“I’ll be in here,” she told the Guards. They watched her with dismay. “Make sure the people who arrive know what I’m doing, and don’t bother me.”

Kwaben and Oama stood in front of the Rokat office, their faces mulish. “We are not going to leave you,”Oama told Sandry. “What if they come back?”

“Then keep out of my way,” Sandry advised them. “I have a lot of work to do in a hurry before you can so much as use these benches.”Oama nodded and made shooing motions at the Guards.

Next, Sandry found canvas bags stuffed with spelled cloth squares in the packs.

Placing one bag on the floor near Wulfric’s body, she forced apart the stitches that held it together. A second unvoiced command, and squares flew through the room in a blizzard of white silk. They raced to cover every spot where Sandry could see unmagic. Taking the second canvas bag into the outer office, she did the same thing there. One canvas bag remained; she ordered its contents into the hall, where they draped themselves over benches and windowsill, sopping up darkness.

Walking back past Kwaben and Oama, Sandry noticed shadow smears on them. Getting a few extra squares of silk, she rubbed them briskly over her guards, collecting all of the nothingness she could find. Once she had it, she called one of the linen bags in the packs to her. It came, unfolding itself as it did. It blazed with signs for protection and enclosure written onto the fabric in the same powerful oils that filled every fiber. Sandry let it hang in front of her as she dumped the cloths she’d used on her bodyguards into the bag. Oama shifted; when Sandry looked at her, she realized that both dark-skinned guards were pale. They were staring at her.

“What’s the matter?” Sandry demanded. “Why are you looking at me that’ way?”

To her surprise it was silent Kwaben who spoke. He said, “Lady, we knew you were a mage, but

Mostly you’re like a cat with it. You never let it show any more than you can help, I think because you know it makes folk nervous.”

“You only throw it around when you’re upset,” Oama added.

“I am upset,” whispered, Sandry. She plucked, the linen, bag from, the air and went back to the inner office to collect the silk in there. She had to keep after the squares, to make sure they gathered everything.

Wulfric had brought plenty of those cloths, and plenty of bags to hold all they collected. Sandry blessed him as she cleaned, and tried not to look at him. That was hard, particularly when she had to slip a magical weaving underneath him, as she had first done at the castle infirmary, to gather the unmagic hidden by his blood and his body.

When all her silk was used up, she had to stop for a few minutes and think. She knew there was more nothingness in the building from the killers’ earlier visit.

She couldn’t bear the thought of it lying about. Holding on to her last bag, the one in which she’d placed the two bolts of silk, she began to tremble. How would she get it all?

“Lady Sandry?”Oama whispered. She drew close to the girl, but didn’t touch her.

Summersea residents knew very well that it was a bad idea to bother a mage in the middle of a working. “Colonel Snaptrap’s assistants came. They’re gathering all the—the unmagic, they called it—on the stairwell, and on the ground floor.

They said you should know.”

Relief. Sandry rolled the top of her linen bag to close it. An order to the fibers in the cloth sent them weaving through one another. At last the bag was sealed as well as if she had sewn it shut with fine, tight stitches. Once that was done, she put the bag next to its mates, and found a chair for herself.

What next? she wondered, resting her head on her hands.

“Lady Sandry?’ It was Oama again. She offered her water flask. “Captain Qais and his investigators are here. They got statements from the others and from Kwaben and me. You’re all that’s left.”

She’d forgotten the Provost’s Guards. “Tell them to make it quick,” Sandry whispered. She accepted the water flask and drank deeply. If she hadn’t thought it would be disagreeable, she might have poured water down her nose in the hope of rinsing away the stink of blood and death.

It wasn’t the captain who questioned her, but the tiny woman with the seamed face and the old eyes. A scribe took notes as the investigator got Sandry to tell her story, from Wulfrics arrival at the Bountiful Inn to that very moment, Once done, she took Sandry over it again, making changes as Sandry added things she had forgot ten, or barely spoken of.

When she was done, the woman laid a hand on her arm. “You’ve been a very brave girl, my lady,” she told Sandry warmly. “Captain Behazin and Lieutenant Ulrina said, you were true to the heart and would, never falter, and they were right.”

Sandry blinked. “Oh. Thank you.”

“My lady.” Captain Qais had come in he bowed to hen “All done?” he asked the investigator who had questioned Sandry. She nodded. He jerked his head toward the door. The woman bowed to Sandry and left, taking the scribe with her.

“Well,” the captain said, his dark face wooden. “I must say, my lady, it would have been better if you had left this—unmagic—to Master Wulfric’s assistants.”

The captain tucked his thumbs in his belt. “I am sure his grace will be most displeased when he learns of your involvement here.”

Sandry rubbed her hands over her face. “At least you had the sense not to interrupt me while I was working,” she informed the man, ignoring his indignant gasp. “And my uncle will understand why I involved myself. Pasco really is related to you? Because he’s not at all stiff.” She was being rude, as rude as her friend Tris. She would probably spend days writing a properly apologetic note after this was all over, but just now she didn’t care.