Swords & Dark Magic - By Jonathan Strahan Page 0,49

you don’t ever want to set foot on. Do you understand me?”

He did. He nodded toward Tewk. “That’s his job.”

“Good lad. Just do what you know how to do. Take this. I advise you take it. You’ve earned it. Gods willing, you will earn it.”

He reached and took it from Master’s hand, and a tingle went through his hand and up his arm and to his heart. He couldn’t breathe for a moment. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t anything. He really wasn’t anything. He looked at his own hand and couldn’t see it.

I want me back! he thought, and there he was.

“That was good,” Tewk said.

“He needs to think,” Master said. “Go sit down in the corner, Willem, and think a while.”

Just like with important lessons. Go think. He did. And he tried not to think about demons. That was how they got in, if you started thinking about them. He thought about the whole Alley not being there, but that wasn’t too bright: if Wiggy or Hersey stepped out back and missed the steps they’d be mad. Really mad.

He marshaled his thoughts in a parade through what he had to do. Master had taught him how to do that. And everything was there. If nobody startled him, he felt stronger than he ever had.

Fool, maybe.

But a wizard couldn’t doubt. Every illusion came apart when you started doubting. He sat there concentrating on believing he could do most anything, but not being specific about what he could do, until Jezzy tapped at the door and brought in the biggest breakfast anybody had ever seen: Jezzy was sweating from just carrying it.

They ate. They had a good breakfast, and water—there was beer, too, but Master said they should save that until later, and Tewk said that was a good idea. Maybe he’d had Wiggy’s beer.

Master clapped Willem on the shoulder as he stood in the doorway, and Willem took one scared look back, afraid it was going to break his concentration. He looked at Almore and Jezzy, and the little room with all its shelves and books and papers, and their little table and benches and their pallets, and the faded red curtain—Master had a bed beyond that, in a little nook.

It was home.

Last, he looked Master in the eyes. They were gray and watery but they were still sharp enough to see all the way inside him, he was very sure of that.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and went out into the Alley. His Alley. With Tewk striding along with him.

“You lead,” Tewk said, which didn’t make him feel that much better.

“Mmm,” he said, trying not to talk. He was thinking hard, exactly how the Alley was, how there was just one door, to the Ox, and that was just a little blind pocket of an Alley, nothing interesting at all. He wasn’t interesting. He was just a kid in un-dyed linsey-woolsey, which mostly ended up gray or nondescript brown, a kid with brown hair, a nondescript face, maybe acne—nobody would look twice; and Tewk was just a workman with a hat, just a skullcap, and needed a shave, and carried a sack lunch and a hammer, which wasn’t against the law. They immediately found the Ox in front of them, and went in by the back door.

“Say, here!” Hersey said. “You think you can just walk through wi’ them dusty boots? We’re not the public walk, here! I just swept that floor!”

Hersey didn’t recognize them. Not at all.

“Sorry,” Willem said in a different voice, and he and Tewk walked out through the front door and kept going, up the street where he had never gone.

But he didn’t let himself think that. He came up this way a lot. So did Tewk. They were father and son, well, maybe a youngish uncle, and he was learning stonemasonry, and there was something—a cracked stone—wanting repairing up the hill.

Maybe it was inside the palace gate, that stone. Stones cracked in summer heat, just now and again, especially along old cracks, and they might want that fixed. They did. They’d be taking the measure for it and matching some chips for the color: he knew about stonemasons. His father had been—

His uncle was. Uncle Tewk. They were guild folk, and important in their own way, and gate guards were going to remember them when they saw them, that they had been coming and going through that gate for days.

He couldn’t sweat. It was a warm day, but he couldn’t sweat. They were going to