The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume III: Volume III

paid for services the Commune as a whole gave the public. He’d spent most of his savings on a special crystal for his favorite small wand. Magical tools and healing herbs were the only expenses he should have. The University supplied everything else.
    Would he still be a magician come the next full moon and payday?
    Mopsie growled a warning. Bessel stopped in his tracks, seeking the source of danger.
    Smoke. He smelled fresh hot smoke, uncontrolled and spreading. Where?
    Just ahead, thick black smoke roiled out of the carpenter’s shop. People gathered to gawk and scream and stand in the way of those who sought to escape the fire.
    “Water!” Bessel cried. He grabbed a burly man by the shoulders and shook him out of his staring panic. “Bring water. Form a line with buckets. You know how to do this.”
    The man blinked his eyes clear of panic and confusion, then nodded his understanding. He grabbed a bucket from the nearby blacksmith and headed for the river. Other men followed. The women brought blankets and soothing salves for the carpenter and his family. Everyone moved quickly, organized—once the trance of panic was broken.
    King Quinnault, before these people had made him king, had drilled them in simple ways to defend their homes from attack. Fire had been a favorite weapon during the Great Wars of Disruption.
    Bessel took a place in the line of bucket bearers. A team at the river filled any available vessel with water and passed them up the line to the fire.
    Three men, garbed in black with trim of bright purple and teal blue, stood to the side watching through hooded eyes. Their dark hair and tanned skin hinted of exotic breeding. Rovers? They leaned casually against the wall of the weaver’s shop. But their stance told of wariness.
    As one, they heaved themselves away from the wall and approached the carpenter.
    Leery of the men’s intent, Bessel opened his senses to them. Mopsie crept closer to the men, adding his keener hearing to Bessel’s.
    “Remember what happens to people who don’t pay up,” one of the black-clad men whispered to the carpenter.
    “The king’s guards will protect us,” the carpenter protested.
    “Who do you think we bribe with your money?” the men replied, laughing. “Spread the word to your neighbors. Ten dragini each moon and we won’t burn you out. Another five at quarter day festivals and we keep the tax collector from darkening your door.”
    “But the tax is only two drageen each quarter day!” the carpenter wailed.
    The men just laughed and strolled away.
    A chill ran down Bessel’s back. He needed to tell someone about this dangerous racket. But who? As a magician, he should report directly to Scarface. The Senior Magician wouldn’t listen to him. Nor could Bessel get close to the king. And the king’s guards seemed to be in the pay of the extortionists.
    Who? Maybe Nimbulan had enough influence to get to the root of the problem. Later. The old man needed and deserved his sleep.
    What could he do? Throw a truth spell on the culprits for the name of their leader. But then what? He didn’t have the resources to tackle the gang on his own. He also needed time and privacy to work the truth spell. The gaudily clad men wandered through the marketplace, keeping well within the crowds.
    Puzzled and wary, Bessel moved along in his quest to get to the library. The locals had the fire well in hand, they didn’t need him now.
    No one seemed to heed his leaving the line of bucket bearers. As if he’d never been there.
    “You’ll have to be quiet in the library, Mopsie. We’re going to retrieve a couple of forbidden books. I hope they will answer my questions. I need to know more about invisibility spells and about navigating the Great Bay, as well as more about the plague.” He added Rovers to his list of subjects to investigate. If the despised wanderers did lead the extortion racket, how did they get into Coronnan through the magical border and why hadn’t they been arrested before this?
    Didn’t Nimbulan, and therefore, his cousin Lord Balthazaan, have Rover blood in their ancestry? That was how Nimbulan had been able to work Rover magic the season he lived with Televarn’s clan. Rumor placed a number of Rover-bred retainers in Balthazaan’s entourage. Their magic depended upon a common link in their blood. If a person with Rover blood in his heritage stood on one side of the border, could he link with Rovers on the other side of the magic wall to