Count Scar - SA by C. Dale Brittain, Robert A. Bouchard Page A

stared as we hurried past, bowing low when they saw Argave. Another gate brought us into a quarter of narrower streets lined with the shuttered houses and shops of artisans, tradespeople, and money changers: virtuous working folk now mostly abed. At the far end of their commune, we entered the poor section of town.
    We had gone quickly until now, with only a few corners where I must halt us until the knife found its bearing. But here the streets were mere alleys, cramped and twisted as the veins in a cheese, and smelling just as ripe. Tottering houses leaned against each other like drunkards, and real drunkards staggered in and out of the taverns that sheltered in the ground floors of more than a few of them. God's wayward children were here in force: idle footsoldiers mustered out with the current peace, fat ox-drovers, runaway peasants, dissolute apprentices, and the bawds who waited to relieve any or all of them of whatever coins the taverns didn't take. Those men or women we encountered upon the streets slunk quickly up alleys or faded into doorways when they realized who they'd met. But we could hear raucous laughter, curses, and snatches of lewd songs from nearby houses every time we stopped to wait for the dagger to show the way, and such halts became frequent in these twisting streets.
    At last the knife pointed up a black alley between two tottering houses that had leaned in toward one another until someone had felt it advisable to brace thick oak beams between them several stories up. We edged around a pile of rotting cabbages halfway along, then the knife swung to guide us into the inner courtyard of the house on our left. The captain stepped up to a weathered but quite solid-looking door and hammered upon it with his mailed fist, bellowing, "Open in the name of Duke Argave!"
    The woman who eventually answered was a surprise. Her gown, though old and worn, was satin, her bearing queenly, and her hard face had once been beautiful and was still striking. She swept dark eyes over us, then bowed low and spoke in phrases as well turned as any court lady's. "Greetings my lord Duke, good Magian fathers, gentlemen all. My pardon for your having to wait; we fastened this door for the night some moments ago. You do too much honor to my poor house."
    The duke, to my interest, looked momentarily nonplussed at the sight of her. Then he shrugged and replied in the same fashion, "I fear we have not come on a social visit, madame. It appears that your house has recently harbored assassins and may hold one still."
    "Indeed." Her black eyes shifted from him to me, and then to the dagger quivering on its line below my outstretched hand. "Then you had best enter at once and seek him out. I want no such miscreants within my walls."
    The cramped corridor passed a locked door through which low voices and the click of dice could be heard. But the knife led us on without a quiver to a steep narrow stair that wound upward at the very back of the house. I could feel the lines of the magic grow stronger and stronger as we climbed. We heard a woman's high laughter as we passed one landing and a man cursing at the next.
    Then, on the fifth landing, the knife jerked at its cord like a hooked fish. The ancient wood floor of the gloomy hallway was creaky and uneven, while beams leaned unexpectedly out of the walls or pressed down from the ceiling. I heard both the captain and Bruno bump their heads and curse ripely behind me. When I reached the third chamber the knife actually pulled the cord from my grasp and went clattering to the threshold. Duke Argave growled a command, and a bulky guardsman stepped forward and smashed the flimsy door in with one blow of his thick shoulder.
    The big man lying in the garret room beyond made no objection. He would never object to anything again.
    "It's big-foot all right." Count Caloran said as he stood up from examining the dead man's feet. "The size is right, and you can see the same worn spot in his right shoe