There was no flash. The eerie sensation of magic at work faded quickly away, and she was just a girl sitting cross-legged on the floor of a hot, airless attic room, holding an ordinary dagger.

But that couldn't be true, she told herself, it wasn't possible. She blinked in the darkness, trying to see the knife, but the daylight was gone, and the light from the window, compounded of lanterns and torches and the lesser moon's pink glow, wasn't enough.

She dropped the dagger and groped for the candles and her tinderbox. In a moment she had a light going, and looked down at the knife that lay on the bare planks.

It was blackened all over, a smooth, even black; the silver blade still gleamed, but with the dark shimmer of volcanic glass.

Tabaea felt it. It wasn't glass; it was still metal.

But it was black.

Hilt and guard were black, as well.

The entire dagger was utterly, completely black, totally colorless.

That wasn't right. Tabaea didn't know much about wizards, but she had seen them in the streets, she had seen the athame that Serem carried and the athame that Lirrin had made. All those athames were perfectly ordinary and natural in appearance, not this unearthly black.

Something had gone wrong.

She remembered the tests that Serem had described, but which she had not seen Lirrin attempt because of her need to flee. She couldn't try any of the ones that involved other people or other athames, but…

She wrapped a leather thong from her belt around one arm, tied it off with a simple knot, then touched the black dagger to it.

Nothing happened.

The cord was supposed to untie and fall away, but nothing happened.

She touched the blade of the dagger to her forehead, gently; it came away bloody, but there was no glow, not so much as a flicker of color. The gash on her brow did not heal.

She held the dagger out by the blade, on the flat of her palm; it did not tremble, did not turn its hilt to her, did not prepare to defend her.

It did nothing that an athame was supposed to do.

It was not an athame.

It was nothing.

Staring at the worthless black dagger, hungry, thirsty, exhausted, Tabaea felt her eyes fill with tears. She fought back the first sob, but then gave in and wept.

Killer

Lady Sarai rubbed her temple wearily and tried to listen to what was being said. It had been four years since she had first sat at her father's left hand and watched him work; now, for the first time, she was in his throne and doing his work herself. She had put it off as long as she could, but someone had to do it, and her father no longer had the strength.

And, she feared, she wasn't doing it very well. How had her father ever stood up under this constant stream of venality and stupidity?

"…she told me it was her father's-what am I supposed to do, call in a soothsayer of some kind every time I buy a trinket? How was I supposed to know it was stolen?"

"A trinket?" the gem's rightful owner burst out angrily. "You call that stone a trinket? My grandfather went all the way to Tazmor to find a diamond that size for my grandmother! You…"

Sarai raised her right hand while the left still massaged her forehead. At the gesture, a guard lowered his spear in the general direction of the victim.

The victim's shouting stopped abruptly.

For a long moment, the three principals stood in uneasy silence, watching Lady Sarai as she sat in her father's throne, trying to think.

"All right," she said, pointing, "you get your diamond back. Right now. Give it to him, somebody. No further compensation, though, because you were stupid to let her near it in the first place. Now, get out of here."

Another guard handed the robbery victim the pendant; he took it, essayed a quick, unhappy bow in Lady Sarai's direction, then fled the room, the jewel clutched tight in his hand.

The jeweler began to protest, and even before Sarai raised her hand, the lowered spear moved slightly in his direction.

The thief grinned; her head was down, but Sarai saw the smile all the same. A hot, rough knot of anger grew in her own chest at the sight.

"Straighten her up," Sarai snapped.

A soldier grabbed the thief's long braid and yanked her head back; the smile vanished, and she glared at Sarai. Sarai could see her arms flexing, as if she were trying to slip free of the ropes around her wrists.

"Sansha of Smallgate, you said your name was?" Sarai demanded.

The thief couldn't nod, with her hair pulled back; she struggled for a moment, then said, "That's right."

"You spent all the money?"

"That's right, too."

"It's hard to believe you could use up that much that fast- eight rounds of gold, was it?"

"I had debts," Sansha said, tilting her head in a vain attempt to loosen the guard's grip.

"That's too bad," Sarai said, "because now you've got another one. You owe this man eight rounds of gold." She pointed to the jeweler.

"Eleven," the jeweler protested. "The stone was worth at least eleven!"

"You paid her eight," Sarai told him. "The stone never belonged to you, only the money you paid her."

The jeweler subsided unhappily, and Sarai turned her attention back to Sansha.

"You owe him eight rounds," she said.

Sansha didn't answer. Sarai had the impression that she would have shrugged, had her hands been free.

"I'm going to buy that debt from him," Sarai said. "So now you owe me eight rounds of gold."

"I can't pay you, either," Sansha retorted.

"I know," Sarai said. "So I'll settle for the five or six bits on the piece that I'll get by selling you at auction. Somebody give him his money, and then take her down to the dungeon until we can get a slaver to take a look at her." She waved in dismissal as Sansha's expression shifted abruptly from defiance to shock.

She watched as the jeweler was led out in the direction of the treasury, and the thief was dragged, struggling and crying, toward the stairs leading down. Then she let out a sigh, and leaned over toward Okko.

"How did I do?" she asked.

He considered that for a moment.

"I think," he said, "that your father would have lectured the jeweler briefly on his carelessness and might have only promised him the auction proceeds, rather than the full amount of the debt."

"You're right," Sarai admitted. "That's what I should have done." She glanced at the door. "It's too late now, isn't it? It wouldn't look right."

"I'm afraid so," Okko agreed.

"I wish my father was doing this," Sarai said. "I hate it."

Okko didn't reply, but was clearly thinking that he, too, wished Lord Kalthon were there.

"I hope he'll be better soon," Sarai added.

Again, Okko said nothing; again, Sarai knew quite well what he was thinking. He was thinking that Lord Kalthon wasn't going to get better.

Sarai feared that Okko might be right. She was doing everything she could to prevent it, but still, her father's illness was growing steadily worse. It really wasn't fair.

And her brother wasn't any help-his sickliness was worse lately, too; he coughed all the time, bringing up thick fluid and sometimes blood. And he was too young to serve as Minister of Justice anyway, even if he were healthy; their father should have been around for another twenty years.

She wasn't supposed to be her father's heir, though; she was Minister of Investigation, not Minister of Justice! It was completely unfair that she should be stuck here, settling all these stupid arguments, instead of finding some way to cure her father's illness. Why couldn't some local magistrate have dealt with Sansha of Smallgate, and all the others like her? So what if the jeweler lived in a different jurisdiction from the gem's owner?