Or perhaps Mereth had chosen her home in order to be close to her preferred customers; Sarai really didn't know which was the ox and which was the wagon.

The weather was cool, but not unpleasant, and Sarai didn't bother with a wrap. She marched quickly across the bright stone pavement of the plaza surrounding the palace, across Circle Street, and out North Street-which, with the usual Ethsharitic disregard for unimportant details, ran west by northwest through Nightside, and not north through Shadyside.

Like all the neighborhoods close around the palace, Nightside was largely occupied by the mansions of successful merchants and the city's nobility; this portion of North Street ran between tall iron fences that guarded gardens and fountains. Sarai paid them no attention.

Harbor Street, being a major thoroughfare between the waterfront and Grandgate, was crowded and bustling where North Street intersected it, and was also far less aristocratic than its surroundings. As she crossed the avenue Sarai was jostled by a heavy man who reeked of fish; her hand fell automatically to her purse, but it was still there and seemed intact. If the man had been a cutpurse or pickpocket he had missed his grab.

At the corner of North and Wizard she turned left, and there was Mereth's shop, two doors down on the far side. The draperies were drawn and the windows closed, but the trademark gilded door was ajar.

Sarai hesitated on the threshold, listening; she could hear voices somewhere within, but could not make out the words. She knocked, and waited.

A moment later young Thar, Mereth's apprentice, appeared in the crack, peering out at her. He swung the door wide, but held a finger to his lips for silence.

Sarai nodded.

"She's working, Lady Sarai," Thar whispered. "Do you want to wait?"

"That depends," Sarai replied. "What's she working on?"

"A murder," Thar answered, his voice low but intense.

"Then it's probably the very thing I came to ask her about," Sarai said.

Thar blinked. "Inza the Apprentice?" he asked.

Sarai nodded.

"Do you want to come in and wait, then?"

"How much longer do you think it will be?"

Thar frowned. "I don't really know," he said. "To tell the truth, I thought she'd be done by now. I guess I misjudged, or maybe she's using a different spell from the usual-I don't know that much about it. I haven't started learning divinations yet myself. She says that if I keep on as well as I have been, though, I'll start on them after Festival."

Sarai nodded again. "So you don't know how long?"

"No."

The young noblewoman considered for a moment, then said, "I'll wait."

Thar nodded. He stepped aside and admitted her to the consulting room, small but cozy, where Sarai settled into a blue brocade armchair.

Thar hovered for a moment, making sure the important guest was comfortable, then vanished through the archway that led to the rest of the building.

Sarai waited, looking over the room. She had seen it before, of course, but she had little else to do.

There were three armchairs, blue, green, and gold, arranged around three sides of a small square table, a table of carved wood inlaid with golden curlicues. Eight little boxes stood on the table-gold, silver, brass, abalone, crystal, and three kinds of wood, all intricately carved and finely polished. Ink paintings hung on the walls, depicting rocky seashores, lonely towers, and other fanciful locations unlike anything in Ethshar of the Sands; Mereth had said once that these had been painted by her grandmother. An ornate wool rug in gold and red covered most of the floor; the rest was oiled wood. A shelf over the door held half a dozen mismatched statuettes, and a cork sculpture of a dragon wrapping itself around a peasant's farmhouse stood on the windowsill.

It was really a rather pretentious and fussy little room, Sarai thought. For lack of anything better to do, she turned her attention to a study of the ink paintings.

She had just about exhausted all possible interest in that when Mereth finally emerged, breathlessly hurrying through the archway, tunic awry and feet bare.

"Lady Sarai!" she said. "I didn't know you were coming! Sit down, sit down!"

"I've been sitting, thank you," Sarai said, as Thar stumbled after his mistress into the room.

"Oh, yes, of course you have," Mereth agreed, flustered. "Well, whatever you please, then. What can I do for you?"

"You were investigating the death of Inza, the apprentice warlock, I believe."

"Trying to, anyway," Mereth said.

Sarai waited.

Mereth sighed. "I can't see anything," she said. "Nothing works. Not the Spell of Omniscient Vision, not Fendel's Divination-none of my spells worked."

Those two spells, Sarai knew, were among the most powerful and useful information-gathering spells of all those known to wizardry; she suspected that between the two of them they provided more than half Mereth's income. "Is it because she was a warlock?" she asked. "I know different kinds of magic…"

"No, that's not it, or at least…" Mereth paused, collecting her thoughts, then explained, "The warlockry doesn't help, Lady Sarai, but I could get around that, I'm sure, if that was all there were. It isn't. She was killed by magic, strong magic-I can't tell what kind."

Sarai blinked. "She was killed with a knife, I thought-her throat was cut and she was stabbed."

"It might have been a knife," Mereth said, "or something else, I can't even tell that much. But I do know that whatever killed her was magical." Her tone was definite. "There's no possible doubt."

"But why would a magician kill anyone that way?" Lady Sarai asked. "I mean, aren't there spells… spells that leave no traces, or make it look like an accident?"

The wizard looked decidedly uncomfortable and did not answer.

Lady Sarai frowned at her silence. "Mereth," Sarai said, "I'm no fool; I've been the overlord's Minister of Investigation for four years now. I know that people who seriously offend wizards or warlocks or demonologists tend to turn up dead in fairly short order, even if, most of the time, we can never prove anything. People who bother warlocks have heart attacks, or fall from heights, or trip over their own feet and break their necks. People who fatally annoy wizards, I mean more than just enough to wind up with a curse like the Dismal Itch or Lugwiler's Haunting Phantasm, can have any number of strange accidents, but they seem especially prone to mysterious fires and smothering in their own blankets. People who are stupid enough to get demonologists angry usually just disappear completely. Witches don't seem to kill people; either that, or they're too subtle for us. Their enemies have plenty of bad luck, though, even if it isn't fatal. I 'm not sure about sorcerers or theurgists or the others. But everyone knows it's bad business to anger magicians, any kind of magicians. I know that, my father knows that, the overlord himself knows that." She swallowed, remembering that her father had not angered any magicians, but had instead annoyed a god and was now dying as a result. Then she forged on. "Every man in the city guard knows that you don't anger magicians and expect to live. It's not our job to protect people when they cut their own throats. We know magicians kill people sometimes-it's so easy for you, after all. When the victims go asking for it, and the killers don't make a show of it, we don't worry too much. But in this case… Mereth, the girl was seventeen years old, never hurt anybody that we can see, and she got her throat cut. We can't let this one pass."

"I know, Lady Sarai," Mereth said unhappily. "But honestly, I swear, on my oath as a member of the Wizards' Guild, that I don't know what happened. I don't know why anyone would do it this way; you're right, there are other, easier, less-obvious spells. I don't know who did this, or why, or how; I only know that it was magic."