In her left hand was a crystal goblet that held perhaps half a cup of something brownish. The goblet was of good quality, but appeared new and unremarkable; Emmis knew he could find a hundred like it in the Old Merchants' Quarter.

"Are you ready, Lar Samber's son?" the Guildmaster asked, in a loud, carrying voice.

Lar swallowed. "I am," he said.

"Then let us see what Fendel's Assassin makes of this!" She swung her arms together, the left dropping below, the right rising above, and plunged the dagger into the goblet.

The instant the tip of the blade touched the brown liquid Lar straightened up as if stung. His pale face turned unnaturally gray – not the gray of terror or ill health, but the gray of stone. His hair followed a split second later, and then his clothing, and then Lar was gone, transformed into a lifeless statue.

The transition was soundless, and for a moment the room was silent as Emmis, Ithinia, and Ildirin all stared at the petrified foreigner.

Then Ithinia pulled the dagger out of the goblet. She turned and set the crystal vessel down, very carefully, on a table, then pulled a cloth from her sleeve and wiped her dagger clean. She looked around the room.

"Is he… Is the creature still here?" Emmis asked.

"Yes," Ithinia said. She held up the dagger, and Emmis could see that the tip was glowing faintly blue, as if catching blue light from some unseen source.

"Why?"

"Did you give it the honey you swore you would?"

"No, not yet."

"Perhaps it wants its honey, then," Ithinia said. "Or perhaps it doesn't think he's dead."

"But – but he's stone!"

"Granite, to be exact." She eyed the statue thoughtfully. "But he's not really dead, and I'd guess the killer knows it."

"Well, it does now," Lord Ildirin said, annoyed. "You just told it!"

"Oh, it never believes anything a human says about such matters," Ithinia said, unconcerned. "That's to prevent anyone from tricking it, from talking their way out of assassination. It has its own standards."

"But he's stone!" Emmis protested. "It must just be waiting for the honey I promised it."

Ithinia shook her head. "Let me try something," she said. She reached into a pocket of her robe and brought out something Emmis couldn't see, pinched between thumb and forefinger. She stepped up to the statue that had been the Vondish ambassador.

Emmis wanted to shout at her to get away, lest she break it, but he knew that was absurd. She was a wizard – not just a wizard, a Guildmaster, whatever exactly that meant. She surely knew what she was doing.

And Lar was stone now, anyway – what could hurt him?

Ithinia flung the pinch of whatever it was into the statue's motionless face and said something, words that not only weren't Ethsharitic, but didn't sound as if they should be coming from a human throat at all. She gestured, an odd twisting motion that ended with her fingers spread wide, palm up, then said one final alien word.

Again, silence fell, as everyone stared at the statue.

Then they all heard, very clearly, the sound of claws scraping on stone.

The scratching continued for what seemed to Emmis like an eternity; he stared at the statue's throat, watching worriedly for a mark on the hard gray stone.

He had thought the creature would consider Lar to be dead, but obviously that hadn't happened. It hadn't even thought he was sleeping, but now it did, now that Ithinia had done whatever it was she had done, and in accord with its instructions the monster was trying to wring Lar's neck.

Just one attempt, Lord Ildirin had said – but how determined an attempt? Would the thing keep trying until it did gouge the stone? What would that do when Lar was restored to life?

Then at last the scratching stopped, and Emmis let out his breath. He hadn't realized he had been holding it.

"There," Ithinia said. "It's done." She held up her dagger again, and frowned.

The tip was still glowing blue.

"It wants the honey Emmis promised it," Ildirin said.

"So it appears," Ithinia agreed. "That's inconvenient. I don't think it would be wise to turn Lar back to flesh while the assassin is around. Ordinarily it would only try to kill him once, but ordinarily it would vanish if that first try failed."

"What if it succeeded?" Emmis asked.

"Oh, then it would report back to the wizard who summoned it. Then it would vanish."

"How can you tell whether it's vanished?" Ildirin asked. "It's invisible!"

"There are ways," Ithinia said, gesturing with her dagger. "I'm not the only one who knows simple detection spells. Fendel's Assassin has been in use for centuries, and there's been plenty of opportunity to experiment with it, and learn just how it does and doesn't work."

"Then why hasn't anyone ever tried petrifaction before?" Ildirin demanded. "Emmis is a clever lad, but surely there have been other clever people involved in all that experimentation!"

"Of course there have," Ithinia retorted. "Someone may have tried Fendel's Superior Petrifaction before, and I just hadn't heard of it. Or it may be that the particular combination of circumstances we have here has never arisen when someone clever was around, or it may be that the victims found equally clever and more effective ways to deal with the killer. As I said, there are no certain defenses against Fendel's Assassin, but there are a dozen ways around it if the wizard casting the spell hasn't been careful in his instructions. The Cloak of Ethereality, for example, would probably be more useful than petrifaction under most circumstances."

Emmis turned to stare at the wizard. "Then why didn't you use that?" he said.

"You didn't ask," Ithinia said. "Lord Ildirin wanted me to use Fendel's Superior Petrifaction, so I used Fendel's Superior Petrifaction." She turned up an empty left palm. "Besides, there would be difficulties with the Cloak of Ethereality in this case; the circumstances are not quite the usual situation. And just for my own curiosity, I wanted to see whether the Petrifaction would work – which, as you saw, it didn't, until I also cast a simple sleep spell, Felshen's First Hypnotic. You should be glad that the assassin wasn't told to smash in your friend's head with a sledgehammer – I doubt even granite would hold up to that. And you might want to thank me for taking the trouble to use granite – white marble is the standard stone for this spell, and it's not clear whether that would have survived. Sandstone is even easier, and the Vondishman's head would not still be attached if I had used that."

Emmis swallowed. "Thank you, Guildmaster," he said.

"Now, I would suggest you give the thing its honey. Didn't you send one of the guards to get some?"

"He hasn't come back yet," Emmis said.

Ithinia was obviously surprised by that. "Where did you send him? Southgate?"

"Cut Street Market," Emmis told her.

"Cut Street?" She shook her head. "They close early this time of year, and I'm not sure you'd find honey there in any case. Southmarket or Westgate would be better, if you insist on a proper market, or if you want somewhere closer, one of the shops in Allston or the Merchants' Quarters."

"Oh," Emmis said. "I didn't know."

"Apparently Zhol didn't, either," Ildirin remarked.

"Or something happened to him," Emmis said.

Ildirin cocked his head. "Zhol is one of my guards; he's carrying a sword and a club and knows how to use them both. What would happen to him on the public streets?"

"I don't know," Emmis said. "But he hasn't come back, and it's been hours."

"Perhaps he came across some matter that required his attention," Lord Ildirin said. "A disturbance he felt it necessary to deal with, for example."

Emmis glanced at Ahan. "Would he do that, though? I mean, would he intervene, instead of going on with his errand?"