Anna spent the night sleeping the sleep of the completely unworried-or the really stupid, which may have been the same thing in her case. Bobo spent the night doing tomcat things. No one knew how Widder Hackett spent the night except that she wasn’t talking to Wiz.
The only really active one in the house was Malkin. She spent most of the hours before first light gathering up the booty she had secreted about the place. Even though she’d turned most of it to gold coins through One-Eyed Nicolai it still made a substantial load.
Live for some time on that, she thought as she swept the last of the gold into a leather sack. Time to move on anyway. I was tired of this town. The prospect wasn’t very satisfying somehow and Malkin realized it wasn’t just because this was where she had been born. With a sigh of frustration she dropped the bag on the table. It toppled and spilled a cascade of coins onto the tabletop. Malkin didn’t bother to sweep them back into the bag.
Restless, she wandered down to the kitchen to get something to eat. Once she descended the narrow steps she found she wasn’t hungry. Maybe a cup of hot mulled wine would help her sleep.
She busied herself blowing up the fire and drawing wine from the small cask on the sideboard. She took down a lovingly polished saucepan and put in the wine with cinnamon, cloves and other spices to steep over the still barely glowing coals.
“Smells good,” came a voice behind her. “Can I have some?”
Malkin whirled and there was Wiz, dressed for traveling with cloak and staff.
“Startled me,” the tall girl said. “But yeah, there’s plenty.”
“On second thought I’d better not. I’ll need a clear head this morning.”
He didn’t sound at all confident.
Malkin ladled out a cup of the hot, spiced wine. “Getting an early start eh?”
“No sense in postponing things.” Malkin just nodded and sat down at the table.
For several minutes neither of them said anything or moved, Malkin drinking her wine at the table and Wiz standing on the stairs.
“Look,” he said at last. “I’m not much good at these things, but I just wanted you to know that you’ve really helped me here. And I wanted to thank you for that.”
Malkin only nodded, not trusting her voice.
Wiz sighed heavily. “Well, I’d better get going if I’m going to make the spot by sunup. Thanks again.”
“Good luck Wizard. And thank you.” Then she stared down into her wine cup so Wiz couldn’t see her tears.
Wiz went back up the stairs. A moment later she heard the front door open and close.
Well, she thought to herself, that’s that. It was possible Wiz would beat the dragon, of course. But in Malkin’s world winning a fight with a dragon was a near-impossibility. Besides, the wizard hadn’t sounded nearly as confident as he had when he’d been tackling human foes.
She sighed and drained the last of the wine. She still wasn’t sleepy so she poured the rest of it into her cup and headed back upstairs with it. She still had packing to do.
Wiz had left the workroom door ajar and his workstation on. The colored light from the screen saver pattern streamed onto the floor in rainbow patterns of cold fire. Malkin paused at the door, intrigued. A combination of thief’s caution and a certain sense of honor had kept her away from Wiz’s work table so far, but now Wiz was gone and she was going as well. She no longer felt bound and the thing had always intrigued her.
A glance out the window showed the sky just turning pink, so she had a while. She spoke the word that turned off the guardian demon. Then she slipped into the chair, set the wine cup on the desk and started to experiment.
Unlike most of the non-magicians in her world, Malkin could read. Literacy is a handy skill for a thief who wants to know what she is stealing. Thus the keyboard on Wiz’s workstation wasn’t completely alien to her. Further, burglary is as much a matter of attitude as technical skills. Malkin knew nothing about computers and security, but she had seen Wiz type his log-on sequence repeatedly and she had memorized it.