The Gambler's Fortune

Songs of the Common People

Being gathered on travels throughout

the Tormalin Empire in the reigns of

Castan the Gracious and Nemith the Wily,

by Maitresse Dyesse Den Parisot

The House of Den Parisot has dwelt in the Nyme Valley since the days of the earliest Emperors. As the wisdom of Tormalin advances to embrace ever wider lands, the men of the House work ceaselessly in the service of their Name and Den Parisot responsibilities now run from farthest east to the very fringes of the Great Forest. The bonds of affection between my husband and myself were so sorely tested when these obligations drew him from home that I resolved to go on the road in his company. While fulfilling my wifely duties on our travels, I made a study of the tales and music we heard and present them here for a wider audience. Music is always a proper occupation for women, from the lullaby that soothes the fractious babe, to the genteel airs we teach our daughters, to the round songs we share in good fellowship. In these songs gleaned from the commonalty of the Empire, I have found beguiling melody, tales to provoke tears and laughter and no little wisdom. Much of value and beauty has been found across the Empire to ornament the great Houses of Tormalin and music is but a less tangible wealth to enrich us.

I present these songs as an entertainment, and too, as evident proof of all that unites the Empire, however many leagues might divide its peoples. While we beseech Drianon’s blessing on our fields of wheat, so the people of the boundless plains commit their mares and foals to her care. I have been welcomed in Ostrin’s name to the leathern tents of cattleherds, just as devoutly as on the threshold of the Imperial palace. Divine authority pays no heed to bounds of time or distance and the same is true of music. A song of woodland birds sung to a babe beneath the leaves of the wildwood will beguile a silk-swathed princeling just as happily. Stirring adventures from northern mountains will warm the blood of youths in the cohorts and teach them much of courage and duty besides.

Harmony delights the ear more than the solitary voice. A threefold cord is not so easily broken as a single strand. Brothers united in common purpose fare better than those divided by rivalry or suspicion. Such truths are acknowledged the length and breadth of the Empire. You will find these and more besides in this collection.

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, First Day of the Spring Fair, Morning

There’s a certain kind of man whose common sense shrinks almost exactly as fast as his self-conceit swells. Perhaps it’s an inevitable law of nature, one of those things Rationalists will bore on about, given half a chance. Whatever, there are enough of them about, especially at festivals, to let me turn a rune—or in this case, a nutshell—for profit any time I choose.

I leaned forward and smiled confidingly. “You’ve been watching close now, haven’t you, friend? Care to risk another penny on it?”

The stout man’s eyes flickered upward to my face, halting for a breath at the tempting ruffle of my loose-laced shirt. As his gaze left the crumb-strewn tabletop, my fingers moved unseen beneath my other hand to make sure I’d be taking his coin once again.

“I’d say I’ve got it this time,” he chuckled, confidence gleaming in his eyes like the fancy braid on his cuffs. Still smiling, I held his eyes with mine although a whisper of cold air on the nape of my neck stirred the hairs like those of a wary cat. A door behind me was being held open for some reason pressing enough to let the tavern waste its heat on the chilly spring day outside.

The merchant made up his mind and reached for the middle of the three nutshells. I laid a soft hand on his hairy fingers. “Copper to choose, silver to see,” I dimpled, all innocent charm.

“Fair enough, girlie. I’ve got you this time.” He tossed a copper onto the table and snatched boldly at his chosen shell. As he gaped at the bare wood beneath, I managed a look of wide-eyed startlement to match his own surprise. Several onlookers laughed, but I never do that, not since my early days on the road. A disgruntled cowherd once backhanded me across the face, losing his sense of humor along with his meager hoard of pennies.

“Saedrin’s stones, I could have sworn I had it that time!” The merchant rubbed a fat hand over sweaty jowls and reached again. As I spread a warning hand over the shells, I heard the scrape of nailed boots coming down on flagstones with a measured tread.

“Silver to see, you know the game,” I braced myself in my chair, unnoticed but ready to rise.

Frustration never lets them not know. The merchant tossed an ill-tempered and tarnished penny at me, which I swept briskly into my pocket. As he picked up one shell then the other to reveal the errant kernel, I let the eager bystanders close in to the table.

“But how, by all that’s holy—” the luckless mark looked up, exasperated, but the townsfolk in their holiday best had me effectively concealed from view. I edged away. A tug at the laces drew my shirt to a more respectable neatness and I paused for a moment in the shadow of the stairwell to reverse my jerkin unseen. Unhurried, I pulled the far door closed behind me as I shrugged into dun homespun, pulling the gaudy scarf from my head and stuffing it in a breeches pocket. There was no mistaking the bellow of a Watch sergeant behind me, asking who had been running the game. Various gullible fairgoers whose coin jingled in my purse would doubtless be eager enough to give him a description. A woman unremarkable of height or build, they’d say, but with a bright red jerkin and a headscarf patterned in yellow and crimson imperfectly concealing her straight black locks. With that scent to follow, the Watch were welcome to try and find me to demand a cut of the coin. Using my fingers, I combed through the soft auburn waves of my hair and plucked out a few errant wisps of dyed horsehair. I let these fall inconspicuously onto a brazier burning incense in the doorway of a little shrine to Halcarion. The smoke could carry my thanks to the Moon Maiden, for keeping my luck bright for another day.

Five chimes rang from the nearby Wool Audit Hall and a hurrying peddler bumped into my back as I halted. I scowled at him, suspicious hands checking purse and belt-pouch, but a second glance showed he was no pickpocket.

“Your pardon, fair festival,” he muttered, trying unsuccessfully to keep to the flagway; the gutters were already choked with dung and garbage. The holiday was barely started but the city’s population was doubling or trebling for the Equinox fair. Still, by the end of five days’ celebrations there would be drunks and paupers enough buying their way out the Watch’s lock-up by clearing the streets.

Tall wooden houses loomed over the cobbled street, three and four stories high; each stepped a little farther out. The newly limewashed plaster of the walls shone bright against the dark oak beams in the spring sunshine. Shutters swung open above my head as some busy housewife hung featherbeds out to air. Dust billowed from open doorways as floors were swept clean for the festivities. Memories ten years or more past teased me. I could almost have been back in Vanam, Selerima’s nearest rival among the great trading cities dotted among the patchwork of fiefdoms that make up Ensaimin. But I had taken myself off from my so-called home and fallen by Halcarion’s grace into the far more rewarding, if more risky, life of chance and gaming. I was no harried housemaid, roused before dawn to scrub and fettle. Looking down at my well-kept hands, remembering them red with toil and a winter’s chilblains, I rebuked myself and slipped off the gaudy ring I’d been wearing as I separated the local clods from their coin. Some Watchman more alert than most might just be looking for such a bauble.

A more distant tower struck its own brazen version of noon with a handful of rising notes. I gathered my wits; the diverse opportunities of the fair were distracting me. This was no time to be yearning for a high-stakes game of runes or raven. The game I was setting the board for promised to set me up for life, if I made the play successfully. I just needed the final pair of pieces. Walking briskly past the tuppenny liquor houses where I’d spent that morning turning a pretty profit, I took a narrow alley to the off-hand and came out onto the broad, sunlit sweep of the high road. There it was, the lofty tower of the guilds’ Conclave Hall, decked out with flags and pennants to proclaim Selerima’s wealth and power to all and sundry flocking to the fair from ten days’ travel in any direction. All the adornments couldn’t disguise the ramparts, the watchtowers and the high narrow embrasures for the crossbow men, though. It might be a handful of generations since Selerima last had to fight for its rights but the city fathers still make sure young men do their militia drills in the exercise halls maintained by each guild. I wondered about trying my luck in a few of them. No, no one would be shooting bales of old hay full of arrows with all the fun of the fair to be had.

If the Conclave Tower was to my sword-hand, I needed to go uphill. I wove through excited crowds with practiced ease to the luxuriously appointed, stone-built inn where I was currently sleeping. Sleeping very well too, on soft goose feathers and crisp linen, a meek lass hurrying to light my fire and bring hot water for my washstand first thing every morning. High spirits put a spring in my step as I sauntered toward the gentlefolk’s parlor.

“Livak, at last! I was wondering where you had got to.” My current traveling companion hurried down the stairs. The dour expression on his thin face did nothing to dampen my sunny mood. “You could have left a note or message,” complained Usara mildly, raising a hand to summon wine. We seated ourselves at an expensively polished table.

“It’s only just past noon.” I nodded to the boy, who filled my goblet and earned himself a copper to ensure a discreet withdrawal. “The streets are busy, hadn’t you noticed? Sorry, you’re not used to big cities or festival crowds, are you?” I blinked mock contrition over the rim of the elegant crystal.

Usara answered me with a half-smile. “Have you managed to find these friends of yours?”

“Not just yet.” I shook my head, unconcerned. “I’ve left messages at the likely taverns, the more adventurous brothels. They’re bound to arrive sometime today or tomorrow.”

Usara frowned. “This is all very vague and uncertain. How can you be sure they’re even coming to Selerima?”

“I know because Charoleia told me they were coming here. They wouldn’t lie to her and she has no reason to lie to me; we’re friends and that means we trust each other.” I took a sip of excellent Tormalin wine. Selerima might have shaken off the honor of being the Old Empire’s most westerly city long since but merchants have always maintained links with the East and for more than the convenience of a common language. This vintage had been carried clear across the civilized world to delight discerning patrons at this elegant hostelry. The flagons had probably traveled nearly as many leagues as me.

Usara ran a hand over his thinning sandy hair. “That’s all very well, but what if something unexpected has occurred? You’ve no way of knowing, so I think it’s best if I—”

“No,” I leaned forward in my chair and cut off his words with an emphatic sweep of one hand. “I’m the big dog with the brass collar here. This is my game and I say how we play it. You’re only here as a favor to your master by the grace of mine.”

Usara’s lips thinned with irritation as a faint wash of color rose on his high cheekbones. I thought it wise to give a little carefully judged ground. “We’ll give Sorgrad and Sorgren until tomorrow evening to contact us. If we’ve had no word by then, we’ll think again.”

The annoyance faded reluctantly from Usara’s pale complexion. “What now?”

“We eat,” I gestured to the maidservant waiting patiently by the hatch to the serving room. I could see a wonderful range of delicacies brought up from the kitchens being suitably plated up and garnished and our table was soon spread with an elegant array of creamware dishes. I savored the enticing aromas, always gratified to be eating the sort of food I’d grown up seeing carried up the back stairs by footmen and the house steward. The girl brought fine white bread, the first, sweet, grass-fed mutton, seethed pigeon breast with its broth thickened with egg and herbs, a grand salad of spinach and cresses, decorated with nuts, raisins, pickled buds and crystalized flowers, lightly sauced with verjuice and green oil. Usara seemed rather less impressed than me, but he probably ate like this every noon, not just on high days and holidays like we lesser folk.

He wiped his mouth on a brocaded napkin. “What have you been doing this morning?”

“As I said, leaving word in likely places.” I didn’t see any need to tell Usara I was topping up my purse. I wasn’t paying for any of this luxurious living but I needed a reason to be hanging around in the tap rooms, didn’t I? “How about you?”

“I’ve been around every guild hall asking for entry to their libraries or archives,” scowled Usara, “but the liverymen are entirely taken up with the fair.”

That was chafing him like an ill-fitting boot, used as he was to instant respect and unquestioning cooperation. I stifled a smile with my own napkin. “The festival’s only five days long. You can look at the archives or whatever after that. It’s taken us the best part of a season to get here so a few more days won’t tip the balance either way.”

Usara nodded mutely but I could see dissatisfaction lurking in his warm brown eyes as we applied ourselves to our meal. I had better do something before he took himself off on his own initiative. I wasn’t having him toss a random rune to spoil my plans.

Using a licked finger to collect the last sweet crumbs of a curd tartlet, I pushed aside my plate. “Let’s see what kind of show this city puts on.”

“You think we’ll find these friends of yours in these crowds?” Usara would never have been so openly scornful when we’d started on the long journey from Toremal. Well, it was about time he felt at ease with me.

“There aren’t that many Mountain Men in the cities, so I suppose we might,” I said. “They mostly just trade with villages on the edges of the uplands. But no, Sorgrad and ’Gren prefer to go unnoticed. You don’t get far in our line of work if you stick in people’s memories.”

Usara looked skeptical for a moment then favored me with a sudden bright smile. “It’s got to be more interesting than sitting here all afternoon. As you say, we don’t see spectacles like this in Hadrumal.”

His words were lost in a carillon of bells from every side of the city. We hurried out to the broad front steps of the inn and found the flagway packed tight with people. Watchmen burnished for the festival were clearing stragglers out of the way. Standing on my toes, I could just see the first of the huge guild symbols being carried high by journeymen of the trade. Then a heavily built man with a lavishly plumed hat blocked my view entirely. I tugged at Usara’s arm. “Let’s find somewhere better to stand.”

Not much taller than me and scant measures heavier, he was similarly struggling to get a sight of the procession. Judicious use of elbows and brooch pin helped us to an alley entry where the jutting foundation stones of a Tormalin-built hall gave us a vantage point. I gave Usara a hand up and we saw a massive pair of scissors bobbing down the high road. Made of wood painted and gilded to look like metal, they incidentally demonstrated the wealth of the Tailors’ Guild, of course. Liverymen bowing and waving in fur-trimmed robes followed the journeymen sweating under the honor of their burden. Finally the warden of the guild appeared, carried aloft in his padded chair on the shoulders of apprentices, presumably chosen for even height and stout muscles. Louder cheers identified loyal craftsmen keen to show allegiance and have their fealty noticed by the masters of their trade.

Fullers and dyers followed with an unexciting display of cloth on tenterhooks teased and harried by rising breezes. The skinners and furriers came next, garnering far more approval from the masses with journeymen wearing monstrous heads: wolves with mad silver eyes and crimson tongues lolling over bloodstained teeth, bears with snarling, foam-flecked jaws. One lithe figure dressed as a cunning marten, complete with mask and tail, dodged among them, while another in the long leather apron of his trade pursued him with a knife as long as my arm mocked up out of wood and paint. I laughed along with everyone else.

“This makes festivals in Hadrumal look a bit staid.” Usara bent close to my ear to make himself heard.

“Selerima puts on nearly as good a show as Vanam,” I shouted appreciatively.

Tanners followed next, then leather workers. The procession wore on, each guild’s standard raised above the Great Gate before they dispersed to feasting at their own audit hall. The banners proclaimed the myriad skills and trades earning coin for the cities of Ensaimin strung along the rivers, bringing valuables from mountains and forests and dotted the length of the Great West Road that carries all manner of staples and luxuries to the ancient Kingdom of Solura in the west, to the diminished Tormalin Empire in the east and for anyone in between with silver to spend. Saddlers, fusters and lorriners gave way to coopers and joiners; pewterers and cutlers were followed by blacksmiths who disdained the counterfeits of the other guilds. Journeymen carried a massive hammer wrought of polished wood and gleaming steel between them, muscles rippling.

The goldsmiths alone of the crafts allowed women in their procession, prosperous wives and haughty daughters on the arms of the liverymen, decked out with rings by the handful, necklaces and earrings jingling, brooches and pins securing dark blue gowns and head-dresses. To my mind the effect was rather spoiled by the glowering of heavy-set apprentices marching alongside, before and behind, each swinging a hefty cudgel. I don’t suppose it was any coincidence that the bladesmiths followed, daggers, swords and steels bright in the sunshine as apprentices brandished their trial-pieces in flourishes threatening to take off any greedy hands. I wondered idly if the ladies would be still wearing their finery at the guild feast and how hard it might be to find a maidservant’s dowdy dress.

Finally the fitful breeze brought a tempting scent over the heads of the throng. Silversmiths and copper workers got scant attention as the crowd turned expectantly to the bakers and brewers, the butchers and grocers. A massive loaf carried high above the heads of the throng was an impressive sight and the heady smell of yeast from vats of ale being wheeled along even managed to outdo the sweaty odors of unwashed bodies. Links of cooked sausage joined buns and sweetmeats tossed out on either side, and cheap earthenware beakers of beer were handed around. The crowds began to move again, people filling the road as the last craft passed, eager to get a share of the largesse and save the price of a meal. Peddlers and pie men appeared with jugglers and entertainers. All were looking for a share in the festival pennies hoarded through the latter half of winter and the first half of spring. Some canny minstrel raised a boastful song proclaiming Selerima’s might and bright pennies pattered into his upturned hat.

It was pleasant to stand aloof, no need to scramble for bread and meat, the days long past when I would salvage a meal from the gutters, brushing off the soiled straw and nameless filth. “Come on,” I caught at Usara’s sleeve as he stared, rapt, after the parade. “Let’s get down to the fairground and see the fun there.”

—«♦»—

Selerima, Western Ensaimm,

First Day of the Spring Fair, Afternoon

“Where do we go next, Jeirran?”

“You’ve tried every assay house, every tinsmith?” Jeirran planted booted feet firmly on the cobbles, defying the stream of locals flowing past intent on holiday amusements. “What about pewterers, there must be plenty of those?”

His three companions were less certain in their stance. Both men and the woman had the fair hair and pale eyes common to Mountain Men but their faces showed shared blood as well, the same solid features and sturdy frames.

The two men exchanged a somewhat hesitant glance before the elder spoke up. “Three places out of five are shuttered up for festival. Where we can get an answer, no one will do business.” Irritation overcame his reluctance to speak. “Not with us anyway. They all say the same thing, Jeirran; they buy their metal from the traders who come down from the hills.”

“And did you find out what prices they’re paying? Five times what Degran and his cronies are paying us, I’ll wager,” interrupted Jeirran, exasperated. “You explained it exactly as I told you to, Keisyl? We can deliver finer ingots for a fifth less cost?”

“And they say show us your ingots,” the older brother retorted. “No one’s interested in ore samples. We need to bring down metal—”

“The ore samples show the quality of what we offer!” Jeirran broke in. “We’ll smelt the ores and deliver the tin, but we need coin to meet our needs. Are you sure you explained it properly?”

“Yes, Jeirran, we’re sure.” The younger broke off to scowl after a burly fair-goer barging past with scant apology. “Those that didn’t laugh in our faces told us to talk to the metalworkers’ guilds, said they might be interested in staking us for a share in the profits.”

“The guild halls are shut for the festival but it might be worth staying on—” Keisyl lifted his voice above the hubbub of the crowds. The girl hushed him but he patted her arm. “There’s not one in a hundred here understands what we’re saying, Eirys. Don’t fret.”

“The whole point of dealing direct with the lowlands is to keep all the profits for ourselves.” Jeirran did not bother to hide his contempt. “We could find three trustworthy kindreds inside a day’s travel who’d be more than happy to take a share in return for timber props and furnace charcoal, spare sons to dig the ore like as not. Make a deal like that and you sign away any hope of filling your coffers or making a decent marriage before Maewelin claims your bones!”

“A half-share in worked metal has to be better than whole claim on ore ten measures underground and no way to reach it!” the younger brother objected with some heat, folding muscular arms over a brawny chest.

“Do you ever listen to a word I say, Teiriol?” Jeirran turned on him. “If we can be sure of selling the metal down here, we can buy in what we need to put in a deep mine ourselves, hire in labor like the lowlanders. That way we keep all the profit.”

“I don’t like discussing our business in the open street like this!” In the girl’s face, the broad foreheads and square jaws of the men were softened to an appealing oval framed with delicate curls artfully drawn forward from the knot of her golden hair, but her lip was quivering in an ominous pout as she drew in her skirts, trying to keep the others between herself and the townsfolk. “I want to go back to the boarding house,” she burst out. “I’m fed up with being jostled and stared at. You shouldn’t treat me so, Jeirran, I’m your wife and I deserve better. It’s downright disrespectful and—”

“Very well, as you wish.” Jeirran clasped his hands behind his back, knuckles white as he sought to contain his frustration. “Keisyl, take your sister back to our rooms, if you please.”

“I want Teiriol to come with me,” the girl interrupted petulantly.

“As you wish. Keisyl and I will see you at sundown. Oh, Eirys, don’t start crying!” he snapped with exasperation.

“I’m sorry.” Her flower-blue eyes brimmed with tears, the pale rose of her complexion vanishing under an unappealing bloom of scarlet. “I’m sorry, but I don’t like it here. It’s noisy and dirty and the people are rude and—”

“Come on.” Teiriol put a comforting arm around his sister’s shaking shoulders and led her away on the inner side of the flagway where she was protected by the buildings on one side and himself on the other. Eirys pulled up the hood of her fur-trimmed cape and clutched it tight. Teiriol spared a fulminating backward glance at Jeirran. Keisyl watched them go, his expression a mixture of relief and concern.

“Why did you insist she come?” sighed Keisyl, running a hand over close-cropped blond hair. He loosened his own cape with blunt-fingered hands to reveal a creamy linen shirt bright with embroidery. Weariness shadowed the pale skin beneath his azure eyes. “I’m sure it’s not fitting to expose her to all this barbarity.”

“I wasn’t about to leave her at home,” spat Jeirran. “Your mother’s spent every day since Solstice telling Eirys any three men she could name would care better for her lands. Give Ismenia half a chance and she’ll be telling Eirys to repudiate me inside a half-year of marriage.” Rising color threw his golden beard into unflattering relief. Neatly trimmed around full lips, it did little to soften a square jaw set above a bullish neck. Jeirran’s hair was longer than Keisyl’s, swept back from a wide, high forehead to curl down to his collar in wiry yellow waves. For all the bluntness of his features, he was undeniably handsome and carried himself with that knowledge.

“I don’t think Mother will be any too impressed if you bring her home with some foul lowlander disease.” Keisyl glared at Jeirran, sufficiently taller to make it an effective tactic. A couple of seasons’ seniority added to the harshness of his tone. A ragged lad with startled eyes ducked past, clutching a loaf to his chest.

“There’s no reason to imagine dangers like that, not this early in the year.” Jeirran forced himself to a more conciliatory stance. “We’re keeping ourselves to ourselves and we’ll be back in our own air soon enough. That should cheer Eirys up.”

“And what will we have to show for our trouble?” demanded Keisyl. “You’ve been telling us all winter this fair was the only place to come and trade for better prices. So far no one will even take a look at our ores, let alone discuss a deal.”

“So these people are too stupid to see buying without a middleman adding his profit saves them coin! I’ll try some of these so-called smiths myself tomorrow. I speak lowlander tongue better than you and it’s about time you tried to entertain Eirys. Today we find a buyer for the furs. If necessary we’ll use that coin to buy what we need. We can drive a decent digging into the back of the lode and make a start ourselves.” Jeirran nodded firmly. “We’ll bring ingots next year, so fine even these clods can’t ignore them. There’s more than one way of snaring a coney.”

A child bright in her holiday best turned her beribboned head at meaningless words in unknown accents. She tugged at her mother’s skirts, but the woman bustled her away, sparing a glance of surprise and suspicion at the men.

Keisyl smiled at the child. “How do we go about that, when every furrier will be as intent on his holiday as everyone else?”

“There are plenty of merchants dealing in hides and skins at this fair,” Jeirran stated confidently. “I was talking to some while we waited to pass the gates.”

Keisyl’s expression brightened. “Why didn’t you make a deal there and then?”

“None of Degran’s men wintering in the valley bottom thought to mention a ban on all trading before the official opening of the fair.” Grievance soured Jeirran’s voice.

“So when is that?” Keisyl’s question was lost as a heedless group of youths chased a stray dog past. Even the shortest of the ebullient boys was a good head taller than either Mountain Man, though not the tallest was as broad in the shoulder. “When is that?” he repeated.

“The man at the rooming house said it’s after the guilds’ procession is done.” Jeirran set his jaw and forced his way through the busy street, upland muscles earning him irritated glances that he ignored. “The fairground’s down by the river, this way.”

Moving with the flow of the crowd soon brought the Mountain Men to the Water Gate. A sudden surge carried them through the clogged arches and they found they were outside the walls. Jeirran’s expression cleared a little to see blue sky uncluttered by looming buildings. Scant moments later the crowd ground to a halt and a fierce scowl carved its habitual lines between his pale eyebrows.

“What now?” he hissed at Keisyl’s shoulder. The other man muttered an oath and lifted himself on the toes of his boots to try to see, but the expectant throng hemmed them in uncomfortably. The murmur rose to a new pitch of excitement before a shrill of brassy trumpets demanded silence. By the waterside, an unseen fruity voice was lifted in formal declamation.

“For-Spring is past; we give thanks to Halcarion for the renewal of seed and beast. Aft-Spring is coming; we beseech Arimelin to send us good luck and good counsel. Remember this feast is sacred to Raeponin and let every man deal fairly or face due judgment.”

A great cheer rang out, startling a flock of mottled birds from the willow-crowned islets barely visible in the broad, spring-swollen river. A great leather glove, tall as a half-grown child, bobbed and waved above the heads of the crowd until its pole dropped home into the waiting socket. The people surged past into the fairground, eager for bargains from brightly colored booths and gawking at entertainments offered on all sides.

“See a wonder or two, my lady? You look like a daring young man! Spend a copper to see creatures half man and half beast?” A crier hovered in front of a gaudy tent painted with improbable scenes of forest and mountain, darting this way and that. “Freaks of magic or of nature—you decide! Sir, how about you?”

“Come on, we’re here to do business, not put copper in some charlatan’s purse.” Jeirran caught Keisyl’s arm as he wavered. “We don’t have coin to waste gawking at misbegotten lowlanders.” Jeirran glared at a hawker waving crudely carved puppets bright with tatters of cloth.

“Have you any idea where we should go?” Keisyl looked down the five already trampled lanes spreading out from the fair’s standard. Each was lined with eager sellers, merchants working from the back of wains piled high with wares, modest traders with barrows and tables, peasants looking to sell the paltry fruits of winter evenings’ labors from threadbare blankets spread on the damp ground.

“We’ll try down here,” said Jeirran decisively, pointing to stalls groaning beneath bolts of fine cloth, peddlers touting ribbons and lace, beads and buttons busy in between. He pushed through smartly dressed women toward larger, more somber booths beyond. Stern-faced men were examining piles of hides and furs laid on broad trestle tables, sharp scents of dye and tanning rising above the green odor of crushed grass.

Jeirran spared Keisyl with a nod of satisfaction. “Here, tell me, what is the price you ask for these skins?”

“What’s that you say?” The skinny stallholder turned from a customer, cupping a hand as tanned as his wares to one prominent ear.

“I thought you said you spoke lowlander tongue better than me or Teiriol.” Keisyl stuck his hands through his tooled-leather belt and scowled at the Seleriman. Jeirran repeated his question carefully and the leather merchant flipped the edge of a skin to show figures chalked on the underside, looking down his long nose with faint contempt.

“See, this is three, five times what Degran Lackhand pays in the valley bottom,” Jeirran hissed to Keisyl, stabbing a finger at the numbers. He checked quickly through the heap of hides, shoving the top ones aside as they slid and hampered him. “The quality’s nowhere near as fine as ours.”

“What’s that you say? Not got a civilized tongue in your head?” The lanky trader planted hands on the hips of his buff jerkin with some irritation. “Are you looking to buy or not?”

“Where do you purchase your hides?” demanded Jeirran, brushing chalk dust from his fingers.

“None of your business.” The merchant scowled under black brows but a prosperous townsman claimed his attention with a wave of a jingling purse and a ludicrously low offer for a russet and white cowhide.

“It’s just as I’ve been telling you. One winter’s worth of trapping sold direct to a merchant here will net more coin than we’d get in three seasons waiting on Degran.” Jeirran crossed to a stall heaped with soft bundles of rolled furs. “Look! Your mother wouldn’t use this to line a hound’s winter boots, I’d scarce bother bringing it in from the hills. Down here, it’s fetching more than Degran pays for miniver!”

“That’s no great deal if we have to waste half a season tramping all the way down here and back again.” Keisyl shook his head. “We agreed to help you on the snare lines over winter as long as you helped us at the diggings in the summer. We should be clearing the workings by now, not haggling with lowlanders.”

Jeirran ignored him. “We’ll get a good price then use some of the coin for trinkets and fancies. Eirys is always nagging for treats from the traders. Enough gewgaws will shut your mother’s mouth as well.” He turned on Keisyl. “Otherwise she’ll be looking around for a husband for Theilyn, like as not, walking her around this coming Solstice.”

“Theilyn’s too young to marry for a good few years yet.” Keisyl shook his head but a shadow of concern darkened his blue eyes.

“But she’s not too young to be betrothed,” Jeirran insisted. “What if your mother finds some family with a gang of sons all eager to offer their labor to help the one who’s going to be getting the prize? Who’s to say she won’t let them start working the diggings instead of you and Teiriol?”

“We have the right to those workings until Theilyn’s wed, no day less,” objected Keisyl.

“Then you’d better make sure you’re bringing in enough to keep your mother sweet. And you need enough coin in hand to woo a girl with decent lands of her own once Theilyn’s eye does start looking out a spot to set her own hearthstone, you and Teiriol both. You won’t get that scratching pits where the lode surfaces. Stripping out easy tin and cutting trees to smelt it may have been good enough for your father but there are no more surface seams to be had, are there? You need to dig deep ore and you need fuel. It’ll be thrice three years before there’s any new growth to speak of in your coppices and you’re not touching the old growth, not while I’m husbanding them. Those woods are Eirys’ endowment; it’s my duty to provide for our children out of their bounty. You could show a little gratitude; I should be concentrating on Eirys’ business, not spending time and effort helping you two make something of Theilyn’s portion. You need to drive in a proper mine and that means shoring and charcoal furnaces and if you’re not going to strike a shares deal for what you need, you’ll have to pay coin on the settling stone. Where are you going to get that gold, unless I’m willing to come in with you, for Eirys’ sake?” Jeirran’s eyes burned.

“So find someone to buy the furs.” Keisyl clenched empty hands eloquently. “Do something besides just telling me things I already know!”

Jeirran dug in the satchel slung beneath his cape. Pulling out a handful of neatly trimmed squares of fur and leather, he caught at the moss-colored sleeve of the man across the trestle. “Here, what do you think of these?”

“I think I’m selling, not buying, friend.” The busy merchant swept a meaty hand across his board. “Get your moth-bitten rubbish off my goods.”

Jeirran stooped to recover his sample pieces, face scarlet with indignation. “Your loss, fool!” Pushing through the jostling masses, he headed for the next fur trader, a hatchet-laced man with a shock of gray hair swept back from shrewd hazel eyes.

“What can I do for you, friend?” The man spared Jeirran a quick glance as he rummaged in the pocket of his calico apron, brushing stray hairs from his jerkin sleeve with the other hand.

“Would you like to buy fine furs?” Jeirran proffered a silky white strip. “Better quality than anything you’ve got here.”

“Mountain fox is it?” The man took the fur and sniffed at it, turning it over to see how well it was cured. “What are you asking?” His eyes scanned the crowd.

“Ten Marks the pelt and we have a good supply with us.” Jeirran nodded triumphantly at Keisyl.

“Guild rate is five Marks the pelt and that only for top quality. There you go, mistress, that will trim a gown or a hood to perfection, fair festival to you.” The merchant abruptly turned his back to sell a fluffy red squirrel-skin to a sharp-eyed woman in blue whose maid was already laden with purchases. “Anyway, Mountain Man, I don’t do deals outside the audit hall! Do you think I’m some kind of idiot? Yes, sir, what are you looking for?”

Eager customers forced them away from the busy trader and his unmistakable dismissal. Keisyl looked puzzled but Jeirran set his jaw obstinately, smoothing the ruffled fur around his hand. “Come on, let’s try over there.”

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, First Day of the Spring Fair, Afternoon

“I’ve seen everything I want, unless there’s something else you’re interested in.” I turned to Usara, who smiled a little shamefacedly.

“There was a man back there claiming to have a cockatrice,” he began.

“Let’s see it,” I said obligingly. Let’s see if he could work out how that old trick’s done. A surge of bodies nudged me into the shadows between two rows of booths. I tried to retrace my steps but a bulky body stopped me edging back to the main walkway.

“Hello, pretty!” it leered. “Fair festival to you.”

“Fair festival,” I nodded a tight, polite smile and tried to side-step past.

“Here for the holiday, are you?” He stretched one grubby, nail-bitten hand toward me. “Hair like autumn leaves, eyes as green as grass, that makes you a Forest lass.”

A necessary step back took me deeper between the muffling canvas walls. “Just a traveler, passing through. Let me about my business, friend.” Folding hands together in a demure gesture, I loosened the cuff of my shirt, ready to reinforce my point with the little dagger I keep sheathed on my forearm.

“What do you say to a little celebration of our own?” The bumpkin licked fleshy lips, lust gleaming in his close-set eyes like the sweat on his unshaven face. “Show me what you girls know to give a man and I’ll buy you a bunch of ribbons as a fairing?”

“Thanks all the same but I’m here with friends.” I tried to look regretful. That came easier when a quick glance showed me that carousing apprentices watching one of their number being comprehensively sick had blocked my escape to the rear.

“Why—” Whatever temptation the lout thought he could offer was lost in gasps and applause and I saw my would-be swain outlined against flaring yellow fire. He turned; I ducked rapidly around his blind side and dodged between two stalls. Jumping over a blanket of trinkets with a hurried apology, I would have gone farther but the way was blocked by people agape at Usara juggling handfuls of flame, his lean face alight with unaccustomed mischief. The fires changed hue, yellow to orange to crimson and back again, soaring higher and higher. He wove the burning colors into dazzling patterns, setting the crowd blinking and cheering. I snatched up a cracked bowl discarded beneath a potter’s bench and pushed my way through.

“Fair festival to you.” As I proffered the bowl, the appreciative audience began reaching for purses and belt-pouches with gratifying haste. Some took the opportunity to discard coin halves and quarters cut for change but more found the performance worth whole pennies, even if mostly copper.

“Forest Folk are you?” One mild-faced tradesman in sober gray slipped a doubtless unintended silver penny into my open hand, unable to take his eyes off the spectacle.

“He’s my brother, good sir.” I ran a hand over my own head and gestured to Usara’s sandy if sparse hair. His being able to pass for Forest blood at a pinch was one of the reasons the wizard was here. I slurred my voice into the softer mumble of the eastern cities where I’d wintered, exotic enough to local ears to mark me as a foreigner. “We have come to delight you with our mysteries.”

“How does he do it?” A matronly woman breathed, one hand resting on the lace at her ample cleavage, her eyes as wide as the child’s clutching her ocher skirts.

I swept a low bow. “The ancient magics of the wildwood, my lady, brought to illuminate your festival!” It was nothing of the kind but no one here would ever know that.

I saw the plumes of a Watchman’s helmet bobbing toward us and tossed a copper cutpiece through the middle of Usara’s increasingly complex pattern. “Stop,” I mouthed.

He tossed knots of flame high with a flourish before snuffing them with a clap of his hands. A final incandescent flare left his audience blinking and rubbing their eyes. I had been looking the other way so grabbed Usara’s sleeve and moved him away toward the waterside before anyone could gather their wits and wonder which way we went.

“You looked like you were enjoying yourself.” I emptied the crock and rapidly tallied our earnings, sparing an eye for anyone taking too close an interest.

“You know, I was rather,” he said with satisfaction. “What are you doing with my coin?”

I looked up, eyes wide with patent surprise. “Half-shares, of course.”

“I’ll allow you a tenth-share,” suggested Usara. “That’s fair, since I was the one doing all the work.”

“And if I hadn’t had my wits in hand, you’d have nothing to show for it and be paying a Watchman out of your own purse besides.” I managed a show of injured indignation.

Usara made a convincing pretense of considering this. “A fifth-share, then, since I’m feeling generous.”

I stuck my tongue out at him as I poured pennies and cut-pieces into his cupped palm. Some was silver minted here or in Vanam, more were crudely struck copper faces with the boasts of minor lordlings together with a fine mixture of local trade tokens. “I thought all your dealings were with princes, councils and scholars. You’ve got the measure of my world well enough for someone used to staying on the sunshine side of the laws.” I slid the few enough Tormalin-minted pennies into my own purse. I had more need than a mage of sound coin that passes pretty much anywhere. The mongrel currency of Ensaimin can be regrettably worthless five leagues beyond the town where it was struck. Usara could find that out for himself.

“Thank you, my lady,” Usara swept me an elegant bow. “Let’s just say I’m a fast learner.”

I had to laugh. “Well I’m glad to see you’ve got more between your ears than arcane learning and library dust. I think the locals were suitably impressed.”

“Fire’s not really my element, but it’s close enough to the earth to give me a fair talent with it. I have a sound enough skill with water as well, but don’t ever bet your purse on my abilities with air. That’s been a scourge to me ever since I was first apprenticed.” Usara offered me his arm and we made our way along the riverbank, picking a careful path past the barges and wherries unloading their bales and barrels, merchants and lightermen all intent on the serious business of commerce. “I know it’s not exactly the done thing, but I think wizards should be allowed to have a little harmless fun now and again, don’t you?”

I feigned surprise. “That would be frowned on in Hadrumal, would it?” It was no news to me that mages had no idea of fun.

“Where exactly are we?” Usara frowned and looked around.

I pointed at the Conclave Tower, tallest of the turrets watchful over the parapets of the wall. “This way.” The open postern of a small sally-gate let us back into the city and we walked past shops shuttered for the festival. The owners were doubtless selling their usual goods for a price and a half in some booth down at the fair.

“You can see the Conclave Tower from pretty much anywhere in the city,” I explained to the wizard. “If you get lost, head for it and then take the road to the Great Gate. You can’t mistake it; it’s the only one with strips of flags in the cobbles to ease carriage wheels. Either that or find a shrine. I expect a priest would take pity on you and set you on the right road.”

Usara nodded. “Selerima’s a lot bigger than Hadrumal.”

I laughed out loud. “Usara, most two-mule towns are bigger than Hadrumal! It wouldn’t warrant its own mill or market on the mainland.”

“Trydek, the first Archmage, founded our island city for the contemplation of the elements and serious study of the complex arts of wizardry.” Usara attempted a stern frown.

“Did he?” I clapped a dramatic hand to my breast. “So, what would happen if you tried a trick like that back home? The Archmage would ceremonially snap your staff over your head?” I paused to get my bearings but decided against a short cut. It wasn’t as if the Watch were actively seeking me, not like the last time I’d been here, and I was still getting the measure of obstructions around the back alleys. It was a good few years since I’d been in Selerima and these things change more than most people realize.

Usara was chuckling to himself. “Planir? No, he’d see the joke well enough, but he’d let me know it isn’t quite what he expects. We do get the occasional new apprentice showing off though. Given how potentially hazardous untrained magic can be, it is something we discourage,” he added in more serious tones.

All magic is downright dangerous as far as I’m concerned, but I kept that opinion under my tongue. “If you want to play that game again, you should add a smell of hot oil, perhaps let the cuffs of your shirt scorch a little.”

“Why?” queried Usara. “It’s a very minor magic after all.”

These wizards might learn all about magecraft on their hidden island but they can be precious little use around ordinary folk. “Remember how seldom these folk see a real mage. Don’t take offense but a lot of us commoners find wizardry rather worrying. If people want to believe it’s magic, they can, but you want to give the meddlesome enough to suggest it’s just a trick. Then we won’t find ourselves up in front of the festival assize answering a lot of awkward questions.”

“Up in front of the what?” asked Usara.

I stifled a sigh of irritation. “The festival assize. The guilds run it for the duration of the fair rather than tie up the regular courts and advocates. It deals with merchants who evade selling tolls or cheat customers, people caught stealing or getting too drunk and starting a fight, anything really. Anyone profiting by the fair falls under its jurisdiction for the duration of the holiday. By rights, we should be paying a cut of what we just took for your little show, so if a Watchman comes asking the next time, we just hand over the coin and let it go.”

“And he gives it to the assize?” Usara sounded rightly doubtful.

“What do you think?” I grinned at him. “Don’t worry, it only happens if a Watchman manages to catch you.” Which, in a nutshell, is why I was playing the squirrel game in grubby taverns rather than more profitable diversions like runes or Raven. Both take too long to bring in the coin and you can’t just walk away from your play pieces and buy them afresh from the next hawker’s tray. I wasn’t risking coming across some Watchman with a memory going back more than the last couple of years. There was a little matter of a robbery suffered by the richest liveryman in the city where the apparent culprits had broken out of the lock-up and fled. Not that there was any need to bother Usara with that.

My smile faded. “Now I come to think of it, we might take a look at the assize tomorrow evening, if we haven’t had word from Sorgrad. If ’Gren’s landed himself in trouble, that could explain why they haven’t got any of my messages.”

I stepped around a knot of women pinning little bows of ribbon to the doorpost of a shrine to Drianon. The usual tokens of festival pieties fluttered bravely, gold in gratitude that the fruits of last year’s harvest had seen them through the winter, white in hopes that sons wouldn’t come home with a dose of the itch. With the lesser moon at dark and the greater waning through its last quarter, the older people on the road had been muttering about ill omens. Even the rest of us who barely spare the gods a thought from day to day tend to hedge our bets around festival time. I decided to find time to make a decent offering to Halcarion and one to Trimon as well.

“Is it likely they’ve fallen foul of the authorities?” inquired Usara disapprovingly.

“It’s possible,” I said shortly. I hoped I was wrong; the success of my plans depended on Usara and the brothers working together and I was already concerned about Sorgren’s admittedly volatile personality starting him off on the wrong foot with the sedate wizard. Even after a season’s traveling together, I was still getting Usara’s measure; I couldn’t see the mage being any too impressed if he learned about some of ’Gren’s more notorious exploits. Even I’d been startled to learn he’d burned down an apothecary’s shop after the owner made some disparaging remarks about Mountain blood.

It wasn’t a subject I wanted Usara to pursue. “I’d rather not find myself trying to explain our little sideshow to the liverymen on assize duty, so perhaps we’d better try and stay inconspicuous. Not that I’m not grateful for your help, of course,” I added hastily.

“I wasn’t sure what was going on when I lost sight of you, but I didn’t fancy my chances of taking that brute on in a fist fight.” Usara shrugged his undeniably scrawny shoulders.

“It was an excellent diversion,” I reassured him. I’ve had plenty of practice of getting myself out of awkward corners but having to cut my sweaty suitor’s ardor down to size risked causing more problems than it solved. We came to a crossroads and I checked the skyline for the Conclave Tower before turning past a marble worthy brandishing a scroll.

“What exactly did he want?” asked Usara hesitantly.

I looked at him, surprised. “What do you think? Just another one who thinks that all Forest girls are a carpenter’s delight.”

“A what?” The mage’s bemusement was plainly genuine.

“Lies flat as a board and waits to be nailed?” I giggled as Usara’s fair skin betrayed his blush. “You wizards do lead a sheltered life, don’t you?”

“I heard you telling those people we were both Forest Folk.” Usara halted. “Do their men have a similar reputation?”

“Forest minstrels are reckoned to be able to charm their way inside most bed-curtains, if they put their mind to it.” Which was what had happened to my mother, leaving her with me to hamper her skirts and ensure she was never going to make a respectable match. I’d been barely as high as her waist before I understood the pity in the eyes of her family and friends, the strictures confining her to life as a housekeeper. I shrugged. “Don’t feel obliged to try living up to the ballads, Usara.”

A group of youths dashing out of a side street nearly bowled us over, dodging to either side, muddy boots skidding. “What’s your hurry?” I called to a straggler hampered by a large, fetid sack.

“Wardmote offenders are about to be pilloried,” he shouted with evident glee.

“That’s something we should take a look at,” I said to Usara.

“You enjoy seeing people pelted with dung, do you?” His distaste was apparent.

“No,” I answered a little reluctantly, “but ’Gren does. He has rather straightforward notions of entertainment.”

Usara let out a long resigned breath. “Very well.”

We followed the eager youths and soon found ourselves in the long paved precinct before the law courts. A tall frontage of new stonework, proud with a pediment of statues, disguised the jumble of mismatched roofs that I had once scrambled over to freedom. The first handful of wretched men shivering bare-arsed in their shirts were about to be locked into the unforgiving jaws of the pillories and face the punishment their peers deemed fit.

“In the name of Raeponin, I call all gathered here to give balanced judgment to the offenders presented.” The first of the ward constables claiming citizen’s rights by serving his year keeping order in his neighborhood stepped forward. He opened a substantial ledger, imposing in his cockaded hat, scarlet sash of office bright. “Markel Galerene, for selling bread loaded with alum.” The pillory snapped shut on its struggling victim, the scales of the god of justice burned crudely into the wood.

A roar went up from the crowd and a scatter of decaying carrots came shying in to batter the disgraced baker, one vindictive stone gashing his cheek amid turnips foul from the store at the end of a long winter.

“Ansin Shammel, for giving short weight.” The luckless Shammel looked to be a butcher and suffered accordingly, bombarded with the knuckle ends of old bones, scraps of hide and fat, finally getting the noisome entrails of some family’s festival mutton full in the face, which raised a cheer to echo all around the square. Some housewife must have felt revenge was worth more than a sheep’s paunch pudding.

“Is this really necessary?” murmured Usara with discreet contempt.

“Ask these women what being cheated a pennyweight of meat for every Mark they spend means.” A stout female beside me flung a handful of nameless filth, face ugly with outrage. “It’s their children who go hungry.” Hard times in my childhood had wrung double duty out of every penny before my mother swallowed her pride and hired herself out as a maidservant. As far as I was concerned, these thieves deserved every chime of their five days of humiliation and pain. When necessity obliges me to relieve someone of coin or valuables, I make sure that those who suffer can stand the loss, and not just to avoid loading Raeponin’s scales too heavily against that day when I answer to Saedrin for passage into the Otherworld.

Usara’s lips were pursed with that unconscious air of wizardry superiority that so irritates me. I ignored him and scanned the intent assembly for blond heads, not just pale or sandy hair but the true corn-colored locks that denote undiluted Mountain blood.

The pitch of the clamoring crowd rose as a man whose name escaped me was pilloried on account of a vicious dog, but more insults than missiles were flung at him. As we waited, all of those who’d failed to abide by the laws of the city were duly chastised, the last man choking in a cloud of ash and clinker, since he’d allowed a fire to spread from his property. The crowd drifted away to other amusements, leaving the square to relatives of those pilloried offering comfort or water while a few persistent accusers harangued them with further rebukes. Beggars twisted with injury or disease scurried to glean the best of the spoiled food that now littered the pavement, glowering at the ragged paupers who challenged them.

“Why are these unfortunates scavenging like this?” The outrage in Usara’s voice startled me. “There should be no need for this! Who takes care of such matters?”

“People are hard enough pressed to keep their families fed and warm without worrying about beggars they don’t even know.” I suppressed my irritation at his naïveté. “Shrines give alms to the needy, same as everywhere else, and the guilds run their own charities. Beyond that, they’re on their own. This isn’t Hadrumal, spells to solve your problems or earning coin for any lack.”

Usara opened his mouth for some heated reply but frowned over my head instead. “Isn’t that a Mountain Man over there?”

I turned to follow his gaze. A glimpse of golden hair made my heart skip a beat but when the throng shifted I saw a man in stout leathers, face dour and defensive, guarding the woman on his arm with all the jealousy customary in the uplands. Drab and incongruous among festival finery on all sides, the pair stuck out like the stones on a stag-hound.

“No, that’s not them.” I sighed. Was I ever going to get my game together?

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, First Day of the Spring Fair, Evening

“We’ve tried every trader down to that rancid dealer in half-cured coneyskins.” Keisyl stepped into Jeirran’s path and folded his arms. “No one’s buying, not from us.”

“We haven’t spoken to that man yonder.” An obstinate light burned in Jeirran’s eyes. “He’s sold most of his stock, so he’ll want more and have the silver to pay for it.”

Keisyl heaved an exasperated sigh but followed Jeirran toward a burly man in a beaver-trimmed jerkin of mustard broadcloth who was bending down to an urchin hopping urgently from foot to foot. The lad shot the two Mountain Men a startled glance and melted away while the fur trader rested his hands on his paunch. “What can I do for you?”

“We have furs to sell: fox, hare and otter, fine elk hide and some deerskins—” began Jeirran in an ingratiating tone.

“Guild-stamped, are they?” snapped the trader. “Paid your tenth at the audit hall, have you? No, I didn’t think so.” He raised his voice. “I wouldn’t disgrace the guild by trading behind their back, do you hear? Who do you think I am, offering me such insult? I’ve never seen you before neither.”

“Don’t,” Keisyl caught Jeirran’s arm as the shorter man took an angry step forward, beard bristling on his thrusting chin. As Jeirran stopped, indecisive, a reveler stumbled into him, unaccustomed ale sending the youth sprawling loose-limbed to the ground. Jeirran loosed frustrated rage in a savage kick that set the unfortunate lad spewing up. Passing fairgoers too slow to keep boots or skirts clear exclaimed in annoyance.

“Come on!” Keisyl dragged Jeirran over to an open space where stilt-walkers were entertaining the crowds. A pair painted like butterflies swooped and fluttered vast wings of sapphire silk, capering ungainly to amuse a wide-eyed child but deft enough to wrap their pinions around some giggling girl. A third in more conventional motley of scarlet and gold came after them, a hopeful bag-puppet on one hand, its maw greedy for small coin.

Jeirran shook free of Keisyl’s hand and stepped into the path of a passing dame. “Here madam, fine furs, smooth and supple leathers, fairer prices than anyone else will offer!” The woman shook him off, affronted and coloring beneath the frills of her cap.

“Sir, that’s a fine cloak you’re wearing,” Jeirran darted in front of a prosperous merchant. “Think how a fur trim would improve it, let me show you!”

The man’s florid face darkened, indignation warring with consternation in his deep-set eyes. “Be off with you, vagabond,“ he spluttered, drawing the lavender folds of his mantle around him.

“Here, you!” One of the stilt-walkers loomed over them, annoyance clear beneath his garish paints. “You’re queering our pitch, pal. Go and make a nuisance of yourselves somewhere else!”

“If you’ve got something to sell, go pay for a token like the rest of us!” called a nearby stallholder, safe behind cheap, speckled plates and green glazed pots under a brightly striped awning. Even Jeirran’s belligerent self-assurance wasn’t proof against hostile eyes on all sides.

“Let’s get something to eat.” Keisyl looked around and beckoned to a lad who was carrying a savory-smelling basket.

“Lamb pasty, mister, with a bit of this and that.” The boy looked from Keisyl to Jeirran, eyes wide and wondering at the oversewn seams on their embroidered shirts, at the stamped patterns on their short capes and the long leather trews gaitered into sturdy boots.

“Four, how much?” Keisyl held up his fingers.

“Two copper, mister,” stammered the boy.

Keisyl frowned as he rummaged in a pocket. “That’s the last of my coin, Jeirran. Teiriol has our purse.”

Jeirran was looking dubiously inside the pastry, picking at a stringy piece of grayish meat with a fingernail. “This is no more lamb than my boot soles.” He chewed slowly with an expression of distaste but the lad had already melted away into the crowd, leaving a faint smell of leeks fried soft in rancid fat.

Keisyl swallowed a stubborn mouthful. “I’ve eaten worse at the diggings. If you’ve got some coin, we can find a drink to take the taste away. Do you suppose they brew mead anywhere down here or will it still be that goat’s piss ale?”

“I’ve only got a few silver on me.” Jeirran reached inside his cape. “I didn’t want to risk having my purse cut, so I left most of the good coin in Eirys’ coffer.”

He spread his hand to count the paltry pennies, worn almost anonymous, edges bent and nicked. As he did so, a mailed gauntlet landed heavy on his shoulder and half the flimsy coins jumped from his hand to vanish into the crushed grass.

“You muck-footed fool! Can’t you people ever look where you’re going?” He turned furiously and found himself facing a bronzed breastplate, freshly polished with festival zeal. The gauntlet tightened its bruising grip on Jeirran’s shoulder.

“I’d keep a civil tongue in my head if I was only arse high to a short horse,” sneered the Watchman. He shook Jeirran by way of emphasis, demonstrating muscle beneath his flab. “Let’s have a look in that bag of yours, shall we?”

Jeirran ripped the gauntlet from his shoulder with an ease that clearly disconcerted the bigger man. Keisyl moved to pick up the fallen coin but another official planted a hobnailed boot on the pennies, an unfriendly smile creasing his unshaven face, fingerless leather gloves with studded knuckles gleaming on both hands. Jeirran turned but a third Watchman in a leather cuirass blocked his way with a metal-bound stave as thick as his bony wrists. The first Watchman tugged Jeirran’s satchel roughly from around his stiff neck and unbuckled it, grunting.

“Looks like them’s our pigeons, lads.” His chapped lips curved in a satisfied smirk. “Right, you pair come and explain yourself to the festival assize.”

The thin Watchman with the quarterstaff brought it level in both hands and gestured at Keisyl, whose fists were now clenched and raised. “I don’t think you want to make a fight of it, corn-poll. I’ll cut you down to the stubble if you do!”

Keisyl spat an incomprehensible Mountain oath that sent a rustle of apprehension through those fairgoers clustering behind the protection of the Watchman’s stave.

“You tell your friend, any trouble and I’ll put you both in irons,” warned the first Watchman, jingling the manacles at his belt in emphasis.

“What right have you to detain us?” Jeirran glared at the man, refusing to acknowledge the faces whispering and gawking on all sides.

The Watchman brandished a handful of fur and leather, white, russet and black. “We’ve had complaints. Some reckon you’re in the pay of the guilds, trying to tempt them to break the laws. Some tell us you’re trying to gull them into paying out for goods you ain’t got. I just think you’re uplanders with no more wit than your goat. Got a fair token to show us, have you?” he demanded sarcastically.

“I don’t know what you mean,” answered Jeirran warily.

“Then you haven’t paid your guild fee, have you, cully? Else you’d have bought the right to trade like an honest man and have the token to prove it. You’re coming along with us!” The Watchman nodded to his subordinate with the stave who brandished it in unmistakable threat.

“I’d check their purses, boss,” the one with his boot still resting on Jeirran’s fallen coin spoke up with an innocent air. “If they’ve not got the price of a meal and bed on them, they’re vagabonds, ain’t they? That’s the law, ain’t it?”

“You thief—” Jeirran took an ill-judged step toward the unshaven man.

The Watchman with the manacles moved swiftly to grab Jeirran’s arms, pulling them up behind his back with a painful twist of the elbows. “That’s enough from you. Rif, check his pockets.”

The man leaned forward awkwardly to stick intrusive hands into Jeirran’s cape and trews, glowering at an urchin eagerly hoping he would step away from the fallen silver. “No, nothing beyond what he’s got in his hand, boss,” he said with satisfaction.

“What about you?” The one with the quarterstaff thumped its butt on the ground and held out a hand to Keisyl.

“I have no coin,” Keisyl said, the foreign words halting on his tongue but the wrath in his face speaking clearly enough.

“Then it’s the lock-up until the assize calls for you.” The leader snapped black iron fetters on Jeirran’s wrists, the smaller man too startled to resist. Keisyl raised his fists in fury but a sweep of the quarterstaff behind his knee sent him sprawling to the ground. The Watchmen hauled him to his feet, deftly manacling him as they did so.

The one called Rif hastily scooped what coins he could from the tangled grass, the urchin scrabbling eagerly for any the Watchman missed. The boss sent Jeirran on his way with a shove past fairgoers exclaiming at the unexpected diversion. “Get moving!”

“So we had to pay some toll to trade?” Keisyl hissed furiously at Jeirran. “Something else Degran’s man didn’t tell you? Did he make any mention of this assize or whatever they call it?”

Jeirran twisted around to face the Watchman pushing him along. “What is the penalty for simply making an honest mistake?”

“Mistake or no, your goods will be forfeit, I reckon,” Rif replied with happy malice.

“Well done, Jeirran!” Keisyl’s indignation halted him until a blow from the quarterstaff sent him on his way again. “We’ll be going home with no goods, no deal, nothing to show for the trip at all. That’ll fulfill Mother’s every expectation of you!”

“That’s enough of your barking, cully.” The Watchman with the breastplate shoved Keisyl’s shoulder. “Talk like a civilized man or not at all, none of this yapping like dogfoxes.”

The humiliation choking Jeirran prevented him from answering Keisyl or the Watchman and fury stained his face scarlet as the pair of them were driven through the busy streets. People stopped to stare open-mouthed, to catch a neighbor’s arm and point, to whisper behind lifted hands. After what felt like an eternity, the Watchmen dragged them up steps of reddish stone to a solidly built hall.

“Knock ’em up, Neth,” ordered the leader. The one with the stave hammered on the stout door with its butt. A balding man little taller than Jeirran slid a metal squint aside and peered out.

“Fair festival to you, Vigo.” He stepped back to open the door. “What have you got here?”

The one called Neth gave both Jeirran and Keisyl a shove with his stave. “Mountain Men, still with the snow on their boots and trying to trade in the fair without a token.”

The little man nodded unsurprised as he turned to make a note on a lengthy parchment.

“And they’m vagabonds,” added Rif suddenly. “Not got coin on them for a bed and a meal, that’s the law, that’s two offenses.”

The clerk looked up, a smile lightening his somber face. “You and Westgate Ward got the usual wagers on, have you, Vigo?”

“That’s right,” grinned the burly Watchman. “You make sure it’s all recorded straight and there’ll be a drink for you if we come top of the tally.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” The clerk stuck his quill back in his inkpot. “Right, leave them with me.” He nodded to a well-muscled man lounging against a wall who stepped forward to glower at the two Mountain Men.

“Let’s see what other game we can spring, shall we?” Vigo led his men away, picking up more manacles from a basket with an optimistic air. The clerk closed the door carefully behind them.

Jeirran and Keisyl stared in all directions, wondering where they had been brought. Scuff marks and dents on the dusty floorboards showed the room had been cleared of substantial furniture for its temporary duty as a place of judgment. A stale smell of food and wine suggested some kind of dining hall. Black oak hammer beams soared above their heads, dusty pennants hanging motionless in the heights. Narrow lancets just below the roofline let in the last of the evening light but tallow candles were already burning in sconces set into the windowless walls lower down. A handful of Watchmen with staves and cudgels guarded a disconsolate group of men and women hunched on the bare floor.

“If you give me your word that you’ll behave, I’ll take those chains off and you can wait here until the assize calls you.” The clerk nodded to three prosperous townsmen seated behind a long table on a dais at the far end of the hall and looking unfavorably on a ragged beggar being dragged up the steps. “Give any trouble, you get chained in the undercroft with the barrels and the rats and like as not you earn a kicking from those nailers who’d rather be out looking for fun.” This nod indicated the two Watchmen either side of a menacing arch over dark descending steps. “What’s it to be?”

“We will abide quietly here,” Jeirran forced the words out.

“You swear it?” demanded the clerk.

“We swear,” said Keisyl in clipped tones. Jeirran echoed him.

“Good enough.” The clerk took a key from his belt and removed the manacles which his thick-set assistant tossed into the basket of identical restraints. “Right, there’s nothing I can do about the trading offense, but you don’t look exactly like vagabonds to me. If you can show means of supporting yourselves, we needn’t take up assize time with that nonsense. Have you got a lodging paid for? Is there anyone who can vouch for you?”

“We’d better send word to Teiriol, get him to bring a purse down here,” Keisyl said firmly.

Jeirran opened his mouth to object but finding it empty of any argument closed it again.

“What’s that you say?” The clerk looked suspiciously at them and the heavy-set man loomed over his shoulder.

“If we can send a message to our companions, they can bring money,” translated Jeirran in resigned tones.

“Good enough.” The clerk made another note on his parchment and used his fingers to whistle up a lad from a bench by the dais. “Tell the boy where to go.”

Jeirran gritted his teeth and gave the youth directions to their rooming house. “Tell Teiriol to bring the hazelwood box from Eirys’ coffer.”

“Get on with you,” the clerk gave the lad a copper penny from a bowl on his table and opened the door to let him out. “Right, you pair sit over there. Make any trouble and it’ll go harder when you come to be heard.”

Jeirran walked briskly to a space against the wall, glowering at any curious faces turned their way, but most of the petty offenders were content to sit and keep their own counsel. Jeirran flung his cape down and sat on it, arms around his knees, brooding blackly with his eyes fixed on the door.

“Why did you ask for the hazel box?” Keisyl demanded in a curt whisper, cross-legged beside him. “Teiriol’s purse will be good enough to prove we’re no beggars.”

“There’s gold coin hidden in the base of the casket, part of my patrimony,” hissed Jeirran. “I want to buy our way out of this. The last thing we need is to forfeit those furs. If we go home with nothing to show for them, we’ll never hear the last of it. We’ll have to sell them at one of the towns between here and home and make the best of it. That’s going to give your mother a big enough stick to beat me with as it is!”

Keisyl grunted. “And what’s Eirys going to say? That gold’s supposed to be your earnest of managing her lands competently for her, providing for her children. Come to that, it should all be safely under the hearthstone at home!”

“Eirys doesn’t have to know about it,” spat Jeirran.

“You think she’ll sit still when Teiriol gets that message and starts taking things out of her coffer?” Keisyl’s voice rose, incredulous. “She’ll be here and madder than a scalded cat!”

“She doesn’t have to know it’s part of my patrimony.”

Jeirran insisted. “I’ll tell her I did some trading last year, before we were wed. I’ll find a way of earning the gold back before Solstice, and Eirys need never know it was missing.”

“On your own head be it,” snapped Keisyl. “If anyone asks, I’m saying I knew nothing about it.”

Jeirran nodded, his eyes still fixed on the door, humiliation souring his stomach and shortening his breath. He sought vainly for any hope of salvaging something from the wreckage of his hopes. Hot fury welled up within him, at all these lowlanders, with their incomprehensible guilds and secret rules, conspiring together to keep every trade for themselves. It was all the same, this deceit, the way Degran and his like cheated the Mountain Men. When had any up-lander last seen a just share in the profits, a fair reward for the dangerous work of wresting metal from barren reaches or furs from the forested heights? It was all of a piece with the way lowlanders were setting their filthy villages ever higher, seizing the best grazing for their mud-caked cattle and greedy sheep, claiming the right to buy and sell the very land itself, haggling over blotted parchment they said could outweigh rights of blood and lineage. Jeirran’s burning eye lit on the heedless clerk, on the three men sitting in smug judgment as they robbed their victims of coin and dignity.

The main door swung open but it was only some immodest red-headed female in close-cut breeches peering in past the clerk. Scowling at her, Jeirran returned to his angry thoughts.

How could he have known that there was no chance of honest dealing here? He had come in all good faith. Degran and those others, they must have known this would happen. They’d all be laughing up their sleeves at him, wouldn’t they? Jeirran set his jaw, beard bristling wrathfully. These smug lowlanders, with their tricks and deceits; he’d find a way of making them pay, every last one of them.

Selerima, Western Ensaimin, First Night of the Spring Fair

“It’s not them,” I told Usara regretfully. “Just some pair fresh off their mules who gave the wrong Watchman a funny look.”

“So where next? Oh, your pardon, madam.” The wizard stepped aside as a painted lass sauntered past, scarlet skirt hitched high on one hip to show off snowy petticoats, an inadequate shawl draped over barely covered shoulders. With the sun setting over the fairground, the other sort of flower-sellers were out looking for trade.

I looked after the whore. “If ’Gren’s found himself a blossom ripe for plucking, we’ve not much chance of finding them tonight. They’ve probably not even arrived yet. We’d have found them at the smithing stalls being sarcastic about the quality of the metalwork. I’d have put money on it.”

Usara looked at me quizzically. “Tormalin coin or one of these local pennies?”

“All right,” I amended, “maybe just an ale-trader’s token.”

The clash of cymbals and a thrum of strings announced a small band making up with enthusiasm for their lack of numbers and skill. Their leader put his battered pipe to his mouth and blew a squeaky flourish. “Good folk of Selerima and honored guests at our feast, I invite you to view a masquerade of rare talent and no little beauty! The Martlet Players will be giving their rendition of The Gulf Traders at the Fleet Hound, commencing at the second chime of evening.” He turned to his motley musicians and they struck up a ragged fanfare before launching into one of those tunes that everyone knows a different set of words to. With the piper leading, they set off down to the next junction to make their bold declaration again.

I looked at Usara. “Fancy an evening at the masquerades?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied cautiously. “There are masquerades and masquerades.”

I laughed. “The Fleet Hound is a respectable house, right up on the market square. When did you last hear of a brothel with a name like that? If you want girls wearing nothing but a few silk flowers and a winning smile, you’d better try down by the waterfront.”

“I’ll resist the temptation,” said the wizard dryly, “unless you think we might find these elusive brothers somewhere around there.”

I shook my head. “If ’Gren’s in a brothel, he won’t be wasting his time looking at the posies, he’ll be busy hunting the honey. But Sorgrad certainly likes a good play. It’s worth taking a look around the masquerades.” And since those of us who live the traveling life, masqueraders, confidence men, and gamblers, nearly always pitch up at the same big festivals, I reckoned I could put a decently minted silver penny on my chances of getting word of Sorgrad at very least. With luck, I could leave a few messages with people who actually knew him.

“So whereabouts is the Fleet Hound?” Usara was looking vainly for the Conclave Tower.

“This way.” I led him down a side street that took us to the marketplace. With bawdy amusements down at the fairground getting ever more raucous as the night deepened, the worthies of the city were holding more sedate celebrations up here. The centerpiece was a blazing fire roasting an ox, courtesy of the Butchers’ Guild if the flensing knives on the pennants all around were any indication. A priest was invoking Ostrin’s blessing on the gathering and everyone was listening attentively, the older people even joining in the liturgy. The priest looked delighted, as well he might; this was the most attention anyone was going to pay to him between now and Solstice. Braziers made bright dots in the gathering darkness as the chill of the evening belied the sunshine of the passing day. Chestnuts were roasting to warm the hands and the belly, a reminder of how early the season still was.

“Hot wine, my lady?” A girl with flushed cheeks and bright eyes proffered a tray of steaming horn goblets. “Compliments of the Vintners’ Guild.”

“Thank you.” I passed a cup to Usara and sipped at my own, finding the spices and warmth good enough to mask the inadequacy of the vintage. “Over there,” I pointed to the far side of the busy square. “That’s the Fleet Hound.”

Usara drank thirstily, grimaced and looked distastefully into his wine before pouring the dregs onto the cobbles. “Where else do you suppose masquerades will be playing? Does this city have a purpose-built playhouse?”

“No,” I said scornfully. “The Looking Glass in Vanam is the only one of those this side of the White River. Selerimans make do with inn courtyards, like everywhere else.”

We made our way over, pausing at my insistence to accept coarse bread rolled around meat and crackling hacked from a plump porker halved from snout to curly tail and spitted either side of a searing fire. A queue was already forming outside the Fleet Hound; a few doors down, beneath the sign of the Swan in the Moon, two masqueraders in bright costumes were taking silver pennies from those keen to get in early enough to secure a good view.

“Livak!” One of the pair pushed up his mask and hailed me in delighted tones.

I laughed with equal pleasure. “Niello, how good to see you!” I grabbed Usara’s sleeve to drag him after me. “I’d have come sooner if I’d known you were here, but I thought you were fixed in Col for good. What happened to Lord Elkith’s Players? Wasn’t he buying the lease of an inn for you?”

Niello shrugged the exaggerated shoulders of his gaudy doublet. “The usual, my dear, a masquerader, a lady, a misunderstanding.”

“His wife,” I guessed.

“His sister,” grinned Niello wolfishly, running a hand over immaculate chestnut locks.

There was doubtless more to it: rows over money, takings spent on ale instead of paying the reckoning, costumes ruined or distrained for debt. None of that was my problem. “So, who are you playing with now?”

Niello swept a low bow with consummate grace. “We are the Brazen Bell Troupe.” His companion gave his hand bell a vigorous shake by way of illustration, which turned heads all around the square. “I joined them when they came to Col for the Winter Solstice.”

“I take it you two know each other,” said Usara in an undertone.

“We’ve had some dealings in the past.” I dimpled a coquettish smile at Niello, whose hazel eyes brightened hopefully. “You might be able to help us, Niello.”

“How?” he asked a touch warily.

“Do you remember Sorgrad and Sorgren? They were at the Cavalcade with me and Halice, Winter Solstice a year back?”

Niello frowned in thought. “Mountain Men, brothers, the little one rather unpredictable, as one might say?”

I nodded. “That’s them. You haven’t seen them, have you?”

“Not so far, though I have to confess, I could have missed them easily enough.”

“Could you look out for them?” I gave him a hopeful smile with all the wide-eyed charm I could muster. “We have some business to discuss with them.”

Niello looked fondly at me. “I can do better than that, Livvie. Reza’s here with me, the lad who was my runner in Col? He’ll remember that pair well enough, so why don’t I send him around a few of the other inns and masquerades to see if he can find them for you?”

I blew Niello a kiss. “You’re a treasure, do you know that?” And Reza now had an excellent excuse for spying out the competition.

“That’s what all the girls say, my pet. Now, get inside, you’re holding up paying customers!” He raised an arm to let the pair of us through and I led Usara to a table at one side of the courtyard.

“Livvie?” queried Usara with something perilously close to a smirk.

I raised a warning finger. “He’s the only one I let get away with that, and don’t you forget it. If I find anyone else calling me that, I’ll know who’s been talking out of turn!”

“How do you come to know him?” Usara twisted on the low bench to look back at Niello, who was coaxing a blushing youth to bring his wide-eyed companion in for the entertainment.

“I’ve been traveling the length and breadth of Ensaimin for ten years and more; I know a lot of people.” I turned to look for a serving wench. That was enough truth for Usara. In fact my friendship with Niello went back to my heedless girlhood in Vanam, when I spent my free time roaming the city looking for any mischief to enliven the tedium of life as a housemaid. Niello had been a lowly runner in those days, hanging around the Looking Glass and the lesser companies of players who played the inns and temple courtyards, carrying messages, mending costumes, standing with his spear on the edges of the big scenes and hoping for that one chance to take up a mask, to play the part to perfection.

The courtyard was filling up, people packed tightly at the sides of the stage lashed up out of planks and barrels. Rows of benches were set out in front, spectators rolling up cloaks to pad their seats as they prepared to enjoy the spectacle.

“Have you seen this one? The Back Gate Gossips they said it was.” Usara looked expectantly at the scenecloth obscuring the doorway into some back room of the inn where the players were busy organizing masks and costumes. It was painted with a bold portrayal of two improbably colored gardens separated by a looming wall. Two iron gates all wrought with curlicues stood on little platforms on either side of the stage, things that wouldn’t keep out a cat with theft on its mind but that would happily symbolize all manner of barriers for the willing playgoers.

I shook my head. “No, but it’ll be the usual kind of thing, young love frustrated by a stern father or an ambitious mother, a couple of comic bits about a pig and everything coming right after some wicked series of coincidences.” I beckoned to a maidservant who was wandering around looking vacant. “Wine for me and my friend and a flagon for the players, compliments of Mistress Deft.”

The girl looked uncertainly at me. Mistress Deft was an elderly scold from The Orphan’s Tears, a gloomy piece that had blighted every troupe’s repertoire a handful of years ago. “It’s a private joke,” I explained, “Niello will know what it means.”

“Some of the apprentices put that one on for Winter Solstice a couple of years ago,” said Usara unexpectedly.

“Do you have masquerades in Hadrumal then?”

“Only attempts got together for one performance, usually. Proper troupes don’t ever accept invitations, not even from the Archmage.” Usara sounded genuinely puzzled.

“Are you surprised?” I asked, incredulous. “When you mages have spent Saedrin knows how many generations building up your terrifying legends, your hidden island locked away in enchanted mists, powerful sorceries holding the very stones together? What player’s going to take on an audience like that? People throwing fruit if they don’t like the play is bad enough, never mind risking being turned into blackbeetles!”

Usara looked faintly affronted. “People don’t believe those old stories nowadays.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said darkly. Not that I had any intention of dispelling the rumors. If I wanted to impress people by casually mentioning that I had been to the mystical city of the wizards, I was hardly about to tell them it was a staid and tedious place full of self-absorbed scholars and pompous mages. “Remember what you thought before you proved mage-born and were sent off to be apprenticed.”

Usara shook his head. “I’m Hadrumal born and bred, a fourth generation on my mother’s side, five on my father’s and mages borne on every branch of the family tree. For me it’s the mainland that’s where all the mysteries lie!” He grinned and I smiled faintly back at him. How had I managed to travel so many hundreds of leagues with the man and never find that out? I chided myself for that slackness; I’d better be on my guard in case his ignorance landed us in some bear-pit, for all his native wit and subsequent learning. Just how shrewd was he? “So, what did you think of the cockatrice?”

Usara frowned. “It started life as an ordinary cockerel, obviously, until someone cut off its spurs and comb. What I don’t understand is how that man set the spurs growing on its head instead.”

So he’d seen nearly all the trick. “You have to castrate the bird first, so I’ve been told.” A chorus of horns ended all conversation and the Explanatory in his plain white mask and unadorned wig stepped out from behind the backdrop. He gave us the set-up for the tale and the usual broad hint of what moral we might expect to improve us, harking back to the days of pious plays performed in the shrines. As was modern custom, half the audience listened attentively to find out who was who and the other half stirred restively, wanting the dancing girls and the comedy with the pig. I sipped my wine as our hero, a rich youth from the nearside house, came on to declaim his love for the virtuous daughter of the warden of his guild. This paragon was apparently and somewhat improbably off traveling with her aunt. There were jokes about the warden hating anyone who didn’t make coin through honest trade and a few mild sallies about his girth, which must have been written in for local color, given the immoderate laughter they provoked.

The cook of the neighboring house spent a lengthy passage complaining to the hero’s housekeeper about how badly her miserly master treated her and then, to everyone’s relief, the messenger came rushing in with muddy mask and windblown hair firmly set with flour paste. After stressing how private his news was, he proceeded to tell all and sundry how the virtuous maiden had been abducted by hired bravos. As those of the audience who’d failed to see this coming gasped, the band struck up and dancers came skipping out from behind the backcloth.

I nudged Usara. “I’ll have to tell Niello upper-house servants would sit naked on the rooftops before so much as commenting on the weather to a cook!”

The mage didn’t answer, leaning forward for a better view of the girls, whose shapely legs were barely concealed beneath muslin skirts bright with ribbons. Gaily colored half-masks hid their eyes, but not their enticing smiles. After an energetic song, just the tasteful side of bawdy, it was time for the clowns, one hook-nosed and the other moonfaced, so no surprises there. They were playing tradesmen this time, their problem a guard dog who attacked anything in breeches. One clown was a knife-grinder wooing the cook, with all the jokes one might expect about blades and scabbards and we soon learned that the dog was keeping him from getting a regular sharpening. I recognized Niello’s voice behind the hook-nosed mask and he played the scene with a relish that set me giggling.

As the hero came on to lament the loss of his love in tedious detail, a stir ran through the crowd behind me. I turned quickly in my seat but Usara’s attention was still fixed on the stage. My instinctive trepidation was replaced with delight as I saw two blond figures pushing toward us, heads at shoulder height to most of the men, one with the unmistakable stocky build of the mountains, the other slighter, long hair tied back with a braided leather knot.

“Make some space, Usara.” I dug an elbow into his ribs and he shuffled along the bench with courteous apologies to some apprentices on his far side. ’Gren grabbed a stool from behind someone unwise enough to stand up for a better view and passed it to Sorgrad, who promptly settled himself at our table as if he’d been there all evening.

“We got word you were here.” Sorgren slipped in between me and Usara, helping himself to the last of my wine with a cheeky grin. “That’s welcome; I’m dry as a lime-burner’s hat.”

Sorgrad pulled a little silver goblet from his pocket and I filled it from our jug. “I’ve been leaving word everywhere I could think of. When did you arrive?”

“Just after sunset.” Sorgrad drank thirstily. “We’ve just come up from Col.”

“Do I owe you money or something, Sandy?” ’Gren challenged Usara’s inquisitive face with a bold stare of his own. “Want to try minding your own mutton?”

“This is Usara and he’s with me.” I reclaimed my cup from ’Gren and looked around for the serving girl. “We’ll get to that later. What were you doing in Col?”

“Keeping out of trouble.” Sorgrad smiled contentedly at me and I noted the fine wool broadcloth of his maroon jerkin, skillfully cut in the very latest fashion and expensively tailored to flatter his barrel of a chest. Silver ornaments on his belt and purse were plentiful and untarnished, the leather still shiny and new. His fine blond hair was neatly cut beneath an elegant cap in the new southern style. Even over stable smells and the sweaty mass of revelers, I could smell the lingering perfume of expensive bath oils.

“So your little project in Draximal went well?” I inquired innocently. The last time I’d seen the brothers, they’d been full of a madcap plan to steal a mercenary pay-chest, gold intended to finance a further season of the interminable civil wars in Lescar.

Sorgrad nodded. “We found some old friends who fancied getting paid up front for a change and not spilling too much blood. We picked the right spot on the road through the hills north of Sharlac and it was easy as clubbing a roosting bird.”

“So what brings you to Selerima?” Usara had to raise his voice as the dancers came on again to some lively pipe music.

“We thought a certain Cordainer might be here for the festival.” Sorgrad’s blue eyes burned dark with a promise of vengeance. They don’t say Mountain memories are carved in stone for nothing.

“Who?” Usara looked to me for explanation.

“Later.” Perhaps, if I could come up with an acceptable way of explaining that Arle Cordainer had masterminded that robbery I didn’t want to discuss with any Watchman. He’d recruited our services but had then found a way to leave the city with all the proceeds while the rest of us faced a climb up the gallows, almost certainly on account of him laying information. I turned to wave at a potman, summoning more wine and an extra cup.

The action resumed with a new maidservant appearing in the miser’s house. Unsurprisingly she wore the delicate mask and ringletted wig of the mislaid heroine. I poured more wine for Sorgrad since there was no point trying to get ’Gren’s attention if there was a trim female to look at. That was fine by me; as long as he was occupied, he couldn’t be getting into mischief.

“Will you be staying hereabouts after the festival?” I asked Sorgrad. “I take it you’re keeping clear of Lescar for the summer.”

“We didn’t leave anyone alive who could identify us,” he shrugged. “But yes, once we’d shared out the coin we thought it best to put a few leagues between the others and us. There are a couple with mouths no safer than a torn pocket and if they find themselves facing a swing on the nevergreen tree, they’ll speak up smart enough to save their necks.”

I nodded and chose my next words carefully. “Charoleia said that she’d heard a couple of men had been taken for the robbery and the Duke of Draximal is out for their blood.” Usara leaned forward, trying to hear what I was saying, but ’Gren pushed him back with an impatient hand as his view of the players was blocked.

Sorgrad looked at me sharply. “When did you see her?”

“Just before the turn of Aft-winter, me and Usara were on our way here,” I told him. “She’s been in Relshaz as usual; that’s how I knew you were planning to come here for the festival. She said she’d seen you at Winter Solstice?”

Sorgrad frowned into his goblet. I knew he wouldn’t question any word I claimed to have from Charoleia. Given she makes her coin talking gullible people into plausible schemes, her network for gathering information is second to none. She spends her winters in one of the biggest ports on the Gulf of Lescar, and everyone knows that if they send her information she can use, gold will eventually work its way back to them. In this case, the news happened to be true.

Usara said something to ’Gren that I didn’t catch but that went unanswered in any case as the clowns were back on. The eager knife-grinder planned to get past the guard dog by wearing a dress. This naturally led to Reza under ragged fur and floppy-eared dog’s head chasing Niello around the stage, the latter wearing no more than mask and skin-tight, fine-knitted wool.

“How dare he pad himself like that!” a blushing girl behind me gasped, intent on Niello’s hose. I knew better than she did and allowed myself a quiet moment of nostalgic reflection.

“We’re far enough away to be safe,” Sorgrad’s face was untroubled when I looked back to him. “No one’s going to hunt us clear across Caladhria and four-fifths the way through Ensaimin.”

“They might if the reward were large enough,” I said slowly. “I heard the Duke was offering a tenth-share of what was stolen.”

Sorgrad’s sapphire eyes looked speculatively over the rim of his silver cup. “That’s what you heard?”

I shrugged. “It could just be tavern talk but it might be prudent to take a paying proposition elsewhere for a season or so.”

“Which you just happen to have to put to us?” Sorgrad raised an inquiring eyebrow. He nodded at Usara, who had given up trying to talk to ’Gren and turned his attention to the masquerade. “Where does he figure in the game?”

“Never mind him for the moment. Yes, I do have something in play and I think you should hear me out.” I smiled at him. “We could both come out ahead of the game.”

Sorgrad’s laugh momentarily turned a few nearby heads from the stage, where hero and heroine were clutching tearful hands through one of the wrought-iron gates. Sorgrad leaned closer to me.

“So what’s the offer? No offense, Livak, but the last I heard you’d gone off with Halice to work for some wizards again. I can’t say I fancy that. Charoleia told us she’d had a letter from Halice all the way from some new land clear across the ocean. The Archmage discovered it?” He gestured toward the stage where the heroine was now weeping alone. “People sleeping in a cave for thirty generations, heartless villains trying to steal their lands, wizards raising dragons to drive them off; Niello couldn’t make a masquerade out of a story like that and expect people to swallow it!”

“I know it sounds incredible, but those people in the cave were the Tormalin colony that Nemith the Last lost track of just before the fall of the Old Empire,” I explained.

Sorgrad looked more interested, despite himself. “We’ve all heard the stories about that lost colony, rivers running over golden gravel, diamonds loose in the grass. People have been trying to find it again ever since the Chaos.”

“I don’t know about any of that, the gold and the gems, I mean,” I said hastily, “but do you remember those islands out in the eastern ocean, the ones where I was taken when I was forced into thieving for that wizard?”

Sorgrad nodded warily and I strove to keep my voice level, ignoring memories of that ordeal. “Don’t forget how much coin I brought back from that trip, Sorgrad. Say what you like about wizards, they certainly pay well.” If you come back alive, I added silently to myself. “It was these Ice Islanders—well, their forefathers—who stamped the original settlers into the mud. The ones that managed to escape hid themselves in a cave, wrapped themselves up in enchantments and the Archmage sent an expedition to find them last summer. That’s what Halice and me got ourselves mixed up in. These people had magic, ’Grad, old magic, not the flash tricks of the Archmage and his like, but lost enchantments that put them to sleep and kept them safe while all these generations passed. Truthfully, I saw it with my own eyes, saw them roused.”

I paused, expecting a scornful response from Sorgrad, but he was looking thoughtful. “So the Archmage woke these people up and now they’ve got their colony back? It still sounds like some bad masquerade. Why are you still bothering with any of this?” he demanded with uncharacteristic sharpness. “You used to keep as far away from magic as you could, same as the rest of us, and from what Halice says these Elietimm have enchantments to turn your hair white! You said yourself you’ve no real idea how it was you managed to withstand them. I know you were blackmailed into that first job for the Archmage, there was no helping that, and as for last year, I suppose you owed Planir something for saving your skin, but I don’t understand why you’re putting your neck in a noose of your own free will again! Is it something to do with this Tormalin swordsman of yours? Charoleia was telling us you’ve been letting him pick your pocket willingly enough.”

“That tongue’s too long for your teeth, Sorgrad,” I warned him. There are times when the efficiency of Charoleia’s network can be less than welcome and I wondered what else Halice had put in her letter. “I’m working for a Tormalin prince now, not the wizards. Yes, the Elietimm scared the shit out of me and I still wake up sweating at the memory and that’s one reason why I’m heading as far away from the ocean coast as I can. Hear me out. The way Messire sees it, it’s clear these Ice Islanders have had enough of their freezing rocks and are looking for somewhere warm and dry for a change. Planir threw them out of the colony and we found their footprints in Dalasor and Northern Tormalin the year before last—”

“I’ve heard no word of any such threat,” interrupted Sorgrad skeptically.

“That’s because Planir and Messire have put their heads together and decided to keep it all quiet until they’ve got some plan in place.” Ryshad and I had argued ourselves breathless over that one, advocating instead the circulation of detailed descriptions of the Elietimm in their distinctive liveries, so that they’d stand out like the stones on a stag hound if they ever tried to make landfall again. I still thought our so-called leaders were wrong. “Sometime soon, the Emperor and his cronies will be facing organized soldiery backed by enchanters who can pull the wits out through someone’s nose from half a league away,” I continued. “My master knows he’ll need magic to fight back.”

“So what does this prince want you to do?” Sorgrad was still looking as darkly hostile as someone with such a fair complexion could hope to. “Who is he, anyway?”

“Messire D’Olbriot. You’ve heard of him, surely?” It was a gold Crown certainty that Sorgrad would have heard of arguably the most important noble House of the Tormalin Empire.

He nodded. “Word is he’s virtually running the court, what with Emperor Tadriol still being so green. What are you doing for him?”

I held Sorgrad’s gaze with my own. “Messire D’Olbriot wants to understand this old magic, ideally before anyone else thinks to start looking, to know what he might be up against. It gets better. The Archmage wants to learn all about this old magic as well. Artifice, that’s what they’re calling it now, or aetheric magic, take your pick. The point is, the wizards of Hadrumal can’t use this old magic, don’t ask me why. That’s got Planir worried, so he’s doing everything he can to find out what he might be facing.”

“So your patron, if he has the information the Archmage is so keen on finding, he can trade it for some mages to start throwing fire and lightning at any Ice Islander who wants to come ashore without paying his harbor dues?” Sorgrad was still looking thoughtful but less hostile. “That makes sense.”

“I knew you’d see it,” I grinned. Messire D’Olbriot hadn’t, not until I put it to him, for all his years of shuffling the pieces around the games of Tormalin politics. The whole notion of getting involved with mages and wizardry was still about as welcome in Toremal as dancing with a pox-rotted whore. “As I say, this is a job that could pay very well indeed. We might even be able to play both ends against the middle and double our winnings.”

“So how do you get to be drawing a rune in the game?” Sorgrad asked.

I could see curiosity beginning to get the better of him and breathed a little easier. “The word is Artifice came from the ancient races originally; the Plains People, the Mountain Men, the Forest Folk. That’s where the Old Tormalins got it from.”

“Along with their lands, their wealth and their stock,” grunted Sorgrad.

I pressed on. “Tormalin scholars and Planir’s wizards have been rummaging through archives and libraries for the last half-year or more, looking for clues. I’ve done a little looking around myself and come up with something interesting”—once the scholars had recovered from their astonishment that a commoner like me might actually be able to read more than a laundry list and let me in to fossick through their dusty tomes. “I found a song book, going back to before the fall of the Empire, lots of old songs from all the ancient races, full of hints of aetheric magic.”

“This is interesting?” Sorgrad’s tone suggested it was anything but.

“I think so, and if we can get all the songs translated from the original, I think Planir and D’Olbriot will agree, especially if the songs actually hold some of the incantations to work the magic.”

“How likely is that?” frowned Sorgrad.

“Not so long odds as you might think,” I assured him. “I’ve seen this aetheric magic worked and I’ll wager any coin minted that there are Forest rhythms in their enchantments. I’m a minstrel’s daughter, Sorgrad, you know you can trust my ear.”

“So why aren’t the wizards looking into this for themselves?” Sorgrad demanded.

“The particular wizard Planir has coordinating the scholars is a small-minded cloak carrier called Casuel,” I explained tartly. “His plans and method are carved in stone and he wasn’t about to listen to my theories, especially when he couldn’t carry a tune if it was knocked down and tied up!”

“And you didn’t just pull a case of books down on his head to get him out of your way?” grinned Sorgrad.

“Don’t think I wasn’t tempted!” I took a sip of wine. “No, I just went around him. There’s a favorite nephew of the House who owes Ryshad a measure of respect, Esquire Camarl. I persuaded him this book was worth investigating and he suggested to Messire D’Olbriot that they pay me to go and get the songs translated.”

“And you’ve had to come all this way to find someone to do the work? I take it that’s what you want me for?” Sorgrad didn’t sound impressed. “I appreciate you wanting to share a fee with your friends, Livak, but there must have been someone closer to hand!”

“Actually, no.” I shrugged. “The scholars could manage the Old High Tormalin but they don’t trouble themselves with what they call lost languages. We found a few nobles who’d spent time up in Gidesta, but Mountain speech sufficient for ordering wine, bed and a whore in the mining camps wasn’t much use with archaic sagas.”

“So you’re looking for someone closer to the old ways to translate them?” Sorgrad ran a pensive finger around the rim of his finely engraved goblet.

“I am, and from every inquiry I’ve made that means going into the wildwood and up into the heights. There’s no one I’ve found between here and Toremal can be sure of all the words.” I’d learned enough to convince me these songs rang with Artifice, though.

“Are you getting paid up front or on results?” demanded Sorgrad suddenly.

“I got a handsome retainer before I set out,” I assured him, “and I’ve authority to draw funds on D’Olbriot reserves in all the major cities hereabouts.” The bronze amulet bearing the D’Olbriot seal hung warm and solid beneath my shirt, but I wasn’t about to attract unwanted attention by showing it to him here. “Final payment depends on exactly what I find out. Yes, I want the songs translated, but with any luck anyone who can master the ancient tongues will point me toward people with useful knowledge of old aetheric lore or some such. I can get myself to the Forest, being half-blood and using my father’s name to vouch for me. Once I find some real Folk, I should be able to talk someone into helping me. What I need to get me into the Mountains is someone who knows how things work up there, who can speak the language, who can make the right introductions.”

“What you need is me and ’Gren.” Mischief lurked in the back of Sorgrad’s eyes. “It might just be worth doing, if we can agree a decent price.”

His amusement was unnerving me and I realized I’d never quite learned why the pair of them had left the mountains in the first place. “We’re not going to be running into handfuls of people eager to skin you for some price on your hide, are we?” I asked sternly.

“No, not as long as we steer clear of a few places.” Sorgrad looked into his empty goblet, thoughtful again. I poured him more wine. “Let me think about it,” he said at length. “I’ll need to talk to ’Gren.”

“Come and see me tomorrow morning. I’ll show you the book.”

I turned to the stage, where dancers were flirting their garters at the audience again. There was no benefit in pressing Sorgrad; he’d give his answer in his own good time and then ’Gren would do what his older brother recommended. ’Gren didn’t concern himself with much beyond taking on life with an eagerness that frequently slipped into recklessness. That was doubtless why they had left the mountains; ’Gren had done something without thinking through the consequences and they’d had to get clear. They’d have worked their way to Lescar, like exiles from every corner of the map. ’Gren’s propensity for casual violence would have soon proved an asset in the mercenary life, rather than the liability it can be elsewhere, so they would have stayed on, seeing that rich pickings could be made from the endless circle of civil wars.

The dancers left the stage to the masqueraders and I soon caught up with the plot. The miser who aimed to marry her money had abducted our heroine and he was working her as a scullery maid until she agreed.

“Why doesn’t he just force the issue by raping the silly poult?” Sorgrad murmured quizzically.

“She doesn’t look as if she could fight off a winter cold,” I agreed. The cook and the housekeeper came on for another of those convenient masquerade conversations, where two characters tell each other things both of them already know. “There’s your answer!”

“The old man in The Orphan’s Tears was impotent as well.” Usara leaned around behind ’Gren to speak to me, looking puzzled.

“It goes with a droopy-nosed mask as a rule,” I whispered. Saedrin save me from these wizards with their sheltered lives.

Next for a turn by the garden gates were our hero and heroine. He was all for calling the Watch and simply having the old wretch arrested.

“First sensible thing I’ve heard him say,” Sorgrad whispered with a grin. “An honest citizen should always turn to the Watch, after all.”

“Bet you a silver Mark she won’t,” I replied. My coin was safe as our heroine replied with undeniable truth and convincing histrionics that no one would believe the old skinflint hadn’t had a finger in her purse, her reputation would be ruined, and our hero’s parents would never allow them to marry. I beckoned for more wine as we sat through the usual romantic nonsense that followed.

I found myself thinking about Ryshad, the Tormalin swordsman Sorgrad had mentioned. Our paths had crossed when he’d been pursuing Ice Islanders on Messire’s account. Elietimm had been sneaking ashore to rob and kill in Tormalin through the last couple of years, stealing the valuables that they hoped would lead them to the lost colony of Kel Ar’Ayen. I’d been after those self-same valuables, reluctantly thieving at the behest of the Archmage.

A fire of sudden passion and the sensual delights that followed were nothing new to me but the real surprise had been the unwelcome sense of loss when Ryshad had returned to his patron. I’m not inclined to pine over men or anything else as a rule—the runes play themselves out and I move on—but I began to suspect we’d become one in more ways than just between the sheets. When chance and the Archmage’s connivance brought us back together, I’d found myself compromising and yielding so Ryshad and I need not part. I wasn’t dressing up my feelings in scented, senseless words like the heroine fluttering about the stage, but I’d finally had to admit I wanted to be with Ryshad and not just until the turn of the year nullified all deals. At least I had learned he was as set on me, a discovery that left me both elated and wary.

I looked up at the artificial lovers with faces of wood and paint and lives drawn from the masquerader’s stock of characters: the noble lover, the lost heir, the wronged beauty, the cheerful rogue, the wise old man, the comic artisans. Their predicaments and the solutions fitted like pieces in a child’s puzzle box; not so, life for Ryshad and me. We’d reconciled my flirtations with necessary dishonesty on the road with his duty as sworn man to a noble House, largely by ignoring the subject, if truth were told, but finding any hope of a future together, for however long we might want one, was proving mightily difficult. Whatever else I might tell Sorgrad, Sorgren, the Archmage or D’Olbriot, that was what all my present contriving was aiming to achieve. But that was my secret.

Niello’s ringing tones dragged my attention back and I realized the two tradesmen were offering to steal the heroine out of the miser’s house, so she could be found wandering in the woods by our hero and returned to her loving family.

“And what am I supposed to be doing in the woods?” the hero asked in puzzled tones.

“Picking pretty flowers?” leered the moon-faced clown with a meaningful gesture at our hero’s hose, which was definitely padded. “What else would a young man be doing in the springtime?”

Laughter swelled. “I don’t think Daddy’s little treasure will be coming home untarnished,” I commented to Sorgrad with mock disapproval.

The masquerade romped down comfortably predictable paths: the improbable lovers chasing in and out of the back-cloth with the clowns, the dog, the cook and the miser raising ever louder laughter as the double-edged jests flew thick and fast. The miser made the mistake of trying to enter his own house by the back gate in an attempt to foil the heroine’s escape and was duly stripped of breeches and, shirt tails flapping, was chased off by his own dog. The knife-grinder seized his opportunity, first to rescue the heiress and then to get his boots under the cook’s table. The dancers came on to draw down the pace with a sedate display of lace and ankles and the piece ended with our hero and heroine emerging from the backcloth in their wedding clothes, her hair duly cut and laid on Drianon’s altar.

The Explanatory raised his voice determinedly above the people stirring and calling for ale, proclaiming the moral conclusion, even if the tales would have shocked any priest who stumbled across the threshold by mistake. I was quite surprised that Niello hadn’t cut that, as so many companies do nowadays, but this was a festival after all, when people like to see the old ways duly observed.

As the company came out to take a bow, Niello waved and mimed taking a drink, pointing at our table.

“Are we staying?” I looked at the others.

“Definitely,” answered ’Gren promptly. The dancing girls were emerging from the backcloth in twos and threes, slippers in hand, warm shawls draped over their costumes. “It’s too early to go to bed, without company anyway.”

He strolled toward the stage, collecting a pitcher and a handful of cups from a serving maid. The dancers barely registered him at first, a slight figure in nondescript buff jerkin and breeches like half the men in the city. I watched as the girls’ heads turned one by one, golden ringlets brassy next to ’Gren’s flaxen head. Curious glances were replaced by demure giggles and ’Gren ended up sitting on the edge of the stage, four lasses around him sipping their wine and giggling flirtatiously as he praised their performance with flattering detail.

Niello sauntered over, swinging his hook-nosed mask idly from its ribbons, a tattered rainbow jerkin unbuttoned over a sweaty shirt. The masculine scent of him wasn’t unpleasant as he dropped onto the bench and gave me a warm smile. He ran a hand through the tangle of his chestnut hair and heaved a gratified sigh. “So, what did you think?”

“Most entertaining,” Usara pushed a drink toward him. “First rate.”

“Good enough for the Looking Glass,” I agreed.

“Hardly that,” shrugged Niello but his expression betrayed his pleasure. “I think we could still make more of the business with the dog.”

“Not without you stripping naked and really giving the girls an eyeful,” I retorted.

“Is that a sacrifice I could make?” he mused, mock serious. “Perhaps not; I don’t think the Watch would see the funny side of it. What did you think of my scene with the cook?”

“Where was the letter?” demanded Sorgrad.

“What letter?” Niello was perplexed.

“The letter that either has some crucial significance and gets mislaid, or that brings a vital piece of intelligence to solve everyone’s problems.” Sorgrad’s smile teased. “Every good story has to have one or the other, surely?”

We discussed the masquerade in general and Niello’s part in particular for some while. Gradually the courtyard emptied until only we four were left with the players as they relaxed. The five chimes of midnight sounded from some distant tower.

“So whereabouts are you staying?” Niello’s eyes slid from me to Usara with an obvious question.

“We have rooms at the Six Stars,” I laid a gentle emphasis on the word “rooms.”

Niello whistled soundlessly. “You’ve come up in the world, my dear. I’ll escort you back when you’re ready to go to your bed.”

I smiled but shook my head. “No need, thanks all the same.”

His hazel eyes clouded with enough disappointment to flatter me but he recovered his poise in the next breath. “If you’ll excuse me, I really should speak to some of the company. It was a good performance, but there are always improvements to be made.”

We watched as he went straight as a scenting hound for the lass who’d played the heroine, her own face showing none of the innocence of the mask she’d worn earlier.

“You turned him down last time as well,” observed Sorgrad slyly. “Keeping yourself free for your swordsman?”

“Keeping myself free of the itch,” I replied with some asperity. “That’s what I got the last time I let him talk me into a tumble.”

I caught an expression of frozen distaste on Usara’s face and was about to challenge it when commotion erupted by the stage. ’Gren had his arm around the waist of a pretty dancer whose face glowed with the vacant sensuality that so often causes trouble. The second clown, his own face nigh as fat as his mask and red with wine and anger, was reaching for the lass’s arm. “Come on, Lalla! I said we’re going. You’re coming with me tonight.”

’Gren swung the girl backward out of the clown’s grasp. “Lalla wants to stay, don’t you, pet?” He tightened his arm around her waist and smiled up at her.

“Go away, Vadim,” one of the other girls interrupted unwisely. “Lalla’s no more your property than any of the rest of us. When are you going to get that into your wooden skull?”

Vadim thrust a warning finger in her face. “Shut your mouth, Kelty, unless you want me to shut it for you.”

I saw ’Gren’s expression harden. With all the delight he takes in the company of pretty girls, he has an exaggerated sense of the courtesy due to women. He lifted Lalla up and sat her on the edge of the stage, his unexpected strength surprising her into a witless little giggle.

“I don’t think these ladies require your company any further this evening.” ’Gren squared up to Vadim, mocking him with the accents of the masquerade. “Why don’t you take yourself off?”

It took Vadim, a man of Col by his accent, a moment to grasp the meaning of the north-country obscenity. Lalla was a breath quicker and giggled but Kelty and the others had the wit to get ’Gren between themselves and Vadim. The fat clown’s face twisted in a furious scowl and he lashed out at ’Gren with a fist the size of a donkey’s hoof. ’Gren avoided the blow with ease, dodging around to land a mocking slap on Vadim’s back. “Over here, lard arse!”

Usara braced his hands on the table, rising and ready to intervene. “Don’t,” I laid a firm hand on his arm.

“Oh come on,” objected Usara. “It’s hardly a fair fight, is it?”

“No, it’s not, but the fat man started it, so he’ll have to take what’s coming to him.” I tightened my grip.

The wizard sat down, bemused face begging an explanation. I directed his attention to the fight. ’Gren was deftly evading Vadim’s clumsy swings, landing stinging slaps on the clown’s puce face. The idiot girl Lalla was fluttering with distress, trying to catch the sleeve of either one despite the urgent hisses of Kelty and the others telling her to get clear.

“I’ll throttle you with your own tripes, you little shit,” raged Vadim, grabbing a stool to fling it at ’Gren, who dodged it easily before throwing a platter of bones and scraps back to catch Vadim full in the chest, spattering him with grease. Enraged, the big man lunged forward, mad as a taunted bear. A fruit rind under ’Gren’s foot betrayed him, dropping him to one knee. With a roar of triumph, Vadim swung at the side of ’Gren’s head. Moving away even before the blow connected, ’Gren had an arm out to cushion his landing and rolled with a grace most tumblers would envy. Back on his feet, he split Vadim’s lip with a lightning punch before the fat man knew what had hit him. A second blow to the gut doubled the clown up. He’d made the same mistake as so many others, thinking ’Gren’s size meant an easy mark. I’d lost count of the men who’d learned to their considerable cost that skinny frame was strong as seasoned wood and whipcord. There was also the fact that ’Gren never imagined he could be beaten. I caught Sorgrad’s eye and he nodded; we’d both seen ’Gren was upping the pace.

’Gren took a step backward, ready and waiting. When Vadim straightened up, he promptly kicked the big man in one shin. I winced, knowing ’Gren still favors the steel-capped boots of the sensible miner. Vadim howled and hopped as he clutched his leg, as comic as anything he’d shown us on stage. The witless Lalla was stupid enough to laugh and with a speed he’d have been better employing against ’Gren, Vadim lashed out, knocking the daft blossom clean off her feet. Kelty darted forward to drag the weeping chit clear.

The mocking amusement on ’Gren’s face was lit with bright anger and a blade glinted steely in one hand.

“He won’t kill him, will he?” Niello tapped Sorgrad on the shoulder, faint concern wrinkling his forehead. “I’ll have no end of trouble finding another clown who knows that part, now the festival proper has started.”

Sorgrad didn’t answer and I was watching the fight. Vadim was moving more cautiously now, eyes flickering to ’Gren’s knife hand. ’Gren was coming closer, eyes shining with a pale blue fire and a faint smile curving the corners of his mouth. He was enjoying himself and my heart sank; that made him so very dangerous. The two of them circled around and around, feet scuffing up the rushes and rubbish. Vadim spread his hands, checking behind for tables and benches at every other step. ’Gren followed, poised like a cat.

Usara made some faint murmur of frustration. “Can’t we put a stop to this?”

“You won’t succeed, and if you spoil ’Gren’s fun you’ll make an enemy for life.” The mage’s mouth hung open with questions he couldn’t quite frame. I spared a glance for Sorgrad, to reassure myself he was ready to intervene. He was the only one who could stop ’Gren killing the idiot now.

Vadim made his play in that same breath, fat face creased with vicious cunning. He edged around a table where lamb bones lay in a puddle of sauce. Snatching up a carving fork, he lunged at ’Gren, a swerving move to stay beyond the sweep of the smaller man’s knife. What Vadim didn’t expect was ’Gren instantly swapping the knife to his other hand, a sideways step taking him out of danger and around to Vadim’s unprotected back. The knife flashed in the lamplight, the swiftness of the move deceiving my eye and I had been watching for it, knowing it of old.

Vadim’s yell mingled pain and outrage and blood oozed between his fingers as he clutched a deep gash in the meat of his shoulder. Stumbling around in shock, he gaped at ’Gren, who was grinning broadly, daggers in both hands now. Vadim dropped his weapon from nerveless fingers, not the only one to see his death in the Mountain Man’s bright eyes.

“Nia mer es! Als verget.” Sorgrad’s curt command in the Mountain tongue cut through the tense silence. The fire in ’Gren’s face faded and he looked at his brother, puzzled, then at Vadim, almost as if seeing him for the first time. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

“I think you owe these ladies an apology, friend.” Sorgrad’s voice was genial enough but the glitter in his eyes told a different story. Vadim curled his lip and drew a deep breath on some defiant retort.

Niello stepped forward making a wary bow to ’Gren while prudently keeping out of range of his knives. “That’s enough, Vadim. You’ve had your lesson in manners, so get out of here and clean yourself up.”

I couldn’t ever recall hearing such authority in Niello’s voice and it certainly brought Vadim to heel. The clown drew himself up and spat bloody phlegm into the rushes at ’Gren’s feet. He left the yard, all eyes on him in silent hostility, no one offering so much as a handkerchief to staunch his oozing wound.

As soon as Vadim’s back was turned, the girl Kelty was at ’Gren’s elbow, offering him wine, dabbing delicately at a bruise on his cheekbone now darkening impressively under his fair skin. He sheathed his knives and submitted meekly to her ministrations. She shot a proprietorial glance at the other dancers, who had to content themselves with helping the grizzling Lalla back into the inn. ’Gren gave me a wink over Kelty’s shoulder that suggested his energies were far from spent.

“Come on, Usara. It’s time I was off to my bed.” I stood up and gave Sorgrad a brief embrace. “Call on us in the morning.”

“We’ll do that, first thing. Well, as soon as we’re out of bed.” Sorgrad’s gaze was resting on the erstwhile heroine, now standing looking rather impatiently after Niello, who was trying to excuse the fight to the innkeeper.

“Come on, Usara.” The wizard followed me out with an air of confusion that kept him silent all the way back to our inn, up the stairs and into our respective bedchambers.