Book 2 - Warlock by Glen Cook Page A

to dissuade her. She did not tell them she had the most
senior’s blessing. They gossiped. She knew, because they
brought her snippets about the
Maksche sisters. She did not doubt but what they paid in
kind.
    The huntresses became suspicious soon after they left the
cloister. “Marika,” Grauel said after a whispered
consultation with Barlog, “we are being followed. By
huntresses from the cloister.”
    Marika was not pleased, but neither was she surprised. A silth
had been set upon by rogue males not a week before her return from
the upper Ponath. “It’s all right,” she said.
“They’re looking out for us.”
    Grauel nodded to herself. She told Barlog, “The most
senior protecting her investment.”
    “We’ll be watched wherever we go,” Marika
said. “We have a friend.”
    “One is more than we did have.”
    “Does that tell me something?”
    “Did you know that we were not supposed to come back from
the Ponath?”
    “We weren’t?” The notion startled Marika.
    “The story was whispering around the barracks here. We
were sent out to build that blockhouse behind the most
senior’s back. We were not supposed to get out of it alive.
That is why Paustch was demoted. It was an attempt to kill
us.”
    Barlog added, “The senior councillors here are afraid of
you, Marika.”
    “We survived.”
    Grauel said, “It is also whispered that nomad prisoners
confessed that our blockhouse wasn’t attacked once they found
out who the keeper was. You have gained a reputation among the
savages.”
    “How? I don’t know any of them. How could they know
me?”
    “You slew the Serke silth at Akard. That has been bruited
about all the Communities, they say. The one who died had a great
name in her order, though the Serke aren’t naming it. That
would mean admitting they were poaching on the Ponath.”
    “I love this hypocrisy,” Marika said.
“Everyone knows what the Serke are doing, and no one will
admit it. We must learn the rules of this game. We might want to
play it someday.”
    “Marika?”
    Grauel’s tone warned Marika that she had come too far out
of her role. “We have to play the silth game the way it is
played here if we are to survive here, Grauel. Not so?” She
spoke in the formal mode.
    “I suppose. Still . . . ”
    Barlog said, “We hear talk about the most senior sending
you to TelleRai soon, Marika. Because that is where they teach
those who are expected to rise high. Is this true? Will we be
going?” Barlog, too, shifted to the formal mode.
    Marika shifted back. “I don’t know anything about
it, Barlog. Nothing’s been said to me. I don’t think
there’s anything to it. But I will not be going anywhere
without you two. Could I survive without touch with my
pack?”
    How could she survive without the only meth she had any reason
to trust? Not that she trusted even them completely. She still
suspected they reported on her to curry favor, but to do that they
had to stay close and remain useful.
    “Thank you, Marika,” Barlog said.
    “Here we are. Do not hesitate to admonish me if I fail to
comport myself properly.” Marika glanced back. “Any
sign of our shadows?” She could have gone down through her
loophole and looked, but did not care enough.
    “None, Marika.”
    “Good.” She touched the fence lightly, examined the
aircraft upon the field. Today the airstrip was almost naked. One
small freight dirigible lay in one of the cradles. Two Stings sat
near the fence. There were a couple of light craft of a type with
which she was unfamiliar. Their design implied them to be
reconnaisance or courier ships.
    She went to the desk in the gateway building. The same guard
watched the same vision screen in the same state of sleepy
indifference. He did not notice her. She wondered if his hearing
and sense of smell were impaired, or if he just enjoyed being rude
to meth from the street. She rapped on the desk.
    He turned. He recognized her and his eyes widened. He sat
up.
    “I would