went on her belt, and she concealed throwing knives up the loose sleeves of her dress.
She hesitated, and then drew out two more items from beneath the cot.
The first was a small leather pouch lined with lead foil. Inside rested three small, thumb-sized crystalline vials containing Elixir Restorata. Callatas had made the Elixir in his laboratory, and it had the power to heal any wound taken within the last year and day. Caina could not use them herself. Thanks to the injuries she had taken from sorcerous attacks, the Elixir reacted violently to her presence, drawing in too much power and destabilizing. If she drank one of the vials of Elixir, the resultant release of power would likely kill her and anyone for fifty yards in any direction.
It was something to remember in case Caina’s enemies ever surrounded her without chance of escape.
She hooked the pouch to her belt and lifted a sheathed sword. It was shaped like a classic Anshani falchion, though most falchions did not have a double-edged blade. The weapon was lighter than a sword of its size should have been, and Caina felt a faint thrum beneath her fingers, a legacy of the mighty spells wrapped around the blade. The sword was a valikon, a weapon forged by loremasters of ancient Iramis. Wrought of ghostsilver, the sword could penetrate any warding spell, and the wards upon it could destroy a nagataaru.
If one of Callatas’s disciples came for her, Caina would need the weapon. The Emissary had appointed Caina the valikon’s custodian, and Kylon would need it to kill Rolukhan and the nagataaru within his flesh.
She wrapped the valikon in an old cloak, tucking it under one arm to complete her disguise. Now she looked like a young woman going about her errands for the morning, a bundle of laundry in the crook of her arm. Hopefully the various hunters seeking the Balarigar and the bounty of two million bezants would never dream that the Balarigar was in fact a young woman with a bundle of laundry.
Caina left the room, locked the door behind her, and descended the stairs to the dusty alley. A half-hour’s walk would take her from the Old Quarter to the Cyrican Quarter, and then…
She froze.
Something gleamed in the dust at the foot of the stairs.
Caina stooped and brushed away the dirt, revealing a slender knife.
It was a short knife, and looked a great deal like the throwing knives she used on a regular basis. Yet the blade was curved, which would make it useless as a missile weapon, and it was far too short and fragile to be useful in a fight. Her next thought was that it was a fisherman’s scaling knife, but it was too short. A skinning knife, then? It looked like a skinning knife, but the blade was too thin and the handle too narrow. If someone tried to skin a cow or a donkey with it, the blade would snap off.
People, though, had thinner skins than animals.
Caina shuddered as she realized the knife’s ideal purpose. A Teskilati torturer might find such a knife useful.
So what was it doing outside the door of her safe house?
The weapon looked new. There were no nicks upon the blade, no scratches, no rust. Given how Istarinmul’s populace tended to immediately steal anything left in public, Caina was surprised that it was still here. The steel would fetch a few coins. Caina saw no trace of any poison upon the blade. She held a hand a few inches from the weapon, but felt no aura of sorcery around it.
There was nothing. No spells, no poison, no signs of use or anything at all suspicious. Just a curved knife lying in the dust.
A curved knife lying in the dust outside of her safe house.
Caina hated coincidences. They were almost always signs of an underlying pattern that she had failed to see.
A brief search through the rest of the alley failed to turn up anything useful. Most of the dust had been trampled to rock-like hardness, and what little loose dust remained bore hundreds of footprints. At last she sighed, tucked the little knife away with the valikon, and left the alley.
She had work to do, and she could not waste time jumping at shadows.
On the other hand, the shadows concealed a lot of people who wanted to kill her.
No one disturbed her as she joined the crowds upon the streets and made her way to the Cyrican Quarter.
Chapter 4: Old Friends
A short time