Ignoring the more obscure sorts of magician, that left witches and warlocks. They didn't seem to need equipment or incantations or anything, and they indisputably did real magic. One of them would do just fine.

How to find one, then?

She couldn't go entirely by appearance; while most varieties of magicians had traditional costumes, there were no hard and fast rules about it. Telling whether a black-robed figure was a demonologist or a warlock or a necromancer or something else entirely was not easy. She had been mistaken for a warlock once or twice herself, when wearing black-warlocks favored all-black clothes even more than demonologists did.

She knew a couple of magicians, of course, and knew of several others. She thought over all of them, trying to decide if there was one she wanted to kill.

No, there wasn't, not really…

She stopped, fork raised.

There was that snotty little Inza of Northangle, Inza the Apprentice she called herself now. She was two or three years younger than Tabaea, but she and Tabaea had played together when they were young. Then Inza had gotten herself apprenticed to a warlock, old Luris the Black, down on Wizard Street in Eastside, and after that she never had time to so much as say hello to her old friends. Inza claimed her master kept her too busy, but Tabaea knew it was because she didn't want to associate with a bunch of thieves and street people now that she was going to be a big important magician.

And Inza would be nearing the end of her apprenticeship now, she would be changing her name to Inza the Warlock soon.

If she lived that long.

Tabaea smiled, and her hand dropped from the table to the hilt of the Black Dagger.

Lady Sarai leaned in the doorway and asked, "Anything interesting today?"

Captain Tikri looked up, startled; before he could do more than drop the report he was reading, Sarai added, "Don't bother to get up."

"Yes, my lady." He settled back and looked up at her uneasily.

"So, is there anything interesting in your reports today?" Sarai insisted.

"Oh." Tikri looked down at the paper. "As a matter of fact, there is one odd case. It's probably just a revenge killing, but… well, it's odd."

"Tell me about it." Sarai stepped into the office and found a chair, one with a dragon carved on the back and the seat upholstered in brown velvet.

"A girl named Inza, an apprentice warlock," Tikri said. "Her throat was cut last night while she slept, and then she was stabbed through the heart-to make sure she was dead, I suppose."

Sarai grimaced. "Sounds nasty," she said.

Tikri nodded. "I would say so, yes. I didn't go myself, but the reports… well, I'd say it was nasty."

Sarai frowned and leaned forward. "You said it was probably revenge? Who did it?"

Tikri shrugged. "We don't know who did it-not yet, anyway. Whoever it was came in through a window-pried open the latch, very professional job, looked like an experienced burglar-but then, nothing was stolen or disturbed, so it wasn't a burglary at all."

"Unless the thief panicked," Sarai suggested.

Tikri shook his head. "Panicked? Cutting the throat and a thrust through the heart doesn't look like anyone who would panic."

"So it was revenge-but you don't know who did it?"

"No." Tikri frowned. "Not yet, anyway. The girl's master swears she doesn't know of any enemies, anyone who hated Inza or had a grudge against her. Warlocks don't do divinations, of course, so she couldn't identify the killer herself; we have a wizard checking on it instead."

"You don't think it was the master herself?"

Tikri turned up an empty palm. "Who knows? But we don't have any reason to think it was her. And Luris is a skilled warlock; why cut the girl's throat when she could have simply stopped her heart? Or if a warlock wanted to be less obvious, she could have staged any number of plausible accidents."

"That's true." Sarai considered and tapped the arm of her chair as her feet stretched out in front of her-signs that she was thinking. "It's very odd, you know, that anyone would kill an apprentice warlock-isn't this Luris now duty-bound to avenge the girl's death?"

Tikri nodded. "Just so. Whoever did this isn't afraid of warlocks, obviously."

"And how could an apprentice have an enemy who hated her enough to kill her? Apprentices don't have time or freedom to make that sort of enemies, do they?"

"Not usually," Tikri agreed.

"How old was she?"

Tikri glanced at the report. "Seventeen," he said. "She would have made journeyman next month."

"Seventeen." Sarai bit her lip. She had been worried about her father, but he was almost sixty, he had had a long and full life. She had been worried about her brother, but he probably wouldn't die of his illness. If he did, if either of them died, it wouldn't be a shock. But a healthy seventeen-year-old girl, five years younger than Sarai herself, had been killed, without warning, apparently without any good reason.

"Has anyone talked to her family?" she asked.

Tikri shrugged. "I think someone sent a message," he said.

"I was also thinking of asking if anyone in her family knew if she had any enemies," Sarai remarked.

Tikri blinked. "Why bother?" he asked. "The magicians will tell us who did it."

Sarai nodded.

"Let me know what they find out," she said. She rose and turned away.

She had intended to stay and talk to Captain Tikri for a while. She didn't have any specific questions or assignments for him; she just thought it was a good idea to know what her subordinates were doing. She wanted to know everything about how the city guard worked, how crimes were investigated, how reports were written, what got included and what got left out- the real story, not what she would be told if she asked. She wanted Tikri to talk to her easily and not treat her as some lordly creature who couldn't be bothered with everyday details. Chatting with him had seemed like the best way to work toward that. The news of the murder bothered her, though, and she no longer felt any interest in light conversation.

There were murders fairly often in Ethshar, of course-with hundreds of thousands of people packed inside the city walls, killings were inevitable. The annual total was often close to a hundred, even without counting the deaths that might have been either natural or magical.

Most of them, however, involved open arguments, drunken brawls, attempted robbery, or marital disputes. Someone breaking into a warlock's house to butcher a sleeping apprentice was definitely not typical.

But there really didn't seem to be much she could do about it just now.

Then a thought struck her, and she turned back. "You said a wizard is doing the divination for this one?"

"That's right." Tikri nodded. "Who is it?"

"Mereth of the Golden Door. Do you…"

"Oh, her! Yes, I know her. Is she working at her home?"

"I think so, yes…"

Before Tikri could finish whatever he was going to say, Sarai cut him off. "Thanks," she said. Then she turned away and strode down the hallway.

She did not care to wait for an official report; she wanted to talk to Mereth and find out just what had happened, why this poor Inza had been killed. Mereth's home and shop were on Wizard Street, of course-at least three-fourths of all the magicians for hire in Ethshar of the Sands located their businesses on Wizard Street.

Wizard Street, however, was several miles long, winding its way across the entire city, from Westbeach to Northangle; simply saying a house was on Wizard Street didn't tell anyone much.

In Mereth's particular case, her shop was just three blocks from the palace in the district of Nightside, where Wizard Street made its closest approach; that was probably, Sarai knew, why Mereth got so much investigative work.