Thick as Thieves by Tali Spencer Page A

the buildings and tight to the river. It was a nicely secluded spot. Vorgell caught sight of shadowy figures on surrounding rooftops and near the tree line, and guessed they were being watched by some of Tagard’s men.
    “I was surprised when I heard you’d showed up here,” Tagard said. He was the same height as Madd and leaned slightly toward him as he spoke. “Got first wind after midday from Ibeena. Said you’d got away from that rotten baron, but were going back.”
    Madd pulled down the high collar of his shirt, displaying the collar. “As long as I wear this, I’m branded his slave.”
    “Is that why you came here? I can’t help you with wizard stuff.”
    “You think I don’t know that? Tagard, I came here because we needed a place to hide for the night and… you know I wouldn’t show you disrespect. I asked to see you because I didn’t want you knowing I’d been in Gurgh—or Thieves Wart either—and then left without telling you. I’ll make good yet, just not this time.”
    “And you think there’ll be a next time? There isn’t always a next time, young witch.”
    “You know he’s a witch?” Vorgell hadn’t expected that.
    “Of course. I’m a witch also.”
    Madd nodded to Vorgell’s look of surprise and said, “He’s like me, outside the Circles.”
    “Outside, but not alienated. Sometimes I work closely with the Circle of Stones, if there be need.” Tagard frowned, his gaze alertly picking at things across the river. Vorgell tried to see what he was seeing. Though the rain had passed, clouds mottled the early morning sky. “Our women don’t approve of men who dabble in magic, as I do. Even minor magic requires us to commit practices witch women abhor.”
    “As if they are better?” Vorgell growled. “Show me a magic user who is not blighted by their use of it.” Yesterday he had sat silent beside Madd, bearing Ibeena’s insults. Her throne of boughs and the amulets she wore around her neck, her embroidered coat of arcane meanings… he had seen such things before. The chill that seized his spine bit to his core. He flicked his gaze away from the surprised look Madd sent his way. This had nothing to do with Madd.
    “Don’t like magic, eh?” Tagard sounded interested.
    He shrugged. “I have no love of magic users. Madd here”—Vorgell looped an arm over the young man’s shoulder and gave him a companionable shake before Madd pushed it off—“is the only magic user I would not slay for sufficient reward.”
    “Are you serious?” Madd looked ready to bite his head off. “You’re talking like a bounty hunter!”
    “Give him a chance to explain” was Tagard’s approach.
    Vorgell turned his head to glare back at the mist-wreathed walls of Gurgh, then took a moment to study the sky above. Every man had reasons for where he stood, and he had his… the rotten core of why he had not sought to return to Scur. Why he had consigned his childhood and youth to the custody of ghosts and been willing to smoke pipefuls of asphodel leaf in hope of banishing memory….
    “Vorgell,” Madd prompted, gentler now. Vorgell looked into those dark, searching eyes and saw both warning and concern. Madd’s trust was too fragile to manage doubt.
    At last he said, “A magic user killed my sister. Upon my father’s death, my tribe’s shaman pronounced her possessed of a dead man’s spirit and demanded she be sacrificed to placate the Father of Wolves. She was not possessed. She bore a child none wanted to see born because its father was blessed by other gods.”
    “Necromancy. Magic drawn from death, from life’s destruction. To kill a woman with child gathers more.” Tagard slumped and heaved a sigh. “Wizardry is such, but not witchery. We would not have harmed her.”
    “No,” Madd snapped. “We would just let the child be born—and then we’d treat it like crap for the rest of its life.”
    “Maddog—” Tagard barely spoke the name, yet the warning had iron behind