Rogues

THE INN OF THE SEVEN BLESSINGS

Matthew Hughes

The thief Raffalon was sleeping away the noonday heat behind some bracken a short distance from the forest road when the noise of the struggle awakened him. He rolled over onto his stomach, quietly drawing his knife in case of need. Then he lay still and tried to see through the interlayered branches.

Figures scuffled, voices spoke indistinctly, the syllables both sibilant and guttural. A muffled cry, as of a man with a hand over his mouth, was followed by the sharp crack of hardwood meeting a human cranium.

Raffalon had no intention of offering assistance. The voices he had heard were those of the Vandaayo, whose border was not far away. Vandaayo warriors left their land only for ritual purposes, and then always in groups of six, and never without their hooks and nets and cudgels. Their seasonal festivals centered on the consumption of manflesh, and if Raffalon had attempted to intervene in the harvesting now taking place on the other side of the thicket, the only result would have been to add a bonus to the part-men’s larder.

He waited until the poor captive had been trussed, slung, and carried away, then waited a little longer—the Vandaayo might assume that where they found one fool in a forest they might find another. Only when he heard birds and small beasts resuming their interrupted business did he rise and creep toward the road.

He found it empty, except for the possessions of the unfortunate traveler who was now being marched east into Vandaayoland. He examined the scattered goods: a scuffed leather satchel, a water bottle, a staff whose wood was palm-polished smooth at its upper end. With small expectation, he squatted and sorted through the satchel’s contents, finding only a shirt of indifferent quality, a fire-starting kit inferior to his own, and a carved oblong of wood about the size of his hand.

He studied the carvings. They formed a frieze of human and animal figures, connecting to each other in manners that some would have called obscene, but which to Raffalon’s sophisticated eye were merely anatomically unlikely. In a lozenge at the center of the display was a deeply incised ideogram that the thief found difficult to keep in focus.

That difficulty caused Raffalon’s mouth to widen in pleasure. The object had magical properties. It would surely command some value in the bazaar at Port Thayes, less than a day’s march in the direction he was headed. Thaumaturges came thick on the ground there. He turned the item over, to see what if anything was on the other side. As he did so, something faintly shifted inside.

A box, he thought. Better. He rotated the thing and examined it from several angles, but found no seams or hinges or apparent means of opening it. Even better, a puzzle box.

The day was improving. For Raffalon, it had begun with a flight into the forest in the cold dawn, with only two copper coins in his wallet and a half loaf of stale bread in his tucker bag. There had been a disagreement with a farmer as to the ultimate fate of a chicken the thief had found in a flimsy barnyard coop. Now it was midafternoon, and, though the chicken had remained in its pen, the bread had been eaten as he marched. He still had the coins and had acquired a box that was valuable in its own right and might contain who knew what?

The satchel could also be useful. He slung its strap over his shoulder after throwing away the shirt, which was too large and smelled of unwashed body. He uncorked the bottle and sniffed its contents, hoping for wine or arrack but being disappointed to find only water. Still, he tucked it into the leather bag, and, after a moment, decided not to take the staff as well, even though there were steep slopes ahead, the land rising before the road descended into the river valley of Thayes—he was better with a knife if he had time to draw it.

As he walked on, he studied the box and noticed a worn spot on one corner. He pushed it. Nothing happened. He rubbed it, again without result. He tried sliding it, this way and that. He heard a tiny click from within. A sliver of wood moved aside, revealing a pin-sized hole beneath.

Raffalon had no pin, but he had the knife and a whole forest made of wood. He whittled a twig down to the right size, inserted it into the hole, and pushed. A plug of wood on the opposite side of the box popped out. When the thief applied pressure here and there, suddenly the carved side of the box slid sideways a small distance and revealed itself to be the top of the container that moved on a hidden hinge.

Inside was a lining of plush purple cloth, with a hollowed space in the middle in which rested a carved wooden figurine the size of his thumb. It had the likeness of a small, rotund personage, bald and probably male, with head inclined indulgently and mouth formed into an indulgent grin. Raffalon took the carving out, the better to examine it.

When his fingertips touched the smooth wood, a faint tingling passed along the digits, into his palm and through his arm, growing stronger as it progressed. Alarmed, he instinctively sought to fling the thing away from him but found that his fingers and arm refused to obey him. Meanwhile, the tingling sensation, now grown into a full-body tremor, reached its crescendo. For several moments, the thief stood, vibrating, in the middle of the forest road. His eyes rolled up into his head and his breathing stopped, his knees locked, and it seemed as if a strong wind passed through his skull from left to right.

Abruptly, the sensations ended and he had control of his body again—except when he tried once more to throw the carving from him. His arm obeyed him, but his hand did not. The treacherous extremity closed tightly around the smooth wood and all of Raffalon’s considerable will would not cause it to open.

Meanwhile, he heard a voice: We had better move. When the Vandaayo are ahunting, it does not do to lollygag.

Without much hope, the thief spun around. But there was no one there. The words had formed in his mind, without the involvement of his ears. His hand now opened and he addressed the object nestled comfortably in his palm. “What are you?”

It is a long story, said the voice that spoke in a place where he was accustomed to hear only his own. And I lack the energy to tell it.

Raffalon agreed with the sentiments about lollygagging. He set off again in the direction of Port Thayes, his gaze sweeping left and right as far up the forest track as he could see. But he had taken only two or three steps when his legs stopped, and he found himself turning around and returning the way he’d come.

The other way, said the voice. We have to rescue Fulferin. In Raffalon’s mind, an image appeared: a tall, lanky man in leather clothing, with a long-jawed face and eyes that seemed fixed on some faraway vista. The thief shook his head to drive the unwanted image away—rescuing mooncalves was not on his itinerary—but he struggled without success to regain control of his lower limbs.

The voice in his head said, You waste energy that you will need when we catch up to the Vandaayo. Another image blossomed on his inner screen: of half a dozen hunch-shouldered Vandaayo warriors, their heads bald, their ears and teeth equally pointed, their skins mottled in light and dark green. They jogged along a forest trail, two of them carrying a long, netted bundle slung between a pole.

He did not try to dispel the vision but examined it with some interest. He knew no one who had ever had an unobscured view of the Vandaayo; invariably, those who saw them clearly and up close—as opposed to a brief glimpse at a distance before the perceiver wisely turned tail and sped away—saw very little thereafter, except presumably the butcher’s slab set up next to the communal cauldron.

Raffalon knew what everyone knew: that they were a species created by Olverion the Epitome, an overweening thaumaturge of a bygone age who had meant the part-men to be a torment to his enemies. Unfortunately, the sorcerer had misjudged some element of the formative process, and his had been the first human flesh his creations had tasted.

Strenuous and repeated efforts by the surrounding communities had managed to confine the anthropophagi to the wild valley that had been Olverion’s domain. But all attempts to enter the deep-chasmed vale and eliminate the monsters once and forever had ended in bloody tatters: the thaumaturge had not stinted in instilling his creatures with a talent for warfare and an unalloyed genius for ambush.

Eventually, an undeclared truce established itself, the terms of which were that the local barons would not lead their levies into the valley so long as the Vandaayo left their towns and villages unmolested. The part-men could snatch their festive meat only from the road that passed through the forest on the west of the valley, and the trail that led over the mountains to the northeast. The locals knew the times of the year when the Vandaayo were on the prowl and avoided the thoroughfares in those seasons. Wanderers and drifters of the likes of Raffalon the thief and Fulferin the god’s man were welcome to take their chances.

The image of the anthropophagi faded from Raffalon’s mind as his legs marched him to the spot where the victim had been taken. Without pause, he turned away from the forest road and plunged through some bushes, almost immediately finding himself on a game trail. He saw deer scat but also the splay-footed tracks of the Vandaayo, instantly recognizable by the webbing and the pointed impression made in the soft earth by the downcurved talon on the great toe.

The tracks led toward Vandaayoland. Raffalon also saw droplets of blood on a bush beside the trail. No sooner had he registered these details than he was striding along in pursuit.

Within the confines of his skull, he said, “Wait! We must find a quiet place and discuss this business!”

His pace did not slacken, but the voice in his mind said, What is there to discuss?

“Whether it will succeed if you fail to gain my cooperation!”

The man had the sense that the deity was thinking about it. Fairly said. It would drain my energy less. Let us find a spot out of view.

The trail led them through a quiet glade bisected by a meandering stream. The thief saw a thick-strand willow, and said, “Here will do.” He ducked beneath the willow withes and sat on one of the gnarled roots, peered through the green screen until he was sure he was the clearing’s only occupant. Then he addressed the little piece of carved wood in his hand and repeated his original question: “What are you?”

Less than I was, less than I shall be.

Raffalon groaned. In his experience, entities that spoke in such a high-toned manner tended to have an acute regard for themselves that was inversely matched by a lack of concern for the comfort of those who minioned for them—indeed, even for their continued existence.

On the other hand, his captor’s determination to rescue the unfortunate Fulferin betokened some capacity for consideration of others’ needs. Perhaps terms could be negotiated. He put the proposition to the piece of wood.

I see no need for terms, said the voice, its tone maddeningly calm. Fulferin is in need of rescue. You are between engagements. One is a high imperative, the other mere vacancy.

“Who says I am between engagements?”

I have access, said the voice, to the vaults of your memory, not to mention the contents of your character. It took on a distant tone. Which scarcely bear mentioning. Fulferin stands in a better category.

“Fulferin,” said the thief, “hangs in a Vandaayo net, and soon will be simmering in a pot—not a category aspired to by men of stature.”

His legs straightened and he found himself stepping outside of the willow. “Wait!” he said. “You’ve already lost one beast of burden to the Vandaayo. If you lose me, do you think you can seize one of the man-eaters to—”

Fulferin, said the voice, is no beast of burden. He is a devotee, a disciple. He knows the rite that will restore my name.

“And yet he is on his way to dine with the Vandaayo. Which tells me that at least one of you was in too great a hurry.”

His legs stopped moving. You have a point, said the voice. Speak on.

“Is Fulferin necessary?” said the thief. “If it is only transport you require …”

Fulferin is indispensable. Only he is versed in the ritual.

“So I must rescue him from the Vandaayo?”

I have said that it is an imperative.

“Why? For what do I risk my life?”

For matters beyond your ken. Issues sublime and surpassing.

“God business,” Raffalon guessed. “You’re some kind of worn-out deity, probably reduced to a single devotee. And you’re not even able to keep him out of the stewpot.”

Fulferin must not stew.

“What can you do to prevent it?”

Send you.

“But I am unwilling.”

A problem I must work around.

“Which brings us back to the question of terms.”

Raffalon sensed from the silence in his head that the entity was considering the matter. Then he heard, Speak on, but hurry.

He said, “You want your devotee rescued. I want to live.”

Fair enough. I will endeavor to keep you alive.

The thief’s legs started moving again. “Wait!” he said. “Mere survival is not enough!”

You do not value your own existence?

“I already had it before I met you. If I am to risk it on your behalf, that is surely worth some compensation.”

Again he had the sense that the other was weighing the matter. Then he heard, What had you in mind?

“Wealth—great wealth—is always welcome.”

I have no command over gross physicality, said the voice, only over certain attributes of individuals as they relate to the flow of phenomenality.

“You mean you can’t deliver heaps of precious goods?”

Not even small quantities.

The thief thought, then said, “What ‘attributes of individuals’ can you alter? Strength of ten men, ability to fly, impermeability to pointed weapons? All of those would be useful.”

Alas, none are within my ambit.

Raffalon realized it might be better to come at the question from the supply side. “What exactly can you offer?”

My powers, said the deity, are in the realm of probabilities.

“You mean you make the unlikely likely?”

Say rather that I can adjust the odds, as they affect a selected person.

Raffalon brightened. “So you could fix it so that I could win the Zagothian communal lottery?”

I will be honest, said the voice. In my present condition, I could at best reduce the odds from millions-to-one against to thousands-to-one.

“But still against?”

Yes.

“So, essentially, you’re a god of luck but only in small things?”

At present, my potency is reduced. Fulferin is going to assist me in restoring my powers.

“If he survives,” said the thief. Then a thought occurred. “You weren’t very lucky for him.”

He had not invoked my help. He acted from … I suppose I must call it enthusiasm. Besides, I must conserve my strength. The box assists, by acting as an insulator.

Raffalon thought briefly, then said, “I will summarize. You wish me to risk my life, in circumstances in which a bad outcome would be particularly grisly and painful. In return, you will make sure that, along the way, I do not stub my toe or lose my comb.”

In a close-run contest, I can tip the balance in your favor.

“Me against a half dozen hungry Vandaayo does not meet my definition of close-run.”

These are, said the deity, the only terms I can offer.

“You control my body. Can you not at least alter it?” Raffalon touched his prominent nose. “Perhaps make some part smaller?” He clutched another organ. “Or make this more prodigious?”

I control only certain interstices within your cerebrum. They generate a field that I can enhance.

“And only,” said the thief, remembering, “when my flesh touches your image.”

No. Once I alter them they remain altered for all time.

“I suppose it’s something,” the thief said. “Still, it is not the best bargain I have ever made.”

It is the best I can offer. On the other hand, I do not need to offer it. I can compel you, as long as your flesh touches my portal.

“Portal?”

“The wooden eidolon.”

“I see.” Raffalon brushed aside the willow withes and stepped into the clearing, crossed to the trail. He saw more spots of blood, presumably Fulferin’s. “If your devotee survives and completes the ritual you spoke of, your powers will increase?”

Oh, yes. Manyfold.

“What, then, of the Zagothian lottery?”

You would win something.

“Every time I bought a ticket?”

Every time.

The man stepped onto the trail. “And this small luck would apply to my other endeavors?” He could think of past occasions when a slight nod from a god of fortune would have been useful, including one desperate flight that had led only to a lengthy term on the contemplarium’s treadmill.

You would have to rescue Fulferin so that he can fulfill the requirements of the rite.

“Then that,” said Raffalon, “must be our bargain.” He pointed his still-prominent nose in the direction of Vandaayoland and followed the trail. After a few steps, he said, “Perhaps you would be more comfortable traveling in your plush-lined box?”

No. You might then decide not to keep our bargain.

Their mission having been successful, the Vandaayo did not set themselves a grueling pace. Nor did they watch their back trail, the chances of anyone’s wishing to be on the same path as six of their ilk being far too slim to warrant even a glance over a green-mottled shoulder. So it was that, toward late afternoon, as Raffalon descended a slope into a narrow valley, he saw through the trees a motion in the greenery on the other side of the declivity. The part-men marched steadily up an incline that zigzagged up and out of the valley. At one switchback in the trail, the thief saw the band pause and transfer their pole-slung burden from one pair of bearers to another.

Raffalon had a rough idea how far it was to Vandaayoland and did not think that the man-snatchers could cross the border before nightfall. He thought it probable that they would stop before dark; this part of the forest had become uninhabited after Olverion’s final misjudgment and the large predatory beasts that now roamed free had no compunctions against dining on wereflesh.

He closed the distance between them until he could hear their grunts and panting breath ahead of him, a turn or two in the trail. As dusk began to settle, he heard different sounds and crept forward to find that the path crossed another in a clearing. Here the Vandaayo had stopped and were now gathering wood for a fire and bracken for sleeping pads. Fulferin, still wrapped in the net that had captured him and trussed to a pole, lay inert beside the track.

Raffalon established himself behind a tree and observed as the part-men built themselves a good fire. They settled themselves around it, squatting or sitting cross-legged in a circle. They had been carrying capacious leather pouches from which they now drew gobbets of rank-smelling meat and bottles of fired clay. The sounds of tearing flesh and gurgling liquids were added to the crackle of the flames, followed by grunts and belches and the occasional growl when one Vandaayo paid too much attention to another’s victuals.

Dusk became darkness. At a sound from the other trail, the part-men became alert. They put down their uneaten meals and stood up, watchful. A moment later, they relaxed, though only slightly, as a second party of Vandaayo emerged from the forest, carrying their own pole-slung contribution to the ritual feast.

Greetings were exchanged—or at least that was what Raffalon thought the spate of grunting signaled. But he noted that the two groups did not mix, and that the party he had been following did not lapse into complete relaxation as the newcomers began gathering fuel for a second fire and leaves for their own beds. Indeed, two of the first arrivals left the communal blaze and went to squat beside poor Fulferin, while the other party put their own captive as far from the new camp as the clearing’s size would allow.

The last light was now fading from the leafy canopy above the thief’s head. He watched the proceedings as the newcomers made their own rough supper and the two groups settled for the night, each arranging its sleeping positions on the far side of its fire from the others, so that between the two hearths was a wide space of trampled grass that was clearly no-Vandaayo’s-land.

“Hmm,” the thief said to himself. After watching a little longer, he withdrew deeper into the forest, out of pointy earshot, and spoke softly to the small deity. “I am going to need both hands.”

He felt the hand that held the deity rise and find its way to the open neck of his tunic. A moment later, the little piece of wood tumbled down to rest against his stomach. The voice in his head said, As long as some part of me touches some part of you, I will remain in control.

The thief’s curiosity was piqued. “Are you actually within the wood?”

I am where I am. The eidolon opens a … conduit between there and here. Now, please get on with the rescue.

Raffalon shrugged and went farther back along the trail until he came to a place where he had crossed a small watercourse. He knelt and put his hand into the water, feeling along the stream bottom, and found what he needed. He rose and looked about. Fifty paces away, a lofty, well-leafed tree arched over the stream. He went to it, fished in his wallet, and drew out a stout knotted cord connected to a grapple. He threw this up into the branches and, luck being with him, it caught securely on the first cast.

He left the cord hanging and returned to the edge of the clearing, Fulferin’s wallet heavier by the weight of several pebbles, ranging in size from the width of his thumbnail to almost the breadth of his fist.

Staying within the tree line, he circled stealthily around the clearing until he found a tree that would best suit his purposes. He climbed until he found a comfortable crutch between two branches with a good view of the two camps. Then he composed himself to wait.

Night eased itself down over the clearing. The Vandaayo fires burned low and were refreshed. Then they burned down again. By now, all of the anthropophagi were curled or sprawled on the grass, save for one from each group. Raffalon noted that these sentries did not face the outer darkness and whatever threats might lurk there. They kept an eye on one another.

He waited until he saw one rise and go to fetch a new log for its fire. As the hunched figure bent to pick up the length of wood, the thief whispered to the deity, “A little luck would assist us now,” and lobbed a pebble out into the darkness. The missile arced across the dark air and he heard a satisfying snick as it connected with the Vandaayo’s hairless pate.

“Ow!” said the injured sentry, adding a stream of gobbling gutturals directed at its opposite number. The other group’s sentry peered across the open space and, though it could not ascertain the cause of the other’s pain, it recognized an occasion for mirth.

The head-struck sentry went back to its position, tossing the new log onto the fire. It squatted, rubbing its injury, and stared through slitted eyes at its counterpart, muttering what Raffalon took to be dire vows of retribution.

The thief waited until the second sentry saw that it was time for fresh fuel. As it stooped to lift a log from its group’s supply, he tossed another stone. He heard the same noise of impact as with the first, a similar cry of pain that was met with a hoot and jeers from the other side of the clearing.

The newly injured Vandaayo stalked to the edge of the open ground between the fires and addressed several remarks to the mocker, accompanied by juts of jaw and shakes of fists. The recipient of these attentions replied with words and gestures of its own, including the revelation of naked green buttocks and the sound of their cheeks being slapped by hard hands.

It was while the thief’s first Vandaayo target was thus bent over with its back turned to the second that Raffalon sped another pebble—this one larger—on its way through the darkness. It landed with a solid crack! on the butt-slapper’s head, bringing a new howl of rage and pain.

The freshly wounded Vandaayo spun around and charged across the neutral zone, its hand reaching for a cudgel thrust through a strap that circled its waist. Its opposite number drew its own weapon, a club ground from gray stone, and, bellowing its own war cry, rushed to meet the assault. They came together in the middle of the clearing and went at each other with all the fervor and indifferent coordination—compensated for by great strength—for which Vandaayo warriors were renowned.

The noise and tumult awoke the others, who sat up or got to their feet, blinking and staring about. Raffalon launched several missiles in rapid succession, including his largest. Aided by the luck of the small god, each found a target among one of the two clusters of sleep-fuddled part-men. One rock came down with sufficient force as to lay out the leader of the six that had snatched Fulferin. When his fellows saw their superior stretched out on the ground and their sentry doing battle, they took up their weapons and, ululating, charged the foe. The enemy, smarting from their own hurts, raced to meet them.

Raffalon descended lightly from the tree and turned to skirt the clearing to where Fulferin lay bound. But his legs disobeyed him and turned in the opposite direction. At the same time, the voice in his head said, We may need something to delay pursuit, while an image appeared of himself and the rescued devotee fleeing along a trail while some hapless and ill-defined person was left behind for the pursuing Vandaayo to squabble over.

“You are a cruel god,” he whispered as he headed for the other captive.

I am, by nature, a kindly sort of god, came the answer, dispensing what small blessings are within my power. But now I do as I must.

Raffalon made no further comment but skulked along the edge of the clearing until he came to the recumbent form wrapped in a stout net that had been snugged tightly with braided leather cords. He found his knife and cut through the restraints, whispering, “Hush! Here is a rescue. Rise and follow me in silence.”

He could not see the figure clearly, this far from the fire, but he recognized the motion of a nod and heard a grunt. He set off around the clearing toward where Fulferin lay, aware of the released captive slipping through the bushes behind him. He found the god’s man awake and struggling against his bonds, muttering something that sounded like a cantrip.

“Easy,” he whispered. “I will cut you loose and we will flee while they are busy battering each other.”

“Hurry!” said the bound man. “I see only six left standing.”

Raffalon worked with his knife, looking up to see that the fight was indeed reaching its conclusion. Two Vandaayo of Fulferin’s group were standing back-to-back, surrounded by four of the opposition. It was only a matter of time before matters were settled and the victors came to see what prize they had won.

“This way,” he said, as Fulferin rose to his feet. Though both captives must have been stiff and cramped from their confinement, they came along after him as he skirted the rest of the clearing to find the trail back toward the forest road. As they plunged back into the darkness of the night forest, he could hear grunts and impacts. Moments later, the ugly sound of Vandaayo crowing triumph came to his ears, and he said over his shoulder, “Faster!”

They reached the little brook where he had chosen the stones and he turned to lead them upstream to the knotted rope.

“Climb!” he said to Fulferin. The god’s man had recovered his strength because he swarmed up the rope like a well-conditioned acrobat. Raffalon turned to the indistinct figure of the second captive, and said, “Now you.”

But this one, though smaller, was in poorer condition and struggled to make the climb. Now the thief heard new sounds from the Vandaayo camp, howls of anger and outrage. He reached out in the darkness and seized the other’s torso in both hands, intending to supply extra lift. The effort was successful and the person, now able to apply feet as well as hands to the knotted cord, began to ascend.

He waited until the feet had passed above his head, then he took hold of the hemp and followed, fretting at the slowness of the climber above as the slap of Vandaayo footsteps came from the direction of the clearing. He came up onto the branch around which the grapple had snagged the rope, and said to the figures beside him, “Higher, quickly but quietly.”

He heard the rustle of their ascent while he freed the grapple and drew up the rope. Then he turned and silently climbed into the tree’s sheltering canopy, finding two blobs of darkness against the slight shimmer of the foliage, sitting on stout branches, their backs against the trunk.

“Absolute silence,” he whispered as he found a perch for himself and froze. Through the leaves, he could see the glow of torches. The Vandaayo were coming along the stream, bending over to sniff at either bank. They passed beneath without looking up.

Time passed, then the searchers came back, shoulders slumped, addressing one another in tones that Raffalon took to be accusatory. One shoved another so that its torch fell into the stream with a hiss. Grumbling, they went downstream to the trail and back to the shambles of their camp.

“We will wait,” said Raffalon, softly, “until daylight, then find our way back to the road to Port Thayes.”

“Agreed,” said Fulferin.

“I, too,” said the second rescued. Raffalon was not surprised to hear the tones of a young woman. His hands, earlier moving over her torso as he helped her up the rope, had encountered two parts of her that, though smaller than he preferred, were inarguably female.

“I will take first watch,” he said. He listened to their breathing settle and thought that if he had to abandon anyone to the Vandaayo, he would prefer to leave Fulferin behind.

The little god read his thoughts. The voice said, I must do as I must.

At first light, they heard the Vandaayo moving off but waited in the tree until midmorning. They descended and made a thin breakfast of water from the stream, then set off up the watercourse. The part-men would be anxious to replenish their stolen larder, Raffalon told the others. Trails and tracks were their preferred settings for ambush. Besides, the sound of the moving water would disguise the noise of their movements.

They walked in silence and single file for a time. Then the thief felt a tug on his sleeve. Fulferin said, “That is my satchel slung across your shoulder.”

“Opinions are divided on that matter,” said Raffalon. “I found it abandoned, which entitles—” but even as he spoke, he saw that his treacherous hands were unslipping the strap and handing the leather bag to the other man.

Fulferin threw open the cover flap and delved into the satchel. He came out with the puzzle box then issued a yelp of unhappy surprise as he saw its secrets exposed and its velvet-lined inner compartment empty.

He looked a sharp question at his rescuer, but the voice in Raffalon’s head was already saying, Give me to him. The thief complied without reluctance, glad to be his own man again, but he watched Fulferin carefully as the little sculpture changed hands. Actually, he noted that hands were not equally employed on both sides: the lanky man did not touch the wood but instead held out the box so that Raffalon could snug the eidolon into its former place. Then he carefully slid the cover back into position and restored the hidden locks.

Raffalon heard the other man’s sigh of relief. While Fulferin slung the satchel’s strap over his own shoulder, the thief studied the man he had saved. He was interested to compare the reality before him with the image the little god had put into his mind. They did not match. Physically, Fulferin was as advertised, tall and spare, with long spatulate fingers and knobby protrusions at knee and elbow. But the face was different. Raffalon had been shown a wide-eyed visionary; the visage he now saw was that of a man who calculated closely and went whichever way his sums dictated.

The exchange had been watched by the young woman, whose manner indicated that she found little to choose between the two men and, despite having been rescued by one of them, would not have gladly elected to spend time with either. For his part, Fulferin ignored her, all his concern fixed on the box and its contents.

Raffalon studied the woman as frankly as she had him. She was well past girlhood, but not matronly, sharp of eye and even sharper of nose, with a thin-lipped mouth that easily fell into a mocking twist. She was dressed better than a farmer’s girl though not so richly as a merchant’s daughter. When his gaze rose again to her face, their eyes met. He said, “I am Raffalon, already known to you as a man of resource and valor. He is Fulferin, a god’s devotee. What is your name and station?”

“Erminia,” she said. “My father is an innkeeper—the Gray Bird at Fosseth.”

“How did you come to be taken by the part-men?”

“My father sent me to pick morels for the Reeve’s banquet.”

Raffalon’s brow wrinkled. “When the Vandaayo were ahunting?”

The corners of her mouth drew down. “The inn’s license comes up for renewal next month. My father weighs the value of his possessions by his own scale.”

“We should get on,” Fulferin said, clutching the satchel to his chest. His chin indicated the stream. “Where does this lead?”

The thief shrugged. “I have seen maps. It parallels the forest road. Somewhere ahead it flows through an old estate that was abandoned after Olverion’s slight miscalculation. If we can find it, it would be a good place to stay under cover until we are sure the Vandaayo have gone home.”

“I must get to Port Thayes as soon as I can.”

Raffalon gestured eloquently at the thickets that lined the stream on either side. Fulferin subsided, but the thief saw a flicker of calculation in those definitely-not-otherworldly eyes and surmised that the same thought about having someone to leave for the anthropophagi had just crossed Fulferin’s mind. The god’s man gestured in a way that invited his rescuer to lead them on.

An hour’s more walking brought them to a weir that cut across the stream at a place that must have been the beginning of a stretch of rapids before the barrier was put in place. When they scrambled up they saw that the weir had created a long and narrow lake. On one of its shores, surrounded by weed-choked gardens and orchards of unpruned fruit trees, stood a moldering agglomeration of vine-draped stone walls, spiral towers, cupolas, colonnades, peristyles, and arcades.

They explored and found that one of the towers had been built with defense in mind—probably some generations ago when the Vandaayo were only an inchoate nuisance. It had a stout door and hinges so well greased that they had not rusted. In the basement, the stored food had long since rotted, but the wine in one of the butts was still potable.

Erminia said that she would gather fruit from the orchards if someone would come and keep watch. Raffalon volunteered. Fulferin said that he would climb to the highest point of the tower and stand sentry, calling out if he spied any Vandaayo coming their way. The thief doubted that the god’s man would make so much as a squeak, and when he and the woman reached the fruit trees he climbed the highest and kept a lookout.

Erminia found apples, persimmons, karbas, and blood-eyes, wrapping them up in her shawl. She called up to Raffalon, who climbed down to rejoin her. The thief thought this might be an opportune moment to test the extent of the young woman’s gratitude for his having delivered her from the Vandaayo cooking pot. She was not his type, but she was here.

A moment later, face smarting from a hard-handed slap and hip aching from a knee that he had avoided just in time, he understood that Erminia drew sharply defined limits. Angered, he briefly considered enlisting Fulferin’s help in mounting a concerted assault on the innkeeper’s daughter’s virtue. But the thought of any cooperative endeavor with the god’s devotee gave him more qualms than did the concept of forcing her acquiescence.

He showed Erminia two palms in token of surrender and accompanied her back to the tower, where they bolted the door and climbed the spiral staircase to the top apartment. Here they found Fulferin, not on the alert but at ease amid the dust, sprawled on a grimy divan, drinking from a wineskin he had filled from the ample supply downstairs.

The windows were glassless, but the season was mild. Raffalon cleared a table and Erminia spread her harvest on it. They found chairs and Fulferin came to join them, bringing the wine. The young woman went to rummage in a sideboard and came back to the table with a stout cook’s knife. But instead of using it to cut the fruit, she showed the point to each of the men in a meaningful way, then tucked the blade into her kirtle.

They ate in silence, passing the wineskin around. The liquid had a tinge of the vinegar to it but was otherwise drinkable. Finally, his stomach full and his blood warmed by the wine, the thief pushed himself back from the table and regarded the god’s man.

Fulferin looked back with an expression that said he did not invite the curiosity of strangers. Raffalon ignored the implied rebuff, and said, “Your god made an arrangement with me. Having rescued you, I am sure you will want to help him honor it.”

The worldly eyes narrowed. “What arrangement?”

“He is a god of luck in small things. He said that, if I aided you, he would henceforward bless me with his intervention. I believe his influence has already served me, and it will grow even stronger once you have revived his powers.”

Fulferin shrugged. The matter clearly did not engage his interest.

Erminia said, “What is this god talk?”

Fulferin seemed disinclined to answer. Raffalon succinctly described the series of events that had brought them all together. He saw no profit in disclosing the god’s willingness to sacrifice her.

The woman leaned forward, her heavy brows downdrawn. “What is this rite that will restore the god’s strength? And what, by the way, is his name?”

Raffalon realized that the question had not come up and turned to Fulferin, his face forming an interrogative. Again, the god’s man showed no inclination to continue the conversation, but when pressed, he said, “Gods who do not hear their names from worshippers gradually forget them. It is akin to falling into a deep sleep, from which it is difficult for them to wake.”

“So the rite will wake him up?”

The god’s man shrugged. “I am no expert.”

When the thief questioned him further, he displayed annoyance and made gestures that said the inquisition was an affront.

“Why this reluctance?” Erminia said. “Are you not this god’s devotee, dedicated to restoring his powers? Speak!”

But Fulferin did not. Instead, with a gesture of irritation, he rose from the table, taking his satchel and its precious contents with him, and went up the small flight of stairs that ended in a door that opened onto the flat roof.

Raffalon watched him go and was prey to dark thoughts. Fulferin was not the man the god thought he was. He remembered how careful the fellow had been not to touch the idol, which would have given the deity access to his innermost thoughts.

The thief made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. His gaze slid sideways toward Erminia. The woman, sitting with her chin in her hands and her elbows on the table, had also watched Fulferin depart. Now she threw a look Raffalon’s way, tilting her head and moving her mouth in a way that said she knew something.

“What?” he said. “What do you know?”

But now her face said she was keeping the information to herself.

Raffalon grunted. “Next time I rescue people from the Vandaayo’s cauldron, I mean to be more choosy.”

That won him a short laugh from Erminia, but the sound lacked humor. She took a final apple and went to sit in one of the open windows, where she could keep an eye on one of the approaches to the estate. Raffalon took the embrasure opposite. As the day wore on, one or the other would come back to the table for a swallow of wine or a piece of fruit, but otherwise they kept their separate vigils.

At nightfall, Fulferin came down from the roof. They did not seek to light a fire, the windows being unblockable. Raffalon said he would take the first watch. Erminia said she would take the second. Fulferin shrugged and lay on the floor, his satchel for a pillow.

After three hours without incident, Raffalon woke the woman—carefully, because she slept with her knife to hand—and disposed himself to sleep. Fulferin snored loudly in a corner, but it had been a long day following a short night’s sleep, and that in a tree. The thief soon fell into oblivion.

He awoke in the full light of morning to find Erminia shaking him. “Get up!” she said. “The bastard has betrayed us!”

He sprang to his feet and followed her to a window. The sun was a good handsbreadth above the forest canopy. Below, in a leaf-strewn, flagstoned courtyard, a fire smoldered, sending a tall column of gray smoke into the still air. Of Fulferin, there was no sign.

“The Vandaayo will have seen the smoke,” said the woman. “We have to get out of here!”

Raffalon was already moving toward the staircase. He picked up his wallet along the way, then went leaping down the stairs, Erminia close on his heels. At the ground floor, he found the stout door open, its lock crammed with mud.

Outside, the thief hopefully kicked aside the smoldering fire, then went to an ornately perforated garden wall and peered through one of the openings. Across the lake he could see motion in the tree line. In a moment, it had resolved into the shapes of the Vandaayo. They plunged into the water, trusting in the amphibian strands of their ancestry to sustain them. It would not take them long to cross the distance.

“Run!” he said.

“If we’re lucky,” he said to the woman as they pounded along a trail that he thought would lead back to the road to Port Thayes, “Fulferin went this way, and we’ll catch up to him.”

“And then?” she said, panting as she strove to keep up.

“Between the two of us, we overpower him and leave him to do for us what he intended us to do for him.”

“Leave him for the Vandaayo? Agreed.”

The trail was hard-packed and showed no tracks. But Raffalon caught sight of an overturned pebble, its reversed side darker than the others around it. A little while farther on, he spied a thread snagged on a thorn. The influence of the god of small luck was still with him.

They came to a wider stream, crossed by stepping-stones. As they slowed to navigate their passage, Erminia said, “I know something about Fulferin that he does not know I know.”

“What?” said the thief. “And how?”

“He has come through Fosseth and stopped at our inn.”

“He didn’t recognize you.”

“I am mostly consigned to the kitchen, scrubbing pots and scraping plates while my sister, Elfrey—she of the blond hair and balloonish breasts and pneumatic hips that draw all eyes—she waits on the customers. Father reckons it good for business.”

Raffalon extended a hand to help her cross a wide gap where the current ran strong between the stones. “What do you know of Fulferin?”

“He is no more than a hedge sorcerer, if that.” She leapt over, daintily. “I doubt he knows more than a handful of minor spells, but he is in service to Bolbek, who calls himself the Potence, a powerful thaumaturge in Port Thayes.”

“Why does Bolbek send him through Fosseth?”

“It is on the old road to the ruins of Itharios.”

The man knew of the place, a tumble of broken walls and upheaved pavements, devastated in an earthquake millennia ago. “So?” he said.

“Fulferin delves in the old fanes, seeking out effigies of foregone gods. These he delivers to his master. Though sometimes they dig together.”

“To restore their powers?”

They had crossed over now. She shook her head. “It involves powers, to be sure, but from what I heard them whispering when once they both stopped at the Gray Bird, the thaumaturge uses the gods the way a spider uses a fly.”

“Ah,” said Raffalon. Having been once incarcerated and treated in ways he had not enjoyed, he had since tended to come down on the side of flies and to reject the claims of spiders. “He has fooled the god,” he said.

“I suppose,” she said, “that even deities are disposed to believe what they want to believe, especially when they are desperate to survive. And when a powerful mage cloaks his assistant’s true nature.”

The man remembered the image of an innocent Fulferin that the god had put up on the screen in his mind. “Hmm,” he said, then, “we had better move on.”

They continued along the trail, making good time. The thief always seemed to place his foot in just the right place for maximum traction. Bushes did not impede his passage. He wondered if his luck would actually put barriers in their quarry’s way and decided that it could not. But it might be enough to keep him out of the Vandaayo’s reach. He wondered if he was also lucky to have found Erminia; she was turning out to be a useful companion.

He came across another upturned pebble and paused to examine it. The exposed bottom was still wet even though the sun was now well up and the day warming. He said to the woman, “He has slowed down. By now, he thinks the Vandaayo have us and is no longer hurrying.”

“He struck me as the kind who expects matters to arrange themselves to his convenience,” she said.

They went quickly but quietly now. The country was more up and down than level and soon they found themselves traversing a ridge. Through the trees, Raffalon saw a flicker of movement ahead. He stopped and peered forward, and in a moment he was sure. “There he is.”

“He’s long-legged,” Erminia said. “If he hears us coming, he may well outrun us.”

The man took a moment to appreciate that scrubbing pots had not diminished this woman’s ability to focus on what mattered. Meanwhile, he was scanning the woods around them, seeking an opportunity for advantage.

Ahead of them, the ridge and the trail made a leisurely curve to the right. If, swiftly and silently, he could cut across the bight, he might come out on the track ahead of the sauntering Fulferin.

“There,” he said, pointing. A tall tree had recently fallen, crashing through what would otherwise have been an impenetrable thicket. They pushed through the bushes, scaled the tree’s exposed root mass, and now they were on a clear, straight course. They ducked low and ran fast.

The fallen trunk was branchless for a long stretch and when they encountered its first foliage, they dropped down onto an open space carpeted in moss and lichens. It followed what must have once been the course of a spring-fed stream, now dried up, that led through a low tunnel of overarching branches and ended up behind a screen of a single flowered bush, only a few paces from the trail.

The man and the woman arrived just in time to see knob-kneed Fulferin come striding along at an easy pace. There was no time to plan a strategy. They simply leapt from concealment and threw themselves on their betrayer. Raffalon took him high, and Erminia low, and between them they conclusively toppled the tall man to the ground. By another bit of luck, the thief’s knees landed square on the god stealer’s midriff, driving the air from him in a great whoof.

Raffalon dug in his wallet and came out with a length of cord. With Erminia’s help, he flipped the recumbent, gasping man over and quickly bound him at wrist and ankle. Then they turned him again so that he was sitting with his back against a bank of earth. The woman tore a strip from Fulferin’s shirt and gagged him well, lest he speak a spell to do them mischief.

While she was doing this, Raffalon said, “If you had merely abandoned us, I could be more forgiving. But lighting a fire to draw the Vandaayo?” He left the consequences unsaid.

Erminia was more forthright. She delivered a substantial kick to Fulferin’s ribs. To Raffalon, she said, “Let us go.”

The bound man was making facial signs that he wished to tell them something. Raffalon stooped, removed the gag, but held his knife to the betrayer’s throat. The thaumaturge’s assistant said, “My master will pay you well if you help me deliver what I am bringing him.” When his captors made no particular response, he went on: “This item will complete a project of great importance to him.”

Raffalon hefted the man’s satchel. “I’ll be sure to tell him that you were thinking of him till the end,” he said.

A sly look occupied Fulferin’s face. “But you do not know who he is!”

“I didn’t,” said the thief, then nodded at the woman. “Until she told me.” He reapplied the gag, then turned and looked back along the curve of the ridge, where mottled green shapes were bustling along the trail. “We’ll be on our way now.”

The house of Bolbek the Potence was in the upper reaches of Port Thayes, which occupied a hillside that ran down to the river port. It was built of an unlikely combination of black iron panels and hemispheres of cerulean blue crystal. To discourage the uninvited, it was fenced by a tall hedge of semisentient ravenous vine, the plant’s thorn-bedecked catch-creepers constantly probing for flesh scent.

Raffalon and Erminia approached the single entrance, a narrow, wooden archway that pierced the hedge. As they neared the opening, the air turned cold and something vaporous hovered indistinctly in the gap. “My master,” it said, “expects no visitors.”

“Say to your master,” Raffalon said, holding up the carved box, “that something he is expecting has arrived.”

The apparition issued a sigh and faded in the direction of the manse. The man and woman waited, batting away the hedge’s mindless inquiries, until the gatekeeper once more semicoalesced in the air before them. “Follow,” it said.

The vines shrank back and the ghost led them along a path of luminous flagstones to a pair of tall double doors in each of which was carved a great contorted face. It was only when they reached the portals that Raffalon, seeing the wooden features move as the faces turned his way, realized that the panels were a pair of forest elementals enthralled by the thaumaturge to guard his entrance.

The doors opened at the ghost’s further approach; the man and woman stepped into the foyer, a place clearly intended to disorient the senses. The thief closed his eyes against the onset of dizziness, and said, “We will not endure ill treatment. We will leave now.” He turned and groped blindly toward the doors, finding Erminia’s hand and leading her behind him. Eyes downcast, she demurely followed.

“Wait,” said a commanding voice. The thief’s giddiness abruptly ceased. Raffalon reopened his eyes and saw that they had been joined by a short, wide-bellied man clad in a blood-red robe figured in black runes and a tall hat of complexly folded cloth and leather. His expression was impassive. He said, “What have you brought me?”

Raffalon reached into his wallet and brought forth the puzzle box.

Bolbek’s eyes showed a glint of avarice. “What of Fulferin?” he said.

“He accepted an invitation to dinner,” said the thief. “In Vandaayoland.”

The thaumaturge’s face showed a brief reaction that might have been regret. Then he said, “And in the box?”

“Fulferin said it was a god of small luck,” said Raffalon. He smiled a knowing smile and added, “so to speak.”

The greedy glint in Bolbek’s eyes became a steady gleam. “Bring it to my workroom,” he said.

Raffalon stood still. “First, we must settle the issue of price.”

Bolbek named a number. Raffalon doubled it. The mage gestured to show that chaffering was beneath him, and said, “Agreed. Bring it.” He turned and exited by a door that appeared in the wall as he approached it.

The thief was concerned. Sometimes those who agreed too easily to an extortionate price did so because they had no expectation of having to pay it. As he and Erminia followed the thaumaturge, he was alert for sudden departures from his plan.

The room they entered was of indeterminate size and shape. The walls appeared to recede or advance depending on whether they were viewed directly or peripherally, nor could the angles where they met floor or ceiling be depended on to remain static. Raffalon saw shelves and sideboards on which stood several items he would have liked to examine more closely. Indeed, he would have liked to take them away for a leisurely valuation, followed by a quick resale.

But Bolbek gave him no time. The thaumaturge bustled his way across the stone floor to a curtained alcove. He pulled back the heavy brocaded cloth to reveal a work in progress in two parts. One was a cylindrical container of white gold, on whose sides were drawn in shining metal a string of characters the thief could not decipher, though he had the sense that one of them replicated the unreadable symbol on the puzzle box. The ideograms must be a cantrip of considerable power, he thought, seeing them glow rhythmically against the gold, like a slowly beating heart.

The second part of the project was man-shaped—indeed, shaped very much like the man who had made it. It was a wire framework fashioned from gold and electrum, connected to the cylinder by thick, braided cables of silver. The framework was made in two halves, hinged so that the thaumaturge could open it and then stand within, completely enclosed by whatever energies the cylinder would presumably generate.

Bolbek cast an eye over the double apparatus. Apparently satisfied, he turned to Raffalon. “The box,” he said.

“The price,” said the thief.

A flash of irritation animated the mage’s bland features, then he spoke two words and made a complex motion of one hand. A leather pouch appeared in the air before the thief, then fell to the floor with a sound that said it was well filled with Port Thayes double mools.

Raffalon handed over the box and stooped to pick up the purse. Then he turned away, as if to examine the contents in private. As he did so, he reached into a fold of his garment, out of Bolbek’s line of sight. His hand closed on something concealed there. Now he tucked the coins away while sending a meaningful glance Erminia’s way.

The woman, who had so far been at pains not to draw attention to herself, began to drift toward one of the sideboards. She fixed her eyes on a glass-topped jar full of blue liquid in which swam a short-limbed homunculus with enormous eyes of lambent yellow.

Meanwhile, the thaumaturge had set the box on a small table next to the cylinder of white gold. He moved briskly to take from a drawer in the table a pair of gloves that he now pulled on up to his elbows. They were of a shimmering, scaly leather, iridescent in the room’s diffuse light, as if they contained rainbows.

With clear evidence of excitement, Bolbek now turned to the box. He found the entry point on one end and slid aside the little piece of worn wood. Then he took a pin from the drawer and inserted it into the hole. His former lifeless expression had transformed into a mask of intensity and his breath came sharp and fast.

Raffalon heard the click as the box unlocked. He looked to Erminia. The woman had reached the sideboard. She now turned so that her elbow struck the jar. It wobbled and almost toppled, the lid coming free and blue ichor splashing out, with a harsh sound of glass on glass.

Bolbek’s head snapped her way. “Idiot! Get away from—” he began, but at that moment, Raffalon swiftly brought the little effigy of the luck god from concealment and touched it to the bare flesh of the thaumaturge’s neck. Instantly, the mage stiffened. Cords stood out in his throat and his eyes bulged. His lips writhed as he struggled to speak a syllable. To be sure he didn’t, Raffalon pinched the man’s lips together.

The thief was impressed at how long the spell-slinger was able to resist the god’s power; his own enthrallment had been almost instantaneous. But finally the struggle ended. Bolbek’s body relaxed, though his eyes spoke of inner misery.

“All well?” the thief said. He kept the idol pressed against the man’s neck.

“I am still examining the contents of the memory,” said the god through the thaumaturge’s vocal apparatus. “Remarkable.”

Erminia came forward. “What would this have done to you?” she said, indicating the apparatus.

“Dissolved me, taken my power, infused it into Bolbek.” A moment’s pause. “The cylinder already contains six imprisoned deities. My entry would have allowed this fellow to take the final step to leach us of our energies. Then the mana would have been transferred to the cage, to be incorporated into his own being.”

“He would have become a god?” said the thief.

“No. The procedure would have failed. They always do. But he would have had a very interesting few moments before the cataclysm obliterated him, his house, and the neighborhood.”

Raffalon examined Bolbek’s eyes, saw rage and despair. “And yet, somehow,” he said, “I do not think that he would thank us for intervening.”

“He would not,” said the god within the thaumaturge. “You had better bind him well, including his fingers. And gag him thoroughly. He knows spells that need only a single syllable, and he is resolved to use them on you.”

“There’s a wizard’s gratitude for you,” said Erminia. She went and found cords, chains, and cloth, then set about rendering Bolbek harmless. She even tied his toes together. When he was comprehensively immobilized, Raffalon removed the effigy from contact with the mage’s skin and set the little god on the table. “Now what?” he said.

The deity spoke in his mind again. I studied his plans for the apparatus, it said. If you carefully unscrew the lid, the prisoners will be released.

The thief said, “They are liable to be angry, and perhaps indiscriminate in how they express themselves.”

I will see that they do you no harm. Indeed, I believe they will see that they owe the two of you whatever rewards are in their power.

Raffalon relayed this information to Erminia and suggested that she come and stand close to him. When she had done so, he reached for the cylinder’s top and slowly rotated it. Fine threads showed, and the white gold squeaked faintly as it unwound.

Then came the last turn, and the top of the cylinder flew into the air, knocking the man’s hand aside. A coruscating fount of force, in several colors and of an intensity too bright to be even squinted at, shot up to the ceiling. The air of the room was filled with overpowering scents, rushing winds, claps of near thunder, and waves of pressure that made the thief’s ears hurt.

Invisible hands seized Raffalon and Erminia in a crushing grip and raised them high above the floor. The thief had but a moment to think that he was about to be dashed against the flagstones. Then as quickly as they had been taken up, they were gently lowered again.

I regret, said a different voice. Potho has explained that you have been our deliverers, not our captors.

“Potho?” Raffalon and Erminia said together.

It is my name, said the voice the thief recognized as the luck god’s. But now he sounded delighted. Mithron recognized me, as I did him. We are the divine equivalent of cousins.

“Mithron?”

Now the other voice spoke. A god of those who race horses, it said. Potho and I were often invoked together.

The luck god made other introductions: Iteran, who presided over crossroads; Belseren, whose province was health and vigor; Samiravi, a goddess of erotic fulfillment; Fhazzant, who looked after license inspectors and tax collectors; Tewks, who, if properly propitiated, could fulfill heart’s desire.

We are all grateful to you, said Potho. And each of us has bestowed upon you both what blessings are within our purview, now that we all know our names and our powers are restored.

“You mean I can count on a good day at the races?”

Always, said Mithron.

Raffalon mentally itemized his other gains. He would never be ambushed at street corners. He would never sicken or tire, nor be embarrassed or unfulfilled in moments of intimacy. What benefits he would accrue from the patron of tax collectors he could not at first imagine.

They will leave you unmolested, said a new voice he assumed to be Fhazzant’s.

“I thank you all,” he said and made a formal gesture of gratitude.

“As do I,” said Erminia, although at first Raffalon did not recognize the musical voice as hers. He turned to her and saw that Samiravi had been at work. The young woman’s eyes were now not quite so close together, nor her nose so long and pointed. Her lips had become fuller and a hairy mole on her chin was gone. Her upper and lower garments had filled out. She glowed with health and erotic promise.

From the way she was looking at him, it seemed that he, too, had been reordered and improved. He felt his nose and found it handsomely reshaped, while a surreptitious hand slipped into a pants pocket quietly determined that his initial inquiry about prodigiousness had been remembered and fully answered as well.

“I thank Tewks, most particularly,” he said.

Now, said Potho, we will say farewell. We have business with this prideful sorcerer.

Mithron added, We have dismissed all his familiars and frighteners. If, on the way out, you see anything you like, feel free to take it with you.

Fhazzant’s voice said, He will have no further need of his goods.

Raffalon repeated the gesture of gratitude. Erminia offered a graceful curtsy, then said with a ravishing smile, “I’ve never been able to do that right before.”

Together, they left the thaumaturge’s workroom, where the winds had once more begun to roar. Throughout the mansion, doors slammed open, locked coffers popped their lids, and cupboard doors swung wide.

Sometime later, their pockets full, bearing between them a densely packed trunk, they were making their way down one of Port Thayes’s better boulevards, seeking a place to stay. Erminia said, “I have been thinking. If we built an inn at a crossroads, near a good racecourse …” She paused for thought, then went on, “And if I served the customers and you ran a few games of chance, perhaps set up a tote …”

Raffalon said, “We would have no troubles with overzealous officials.”

“It could work,” she said. “Of course, you and I would have to be personally compatible.”

“There is a hotel across the way,” the thief said. “We could take a room for the night and see.”

He was surprised, but pleased, when she forthrightly expressed approval of his proposal.

Later that night, having discovered that they were indeed wonderfully compatible, she threw a sated arm across his chest, and said, “To be a success, an inn needs a good name.”

He said, “With luck, I’m sure I’ll think of one.”