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Scowling, Nevery started to answer back, and Brumbee pulled at Trammel's sleeve, saying, “Do sit down, Trammel. Do.”

From the back of my chair, Pip made a low growling sound, then it leaped into the air and flew to one of the room's narrow windows. It wanted out.

So did I.

Trying to ignore the shouts zinging from one end of the table to the other, I pushed back my chair and went to the window. Pip perched on the sill, which was about chest-high to me. I unlatched the window and pushed it open. Pip launched itself into the chilly air, flapping across the narrow courtyard that lay before Magisters Hall.

I glanced over my shoulder. Nevery stood leaning on the table, glowering at the other magisters. Brumbee sat beside him looking worried, and the rest of them were red-faced and angry, too.

Trammel stood at his place, smoke coming out of his ears. Beside him, Nimble smirked. He jabbed his finger toward me. “There's your thief!”

Thief.
It was always like this. They weren't going to believe me no matter what I said.

Still . . . I knew how thieves worked. If I could get away from all the fuss and
looking after
and the ducal magister box that I didn't fit into, I could get out into the city, and once I was in the city I could sneak and spy and find out who was really stealing the locus magicalicus stones, and deal with the two-magic problem too, if I could find time for it.

“We must call the guard and have him arrested!” Trammel shouted.

I turned back to the window. The meeting room was on the ground floor of Magisters Hall. Quick as sticks, I pulled myself up and crouched on the windowsill. I pushed the window wider open.

“Connwaer—” I heard Nevery's warning shout.

A quick glance back at him—
sorry, Nevery
—and I turned and gripped the window frame, swung myself down, and dropped. Farther than it looked; I spilled onto the hard stone of the courtyard. Scrambling to my feet, I started to run. From the window behind me I heard shouts.

Near the front steps of the Magisters Hall was an entrance to the tunnels. I raced for it. “Pip!” I called. The dragon was nowhere to be seen. I reached the top of the stairs leading down to the tunnel; behind me, the front doors of the Hall burst open. The guards!

“
Tallennar!
” I shouted Pip's true name, and pelted down into the tunnel, my boots pounding on the stone steps. I heard the guards shout, coming after me.

I reached the Magisters Hall gate. Closed. I whirled and saw the guards' dark shadows at the very top of the stairs. Come
on
, Pip! I couldn't open the gate without my locus stone!

With a flash, Pip shot past the charging guards, through the tunnel, and slammed into my chest. I turned and shoved the dragon up against the lock and shouted out the opening spell.

The gate crashed open. As the guards reached the bottom of the stairs and lunged after me, I leaped through, and the gate slammed closed behind me. I jerked away from it before the guards could grab me with their long arms.

One guard pounded at the gate, then shook at the bars. “Come back here!” the other shouted.

Not likely. Still clutching Pip, I turned and skiffed away.

Free!

C
HAPTER

10

I
t takes a while to work up a good layer of grime. When I'd been a little kid living on the streets of the Twilight, I'd been grimy all the time. My hair had been stiff with dirt and grease, my face smudged with dirt, my hands and feet grained with dirt and under my fingernails black with it, my tattery clothes, layers of them in the cold months, stained and smelly.

If I was going to do what I needed to do, I needed to grime up again. Staying in the alleyways, I headed deeper into the Twilight, keeping an eye open for old rags and clothes in the piles of trash I passed. Not too far from Sark Square, I stopped in at a swagshop, trading my good stout boots and red knitted socks for a broken-down pair of shoes and a handful of copper locks. Too bad about the boots, really. But a good pair of boots would be a dead giveaway.

Carrying the bundle of rags I picked up along the way, and the old shoes, I headed for the worst part of the Twilight, the Rat Hole. Embre had been working to improve things in the Underlord's part of the city, but he hadn't changed much here, at least not yet.

I could still feel the comforting presence of the magics, though—the stony strength of Arhionvar and the warmer old Wellmet magic. Even though I was alone, I wasn't really alone.

The streets grew narrower and clotted with mud and trash, the houses on either side boarded up or burned out, leaning against one another like old men drunk on redstreak gin. I made a couple of turns to be sure nobody was following, then edged down a dead-end alley. I sat down with my back against a rotting wooden wall to see what I'd come up with.

A man's shirt with the collar and cuffs ripped off and suspicious-looking rusty-red stains down the front, and a slit over the heart where a knife might've gone in. Another shirt, yellowed, dirty wool, more moth-eaten hole than cloth. A sock with holes in the toe and heel. What had once been a gentleman's waistcoat but was now a tattered vest stiff with dirt.

Well, all right. Better than any fancy-fine ducal magister clothes, anyway.

Along with the copper lock coins I'd gotten from the swagshop lady, I had a little knife in my pocket, a silver one good for picking easy locks. I pulled it out and used it to hack off the ends of my trousers, then pulled at the dangling threads to make them look more raggedy. I had a couple of lockpick wires in the seams of my trousers; I left them there. Picking up a clot of mud, I rubbed it over my bare feet and legs, and then I put on the one sock, then the shoes. They both had holes in the soles, so I'd feel the cold cobbles under my feet. Not such a bad thing, the holes. They'd remind me of where I was and what I was.

Next, the shirts. I stood up and pulled off my black woolen sweater. I set it aside, then stripped off my good shirt and pulled on the other two ragged shirts and the dirty vest. Then I scooped up more dirt from the ground and rubbed it all over my hands and the back of my neck, and up into my hair, and smudged it across my face, too.

Finished, I looked at myself. Gutterboy.

It was a strange, free feeling, being a gutterboy again. It meant I could do whatever I wanted to do, without anybody telling me where I had to live, and no bothersome
looking after
.

I glanced down, seeing the black sweater where I'd left it folded on the ground. Drats. Benet had knitted that sweater for me; I couldn't just leave it in the alleyway. I took a shaky breath and steadied myself. No, I was free of all that and I had something to do, and I was going to do it.

“What about you, Pip?” I said.

The little dragon was perched on a broken-down box. I crouched, and it gave me a glary look with its ember eye.

“I can't have a dragon following me around,” I said to it. People would notice that, sure as sure, and what I needed was to be not noticed.

Hmmm. With the magics so unsettled, this could be tricky. But something like the embero spell and the remirrimer might work. I closed my eyes and thought it through, putting the words of the other two spells together to make a new spell. The embirrimer spell. Very useful. Good for making a disguise for locus magicalicus dragons.

I opened my eyes, ready.

Perched on the box, Pip eyed me, half opening its wings as if it might fly away. Reaching out, I laid my hand on the smooth place between the dragon's golden wings and spoke the new spell.

At first nothing happened—maybe the magics were so unsettled they couldn't hear me. I frowned and tried again. This time the spell effected. Slowly at first. Pip's eyes popped wide open; then it leaped up, did a flip in the air, and, in a shower of sparks, landed on the muddy ground. White-bright light flashed.

I flinched back, covering my eyes, and blinked the brights away to see. Then I laughed. Pip crouched on the dirt in front of me, its tail lashing, its ears laid back, its whiskers twitching. A cat. But with goldy-green fur and ember-red eyes.

“Come here, you,” I said, and made a grab for the Pip-cat. It yowled and scrambled away, then made an awkward leap into the air. Landing on its four paws again, it growled, then leaped again. Trying to fly.

“No wings,” I said.

Pip-cat paced in a tight circle, then snarled at me and bounded out of the alley.

“Sorry, Pip!” I shouted after it.

But I wasn't, really. Being changed into a cat wasn't such a bad thing.

 

The last thing I did was use a copper lock to buy a stub of pencil and a bit of paper from a rag-and-bone shop, and wrote a note.

 

 

Then, after thinking for a minute, I added another line at the end.