Drinker of Souls

When he was drained, she rolled him off her and got shakily to her feet, lit the lamp from the dying fire, threw on a few more sticks of wood. Toe in his ribs, she nudged him over. The Censor. She’d humiliated him; this was how he got even. Got dead. She looked away. No anger or fear left, all she felt was dirtied. Filthy. She looked down at herself and was startled by a drop of blood falling by her foot. Her thighs were smeared with blood. Another drop fell. Hastily she stepped into the tub, scooped up a dollop of fresh soap and began washing herself, gently at first then scrubbing the washcloth harder and harder over her whole bod^y as if she could scrub the memory of the dead man off her skin.

By the time she finished, the bleeding had stopped. She padded to the bed, wrapped herself in a blanket and sat crosslegged in the middle of the stained sheets, staring at the door.

About an hour later Yaril came back with a bundle of clothing. Brann blinked at them, understanding then where Yaril had gone. The changechild had seen the way she looked at the stinking shirt and trousers. Once she was safely asleep, Yaril went out and stole clean things for her.

“You didn’t lock the door,” Brann said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

Yaril looked at the dead man, shook her head, held up the clumsy key. “I did.”

Brann opened her mouth to say something, forgot it, began to cry, the gasping body-shaking sobs of a hurt child.

Yaril dropped the clothing and ran to her, sat on the bed beside her, murmured soft cooing words to her, patted her, soothed her, comforting her as a mother would a frightened child, gentling her into a deep healing sleep with the song of her voice, spinning sleep with that soft compelling voice.

WHEN SHE WOKE, the sound of rain filled the room.

While she slept, her body had healed itself; the bruises and strains were gone and the burning hurt between her thighs. She sat up. The body was gone. She got quickly out of bed and started pulling on the clean clothes Yaril had brought her.

A knock on the door as she was tucking in her shirt tail. “Come.”

Jaril came in looking a little wan. “I was right,” he said, not waiting for her questions. “Mountain blew east not north. The river has changed course some, got more cataracts, the track out is chewed up so badly that if you didn’t know where Arth Slya was already you’d never find it. Dance floor is cracked, part of it tilted. Some of the workshops slid into the river. Your folk are out clearing up, a few bumps and bruises but I didn’t see anyone seriously hurt. Your mother’s fine. Her looms didn’t get burnt, the fire in your house went out, the quake didn’t mess them up either, so she’s been busy. She thinks you’re dead, killed by Temuengs. Folk don’t know what to do about your father and the others. If they haven’t returned before shelters are cobbled together, some of your cousins are going to slip down and see what happened to them.”

“Sheee, they shouldn’t…”

“Be all right if they keep their heads down; they’ve been warned.”

Brann brushed her hand back over her hair, rubbed at her eyes. “Thanks, Fri. That helps a lot. You look worn down.” Her mouth curled into a wry smile. “I picked up a life last night. Come and take.”

Jaril hesitated. “You all right?”

“Not so upset as I was. A little wiser about the way things are.” She held out her hands. As he took them, she said, “By the way, what did you and Yaril do with the body? And where is she?

“Watching the enforcers, they’re asleep and she wants them to stay that way until after we’re gone. We dumped it in the river. With a little luck it’ll be out to sea before it’s spotted.” He took his hands away, giggled. “He’ll get to Tavisteen before us. I better see how they’re treating Coier, get him saddled. You feel like eating?”

“What’s one more dead man?”

After he left she wandered about the room, picking up her scattered possessions, folding everything neatly, packing with the careful finickiness of the most precise of her aunts. When she was finished, she sat on the bed, gathering courage to leave the room. After a few ragged breaths, she bounced to her feet, draped the saddlebags over her arm, sucked in a deep breath. Go slow, she thought, act like you don’t give spit what anyone thinks. She touched the door’s latch and went weak in the knees. Not ready to go out. Not yet. She passed her hand over her hair, realized she’d forgotten to wind the scarf about her head, saw the creased length of material hanging over the back of the chair. She crossed to the wavery mirror. A curling mass of soft white hair all over her head, long enough now that its weight made the curls larger, looser. Strange but rather nice, suiting the shape of her. face. She thought about not wearing the scarf, it’d feel good to let the wind blow through her hair, but short as it was, the color it wasn’t, it’d cause too much comment when she was riding the highroad. She wound the strip of cloth about her head, tied it so the ends fell behind one ear. Odd, that paring down of her head to its basic contours made her eyes look huge and gemlike, her mouth softer. She looked at herself another heartbeat or two, then strode to the door, jerked it open and stepped into the empty corridor. The other travelers staying the night had already departed or were still sleeping. It was early.

She walked slowly down the rush matting toward the stairs at the end of the corridor, her stride growing firmer, steadier. At the landing she touched the scarf to see if it was still in place, a concession to uncertainty, then started down.

A younger version of last night’s host, so exact a copy he had to be the owner’s son, looked up as she stopped by the counter. “You wish, athin?”

“I’d like, athno, something to eat.”

“Certainly, athin. It is a bit early,” he went on as he flipped the hinged section of counter top and came out to escort her to the table she’d chosen the night before. “It’ll take a breath or two to prepare, but ‘tis just as well to be early this day, the diligence from Tavisteen is due to stop here soon for the fastbreaking and we’ll be busier than broody hens and wishing for more hands, trying to feed them and the escort too.” She said nothing, but he must have read something in her silence because he came around and stood beside her. “Traveling was near impossible till the Temuengs started sending patrols with the packtrains and the diligences. Now, we have eggs fried or poached, fresh baked rolls, sausages, they’re the family’s special blend and many the praises we’ve got for them, though it’s me who says it. Or a nice steak? Or we’ve some young rockquail, or some fish my middle son caught from the river this morning. For drinking, there’s ale, cider, tea or something called kaffeh a trader left with us a month ago. Some seem to like it, though I must say I think it’s an acquired taste.” He turned his head to listen to the rain coming steadily down outside. “The highroad will be awash if this keeps up, athin; for your comfort you might consider staying until the storm blows out.”

Having waited for him to finish, she did not bother to answer his discreet attempt to wring another day’s coin out of her, but simply ordered a hot ample breakfast with a pot of tea to wash it down. His amiable chatter had put her at ease and now she was merely hungry.

The children came in befOre she was done with the meal, soaked and waiflike one moment, dry the next. Silent and undisturbed by the stares of the fastbreakers in the slowly filling room, they threaded through the tables and came to stand beside her. Brann scowled at the stare-eyes and they looked hastily away, wary of her. Rumors, she thought, worse than midges for getting about. She sipped at the hot tea, saying nothing until she’d emptied the cup. She set it down with a small definite click, turned to Jaril. “Have you paid for our room and meals?”

“No mistress, nor for the stable and worn.” His back to the rest of the room, Jaril grinned and winked at her.

“See to it then; I shall be annoyed if you allow yourself to be treated like a country fool.”

Jaril winked again, went trotting off to pay the rate Yaril had won by bargaining with the host. Brann relaxed a bit more, squeezed a last half cup from the pot and sat sipping at it, looking about the room. A number of new faces, probably they’d been in bed when she reached the Inn last night, up now to get their morning’s meal before the inundation from the diligence and the Temueng patrol. An odd mix. Alike in their wariness, not alike in other ways. A merchant with a duplicate-in-little of his opulent dress, bland ungiving face and tight little hands seated beside him, a son most likely learning the business. Several scarred, harsh-featured men in worn leathers with more cutlery hitched to their bodies than she’d seen outside of Migel’s smithy. They reminded her immediately of the Temueng invaders, different racial types, but a sameness to them that overrode the minor differences of build or skin color. Half a dozen older men seated about, mostly with their hacks to the walls, their clothing and demeanor giving little clue as to who they were or why they were on the move, the only thing she could be sure of was that they weren’t Temuengs.

Jaril looked in through the archway, nodded. Keeping her face expressionless, Brann slid from her chair and walked without haste between the tables, feeling eyes on her all the way. In the foyer she lifted a hand to the young host, pushed through the main door and stopped under the bit of roof that kept the rain off her head. It was coming down harder than she’d expected, in gray sheets that hid everything more than a body-length away. Coier stood saddled and ready, hitched to a ring in one of the several wayposts before the Inn, sidling and unhappy, not liking the rain very much. She felt for him, reluctant herself to leave the shelter of the roof, but there was no help for it, she had to be long gone when Yaril’s sleep spinning wore off and the enforcers woke to find the Censor vanished. She stomped through the wet and pulled herself into the saddle, sitting with a squishy splat, took the reins when Jaril handed them up to her, looked at him with envy. His clothing wasn’t clothing at all, but a part of his substance and when he chose, it shed the wet better than any duck’s back. She sighed. “The trouble you two get me into.” With a gentle kick she started Coier toward the highroad, keeping him at a walk. “No doubt they all think I’m a horrible monster, riding while I make you children run in the mud.” She bent down, called to Yaril, “How long’s the spinning going to last without you there to freshen it?”

Yaril turned her face up. The rain slid away without wetting her. She held up her hands and Brann swung her onto the saddle in front of her. “Till the diligence gets there probably. I’d say the noise of it is enough to wake them.”

“What’ll they do?”

“Considering what happened in the taproom, raise one holy stink and get half the Temueng army looking for us.”

“Sheee, Yaro, we can’t handle that.”

“Can’t fight something, then run like sheol and hope you lose it.” Yaril patted her arm. “Just have to be smarter than they are, that’s all.”

“Not so great a start, was it.”

AN HOUR LATER the diligence came out of the rain at her. She heard it before she saw it, its creaks, rattles, cadenced sloppy thuds, windy snorts, a snatch or two of voices, mostly bits of curses; she nudged Coier off the road, pushing up tight against the hedgerow trying to ignore the clawing thorns. The rain was coming down harder than ever and from the sound of the thing whoever was driving it expected the world to get out of his way. The large mild heads of Takhill Drays came out of the rain, their black manes plastered down over the white stripes that ran ear to nose, the leather blinder on the offside lead gleaming like the glaze of das’n vuor. Their brown hides dripped water and looked almost as black as the harness. The feathers on their massive shapely hocks were smoothed down with rain and mud but their sturdy legs lifted and fell with the regularity of a pendulum, tick-tock, tick-took. Two first, then two more, then the two wheelers, larger than the others. A fine hitch. The driver hunched over the reins, cowl pulled so far forward she couldn’t see his face, only the large gnarled hands so deftly holding the black leather straps. He was silent, his silence making a space about him that the second man on the perch made no attempt to breach. He was a Temueng with a short bow held across his knees that he was trying to protect with his cloak, a quiver full of arrows clipped to the inside of one leg. He was cursing steadily, stopping only to wipe at his face. He saw her, looked indifferently away. She watched him with a surge of hatred that twisted her stomach into knots.

The diligence was a long boxy vehicle creaking along on three pairs of oversize wheels that cast up broad sheets of brown water. Oiled silk curtains were drawn tight against the rain but there was some sort of lamp burning inside, probably more than one, because she saw the shadows of the passengers moving across the silk. Six high narrow windows filled with profiles and the rounds of swaying heads. She watched them and wondered what was so important it took those people out into weather like this. The last window slid past, then she saw the piles of luggage strapped behind. And felt again that helplessness that had engulfed her as she walked into the Inn, an ignorance of life down here so complete that moving into it was like stepping off Tincreal onto a low-hanging cloud.

Four Temuengs rode guard far enough behind the diligence to escape the mud and gravel the broad iron-tired wheels kicked up. They rode swathed in heavy cloaks, lances couched, bows covered, but she had little doubt they’d be a nasty surprise to anyone thinking of attacking the diligence. The leader turned his head and stared at her as he rode past. She saw a flash of gilt, of paler silver. An empush, commanding four.

Then he was past. Then they were all past. She let out a breath. Her middle hurt as if she’d been stooping and straightening for hours. She wiped at her face, kneed Coier into a walk, guiding him back onto the road, the two hounds pacing silently one on each side of her.

A few breaths later she heard the sound of a horse coming rapidly up behind her, then the Temueng empush rode around her, turning his mount to block the road. She pulled up, a flutter in her stomach, a knot of fear and rage closing her throat. She couldn’t speak, sat staring at him grimly, silently. Her eyes blurred and after a moment she knew she was crying; she didn’t try to hide her tears, only hoped the rain beating on her face would camouflage them.

“Who are you?” he shouted at her, his voice harsh, impatient. “What are you doing on this road? Where are you going?”

She stared at him, managed, “A traveler, headed for the nearest port so I can get out of this soggy backwater.” She was surprised by the crisp bite of the words, no sign of what she was feeling in them, as if someone else were speaking for her. Her fear and anger lessened, the tears stopped, she sat silent waiting for his response.

“Your credeen.” He rode closer, held out his hand. “What?”

“Your permit to travel, athin.” The honorific was an insult. He drew his sword, holding it lightly in his right hand. “The sigiled tag.”

– “Ah.” She thought furiously. Seemed the Temuengs were trying to control travel and tighten their grip on Croaldhu; nothing of this had been in place three years ago at the last Fair; the Kumaliyn didn’t bother with such nonsense. She dredged up the worst words she could think of, cursing the Temueng’s officiousness, the need to poke his nose in other people’s business. All he had to do was ride on and let her be. But he was waiting for some sort of answer and from the look of him, wasn’t inclined to accept excuses or pleas of ignorance. She glanced quickly at Jaril and Yaril. The werehounds had moved quietly out from her until almost obliterated by the rain. She risked a look over her shoulder; the other soldiers and the diligence were out of sight and hearing. Lifting a hand slowly so he could see it was empty, she moved it in a broad arc from Yaril to Jaril. “They are all the permits I need, Temueng.”

And Yaril was a fireball rushing at his head, and Jaril was fire about his sword. With a scream of pain, he dropped the blade. Hastily Brann said, “Just chase this one off, I’ve had enough lives.”

The fires seemed to shrug, then nipped and sizzled about the flanks of the already nervous horse, driving it into a frantic, bucking run after the diligence, the shaken empush struggling to keep from being thrown into the mud. One of the fires flowed into a large hawk and came flying back. It swooped to the sword’s hilt, caught it up and vanished into the rain with it. A second later it was back, settling to the ground beside Coier, Yaril again as soon as the talons touched mud. Brann lifted her Onto the saddle in front of her. “I gave that fool his sword,” Yaril said. “Better if he doesn’t have to explain how he lost it.” She leaned back against Brann, smiled as the other fire returned and was a hound again standing beside the horse. “We got trouble enough once he connects up with those enforcers.”

Brann nudged Coier into an easy canter. “I’m still glad he’s alive. We got trouble anyway, what’s one more stinking Temueng?” She stroked Yaril’s moonpale hair. “Another hour,…” She sighed. “Stinking rain. Wasn’t for that, one of you could fly watch. I don’t know what to do… I don’t know…”

BRANN RODE ON into the rain, that dreary steady downpour that falls straight from clouds to earth and stays and stays until you forget what the sun feels like. Jaril laughed at the idea that anything so simple and natural as rain could keep him from flying and was following about an hour’s ride behind, a dark gray mistcrane dipping in and out of clouds. Yaril was a hound again, running easily beside the horse. Rested and well-fed, Coier had to be held to a steady lope; he wanted to run and Brann shared the urge, but she didn’t dare let him loose.

An hour passed, then another. The children could communicate over any distance bounded by the horizon, why this limitation they either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain, and Jaril would give them an hour’s warning of pursuit, a chance to discover a hide that would fool the followers.

Another hour. Brann rode on between half-seen hedgerows beaten into a semblance of neatness by the downpour, washed to a dark shiny green that glowed through the grays of rain and mud.

Some fifteen minutes into the fourth hour the hound was suddenly Yaril trotting by her knee, screaming up at her over the hiss and splat of the rain, “Riders coming up. Fast. Temuengs. Three from the diligence, one of the enforcers. Half dozen besides. New faces. Most likely occupation troops.” She dashed ahead of the horse, was a hawk running, then powering into the rain, gone to look for a break in the hedges.

Brann was frantic. Ten men, men warned about her. Half a score of men who could stand at a distance putting arrows in her, pincushion Brann, not something pleasant to contemplate. Adept as her body was at healing itself, she had a strong suspicion there had to be a limit-at which point she would be very dead. The hedges on both sides of the road were high, wild and flourishing, taller than she was atop Coier and likely as thick as they were tall. Even if she could somehow push through, those murderous hounds on her trail would spot the signs she’d have to leave and be through after her and she’d have gained nothing, would have lost if some of them had been living long enough hereabouts to know something of the land. Even a year’s patrolling would have taught them how they could drive her into a corner.

Yaril came winging back, touched down, changed to childshape. Brann pulled her up before her once again, so they could talk without having to shout. “Nothing,” the changechild said, “No turn-offs far as I dared fly. But there’s a weak spot in the hedge about twenty minutes on, a place where one of the bushes died.”

Brann started to protest, but Yaril shook her head. “It’s all there is, Bramble. Well contrive something. Now move.” She slid of changing in midair and went soaring away on hawk wings. Brann urged Coier into a gallop and followed her, feeling a surging exhilaration at the power under her. The hedge on the left grew wilder and even the meager signs of tending evident before vanished completely, straggly canes encroaching on the paving.

Yaril stood in the road, waving at a thin spot where the canes had withered away and the few leaves clinging to branchstubs were wrinkled and yellow. Without hesitation, Brann turned Coier off the road and drove him toward the brittle barrier with voice, heels and slapping hands. Head twisted back, snorting protest, he barreled through into a long-neglected field that was grown to a fine thick crop of weeds in the center of which stood a shapeless structure with much of its thatching gone, its stone walls tumbled down, the stones charred black in spite of the rain and the many that had gone before. She rode Coier into the meager shelter through a door where half the frame still stood, the other half lay in splinters among the charred stones and twisted weeds. The roof that remained was sodden and leaking but it kept out the worst of the wet. She dismounted with a sigh of relief and trembling legs, glad to be out of that depressing incessant beat-beat on her body and head. She closed her eyes and leaned against the endwall, dripping onto the bird dung, weeds, old feathers, bits of thatching that lay in a thick layer over the beaten-earth floor. But she couldn’t stay there. She looped the reins about the remnant of the door frame, then ran back to Yaril.

The changechild was dabbling in the mud, resetting the clods that Coier’s hooves had thrown up, helping the rain wash away the deep indentations his iron shoes had cut into the mud. The hole in the hedge looked wide as a barn door; Brann tried to drag a few canes from the live bushes across the gap but that didn’t seem to do anything but make the opening more obvious. Yaril straightened, the mud sloughing off her, leaving her dry and clean. She saw what Brann was doing, giggled. “Don’t be silly, Bramble.” The pet name seemed to amuse her more and she laughed until she seemed about to cry, then pulled herself together. “Go on,” she said, “get into shelter. Jaril’s coming, be here soon to keep watch when I can’t.”

“Can’t?”

“Watch, then scoot.” Yaril giggled again then stepped next to the twisty trunk of the bush and changed. With startling suddenness she was a part of the hedge, as green and vigorous, wild and thorny as the bushes on either side of her.

Shaking her head at her lack of thought, Brann trudged to the burned-out structure, barn or house or storage crib, whatever it was.

She stripped off her sodden clothing, rubbed herself down with one of her blankets, stripped the saddle and bridle off Coier and rubbed him down until she was sweating with the effort, doled out a double handful of cracked corn onto his saddle pad. She tied on his tether and left him to his treat, then got out her old filthy shirt and trousers, slipped into them. At least they were dry. She wrinkled her nose at the smells coming from the dark heavy cloth, but soon grew used to them again. She folded the damp blanket into a cushion, sat down with her back against the rough wall and was beginning to feel almost comfortable when Jaril walked in.-They’re almost here,” he said. “You’ll hear them soon.” He squatted beside her. “Far as I could see, they didn’t investigate any of the turn-offs, they’re coming straight ahead, pushing their horses hard, on the chance they can overtake you.”

“What happens when they wear out their mounts and still haven’t come on us?”

“Raise the countryside I expect. Listen.”

Through rain that at last was beginning to slacken she heard the pounding of hooves on the worn stone paving of the highroad. Coier lifted his head and moved restlessly. She got to her feet and stood beside him, a hand on his nose to silence him if he decided to challenge the beasts on the far side of the hedge. She listened with her whole body as they went clattering pounding splashing past without slackening pace, the noises fading swiftly into the south.

She let out the breath she was holding. Jaril squeezed her fingers gently.-I’m off, Bramble. Better I keep an eye on them awhile more.” He looked around.-I think you could chance a fire, Yaril’ll get you the makings, dry them off. You might as well eat something now, it could get harder later.” Then he was a mistcrane stalking out the door. Brann followed him, stood watching his stilting run and soar, beautifully awkward on the ground, beauty itself in the air. She stood wiping the damp off her face, suddenly and simply happy to be alive, delighted with the water running from her hair, the breath in her lungs lifting and dropping her ribs. She stood there long enough to see Yaril dissolve out of the hedge and come walking through the wet weeds, a slight lovely sprite, a part of her now, her family. She smiled and waited for Yaril to reach her.

BRANN WOKE FROM a long nap to find the afternoon turned bright as the clouds broke and moved off. Yaril was sitting in silence, staring into the heart of a little fire, her face enigmatic, her narrow shoulders rounded, the crystal eyes drinking in and reflecting the flames. Brann felt an immense sadness, a yearning that made her want to cry; it wasn’t her own grief but waves of feeling pouring out of Yaril. For the first time she saw that they’d lost as much as she had, drawn from their homeland and people as she was driven from hers. And there was very little chance they’d ever return to either homes or people; they were changed as she was changed, exiled into a world where there was no one to share their deepest joys and sorrows. Brann licked her lips, wanted to say something, wanted to say she understood, but before she could find the words, Yaril turned, grinned, jumped to her feet, tacitly rejecting any intrusion into her feelings. “Jaril’s on his way back.

Rain’s over, we’ll ride tonight and if we can, lay up tomorrow.”

Brann yawned. “What’s he say?”

“Temuengs went on till the rain stopped, but they finally had to admit they’d missed you. There was a bit of frothing at the mouth and toing and fming-” Yaril giggled-“then the enforcer rode on for Tavisteen, your favorite empush started back, he’s sending the Temuengs one at a time down side roads to stir up the local occupation forces and looking careful at the hedges as he goes past. Time I got back to being a plant. It’s boring but not quite so bad as being a rock.” With another giggle she got to her feet and ran out.

Brann followed her to the opening, watched her dart through the weeds to the hedgerow, merge with the green. Shaking her head, she turned away to fix herself a bit of supper while she waited for Jaril to arrive.

THE MISTCRANE FLEW ahead of them, searching out clear ways, leading them along twisty back roads that were little more than cowpaths. Moving mostly at night, ducking and dodging, watching Temuengs and their minions spilled like disturbed lice across the land, nosing down the smallest ways, Missing her sometimes by a hair, a breath, Brann wormed slowly south and west, heading for Travisteen though that grew more and more difficult as the hunt thickened about her. The children stole food for her, corn for Coier to keep his strength up because there was never enough rest and graze for him. She grew lean and lined, fatigue and hunger twin companions that never left her, sleep continually interrupted, meals snatched on the-run. Five days, seven, ten, sometimes forced into evasions so tortuous she came close to running in circles. Yet always she managed to win a little farther south. Twice Temuengs blundered across her, but with the children’s help she killed them and drank their lives, passing some of that energy on to Coier, restoring the strength that the hard running was leaching from him.

The broad fertile plain at Croaldhu’s heart dipped lower and lower until sedges and waterweeds began to replace the cultivated fields and the grassy pastures, until pools of water gathered in the hollows and stood in still decay, scummy and green with mud and algae. The fringes of the Marish, a large spread of swampland and grassy fens like a scraggly beard on Croaldhu’s chin, a bar on her path, a trap for her if she wasn’t careful; should the Temuengs get close enough they could pin her against impassible water or bottomless muck. The mistcrane flew back and forth along the edge of the Marish, trying to work out a way through it, a straggling line from one dot-sized mud island to the next, wading through the pools and streams to test depth and bottom, keeping as close to the Highroad as he could so he wouldn’t get them lost in the tangle of the wetlands, even after the road turned to a causeway built on broad low stone arches a man’s height above the water, an additional danger because Temuengs riding along the causeway could see uncomfortably far into that tangle. He led Brann and Coier along his chosen route, one that managed to keep a thin screen of cypress, flerpine and root-rotted finnshon between her and that road. The Wounded Moon was fattening toward full and the children’s crystal eyes saw as well by night as by, day, so they moved all night, slowly, with much difficulty, struggling with impossible footing, slipping and sliding, half the time with Brann dismounted and walking beside Coier, stroking him, comforting him, bleeding energy into him, helping him endure, stumbling on until they reached a mud island high enough to get them out of the water and away from the leeches and chiggers that made life a torment to the two fleshborn though they avoided the changechildren.

Gray. Even during daylight everything was gray. Gray skies, gray water, gray mud dried on sedges and trees, on low hanging branches, gray fungus, gray insects, gray everything. The stench of damp closed around her, of rotting everything, flesh, fish, vegetation. Three gray nights she rode, three gray days she rested on mounds of mud and rotting reeds, where she fed Coier from the too rapidly diminishing supply of corn, rubbed him down, touching to death the leeches on his legs, draining their small bits of life, feeding it back into him; once the leeches were drained they were easy enough to brush off, falling like withered lengths of gutta-percha. By accident she discovered another attribute of her changed body as she fed that life into the weary trembling beast; her hand was close to one of the oozing leech-bites and she saw the bite seal over and heal with the feed.

By the end of the fourth night, she was ready to chance the causeway rather than continue this draining slog. As dawn spread a pale uncertain light over the water, Jaril led her deeper into the Marish to an eye-shaped island considerably larger than the others with a small clump of vigorous, sharp-scented flerpines at one end, a dry graveled mound at the center with some straggly clumps of grass, a bit of stream running by it with water that looked clear and dean and tempting. She resisted temptation and began going over Coier, her probing deadly touch killing gnats and borers, chiggers and bloodworms and the ever-present leeches, feeding the weary beast those bits of life. It was a handy thing, that deadly touch of hers, and she was learning from far too much practice how to use it. By now she could kill a mite on a mosquito’s back and leave the mosquito unharmed. After spreading a double handful of corn on his saddlepad, she plunged into a stream and used a twist of grass to scrub the sweat and muck off her body and hair. While she washed, Yaril thrust a hand into the pile of wood Jaril collected and flew back to the island, got a fire going and set a pot on to heat water for tea, then took Brann’s clothing to the stream and began scrubbing the shirts and trousers with sand from the mound. When Brann was clean inside and out, when the water was boiled and the tea made, when Yaril had hung the sopping shirts and trousers on ragged branches of the pines, Brann sat naked on a bit of grass, cool and comfortable for the first time in days, watching Coier standing in the water drinking, sipping at her own drinking bowl, the tea made from the scrapings of her supply but the more appreciated for that. She set the bowl on her knee, sighed. “I don’t care how many Temuengs are shuttling along the causeway, come the night, I’m getting Coier and me out of this.”

Jaril looked at Yaril, nodded. “Traffic’s been light the last few nights, and…” he hesitated, “we’ve used more energy than I expected. Yaril and me, we’re getting hungry.”

“Think I’d like being the hunter for a change. Instead of the hunted.” She gulped at the tea, holding it in her mouth, letting the hot liquid slide down her throat to warm her all over. “Coier’s sick or something, the water’s got him, or those bites. He needs graze and rest, more than anything, rest. Me too. Maybe we could find a place to lay up once we’re past this mess.” She looked over her shoulder at the hazy sun rising above the pines. “Could one of you do something about drying my clothes? I don’t feel right lying down with nothing on. Anything could happen to make us light out with no time to stop for dressing.”

“Right.” While Jaril doused the fire, Yaril changed, went shimmering through Brann’s wet clothing, drying a set of shirt and trousers for her. When she thought they were ready, she brought them to Brann. “Get some sleep,” she said. “We’ll watch.”

BRANN WOKE tangled in tough netting made from cords twisted out of reed fiber and impregnated with fish stink. She woke to the whisper of a drum, to the suddenly silenced scream from Coier as his throat was cut. She woke to see little gray men swarming over the island, little gray men with coarse yellow cloth wound in little shrouds about their groins, little gray men with rough dry skin, a dusty gray mottled in darker streaks and splotches like the skin of lizards she’d watched sunning on her sunning rock, little gray men butchering Coier, cutting his flesh from his big white hones. She wept from weakness and sorrow and fury, wept for the beast as she hadn’t wept for her murdered sister, her murdered people, wept and fir a while thought of nothing else. Then she remembered the children.

She could move her head a little, a very little. It was late, the shadows were long across the water. No sign of the children anywhere. Another gray man sat beside a small crackling fire, net cording woven about him and knotted in intricate patterns she guessed were intended to describe his power and importance; a fringe of knotted cords dangled from a thick rope looped loosely about a small hard potbelly. In an oddly beautiful, long-fingered reptilian hand he held a strange and frightening drum, a snake’s patterned skin stretched over the skull of a huge serpent with a high-domed braincase and eyeholes facing forward. Smiling, he drew from the taut skin a soft insistent rustle barely louder than the whisper of the wind through the reeds, a sound that jarred her when she thought about it but nonetheless crept inside her until it commanded the beat of her heart, the in-out of her breathing. She jerked her body loose from the-spell and shivered with fear. Magic. He looked at her and she shivered again. He sat before that tiny hot fire of twigs and grass, his eyes fixed on her with a hungry satisfaction that chilled her to the bone. She thought about the children and was furious at them for deserting her until the drummer reached out and ran a hand over two large stones beside his bony knee, gray-webbed crystals each large as a man’s head, crystals gathering the fire into them, little broken fires repeated endlessly within. His hand moving possessively over them, he grinned at her, baring the hard ridge of black gum that took the place of teeth in these folk, enjoying her helpless rage until a commotion at the other end of the island caught his gaze.

She strained to see, froze as a Temueng walked into her arc of vision, leading his mount and a pack pony with a large canvas-wrapped load. Gray men crowded around him, hissing or whistling, snapping fingers, stamping their broad clawed feet, jostling him, giving off clouds of a hate and fury barely held in check. His nostrils flaring with disgust, he looked over their heads and kept walking until he stood stiffly across the fire from the magic man, not-looking at Brann with such intensity she knew at once the Marishmen had sold her. She lay very still, grinding her teeth, with a rage greater than the gray men’s.

“You sent saying you had the witch.” The Temueng’s voice was deep and booming, deliberately so, Brann thought, meant to overpower the twitter and squeak of the gray men. “I brought the payment you required.”

The drummer convulsed with silent laughter, drew whispery laughs from his drum. “Yellow man, scourge a thee dryfoots.” He laughed some more. “Sit, scourge.”

Gray men trotted busily about building up the small fire into a snapping, crackly, pine-smelling blaze. The magic man played with his drum, its faint sounds merging with the noise of the fire. The Temueng sat in firmly dignified silence, waiting for all this mummery to be done, looking occasionally around to Brann. She glared hate at him, and lay simmering when he looked away, taking what satisfaction she could in his rapidly cracking patience.

The drum sound grew abruptly louder, added a clickclick-clack as the drummer tapped the nails of two fingers against the bone of the skull. “I, Ganumomo speak,” the drummer chanted, garbling the Plainspeak so badly she could barely understand what he was saying. “Hah! I, Ganumomo daah beah mos’ strong dreamer in ahhh Mawiwamo.” Continuing to scratch at the drumhead with two fingers of the hand that held the skull, he scooped up one of the crystals, held it at arm’s length above his head.

“Ganumomo naah fear fahfihmo, see see.” He set the crystal down, pursed his rubbery lips, added a whispery whistle to the whispery rattle of the drum, snapped off the whistle. “Cha-ba-ma-we naah sah strong. Magah da Chaba-ma-we naah hotha Ganumomo. Hah!” Dropping into a conversational tone, he said, “You, dryfoot, you bring aulmeamomo?”

With a grunt of assent, the Temueng got to his feet and went to the pack pony. He unroped the canvas, took a pouch from among the other items piled onto the packsaddle, brought it back to the fire. He dropped it beside the drummer, returned to his seat across the fire from the gray man. “Bringer of dreams,” he said. “More will be sent when we have the witch, like you say, what is it? the chabummy. I brought other things. Axe heads, spear points, fishhooks, knives. An earnest of final payment. Give me the witch.”

“Fish that swim too straight he go net. Otha thing in the trading. I Ganumomo daah beah wanting no dryfoots come in Mawiwamo. I Ganumomo daah beah wanting…”

Brann stopped listening as the bargaining went on, focusing all her attention and will on the children. It was no use, she got no response at all no matter how hard she concentrated. She moved about the little she could, but her arms were pinned tight against her sides, her legs were bound so tightly she couldn’t even bend her knees; the more she struggled, the more inextricably she was tangled in the cords. Anger rumbled in her like the fireheart of Tincreal, anger that was partly her own and partly that wildness that took hold of her and killed the Temueng pimush. She was terrified when that happened, somewhere deep within her there was terror now, but it was overlaid by that melded fury. She began to sing, very softly, tinder her breath, the possession song that Called the Sleeping Lady into the Yongala and readied her for the great Dances.

Dance, Slya Slya, dance

I am the Path, so walk me

Dance the sky the earth the all

Dance the round of being’s thrall

Dance, Slya Slya, dance

Emanation, puissance

I am the cauldron, empty me

Dance dissolution, turbulence

End of all tranquility

Dance, Slya Slya, dance

I am the Womb, come fill me

Germination, generation

Dance hard death’s fecundity

Dance the is and what will be

Dance the empty and the full

Dance the round of being’s thrall.

Though she sang so very softly and the magic man was deep in bargaining, he sensed immediately what was building in and around her; he broke off, came round the fire and kicked her in the ribs, the head. But he was too late. Slya took her as she groaned, Slya called the drummer’s fire to her and it burned the nets to ash and nothing and it leaped from her to the magic man and he was a torch and it leaped from her to the Temueng and he was a torch, and it leaped from gray man to gray man until the island was a planting of torches, frozen gray men burning, Temueng burning, grass and trees burning, pouch of dream dust burning. In an absent, blocked-off way she saw the packs and gear burned off the horse and pony without singing a hair on them, though they ran in panic into the water and away.

Finally the fire dimmed in her, a last tongue licked out, caressed the crystals. Yaril and Jaril woke out of stone, sat up blinking.

Then Slya was gone, the island bare and barren, the trees reduced to blackened stakes, the ashes of the burned blowing into drifts, and she was burdened with a fatigue so great she sank naked on charred sand and slept.

THREE DAYS LATER she was Temueng in form and face, wearing stolen Temueng gear, riding on an elderly but shapely werehorse, one good enough for Temueng pride but not enough to tempt Temueng greed, her altered shape grace of the children’s manipulations and the lives of half a dozen Temueng harriers they ambushed along the causeway. The sun was setting in a shimmering clear sky and she was riding across the river on a stone bridge a quarter of a mile long, turning onto a road paved with massive blocks of the same stone, the city a dark mass against the flaming sky. Tavisteen. Gateway to the Narrow Sea.

3. Brann’s Quest-Across the Narrow Sea With Sammanq Schimti

BASTARD RUMORS SPREAD faster than trouble through Tavisteen; no one claimed them, everyone heard them. Agitation on the Plain…

Temuengs dead or vanished (silent celebrations in Tavisteener hearts). Temuengs thrashing uselessly about, interrupting spring planting, rousting honest (and otherwise) folk from their homes, stopping trader packtrains to question the men and rummage through their goods. Temuengs closing down the port more tightly than before (suppressed fury in every Tavisteener and an increase in smuggling, Tavisteeners being contrary folk, the moment the Ternueng Tekora governing the city promulgated a rule, there’d be cadres of Tavisteeners working to find ways to round it, but they were wily and practical enough to pretend docility); since the Temuengs moved in and took over, any trader caught in port went through long and subtle negotiations and paid large bribes if he wanted to sail out again (another cause for fury, it was ruining trade). And this aggravation doubled because they were chasing some crazy woman who kept slipping like mist between their fingers (in spite of the trouble she brought on them, Tavisteeners cheered her in the secret rooms of mind and heart-and hoped she’d go somewhere else).

Agitation in the Marish…

Marishmen went gliding like gray shadows from the fens to attack Temuengs and Plainsfolk alike, turning the causeway into a deathtrap for all but the largest parties, and these lost men continually to poison darts flying without warning from the Marish. No one dared go into the wetlands to drive off the ambushers; traffic along the road sank to a trickle then dried up completely.

Agitation in Tavisteen…

Bodies without wounds lying in the darkest parts of dark alleys, floating in the bay. Temuengs and Tavisteeners alike. The locals were small loss to the city since all of them without exception were cast-offs without family to acknowledge them, given to rape and general thuggery. The other Tavisteeners grumbled at the cost of exorcising all those stray ghosts, but didn’t bother themselves with listening to the complaints of the ghosts or hunting for the ghost-maker (for the most part, this was another case of silently applauding one they saw as something of a hero in spite of the trouble she was causing them).

The Temuengs were not nearly so philosophical about the mysterious force stalking and killing them. Temueng enforcers began snap searches, surrounding a section of the city or the wharves, turning everyone into the street, checking their credeens, searching houses and warehouses, ripping furniture,, boxes and bales apart, kicking walls in, even turning out ship holds, beating Tavisteeners and foreign sailors with angry impartiality, hauling chosen members of both sorts off to the muccaits for questioning. Sometimes they made several of these searches in a single day, sometimes they let several days pass with none, sometimes they struck in the middle of the night.

They found smugglers’ caches, forbidden drugs and weapons, illegal stills, prisoners escaped from any of a dozen muccaits, and other things of some interest to the Tekora. They did not find the woman.

SAMMANG SHIPMASTER sat hunched over a tankard of watery beer, scowling at the battered table top, his dark strong-featured face the image of his island’s war god; squat and powerful was that god, a figure carved from sorrel soapstone and polished to a satin shine, meant to inspire awe and terror in the beholder. The rest of the tavern’s patrons, not at all a gentle lot, sat at the far side of the room and left him to his brooding. Now and then he tugged at an elongated earlobe; the heavy gold pendant that usually hung there he’d sold that morning to pay docking fees; the little left had to keep him and his men for a while longer. Soon though, he’d have to break from the mooring and try to run past the ships and the guard tower at the narrow mouth of the harbor, not something he contemplated with any pleasure. Trebuchets hurling hundred-pound stones, springals with javelins that could pierce the thickest of ship timbers, fireboats anchored beyond to take care of what was left of any ship sneaking out, skryers to spot anyone trying to run under the cover of magic. Temuengs were thorough, Buatorrang curse their greedy bellies. He had a cargo of Arth Slya wares smuggled down from the Fair by an enterprising Tavisteener under the noses of the Tern uengs who’d grabbed everything they could, with some hides and fleeces from the Plains, nothing that would spoil or lose its worth-if he could get the Girl out of this wretched port. He growled deep in his throat, his broad square hand tightening on the tankard until the metal squealed protest.

“Sammang Schimli? The Shipmaster?”

He looked up, the lines deepening between his thick black brows, the corners of his mouth dipping deeper into the creases slanting from flared nostrils. He ran his eyes slowly over the woman standing on the far side of the table. “Shove off, whore, I’m not looking for company.” He shut his eyes and prepared to ignore her.

The woman pulled out a chair, sat across from him.

“Nor I, Shipmaster. Only passage out of Tavisteen to Utar-Selt. And I’m not a whore.”

Eyes still closed, thumbs moving up and down the sides of the tankard, he said, “I’m going nowhere soon, woman.”

“I know.” His eyes snapped open and he stared at her. “If you’ll tell me just what you need to shake yourself loose,” she went on, “and we can agree on terms, I’ll see what I can do about financing your clearance.”

He looked her over. No. Not a whore. Not reacting to him right for that. She was interested, but in an oddly childlike and at the same time cerebral way. None of the body signs of sexual awareness. Under the mask of calm, a nervous uncertainty. He clicked tongue against teeth, widened his eyes as he realized who she must be.

She had large green eyes in a face more interesting than pretty, rather gaunt right now as if she’d been hungry for a long time. A full mouth held tightly in check. Skin like alabaster in moonlight. The hands on the table were long, narrow, strong; hands not accustomed to idleness. Shoulder, length soft silver hair catching shimmers from the tavern’s lamps whenever she moved her head. Wholly out of place here. He had a sudden suspicion she’d look out of place an^ywhere he could think of. By Preemalau’s nimble tail, how she ran loose in this part of the city was a thing to intrigue a man. He drew his tongue along his bottom lip, tapped his thumbs on the table. Maybe she could break the Girl loose, maybe she’d put his head in a Temueng strangler’s noose. A gamble, but what wasn’t? “Why not,” he said.

“We can’t talk here.”

He thought about the rumors, the dead on the plain, the dead in the city, the dead floating in the bay, then he drained the tankard, set it down with a loud click that made her hands twitch. “I have a room upstairs.”

She smiled suddenly, a mischievous gamin’s grin that changed her face utterly. “Be careful, Shipmaster. You don’t want to make me angry.”

He stood. “Your choice.” Leaving her to follow if she would, not so sure anymore he didn’t want female company, he went up the several flights of stairs, hearing now and then her quiet steps behind him. He was rooming on the fifth floor, up under the roof, not so much for the cheaper price as for the breezes that swept through the unglazed windows. He unlocked his door, shoved it open, walked in and stopped.

Two children sat cross-legged on his bed, moonlight glimmering on pale hair, glowing in crystal eyes.

The woman brushed past him, settled herself in the rickety chair by one window. “My companions,” she said. “Close the door.” When he hesitated, she giggled. “Afraid of a woman and a pair of kids?”

He looked at the key in his hand, shrugged. “Might be the smartest thing I’ve done in months.” He pulled the door shut, latching its bar and went to perch on the sill of the nearest window.

“Yaril,” the woman said, “any snoops about?”

“No, Brann.” The fairest of the two children grinned at her. “But Jaril did drop a rock on Hermy the nose.”

“Nearby?”

The child with the shade darker hair waggled a hand. “So-so. Got him a couple streets back, fossicking about, trying to figure out what happened to you. No one else interested in you, well, except for the usual reasons.”

“Hah, brat, talk about what you know. Still, mmh, I think you better go prowl about outside, see we aren’t interfered with.” She turned to Sammang. “Let him out, will you please?”

“What could the kid do?”

“More than you want to know, Shipmaster.”

He shrugged. “Come on, kid.”

When the latch was again secure, he stumped to the window, hitched a hip on the sill, angled so he could look out over the roofs toward the estuary and at the same time see the woman and the remaining child. “Why me?” he said. “Why not a Temueng ship? They’re going in and out all the time. Cheaper too, because I’m going to cost you… Brann, is it? Right. I’m going to cost you a lot. Maybe more than I’m worth. You who I think you are, you’ve already fooled Temuengs high and wide, seems to me you could go on fooling them just as easy. Not that I’m usually this candid with paying customers, you understand, but I want to know just what I’m getting into.”

“Candid?”

He raised both brows, said nothing.

“You know quite well what you’re getting into, Shipmaster.”

The child-he was growing more certain it was a girl-slid off the bed and walked with eerie silence across the usually noisy floorboards, touched a pale finger to the wick of the stubby candle sitting on the unsteady table that was the room’s only other piece of furniture. The wick caught fire, spread a warm yellow glow over Brann and Sammang, touched the hills and hollows of the lumpy bed. She went back to where she’d been and sat gazing intently at him for a long uneasy moment, sharp images of the candle flame dancing upside down in her strange eyes.-Tell him,” she said. “He’s hooked, he might as well know the whole, maybe he could come up with better ideas than we can; he knows this city and the Temuengs. You can trust him with just about anything he isn’t trying to sell you.”

He scowled at the girl, snorted at her impudent grin, turned to the woman. “Have you heard of Arth Slya?” she said. Her voice broke on the last words; she cleared her throat, waited for his answer.

“Who hasn’t?”

“It was my home.”

“Was?” He leaned forward, suddenly very interested: if Arth Slya was gone, the Slya wares hidden in his hold had suddenly jumped in value, jumped a lot.

“Temuengs came, a pimush and fifty men. Tried to take my people away, killed…” Once again her voice broke; hastily she turned her head away until she had control again. In a muffled voice she said, “Killed the littlest and the oldest, marched the others off… off for slaves… on the emperor’s orders… the pimush told me… slaves for the emperor… He called him old lardarse… the pimush did… he’s dead… his men, dead… I killed… the children and I killed them… my folk are home again, the ones left… trying to put things… things together again.” Her shoulders heaved, she breathed quickly for a space, then lifted her head and spoke more crisply, her mask back in place. “Slya woke and Tincreal breathed fire, scrambled the land so Arth Slya is shut away. As long as the Temuengs hold Croaldhu I doubt you’ll hear much of Arth Slya.”

He tugged at his earlobe, narrowed his eyes. “You’re going after the emperor?”

“No. Well, not exactly. This is the year of the Grannsha Fair.”

“I know, Slya-born, I came for it and caught my tail in this rat-trap.”

“There were Slya folk at the fair. The pimush told me they were taken to Andurya Durat where they were going to be installed in a special compound the Emperor old lardarse…” She laughed; it was not a comfortable sound. “He built for them. Slaves, Shipmaster. My father and two of my brothers, my kin and kind. I will not leave them slaves.” She spoke with a stony determination that made him happy he was neither Temueng nor slaver. He nodded, approving her sentiment, it was what he’d have done in similar circumstances, which Buatorrang and the Preemalau grant would never happen; he wasn’t so sure he wanted to involve himself and the Girl in this, but it might be worth the gamble; where she was now, she was like to rot before he could pry her loose. There was a lot the woman wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t think this was quite the moment to bring that up. “My greatest difficulty,” she said, “is I haven’t been out of Arth Slya before and know very little about the world down here.”

“You’re not doing so bad, Saiir.” He smiled. “And you knew enough to come here instead of Grannsha.”

“Ignorance is not the same as stupidity, shipmaster.”

“And you want to go to Utar-Selt. Slipping in the back door.”

“I have to be careful, I’m all there is.”

“It’s not very likely you can do anything but get yourself killed.”

She shook her head, looked stubborn. “I’ve taught

Temuengs here they aren’t masters of the world,”

“You have that. How do you keep from being caught?

Can’t be two women on this island look like you.” I know a trick or two. How much will this cost?”

He rubbed a hand across his chin. “Fifty gold for passage, you and the children. In advance.”

“Done.” The urchin grin again; it charmed him but not enough for him to reduce the price though he was rather disappointed that she hadn’t bothered to haggle. “It’ll take a few days to steal that much.”

He raised his brows.

“Temueng strongboxes,” she said defiantly. “They owe me, more than they could ever pay though I beggared the lot of them. And don’t worry, Shipmaster, I won’t get caught or tangle you in Temueng nets. Now, the rest of it. What papers do you need? What signatures, what seals, who do you have to bribe, how much gold will it take and how soon do you need it?”

FOUR DAYS LATER. Tavisteen gone quiet. No more dead.

No alarums out for an impudent thief, though he listened for them and had his crew listening when they weren’t getting the Girl ready to sail.

The room up under the roof. Late afternoon light streaming in, heavy with dust motes, a salt breeze blowing hot and hard through the windows, tugging at the papers Brann dropped on the table.

“Look them over, Shipmaster. I think they’re right, but you’ll know better than I if they’ll pass.”

THAT HE COULD read a number of scripts was one of the several reasons the children had for choosing him; they’d walked his mind in dream, learning the language of his islands, learning much of what he knew about the ports he visited and more about his character. He was a man of strong loyalties who kept his crew together, cared for them, gave them money to live on though that meant his limited resources vanished more quickly, a man whose love for his ship was as fierce as her love for her folk and fire-hearted Tincreal, a man of many gifts who could read water, air, sky and landshapes as if they were words scribed in a book, hard when he needed to be hard, with a center of tenderness he let very few see, a brown, square man with a large-featured square face. Sitting by the window with the sun giving a sweat sheen to his tight-gained skin, he was a creature of living stone, a sea-god carved from red-brown jasper with eyes of polished topaz. He affected her in ways she didn’t understand, did things to that adult body she’d so suddenly acquired that she didn’t want to understand; this terrified her, even sickened her because she could not forget no matter how she tried the Temueng Censor grunting on top of her, reaming into her; she dreamed that time again and again, the children having to wake her because her cries might betray that night’s hiding place. She watched the man and wanted him to touch her, her breasts felt sore and tight, there was a burning sweetness between her thighs. She forced her mind away from her intrusive body and tried to concentrate on the papers and what the man would say of them.

SA MANG FELT HER restlessness, looked up. “Where are the children?”

“Around. Never mind them. How soon can we leave?”

He shook his head. “You are an innocent. Wait a minute.” He began going through the papers again, holding them up to the light, wondering by what magic she’d come up with them. Not a flaw in them, at least none he could find. When he was finished, he squared the pile, flattened a hand on it. “How much noise did you make getting these?”

“None. The Temuengs who signed and stamped them were, well, call it sleepwalking. They won’t remember anything of what happened.”

“Handy little trick. Mmmh.” He tapped his forefinger on the pile of paper. “Can’t go anywhere without these, but it’s only a start, O disturber of Temueng peace and mine; even with gold to ease their suspicions, well have to be careful to touch the right men and move fast before the wrong men start talking to each other.”

“How much gold?” Without waiting for an answer, she leaned out the window, brought back a heavy bag, which she set on the table in front of him. Before he could say anything, she had twisted away. She brought in a second bag, dumped it, and was out again, pulling in a third. With quick nervous movements, she went away from him to sit on the bed; today she seemed very aware of him as a man. Her response woke his own, he eyed her with interest, wondering what bedding a witch would be like. She looked hastily away. Skittish creature. Well, Sammo, that’s for later.

He unwound the wire from the neck of the first bag, began setting out the coins, brows raising as he broached the other bags and the piles multiplied, ten each, in rows of ten, ten rows of ten, a thousand gold, a full thousand heavy hexagonals, soft enough to mark with his thumbnail. Even without weighing and trying them, he was sure they weren’t mixed with base metal, something you had to watch for here in Tavisteen the tricky. When he finished he sat frowning at the mellow gold glimmer. And I thought to discourage her by asking a ridiculous price for her passage. He looked up. “This much high assay gold will be missed.”

She shook her head. “Not soon; these are from the Tekora’s private stash, dust and cobwebs over the lockboxes.”

With a laugh and a shake of his head he began putting the coins back in the sacks. “You wouldn’t consider signing on with me as bursar? I do like the idea of paying off the Tekora’s men with the Tekora’s gold.” He set two of the sacks on the paper pile, held out the third. “Here. You hang onto this, you might need it.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want it. When can we leave?”

He dropped the sack on the table, frowned. “Tide’s right round mid-morning tomorrow, but I’d rather put off leaving another day, have to provision the Girl, top off the water barrels. Don’t want to look hurried either, set noses twitching.” He drummed, his fingers on the table top, lips moving as he conned the tides. “Why not midday three days on?”

She blooded a moment, nodded.

“Can you and the children get on board without anyone seeing you?” When she laughed at that, he went on, “A Temueng pilot will be coming along. He’s to get us past the forts and fireships, good enough, but he’ll stick his nose into every corner before he lets us leave. Can you handle that?”

“I think so. You can really be ready to sail that quickly?”

“I could sail yesterday.” His voice was angry, violent. “If it weren’t for those lapalaulau-cursed sharks.”

She slid off the bed, started for the door, turned back. “I forgot to ask. How long from here to Utar-Selt?”

“Say we get good winds and we aren’t jumped, ten, twelve days. The Girl’s a clever flyer.”

“That long…”

“You want a shorter route, it’s only five days to the mouth of the Garrunt, but don’t ask me to take the Girl anywhere near the Fens.”

“Which I understand are a maze of mud and stink and hostile swampfolk. No thanks. The Marish was bad enough. Seems to me the long way round is the shortest route, all things considered.”

He got up and walked over to her, touched the side of her face, dropped his hand on her shoulder. “Need you go right now?”

She stopped breathing, green eyes suddenly frightened; she moved away, would not look at him.

“I only ask,” he said mildly. He didn’t try to move closer.

She let out a long shaky breath. “How old do you think I am, Sammang Schimli?”

He raised a brow. “Shall I flatter or speak the truth?”

“Truth.”

“Mmm, mid-twenties, maybe a bit more.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “A lovely age, Brann, old enough to have salt in the mix, young enough to enjoy the game.”

She set her shoulders against the door, her agitation visibly increasing. It puzzled him, disturbed him, made him wonder if she was whole in the head. If not, what a waste.

‘I wouldn’t… wouldn’t know.” She flattened her hands against the door, then burst out, “I’m eleven, I know what I look like, I know it’s hard to believe, but inside here, I’m eleven years old. The children changed me, grew me older, I went to sleep a girl and woke a woman. Like this.” She swept a hand along her body, dared to look at him a moment. “How could a child do what I have to do?”

“Eleven?” He frowned at her, uncertain.

She nodded, shyly, abruptly. “You… you do disturb me, Shipmaster…” She rushed on, “But I’m not ready for what you offer.”

Abruptly he believed her, saw the child there, marveled that he hadn’t understood it before. When her urchin’s grin’ flashed out, when she relaxed and let her mask drop, she was little sister, mischievous child-if he didn’t look at her body. He backed off. Nice child, good child, bright and warm and loving. He discovered that he liked her a lot and wanted to help her all he could. “Too bad,” he said. “But we’re still friends?”

She blushed, nodded. “If it were otherwise…” She fumbled the door open and ran out.

He followed her, watched her slow as she went down the stairs until she was the cool witch he’d first seen. Shaking his head, he shut the door, went back to the table to tuck the papers in a leather pouch. The children. Spooky little bits. Those eyes. Preemalau’s bouncing tits. Changed her. He shivered at the thought, momentarily chilled in spite of the heat. Eleven. What a thing to do to her. To me. He slid a hand down one of the bags of gold, the corners of the hexagonal pieces hard against his palm, then stripped its tie off and began stowing the coins about his person. The other two bags he shoved in the pouch on top of the papers. No more Arth Slya wares. For a good while, anyway. And I’m the only one in Tavisteen who knows that. He chuckled, patted the bulging pouch, began humming a lively tune. Too soon to be passing out bribes, might as well nose out some more of the Slya wares; she’d passed the gold on, didn’t care what he did with it as long as he got her out. When she’s a few years older, what a woman she’ll be. Taking on the whole damn Tenaueng empire. And getting away with it, yes, he’d wager even the Girl she got away with it. Should’ve had Hairy Jimm hanging around below. This much gold was honey to the tongue for the thugs hanging about. He bent, transferred the boot knife to his sleeve. Still humming, he left the room, locked the door behind him, went lightly down the stairs, the song’s traditional refrain ousted from his head by a more seductive one, the siren song of the trader’s game where profit was more the measure of skill than anything important in itself. No more Slya ware, his mind sang to him, no more no more, and when the word gets out, when that word gets out, the price goes up up up… You’re a lucky man, Sammang Schimli, though you’d have traded places with a legless octopus a week ago. Slya ware, Slya ware, rare it is and growing rarer, no one knows gonna be no more…

THE TEMUENG ENFORCERS went like locusts through his goods, but the smuggled treasures were deep in the bundles of hides and fleeces. His crew went after the lapalaulau castrate and put things together again, stowing the bales and casks properly so the Girl was ready to go. When the sun was directly overhead and the lice were off the ship, when the Girl was tugging at her mooring, eager as Sammang was to be gone, he stood at her rail, wind whipping his hair into his eyes and mouth as he waited for the pilot. He watched the skinny Tern ueng (his pockets heavy with Brann’s gently thieved gold) leave the sour-faced harbor master, clamber into a dinghy, sit stiff and somber while the master’s men rowed him out to the Girl. Sammang wondered briefly where Brann and the children were, then walked forward to help the pilot over the rail.

He showed the Temueng about the ship, fuming as the man poked and pried into her cracks and crannies, even into the crew’s quarters, opening their seabags, sticking his long crooked nose where it had no business being. The crew resented it furiously, but were too happy to be getting back to sea to show their anger. They watched with sly amusement as the Temueng (they named him in whispers Slimeslug) went picking through. Sammang’s quarters with the same prissy thoroughness; they passed the open door again and again, savoring Sammang’s disgust. He held his tongue with difficulty, beckoned Hairy jimm in to take a chair on deck for the pilot. And he lingered a moment after the pilot followed Jimm out to grin at a large sea chest the Temueng hadn’t seemed to notice and salute.

AS SOON AS HE could, he left the pilot sitting with his signal flags across his knees, lowering the level in a sack of red darra wine. Brann was sitting on his bed, flanked by the not-children. There was a shimmer about her, a snapping energy. “We’ve pulled the hook, the pilot’s getting drunk on deck; we’re just about loose, young Brann, but hold your breath until we’re past the fireships.” He dropped his eyes to the full breasts swaying with the movement of the ship beneath the heavy white silk of her shirt, sighed as he saw the nipples harden.

She smiled. “Eleven,” she said. “Though I’m getting older by the minute.”

“Yeah. Aren’t we all.”

The blond boy had his head in her lap, the girl was curled up tight against her, both were deeply, limply asleep. With their eyes closed, they seemed more like real children. “They’ve been working hard the past few nights,” she said. “They’re worn out.”

Worn out. That too was something he’d just as soon not have explained. “Not much point in hiding down here once we put the pilot off. You can trust my men, they’re a good bunch.” He frowned. “No… no, you wait here until I have a talk with them which I will do once we pour that gilded gelding into his dinghy. You get seasick?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been on a boat before.”

“Buatorrang’s fist, woman. Ship. Not boat, ship.” He fished under the bed, found a canvas bucket. “Spew in this if the need takes you.” He looked at the sleeping children. “Them too.” He started out the door, turned. “I won’t leave you shut up longer’n I have to. Um, my crew, they’re not delicate flowers, don’t mind the way they talk.”

“Stop fussing, Shipmaster. I have got a little sense, or haven’t you noticed?”

Feeling better about everything Sammang went back on deck and stood by the rail watching Hairy Jimm maneuver the Girl among the ships crowding the estuary. The pilot was paying little attention to what was happening about him. His title had a,Temueng twist to it; he wasn’t there to guide them through the harbor’s natural snags but to ease them past the far more deadly man-made obstacles. The day was brilliant with a brisk headwind, and tide and river current together were enough to carry the Girl bare-poled out to the stone pincers at the mouth of the bay. Stays singing about him, the salt smell growing stronger than the stench of estuary mud and city sewage, the shimmering blue water blown into sharp ridges, white foam dancing along them, Sammang relished everything about the day, the colors and sounds, the mix of smells, the exploding array of possibilities ahead of him.

The pilot shoved onto his feet as the ship came up to the two great towers looming over the narrow mouth of the estuary, settled himself and began whipping his signal flags about. When specks of bright color bloomed and swung atop the South tower, he made a last pass, then rolled up his flags, sheathed them, and dumped himself back in the chair, ignoring the crew who took every chance they found to walk up, stare at him and stroll away again. Hairy Jimm kept a minatory eye on them and the heckling didn’t go beyond staring; he’d made it quite clear early on that anyone who laid a hand on the pilot would go overboard there and then. More than one of the crew had deep grudges against the Temuengs and the parade could have disiritegyated into a shivaree with a dead Temueng at the end of it. When they began crowding too close and staying too long, Sammang nudged Hairy Jimma and the big brown bear lumbered forward and stopped the parade.

The ship slid without incident between the towers, began to lose way as the channel widened abruptly and the flow spread out. Hairy Jimm sent Tik-rat and Turrope to raise the jib and ordered the ship into a tack so the wind wouldn’t push them into the Teeth of the Gate. The Girl was a two-masted merchariter with standing lugsails, a configuration that could have been clumsy and often was, but she was Sammang’s dream and he’d watched her rise from bare bones under the hands of his great uncle Kenyara; more than that, he’d built with his own hands model after model, had sat with Kenyara and argued and trimmed the models and made her come to life as much by will as by the work of his hands and the gold he brought back to the Pandaysarradup, the wood he’d searched out and brought back, the fittings he’d gathered from most of the ports he touched in his travels; the eyes on her bow he’d carved and painted himself. She could sail closer to the wind than most her size, could squat down and ride storm waves as well as any petrel. She was an extension of himself and he loved her far more than he would ever love man or woman, loved her with a passion and a delight that would have embarrassed him into stammering if he had to talk about it. Seeing her dulled and dying and quiet at the mooring had been the worst of many bad times during the months of stagnation in Tavisteen. Now he felt her come to life under his feet and hands; he stood smoothing his hand along her rail in a contented secret caress. Young Brann, I owe you. Whatever you want, you and your… He cleared his throat with a sound half a laugh, half a groan. The children scared him and he had no hesitation admitting that to himself. Brann was pleasanter to the mind-child, woman, fighter, with a passion, caring; stubbornness that reminded him very much of a younger Sammang. He thought fondly of a few of his own childhood exploits, as he watched the fireships swinging at anchor, the last line to pass, then they were free. He took a deep breath. The air filled the lungs better out here. He looked at the slouched Temueng half asleep and reeking of the wine they’d fed him. Or it would soon as they got that off the Girl’s deck.

They put the pilot and his minions overside in the trailing dinghy, set and trimmed the sails and left the fireboats in their wake. Sammang stood sniffing at the wind, gave a short shout of freedom and celebration, grinned as he caught the cheerfully obscene salutes from Dereech and his shadow Aksi.

He moved to the wheel, cuped his hands about his mouth, bellowed, “Tik-rat, Turrope, Aski, Leymas, Dereech, Gaoez, Staro, Rudar, Zaj, gather round.”

When they were around him, squatting on the gently heaving deck, Sammang clasped his hands behind his head, grinned at them, still riding high with the effects of breaking the Girl loose and incidentally sneaking past the Temueng clutches the woman they were turning the island upside down to find. “We got a passenger,” he said. He stretched, straining his muscles till his joints popped. “The woman the Temuengs were hunting. One who kicked those sharks where it hurt. We don’t mind that, do we.” He grinned into their grins, grimaced as the wind blew hair into his teeth. Rotting in Tavisteen, he’d let his hair grow long, too despondent to get it cut. “We owe her,” he said. “Still be watching moss grow up the walls without her help. Witch,” he said. “Nice kid but no man’s meat. Not mine, not yours. Ever see what happens if a Silili priest holds onto a rocket too long after its lit? Uh-huh. So keep your hands to yourselves. This old fart talking to you, he wouldn’t like to see what comes down if one of you got her into a snit.”

“Hanh.” Hairy Jimm rubbed a meaty hand across his beard. “I heerd a thing or two about that nakki that makes me leery of her. What keeps her hands off us?”

“Relax, Jimm. She’s a good kid. Treat her like a little sister.” He thought a minute. “Not so little.” He looked round at the crew. “That’s it.”

They went off to busy themselves with the endless tasks that kept a ship healthy, but Hairy Jimm fidgeted where he was. “Turrope’s boor was telling him the Fen pirates are taking everything that moves, be you Temu be you Panay, whatever. How you want to handle that?”

“A good wind and no proa’s going to catch the Girl.”

“Turrope’s hoor has got a busy ear, she say the Djelaan have found them a weatherman.”

Sammang laughed. “If he sticks his head up, I’ll sic the witch on him.” He sobered. “She’s paying us for a quick passage, Jimm. Cutting south would add at least five days. Give your totoom a thump for me and whistle us a steady blow.” He rubbed thumb and forefinger over the finger-pieces of the heavy gold pendant in his left ear, the first thing he’d ransomed with Brann’s gold, tracking down the buyer and leaning on him till he sold. “I’ll talk to her, see what she says.” He watched Jimm walk away, watched him try the tension of backstays, eye the sails for weak spots, look for any problems he’d missed in port, things that would only show when she was moving. With a nod to Uasuf, silent at the wheel, Sammang went to stand in the bow, hands clasped behind him, staring out across the empty blue. Empty now, but how long would it stay that way? For a few breaths he stopped worrying and simply relished the way the Girl was taking the waves and the wind; she was a trier, his sweet Girl, even with her hull fouled with weed and barnacles, she danced over the waves. Preemalau be gentle and send no storms, she had to be careened and cleaned, gone over for dry rot and wood worm, every bit of cordage checked and replaced if necessary. He knew as well as Hairy Jimm how fragile she was right now. He unclasped his hands, touched her stays, feeling the hum in them, touched her wood feeling the life in it, loving her for her beauty and her gallant heart, afraid for her, cursing the Djelaan pirates, cursing all weathermen, cursing the Temuengs who were too busy with conquest to keep their own coasts clean. He watched the dolphins dance in the bow waves a while longer then went below to see how Brann was faring and talk to her about Jimm’s disclosures.

“How soon until we’re in Djelaan waters?” she said.

“Four days,” he said.

“Too far,” she said, “Wear the children out for what could be nothing.”

“You don’t far-see?” he said.

“The Temuengs call me witch,” she said, “their mistake. Don’t you make the same one. I have certain abilities, but they’re useful only in touching-distance.”

“Then we should turn south in two days, go wide around the Djelaan corals,” he said.

“How many days would that add?”

“Four, probably five.”

“Too long,” she said. “I’d be a shade by then and the children would be hungry.”

“Then we sail on luck and hope,” he said, “and fight if we have to.”

“There’s nothing else?”

“No.”

THE NEXT TWO DAYS passed bright and clear, with spanking winds that propelled the ship across the glittering blue as if she were greased. Sammang watched Brann move about the ship, taking pains to keep out of the way of anyone who was working. She respected skill and found the sailors fascinating. Both things showed. The crew saw both, were flattered and fascinated in their turn and the children helped with that by staying below where their strangeness wouldn’t keep reminding the men of corpses in dark alleys and corpses floating in the bay. Young Tik-rat was wary of her for an hour or two, but he succumbed to her charm after she’d followed him about awhile as he played his pipe to help the work go easier; he spent the hour after that teaching her worksongs. Leymas was the next she won. He taught her a handful of knots then set her to making grommets; she was neat-fingered and used to working with her hands and delighted when he praised her efforts. Sammang continued to watch when he had a moment free, amused by her ease with them as if they were older brothers or male cousins, as if she willed them to forget her ripe body, damping ruthlessly any hint of sexuality. One by one his crew fell to her charm and began treating her as a small sister they were rather fond of, fonder as the second day faded into the third. By then he couldn’t move about the deck without finding her huddled with one of the men, her strong clever hands weaving knots, her head cocked to one side, listening with skeptical delight to the extravagant tale he was spinning for her. Even Hairy Jimm told her lies and let her take the wheel so she could feel the life of the ship while he showed her how to read the Black Lady, the swinging lodestone needle, and put that together with the smell of the wind and the look of the sea to keep the ship rushing along the proper course.

She had relaxed abruptly and utterly all her own wariness and pretenses and was the child of the gentle place where she’d been reared. He saw in her the naive and trusting boy he’d been when he found his island growing too small for him and he’d smuggled himself on board one of the trading ships that stopped at Perando in the Pandaysarradup. He’d been confident in his abilities and eager to see the great world beyond, never hurt deliberately and with malice, trust never betrayed, friendly as a puppy. It took a lot of trampling and treachery to knock most of that out of him. He saw the same kind of trust in her and he sighed for the pain coming to her, but knew he couldn’t shield her from that pain-and if he could he wouldn’t. To survive, she had to learn. Even the Temuengs hadn’t taught her to be afraid of others; here, surrounded by people who were not threatening, who responded to her friendliness with good will and friendliness of their own, she’d let her guard down. Not a good habit to get into. Still he couldn’t condemn it totally as foolishness, it had done her good with the men. And, he had to admit to himself, with him.

The fifth day slid easily into the sixth; no Djelaan yet, but the rising of the sun showed him clouds blowing about a low dark smear north and west of the Girl. The southernmost of a spray of uninhabited coral atolls, most of them with little soil and no water, good only to shelter pirate proas while the Djelaan waited to ambush ships that ventured past. He scowled at it. Was it empty of life except for birds and a few small rodents or were a dozen proas pulled up on one of its crumbly beaches with a weatherman set to cast his spells?

Brann came to the bow and stood beside him. “Is that Selt?”

“No.”

“Thought it was a bit soon. Djelaanr

“If they’re coming, that’s where they’ll come from.” She chewed her lip a moment. “I can’t judge distances at sea”

“Well come even with the island about mid-afternoon, be about a half-day’s sail south of it.”

“And you’d like to know if you can relax or should get ready to fight.”

“Right.”

“And the trip is a little more than half over?”

“Wind keeps up and pirates keep away, we should be in Silili say about sundown five days on.”

“Mmm. Children lying dormant, they haven’t used as much energy as they’d ordinarily do.” She looked around at the crew, then straightened her shoulders, stiffened her spine. “Jaril will fly over the islands and Yaril will tell us what he sees. You’d better warn Nam and the others; it’s sort of startling the first time you see one of the children changing.”

Sammang wasn’t sure what was going to happen but suspected it would be spectacular and remind him and his crew forcibly she wasn’t little sister to all the world. He patted her hand. “They won’t faint, Bramble.”

She looked up at him, startled, then half-smiled and shook her head. “Well… I’d better fetch them up.” She left him and moved with brisk assurance along the deck.

He went back to stand by Hairy Jimm who had taken the wheel awhile because he was nearly as fond of the Girl as Sammang and loved the feel of her under his hands. “Our witch is getting set to scare the shit out of us.”

“Hanh.” Jimm took a hand off the wheel, scratched at his beard. “Hey, she our witch, Sammo. Ehh Stubb,” he boomed. “On your feet.”

The dozing helmsman started, came to his feet, looked dazedly about. “Huh?” Then he came awake a bit more and strolled yawning over to them.

“Grab hold.” As soon as Staro the Stub had the wheel, Jimm moved away. “Our witch gon be showing her stuff and I want a close eye on it.”

By the time Brann came up on deck with Yaril and Jaril, the news had spread through the crew. Even those supposed to be sleeping settled themselves inconspicuously about the deck doing small bits of busywork. Sammang looked around, amused. The way Hairy Jimm said our witch, with the air of a new father contemplating his offspring, made him want to laugh until he realized he felt much the same way.

She came up to Sammang and Hairy Jim. “What’s the most common large bird that flies out this far?”

“Albatross. Why?”

She turned to the boy. “You know that one?”

Jaril grinned at her and suddenly the grin was gone, the boy was gone, there was a shimmer of gold and a large white bird with black wingtips was pulling powerfully at the air and rising in a tight spiral above the ship; a heartbeat later it was speeding toward the island.

YARIL SRRS WITH her back against the mast, her eyes shut, her high young voice sounding over the wind and water sounds, the creaking of mast and timber.

First island. Nothing from high up, going closer, some birds objecting, no beaches, no sort of anchorage. Going on to the next.

Silence. The listeners wait without fuss, quietly working, not talking.

Second island. More trees. Don’t see any sign of surface water. Definitely deserted, quiet enough to hear a rat scratch.

Silence. Sammang gazes at Brann wondering what she is thinking.

Third island. This one’s the lucky dip. A dozen proas drawn up by a stream cutting through a bit of beach, apparently water’s the main attraction. Maybe a hundred Djelaan, war party, clubs, spears, throwing sticks, long knives, war axes. A clutch of them cheering on a tattooed man who’s throwing a fit. Ah, the fit’s over. Look at them scoot. Anyone want to wager the tattooed gent wasn’t telling them about this fine fat ship passing by? Get a move on, folks, you got trouble rolling at you.

THEY RACED WEST and south, carrying as much sail as the rigging would stand, the Girl groaning and shuddering, fighting the drag of the weed on her hull. In spite of that she sang splendidly through the water. She popped rigging and staggered now and then, but the crew replaced and improvised and held her together as much by will as skill. Sammang was all over the deck, adding his strength where it was needed, eyes busy searching for breaks. He heard laughter and saw Brann beside him, her gyeen eyes snapping with sheer delight in the excitement swirling about her. For a breath or two he gwzed at her and was very nearly the boy who’d run to the wider world confidently expecting marvels. Then he went back to nursing his Girl.

The wind dropped between one breath and the next. The Girl shivered and lost way, the drag of the weed braking her with shocking suddenness. Sammang cursed, stood looking helplessly about. The crew exchanged glances, dropped where they were to squat waiting, hands busy splicing line, one man whittling a new block to replace one that had split.

Brann touched Sammang’s arm. “Jaril says the proas are about an hour behind us.”

“How many?”

“Twelve. Traveling in two groups, the tattooed man-that has to be the weatherman, Jaril thinks so and I agree-he’s hanging behind with a couple boats to guard him. The other nine are riding a mage wind at us, really flying, Jaril says.”

“How many men in each boat?”

“Nine or ten.”

“Eighty maybe ninety, not counting the bodyguards.” He scowled at the limp sails. “A wind, even a breath…”

“Jaril’s thought of that. He’s been trying to get at the weatherman but he keeps bouncing off some kind of ward, whether he comes at the proa out of the sky or under water. Only thing he can think of is a pod of mid-sized whales he spotted a little way back. When he broke off talking, he was going to find them. He plans to drive them at the proas. Spell or no spell, a half dozen irritated whales are going to swamp that boat. He figures a weatherman will drown as fast as any other breather. And once he’s gone, you should have your wind. Thing is, though, he doesn’t know quite how long it’s going to take, so you should be ready for a fight.”

Sammang nodded, touched her arm. “Our witch,” he said, felt rather than heard a murmur of agreement from the crew. “You’ll fight with us?”

“In my way.” She grimaced, looked around at the circle of grave faces, raised her voice so all could hear. “Listen, brothers, when it starts, don’t touch me. I am Drinker of Souls and deadlier than a viper, I don’t want accidents, I prefer to choose where I drink.”

Sammang nodded, said nothing.

Yaril tugged at his sleeve. “What do you want me to be, Sammang shipmaster? Serpent? wildcat? falcon? dragon? It’d have to be a small dragon.”

Sammang blinked at the not-child. “Falcon sounds good. You wouldn’t get in our way, and you could go for their eyes.”

She considered a moment, nodded. “Be even better if I make some poison glands for the talons, then all I have to do is scratch them.”

Sammang blinked some more. “Be careful whom you scratch,” he said after he got his voice back.

“Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.” She stretched, yawned, went to curl up by the mast; a moment later she seemed sound asleep.

He turned to Brann, raised a brow.

“Don’t ask me,” she said.-Before they came here, probably; that’s something I haven’t seen.”

SAMMANG WENT BELOW and dug out his war ax, a steel version of the stone weapon he’d learned to swing as a boy in the godwar dances, his father’s passed on to him, an ax that hadn’t been used in a real war since his great-grandfather carried it against Setigo, the next island over. After he’d shipped out a few years, he got very drunk and nostalgic and spent most of his remaining coin hiring a smith to make a copy of the bloody old ax, describing it to him as a curving elongated meat cleaver, point heavy with a short handle carved to fit his grip.

Zaj and Gaoez, the bowmen of the crew, climbed on the cabin’s roof and sat waiting, arrow bundles between their knees; Hairy Jimm was swinging his warclub to get the feel of it, a long-handled lump of ironwood too heavy to float; other crew members were using hones on cutlasses or spearpoints, razor discs or stars, whipping staffs about, making sure clothing and bodies were loose enough to fight effectively. Djelaan never took prisoners; either they were driven off or everyone on the ship died. The Girl wallowed in the dead calm. Close by, several fish leaped and fell back, the sounds they made unnaturally loud in that unnatural silence. Yaril woke, fidgeted beside Brann. “I’m going up,” she said suddenly. She dissolved into a gold shimmer then was a large Redmask falcon climbing in a widening spiral until she was a dark dot high overhead circling round and round in an effortless glide. Brann stood still, looking frightened and uncertain.

The hour crept past, men occupied with small chores fidgeting with their weapons.

The Redmask left her circling and came swooping down, screaming a warning, found a perch on the foresail yard.

Silence a few breaths, the sea empty, then the Djelaan came out of nowhere, yelling, heating on flat drums, proas racing toward the Girl, their triangular sails bulging with the magewind, a wind that did not touch the Girl’s sagging canvas.

Zaj and Gaoez jumped up and began shooting, almost emptying the first proa before the mage wind began taking their shafts and brushing them aside. They shot more slowly after that, compensating for the twist of the wind, managed to pick off another half-dozen before the Djelaan bobtail spears came hissing at them, propelled with murderous force by the throwing sticks. They hopped about, dodging the spears and getting off an ineffective shaft or two until Hairy Jimm began batting spears aside with his warclub. The rest of the crew darted about, catching up those that tumbled to the deck and hurling them back at the proas, doing little damage but slowing the advance somewhat.

Then grapnels were sinking into the wood of the rail, the Djelaan attacking from both sides. Sammang and others raced along the rails, slashing the ropes until there were too many of them and they had to fight men instead of rope. Yaril screamed, powered up from the yard and dived at the proas, not a falcon anymore but a small sun searing through the sails. The weatherman was holding the air motionless, trapping the Girl but protecting her too; in seconds she was swaying untouched in a ring of flames as the proa sails burned and began to char the masts and rigging. With shouts of alarm half of the attackers turned back and began to fight the fires that threatened to leave them without a means of retreat.

The rest swarmed over the rails and the Girl’s men were fighting for their lives, cutlass ax and halberd, warclub staff and all the rest, flailing, stabbing, slashing, a ring of men tight about the foremast holding off the hordes that tried to roll over them. Yaril flew at Djelaan backs, stooping and slashing, her razor talons moistened with the poison she and her brother could produce when inspired to do so, keeping the Djelaan off Brann as she walked through them, reaching and touching, reaching and touching, each touch draining and dropping a man. A spear went into her side; she faltered a moment, pulled it out with a gasp of pain, sweat popping out on her face, a trickle of blood, then the wound closed over and she walked on.

At first the attackers didn’t realize what was happening, then they began struggling to avoid those pale deadly hands-They retreated before her, throwing other attackers into confusion. The Girl’s men shouted when they saw this and fought with renewed hope.

A powerful gust of wind whooshed along the deck, filling the drooping sails. Another deadly Redmask came darting out of the east where the weatherman’s proas had been and swooped at the Djelaan, clawing at eyes and hands, slashing flesh, the poison on his talons killing quickly, painfully. Twisting and turning with demonic agility he wove unharmed among the weapons of the pirates with a formidable ease that drew moans of fear from them. Retreating from the falcons, retreating from Brann who burned now with a shimmery fire, the Djelaan broke. Dropping their weapons, scrambling down the grapnel lines, leaping into the sea and swimming for their fire-stripped proas, the men in the boats dragging the swimmers over the sides, the Djelaan fled that demon-haunted ship.

Sammang dropped his war ax and leaped to the wheel, turning the Girl so she was cutting across the rising swells, not lying helpless between them. Hairy jimm roared the men capable of moving into trimming the sails and getting the ship into order so she wouldn’t be broken by the coming storm. Brann and the children staggered along the deck, heaving Djelaan dead and wounded overboard. When that was finished, Brann stood a moment staring at her glowing hands, the wind whipping her white hair about, plastering her shirt against her burning body. With a sigh she went searching for crew dead and wounded. Zaj was dead, a small brown islander much like the men who’d killed him. She and the children carried him to the side wall of the cabin and lashed him there to wait for what rites Sammang and the others would want for him. She hurried back to kneel beside Dereech who had a flap of scalp hanging down over his face, deep cuts in his legs and shoulder. He stared up at her with his one clear eye, horror in his face as she reached for him, tried to crawl away from her but was too weak. When she flattened her hand on him, he froze, a moan dying in his throat.

From his place at the wheel, Sammang watched her and wondered what she intended, wondered if he should drive her off Dereech. What she’d done to the Djelaan she’d done to save her life and theirs, but the glimpses he’d caught of her work worried him. He liked and trusted the child in her, but didn’t know what to do about the witch. In the end, he did nothing.

She bent lower, smoothed her hand up along Dereech’s face, pressing the flap into place, her hands blurring in a moonglow mist. The bleeding stopped, the flap stayed put as if the mist had soldered it down. She pressed the other wounds shut, smoothed her hands over them, the glow shuddering about her flesh and his. The children stood behind her, their hands welded to her body until she sat back on her heels, finished with the healing.

Tik-rat had a spear through a lung. She burnt the spear, out of him, bone point and broken haft, close the wound and held her hands over it, a wound that was almost always fatal. Smiling Tik-rat was the ship’s bard, story teller and singer, the pet of the crew. Now all saw her clean and close his wound, saw the boy’s chest begin to rise and fall steadily and smoothly. Our witch, she’s our witch. A whisper passing round. Our child-woman witch, Sammang murmured to himself. The children with her, she moved on to Rudar, then Uasuf, left them sleeping, their wounds closed, cleaned, healed.

She went briskly over to Hairy Jimm, who jumped when she touched him, looked uneasy and dubious as she began moving her hands over his meaty body, touching, pressing, the mist moving with her. After a minute of this, though, he grinned and stood holding his arms out from his body as if for a tailor taking measurements. When she finished, he patted her on the head. “Any time, our witch.”

She went on, the children following close behind. Tun-ope, Leymas, Gaoez. Healing the smallest cuts, the scrapes and bruises, even a blood-blister on Turrope’s little finger. Then she came toward Sammang.

She looked very tired, haunted by all the dying, her face pale in spite of the eerie glow that shone out through her skin. “Your turn, Sammo. Give over the wheel a minute; you might find this a bit distracting.”

Hairy Jimm boomed laughter, shouldered Sammang away from the wheel. “Distractin’s not the word, no not the word.”

She touched the cut in Sammang’s side. He felt a jolt, then a tingle, then coolness, a new vigor coursing into him. Her strong nervous hands moved along his body and all the hurts and scrapes of the fight were wiped away. And he understood the look on Jimm’s face. He was tumescent before she was half done, ready to take on a harem and a half when she stepped away from him.

She smiled uncertainly at him, met his eyes briefly, blushed, turned hastily away to the hatch.

A bit of hard work and some douches of icy sea water from the building waves cooled him down. He glanced at the sun and was startled to see how little it had moved. Less than an hour since the fighting started. He shook his head, feeling a touch of wonder at how much had happened in that pinch of time. Two dead. But because of the child-woman and the not-children the wounded lived and were well, neither maimed nor disfigured. He lifted his head and laughed. “Our witch,” he shouted, laughed again at the cheers from the three now awake. He began a rumbling song, Hairy Jimm took it up, all of them roared it into the wind as they settled the Girl for the blow coming.

SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT Sammang stumped wearily into his cabin. A nightlamp was hanging from a hook by his hammock. Brann was curled in the bed, half-covered by a blanket, her flesh faintly glowing in the darkness. Her eyes were closed and for some time he thought she was asleep; he pulled off his shirt, started to unlace his trousers, thought about the sleeping witch, and decided he could stand the damp if he kept himself warm. Eleven, eleven, eleven, he told himself; his mind believed it but his body didn’t. He started to swing up into the hammock, couldn’t resist another look at Brann. She was curled on her right side now watching him. Her face was pale and drawn, huge eyes, dark-ringed, asking him… He turned his back on her, climbed into the hammock, flipped the blanket over him and settled himself to sleep.

Much later he woke, knowing something had roused him from sleep, not knowing what it was. He listened to the ship, nothing there. Slowly he became aware of a sound almost too soft to hear, faint rhythmic creaking, soft soft rustles.

Brann lay curled up, her back to him; the children were somewhere else, doing whatever shapechangers did at night. She was sobbing and the shudders that convulsed her body were shaking the bed. He scowled at her, hesitated, tipped out of the hammock and padded the few steps to the bed. He touched her shoulder. “Bramble?”

She buried her face in the pillow. The shaking went on; she was gasping and struggling to stop crying, unable to stop the shudders coursing through her body.

He caught her shoulder, pulled her over, examined her face. She was crying with the ugly all-out grief of a wounded child. He straightened, looked helplessly around, cursed the children for leaving her in this state. Finally he gathered her up, holding her tightly against him, patting her, smoothing his hand over her hair and down her back, over and over, murmuring he didn’t know what to her; her shudders and wrenching sobs died gradually away.

For a while she was just a child he was comforting. Insensibly that changed, pats changed to caresses. He forgot the child in the woman’s body-until he suddenly realized what he was doing. He pulled away from her. “You’ll be all right now,” he said when he could get the words out. He started to get up but her hands closed about his arm, pulled him down beside her.

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Brann…” He touched her face, drew his hands down over her shoulder and onto her breast. Her eyes widened, her tongue moved along her lips. She sighed and her breast shifted under his hand, tfie nipple hard as he was. He pulled his hand away.

“No,” she breathed.

“Got to,” he said; he tore at the lacing on his trousers, breaking the thongs in his urgency.

She was warm and wet and ready for him, closing tightly about him, passive at first, then doing what her body taught her. When it was finished and he lay beside her, his breathing quieting, she snuggled against him, sighed, a sound of deep contentment, and went to sleep.

HE WOKE WITH a numb arm and white curls tickling his chin, sunlight pouring through the slats of the airvent, lay a moment listening to the sounds of the ship. The wind had slackened to a brisk quartering breeze that drove the Girl steadily along without straining her.

Brann’s breath was a spot of warm dampness on his shoulder. She was deeply, bonelessly asleep, not even murmuring as he eased from under her and slid off the bed. He picked up a fresh pair of trousers and laced them on, pulled on a sleeveless shirt bleached by sun and salt water to a dirty gray. He ran his fingers through his hair and swore to have Staro take a knife to it before the day was out.

He looked at Brann. She lay on her stomach, one arm outflung, the other bent so her fist was pressed against her mouth. A child, damn her. A moment before he’d been looking forward to breakfast, now his appetite was gone. He left the cabin, his bare feet soundless on the planks, taking care to make no noise when, he shut the door. He didn’t want to wake her. If she slept most of the day away, he’d be quite happy. He had a lot of thinking to do.

Hairy Jimm had the wheel. He was squinting at the sky ahead, humming a three-note song into his beard. He grinned at Sarnmang, jerked a massive thumb at the sky. “Takes a bit of getting used to, it does, but they’re handy little buggers. Y’ know, Sammo, you ought to keep hold of them all, say you can.”

Sammang looked up. Two large white birds circled lazily above the ship, effortlessly keeping even with her.

“They been up there most all the night, friendly of them, they say they give us a shout down here if somethin starts coming at us.”

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON Brann came on deck. Standing in the bow, Sammang heard her shouted exchanges with the crew, heard her silences. She drifted about for some time, circling gradually closer to him, but he gave no sign he knew she was there. When she put her hand on his arm, he flinched and all but jerked his arm away.

“You’re really upset.” She seemed amazed.

“Yes,” he said, angrily, almost violently.

“I told you I was getting older. I was eleven in Tavisteen, but things have happened since, pushing me older. Might be fifteen, sixteen seventeen now.” She drew her forefinger along the hard muscle of his arm. “You helped, Sammo, you taught me a lot before you ever touched me.”

“Don’t do that.” He pulled his arm away, stared at the water ahead of the ship without seeing it. “Why?

“I don’t know. Lot of reasons. Comfort. I needed to touch someone just for me, not to heal them or kill them. She gave a tiny shrug. “Curiosity.”

“You weren’t virgin.” His own resentful confusion increased his fury.

“A Temueng censor raped me. He’s dead.” She ran her hand slowly down his arm; he felt her enjoying the feel of him and ground his teeth together. “You would be too,” she said, “if I’d wished it.”

A chill ran through him, fear. He forced himself to look at her. There was sadness in her face as if she knew how her words had affected him, had extinguished desire. She said it deliberately, he thought, out of pity for me. He took a step away, almost hating her. Then child and woman both looked at him out of those wide green eyes and anger drained from him.

Forgetting him, she leaned precariously out to look down at the water slicing out from the bow. “The sea looks different.” she said. “How come?”

“How different?”

“Color maybe, the way it moves. I don’t know. It’s just different.”

Watching her, he again saw himself as a boy, ship’s lad trying to answer the same question. He leaned over the rail beside her and began teaching her as he was taught.

THE NEXT DAY was bright and clear, but the wind grew erratic, now and then quitting altogether, leaving the Girl wallowing, her sails slatting, the crew run off their feet. And the weathermaker’s ghost tangled itself in the rigging, gibbering at them, which didn’t improve either skill or morale. Tik-rat who was ship’s exorciser as well as bard had dealt with the rest of the ghosts but the weatherman was stubborn and filled with spite, determined to make the lives of his slayers as miserable as he could manage. He was ragged and growing more so, but grimly hanging on ignoring Tik-rat’s chants and sacred dances, the eroding of the incense the boy waved at him, the curses of Sammang and the rest of the crew. Yaril and Jaril watched the process with fascination until it began wearing on the nerves of their friends, then they joined to drive the ghost from the shrouds and banged through him until he was scattered wisps of smoke that dissipated with the rising wind.

ON THE TWELFTH day after leaving Tavisteen the Panday Girl dropped anchor in the crowded bay at the island port Silili.

4. Brann’s Quest-Silili to Andurya Durat with Taguiloa the Dancing Man

HOLDING LIT CANDLES in both hands, Taguiloa made the last run, whirling over and over, coming up with the candles still burning, arms lifted high over his head, feet stamping out an intricate patterdance over the cork matting spread on the flags of the summer court. He finished the dance before the painted coffin, made the required deep obeisance, blew out the candles, bowed to the finger-snapping crowd and stalked into the darkness with stiff-legged dignity, leaving Yarm to pass through the ghost-witnesses and collect what coins they felt like giving. Should be a goodish haul. Most of the witnesses were rich old merchants, more than half-drunk, delighted to have their minds taken off the death of one of their number, even if the dead was only an old cousin of the master of this house. They were reminded too vividly of their own decaying bodies and how short the count of their remaining years could be. He didn’t like performing at ghost watches either but the money was good, the fee guaranteed, with whatever he could wring from the watchers added on top of that.

He stopped by the food table, dipped a drinking bowl into the hot mulled wine and stepped back into the shadows to watch the dancers who followed him move onto the matting, their long sleeves fluttering, their gauze draperies hiding little of the lithe bodies beneath. Tari called Blackthorn and her dancers. Csermanoa wasn’t stinting his uncle. Taga smiled. Wasn’t for love, all this, Csoa the Sharp was underlining his position among the Hina merchant class; from the number of men sitting out there and the smiles painted onto their faces, he was nailing down his status with the same force he used to drive bargains.

Tari’s flute player was a marvel, the sounds he got out of that pipe, and matched-the mood of the dance and the subtle rhythms of Tari’s body. Taga sipped at the wine, frowning thoughtfully at the way the music enhanced the appeal of the dancers. Though tradition decreed that flute music be reserved for female dancers, for the past year he’d been working with Tari’s Ladjinatuai, developing a mixture of tumbling and dance that used the flowing line of the flute music, but he hadn’t tried it in public yet. It was a daring move and required the right audience, probably one with a strong leavening of Temuengs. Much as he despised them, they weren’t so rigidly set on maintaining things the way they were. When he ventured to combine juggling and tumbling into a single presentation, he had Gerontai his master to support and defend him, but he remembered all too well how difficult it had been to win acceptance before the Tekora chanced to see him and approve. Taguiloa spent a good few days despising himself for being grateful for this recognition until his mentor-almost-father chided him out of it. We’re despised anyway by those who pay us for our skills, Gerontai said, don’t let them tell you how to see yourself. Look at the lap-dogs licking Temueng ass and running after you now that the Tekora says you’re remarkable. What does it matter that it takes a Temueng to see what you are? You know yourself, soul-son, you know you’re better than I ever was or could be. Your integrity lies in your art, not in what Hina say of you. The new things he wanted to do, though, would need a lot more than the Tekora’s approval. He was growing more and more impatient to get started but could only see one way to manage. Gather a troupe together and travel to Andurya Durat with a chance at performing before the emperor-which would give him the right to display the imperial sigil when he was working. That plan would cost an impossible sum in bribes and fees, to say nothing of general expenses. He’d need a patron and a lot of luck to have half a chance of pulling it off.

He watched and listened a while longer, brooding over all the barriers he could see no way of surmounting, then set the bowl down and went into the sidecourt where Csermanoa had put up a paper pavilion for the players, a place to keep them away from his guests. He found Yarm in a corner with one of Tari’s maids, glanced at her to see if she was being coerced in any way, nodded to her and strolled into the alcove that served as washroom and dressingroom. After stripping the paint from his hands and face, he climbed out of his tumbling silks and pulled on a long dark robe, thrust his feet into the aged sandals he brought along when the performance would be long, complex and tiring. Knotting a narrow black sash about his waist, he walked back into the main room, stood looking around. Chinkoury the m’darjin magician and his boys in a small knot by the door, elongated blue-black figures, even the boys a head taller than Taguiloa. To one side and a little behind them a clutch of Felhiddin knife dancers, bending, stretching, testing gear, inspecting each other, chattering in their rapid guttural tongue, little brown men covered in intricate blue tattoos. He didn’t recognize them, must be new to Silili. Trust Csermanoa to get hold of something no one else had seen. Curled up in the far corner, snatching what sleep they could, six young women, more joyhouse girls than dancers, a step above ordinary joygirls, but far below the rank of courtesan, though most of them had hopes. The last to perform-in both their functions-they were expected to return to their house with more than their appearance fee, with longer-term attachments if they could manage it.

He nodded to Chinkoury and passed out of the pavilion. He stood in shadow watching the dancers, silently applauding Tad for the gift she was wasting on those drunken coin-suckers. He watched the merchants for a moment with a contempt he usually had to hide; some were drinking and eating, a few frankly asleep, others wandering about, some watching the dancers, some with their heads together, a heavily conspiratorial air about them that suggested they either plotted new coups or told each other tales of coups past to magnify their shrewdness. Maybe one or two watched Blackthorn dancing with a pinch of appreciation and understanding of what they were seeing, the magic she was making there on the cork mats before the painted coffin. Taguiloa drew his sleeve across his face, amused and angry. I ought to know, he thought, by now I ought to know what to expect. He put anger away and watched Blackthorn end her dance, bow first to the coffin, her sleeves fluttering dangerously near the hordes of candles burning about the elaborate box, then to the audience, who woke enough to provide the expected applause, she was after all Blackthorn, the most celebrated dancer in three generations. As her maids came giggling into the audience, rattling their collecting bowls, dodging gropes, shaking heads at gross remarks but careful to smile and say nothing, Blackthorn sailed majestically into the darkness, her dancers drifting after her, the flute player weaving a slow simple tune that trailed into silence a moment after the last of the girls vanished.

In the hush before Chinkoury was due to appear, Taguiloa heard a faint commotion from the direction of the main gate and succumbed to the curiosity that was his chief vice. He glanced quickly about, but the noisy clash of cymbals, the sprays of colored smoke and the!looming of the apprentices as they ushered their master onto the cork, all this had trapped the attention of most of the guests and servants; those still involved in conversations wouldn’t notice if old Csagalgasoa climbed out of his coffin and jigged on the lid. He slipped away and eeled into a dark corner of the public court, hidden behind a potted blackthorn that Tad had given to Csermanoa when he was one of her favored few, before she inherited her house and income from another of her lovers.

Old Grum stopped talking and slammed the hatch shut, swung the bar and opened the wicket to let in the folk he’d been arguing with.

A man and a woman. Not Hina. Two children, very fair. Not Hina.

“You wait,” Grum said, “You wait here.” He jerked a third time at the bell rope then stumped off to his hutch and vanished inside.

A broad man muscled like a hero, Panday by the look of him, not much taller than Taguiloa but wide enough to ‘ make two of him. Dark brown skin shining in the torchlight, yellow eyes, hawk’s eyes. Taguiloa grinned. Fitting, with a beak like that. Wide, rather thick-lipped mouth, good for grins or sneers. Raggedly cut black hair. Barbaric ear ornament the length of a man’s finger, a series of animal faces linked together. A shipmaster from his dress.

The woman, tall and full of nervous energy. Attractive face for one not Hina, rather wide in the mouth with elegant cheekbones and an arrogant nose; eyebrows like swallow’s wings over large lustrous eyes. Green, he thought, though it was hard to be sure in the torchlight. A band of silk wound about her head, hiding her hair. White blouse with long loose sleeves, wide leather belt that laced in front, long loose black trousers stuffed carelessly in the tops of black boots. She wore no ornaments of any kind, had no visible weapons, but he smelled the danger that hovered round her like a powerful perfume.

Dombro the Steward came into the court, hastened to the visitors. “Sam mang Shipmaster, you are early this year.”

“And late this night, for which I beg your master’s pardon, but it is important I speak with him.”

“So the Sao Csermanoa understood. He asks if you would wait in the spring garden pavilion, Shipmaster. He cannot leave his guests quite yet.”

Taguiloa scowled at the Steward. Stiff-rumped worm. Players had to put up with a lot of sniping from him; he looked like he wanted to try his insolence on the Shipmaster but didn’t quite dare. Obviously the Panday was important to Csermanoa. He watched the Shipmaster nod and follow the Steward, waited a while then slipped after him. He’d met many foreigners in this house. Csermanoa’s interests ranged widely; while it wasn’t according to Temueng law for a Hina to own shipping, he was a very silent partner to more than one Shipmaster, and Taga’s snooping had brought him the startling discovery that this highly respectable merchant was also a fence of considerable proportions; there was not a whisper of that in the market places around Silili and Taguiloa would have been mocked as moon-dreaming if he’d told anyone, but he was a miser with the secrets he nosed out, calling them up and fondling them when sleep eluded him.

He ghosted through the dark paths, his senses alert; if this was something to do with the subterranean aspects of Csermanoa’s business, the merchant would be quick and drastic in the methods he used to keep his secrets to himself I should forget this and get back to the Watch, he told himself. He kept following them.

The Steward unlocked and opened a gate in a wall, and left it open after ushering the Panday and his companions through. Taguiloa crept up to the gate after a few ragged breaths, still half-convinced he should get out of there.

A few scrapes of feet against gravel, no talking. Dombro wouldn’t waste his breath on foreigners. Taga watched a moment more, then floated through, his feet as soundless as he could make them. He whipped into shrubbery on the far side of the gate, wishing he wore clothing more suitable for night-prowling. A moment later the Steward came back, a sour sneer on his face. He passed through the gate, slammed it shut and locked it. Trusting soul. Seshtrango send him boils on his butt.

The pavilion was a free-standing six-sided structure large enough to contain more than one room. He circled round it till he found one window whose oiled paper was an arch of yellow light. He slid into the shaggy yews planted close to the wall, dropped into a crouch as a voice sounded above him, startling him with its nearness and clarity. At first he didn’t catch what was being said, then realized the woman was speaking Panay. Growing up wild in this polyglot port city had given him the rudiments of many tongues and he’d polished them as he grew older, because he admired his master’s command of many languages and because it was a necessity for satisfying his thirst for secrets.

“You’re fussing about nothing, Sammo.” Her voice was husky but musical, deep enough to pass for a man’s. “I did all right in Tavisteen.”

“Hunh.” An angry rasping sound rather like a lion’s cough. “You’re a baby, Bramble-all-thorns. Tavisteeners may think they’re the slipp’riest things under the Langareri bowl, but Silili Hina make them look like children who aren’t very bright. Hina say they’re the oldest folk and maybe its so; trying to get through their customs is like threading a maze without a pattern. And since the Temuengs took over here nothing they say or do means exactly what it seems to. It’s called survival, Bramble, Hina are very good at surviving.”

“So am I, friend.”

Another impatient sound from the Panday. Footsteps going away from the window, coming back, going away again. Pacing, Taguiloa thought, a baby? that woman? Wicker creaking, the whisper of silk. The woman sitting down. After a while the man joined her. “Csermanoa financed a good part of the Girl,” he said, “I’m clear of debt to him, the Girl’s all mine. It’s the other way now, he owes me. He’ll take care of you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Baby, baby, you haven’t the least idea what the real world’s like.”

A chuckle, warm and affectionate. “Hahl Maybe I didn’t last month, but I’ve learned a few things since.”

“You’ve learned to tease, that’s for sure.”

“Who says I’m teasing?”

“Let it go, Brann. You know how I feel. Smooth your feathers and take any help that’s going. Think of your father and your brothers. If you’re killed before you get to them, what good is all you’ve done so far?”

“You throw my own arguments at me. How can I fight that?” Silence for a while. “I’ll take a lot of killing.”

“Lapalaulau swamp me, I wish you were a few years older.” There was an odd, strained note in the man’s voice.

Taguiloa scowled. There was too much he didn’t know. He couldn’t catch the nuances, the feelings between the words. Crouched outside in the darkness, he could hear the strong currents of affection passing between them, such shared understanding they didn’t have to say any of those things he wanted to know. He flushed with envy. Not even Tani Blackthorn was that close. Gerontai had loved him but he was an old man when he took an angry street boy into his home and he was a man of solitude and distances. Taga’s parents, his brothers and sisters, he lost them in a shipwreck when he was five; he clung to a bit of debris and was pulled out of the sea by a fisherman, brought back to live with an overworked cousin who had eight children of her own and neither missed nor mourned him when he ran away.

“What are you going to do?” The woman’s voice. “Unload my official cargo for what I can get. See if I can get hold of more Slya ware, maybe pick up other cargo.

Go home awhile. Careen my ship. I didn’t use half your gold in Tavisteen. You sure you don’t want it back?”

“Very sure. What I need, the children will provide.”

“Yeah.” Sound of wicker shifting, scrape of boots on the tile floor. “What about your father, will he work for the emperor?”

“How can he without Tincreal’s fire? He’s spent a lifetime putting her heart into his work; what he does is more than just shaping the bowls and things. Old Lardarse…” She giggled. “Like that name? A Temueng pimush should know the worth of his emperor… Where was I? Ah. I suppose he can have my folk beaten into making something, but it won’t be Slya ware. What a fool he is. If he’d left us alone, he’d have had the pick of what we made. Now that the mountain has taken her own back, he’ll have nothing. “

Arth Slya gone, Taga thought. He closed his eyes and cursed the Temuengs, cursed the woman, cursed himself for somehow believing there’d always be a place free from the compromises he’d made all his life, a place where artist and artisan explored their various crafts without having to pander to blind and stupid men whose only virtue was the gold in their pockets. If he understood what she was saying, Arth Slya was either dead or maimed beyond recovery.

The Panday cleared his throat. “Come home with me, Bramble. Wait till I get my ship clean of weed and rot. Well take you up the Palachunt to Durat, sooner and safer than the land route, wait for you, take you and your folk away once you break them free.”

Silence again. More creaks from the wicker as she shifted about, more wool moving against silk. “I’m sorry you wouldn’t love me again, Sammo. I wanted you to, you know that.”

“Bramble, how could I? Tupping a child. I’d kill another man for doing that.”

“I should have kept my mouth shut that time in Tavisteen, just said no and left it at that.”

“I wish you had.”

“I’m growing older fast.”

“Give me a couple more years, Bramble, then maybe I’ll believe it.”

“Slya! you’re stubborn.”

“We’re a pair.”

“You’re right. I’m going to stick to my first plan, Sammo. I know how you feel about the Girl and I can read a map. A dozen places on that river where the Temuengs could drop rocks or fire on you and would if they thought they had a reason. You’d all be killed and if you weren’t, you’d lose the Girl. I won’t have that, Sammo. I won’t.”

The shadows around Taguiloa suddenly vanished and hot golden light flickered about him. He bit back a yell and jumped to his feet, meaning to get out of there as fast as he could, hoping he wasn’t already identified. His feet wouldn’t move. He tried to turn his head. It wouldn’t move. Not his head. Not a hand. Not a finger.

He stood frozen and afraid. As abruptly as it came, the light was gone, taking with it the greater part of his fear. Whatever else had happened, he wasn’t discovered. Inside the pavilion the man and woman were still talking; there were no shouts of discovery outside it. Something very strange had happened. If he fled without careful thought, likely he’d run into trouble rather than away from it. He glanced around, saw only darkness and yews, dropped to the ground and began listening again to what was happening inside.

“I don’t want to let you go.” The Panday was walking about, his words loud then muffled.

“I don’t want to go.” Creak of wicker as she moved restlessly on the divan. “If it weren’t my father, my brothers, my kin, if it weren’t for Slya filling me, driving me, if…

Ill Stupid word. I can’t change what is, Sammo.”

“You don’t even know if they’re alive now, you don’t know what will happen to them before you can get to Durat.”

“No.” A long silence filled with the small sounds of movement. “If they aren’t alive,” the woman said suddenly, fury, frustration, fear sharp in her voice. “If they aren’t alive, I will drink the life from Abanaskranjinga and spit it to the winds.”

“Preemalau’s bouncy tits, Brann, don’t say that, don’t even think it.”

“I won’t say it again, but I will do it. That’s another reason I don’t want you and the others anywhere about.”

“I believe you, don’t say more, what if someone is listening.” Sound of door opening, feet crossing the tiles, voice louder, window shutters slamming open. Taguiloa shrank farther into shadow, but the Panday saw nothing but the darkness of the yews and the moonlit grass beyond. He dragged the shutters to and went to stand behind the woman, so close to the window Taga could hear him breathing. “Where’s the boy?”

“Keeping watch.”

“Ah.” Feet on tiles, wicker protesting loudly as a heavy weight dropped onto the silk cushions. The Panday sitting beside the woman. “I could leave Jimm to take care of the Girl and go north with you.”

“Don’t be silly, Sammo. I’d have to spend more time worrying about you than getting on with the business. The children will take care of me. There’s no way the Temuengs can harm them. Strike at them and they fade and are something else, somewhere else.”

“Not you.”

“While they live, I live.”

He grunted, then laughed. “Don’t think I want to go deeper into that.”

Laughter from the woman. A long comfortable silence. Taguiloa felt the amity and warmth moving between them, filling the silence, was angry and sad at once that such a communion was beyond him. Even as he felt this, the woman repelled him and the things they said frightened him. He thought of leaving, decided he’d wait for Csermanoa and see what happened then.

As if it took a cue from him, a child’s voice broke the silence. “)aril says Csermanoa’s coming.”

Taga listened, heard nothing for a few breaths, then the crunch of feet on the gravel path, then Csoa’s voice ordering the guards to take up their posts. Taga smiled to himself. Csoa the Sharp making sure they weren’t close enough to hear what was said in the pavilion, yet where they could come running if he needed them fast. Heavy footsteps as he came on alone, protesting planks as he climbed the stairs to the pavilion’s door, faint squeal of hinges.

“Well, Sammang?”

“Precariously, Saiim.” He spoke Hina with very little accent.

“Ah.” Creak of wicker as the rotund little merchant settled himself across the room from the man and woman. “Didn’t expect you till the end of summer.”

The Panday chuckled. “The gods dispose, Sadm.” A short silence. “This isn’t business. I’m calling in a couple favors. Business we’ll discuss tomorrow.” Another short silence. “Sorry about your uncle.”

“An old man full of years.” Wariness in the merchant’s voice. Taguiloa grinned into the darkness, seeing the film sliding over Csoa’s eyes, the stiff smile stretched his lips. For him, favors meant coin and he never parted with coin until he got as much as he could for it.

“My friend needs a place to stay hid and needs tutoring in Hina and Temueng ways.”

“She speak Hina?”

The woman broke in with a rapid question to the Shipmaster, wanting to know what was being said. She listened and told him she’d be speaking Hina the next day, the children would give it to her.

“She will,” the Panday said, finality in his voice.

Loud creaks from across the room, the wicker complaining as Csoa’s shifting weight stressed it. Taguiloa imagined the fat man leaning forward to stare at the woman, his narrow black eyes sliding over her as if she were a sack of rice he thought of buying. “Stay hid?”

“That’s the other favor. Don’t ask.”

“Ah.” The wicker creaked again, Csermanoa settling back. “Dombro won’t gossip, he knows better. Grum wouldn’t talk to his mother if he had one. Who else saw her?”

• “My crew, but they won’t talk, not about her. We came the back ways, no one credible saw her.”

“You had that hair covered? Good. Old woman’s hair with a young woman’s face catches the eye. Can she read and write? Her own gabble, I mean. Yes? Good. She’s got the idea. Shouldn’t be too hard to give her a fair sense of Hina script if she’s willing to work at it.” Silence. Taguiloa imagined the merchant running shuttered eyes over the woman again. “Is she prepared to earn her keep?” An angry exclamation from the Shipmaster. “Not while she’s here,” Csermanoa added hastily. “I ask so I’ll knovi, what to teach her.”

Switching into rapid Panay, almost too rapid for Taguiloa to follow, the man reported to the woman what he and Csermanoa had been saying.

“Samna, I’m not going to he earning my way, you know that. He’s fishing, it’s nonsense. I’ll survive,” she added grimly. “Leave how I do it to me.”

Taga smiled. As I thought, he told himself. A tough one Csoa can go milk a rock and get more than she’ll give him.

“You don’t want the imperial guard waiting for you.” Sammang speaking angrily. Careless, Taguiloa thought. I’m sure Csoa knows some Panay, and the word imperial is a bad slip, has to tell him more than they want him to know.

“Who knows to wait?”

“You think the Temuengs in… where you come from don’t send messages every day to Durat?”

“So?”

“They’re not stupid. By now they know you’ve escaped them, and they’ll have an idea where you’re going. They will be waiting for you. You’ve got to be sly and cunning, you’ve got to know the ground.”

“All right, all right, I hear you. I admit you’re right. Get on with the bargaining. I’m sleepy.”

Be careful, Taguiloa thought, Csoa may owe you favors, but you’re not Hina, remember that and beware, how he treats the woman depends on how much he still needs you. Don’t let him know the Temuengs will hunt her down and stomp everyone connected with her. He made a note to himself to stay as far away from her as he could manage.

Switching to high Hina, the Shipmaster said, “Sao Csermanoa, will you provide shelter and tutoring for the freewoman and her child companions?”

Taguiloa wished he could see the merchant’s face. That was a most formal request, phrased in the elegant high Hina more suitable for use with one from the few Old Families left after the Temueng clearances in the bloody aftermath of their invasion. He nodded with appreciation. A touch. A real touch. Shrewd though he was, Csermanoa would bite.

In the same high tongue, with the same formality, Csermano answered the Shipmaster. “I say to you, O Sammang Schimli, shelter will be provided and tutoring for the freewoman and her child companions.” Slipping into less formal language, he went on, “You said companions. I only see one child. Silent little thing.”

“Her twin watches outside.”

“A bit young.”

“But very competent.”

Competent? Taguiloa thought. Haven’t found me… he jumped and almost betrayed himself as a small hand touched his arm, a soft laugh sounded in his ear. He looked down, saw the boy’s face as a pale oval in the shadow, then it dissolved into the golden light that had touched him not so long ago, then the light was gone; there was a faint rustle to his left as if something small was pattering away. No wonder the woman wasn’t worried. Witch with demon familiars. He shivered and renewed his vow to keep away from her, shivered again when he realized the boy would tell her about him as soon as Csermanoa left. He fidgeted. He wanted to get out of there now, he knew enough to play with, but he couldn’t chance the guards. They’d be just bored enough to catch the slightest sound and mean enough to enjoy stomping him.

“Favor for favor,” the merchant said.

“Name it and I’ll think about it.”

– Tomorrow, Shipmaster.” Wicker creaked. “You said business tomorrow.”

“Sen, would you promise blind?” Sounds of the Panday shifting his feet, softer noises of the woman standing beside him. “Thanks for listening. I’ll make other arrangements.”

“Sit, sit.” Csermanoa spoke hastily, a querulous note in his voice. “There’s no question of swearing blind. Certainly not. We’ll talk about that tomorrow.” Grunts, more creaking, a few thuds. Csermanoa standing. “The woman may stay, of course she may, servants will be provided, food, the tutoring you ask. All I ask is discretion.” Heavy steps on the tiles, crossing to the door. “Come to the ghostwatch, Shipmaster, before you leave.” Sound of door opening, closing. Heavy feet stumping down the steps. Csoa calling to his guards, walking off with them.

Taguiloa stayed where he was until he heard the gate clunk shut. He straightened, turned to follow Csoa out. Then he heard the Panday and the witch start talking, hesitated, squatted once more, cursing his stupidity but unable to break away.

“Our witch.” Caressing sound in the man’s voice. “You’re set. He won’t bother you. Maybe ask questions. Mmmh. Certainly questions. You’re all right as long as you’re suspicious, Bramble, but soon as you relax, you talk too much. You talked too much to me.”

“What harm would you do me?”

“Bed you, child.”

“I keep telling you…” She sighed impatiently. “It wasn’t a child’s body you loved. I don’t know what I am any more, only that I’m not Arth Slya’s Brann waiting for her eleventh birthday so she could make her Choice. Sammo, I was going to be a potter like my father. He made a teapot and drinking bowls for an old man’s birthday. Uncle Eornis. My birthday was his too, he was going to make a hundred this year… the oldest among us…

Her voice broke. After a moment she cleared her throat and went on. “That he was killed two weeks before his hundred… funny, that seems worse…” She seemed to be speaking to herself. Taguiloa was caught up in them, his imagination responding to the emotion in the soft voice, emotion that was all the more powerful because of the quiet restraint that kept the words so slow and easy. “I saw a Ternueng take my baby sister by the heels and dash her brains out against the Oak, I saw them fire my home and walk away with my mother, my uncles, aunts and cousins, I didn’t cry, Sammo, all that time I didn’t cry. And now I weep for an old man at the end of his life. Look at me, isn’t it funny?”

“Brann…”

“Don’t worry about me, Sammo, I’m not falling apart. Like aunt Frin always said, complaining is good for the soul. A purgation of sorts.”

Silence. The man began walking about, stopping and walking, stopping and walking, no regular rhythm to his pacing. Pulled two ways, Taguiloa thought, wants to stay, wants to go.

“Three months,” the Panday said, his voice stone hard with determination. “Enough time for you to learn how to go on and work out a way into Audurya Durat, then make your way there. In three months I’ll be tied up at the wharves of Durat waiting for you.”

“No!”

“You can’t stop me.”

“The Girl. What if something happens to her?”

“Thought about that. Plenty of inlets near the mouth of the Palachunt. Jimm can wait there with the Girl; your gold will buy a ship I don’t have to care about, all it needs is a bottom sound enough to get us back down the river. And the children flying guard.” He chuckled. “Now argue with that, Bramble-all-thorns.”

“Dear friend, what about the crew? Who’re you going to take with you into that rattrap? Tik-rat? Staro the stub?”

“Better to ask who I can persuade to stay behind and if I’m going to have to part Jimm’s hair with his war club to make him wait with the Girl.” He cleared his throat. “You’re part of the crew now, Bramble. You’re our witch.”

Soft gasping, snuffling sounds. The witch weeping. Taguiloa scowled into the darkness, his pulses shouting danger at him, danger to stay so close to a woman who could spin such webs. He started to creep out of the shadows, froze as he heard the door slam, feet running down the steps. Then the Shipmaster slowed to a deliberate walk. The gate creaked open, bumped shut. Taguiloa stood, still in half-shadow, and worked the cramps out of his body. Behind him he heard the soft murmur of voices-the children and the woman. He closed his ears to them, started cautiously for the gate, staying in the shadow of the plantings, moving with the silent hunting glide that had served him so well other times.

A faint giggle by his side. He looked down. The blond boy, trotting beside him. Taga ignored him and went ghosting on until he reached the wall.

The boy caught hold of his arm. “Wait,” he breathed. A slight tug, then a large horned owl was powering up from him. It sailed over the wall, circled twice and came slanting back. Feathers soft as milkweed fluff brushed at his arm, then the boy was standing beside him. “No one out there, not even a servant.”

“Why?”

“It’s late. Only a couple hours till dawn.”

– “You know what I mean.”

The boy grinned at him, danced back a few steps, turned and ran into the darkness. Taguiloa stared after him then turned to the gate. With a silent prayer to Tungjii, he lifted the latch and walked through.

THE KULA PRIEST came from the house and paced round and round the pyre with its festoons of silk flowers and painted paper chains and the paper wealth soaked in sweet oils to make a perfumed and painted fire. He waved his incense sticks and the sickly sweet perfume drifted on the breeze to Taguiloa. If funerals had not provided a steady income and a place to show his work, he’d have missed them all; the smell of the roasting meat, the sight of the earthsoul and skysoul oozing out of the coffin surrounded by that smell which the incense never quite covered twisted his stomach and made the inside of his bones itch.

The fire was crackling briskly as the Kula finished the final tensing round. He stepped back and chanted, binding the sparks into a web of light so there was no danger of the House or the Watchers catching fire.

Taguiloa sensed a presence and looked down. The blond boy was standing beside him, watching the show with amused interest. There was a companionable feel to the situation that made him want to relax and grin at the boy, ruffle his hair the way he hated to have done to him when he was a boy. He’d stopped being afraid of this maybe-demon, this changechild; he smiled at the boy and went back to watching the fire burn.

The shimmer that was the skysoul wriggled free and darted skyward like a meteor shooting up instead of down. The earth soul, a bent little man looking much as old uncle had looked in life, hovered near the pyre as if it didn’t have the strength to leave the meat that had housed it. After a while, though, it seemed to shrug its meager shoulders and begin a heavy drift upwards riding the streamers of smoke. The death was clean, the old man had nothing to complain of, there was no violence against the meat to hold the earthsoul down, a clear testament to the way Csermanoa performed his family duties.

As the fire began to die down, the party grew livelier. The servants came bustling about, replacing the plundered food trays, setting out new basins of steaming spiced wine, drawing the lamps down and replacing the candles in them; the joygirls were circling through the guests, teasing and laughing, cajoling sweets from the men, whispering in their ears. It was clearly time for the players to leave. He looked down. The child was gone. He watched a moment more, then edged around the walls of the summer court and went into the paper pavilion. Yarm had the gear packed and was curled up, dozing, beside it. He shook the boy awake, caught up his own pack and left Csermanoa’s compound by the servant’s entrance, the sleepy doorkeeper coming awake enough to hold out his hand for a tip. Feeling generous, ignoring Yarm’s scowl, Taguiloa dropped a dozen coppers in the palm; the broad beaming grin he got in return seemed worth the price.

As they wound through the irregular narrow streets, Yarm kept looking back, something Taguiloa didn’t notice until they were about halfway to the players’ quarter and the house and garden he’d inherited from Gerontai. He endured Yarm’s fidgeting for a while, then looked back himself, half-suspecting what he’d see.

The small blond boy was strolling casually along behind them, making no effort to conceal himself. He stopped when he saw them watching him, waved a hand and sauntered into an alley between two tenements. Taguiloa tapped Yarm on the shoulder. “Forget it,” he said. “That’s nothing to trouble us.”

“Who’s he? What’s he want?” Petulance and jealousy in the boy’s voice.

Taguiloa frowned at him, started walking again without answering him. Yarm had a limber body, a quick mind when he wanted to use it, a good ear for rhythm; he also had a difficult nature he made no attempt to change. He was intensely, almost irrationally possessive. Taguiloa’s continued aloofness still intimidated him a little, but the effect of it was wearing off. He had to go. There were complications to getting rid of him, notably his cousin the thug-master Fist, but he had to go.

An owl dipped low overhead, hooted softly and went slanting up, riding the onshore wind freshening about them in the thickening dark just before dawn. Taguiloa shivered, then laughed at himself. The boy was teasing him, that was all. And following him home. He glanced up at the owl, walked on. Nothing he could do about it. Besides, a hundred people knew where he lived, that was not one of his secrets.

THE DAYS SLID one into the next until a week was gone. The boy appeared now and again when Taguiloa was performing, watching him with such genial interest that he found himself relaxing and accepting his presence with equanimity and curiosity. He didn’t try to talk to the boy, only nodded to him and smiled now and then.

Yarm began making jealous scenes about the boy, barely confining them to the walls of the house, making life there such a misery that Taguiloa began staying away as much as he could, even neglecting practice, something he’d never done before. He was coldly furious at Yarm, but he needed him for performances already booked, a wedding, two funerals, a guild dinner, and the first-pressing festival. And there was always Fist who started dropping in on Taguiloa now and then, mentioning casually how delighted the family was that Yarm had found such a considerate master. It was enough to make a man stomp into the Temple and kick old Tungjii on hisser fat butt.

TAGUILOA THREW the sticks and they landed eskimemeloa, the wave of change, a sign of the third triad, a good high point. He smiled with satisfaction. Maybe a sign that his luck was changing. Djeracim the pharmacist grunted, gathered the sticks and threw them, snarled with disgust and emptied his winebowl. Neko-karan. Only one step from nothing, the maelstrom. Grunting with the effort. Lagermukaea the Fat scooped up the sticks, held them a moment lost in his huge hand. “That kid of yours, Tap, he’s whispering nasty things about you in Pupa’s ear. Muck-worm don’t waste any time running to the Temueng Nose to dump his dirt. You ought to pop the kid in a sack and drop him in the bay.” He opened his hand, looked surprised to see the thin brown stalks on his broad palm. Clicking tongue against teeth, he cast them, hummed a snatch of a dirge as they split into two signs. Rebhsembulan, the honeybee, and mina-tuatuan, the reviving rain. He grunted. Even added, they didn’t count enough to beat the eski-memeloa. He grinned a moment later, began flipping the coppers one by one to Taguiloa who caught them and tossed them up again, keeping more and more in the air until he finally missed one and dropped the bunch. Laughing, he opened his pouch and dropped the coins inside along with Dji’s, leaving out enough to buy another jug of wine. “That I would,” he said. “Tie him in a sack. If someone would sack Fist and feed him to a shark.” He pushed the coins into a squat triangle. “Let me know if someone none of us likes is looking for an apprentice, maybe I can push Yarm off on him. Or her.” He curled his tongue and whistled up another jug.

TACUILOA SAT on the pier in a heavy fog, listening to the sound of the buoys clanging, to the distant shouts from the Woda Living boats, to the thousand other noises of the early morning. He’d always liked foggy days, enjoyed the times when he was immersed in the sounds of life, yet wholly alone in the small white room the fog built around him.

The blond boy came into that room and sat beside him, his short legs dangling over the pier’s edge. Water condensed on his skin and in his hair, ran down his nose and wet the collar of his jacket.

“Why are you following me about?” Taguiloa spoke lazily, not overly interested in the answer.

“Curiosity.”

“About why I was outside the pavilion listening?”

“That? Oh no. I already know what you were doing

. there and why. I wanted to know more about you.”

“Why?”

“My companion needs to reach Andurya Durat. I thought you might be the right one to take her.”

“Me? Nol” After a moment’s silence, he said, “She’s a witch. Worse, she’s a foreigner. Worse than that, she’s going hunting for Temuengs.”

“So? You like Temuengs?”

“Hahl I like living.”

“What about gold?”

“Not enough to die for it.”

“You want to go to Durat and play for the emperor. Brann could provide the gold.”

“My master reached his eighties by being a prudent man.”

“He took a chance on a boy who tried to rob him, took him in, taught him, made him his heir. Was he wrong?”

“Stay out of my head.” There was no force to his voice, he was too accustomed to the boy now, he couldn’t work up any fear of the changechild, no matter how strange he acted. “Look, Jaril, I’m not saying I don’t understand her feelings, if my folks were slaves Understand me, it’s the rest of my life you’re talking about.”

“Brann knows that. All she wants is a quiet way into the city so she can get there without the guard waiting for her. If she didn’t care who knew she was coming she could hire a barge and a team of Dapples and float in comfort up the canal.”

“A foreigner?”

“She could buy a Temueng to take her. Enough gold buys anything.”

“Csermanoa’s gold?”

“Certainly not, we’re not going to make trouble for our Sammang and his men; think rather of the Tekora’s vaults. Who can stop Yaril and me from getting in where we want?”

“Why me?”

Jaril snickered, slanted a crystal glance at him. “You presented yourself.” Darkened by the fog his eyes glistened with good humor. “And who would look for vengeance riding in a player’s wagon?”

“Your companion offers to pay the bribes and the outfitting?”

“And expenses along the way. What you make, that’s yours to share out with the others in the troupe.”

“She is generous.”

“How easy to be generous with Temueng gold.”

“Given the Temuengs don’t know.”

“Who would think of serpents with pockets in their hide?”

Taga chuckled. “Not me, friend.”

“You won’t take Yarm?”

“One more funeral and I’m done with him.”

“He’s got a cousin with a nasty temper.”

“He has a lot of cousins, most of them with nasty tempers.”

“Only one of them about to lesson you with padded clubs that won’t break the skin, only bones.”

“Tungjii’s gut! I suppose you were a fly on the wall.”

“Be one monstrous fly, but you’ve got the idea.”

“Why tell me?”

“We like you. Offer. Whether or not you accept my companion’s gold, Yaril and I, we’ll keep an eye on Fist and warn you when he’s set to act.”

“Accept. Seshtrango send him hives and flatulence and inflict Yarm on him the rest of his life.”

Jaril giggled, then dug in the pocket of his jacket and dropped a handful of gold beside Taguiloa. “Brann wants to move out of Csermanoa’s house. He’s hanging around a bit too much, asking questions she doesn’t want to answer, and the maids spy on her. Makes her nervous. Could you find her a place to stay?” He stacked the coins into a neat pile. “That should be enough. Someplace she can stay quiet and safe?”

“There’s no place safe from gossip.”

“Even if she seems Hina? At least outside the house?”

“She can do that?”

“We can do that.”

“Mmm. I can think of a couple places might do. Give me two days, meet me at my house.”

“I hear.” The boy got to his feet with the sinuous supple grace of a cat, vanished into the fog with a wave of a hand.

Taguiloa sat staring at the black water rocking under his feet, wondering what he’d got himself into.

HE FOLLOWED THE MUSIC and laughter through the pleasure garden to the beach house built out over the water-water-dark stones and wind-sculpted cedars, clipped and trained seagrape vines. Salt flowers in reds and oranges and a scattered shouting pink. A willow or two to add a note of elegance. A bright cool morning with the sun just hot enough to fall pleasantly on the skin. Flute song winding through the wash of the sea, the spicy whisper of the cedars, the rustle of the willows. Ladji, he thought, then lifted his head and stopped as another instrument began to play, a jubilant, very clear, rather metallic flurry of notes dancing around the thread of the flute song.

He walked into the house.

Tari Blackthorn was reclining on a low divan amid piles of pillows watching two girls dancing. A small ancient man with a few wisps of hair on mottled skin stretched tight over his skull knelt at the edge of the straw matting and danced fingers like spider legs over the holes of his flute. Beside him a small dark-haired woman sat on a broad orange cushion, an instrument like a distorted and enlarged gittern on her lap. Her hair was dressed in innumerable small braids, some of them stiffened into graceful loops about her head. Elaborate gold earrings, wide hoops with filigreed discs hanging from them. Large blue eyes, the blue so dark it was almost black. Small pointed face, dark olive skin. A nose that had a tendency to hook. A wide mobile mouth, smiling now as she watched the girls dance. Short stubby fingers moved with swift sureness over the strings, the ivory plectrum gleaming against her dark skin.

Tari looked up as he came in, smiled and nodded at a pile of cushions near her feet. He dropped on them, leaned against the divan and watched the girls. They were very young, ten or eleven, sold by their parents into the night world when they were old enough so their adult features could be guessed at. He’d escaped being impressed into the world of the joyhouses by craftiness learned in a hard school, by the nimble body, coordination and speed Tungjii had gifted him with, and by a lot of luck. He watched the dancers with a cool judicial eye, his tastes running to older women. The plumper one wasn’t going to make a dancer, she was a juicy creature with a bold eye; she had the proper moves, but there was no life to her dancing, none of the edge and fire Tail Blackthorn got into her dances. The other girl was thin and under-developed, coltish and a bit clumsy but there was a hint that she might have some of the gift that made Blackthorn the premier dancer of Silili before she was nineteen and kept her there for the next fifteen years.

Taga twisted his head around and saw her watching him. A slow smile touched the corners of her mouth. She seldom let her face move in any way that would encourage wrinkles, part of the discipline she enforced over nearly every aspect of her life. He was a part of that tiny area where she let herself feel and possibly be hurt, that little area of danger that gave her the magic she put into her dancing. Her smile was at most a slight lifting of her face, a gleam in her eyes, but he’d warmed to it since he’d celebrated his seventeenth birthday in her bed. Eight years ago. She was at her zenith now while he was still rising. She’d stay where she was for a few years and manage a graceful glide into her retirement unless she made enemies. Here too she walked the ragged and crumbly edge between acceptance and obloquy, walked it with calculation and care, knowing a misstep could destroy her. Like every player she had only her wits, her skill, and the tenuous protection of custom and reputation to restrain the merchants and the officials who ran Silili (always subject to the whims of the Temuengs) and ordered the lives of all who lived there.

Tali touched the ceramic chimes. The double clink was not loud, but it cut through the music. The dancers stopped and bowed, then stood waiting for her to speak, the plump one a little nervous but enough in command of herself to slide her eyes at Taguiloa, the thin one seeing no one and nothing but Blackthorn. Tari lifted a hand. “You saw, what do you say?”

“The hungry one.”

Tail nodded. “When you have that hunger, its easy to see it in others. If I were five years younger, I might want to kick her feet from under her.” She turned to the two girls. “Deniza,” she told the thin one, “see my bataj about buying you out. Rasbai, your gifts lie elsewhere, I am not the proper teacher for you. May I suggest… mmm… Atalai?” She dismissed them firmly, ignoring both Rasbai’s scowl and Deniza’s sudden glow. “Your student has shut his mouth. What’d you do to that little snake?”

He watched the two girls walk out with their silent chaperone and said nothing until they had time to get beyond hearing, then turned to stare cooly at the foreign woman. “Me?” he said, “I did nothing.”

Her eyes opened a bit wider, the toes of her right foot nudged at the nape of his neck, tickled through the hair by his right ear. “This is Blackthorn, little love. Maybe you forget?” She dug at him with the nail of her big toe. “Harm? Would I ask in front of her if I didn’t trust her? Fishbrain.”

He swung round, caught hold of her ankle, danced his fingers along the henna’d sole of her foot. “Even a fishbrain knows Blackthorn.” He let her pull her ankle free. “It’s the truth. I did him nothing. He’s happy contemplating my future broken bones.”

“What?”

“Fist and a handful of his thugs are getting set to thump me some.”

“You’re very cheerful considering.”

“Considering I’ve got some protection Fist and Yarm don’t know about. I’m shucking Yarm the end of the week, going on tour soon as I can get it together. I’ve got a patron of sorts, who’s financing me and providing that protection I mentioned.”

“You’re finally going to do it? The dances?”

“Uh-huh. I need a flute player.” He scowled at the mat. “Funeral tomorrow. The last appearance I’ve got for a while. Yarm’s out the next day. I’m not looking forward to that.”

“I told you he was a bad idea.

“That you did, but I had no ears then.”

“And nothing between them either.”

He caught hold of a toe, pinched it lightly. “Flute player.”

A sharp intake of breath, a moment’s silence. Tari lay back with her eyes shut. He frowned at her but before he could say anything, she spoke. “Ladji.”

The ancient flute player got easily to his feet, came across the open airy room and dropped to his knees near the head of the divan. “Sew,” he said tranquilly. He held his flute lightly across his thighs.

“You have a student, your sister’s grandson I think it is. You know him, you know Taga. What do you think?” She opened her eyes. “It’s a gamble, and the hillwolves are getting bold.” She glanced at Taguiloa, lifted the corner of her mouth a fraction. “Rumor is once the Jamara lords and the jamaraks are left behind, it’s a dance with death.” Delicate lift of a delicate brow, slow and smooth, a question to Taguiloa. “You’re not given to taking those kinds of chances, little love.”

“It’s the hillwolves that better watch themselves.” He hesitated, wondering exactly what he wanted to say, how much he wanted to tell. This was Blackthorn who read him better than he did himself “My patron is a friendly witch with demon familiars.” He turned so he was facing the foreign woman. “That is not for repeating.”

She nodded, but said nothing.

The old man spoke. “Taga, when would you like to talk with Linjijan? And where?”

Blackthorn’s toe nudged at Taguiloa’s head again. “Will here do?”

“Since you offer.” He rubbed his head gently against her foot. “This afternoon? I’ve got to start shaking the mix.”

“Ladji’’

The old man looked past her at the wall. “Linjijan went out with his brothers this morning. After fish. He’ll be returning with the sun. But he’ll need sleep.” He turned muddy amber eyes on Blackthorn and smiled, the wrinkles lifting and spreading. “And you, saOr, prefer the afternoon.”

“True, my eldest love.” She made the deep gurgle that was her sort of laugh. “raga. Dance for me, you. I’ve earned some entertaining, don’t you think?”

He turned his head and kissed the smooth instep, then jumped to his feet. He kicked off his sandals and walked barefoot onto the woven straw mat, rubbed his hands down his sides, lifted a brow to Ladjinatuai, then began snapping his fingers, hunting for the rhythm that felt right for the mood he was in and the way his body felt. He looked over his shoulder at the foreign woman. “Play for me,” he said. “With Ladji, if you will.”

Ladjinatuai lifted his flute and began improvising music to the changing rhythms of Taga’s fingers.

A few beats later, a soft laugh, and the lively metallic complex tones of stringed instrument came in, picking up the beat, playing fantasies around it, making a sound he’d never heard before.

He let the music work in him a while longer.

When he was ready, he began the first tumbling run, moving faster and faster, gathering the energy of the music into his blood and bone, ending the run with a double flip, landing, reversing direction without losing the impulse driving him, dropping, curling onto his shoulders, slowly unfolding his body until he was a spear pointed at the roof, breaking suddenly, the music breaking with him, a long swoop of the flute, a glittering cascade from the strings, his body flexed, rose and fell, wheeled and caracoled, improvised around the traditions of the female dancers, the male mimes and tumblers; he felt every move, all the pain and effort, yet at the same time he was flying, riding the sound.

Until a tiny shake, a hairline miscalculation, and he lost it, the music went on but his improvisation faltered. With a gasping laugh he sank onto his knees, then sat back on his heels, hands on thighs, breathing hard, sweat pouring down his face, into his eyes and mouth. He heard Blackthorn’s gurgling laughter, the patter of her hands, but only at a distance; more important to him this moment was the music that wove on and on, the foreign woman and the old flute player working out their own magic until they achieved resolution and silence.

He swung on his knees to face the woman. “Who are you?”

“My name is Harra Hazhani.”

“From the west?”

“A long way from, dancer.”

“Why?”

“Chance, curiosity, who knows. I came with my father.”

“Your father?”

“Dead.” She plucked a discord from the strings. “An aneurism neither of us knew he had.”

“Your people?”

“You wouldn’t know them.” She shrugged. “What does it matter?” Then, producing a soft buzzing sound from the instrument by pulling her hand gently along the strings, she stared past him. “I’m a long way from my mountains, dancer. The wind blew me here and dropped me. The day will come when I catch another and blow on. Rukka-nag. My people. You see, it means nothing to you and why should it?” She had a strong accent that was not unpleasant, especially in her honey-spice voice. As she spoke she made almost a song of the words, using the pads of her fingers to coax a muted music from the strings. Abruptly she lifted her hands from the instrument and laughed. “More prosaically, Sad Taguiloa, when my father dropped dead, Saiiri Blackthorn took pity on me and gave me houseroom until I could find the kind of work I was willing to do.” She took up the plectrum and plucked a questioning tune. “And have I, O man who makes music with his body? Have I?”

“Do you dance?”

“The dances of my people. And never so well as Blackthorn does hers.”

“Show me.” He moved off the mat to make way for her, seating himself once again at Tafi’s feet.

Han-a Hazhani looked at him gravely, considering him, then she set her instrument aside and got gracefully to her feet. She wore black leather boots with high heels; a long skirt with a lot of material in it that swung about her ankles, a bright blue with crudely colorful embroidery in a band a handspan above the hem; a long-sleeved loose white blouse and a short tight vest laced up the front that seemed designed to emphasize high full breasts and a tiny waist. The blouse was gathered at wrists and neck by drawstrings tied in neat bows. She reached into a pocket in the skirt and pulled out a number of thin gold hoops, slid them over her hands so they clashed on her wrists when she lifted her arms over her head and began clapping out a strongly accented rhythm. Still clapping she began to whistle, a sound with a driving energy as crude to his ears as the colors and patterns in the embroidery on her clothing was to his eyes. She whistled just long enough for Ladjinatuai to pick up the tune, though the mode of her music was not that of his flute.

Her head went back; her arms curved so her hands were almost touching, then quivered so the gold hoops clashed slightly of the beat, then she was whirling round and round, her feet moving through an intricate series of steps. She danced pride and passion and joy-at least that was what he read into what he saw-then went suddenly still, a foot pointed, a leg a little forward, a straight slant visible through the drape of her skirt, her head thrown lwk, her arms up as if she would embrace the moon.

She broke position, grinned at him and went back to her cushion, dropped with energetic grace beside her instrument.

“What do you call that?” He pointed to the instrument. “Daroud. A sort of distant cousin to a lute.”

“You dance well enough.”

“Thanks.”

“You play a lot better.”

“I know.”

“Modest too.”

“Like you.”

“What would you do if a man started fondling you?”

“Depends. Official, patron or some lout in an Inn where we happened to be staying?”

“Start with the lout.”

She tilted her head, scowled, put her hands on her hips, “Back off, lout.” One hand shifted position so quickly it seemed to flicker. A short thin blade grew suddenly from her fingers; she held the hand close to her body and waited. “And if he didn’t, he’d lose maybe some fingers, certainly some blood.” She tossed the bright sliver of steel into the air, caught it and flipped it at the wall. It thudded home a hair from a small waterstain on the wood. She frowned, got up and retrieved the knife. “Kesker would pull my hair for botching a throw like that.”

“Kesker?”

“My father’s bodyguard until he got killed.”

“Protecting your father?”

“No. Bloodfeud. We passed too close to his homeland.”

“You’ve had a varied life.”

“Very.”

“That takes care of the lout. If you run into trouble for it, I’ll back you, but try saying no first, will you?”

“Sure. Why not.”

“Say a Jamar Lord has an itch for foreign bodies in his bed.”

She grinned. “And I say, it’s all right with me, honored Sabin, but I’ve got the pox so maybe you’d rather not.”

“You don’t look it.”

“That’s us foreign bints, can’t tell about us.”

“And if he says he doesn’t believe you?”

“Then I do this.” She began to whistle an odd little droning tune. He watched her a moment until she blurred and a total lassitude took hold of him. She stopped whistling and clapped her hands, the sharp sound jolting him awake. “Men are very suggestible in that state,” she said calmly. “I’d tell him he wasn’t at all interested in me and he should forget the whole thing including the whistling. My father was a mage. I was his best and most constant student.”

He looked at her and began laughing so hard he fell over on the floor. When he recovered a little, he sat up, wiped at his eyes, caught Tari’s astonished stare and almost began again. He sucked in a long breath, exploded it out. “If you want to come along, you’re welcome, Harra Hazhani.” He cleared his throat. “Though you might want to wait until you meet my patron before you make up your mind.” He narrowed his eyes, examined her face, her hands, wondering how old she was.

“Twenty-three.”

“You answer questions not asked?”

“Why waste time? You wanted to know.”

“Keep out of my head, woman.”

“No need to get in it. Your face told me; men are much alike, you know, at least on things like that.”

“Uh-huh, you and the witch should have some interesting conversations.”

“You make me curious. Who is she?”

“A foreigner like you.”

“Should I know her?”

“I doubt it.”

Tari Blackthorn stirred on the divan, nudged at him with her foot. “Go home, Taga. Now that you steal my treasure from me. Go home, summerfly and soothe the wasp in your nest.” She made a soft snorting sound. “Don’t come back, O ungrateful one, without a thank-gift to make up for taking all my afternoon. The second hour after midday and not a breath before.” She gurgled. “Or I’ll have my dancers fickle you into a mass of quivering jelly.”

He trapped the prodding foot, woke laughter in her with knowing fingers, kissed the instep, then jumped to his feet and started for the door.

Before he reached it, she called out, “Bring your witch with you and let us see this wonder of wonders.”

He waved a non-committal hand and plunged out the door before she could call him back, strode off along the winding path, whistling an approximation of Harra’s dance tune, content with things as they were (except for Yarm and Yarm would cease to be a problem very soon); old Tungjii was sitting on his shoulder, he could almost feel hisser presence there. “So I light a batch of incense for you, O patron of my line, O bestower of joy and sorrow.”

The doorguard let him out the gate and he strolled along the sun-dappled lane beneath the willows and the tall, rare mottled bamboo, A few wisps of fog were flowing in off the sea and the air had a nip to it that pleased him. The night would be foggy and jaril was sure to come to him. Brann’s house was ready with a discreet maid waiting to see if she pleased the new mistress. He sauntered through the Players’ Quarter, wound deeper into Silili, heading up the mountain to the Temple, his mood mellowing until he was afloat on contentment and all men were brothers and all beasts had souls.

He drifted through the godons, the throng of traders from a thousand lands east and west. M’darjin, black men, ebony stick figures, heads shaven and enclosed in beaten bronze rings, bronze rings about their wrists and ankles, narrow bodies clad in voluminous robes, patterned in lines and blocks of black and white and sudden patches of pure color, blue, green, red, a vibrant purple. They brought ivory and scented woods and metal work of all kinds.

Western men and women-Phras, Suadi, Gallinasi, Eirsan, dozens of other sorts of men he couldn’t name, pinkish skin, hair shading from almost white to the darkest of blacks, eyes blue, brown, green, yellow, mongrel hordes they were, none as pure as Hina. They came with clocks and other mechanical devices, saddles and fine leatherwork, books, wines, fine spices. The women especially were spice hunters adept at worming into the odd places where you found the rarest of the spices. Gem traders, art dealers, dream sellers. Anything that men or women would buy.

Harpish clad in leather top to toe in spite of the warmth of Silili’s climate, faces shrouded in black leather cowls with only the eyes cut out, always in groups of three, never alone, dealers in mage’s wares and witch’s stock, mystical books, rumor and small gods.

Vioshyn in layer upon layer of violently clashing patterned cloth, selling sea-ivory and mountain furs, carved chests and exotic powders, also most of the more common drugs.

Felhiddin, small, thin, a walnut brown, clad mostly in the blue tattoos that covered every inch of visible skin, skimpy loincloths and sandals, men and women alike, though any stranger who mistook the meaning of the bare breasts got the metal claws the women wore in the meat of the offending hand and threatening growls from any other Felhiddin nearby as they swirled about him like a dog pack set to attack. Trading in exotic nuts and herbs, scaled hides of strange beasts, furs in fine bright colors, metallic reds and greens, a hundred shades of blue, bowls and other objects carved from jewelwoods with great simplicity but exquisite shape.

Henermen trading nothing but their services and their herds of strong ugly Begryers, hauling whatever their hirers desired inland along the land route to the west.

Mercenary fighters of all races and both sexes.

Street magicians, dancers, acrobats, musicians, beggars. Woda watermen and porters, squat, broad, bowed legs, calling their services in loud singsong voices.

Priests. Servants to many gods and demons. Mostly Hina, native to the ground, born on Selt to die on Selt, born in the uplands that had once been Hina-ruled but now lay in the tight fists of Damara lords, here now as pilgrims to the great Temple on Selt’s central mountain or teaching in the priest schools attached to the Temple.

Mages, small men and large, small women and large, all races all shapes, some pausing awhile in Silili during their enigmatic wanderings, some there for the day, changing ships, touching foot to ground only to leave it again, some there to study in the Temple schools, some just nosing through the teeming market.

Fog was edging up from the water and the streets were beginning to empty, the foreigners flowing out of them into the joyhouses or the Inns of the Strangers’ Quarter according to the hungers that most clamored to be satisfied.

Taguiloa waved to those who leaned from joyhouse windows calling his name, shrugged off invitations. He was popular among the women of the night because of his stamina and his delight in them and their bodies. It was his intention to appear as one who walked lightly and with laughter through the world; his fears and blue spells he kept strictly to himself. He was a good fella, a pleasant considerate lover, a gambler who lost and won with cheerful equanimity, a friend who didn’t vanish when trouble came down, so there were many men and women to wave and call his name, and few knew it was as much calculation as nature, as hard-won as Blackthorn’s beauty, a product of much pain and rage and thought. When Gerontai died, he wept and shuddered in Blackthorn’s arms and she shut herself away with him a day and a night, though this meant she had to deny her current patron and had to coax him into complaisance with a masterly performance of illness. A sickness in which she seemed frail and suffering, but ten times as lovely and desirable as before, perhaps because of her momentary unattainability. From where he was concealed Taguiloa watched with amazement and appreciation, seeing how she took what would have destroyed a lesser woman and made it work to her advantage. He left her and shut himself in his master’s house, his now, shut himself away from everyone and thought long and hard about how his life should go, coming from that wrestling match with a sketch of the man he wanted to be, eighteen and determined to climb as high in his way as Blackthorn had in hers.

He ran up the steps of the Temple Way, reached the Temple Plaza, turned and looked out across the city and the bay.

The shops were being shuttered, the paper windows of the living quarters above them glowed a dark amber just visible as night drifted down on Selt. Torches and lampions flared in the Night Quarter, the noises of the night came to him, tinkle of strings, soar of flutes, laughs, shouts, a fragment of a song. The Strangers Quarter was quieter, the only lights the torches that glimmered before the Inns and taverns and noodle shops. The docks were dark and deserted except for the guard bands with their polelamps and rattles. Out on the water the Woda-an were lighting up lanterns and cook fires, too far away for him to hear more than a few mushy sounds, the blat of a horn, a wild raucous shout or two. He could see dark shapes passing the lanterns, merging and parting, some moving fast, jaggedly, some slowly, sinuously, a shadow play of dark and light that fascinated him for a while, wisps of images for another dance fluttering unformed in his head. The ghosts of the drowned and murdered came oozing from the water and the ground, blown by the wind like scraps of smoke. Ignoring the Temuengs, it’s a good place to be, he thought, and I am a man with the luck god riding my shoulder. Time to pay my debt, eh Tungjii?

He went into the Temple, moved past the Godalau and her companion gods and stopped before one of the smallest figures, the little luck whose belly was shiny from the hundreds, no, thousands of hands that had rubbed it, a mostly naked little man/woman with fat big-nippled breasts and a short thick penis, left eye winking in a merry face. Taguiloa bowed, patted the round little belly, dropped coins in the offering bowl and lit a handful of incense sticks. Feeling more than a little drunk from contemplating the possibilities in his future, he poked the sticks in the sandbowl, squatted and watched the sweet smoke swirl up about the god. After a moment he laughed, jumped to his feet, did a wheeling run, a double somersault, flipped into a handstand then over onto his feet, then he was running from the Temple, laughter still bubbling in his blood, the luck god still riding his shoulder, giggling into his ear.

Jaril materialized from the fog, walked down the Temple Way stairs beside him, saying nothing, just there. Taguiloa nodded to him and continued his careful march downward; the steps were slick with condensation and worn by generations of feet. To break a leg here would be thumbing his nose at the god on his shoulder and an invitation to a cascade of evil luck. When he reached the bottom, he smiled down at his small silent companion. “Ladji and Blackthorn offer Linjijan, Ladji’s grand-nephew as our flute player. Blackthorn wants to meet Brann.” He hesitated, lifted a hand, let it fall. “I told them a little about her and you. They won’t say anything, Jaril. Oh yes, there’s a foreign woman too, a musician and the daughter of a mage. She’s joining the troupe. I think. Tomorrow, two hours after midday. Would your companion be willing to come? I’ve found a house. A few steps from mine, a maid there for Brann if she wants to keep her. The girl will be discreet. We can get your companion moved in tomorrow morning if she decides to take the house. You want to see it? Come along then.”

BRANN CAME THROUGH the wall-gate, not at all the woman he’d seen that morning. Obviously she’d decided not to show forth as Hina, wisely so, he thought. The Shipmaster was right, Hina ways weren’t easily acquired. Her hair was hanging loose, not curling but undulating gracefully out from her face, black as night, cloud soft. She wore a cap of linked gold coins with strings of coins hanging beside her face, a long loose robe of black silk embroidered with birds and beasts from Hina tales. Her skin was darkened to an olive flushed pink on the cheeks, her mouth a warm rose, her green eyes wide and gemlike, her face as devoid of expression as the godmasks in the Temple. A brindle hunting bitch pranced beside her, prickears twitching, crystal eyes filled with a dancing light that said Yaril was enjoying herself.

For a moment Taguiloa felt uneasy before this trio, though he was used to ghosts fluttering about and gods roaming the world. Now and then someone would see the Godalau swimming through the waters of the outer bay, her long fingers like rays from the moon combing the waves, her fish tail like limber jade flipping through air and water, churning both. Or Geidranay big as a mountain squatting on a mountainside tending the trees. He’d seen a dragon break a long drought, undulating laughter it was, flashes of reds and golds as the sun glittered off its scales, a memory of beauty so great the ragged boy digging for clams forgot to breathe. The little gods, Sessa who found lost things, Sulit the god of secrets, Pindatung the god of thieves and pickpockets, all the rest of them, they scampered like cheerful mice from person to person, coming unasked, leaving without warning, a capricious, treacherous and highly courted clutch of godlings. You could make bargains with them and if you were clever enough even profit from them. If you weren’t clever enough and brought disaster on yourself and your folk, well that was your fault; if you got greedy and overstepped or fearful and failed to keep your wits honed you might find yourself reduced to night-soil collector or beggar with juicy sores to exploit.

Taguiloa walked in silence with the woman, boy and bitch; contemplating his choices. When Tungjii gave, you used the luck or lost it and more. The time he was still fussing about being obligated to a Temueng, Gerontai impressed that on him and to underline the lesson told him Raskatak’s story.

Raskatak was a fisherman with a small boat and miserable luck who brought in just enough fish to keep him from abandoning the craft and seeking some other kind of work. One bright day he was out in his boat alone on a becalmed sea, his lines overboard while he patched his sail. It had nearly split up the middle in the sudden squall that separated him from the other boats and left him wallowing between swells that rapidly flattened out as the.wind stopped dead and the sun rose higher and higher until it was beating remorselessly on the ocean. There was nothing touching his lines, they hung loose over the side, even the boat sounds had died away until the noise the awl made punching through the canvas seemed as loud as a large fish breaking water, though none did for miles about.

Overhead, sundragon burned and undulated, white and gold, great mother-of-pearl eyes turning and turning. And on his forward shoulders Tungjii rode, hisser plump buttocks accommodated in a hollow the dragon made for himmer. Waving a fan gently before hisser face, heesh looked down at the wretched little boat and grinned suddenly, broadly, reached into the glitter about the dragon, twisted hisser dainty hand in a complicated round, opened hisser fist and let a scatter of gold coins drop into the boat, watching with casual interest to see if they would hit the fisherman on his head and kill him, miss the boat altogether and be lost in the sea, or land beside the man in a clinking shining pile. Tungjii had no leaning toward any of those outcomes, heesh was merely watching to see how chance would work out.

The coins came clunking down, heavy rounds that landed in a little pile beside Raskatak’s bare feet, one of them bouncing off his big toe, crushing the bone. He gaped at the coins, his big bony hands stilled on the rotten canvas. After a minute he put the canvas aside and scowled at his reddened toe. He lifted his foot and put it heavily on his knee. He touched the toe with clumsy fingers, grunted at the pain. Still ignoring the gold, he searched around in his sea chest, drew out a flat piece of bone, broke off a bit of it, bound it to his toe with a bit of rag, then a twist of line.

He put his foot down with the same heavy care. Only then did he pick up one of the coins and look it over, test it with his teeth. He sat staring at it as if he didn’t understand what it was. Moving with the same stolid deliberation he picked up each of the coins, tested each of them the same way and put it away in his sea chest. When he finished that he looked up, searching the sky for the origin of the shower of gold. What he saw was the glitter and burn of the noon sun. He hawked and spat over the side, went back to sewing up the sail. Gold or no gold, he wasn’t going to get home without a working sail.

He finished the seam and raised the sail, but the wind was still absent. The canvas hung limp, not even slatting against the mast. He sat waiting, his eyes half shut, dreaming of what he was going to do with the gold.

As if to prove that miracles never occur singly, a school of fish struck the hooks on his lines and he spent the next two hours hauling them in, dropping the lines back until his boat was alive with flopping glistening silversides and the moment the school passed on, a fresh breeze sprang up and set the wretched little boat racing for Selt. For the first time ever he came in early and alone and got premium prices on his fine fat fish. He went back to the tiny hovel he’d built of ancient sails and bits of driftwood on a handful of land he rented from a distant cousin. He counted the coins over and over, even when it was only by feel after his fish oil lamp sputtered dry. And he counted the silver and copper coins the day’s catch had brought, ten times the sum he usually made. Fearing that the gold might disappear as strangely as it had come, fearing too that the thieves that lived around him might smell it out and steal it from him, forgetting no thief of reasonable intelligence would come poking through his bits and pieces, he buried the gold under the agglomeration of sticks and rope he used for a bed, then spent a good part of the night nursing a jug of cheap wine and trying to ignore the pain in his toe while he dreamed of great feasts and high-class dancing girls and fine silk robes and his cousins bowing respectfully before him and seeking his advice and begging favors of him which he granted or refused with gracious nobility.

In the morning he washed his toe, bound some cobwebs and chicken dung about it and tied on another rag. Without much thought, acting from old habit, he rose with the dawn, got dressed, went limping down to the water and went out again in his boat. Again he had great luck. As if his hooks were magnets, he called the fish to them. Again he filled the boat so soon he was the first back and got the best price.

It being the way of the stupid, he sw himself as clever, he saw what was happening as an outcome of his superior worth. Though he was no less a silent man he began holding himself with great pride (not noticing that children followed behind him, mocking him). The gold coins staved where they were, buried beneath his bed. He dreamed the same dreams night after night, but in the morning he left the dreams behind and went out on his boat as he had since he was old enough to hold a line. He sat alone in the boat whispering to himself, saying: if I spend gold, they’ll want to know where it comes from, they’ll send thieves to steal it from me, they’ll send men to kill me. So the gold stayed under his bed, the dreams stayed in his head. His foot got worse, the toe swelling and turning black. His catch went back to what it was before, a whole day’s work hardly enough to pay his land, huy his meals and a jug of cheap wine to kill the pain in his foot.

On the sixth day a squall caught his boat before he got more than a few lengths from the shore, reducing the wretched thing to a hodgepodge of shattered planks and timbers. It took him all day to gather the bits and pieces, then he went looking for driftwood so he could cobble the boat back together; he had more than enough gold for a dozen such boats, but the thought of spending it never entered his head. He worked on the boat all day, then went home to eat and dream some more. In the morning he couldn’t get out of bed, his whole foot was black, his leg swollen, his body damp with fever.

By the end of the week he was dead.

This is the lesson, Cerontai told Taguiloa: Use your luck or it rots like Raskatak’s toe.

LINJIJAN WAS a smiling amiable boy, nineteen or twenty, skinny, hands chapped and callused from the labor on a fishing boat, keeping in spite of that the tender agility of his great-uncle’s hands. Taguiloa met his mild uncurious gaze and groaned within. The boy seemed as incapable of keeping himself as a day-old baby. Then he saw the way Blackthorn, Brann and Harra were smiling at him, the half-exasperated, half-adoring smile of a mother for a mischievous but well-loved child-and changed his mind. Linjijan was one of the fortunate of the earth. As long as he had his music, he’d be content and whatever he needed to survive and play that music would come unasked into his hands. Women and men alike would care for him, protect him, love him even when they were furious at him. Taga sighed but promised old Tungjii more incense and a free performance on the Luckday festival. He listened to Linjijan play and sighed again, moved quietly to stand beside the old piper. “Thanks,” he said dryly.

The old man stretched his mouth in a tight-lipped smile, savoring the ambiguity in the word. He snapped his fingers. Linjijan stopped playing and came to squat beside him. “You want to go with him?” Ladji nodded at Taguiloa.

Linjijan nodded. He hadn’t said a word so far, even to his great-uncle, greeting him with a smile and a nod.

“That’s it then. Come.” The old man retreated to the far side of the room and sat with his back against a wall, Linjijan beside him.

Tari stirred on her divan, her eyes fixed on Brann. She’d focused on the woman’s face the moment Taguiloa brought her in, had been glancing repeatedly at her as Taguiloa dealt with Linjijan; now she gave over any pretense of interest in the others. “Saiir Brann,” she said. “Taga tells me you will be reading past and future for the countryfolk. He tells me you’re a witch, really a witch. Read for me.” She looked blindly about. “What do you need, gada sticks? fire and shell? crystal? a bowl of water? Tell me what you need and I’ll have it brought.”

Brann came across the room to kneel beside the divan, the brindle bitch moving beside her with silent feral grace. “If you will give me your hand, said Blackthorn.” Tad extended her hand. Brann cradled it on hers. “Yaril,” she said, “Let’s make it real this time.”

The bitch shimmered into a gold glow which rose and hovered a moment over Blackthorn then sank into her. Taguiloa remembered it with a shiver at the base of his spine and wondered briefly if he should interfere. He glanced at Brann’s intent face and held his tongue. The glimmer emerged from Tari and coalesced into a small blonde girl. She stood beside Brann, murmured in her ear for several minutes, then she retreated to the end of the divan and sank out of sight.

Brann shivered, her composure broke suddenly, briefly. Pain and fear and pity and anger flowed in waves across her face. She sat very still, as if frozen for a moment, then the mask was back; she opened her eyes, drew a forefinger across Tan’s palm.

“Not even the gods know for certain what the morrow brings,” she said quietly. “Their guesses might be better than a mortal’s but that’s only because they’ve had a longer time to watch the cycling of the seasons and the foolishness of man. When I read the fates of men and women, I will give them what pleases them and phrase it vaguely enough that whatever happens they can twist the words to fit as they will. They want to be fooled and will do the greater part of the work for me.” Her voice flowed on, gentle and soothing. “Yongala laughing told me folk hold fast to their dreams even when their reason tells them they are fools. Tari Blackthorn, dancer on fire, do you desire that sort of reading or the truth of what you fear?”

Tad trembled, closed her eyes. “What do you know?”

“Shall I speak of it here?”

“These are my friends. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t expect a real answer.

Brann looked at the hand she still held, set it on the black velvet cover. Watching her closely, his curiosity a hunger in him, Taguiloa saw her gather herself; a cold knot in his stomach, he waited for her answer. “This is what I know,” she said, her voice held level with visible difficulty. “Some days every step is agony and effort. Your ankles and knees swell and throb sometimes beyond bearing. When you are in the dance you forget that pain but are nearly crippled by it once the dance is over. You fear the end of your ability to dance. Six months ago you sought solace from pain in poppymilk, now you find yourself slaved to it and view that slavery with horror but cannot escape it.” She turned away from Tali’s drawn face, looked over her shoulder at Taguiloa. In spite of her efforts her own face quivered; she closed her eyes, tried to calm herself and when she spoke her voice was flat and dead. “Saхm, I will not do this for you in the villages, it would call too much attention to me. And I don’t think I…” She faced round again, moved on her knees to the foot of the divan. “Yaril, Jaril, come to me, I need you.”

The blond boy came from the shadows, put his hand on her left shoulder; the hand melted through the black silk and into the flesh beneath. The blond girl came from behind the divan and stood at her right shoulder, the hand melting through the black silk of the robe and sinking into the flesh beneath. Brann reached out and brushed aside the many layers of fragile silk and took Blackthorn’s ankle in her hand.

Taguiloa saw then what he’d overlooked before. The ankle was swollen a little, thickened, stiff. Tari watched with fear and anguish as Brann brushed her fingers across the swelling. “It is only beginning,” she said, cleared her throat, took a breath, then went on. “Were it to proceed, you would be unable to walk five years from now.” She smiled a wide urchin’s grin full of joy and mischief. “Slya be blessed, O dancer, it will not proceed.” She closed her eyes and held the ankle cradled between her hands.

Tari’s eyes flew open wider. “Heat,” she whispered.

Brann said nothing, did not seem to hear. After a moment she lowered that foot to the velvet and lifted the other.

Taguiloa watched, amazed, his anxiety and the sharp fear aroused by the witch’s words dissipating as the woman’s long strong hands moved from ankles to knees, not bothering to push aside the layered silk robe, from knees to hips, then wrists, elbows, shoulders. Humming softly, Brann moved her hands from the top of Tari’s head down along her body to the henna’d soles of her lovely feet, the children moving with her, bonded to her, flesh to flesh. Then she sat back on her heels and sighed.