What was worse, not all the deaths were from disease or age; not counting the assassination attempts, there had definitely been at least two murders in the palace since her ascension, both apparently the result of fights over unattended goods. There were reports of other fights that had not ended quite so badly, and stories of rapes and molestations.

It was just as bad as the Wall Street Field had been. Didn't these people appreciate the fact that they had a roof over their heads now, that they weren't outcasts anymore?

Obviously not. About the only comfort was that the population of the palace seemed to be declining; there were clearly fewer people in the corridors now.

They might just be moving into the rooms and chambers, or down into the deeperareas where she didn't see them, but Tabaea liked to think that they were finding places for themselves outside, in the houses her people were taking back from the old overlord's tax collectors, or with their families, or somewhere.

She frowned. There had been that rumor that some were moving back to the Wall Street Field. She didn't like that.

And then there were all the complaints from the other people, the outsiders, the merchants and nobles and even sailors and craftsmen and the like, worried about the absence of the city guard, complaining about the loss of their slaves, claiming they had been robbed and the thieves had taken shelter in the palace, and any number of other things . . .

The pleasures of ruling, Tabaea thought as she neared the steps that would lead her up to the start of her working day, were overrated, and it didn't help at all that she had gone and limited what pleasures there were, in her idealistic drive to improve the lot of her subjects. She could think of interesting ways to pass the time with a handsome slave, now that she could afford one, could have had one for the asking-but she had abolished slavery.

She sighed, straightened her skirt, and proceeded up the steps toward the throne room.

At least she had finally had the sense to give up on those silly gowns and gewgaws. She didn't need to look like some jewel-encrusted queen out of an old story to convince people that she was the empress; all she needed was to be herself, Tabaea the First.

As always, there was a crowd waiting for her; as always, she ignored them and marched straight toward the dais, expecting them to get out of her way.

Then, abruptly, she stopped. Something was wrong. She sniffed the air.

Someone in the crowd was terrified-not just nervous, but really scared, and at the same time she scented aggression. And it wasn't from someone lurking in a back corner, it was someone nearby. She saw movement, a hand raising. Another assassination attempt, obviously. Well, this time she didn't intend to be killed. Even if she always recovered almost instantly, it still hurt; in fact, it was downright agonizing, for a few seconds. It used up precious magic energy, and besides, it made a mess, getting blood all over everything.

This time she sensed warlockry, just a trace of it, a tiny bit of magic. That had happened before; warlocks had tried to stop her heart, had tried to throw knives at her, had tried to strangle her from afar, and every time, she had blocked the attempt easily. Warlockry didn't work on warlocks, and she, thanks to that silly Inza, was a warlock.

Usually, though, the warlock attacks had come when she was alone, not here in the throne room.

Well, those attacks hadn't worked, so a change in strategy was sensible enough. She wondered just what was intended this time.

All this ran through her mind almost instantly; she was reacting far faster than any ordinary human could, faster than any ordinary warlock.

The frightened warlock in the crowd was holding something hi his upraised hand, something small and golden, and then he was releasing it, sending it flying toward her at incredible speed, supported and propelled by magic.An ordinary woman probably wouldn't have seen it in time to react. An ordinary warlock probably couldn't have gathered the will to respond before the gold thimble reached her.

Tabaea had no trouble at all knocking the thing aside while it was still three or four feet away; the thimble dropped to the floor, rattling on the stone, and the single drop it held spattered out.

Immediately, a white vapor arose, hissing. Tabaea didn't concern herself with that; she had an assassin to stop. She leaped over the smoking thimble, reaching the warlock in a single bound; she grabbed the front of his tunic with her left hand, and her right snatched her dagger from its sheath. Then she stopped.

People were screaming and backing away, the white vapor was spreading, and Tabaea could smell it, a horrible, burning stench like nothing she had ever smelled before; the assassin, more frightened than ever, was struggling helplessly hi her grip, trying to get free. Tabaea ignored all that. The knife in her hand felt wrong.

It was a fairly subtle thing, and she couldn't have described exactly what the difference was, but the instant her hand closed on the hilt, she knew, beyond any doubt, that this knife was not the Black Dagger. A person gets to know a tool when it's handled with any frequency, gets to know its feel, its shape.

Without question, Tabaea knew the Black Dagger.

And without question, the knife in her hand was not the Black Dagger.

Furious, she rammed the blade into her would-be assassin's belly, partly to be certain that this was not just some inexplicable transformation that had left the magic intact, and partly because after all, even if she couldn't steal his life, this man had tried to kill her, and was therefore a traitor who deserved to die.

She felt no surge of energy, no tingle of magic, as the man screamed and clutched at her hand.

There was no magic. The Black Dagger was gone.

She threw the assassin aside, unconcerned whether he was dead or alive, and turned to face the stairway she had just ascended.

Where could the Black Dagger have gone?

She had some vague idea of retracing her steps, but when she turned, she found herself face-to-face with that stinking smoke. It was still rising, still spreading. She looked down.

The contents of the thimble had spread, and now completely covered an area the width of her hand, perfectly circular in shape-and Tabaea knew that that perfect a circle was unnatural. The stuff should have sprayed unevenly across the stone in a fan shape.

What was more, within that circle the floor was completely invisible, hidden by a layer of... of something. Tabaea had no name for it, either for the substance or even for its color. It wasn't exactly green, wasn't exactly gray or brown or yellow, but it was closer to those colors than to anything else.

It was liquid, but she couldn't say what kind; it was shiny and looked somehow slimy, but it wasn't quite like anything she had ever seen before.And it wasn't still; it roiled and rippled and bubbled and steamed, though Tabaea could feel no heat from it. It moved almost as if it were somehow alive.

She had assumed at first that the drop was some sort of concentrated acid, or virulent poison, but this stuff was obviously magic.

What's more, it was spreading.

And, she realized with a twinge of horror, it wasn't spreading on top of the marble floor; it was eating into the stone.

And someone had wanted to put that stuff on her, and she didn't even have the Black Dagger to protect her, it would have eaten away at her, just as it was eating at the floor. She shuddered.

Who was responsible for this? She looked up and around at the throne room.

Most of the crowd had fled, but some were still there, staying well away from her and from the little pool of whatever-it-was. No one was smiling; no one seemed to stand out as reacting oddly, unless she counted the assassin, who was still breathing, still alive.

Had the assassin known that her dagger was gone, that she was no longer protected against wizardry? Had he taken the dagger himself?

She strode over to him and used one toe to roll him over onto his back. He lay there, gasping and bleeding. The knife on his belt was obviously not the Black Dagger; Tabaea could see that at a glance.

"Who sent you?" she demanded.

He made a strangled choking noise. He clearly was in no condition to answer, even if he had wanted to. Tabaea frowned.

She reached out, warlock-fashion, and tried to sense the damage her knife blow had done.

The wound was pretty bad, but she thought it could be healed if someone, a powerful witch or a warlock who had been trained properly, got to it before the man finished bleeding to death, or if a theurgist managed to get the right prayer through in time. Unfortunately, Tabaea could not do it herself; she had never learned to heal, with either warlockry or witchcraft.

She turned and spotted Arl, standing by the dais. "You, Art," she said. "Find a witch or a priest or someone; I want this man healed, so he can tell me who sent him. And be careful, he's a warlock. " "Uh. . ."

"Hurry! And I won't be holding court today, so the rest of you can all . . .

no, wait a minute. You, and you - find something to cover over that stuff, I don't want anyone stepping in it. It looks nasty. And then get out of here, all of you. Get going, Arl."

"Yes, Your Majesty. "

A moment later the throne room was empty, save for Tabaea and the wounded assassin. The empress glanced around and noticed that even here, in the imperial audience chamber, trash had piled up in the corners.

And over by the stair, the little pool of magical gunk was still bubbling and smoking. Tabaea didn't worry about it; she was far more concerned just nowwith the whereabouts of the Black Dagger.

After all, whatever that stuff was, it would surely dry up and die soon enough.

CHAPTER 37.

A fanner's wagon was sitting by the palace door in plain sight in the morning sun, Sarai noticed. It looked incongruous; when the overlord was in power, deliveries had been made as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, over at the southeast entrance.

People were milling about, some in rags, some in commonplace attire, some in finery-though most of the last seemed uncomfortable in their obviously stolen clothes, and sometimes combined their finery with familiar rags. Those who were just emerging from the dim interior of the palace blinked in the bright sunlight; hands shading eyes were common. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the wagon or its driver.

The mix of clothing was familiar to Sarai from her stay in Tabaea's palace, but she had never noticed wagons at the northeast entry before. She took a good look at it as she approached- and then stopped dead in her tracks.

The wagon's driver was Tobas, the wizard. He was dressed in rough brown wool instead of his usual wizard's robe, but it was unmistakably him. He was leaning down from his seat talking to someone, and Sarai recognized the young woman in the black dress as Teneria, the witch.

Sarai took a second to gather her wits, then hurried forward again; a moment later she hailed Tobas. She had to shout twice before he looked up, startled.

Even then, he didn't answer at first; he stared blankly at Lady Sarai until Teneria said, "Oh, it's Sarai!"

Two or three passersby looked up at that and glanced curiously at Sarai. Sarai hurried up to the wagon, not at all pleased by this attention; she didn't want to be recognized, and with her disguise gone, it was entirely possible that someone would know her face.

Well, it was her own fault for calling out. "Pharea," Sarai said. "I'm called Pharea. What's happening?"

"Well, right at the moment, there's a warlock in the throne room, waiting for Tabaea to make her entrance, and when she does, he's going to try a spell of Telurinon's on her," Tobas explained. "Karanissa is in there, too, keeping an eye on everything."

"That's the Seething Death?" Sarai asked. "Now, how ..." Tobas began.

Teneria said, "She talked to Alorria. Excuse me, Sar . . . Pharea, but Tabaea's coming up the steps right now, she's at the top."

"So you know about this?" Tobas asked.

Sarai nodded.

"And you know about the Black Dagger."

"Yes," Sarai said.

Tobas sighed uneasily and said,"Well, in a moment we should find out if theBlack Dagger can stop the Seething Death. And if. . ."

"No," Sarai interrupted. "We aren't going to find out anything about the Black Dagger."

"We aren't?" Tobas stared down at her. "Why not?"

Sarai hesitated, and before she could say anything, Teneria cried out, "Oh, no!"

Tobas whirled back to the witch. "What happened?" he demanded.

"She spilled it! She knocked it aside and spilled it on the floor, and now she's grabbed Thurin and ..." Teneria winced. "... and she's stabbed him, and it hurts really bad ..." She closed her eyes and leaned against the wagon.

Sarai bit her lip and watched as the witch tried to continue. She had worried that something might go wrong, ever since she had used the Black Dagger herself and discovered how Tabaea saw the World-or rather, how she sensed it.

She could smell danger. She could move inhumanly fast. The slightest movement could alert her. She could hear a whisper from across a room. None of the magicians would realize that-at least, Sarai didn't see how they could. The witches might have sensed something, but would even they have really appreciated just how fast and how sensitive Tabaea was?

Well, either they hadn't, or they hadn't been consulted in setting this up.

"Now what?" Sarai asked.

"Now she's trying to get Thurin to talk, but he can't; he's dying, he's bleeding to death, and she doesn't know how to heal him. She's sent her chancellor for a healer, and Karanissa wants to know whether we should send a volunteer-she'll try it herself, if you want, but she isn't sure she can heal a wound that bad; a warlock would be better-Tobas, warlocks have trouble at healing, they don't have the subtlety of touch, but if I did it, with a warlock helping, I know how to draw on a warlock's strength ..." She looked up. "Who's the Council got nearby?" Tobas asked. "Vengar is in the antechamber ..." "All right, then, you go find Vengar, and the two of you help Thurin, but you be careful around Tabaea! And send Karanissa out here, so we can stay in touch!"

Teneria nodded, then turned and ran into the palace.

As she did, the first of those who had fled the throne room in panic began to emerge, shoving the young witch aside as they hurried out into the sun. She fought her way past and in.

Tobas sighed as he watched her go.

"It all went wrong, didn't it?" Sarai said.

Tobas nodded.

"So how was it supposed to go?" she asked. "How does the Seething Death work?"

Tobas sighed. He climbed down off the wagon, patted the ox, and turned to stare at the door to the palace.

"The Seething Death," he said, "creates a drop of... well, it's more or less liquid chaos. It's the raw stuff that wizardry is made of, I think; thedescriptions aren't very clear. But whatever it is, once it's activated, it spreads. It expands, and as it expands, it consumes everything it touches.

Anything that comes into contact with it dissolves away-the book says that first it loses solidity, and then all the different elements that make it up blend together into a sort of boiling slime, and then it all becomes more of the Death itself, more pure chaos."

He was interrupted by the screams of three women who came running out the door just then. When they had passed, Sarai remarked, "Sounds nasty."

"It is," Tobas agreed. "It hasn't been used in centuries because it's too dangerous, but Telurinon was desperate to find something that could get at Tabaea despite the Black Dagger, so he tried it."

"Someone was supposed to get it on Tabaea and dissolve her?"

"That was the idea," Tobas agreed. "A warlock named Thurin of Northbeach volunteered-but he missed, I guess, and Tabaea caught him and stabbed him. I don't know why he's still alive; I thought the Black Dagger stole the souls of anyone it cut."

Sarai started to say something, to explain that Tabaea didn't have the Black Dagger anymore and that that wasn't how it worked anyway, but then she stopped. There would be plenty of time for that later. "So the spell didn't work?" she asked.

"Well, it didn't work on Tabaea" Tobas said. "If the stuff landed on the floor, then right now it's dissolving away the floor of your throne room, and there's no way to stop it."

Sarai had been watching the people emerging from the palace; now, startled, she turned back to Tobas. "No way to stop it?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No way we know of," he said. "If it had been confined to Tabaea's body, we could have transported her to a place where magic doesn't work-that's what's in the wagon here, a magic tapestry that would send her there. But I don't see how we can send an entire floor through the tapestry."

"There isn't any countercharm?" Tobas shook his head.

"So how much is it going to dissolve, then?" Sarai asked. "I mean, it won't ruin the whole palace, will it?"