needed to follow his rules.

It had taken her years to discover who had been on the jury that had sentenced her mentor to darkness and pain for the remainder of his days. The records that were kept in the early days of occupation were skimpy and difficult for even the most innovative thief to get her hands on. The Old Man wouldn't tell her -- he was a gentle man not given to vengeance.

One night though, he'd cried out a name as he thrashed in a nighttime reliving. Sham used that name to question an old court scribe. From him came three other names. She questioned others and offered money for information until she had the names of all fifteen members of the court who decided unanimously to cripple the sorcerer's hands and blind him. The Cybellians who had seen the King's Wizard fight had not been able to sustain their disbelief in magic's power, and they had struck back out of fear. Only later, after Southwood's mages had learned to hide themselves, could the Easterners dismiss it as superstition and delusion.

If she'd known the names of the Old Man's torturers at first, doubtless she would have destroyed them all, but the Old Man's gentleness had done its work. Certainly he would be upset about what little she'd managed to do -- if he ever found out.

It was enough for her that she exacted a price from them, a price they might never miss. The bad luck that would haunt them for a while was nothing akin to the pain the Old Man would suffer for the rest of his life. They would shrug it off and go on with their lives, but she would know that they had paid.

The gold she took she kept safely hidden, and soon now she would have the resources needed to buy a small farm in the country. The Old Man had been born and raised in the fields of northern Southwood and he lived in the city perforce. He had given her a reason to live after her parents had been killed when the Castle fell: This was something that she, with the unknowing help of his destroyers, could give him back.

She exited the mansion by the front door, using her magic to trip the locks behind her. Squeezing under the hedge again, she made sure that the street was deserted before completely leaving the protection of the shadows. With luck it would be months before anyone discovered the theft. She hoped no one blamed some poor servant, but that was their business and none of hers.

This time she merely waved at the guard as she trotted past him, seemingly intent on the message she carried back to her employer. By the time a week was gone, he'd never remember her at all.

She retrieved her bundle of clothing and stopped in the alley that marked the edge of the unofficial but understood border of Purgatory. Quickly she exchanged the expensive silk for worn cotton pants, a baggy shirt, and a stained leather jerkin that disguised her sex much more reliably than the courier's garb. The undershirt, with its pockets, she left on.

For most people, walking at night in Purgatory was a dangerous proposition. But Sham's face was known and stealing from a mage was sure to bring ill luck to the thieves. That was protection enough from the Southwood natives, who already had more bad luck than they needed.

Like the rest of the Easterners who had come after the initial attack on Southwood, the Cybellian gutter-thugs generally did not believe in magic. But they were wary enough of her skill with the knife or dagger that they didn't attempt the well-known emptiness of her purse and pockets. If any of them had realized she was female, it might have been different.

Sham walked a while to make sure that no one followed her, casually nodding to one acquaintance and exchanging warm insults with another. As she came down the hill to the old docks, she used her magic to gather the shadows to her until they hid her from a casual glance.

It was strangely quiet at the docks without the constant murmurs that the waves usually made even in the calmest time. The sea was at Spirit Tide, leaving a mile-wide stretch of wet, debris-covered sand well below the lowest of the cliff tops.

The daily tides dropped the ocean level mere feet down the timbers of the docks and allowed only the tops of the cliffs to be exposed to the air. Only once each month did the Spirit Tide expose the pale stretch of beach for a tenth part of a day. One month it would fall during the night and the next during the day.

The support pillars of the docks rose high into the air, backlit by moonlight. The barnacles that covered them were drying for the few short hours that the tide was out. Years of salt water and tides had marred the thick wooden posts, and neglect had left the upper surface laced with missing and rotting boards.

The long expanse of beach was covered with the litter of the ocean; barrels and broken bits of refuse lay between the cracked shells and swollen remains of sea denizens. Once in a while, the broken timbers of a ship that the sea had taken would appear, only to be washed out with the next turn of the tide. Once, it was said, an ancient gold-laden vessel had washed up on the desolate weed-covered sands, and the king of Southwood had used the precious metal to form the great doors of the Castle.

Stories were told of the dead who walked the beach, searching for their loved ones to the creaking of the drying dock-timbers. There was enough truth in that to keep the beach clear of all but the most desperate slum-scavenger at night. By the light of day, the sands of Spirit Beach were fair hunting for all who were willing to fight with their fellow thugs for what treasures the sea had left behind.

When the western docks had been in use, the giant bell on the cliffs rang out as the waters began to recede, and the few ships that had chosen to race the tide would unfurl their sails and their masters would hope that they hadn't waited too long and stranded themselves on the land where they would be destroyed by the abnormally swift, crushing waves of the ocean that reclaimed the empty bay within moments of the turning tide.

Some claimed it was magic that caused the drastic tides that depleted a bay almost four fathoms deep, but the Old Man had explained it differently. Something about the converging of deep sea currents and the great sea wall that protected this bay of Landsend, as she recalled.

It had been a long time since the bell had been rung, as the Cybellian overlords preferred the shoaly bay on the eastern side of the peninsula upon which Landsend was built. They were uncomfortable with the dangers of the Spirit Tide, and Purgatory, once a small blight in the center of the city, had quickly spread its leprous mantle to encompass the abandoned western docks. Several years earlier the heavy bell had fallen from its mounting and landed in the sea to be swallowed by the shifting ocean sands, but the frame on which it had hung was still standing.

Near the docks, higher cliff peaks rose in the air, looking far larger than they did during normal tides. Sham made her way through the rocks of the cliffs, finally lying down on her belly to reach the undercut ledge below.

From the ledge, safely hidden from view, hung a rotted ladder that owed its continued existence more to her magic than any integrity left in the wood and rope. She used the ladder to climb most of the way down the slime-coated cliffs. At the last rung she hung by her arms and dropped two body-lengths to the soft sands below.

Warily she scanned the beaches for the predators that sometimes hunted here, though it was dark enough in the shadow of the cliffs that she wouldn't be able to see anything until it was upon her anyway. She had never discovered anything hunting here herself, but she'd come upon places where something had fed often enough that she remained cautious.

Pulling the shadows more tightly around her, she found the entrance to the cave system that riddled the ancient limestone cliffs, carved by the countless years of water pounding at the wall.

"WHAT IS THIS?" she asked, stretching to place her fingers on the edges of the runes that marked one of the openings.

Maur, his chestnut hair tinged with grey at his temples, smiled down at her. "Wards, child. To keep people out."

She thought about it for a moment. "They're not complete, are they?"

Pleased, the mage crouched beside her. "How would you finish them?"

She frowned at the patterns before her and traced a rune below the last one. As she finished, magic flared and she snatched her fingers back. The opening solidified until she faced a wall where a cave had been.

"Good girl," Maur laughed. Standing up, he ruffled her hair with one hand as he unworked the wardings with another.

"Who put them there, Master?" she asked.

"Now that's a story," he said, leading the way into the tunnel. "I first found this cave by chance when I was a young man. Have you ever heard the stories of Golden Jo?"

She tilted her head and grinned. "Who hasn't? There aren't many thieves with the--" she hastily dropped the word she'd picked up from her father's men and substituted something less shocking, "er -- rashness to rob the king in his own chambers." She paused and thought about what she'd said. "This is where you found the king's lost crown?"

Maur smiled.

"I thought you did that with magic." For a moment she was disappointed; finding the crown was touted as proof of Maur's powers throughout Southwood.

"Magic," replied Maur, tapping on the runes, "-- wit, and a little luck are always more powerful than magic alone. Remember that. I also found the remains of Golden Jo next to the crown; not much left of him after all these years. It looked like he took too much time storing the crown and got trapped in the cave. From the scorch marks in the cave and on the bones, I'd say that he tried to teleport and drew more magic than he could handle -- the Spirit Tide's funny that way sometimes. All in all it's a better way to go than dying of thirst."

"He had luck and magic," said Sham slowly, "but his wits were lacking if he trapped himself here."

Maur nodded. "You remember that, child. Never trust to any one of the three: And don't stay in the caves too long."

Copyright © 1998 by Patricia Briggs