Read Magic in Ithkar for Free Online

hard to get up again.
    But all good fortune ended.
    There was the door. He thought of palming something, like a fat skein of wool, worth a penny. But he had no quickness left. He would botch it all. Besides, they knew his face.
    “Good luck,” the friar said when they both stood outside, the sun coming up pink and golden, the tents spreading themselves like newborn moths. Cattle lowed. A bird laughed. Fair folk began their own rushing about after supplies and water and taking slops out to the wagon.
    Into this bustle the friar set out. Sphix caught a breath, danced on one foot, committed himself, plunged after. “Father, where are you going?”
    “Oh, about. Up and down. Wherever.” The friar never turned his head. Sphix faltered, fell behind. Hurried a second time.
    “Mind if I join you?” Coins came this man’s way. And blankets and breakfasts. And he hurt, Lords, he hurt; it hurt to run, hurt to walk, to breathe. He could not face a day of stealing. “I know the fair.”
    “So do I.”
    He dropped back, defeated.
    The friar stopped, turned. “Well?”
    Sphix caught him up, breathing like a winded horse and holding his side. But there would be supper. Maybe a place to sleep again. He swung along beside the friar, matching strides and remembering—oh, sweet Evin, the clothes. The clothes he wore. He was hunted, up near the wall.
    And suddenly—suddenly he spied one of Coss’s folk, just sitting, the other side of the slops-wagon.
    Three-Fingered Tok they called him. Small and lean, like the vermin that haunted grain bins.
    Tok winked.
    He kept walking, limped his way up even with the father and stayed there.
    There were fair-wards, brass-hats, with their staves; they wished the friar good morning.
    There were priests: they did not.
    “What do you do?” Sphix asked, meaning what the friar did in his walking about.
    “I’m doing it.”
    “Is this it! Walking around, picking up coppers, handing them to fake blind beggars?”
    The friar turned on him a look very like Khussan’s, all quizzical, as if he had said something very peculiar indeed.
    And he walked, that was all, walked until Sphix was limping; until they were very near the walls and Sphix limped more and more.
    “I hurt,” Sphix said. He should not go closer. But to let the friar go his way and lose supper and a bed—to face Coss without a coin . . . “Father, I’m sick.”
    “Are you?” The voice was only concerned.
    “I think—think I’d like to find shade and sit.”
    They sat. They sat and sipped fine ale at a booth, for a coin the friar had.
    All the day was like that.
    And in evening, when Sphix was limping in dead earnest: “Father—wait—”
    “Coming?” the friar asked.
    Sphix looked. A brass-hat was looking his way, just standing there leaning on his staff and looking at him in the twilight. A chill went up his back.
    He came, in all haste, limping all the way.
    “Is it Nosca’s?”
    “You want a place to sleep?”
    He stopped dead; not for nothing he read human faces, knew humor at his expense. Begging, the old man wanted. He would have said no.
    But there was Tok to think of. He had only a copper coin. He had clothes that marked him thief for any witness. And Coss—Coss had that opal, enough to get him hanged.
    “I guess,” he said, victim of his pride, “I guess I can find one.”
    “Boy.”
    He looked back, mouth open. Saw a sorrowful smile.
    “Want supper?” the friar asked.
    They shopped among the counters. They sat in evening in the benches of the pastry booth; ate pies; drank ale.
    “This being a priest,” Sphix said in deep contentment, “pays—”
    It was Tok. Coss. Standing beyond the rail.
    The friar turned his head, or started to.
    “Hey.” Sphix put his foot up onto the bench opposite. Sweat broke out on his bruised sides. “Father. ...”
    “You worried about something, son?”
    Sphix took a sip, studied the ale in the mug. His heart beat triple time. He looked up again. “Maybe.” (Lords,