Magic in Ithkar by Andre Norton, Robert Adams (ed.) Page B

do to her, but it’d sure mess up her family. She ran along the wall, turned the corner, and headed toward the canal, keeping the wharf sheds between her and the docks, stopped on the bank of the canal, looked both ways along it. Most of the pilgrims were up closer to the temple and the sheds blocked the view of anyone on the docks. The water slid past, dark and secret, moonlight scrolling silver lines on the shifting black surface, the muted whisper of the water lost to the wind that teased at her hair. “Mama says all the time pick up after yourself, Jezeri, don’t leave your stuff lying around.” She giggled, bit her lip, dragged her sleeve across her face. After a last glance along the canal, she raced back down the weed-choked alley, rounded the corner of the warehouse, and stopped beside the piper’s body.
    “Pick up, pick up,” she breathed, began giggling again in tiny gasping bursts as she bent and grabbed hold of the man’s collar, hoping he’d been practical enough to buy good strong cloth. Her stomach lurched, but she got command of herself and started dragging the body toward the canal.
    Like Jet and Nightlord hauling an extra-heavy load in the wagon-draw, she dug in her heels and heaved the awkward weight along, inch by inch at first, then faster as she built up momentum. Fighting waves of dizziness and the pain in her shoulders, sweat on her forehead again, trickling into her eyes again, she pulled the body over the crackling weeds, the dry withered grass, the sounds thundering in her ears with the groaning of her breath. With a last explosion of effort, she got him lodged at the top of the bank. She straightened, stood rubbing at her back, her arms and legs as limp as old leather rope.
    A rustling in the grass behind her. She swung around, frightened, but it was only Tanu bringing her the knife and sheath. She sheathed the knife and stuffed it back in her boot. “Thanks, little friend. Just a bit more and we head for camp.” Tanu sang of pleasure and patience and went trotting off again. Jezeri pushed the damp hair off her face and nudged the piper’s body with her toe. Its eyes were half-open, the whites glistening in the moonlight like wet mother-of-pearl. At first she didn’t think she could touch it again. She closed her hands tightly, so tightly her fingernails bit crescents into her palms. What I have to do, I can do, she told herself and fought to make herself believe it. Trying not to think about what she was doing, she wound her fingers in the fine black hair and heaved.
    For an instant the dead man resisted her, then, with a sickening sucking sound, he came loose and rolled over into the water, pulling with him a rattle of loose gravel and clods of dirt. The current teased at him, dragged him away from the side, drew him downstream, his body gathering speed as it sank below the surface. The last she saw of him was a flapping white hand.
    Gulping, gasping, she collapsed on hands and knees and spewed out everything in her stomach. When the spasms were finished, she crawled away from the edge, tore up handfuls of dry grass, and scrubbed at her face, wiped her hands hard across the clumps of grass. Wearily she got to her feet, drew her sleeve one more time across her face, feeling empty but somehow cleaner, as if the canal had taken him and hidden him but cleaned his traces off her. “Tanu?”
    He came lolloping from the alley, sat on his haunches, and held up to her the odd man’s bone flute. She took it from him and thought of tossing it into the water to follow its master, then she changed her mind and stuffed it into her money pocket, pulling her tunic over the part that stuck out.
    She looked for the moon. “Haschundapri!” she breathed.
    It hardly seemed to have moved since the last time she’d looked, sometime around the middle of the chase. She thrust her hand up—yes, more than a handspan gap between the moon’s front edge and the first stars of the Pard’s paws. “What do