"Pull the wings open three times and then shut," instructed Kid as he looped the belt around her waist and fastened the buckle. "And the belt flies. Twist twice to the right and then open to cease the spell."

"Maybe you should wear it." Magical items always made her a little nervous. Such objects rarely worked as she expected.

"No, my dear, it would better for you to have it. Archlis watches me closely, but he ignores you."

"So much for my pride."

"It is because he is a magelord, which means he is even more arrogant than the ordinary wizard," said Kid. "He sees only those who have mastered his brand of magic as a threat. All others are nothing to him. He knows that I knew some of Toram's secrets, but he only sees you as a fighter-someone of no value because they have no magic at all. He is a very foolish man, my dear."

"So, should we see if this works on a live body?"

"Open three times and then shut," Kid repeated, laying his hands over Ivy's gloved fingers to teach her the move.

Suddenly, her feet were no longer in contact with the floor. Ivy was pulled into a horizontal position, face down to the pile of rubble. She bobbed up in the air so quickly that she smacked the back of her head against the ceiling. The force of that blow bounced her back toward the floor. Kid jumped up and hooked one hand through the belt. Now both of them dangled off the ground, but not quite so high. Kid wiggled, and they bobbed up and down a little. Ivy could not feel her own weight or his. For the first time in her life, she was completely unable to tell where the ground was. Usually the earth was pressed against some part of her anatomy, such as the soles of her feet. She stared down. It was there and she was above it, but she could not sense it. If she closed her eyes, she doubted she could tell which direction was up and which was down. She felt like a cloud, just floating along, but without any wind to move her to the next spot.

Ivy bent her chin against her chest to peer cross-eyed at Kid hanging off her belt. "Now what do we do?"

"Try flying, my dear."

"How? Flap my arms?"

"Most probably."

"Of all the foolishness!" Ivy flapped her arms up and down. She kicked her legs. She stroked arm over shoulder like she was trying to swim through a river. Nothing worked. They just hung there, wobbling a bit, but making no noticeable progress in any one direction.

"There may be some other trick to it," said Kid, letting go of the belt and landing lightly on his feet next to the corpse. Without Kid's extra weight hanging off the belt, Ivy floated up to the ceiling. But this time she tucked her head and legs under so the only part that smacked the stone ceiling was her rump. She straightened out and looked down at Kid and the sharp rubble littering the floor.

"Twist twice to the right and then open to cease the spell," Kid reminded her.

"I'm going to fall hard on that pile of rocks. For the second time today," Ivy observed.

Above her, she could hear the scraping of stone upon stone. A tickle of air hit the back of her neck.

"They are prying open the trapdoor, my dear," Kid said. "Quick, or they will see you."

"The gods must truly despise me," Ivy said as she squeezed her eyes closed. "All right. Step back so I don't flatten you."

Tucking her head down on her chest and throwing one arm over her face, she twisted the wings twice to the right with her free hand and squeezed the buckle open. The earth became very evident and very hard as she banged with a teeth-rattling bump into the rubble and rolled across sharp-edged pebbles and potshards.

Above her, she could hear Mumchance calling, Wiggles yapping, and Kid replying, "We are here, dear sir, well enough and safe."

"Speak for yourself," mumbled Ivy, making sure that the scarlet belt was secure and tucked down under her weapons belt. "Next time we get to town, remind me to get some extra protection from falling spells."

"That is it!" said Kid, turning away from the rope that Mumchance had thrown down.

"What's it?" Ivy brushed the dust and less pleasant debris from her gloves.

"The purpose of the belt. It keeps you from falling or sends you falling upward."

"Upward falling?" Ivy turned that phrase over in her brain and decided it just made her head hurt. "How about we just say it makes you float in the air."

"And anyone else grasping it! The belt must have been made to hold up more than one man-or maybe a very fat man."

"We'll talk about it later," Ivy hushed him. She strode under the trapdoor and looked up at Mumchance.

"Couldn't bear to leave me behind?" she called to the dwarf in a mocking tone.

"Wasn't you," replied the dwarf in a much drier tone, his scarred face wrinkled up in a worried frown. "Archlis wants Kid. But he said we could pull you out too if we were quick about it."

"In that case, I'm going first, and Kid can follow." She grabbed the rope with both hands and shimmied out of the hole. Not surprisingly, as she came out of the hole, she saw that Zuzzara had the other end of the rope tied around her waist and was standing there like a stone pillar, unruffled by the tug of Ivy's weight.

Sanval reached out and helped steady her as she stepped out of the hole. "You are well? Is that another scrape on your face?"

"I fell through a hole and landed on rock rubble. Mildly uncomfortable. Not dead yet," she replied. He started to say something but stopped and just gave her a small bow. She nodded back at him. Stuck underground, surrounded by enemies, his formality never stopped. It must be that gleaming armor that keeps him so stiff and proper, she thought.

"Anything down there?" asked Gunderal, watching her sister lean over the hole and haul Kid up on the rope, like a fish through an ice hole.

"Just rubble and an old dead body. Nothing exciting," said Ivy. "What about up here?"

"Archlis says we have to walk very quietly now," said Zuzzara. "And not talk too loudly."

"At least he didn't ask the impossible, like no talking at all."

"No, Ivy, he said that doesn't matter. They will hear us just by our footfalls on the stone when we get close enough," Gunderal sounded even more worried than usual.

"Who would they be?" Ivy was certain that she would not like the answer.

"He says that we have to see to understand," said Gunderal. "But, Ivy, whatever it is, I can tell that it troubles him. What could frighten a magelord with as much magic as Archlis has?"

Sanval fell behind the Siegebreakers. Though relieved to see Ivy back with them, he also felt a familiar frustration. Why could he not have said anything sensible or even interesting when he helped her out of the hole? Instead, he had just babbled the usual Procampur phrases-completely impersonal, if courteous. He watched Ivy walk ahead of him, her head bent to catch some remark of Kid's. Since the first day he had seen her, striding through the dust of the camp, he had thought that she walked through the world as if she had no cares. No, he corrected himself, not quite that. Rather, she walked as if the world did not own her. Laws, traditions, even the gods themselves, seemed to be unable to constrain that cocky stride and the intelligent, mocking gleam in her eyes. And, Sanval was honest enough to admit to himself, he envied that freedom more than anything else.

Of course, Ivy was nothing like the perfumed ladies of Procampur, the silver-tile court intriguers who whispered secrets behind feather fans, or the red-roof girls who swayed their hips as they sashayed down the street. If there were a contest for the most grubby mercenary, Ivy would probably win. Once, when he had been very young, too young for tutors, he had eluded his nurse and gone out to the stableyard. It had been raining, and the yard was a wonderful, slippery mess of mud, perfect for sliding. Sanval still remembered the pain in his ear as his nurse dragged him upright and held him dangling before her, dripping mud upon her clean white apron. "You are the muckiest kid," she had scolded, slipping into the blue-roof dialect of her sailor father at that moment. "Dirtiest boy that I have ever seen!" Mucky was, he felt, a rather apt description of Ivy. Except, and again he had to be honest with himself as he tried to be with others, her collecting of dirt was that same friendly, joyful, defiant roll in the mud that he had enjoyed so much that day. She did it deliberately, he felt, just to tweak the more proper nose of those Procampur officers who were foolish enough to sneer at her as she swaggered up the hill to the Thultyrl's tent.