Nuvielle headed for the door, then stopped and turned back to the wizard. "Does it bite?" she asked.

"No," Ithanalin assured her. "It has no teeth. And its claws are as dull as I could make them without spoiling its appearance. It needs only a few drops of water each day to keep the wood from cracking, and no food at all. You needn't worry about feeding it."

"Excellent," Nuvielle said again. She swirled her cloak about her and swept out onto Wizard Street, her pet held high before her.

Kilisha watched Lady Nuvielle go, but Ithanalin didn't bother; he picked up the purse and opened it. He smiled at the sight of its contents, then turned to the workshop door.

"You can come out now," he called.

"I know," Yara answered from the doorway, "but Pirra and Lirrin were fighting again." She emerged, with her two daughters on either side. Lirrin was eight; Pirra only three. Yara released them, and they immediately dashed to the front window.

"She's pretty, Daddy," Lirrin remarked.

"I do enjoy working for the nobility," Ithanalin said, as he poured a stream of golden bits into Yara's outstretched hands.

"You did that with the Familiar Animation?" Kilisha asked, still staring after the departed customer.

"That's right," Ithanalin agreed, his head bent over his wife's hands, counting the coins. "A variant, actually."

"When are you going to teach me that spell?" Kilisha asked.

"Soon," Ithanalin replied, still counting.

"And when are you going to dust in here?" Yara asked. "Or let me dust it?"

"Soon," he repeated. Then he paused and looked up. "We'll have to close the drapes, of course. We can't let anyone sec you doing it." He kicked at the rag rug, which was humped again. "You know, I think I've accidentally animated this stupid thing, at least slightly. This wrinkling can't be natural."

Yara sighed. She suspected Ithanalin was right about the rug, which was certainly a nuisance; she was convinced he was wrong about the drapes, though. She would have been glad to dust the place in broad daylight, with an audience, but Ithanalin wouldn't allow it. He insisted it would look bad if anyone saw an ordinary human being dusting his furniture, rather than a sylph or homun-culus.

Yara had argued often enough that not having anyone dust it looked even worse, but Ithanalin was adamant. He would only allow housework to be done m the front parlor, the only public part of the shop, when no customers were expected, and only behind tightly drawn drapes-and since he kept the shop open long hours, and Yara did like to cat and sleep on occasion, that meant the dusting wasn't done very often.

Yara thought it was a foolish minor annoyance.

Kilisha thought it was bad advertising, to let the place get so dusty, but she knew better than to argue with her master. She was just an apprentice; it wasn't her place to say anything, let alone to side against her master, even if it was only with her master's wife. She had acquired a bit of a reputation for rushing into things without thinking, but even she wasn't going to argue with the man who controlled almost every detail of her life.

It had long since occurred to her that as the apprentice in the household she probably ought to do the dusting herself, but as yet Ithanalin hadn't told her to, and she had enough other obligations that she didn't care to volunteer.

Ithanalin himself clearly thought that it was in keeping with a wizard's image to let the place get a little dusty. Wizards were supposed to be somewhat unworldly, after all.

Even so, for the sake of peace, he kept promising to animate something that would do the job, but as yet he hadn't gotten around to it.

Yara maintained that he never would get around to it, and every so often she would sneak into the room when Ithanalin was out and run a surreptitious rag over the most offensive surfaces, without worrying about whether the drapes were drawn.

Kilisha did wonder why the wizard hadn't just animated something long ago and gotten it over with. She knew Ithanalin was capable of it; the little creature that Lady Nuvielle had just bought was not the only such she'd seen pass through the shop, so she knew that Ithanalin could make a very nice little homunculus indeed, if he chose to. Animations were his specialty. He claimed to know more animating spells than any other wizard in the city, and Kilisha believed him-though as yet he had not taught her any of them; she had been working her way up through more mundane magic.

He knew all the spells, yet there wasn't a sylph or homunculus or even as much as an animated serving dish in the entire house. He had just created a familiar for a noblewoman, but had none himself. Everything he had ever animated had been given away or sold. lie claimed that he didn't want the place cluttered up with creatures that might interfere with his work, but Kilisha thought he just couldn't be bothered.

Maybe someday, Kilisha thought as she turned away from the door, she could make a homunculus for Yara on her own, if Ithanalin never did get around to it; it would be an expression of gratitude for the treatment she'd had.

Ithanalin was a fine master-polite, informative, an excellent teacher, never beating her or working her too hard, rarely even yelling at her when she messed something up. A girl could hardly ask for better, really.

But Ithanalin could be absentminded and careless, and often left Kilisha to fend for herself in the workshop for extended periods of time, or let her improvise complicated jury-rigged solutions to magical problems that Ithanalin himself could have solved with a single simple little incantation. He kept telling her to plan, to think things out for herself-but when she tried, it never seemed to work out, and often because there was some little detail that Ithanalin had failed to provide.

Yara, though-Yara was always considerate. It was Yara who made sure that Kilisha had clean bedding, good food, safe water, and all the other basic necessities of life.

Of course, she did the same for her husband, and the three children, and herself. It was she who kept the entire household running smoothly at all times. She was more than just a housekeeper, though-she loved her husband and her children and showed it, she provided the household with firm common sense when it was called for, and she was even sometimes a friend when Kilisha needed one. Ithanalin was fine, but he was her master, and sometimes she needed someone to talk to who wasn't her master. The three children-Telleth, Lirrin, and Pirra-were sweet enough, but too young to understand the concerns of a girl of seventeen. Telleth, the oldest, was only ten. Kilisha couldn't often talk to her parents or her brother Opir-they still lived in Eastgate, a mile away, and she was rarely free to visit there.

Much of the time there was only Yara-but she was usually enough.

Kilisha knew she would have to animate a few things herself in order to learn the relevant spells; perhaps, as part of her training, if Ithanalin didn't insist her creations be sold, she could provide Yara with the magical servants Ithanalin had never bothered to create.

But she had less than a year of her apprenticeship remaining, and had not yet been taught a single one of the spells that were Ithanalin's specialty and primary source of income-a fact that distressed her.

"Master," Kilisha said, "please-could I please learn an animation spell next?"

Ithanalin looked up at her, startled by the intensity in her voice.

"All right," he said. "We'll start on the seventeenth, the day after tomorrow-I have another important customer coming tomorrow, and it will take me most of the day to get his spell ready, so we can't do it then. But Kilisha, it may still be more than you can handle, even yet-animation spells are tricky." He thought for a moment, then added, "We'll start with the simplest I know. It's called the Spell of the Obedient Object-you've seen me use it. It's not the simplest there is, by any means, just the simplest I know. We'll need the blood of a gray cat, and one of these gold coins-I'll have to look the rest up. Day after tomorrow, right after breakfast, then. You'll have to find a gray cat tomorrow-I don't have any more cat's blood in stock. Besides, it'll keep you out of the way while I'm working."