Spring was coming to Rashemen-eventually. That night, early in the month of Ches, spring’s presence had not yet been detected in the frost-bound capital city of Immilmar. The snow in the streets and on the buildings had been there for months, layer after layer of hard-packed ice, dirt, soot, and frozen debris. The air was still bitterly cold, and icicles hung like prison bars from the eaves of many buildings.

Teza wiped her face and hurriedly pulled her wolf-fur collar up closer to her nose and mouth. Muttering to herself, she left the Guardian Witch Inn behind and marched up the street, paying no attention to her direction or the people around her. The streets were quiet, for most people had already sought the warmth and light of well-lit hearths. The many inns were doing a rollicking business, but most of the shop fronts and the city markets were closed.

The young woman gritted her teeth and stamped into the gathering darkness. Mask take that wizardess, she fumed. It was not fair that the one person in all the East that she considered her best friend had to be so stubbornly honest. Why couldn’t Kanlara look past Teza’s profession to what lay within the horse thief’s heart and mind?

Resentment flared anew in Teza’s thoughts. What right did Kanlara have to tell her what she should not do? Who made her the guardian of Teza’s integrity? Kanlara’s rigidity and her lack of faith in her friend had pricked the horse thief’s hide one time too many.

Teza frowned at the night sky. Last autumn, tolerance had been easy for both of them. At the risk of her own life, Teza had freed Kanlara from a wizard’s spell that had trapped her in the shape of a book for over thirty years. Kanlara, overjoyed at her freedom, had been grateful and ready to embrace the world. Teza took Kanlara to her home and into her life. To the delight of them both, a fast friendship had formed. But in the ensuing months, winter had locked them into constant close proximity and forced them to delay their plans to travel beyond Rashemen’s borders. Little differences blew up into heated arguments, and the subject of Teza’s profession threatened to cause an irreparable rift.

As if on cue Teza’s palms began to itch, a sure sign she had not stolen a good horse in days. Belatedly, she slowed and took her bearings. She was in an area of large workshops and houses just to the east of the center of the city. The grim fortress of the Huhrong’s citadel lay behind her, its iron and steel walls pockmarked with pools of torchlight. Ahead and to the north lay the houses of the wealthier merchants and many of the city’s nobles.

It wasn’t the houses that drew Teza, however. She had tried her hand at burglary and did not like it. She preferred the subtlety of picking pockets or the excitement of horse theft. Even in winter there were places to find crowds with full purses and stables with interesting horses. One of her favorite spots was an inn and livery on the eastern road to Muiptan. It was often frequented by merchants, travelers, and traders, and their many beasts of burden, and it was not always well guarded.

Teza picked up her pace and continued east. The snow crunched under her boots and the biting wind drove in from Lake Ashane, the icy Lake of Tears. She hunched her shoulders against the cold and plowed on, not hearing a faint voice that called behind her.

She passed over a low stone bridge that spanned a small but swift river that still resisted the grip of the freezing wind. Several minutes later she saw the bulk of the Red Stallion Inn hunched back into a thick stand of evergreens. The timbered walls were lit with lanterns and lamplight blazed from every window. Smoke rolled from the inn’s several chimneys and the smell of cooking food wafted into the dark. Teza noted all the activity with satisfaction. The inn was busy this night, which meant there were probably good pickings in the stable.

Niall One Hand ran a fine establishment that included the convenience of large corrals for livestock and beasts of burden and warm stables for the finer mounts of his guests. Teza, not wishing to abuse a good source, only visited Niall’s place rarely to remove a few of the finer steeds from customers who could well afford it. Fortunately, Niall bad no idea who raided his stable, so Teza was able to return the favor sometimes by bringing him stock to sell or passing a good deal his way. She liked Niall’s easy wit and his flexible sense of honesty.

She turned away from the light and warmth and worked her way through the trees toward the stables. As quiet as a snowcat she slipped through the night to the back of the large barn. The building was timber, built on a stone and earth foundation, and it could house twenty horses or thirty ponies in a double row of stalls. A set of double doors opened onto the inn’s courtyard, but there was also a smaller groom’s door that opened from the back into the alley between the stalls. This door was usually kept locked-a fact that rarely bothered Teza-but this night it was also guarded.

Teza hesitated. The presence of the guard was unusual, but the fact that he wore the emblem of the clan family, Vrul, seemed strange. Most of the Vrul lived in Mulptan. Not that it really mattered. The Vrul were well known in Rashemen for their fine taste in horses.

It took the horse thief just a moment to slip back her hood, loosen her long dark braid, and find the small bag she always wore. Within, among the other tools of her trade, were the circles of fabric permeated with a quick-acting sedative. Very useful for unsuspecting guards.

She stumbled out of the trees close to the inn and ambled, in her best drunken fashion, toward the guard by the door. He watched her approach with some amusement.

“Sir, I was looking for the outhouse,” she slurred, stumbling closer. “Do you know where it is?”

He lifted his hand to point, his head turning naturally in that direction, and in that instant Teza leaped forward and pressed the fabric to his nose. He took one gasp and fell like a stricken rothй.

Teza solicitously dragged him into the barn where he would not freeze. As she hoped, the grooms were in the inn and the stable was empty of humans. One by one she began a rapid inspection of the stalls’ inhabitants.

“Teza!” a whispered voice called to her from the door.

Teza and the horse she was patting leaped sideways as one and crashed into the wooden partition. “Kanlara!” Teza snarled. “What are you doing here?”

The wizardess, cloaked and booted, strode forward, her face pinched with cold and annoyance. “I followed you,” she said. “I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t catch up with you. I had a feeling you were going to do something like this.”

“Of course I am!” Teza stormed out of the stall and into the next where a creamy white mare rolled her eyes nervously. “I told you from the beginning I was a horse thief. It’s what I am.”

“But it’s not what you can be!” Kanlara insisted. “You are intelligent, strong, and beautiful. You could be anything you set your mind to.”

Teza made a rude noise of disbelief. Those words, coming from a woman with exquisitely beautiful features, long red hair, jewel-green eyes, and the advantage of being wizard-trained, did not carry a great deal of weight with an untalented street rat. There were some realities of life Kanlara had never had to face-like starvation and loneliness and poverty.

Teza had learned to be a thief to survive and now it was all she knew. She threw her hands up. “You want me to change. You want us to leave Immilmar. You want a new wizard’s staff and spell components. Well, all of that takes money. How do you propose we get it? You are forbidden to practice magic while you are in the jurisdiction of the Rashemi witches and the only jobs the Rashemaar will give an outlander are menial… they barely pay for our room. So that leaves me.”