The Anvil of the World

Troon, the golden city, sat within high walls on a plain a thousand miles wide. The plain was golden with barley.

The granaries of Troon were immense, towering over the city like giants, taller even than its endlessly revolving windmills. Dust sifted down into its streets and filled its air in the Month of the Red Moon and in every other month, for that matter, but most especially in that month, when the harvest was brought in from the plain in long lines of creaking carts, raising more dust, which lay like a fine powder of gold on every dome and spire and harvester’s hut. All the people of Troon suffered from chronic emphysema. Priding itself as it did, however, on being the world’s breadbasket, Troon put up with the emphysema. Wheezing was considered refined, and the social event of the year was the Festival of Respiratory Masks.

On the fifth day of the Month of Chaff Storms, as a cold wind scoured the walls of Troon with stubble and husks, a man in a fish mask sat at a table in the Civic Ballroom and wished he were anywhere else.

He belonged to that race called the Children of the Sun, and, like others of his kind, he had skin and hair the color of a sunrise. They were an energetic, sanguine, and mechanically minded people, tracing their lineage back to a liaison between a smith god and a fire goddess somewhere in the deeps of time. They were consequently given to sins of an ecological nature (the slag heaps from their smelters were mountainous), and they were also quarrelsome (their blood feuds were legendary).

It was a particularly nasty blood feud that had sent the man in the fish mask fleeing to distant Troon, and he now sat alone at a table, watching the masked dancers as he glumly sipped beer through a long straw. It wasn’t his kind of party, but his cousin (to whom he had fled) insisted he attend. The masked ball was held on the final night of a week of breathless celebration, and everyone of distinction in Troon society was there.

“Er—Smith?”

The man in the mask turned his head, peering through the domed lenses of his fish eyes. The name Smith was an alias, only the latest of many the man had used. He got awkwardly to his feet as he saw his cousin approaching. His cousin’s costume was fine and elaborate, robes of red-gold brocade and a fire efrit mask. No less elaborate was the costume of the lady his cousin had in tow: butterfly wings of green and purple foil and a butterfly mask of the same material.

“This, madam, is Smith. My caravan master,” explained his cousin. “A most experienced veteran of transport. A man in whose expert hands you may trust the rarest of commodities.”

This was not exactly true. Smith had never led a caravan in his life, but his cousin’s freight and passenger service had lost its former master to a vendetta on the day of Smith’s sudden arrival in Troon, so Smith was learning the business.

“How nice to meet you,” said the woman in the mask, and shot out a black and curling tongue. Smith started, but the tongue was merely a feature of the mask, for it was hollow, and she poked it now into a tall glass of punch.

“Honor on your house, lady,” Smith murmured.

His cousin coughed, and said, “Smith, this is Lady Seven Butterflies of Seven Butterflies Studio. You will be privileged to transport her celebrated creations!”

“I’m delighted,” said Smith, bowing. “Rely on me, lady.”

But Lady Seven Butterflies had lost interest in him and fluttered off to the punch bowl. His cousin leaned close and grabbed him by the shoulder. They bumped papier-mâché faces as he hissed, “Very important client! Almost ready to sign a contract granting us exclusive transport rights! Used to go with Stone and Son until they broke goods in transit. Vital we catch the ball, cousin!”

Smith nodded sagely. “Right. What are we shipping for her?”

“One gross of glass butterflies, what else?” said his cousin impatiently, and turned to pursue the lady. Smith sat down again. It was a good thing his new job would require him to be on the open road a lot. He didn’t think people in Troon got enough oxygen.

He watched the dancers awhile in their stately pavanes, watched the symmetrical patterns their trailing brocades left in the rich layer of floor dust, and brooded on the sequence of events that had brought him here, beginning with an innocent walk to the corner for an order of fried eel.

That he had reached that time in life when really good fried eel was at least as interesting as romance made his subsequent misadventure all the more unexpected. Nor was he especially attractive. Even the girl’s brothers had to admit there must have been a mistake on somebody’s part, though they weren’t about to retract their vow to see Smith’s head on a pike, since without benefit of hot-blooded youth or personal beauty, he had nevertheless sent three of their kinsmen to the morgue.

He sighed now, swirling his beer and noting in disgust the fine sediment of dirt at the bottom of the glass. He thought of waving for a waiter, but his cousin came bustling up again with somebody new in tow.

“…with complete confidence, my lord. The man is a seasoned veteran of the roads. Er—Smith! I have the great honor of commending to your care the very noble Lord Ermenwyr of the House Kingfisher.”

“Honor to your house, lord,” said Smith, rising to his feet though he’d never heard of the House Kingfisher.

Lord Ermenwyr was doubled over in a coughing fit. When he straightened up, dabbing at his lips with an embroidered handkerchief, Smith beheld a slender young man. A pomaded and spangled beard was visible below his half mask, which was that of a unicorn’s head. He had extended the unicorn theme to an elaborate codpiece, from which a silver horn spiraled up suggestively. The eyes behind the mask had the glitter of fever.

“Hello,” he croaked. “So you’re the fellow taking me to Salesh-by-the-Sea? I hope you’ve had some training as a psychopomp too. I expect to die en route.”

“His lordship is pleased to be humorous,” said Smith’s cousin, wringing his hands. “His lord father has paid a great deal for his passage to the health resort at Salesh, and I have written to assure him in the strongest terms that Lord Ermenwyr will arrive there safely.”

“Really?” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Watch this, then.” He reached out with the toe of his boot and drew a bull’s-eye in the dust. Stepping back several paces, he hawked and spat in a neat arc, hitting the center of the target with a gob of blood.

“You see?” he said brightly, as Smith and his cousin stared. “Utterly moribund. Don’t worry, though; I’ve got embalming spices in my luggage, and Daddy won’t mind my early demise much, whatever he may have written.”

Smith’s cousin closed his mouth, then said hastily, “It’s simply the inconvenience of our local weather, my lord. I myself coughed up a little blood not an hour ago. It passes with the first winter rains!”

“I’ll be in Hell or Salesh by the time they start, I devoutly hope,” snarled the young man. He turned a gimlet eye on Smith. “Well, caravan master, I suppose we’re starting at some ungodly hour in the morning? If I’m still moaning on my painful couch at cockcrow, you’ll leave without me, no doubt?”

“The caravan departs from the central staging area by the West Gate an hour before dawn, my lord,” said Smith’s cousin helpfully.

“Fine,” said Lord Ermenwyr, and turned unsteadily on his heel. “I’m going to go get laid while I’m still among the living, then.” He staggered off into the crowd, hitching up his spangled tights, and Smith looked at his cousin.

“Does he have anything catching?” he demanded.

“No! No! Delicate lungs, that’s all,” chattered his cousin. “I believe his lord father’s apt phrase was—” From the depths of his brocade he drew out a heavy, folded parchment to which was affixed a ponderous seal of black wax. “Here we are. ‘Hothouse lily.’ In any case the young lord will be traveling with a private nurse and ample store of physic, so your sole concern will be conveying him in one piece to Salesh-by-the-Sea.”

“And what if he dies?” asked Smith.

His cousin shivered and, looking quickly at the letter as though it might overhear him, folded it again and thrust it out of sight. “That would be very unfortunate indeed. His lord father is a powerful man, cousin. He’s paid a great deal for this passage.”

Smith sighed.

“The lad’ll be in a palanquin the whole way,” added his cousin, as though that answered everything. “You’ll have him there in no time. A routine trip. Your first of many, I’m certain, to the continued honor and glory of our house. Ah! You’ll excuse me—I must go speak to…” He turned and fled into the crowd, in pursuit of some other bedizened customer.

Smith sat down, and took another sip of his beer before he remembered the mud at the bottom of the glass.

The gonging of the cistern clock in Smith’s apartment warren woke him, and he was up and pulling on his coat in very little time. He paused before arming himself, considering his stock of hand weapons. He settled for a pair of boot knives and a machete; nothing more would be needed, surely, for a routine trip to the coast.

He was, accordingly, surprised when his cousin met him at the West Gate in the predawn gloom with a pair of pistol-bows and a bolt bandoleer.

“You’ve used these before?” his cousin asked, draping the bandoleer over Smith’s shoulder and buckling it in place.

“Yes, but—you said—”

“Yes, I know, it’s all routine, easiest road there is, but just consider this as insurance. Eh? And it makes a man look dangerous and competent, and that’s what the passengers want to see in a caravan master,” explained his cousin. “There you are! The picture of menace. Now, here’s the cargo and passenger manifest.” He thrust an open scroll at Smith. Smith took it and read, as his cousin ran off to shriek orders at the porters, who were loading what looked like immense violet eggs into one of the transport carts.

There was, indeed, a gross of glass butterflies, being shipped from Seven Butterflies studio to the Lady Katmile of Silver Anvil House in Port Ward’b. To Be Handled With Exquisite Care.

There were twenty sacks of superfine cake flour from Old Troon Mills, destined for a bakery in Lesser Salesh. There were thirty boxes of mineral pigments from the strip mines in Outer Troon, to be delivered to Starfire Studio in Salesh Hills. No eggs, though, violet or otherwise.

The passengers were listed as Lytan and Demara Smith and Family, custom jewelry designers, of Salesh Hills; Parradan Smith, courier, of Mount Flame City; Lord Ermenwyr of the House Kingfisher, and Servant. All Children of the Sun.

Also listed was one Ronrishim Flowering Reed, herbalist, of Salesh-by-the-Sea. From his name he was probably a Yendri, one of the forest people who occasionally fought guerrilla wars with the Children of the Sun over what they felt was excessive logging.

Smith looked out at the boarding area and spotted the Yendri, taller than the other passengers, wearing fewer clothes, and standing a little apart with an aloof expression. The Yendri people had skin that ranged in color from a gently olive complexion to outright damn green, and were willowy and graceful and everything you’d expect in a forest-dwelling race. They were thought by the Children of the Sun to be arrogant, uncivilized, untrustworthy, and sexually insatiable (when not perversely effeminate). They said exactly the same things about the Children of the Sun.

The other passengers were equally easy to identify. The Smiths were clearly the young couple huddled with a screaming baby, waving a sugar stick and stuffed toy at him while their other little ones ran back and forth merrily and got in the way of the sweating porters. Parradan Smith must be the well-dressed man leaning against a news kiosk, reading a broadside sheet. Lord Ermenwyr, who had evidently not died in the night, sat a little apart from the others on one of many expensive-looking trunks piled beside a curtained palanquin.

He had changed his unicorn costume for a black tailcoat and top boots, and combed the spangles out of his beard and mustache. It failed to make him look less like the pasty-faced boy he was, though his features were even and handsome. His eyes were unnervingly sharp, fixed on the screaming infant with perfectly astonishing malevolence. He glanced up, spotted Smith, and leaped to his feet.

“You! Caravan Master. Is that damned brat going to squall the whole trip? Is it?” he demanded, folding his arms as Smith approached him.

“I don’t think so,” said Smith, staring down at Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes. His pupils were like pinpoints, perhaps because of whatever drug the lordling was smoking in the long jade tube he presently had clenched between his teeth. It produced trailing purple clouds, vaguely sweet-scented. “Should you really be—”

“Smoking? It’s my medication, damn you! If that child isn’t silenced at once, I’ll not be answerable for the consequences. I’m a sick man—”

“Master, you’re raving again,” said a silken voice from behind the curtains of the palanquin. “Stop that at once.”

“—And if I’m harried to an early grave, or should I say an earlier grave, well then, Caravan Master, you’ll pay for it in ways you can’t even begin to—”

“Nursie warned you,” said the voice, and an arm flashed between the curtains and caught Lord Ermenwyr around the knees. He vanished backward into the depths of the palanquin with a yelp, and there were sounds of a violent struggle as the palanquin rocked on its base. Smith stepped quickly away.

“Er—Smith!” cried his cousin. “I’d like you to meet your subordinates.”

Smith turned to see a crowd of caravaneers who clearly disliked being described as his subordinates. They gave him a unanimous resentful stare as he approached.

“May I present the esteemed keymen? Keyman Crucible, Keyman Smith, Keyman Bellows, Keyman Pinion, Keyman Smith.”

They were, as all keymen, compact fellows with tremendously developed arms and muscle-bulging legs, and so alike they might have been quintuplets.

“Nice meeting you,” said Smith. They grunted at him.

“This is your runner.” His cousin placed his hands on the shoulders of a very young, very skinny girl. She wore the red uniform and carried the brass trumpet of her profession, but she was far from the curvaceous gymnast Smith fantasized about when he fantasized about runners. She glowered up at Smith’s cousin.

“Take your hands off me or you’ll hear from my mother house,” she said. Smith’s cousin withdrew his hands as though she were a live coal.

“Young Burnbright hasn’t earned her full certification, yet, but she’s hoping to do so in our service,” he said delicately. “If all goes well, that is. And here, Smith, is our culinary artist! May I present the two-time winner of the Troon Municipal Bakeoff? Mrs. Smith.”

Mrs. Smith was large and not particularly young, though she had a certain majesty of bearing. She looked sourly on Smith.

“Do you do fried eel?” Smith asked hopefully.

“Perhaps,” she said. “If I’m properly motivated. If I have the proper pans.” She spat out the last word with bewildering venom, turning her glare on Smith’s cousin.

He wrung his hands. “Now, dear Mrs. Smith—I’m sure you’ll manage without the extra utensils, this one time. It was necessary.”

“Leaving half my kitchen behind for those bloody things?” Mrs. Smith demanded, pointing at the carts laden with giant eggs. “They take up three times the room of an ordinary shipment! What was wrong with regular crates, I’d like to know?”

“In addition to her other talents, Lady Seven Butterflies is a genius at innovative packing and insulation,” said Smith’s cousin earnestly. “She had the inspiration from Nature itself, you see. What, after all, is the perfect protective shape devised by Nature? The egg, of course—”

“Balls,” said Mrs. Smith.

“—with its ovoid shape, elegantly simple yet strong, a holistic solution providing plenty of insulating space for the most fragile creations—”

“How am I going to feed my boys, let alone serve up the gourmet experience for passengers so grandiloquently advertised on your handbills, you imbecile man?” shouted Mrs. Smith.

“We’ll work something out,” said Smith, stepping between them. “Look, I’m traveling pretty light. Maybe we can take some of your pans in the lead cart?”

Mrs. Smith considered him, one eyebrow raised. “An intelligent suggestion,” she said, mollified, as Pinion and Crucible seized up a vast crate marked KITCHEN and hurried with it to Smith’s cart. “We may get on, young Smith.”

“Of course you will,” said Smith’s cousin, and fled.

It was nearly light. Those whose duty it was came yawning and shivering to the West Gate, bending to the spokes of the great windlass. The gate rose slowly in its grooves, and a cold wind swept in off the plain and sent spirals of dust into the pink air. A trumpeter mounted the turret by the gate and announced by his blast that another day of commerce had begun, for better or worse, and Burnbright answered with a fanfare to let the passengers know that it was time to board.

The keymen mounted to their posts and began cranking the mighty assemblage of gears and springs in each lead cart. The passengers took their seats, with the Smiths’ baby still crying dismally, as the last of the luggage was loaded by the porters. There was a moment of dithering with Lord Ermenwyr’s palanquin until it was lifted and lashed in place atop his trunks. Purple fumes escaped between the fluttering curtains, so it was evident he was still alive in there, if preserving a sullen silence.

Mrs. Smith mounted to a seat beside Crucible, pulled a pair of dust goggles over her eyes, and with unhurried majesty drew out a smoking tube and packed it with a particularly pungent blend of amberleaf. She held a clever little device of flicking flint and steel to its tip, shielding it from the wind as she attempted to ignite the amberleaf.

Burnbright sprinted to the front of the line, backing out through the gate and calling directions to the porters as they wrestled the wheels of the lead cart into the grooves in the red road, worn deep by time and utility. Smith’s cousin clasped his hands and prayed, as he always did at this point; and Smith, realizing belatedly that he was supposed to be in the lead cart beside Pinion, ran for it and vaulted into his seat, or attempted to, because the crate marked KITCHEN occupied that space.

Pinion just looked at him, poised over the tight-wound coil. Smith, determined to show he was game, climbed up and perched awkwardly atop the crate. He looked forward at Burnbright and waved.

She lifted her trumpet and blew the staccato call for departure. Then she turned and ran forward, swift as flight; for behind her the keymen threw the release pins, and the caravan lurched rumbling out through the gate, late as usual, a dozen linked carts impelled by gear-and-spring engines, following the grooved stone, bearing their disparate cargo.

Mrs. Smith got her tube going at last and leaned back, holding it elegantly between the first two fingers of her left hand, blowing a plume of smoke like a banner. In the cart behind her, the Yendri coughed and waved fumes away, cursing. The rising sun struck flame on the flare of Burnbright’s trumpet.

They were off.

“This is pretty easy,” remarked Smith after the first hour of travel. Troon was a distant clutch of towers behind them. Before them and to all sides spread the wide yellow fields, unrelieved but for the occasional bump of a distant harvest village. The red road stretched ahead, two grooved lanes running west to the infinite horizon, two parallels running east, and Burnbright had slowed to an easy mile-devouring lope a few hundred yards in front.

“You think it’s easy, do you?” said Pinion, giving the key a gentle pump to bring the next spring into play. Once the initial winding had got them going, the keymen maintained forward momentum by steadily cranking.

“Well, yes,” said Smith. “Look at it! Flat as a board. No place for a bandit to hide as far as the eye can see. Nobody’s at war, so we don’t have to worry about any armies sweeping down on us. Nothing to do but chug along, eh?”

“Unless a dust storm comes up,” Pinion told him. “Which they tend to do, now the harvest’s in. I’ve seen some cyclones in my day, I can tell you. Even the regular prevailing wind’ll fill the channels in the road with dust, and if the little girl up there doesn’t spot it in time, we might all rattle off the road into a field, or hit a block at top speed and strip all our gears—that’s lovely fun.”

“Oh,” said Smith. “Does that happen often?”

“Often enough,” said Pinion, pumping the key again.

“At least it doesn’t sound like I’ll need these,” said Smith, looking down at his pistolbows.

“Probably not,” conceded Pinion. “Until we reach the Greenlands.”

“What’s in the Greenlands?”

Pinion was silent a moment.

“You’re a city boy, aren’t you?” he said at last.

“I have been,” said Smith, shifting on top of the kitchen crate. “Come on, what’s in the Greenlands? Besides a lot of Yendri,” he added, glancing back at their sole Yendri passenger, who had wrapped a scarf about his nose and mouth and sat ignoring the others.

“To begin with, that’s where you’ve got your real bandits,” Pinion said. “And not your run-along-by-the-side-of-the-road-and-yip-threateningly bandits either, I’m talking about your bury-the-road-in-a-landslide-and-dig-out-the-loot bandits. See? And then there’s greenies like that one,” he went on, jerking a thumb in the direction of the Yendri. “They may say they’re for nonviolence, but they’re liable to pile rocks and branches and all kinds of crap on the road if they’re miffed about us cutting down one of their damn groves to build a way station or something.”

“Huh.” Smith looked back at the Yendri uneasily.

“Of course, they’re not the worst,” added Pinion.

“I guess they wouldn’t be.”

“There’s beasts, of course.”

“They’re everywhere, though.”

“Not like in the Greenlands. And even they’re nothing to the demons.”

“All right,” said Smith, “you’re trying to scare me, aren’t you? Is this some kind of initiation?”

“No,” said Pinion in a surly voice, though in fact he had been trying to scare Smith. “Just setting you straight on a few things, Caravan Master. I’d hate to see you so full of self-confidence you get us all killed your first day on the job.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Smith. The caravan went rumbling on, the featureless fields flew by, and after a moment Smith looked down at Pinion again.

“I did hear a story about the Greenlands, now that I come to think about it,” he said. “In a bar in Chadravac Beach, about six months ago. Something about a demon-lord. He’s supposed to be called the Master of the Mountain?”

Pinion blanched, but did not change expression. He shook his head, pedaling away stolidly.

“Don’t know anything about that,” he said firmly, and fell silent.

All that day they traveled across the yellow land. With no companion but the sun, they came at evening to the way station, marked out by a ring of white stones.

It was a wide circular area by the side of the road, with grooves for carts running off and grooves for running back on. There was a tiny stone hut surmounted by a windwheel pump, enclosing a basin where a trickle of water flowed, drawn up from deep beneath the plain. The moment they had rolled off the road and into the circle, the Yendri was out of his cart and staggering for the pump house. He monopolized it for the next quarter hour, to the great annoyance of the other passengers, who lined up behind the hut and made ethnically insulting remarks as they waited.

At least the diversion kept most of them occupied as Smith oversaw making camp for the night. He didn’t really have much to do; the keymen, long practiced in this art, had quickly trundled the carts in a snaked circle and set to erecting tent accommodations inside it. Burnbright and Mrs. Smith were busily setting up the kitchen pavilion, and politely implied that he’d only get in their way if he lent a hand there.

Smith noticed that Lord Ermenwyr was not among the carpers at the water pump, and he wondered whether he ought not to see if the lordling had died after all. As he approached the palanquin, the curtains parted and a woman slid out with all the grace of a serpent and dropped lightly to the ground.

Smith caught his breath.

That she was beautiful was almost beside the point. She had a presence. Her body was lush, tall, perfect, powerful. Her mouth was full and red, and her sloe-black eyes ought to have been sullen but glinted instead with lazy good humor as she saw Smith gaping at her.

“Good evening, Caravan Master,” she said, and the voice matched the body: sultry, yet with an indefinable accent of education and good breeding.

Smith just nodded, and collected himself enough to say, “I was coming to inquire after the lord’s health.”

“How nice. His lordship is still with us, I’m happy to say.” She tilted her head to one side and occupied herself a moment with loosely braiding her hair, which was black and thick as a bolt of silk. Having pulled it up into an elegant chignon, she drew from her bosom what appeared to be a pair of stilettos of needlelike fineness and thrust them through the glossy coils.

“I… uh … I’m very happy to hear that. We’re just setting up the tents now, if he’d like to rest,” said Smith.

“That’s very thoughtful of you, but my lord has his own pavilion,” the woman replied, opening one of the trunks and drawing out a bundle of black cloth patterned all over with little silver skulls.

“I’d be happy to help you, miss—”

“Balnshik,” said the woman, smiling. “Thank you so much, Caravan Master.”

What an exotic name, Smith thought dizzily, accepting the load of tent material while Balnshik bent over the trunk to rummage for poles. Something about the name suggested flint knives and attar of roses, and perhaps black leather … though she was modestly attired in white linen, and he dragged his attention back to the fact that she was a nurse, after all. She drew out a tent pole now and gave it a quick twist. In her deft hands it shot up and expanded to twice its length, spring-loaded.

“I’m—Smith,” he said.

“Of course you are, dear,” she told him. “Just spread that out on the ground, won’t you?”

He helped her assemble the pavilion, which was quite a large and sumptuous one, and then there was a lot of collapsible furniture to be set up, so it was a while before Smith remembered to inform her, “We’ll be serving gourmet cuisine shortly, as advertised. We can offer his lordship—”

“Oh, don’t worry about him; the little beast can’t keep down anything solid,” said Balnshik serenely, tossing a handful of incense onto a brazier.

“I can hear every word you’re saying, you know.” Lord Ermenwyr’s voice floated from the palanquin. He sounded peevish.

“What about some clear broth, darling?”

“No. I’m still motion sick and, anyway, it’ll probably be poisoned.”

Balnshik’s eyes flashed, and she turned to Smith with a charming smile in which there were a great many white and gleaming teeth. “Will you excuse us, please? I must attend to my lord.”

So saying, she vaulted into the palanquin, vanishing behind the curtains, and Smith heard the unmistakable sound of a ringing slap, and the palanquin began to rock and thump in place once more. It seemed like a good idea to leave.

He wandered over to the kitchen pavilion, where Mrs. Smith had lit a fire and set saucepans bubbling at magical speed, and was now busily dabbing caviar on little crackers.

“Can you prepare an order of clear broth?” he asked.

“What, for the greenie?” She glared across at Ronrishim Flowering Reed, who had finally relinquished the hut and was now seated in front of a tent, apparently meditating. “Bloody vegetarians. I hate cooking for those people. ‘Oh, please, I’ll just have a dish of rainwater at precisely air temperature with an ounce of mother’s milk on the side, and if it’s not too much trouble, could you float a couple of violets on it?’ Faugh!”

“No, actually, it’s for Lord Ermenwyr.” Smith looked over his shoulder at the palanquin, which was motionless now.

“Oh. The invalid?” Mrs. Smith turned to peer at the pavilion. “Heavens, what a grand tent. He’s a nasty-looking little piece of goods, I must say, but as he’s dying I suppose we must make the effort. A good rich capon stock with wine, I think.”

“Parradan Smith’s a gangster,” Burnbright informed them, coming close and appropriating a cracker.

“Get away from those, child. What do you mean?”

“I peeked when he was washing himself, and he’s got secret society tattoos all over,” said Burnbright, retreating beyond the reach of Mrs. Smith’s carving knife. “And he’s got an instrument case he never lets go of almost. And knives.”

“How do you know they’re secret society tattoos?” Smith was troubled.

“Because he’s from Mount Flame City, and I’m from there too, and I know what the Bloodfires’ insignia look like,” said Burnbright matter-of-factly. “Their deadly enemies are the House Copperhammer. When they’ve got a war on, you find body parts in the strangest places. All over town.”

“Lovely,” grunted Mrs. Smith.

“He’s listed on the manifest as a courier,” said Smith, looking out at the man in question, who sat just inside the door of a tent, polishing his boots. Burnbright nodded sagely.

“Couriering somebody’s loot somewhere, see. I’ll bet he’s got a fortune in that instrument case. Unless it’s a disguise, and he’s accepted a contract on one of the other passengers and he’s biding his time before he kills them!” she added, her little face alight.

“Wretched creatures. He’d better leave me alone; I never travel unarmed,” said Mrs. Smith, handing her the tray of hors d’oeuvres. “Go set that on the buffet and inform the guests that the main course will be served in half an hour. Grilled quail glazed with acacia honey, stuffed with wild plums.”

It was as good as it sounded. Even the Smith’s infant stopped crying for a while, given a leg bone with sauce to suck on.

When twilight had fallen Balnshik emerged from the palanquin, carrying Lord Ermenwyr in her arms like a limp rag doll, and settled him in the splendid pavilion before coming out for a plate for herself and a bowl of broth for her lord. She made as profound an impression on the other males in the party as she’d made on Smith. Even the Smiths’ two little boys stopped chewing, and with round eyes watched her progress across the camp.

She seemed not to notice the attention she drew, was courteous and formal. Smith thought he saw her glance side-long at the Yendri, once, with a glitter of amused contempt in her eyes, before there came a querulous feeble cry from the pavilion, and she turned to hurry back to Lord Ermenwyr.

“Clearly she doesn’t think much of Mr. Flowering Reed,” pronounced Mrs. Smith, and had a drag at her smoking tube. She was sitting at her ease with a drink beside the fire, as the keymen cleared away the dinner things for her.

“Except I hear the Yendri are supposed to have really big, urn, you know,” said Burnbright. Mrs. Smith shrugged.

“It depends upon what you mean by big, dear.”

“I think we made pretty good time today,” said Smith. “No disasters or anything. Don’t you think it went well?”

“Tolerably well,” said Mrs. Smith. “At least there weren’t any breakdowns this time. Can’t count the hours I’ve wasted at the side of the road waiting for replacement gears.”

“Have you been with the caravan long?” Smith asked her.

“Twenty years, next spring,” she replied.

“Traveled much through the Greenlands?”

“Far too often. What about you? Have you a first name, Smith, by the way?”

Smith glanced over at Pinion, who was scouring out a pot with sand, and lowered his voice when he spoke. “I’ve been here and there. And yes, I have a first name. But…”

Mrs. Smith arched her eyebrows. “It’s like that, is it? Lovely impersonal name, Smith. Rather fond of it, myself. So, where were all your questions leading?”

“Have you ever heard of somebody, a demon or something, called the Master of the Mountain?”

Mrs. Smith gave him a sharp look, and Burnbright cringed and made a gesture to ward off evil. “Clearly,” said Mrs. Smith, “you’re not from the interior. You’re from the islands, I’d bet, or you’d know about him.”

Smith wasn’t anxious that anyone should know where he’d been born, so he just said, “Is he in the Greenlands? Is he a demon?”

Mrs. Smith waved her drink at the Yendri, who was just retiring into his tent. “That one could probably tell you more, though I doubt he would, however nicely you asked. You haven’t heard of the Master of the Mountain? Half demon and half something else, or so the story goes. Yendri, possibly, though you wouldn’t know it from the way they hate him. Mind you, he’s given them enough reasons.”

“What reasons?” Smith drew closer, because she was lowering her voice. She hitched her folding chair a little nearer to him and pointed off into the night, toward the northwest.

“You’ll be able to see it, in a week or so, poking up out of the horizon: a black mountain like a shark’s tooth, perfectly immense. That’s his stronghold, and he can look down from up there on every inch of the Greenlands, and you can bet he’ll be watching us as we creep past on our tiny road. If we’re very fortunate, he won’t trouble himself to come down to say how d’ye do.

“I don’t know how long he’s been up there; a couple of generations, at least. There’s talk he used to be a mercenary. Certainly he’s some sort of powerful mage. Demon-armies at his beck and call, spies in every city, all that sort of thing. These days he contents himself with swooping down and raiding our caravans now and again. But there was a time when he singled out them for the worst of his plundering.” Mrs. Smith pointed at the Yendri’s tent.

“No idea why. You wouldn’t think they’d have anything worth stealing, would you, in those funny little brushwood villages of theirs? Something personal, seemingly.

“In any case—you’re aware they used to be slaves, the Yendri? No, not to us—that’s one thing they can’t blame us for, at least. It was somewhere else, and somebody else enslaved them, until they overthrew their masters and escaped. There was some kind of miracle child whose birth sparked the slave rebellion. One of their greenie prophets carried her before them like a figurehead, and they all emigrated here. When she grew up she became their Saint. Heals the sick, raises the dead, most beautiful woman in the world, et cetera. You haven’t heard of the Green Saint either?

“Well. So the Yendri settled down as a free people then, with no troubles except the Master of the Mountain raiding their villages with dreadful glee, which I understand he did on very nearly a weekly basis. And then, oh horrors! He captured the Green Saint herself.

“Though I have heard she went and offered herself to him, if he’d stop being so terribly evil,” Mrs. Smith added parenthetically, and drew on her smoke again. “However it happened—she moved in with him on his mountain, and while she didn’t exactly convert him to a virtuous life, he did stop burning the poor greenies’ wigwams about their ears. Not that they were grateful. They were furious, in fact, especially when he and she proceeded to have a vast brood of very mixed children. Said it was sacrilege.”

“A demon and a saint having kids?” Smith pondered it. “Funny.”

“Not to the Yendri, it isn’t,” said Mrs. Smith.

“Let’s talk about something else,” begged Burnbright.

So the subject was changed. Not long afterward the fire was banked, and everyone retired for the night, with the exception of the Smiths’ baby, who cried for a good hour.

The next day, once camp was broken, proceeded in much the same way as the previous one had. Endless hours they rumbled across the empty fields, and though Smith watched the horizon, he saw no threatening darkness there, not that day nor on the next few to follow. The Smiths’ infant cried, the Yendri kept himself aloof, Parradan Smith killed no one, and Lord Ermenwyr did not die, though he remained in his palanquin as they traveled and the purple fume of his irritation streamed backward in the wind.

“Mama!” shrieked the Smiths’ younger boy, pointing behind them. “Dragons!”

It was the fifth day out, and the Smith children were reaching critical mass for boredom.

“Don’t be silly, dearest,” his mother told him wearily, jogging the screaming baby on her shoulder.

“I’m not! They’re flying up behind us and they’re going to get us! Look!”

Nobody bothered to look except Smith, who turned on his high crate to glance over his shoulder. To his astonishment, he saw some five or six winged forms in the air behind them, at a distance of no more than a mile or two. He turned completely around, bracing his feet on the edge of the cart, and shaded his eyes for a good look.

“The dragons will get us!” chorused the Smiths’ other children, beginning to wail and cry.

“No, no, they won’t,” Smith shouted helpfully, looking down into their cart. “Dragons won’t hurt you. And anyway, I don’t think—”

“The lord in the black tent says they do,” protested the little boy. “I went in when the big lady came out to eat so I could see if he was really a vampire like the runner said, and he told me he wasn’t, only he’d been bit by a dragon when he was a little boy for making too much noise and it made him half-dead forever but he was lucky ’cause most dragons just eat children that make too much noise, they fly overhead on big wings and just catch them and eat them up like bugs!”

“Now, Wolkin—” said his father.

“I told you not to bother that man!” said his mother.

“Well, that just isn’t true,” yelled Smith, mentally damning Lord Ermenwyr. “Dragons don’t do that kind of thing, all right, son? They’re too small. I’ve seen ’em. All they do is fly over the water and catch fish. They build nests in cliffs. People make umbrellas out of their wings. No, what we’ve got here are gliders.” He pointed up at the winged figures, who were much nearer now.

“Yes, Wolkin, you see? Perfectly harmless,” said his father.

“Just people with big wings strapped on,” explained Smith. “Sort of. They carry letters sometimes.”

“And they have, er, flying clubs and competitions,” added his father. “Nothing to be afraid of at all.”

“Of course not,” Smith agreed. “Look, here they come. Let’s all wave.”

The children waved doubtfully.

“Look,” said the Smiths’ little girl. “They’ve got pistol-bows just like you have, Caravan Master.”

“What?” said Smith, as a bolt thunked into his left thigh.

The gliders were raking the caravan with boltfire. The result was screaming confusion and an answering barrage of shot from the caravans. Smith, firing both his weapons, glimpsed Parradan Smith standing, snarling, balancing as he sent boltfire from an apparently inexhaustible magazine into the nearest gliders. He saw Balnshik hanging out the side of the palanquin, bracing her feet on an immense old hunting weapon, and firing with deadly accuracy.

It was over in seconds. The closest of the gliders veered off, dropped something beside the road, and went down in a tangle of snapping struts and collapsing green fabric. The others wheeled. They lifted and floated off to the east, rapidly vanishing. The thing that had been dropped coughed, spurted dust, and exploded, throwing liquid flame in all directions. Fortunately the carts were well clear by the time it went off.

“Stop,” gasped Smith, but the keymen were already applying the brakes. The carts shuddered to a stop, their iron wheels grinding in the stone ruts and sending up a flare of sparks the whole length of the caravan. He jumped from his high seat and fell, clutching his wounded leg. Scrambling up painfully he saw Parradan Smith already out and running for the fallen glider, holding a freshly cocked weapon upright over his head as he ran. Burnbright had turned and was racing back toward them, looking terrified.

“Anybody hurt?” Smith shouted, leaning against the cart as he tried to stanch the flow of blood down his leg.

It was some moments before he could get a coherent answer. Luckily, he had been the only one to sustain a wound. One of the Keymen Smiths had been slightly stunned by a bolt striking his steel pot-helmet, deflected by its wide brim; another shot had ricocheted and hit Keyman Crucible sidelong on his upper arm, leaving a welted bruise the size of a handball. Lord Ermenwyr was unharmed, but his luggage was struck through with a dozen bolts at least, and he had leaped from the palanquin and was screaming threats, in surprisingly full voice, at the remaining gliders, now only distant specks on the horizon.

“So much for his being a vampire,” Smith muttered to himself. He was binding up his leg with a rag when Parradan Smith approached him, his face stony.

“You’d better come see this,” he said.

“Is he dead?” Smith inquired, limping forward. The other man just nodded.

The glider was certainly dead. His neck had been snapped when his aircraft crashed, and lay at a distinctly unnatural angle; but it was obvious he’d been dead well before the impact. His quilted flight suit was torn and bloody in a dozen places.

“Damn,” said Smith.

“Those are my bolts,” said Parradan Smith, pointing out a scatter of small black-centered wounds. “Custom-made. Those two would be yours, probably.”

“You’re a lucky, lucky man,” Lord Ermenwyr told the corpse, coming up to stare at it balefully. “If you were still alive, after what you’ve done to my best shirts—well, I wouldn’t want to be you, that’s all.” He prodded the body with his boot. “No weapons. I suppose he was the one designated to drop the incendiary device.”

“Probably.”

“Good job Nursie nailed him before he managed it.” He poked at the man’s left arm, from which a big barbed steel projectile protruded.

“So these are hers too?” Parradan Smith pointed at two others, one in the dead man’s right leg and one between his ribs.

“Yes. They’re designed to take down elk.”

“And these are mine, and these are Caravan Master’s, so—” Parradan Smith stooped and pulled three feathered darts from the body. “Who the hell fired these?”

Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes widened, seemed, in fact, at the point of starting out of his face.

“I’d be careful with those, if I were you,” he said faintly.

They were little tubes of cane, tipped with what appeared to be thorns and fletched with small curling green feathers.

“Poisoned?” inquired Smith.

“Aren’t all darts that mysteriously appear out of nowhere smeared with deadly poison?” said Lord Ermenwyr. Parradan Smith tossed them away.

“Do you know who fired them?”

“No!”

“Well, somebody fired them,” said Smith. “What I’d like to know is, what was this one trying to do? He and his friends?”

“Trying to kill me, obviously,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Have you enemies, my lord?”

“Dozens of them,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “And they’re nothing to Daddy’s enemies. In fact, I wouldn’t put this past Daddy. He’s never been fond of me.” His rage had burned quickly down to ash, and he was pale, beginning to shake.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Master,” said Balnshik, appearing behind them suddenly. She looked over the battered corpse with a cold eye. “You know perfectly well that if your lord father had wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now.” She stooped and pulled her steel points from the body. Some of the clothing tore as she retrieved the last one, and Smith leaned forward with an exclamation.

“Look, he’s got a tattoo!”

“So he has.” Balnshik glanced down at it. “One of those nasty little assassins’ gangs, isn’t it? There you are, Master, you see? Nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” cried Lord Ermenwyr, his eyes bugging out again. “When I might have been riddled with boltfire and burned into the bargain? By the Nine Hells, what do you think’s worth worrying about?” His voice rose to a scream. “You’re going to let me die in this horrible featureless wilderness and I’ll have no tomb, not even a proper funeral—”

He broke off with an oof as Balnshik seized him and threw him over one shoulder.

“You’ll have to excuse his lordship,” she said. “It’s time for his fix. Come along, darling.” She turned and strode back to the caravan.

Smith stared after her; then his attention was drawn back to the corpse, as Parradan Smith bent and methodically dug his bolts from the wounds.

“Is that an assassins’ tattoo?” he asked.

“How should I know?” said Parradan Smith tonelessly, not looking up.

They scraped out a grave in the dry ground and covered the body with a thin layer of earth and stones. The green wings were laid over all.

Speed once they’d started up again was limited because Keyman Crucible’s arm became swollen and painful. It was well after dark by the time they were able to make camp; by then Smith’s leg was throbbing and fairly swollen too. As the fires were lit, as the tents were being set up, he limped slowly to the hut and waited for Ronrishim Flowering Reed to emerge.

“You’re an herbalist, aren’t you?” he said, when the Yendri came out.

Flowering Reed looked him up and down with distaste.

“Are you going to ask me for healing?” he asked.

“Yes, if you can help me.”

“In the name of the Unsullied Daughter, then,” he said, “I will require clean water. Have your minions fetch it.”

The only person available to be a minion was Burnbright, who obligingly fetched a bucket of water from the pump and stayed to watch as Smith reclined before Flowering Reed’s tent and submitted to having his trouser leg sliced open.

“Aren’t you going to cauterize it with something?” she inquired, wincing as Smith’s wound was probed. Smith grunted and turned his face away.

“Do you use a sword to cut through flowers?” replied the Yendri, extracting the bolt and regarding it critically. “Ah, but I forget; you people do. It may surprise you to learn that the most violent solution to a difficulty is not always the best one.”

“I was just asking, for goodness sake!” said Burnbright, and stormed away.

“Got anything for pain?” Smith asked through clenched teeth. Flowering Reed shook his head.

“I do not keep opiates for my personal use,” he said. “I believe it is better to learn to bear with inevitable suffering.”

“I see,” said Smith.

“When you and all your people learn to see, there will be rejoicing and astonishment through the worlds,” said Flowering Reed.

Smith endured in silence as his wound was cleaned, and the Yendri took a pungent-smelling ointment from his pack and anointed the wound. As Smith shifted so the bandage could be wound about his leg, he looked over at Flowering Reed.

“What do you make of the attack today?” he inquired.

Flowering Reed shrugged again. “One of your people’s interminable quarrels. Filth slew filth, and so filth lusted after vengeance.”

Smith decided there was no point attempting to defend the blood feud as part of his cultural heritage. “But who do you think they were after?”

“I have no idea, nor any interest in the matter,” said Flowering Reed. “Though if I cared to speculate on such a thing, I might begin by observing who defended himself most viciously.”

He tied off the bandage, and Smith sat up awkwardly. “Parradan Smith?”

“Perhaps. On the other hand, your people are always ready to unleash violence upon others. He may simply have been the best prepared.”

“Nice to get an unbiased opinion,” said Smith, getting to his feet.

“Leave me now. I must pray and cleanse myself.”

“Go ahead.” Smith limped away, and Burnbright came running to lend her shoulder for support.

“Isn’t he awful?” she hissed. “Now he’ll put his nose in the air and meditate on how much better he is than anybody else.”

“At least he was willing to fix my leg,” Smith said.

“Only because you asked him. They have to if they’re asked; it’s part of their religion or something. Don’t think for a minute he’d have offered on his own.”

“You don’t like the Yendri very much, do you?”

“They’re always raping runners,” Burnbright informed him. “Not so much caravan runners like me, but the solos, the long-distance messengers, all the time.”

“That’s what I’d always heard, but I thought it was just stories,” said Smith. “Since they’re supposed to be so nonviolent.”

Burnbright shook her head grimly.

“They say it’s an act of love, not violence, and their girls take it as a compliment, so why shouldn’t we? Self-righteous bastards. We learned all sorts of defenses against them at the mother house.”

“Nice to know,” said Smith. “How’s Crucible’s arm?”

“It’s huge, and it’s turning all sorts of colors,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll be able to crank tomorrow. That means you’ll have to take his place on the key. That’s what Caravan Masters do.”

“Oh,” said Smith, who had been looking forward to a day of riding stretched out on the shipment of flour from Old Troon Mills.

“Funny about the dead glider,” Burnbright said.

“What was funny about him?”

“He was from Troon.” She helped him to a seat beside the fire. “I recognized him. He used to hang out at the Burning Wheel. That’s the bar where all the gamblers go.”

“You think Lord Ermenwyr’s a gambler as well as a vampire?” Smith asked her wryly.

She flushed. “Well? I never saw him any other time but after dark until today, did you? And he never eats anything, and he looks just terrible! But he’s not a gambler. He’s somebody’s ambassador, was what I heard, and he’s been called off the job because he’s sick so they’re sending him to the spa. What, you think the gliders were after him?” She looked surprised.

“He thinks so.”

“Hmmm.” Her face was bright with speculation. Just then Mrs. Smith called for her, and she ran off to the kitchen pavilion.

No one slept particularly well that night. The Smith’s baby screamed for two hours instead of the usual one. Smith divided watches with the keymen, taking the first shift, so he was up late anyway, getting stiffer and more chilled before Keyman Bellows took his place. Just as Smith had got himself drunk enough to pretend his wounded leg belonged to somebody else so he could doze off, he found himself sitting up, his heart pounding. He turned his head, staring into the west beyond the ring of carts. The faintest of touches on his face, a trace of moisture in the air, a scent as powerful and distinct as the sea’s but certainly not the sea.

Across the fire from him, Mrs. Smith leaned up on one elbow in her bedroll.

“Wind’s shifted,” she muttered. “That’s the Greenlands. We’ll see it, tomorrow.”

Smith lay back, wondering what she meant, and then he remembered the dark mountain.

He had forgotten it next morning, in the haze of his hangover and the confusion of breaking camp. He took Keyman Crucible’s place on the key, crowding beside him as Crucible pedaled, and the effort of winding for the push-off alone was enough to make Smith’s biceps twinge. By the time they were three hours on their way he had mentally crossed key-man off the list of possible careers for himself.

Busy with all this, Smith did not glance up at the horizon until the noon meal was handed along the line, and then he saw it: a rise of forested land to the northwest, and above it a black jagged cone. It didn’t seem very big until his mind grappled with a calculation of the distance. Then his eyes wouldn’t accept how immense it must be.

He put it out of his mind and attempted to unwrap his lunch with one hand. It was a pocket roll stuffed with highly spiced meat. He chewed methodically, looking back along the line of cars, and wondered again what the purpose of the glider attack had been. Robbery seemed unlikely, at least of the cargo. The most valuable thing they were carrying was Lady Seven Butterflies’s holistic eggs, and the mental image of a corps of gliders attempting to fly, bearing between them perhaps a cargo net full of big violet eggs, was enough to make him grin involuntarily.

What if one of the passengers had something they wanted? The fact that the dead man had an assassin’s tattoo didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t also a thief. One man may in his time take many professions, as Smith knew too well.

He looked forward at the cart where the Smiths rode. They were jewelers; were they carrying any of their wares?

He turned back to look at the cart that Parradan Smith and the Yendri shared. They rode in mutual silence. Parradan Smith watched the eastern horizon. Flowering Reed’s uneasy stare was fixed on the black mountain to the northwest. Smith ruled out the Yendri, who was carrying very little luggage and had no trunks at all. His race disdained personal possessions and produced nothing anyone would want, traded in nothing but medicinal herbs and the occasional freshwater pearl.

Parradan Smith, on the other hand, was couriering something. What? The instrument case he carried didn’t seem heavy enough to be loaded with gold, as Burnbright had speculated.

Which left Lord Ermenwyr. Drugs, money, jewelry: The Lordling undoubtedly had plenty that would interest a thief.

Smith cranked again on the key, scanned the sky. No wings, at least.

But the black mountain grew larger as the hours went by; and after the following day, when they came to the divide and took the northern track, it loomed directly ahead of them.

“Smith.”

He opened his eyes Wearily. It seemed to him he had only just closed them; but the east was getting light. He turned and looked at Mrs. Smith, who was crouching beside him.

“We’d a visitor in the night, Smith, or so it seems. Still with us. I’d appreciate your assistance in removing it.”

“What?” He sat up and stared, scratching his stubble.

She pointed with her smoking tube. He followed with his eyes and saw a mass of something on the ground in the center of camp, dimly lit by the breakfast cookfire.

“What the hell—?” Smith crawled out and stood with effort, peering at the thing. It didn’t invite close inspection, somehow, but he lurched nearer and had a good look. Then he threw up.

If you took a gray-striped cat, and gave it the general size and limb configuration of a man, and then flayed it alive and scattered its flayed fur in long strips all over the corpse—you’d have something approximating what Smith saw in the pale light of dawn. You’d need to find a cat with green ichor in its veins, too, and remarkably big claws and teeth.

It was a demon, one of the original inhabitants of the world. Or so they themselves said, claiming to have been born of the primeval confusion at the beginning of time; for all Smith had ever been able to learn, it might be the truth. Certainly they had wild powers, and were thought to be able to take whatever solid forms they chose. This had both advantages and disadvantages. They might experience mortal pleasures, might even beget children. They might also die.

Smith reeled back, wiping his mouth. The thing’s eyes were like beryls, still fixed in a glare of rage, but it was definitely dead.

“Oh, this is bad,” he groaned.

“Could be worse,” said Mrs. Smith, putting on the teakettle. “Could be you lying there with your liver torn out.”

“Is its liver torn out?” Smith averted his eyes.

“Liver and heart, from the look of it. Doesn’t seem to have got any of us, though. I didn’t hear a thing, did you?” said Mrs. Smith quietly. Smith shook his head.

“But what is it? Is that a demon?”

“Well, there aren’t any tribes of cat-headed men listed in the regional guidebooks,” Mrs. Smith replied. “The principal thing with which we ought to concern ourselves just now is getting the bloody body out of sight before the guests see it, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Right,” said Smith, and limped away to the carts to get rope.

He made a halter, and together they dragged the body away from the camp, out onto the plain. There wasn’t much there to hide it. They returned, and Smith found a shovel, and was going back to dig a grave when he saw the body convulse where it lay. He halted, ready to run for his life, game leg notwithstanding. The body flared green, bursting into unclean flame. It became too bright to bear looking at, throwing out a shower of green sparks, then something brilliant rose screaming from the fire and shot upward, streaking west as though it were a comet seeking to hide itself in the last rags and shadows of the night.

The flames died away and left nothing but black ashes blowing across the plain in the dawn wind.

“That was definitely a demon,” Mrs. Smith informed him when he returned, leaning on his shovel. “Going off like a Duke’s Day squib that way. They do that, you see.” She handed him a tin cup of tea.

“But what was it doing here?” Smith accepted the cup and warmed his hands.

“I’m damned if I know. One doesn’t usually see them this far out on the plain,” said Mrs. Smith, spooning flatcake batter onto a griddle. “One can assume it came here to rend and ravage some or all of our company. One can only wonder at why it didn’t succeed.”

“Or who killed it,” Smith added dazedly. “Or how.”

“Indeed.”

“Well well well, what a lovely almost-morning,” said Lord Ermenwyr, emerging from his pavilion and pacing rapidly toward them. He looked slightly paler than usual and was puffing out enough smoke to obscure his features. “Really ought to rise at this hour more often. What’s for breakfast?”

“Rice-and-almond-flour flatcakes with rose-apricot syrup,” Mrs. Smith informed him.

“Really,” he said, staring around at the circle of tents. “How delightful. I, er, don’t suppose you’re serving any meat as well?”

“I could fry up sausages, my lord,” said Mrs. Smith.

“Sausages?… Yes, I’d like that. Lots of them? Blood rare?”

“Sausages only come one way, my lord.”

“Oh. They do? But what about blood sausage?”

“Even blood sausages come well-done,” Mrs. Smith explained. “Not much juice in a sausage.”

“Oh.” For a moment Lord Ermenwyr looked for all the world as though he were going to cry. “Well—have you got any blood sausage anyway?”

“I’ve got some imported duck blood sausage,” said Mrs. Smith.

“Duck blood?” Lord Ermenwyr seemed horrified. “All right, then—I’ll have all the duck blood sausage you’ve got. And one of those flatcakes with lots and lots of syrup, please. And tea.”

Mrs. Smith gave him a sidelong look, but murmured, “Right away, my lord.”

“You didn’t notice anything unusual in the night, did you, my lord?” asked Smith, who had been watching him as he sipped his tea. Lord Ermenwyr turned sharply.

“Who? Me? What? No! Slept like a baby,” he cried. “Why? Did something unusual happen?”

“There was a bit of unpleasantness,” said Smith. “Something came lurking around.”

“Horrors, what an idea! I suppose there’s no way of increasing our speed so we’ll be off this plain any quicker?”

“Not with one of our keymen down, I’m afraid,” Smith replied.

“We’ll just have to be on our guard, then, won’t we?” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“You know, my lord,” said Mrs. Smith as she laid out sausages on the griddle, “you needn’t stand and wait for your breakfast. You can send out your nurse to fetch it for you when it’s ready.”

“Oh, I feel like getting my own breakfast this morning, thank you.” Lord Ermenwyr flinched and bared his teeth as the Smiths’ baby began the morning lamentation.

“I see,” said Mrs. Smith. Smith looked at her.

He watched as, one by one, the keymen and the guests emerged from their tents alive and whole. Parradan Smith sniffed the air suspiciously, then shrugged and went off to wash himself. Burnbright crawled out of her bedroll, yawned, and came over to the kitchen pavilion, where she attempted to drink rose-apricot syrup from the bottle until Mrs. Smith hit her across the knuckles with a wooden spoon. The Smith children straggled forth and went straight to the mess of green slime and strips of fur where the demon’s body had been and proceeded to poke their little fingers in it.

Ronrishim Flowering Reed stepped from his tent, saw the mess, and looked disgusted. He picked his way across the circle to the kitchen pavilion.

“Is it possible to get a cup of clean water?” he inquired. “And have you any rose extract?”

“Burnbright, fetch the nice man his water,” said Mrs. Smith. “Haven’t any rose extract, sir, but we do have rose-apricot syrup.” Burnbright held it up helpfully.

Flowering Reed’s lip curled.

“No, thank you,” he said. “Plain rose extract was all I required. We are a people of simple tastes. We do not find it necessary to cloy our appetites with adulterated and excessive sensation.”

“But it’s so much fun,” Lord Ermenwyr told him. Flowering Reed looked at him with loathing, took his cup of water, and stalked away in silence.

Lord Ermenwyr took his breakfast order, when it was ready, straight off to his palanquin and crawled inside with it. He did not emerge thereafter until it was time to break camp, when he came out himself and took down his pavilion.

“Is Madam Balnshik all right?” Smith inquired, coming to lend a hand, for the lordling was wheezing in an alarming manner.

“Just fine,” Lord Ermenwyr assured him, his eyes bulging. “Be a good fellow and hold the other end of this, will you? Thanks ever so. Nursie’s just got a, er, headache. The change in air pressure as we approach the highlands, no doubt. She’ll be right as rain, later. You’ll see.”

In fact she did not emerge until they made camp that evening, though when she did she looked serene and gorgeous as ever. Mrs. Smith watched her as she dined heartily on that night’s entree, which was baked boar ham with brandied lemon-and-raisin sauce. Lord Ermenwyr, by contrast, took but a cup of consomme in his pavilion.

“That’s two murder attempts,” said Mrs. Smith, as the fire was going down to embers and all the guests had retired.

“You don’t think it’s been robbery either, then,” said Smith. She exhaled a plume of smoke and shook her head.

“Not when a demon’s sent,” she said. “And that was a sending, depend upon it.”

“I didn’t think there were any sorcerers in Troon,” said Smith.

“What makes you think the sending came out of Troon?” Mrs. Smith inquired, looking dubious. He told her about Burnbright’s recognizing the dead glider. She just nodded.

“You don’t think the two attacks are unrelated, do you?” asked Smith. “Do you think the demon might have been sent by—” He gestured out into the darkness, toward the black mountain. Mrs. Smith was silent a moment.

“Not generally his style,” she said at last. “But I suppose anything’s possible. That would certainly complicate matters.”

“I like trouble to be simple,” said Smith. “Let’s say it’s somebody in Troon. It’s my guess they’re either after Parradan Smith or the little lord. Couldn’t get them in town without it being an obvious murder, so they waited until we were far enough out on the plain that we couldn’t send for help. Eh?”

“Seems reasonable.”

“But the first attack didn’t come off, thanks to there being a lot more people able to fight back here than they bargained for,” Smith theorized. “Now we’re getting farther out of range and they’re getting desperate, so they hired somebody to send a demon. That costs a lot. I’m betting they’ve run out of resources. I’m betting we’ll be left in peace from here on.”

And for the next two days it seemed as though he might be right, though the journey was not without incident. The Smith children began to grow gray fur on their hands, and nothing—not shaving, not plucking, not depilatory cream—could remove it. Moreover it began to spread, to their parents’ consternation, and by nightfall of the second day they sat like a trio of miserable kittens while their mother had hysterics and pleaded with Smith to do something about it.

Such commotion she made that Lord Ermenwyr ventured from his bed, glaring and demanding silence; though when he saw the children he howled with immoderate laughter, and Balnshik had to come drag him back inside, scolding him severely. She came out later and offered a salve that looked like terra-cotta clay, which proved effective in removing the fur, though the children wept and whined that it stung.

Still, by the next morning the fur had not grown back.

The Greenlands rose before them, now, in range upon range of wooded hills. Beyond towered the black mountain, so vast it seemed like another world, perhaps one orbiting dangerously close. Its separate topography, its dark forests and valleys, its cliffs brightened here and there by the fall of glittering rivers and rainbowed mists, became more distinct with every hour and seemed less real.

Though the road skirted the hills in most places, the ground did climb, and the keymen grunted with effort as they pedaled. Smith worked so hard, his wound opened again and Keyman Crucible had to help him, winding with his good arm. The air was moist, smelling of green things, and when they made camp their first evening in a tree-circled glade there was not the least taste of the dust of Troon left in anyone’s mouth.

Two days into the Greenlands, they were attacked again.

They had scaled a hill with sweating effort, and cresting saw a long straight slope before them, stretching down to a gentle shaded run through oaks beginning to go golden and red. Burnbright whooped with relief, and sprinted down the road before the caravan as it came rattling after. The Smith children raised a shrill cheer as the carts picked up speed, and bright leaves whirled in the breeze as they came down.

But near the bottom of the incline, there were suddenly a great many leaves, and acorns too, and then there was an entire tree across the road. A very large and fairly ugly man stepped out and stood before them, grinning.

He was doing it for effect, of course. He had the sashes, the golden earring, the daggers that went with a bandit, and he had, moreover, the tusks and thundercloud skin color that went with a demon hybrid. There was no need for him to shout, “Halt! This is an armed robbery!” and with his tusks he might have found it a little difficult to enunciate anyway. His job was to terrify and demoralize the caravan, and he was well suited for it.

However, it is not a good idea to terrify a little girl whose legs can run fifty miles in a day without resting. Burnbright screamed but, unable to stop given her momentum, did what had been drummed into her at the Mount Flame Mother House for Runners: She leaped into the air and came on heels first, straight into the bandit’s face. He went over with a crash, and she went with him, landing on her feet. She proceeded to dance frenziedly on his head, as behind her the carts derailed and before her other bandits came howling from the forest.

Nor is it a good idea to lose the element of surprise. Smith and the others had enough warning, in the time they were hurtling toward the tree, to prepare themselves, and when the moment of impact came they were poised to leap clear. Smith landed hard on his hip but got off a pair of bolts into the bandit who was rushing him, which bought him enough time to scramble to his feet and draw his machete. The key-men had produced dented-looking bucklers and machetes from nowhere, and charged in formation, a pot-headed wall of slightly rusty steel.

One of the bolts had got Smith’s opponent in the throat, so he was able to cut him down in a moment. As he swung to meet another shrieking assailant he had a glimpse of the tumbled caravan. The Smiths were desperately attempting to get their children into the shelter of an overturned cart, and a bandit who was advancing on them found his head abruptly caved in by a heavy skillet wielded by Mrs. Smith. Giant violet eggs were rolling everywhere, spilling free of their cargo netting, and Balnshik was kicking them aside as she leaped forward, a stiletto blade in either hand. She slashed at a bandit who backed rapidly from her, though whether he was intimidated more by the wicked little knives or the gleam of her white teeth, bared in a snarl of bloodthirsty joy, it would have been difficult to say.

Lord Ermenwyr, astonishingly, was up and on his feet, and had just taken off an assailant’s head with a saber. Parradan Smith had emptied his pistolbows, mowing down at least five attackers, and was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle with the sixth. That was all Smith was able to see clearly before he became far too preoccupied with his own survival to look longer.

His opponent was not, as the tusked bandit had been, hideous. He was lithe, slender, beautiful; but for the ram’s horns that curved back from his temples and the fact that his skin was the color of lightning, he might have graced any boy prostitute’s couch in the most elegant of cities. This did not impress Smith, but the youth fought like a demon too, and that painfully impressed him.

Blade blocked blade—whipp, a dagger was in the youth’s free hand, and he’d laid open Smith’s coat just over his heart. Smith’s hand moved too fast to be seen and would have taken off the boy’s head, but he was suddenly, magically, four paces back from where he ought to be. He smiled into Smith’s eyes and lunged again, and Smith, jumping back, was unable to free his boot knife before they locked blades once more. The boy had all the advantage of inhuman speed and strength, and Smith began to get the cold certain feeling in his gut that he was going down this time.

All he had on the boy was weight, and he threw it into a forward push. He managed to shove the other one back far enough to grab his knife at last and they circled, the boy dancing, Smith limping. He knew vaguely that the bandits were getting the worst of the fight, but they might have been in another world. His world was that locked circle, tiny and growing smaller, and his opponent’s eyes had become the moon and the sun.

The demon-boy knew he was going to win, too, and in his glee threw a few little eccentric capers into his footwork, strutted heel to toe, swung his dagger point like a metronome to catch Smith’s gaze and fix it while he ran him through—

But he didn’t run him through, because his own gaze was caught and held by a figure advancing from Smith’s right.

“Hello, Eshbysse,” said Mrs. Smith.

The boy’s face went slack with astonishment. Into his eyes came uncertainty, and then dawning horror.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Smith. “Fenallise.”

He drew back. “Fenallise? But—you—”

“It’s been thirty years, Eshbysse,” she said.

“No!” he cried, backing farther away. “Not that long! You’re lying.” Averting his gaze from her, he dropped his weapons and put his hands to his face. It was still smooth, still perfect.

“Every day of thirty years,” she assured him.

“I won’t believe you!” Eshbysse sobbed. He turned to flee, wailing, mounting into the air and running along the treetops, and the red and golden leaves fluttered about his swift ankles as though they had already fallen. His surviving men, seeing the tide had turned, took to their heels along the ground with similar rapidity.

Smith dropped his weapons and sagged forward, bracing his hands on his thighs, gulping for breath.

“What the hell,” he said, “was that all about?”

“We were an item, once,” said Mrs. Smith, looking away into the sea of autumn leaves. “You wouldn’t think I was ever a little girl to be stolen out of a convent by a demon-lover, would you? But we did terrible things together, he and I.”

“What’d he run off for?” asked Smith.

She shook her head.

“He was always afraid of Time,” she said thoughtfully. “It doesn’t get their kind as quickly as it gets us, but it does do for them sooner or later. Seeing me reminded him. One day he won’t be pretty anymore; he can’t bear that, you see.”

Smith stared at her and saw in her face the girl she had been. She turned and looked at the aftermath of battle.

“Bloody hell,” she said. Parradan Smith was staggering toward them, death-pale, supported by Flowering Reed.

“He’s hurt,” Flowering Reed cried.

They made temporary camp by the side of the road and assessed the damage.

Parradan Smith was indeed hurt, had taken a stab wound in the chest, and though it was nowhere near his heart, he was in shock, seemed weakened on his left side. Flowering Reed advised that he shouldn’t be moved for the present, so they made him as comfortable as they could in one of the tents.

Burnbright was bruised and crying hysterically, but had taken no other harm. Smith’s ribs were scratched, and the keymen had taken assorted cuts, none serious. The Smiths and their children were unharmed. Balnshik was unharmed, as was Lord Ermenwyr. There were, however, nine dead bandits to be dragged into a pile and searched, and there was an oak tree to be cleared from the road, to say nothing of 144 giant eggs to be collected and a dozen carts to be righted and put back on track.

“So thanks a lot, Master of the Mountain,” Smith muttered, as he was having his ribs taped up. Mrs. Smith, who was tending to him, shook her head.

“Have you taken a good look at the bodies?” she asked. “Three of ’em are our own people. The others look like half-breeds. Poor Eshbysse had got himself a band of threadbare mercenaries and thieves. When the old man attacks, you’ll know; his people are all demons, and a good deal more professional than these feckless creatures. We’d have had no chance at all against him.”

“That’s encouraging,” growled Smith.

“Would you believe it?” said Lord Ermenwyr brightly, approaching with an armful of violet eggs. “Not one of the damned things broke!”

Mrs. Smith looked scornful. “I suppose all that tripe about the perfect holistic packing shape had some sense in it, then.”

“Are they supposed to be a perfect holistic shape?” Lord Ermenwyr looked intrigued. He tossed his armful into the air and, before Smith had time to yell, began to juggle them adroitly.

“My lord, could I ask you to put those back in the cart?”

Lord Ermenwyr tossed the eggs, one after another as they came out of their spinning circle, into the cart. “Shall I volunteer to search the bodies? Might be a purse or two on them.”

“Do you think they were from the Master of the Mountain?” said Smith.

Lord Ermenwyr gave a short bark of a laugh. “Not likely! His men all wear mail and livery. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Why does everybody know more about this than me?” Smith wondered, as the young lord went off to loot corpses.

“Well, you’re not from around here, are you, dear?” Mrs. Smith tied off his bandage. “If you weren’t from Port Black-rock or wherever it is, you’d have heard these stories all your life.”

Smith was disinclined to tell her whether or not he was from Port Blackrock, so he looked up at Keyman Bellows, who saluted as he approached. “How are we doing?” he inquired.

“Carts are righted, Caravan Master, and no damage to the wheels or gears. Old Smith and New Smith are taking axes to the roadblock now. Parradan Smith’s asking for you.”

“Right,” Smith said, getting to his feet and pulling on his slashed coat. “I’ll go see what he wants. When they’re done with the tree, tell them to dig a grave pit.”

His first thought, when he parted the tent flap and peered inside, was that he was looking at a dead man. But Parradan Smith’s eyes swiveled and met his.

“Talk to you,” he said.

“He shouldn’t talk,” said Flowering Reed, who sat beside him. Parradan Smith bared his teeth at the Yendri.

“Get out,” he said.

“Easy!” Smith ducked his head and stepped in. “You’d better go; I won’t let him wear himself out,” he told Flowering Reed, who looked offended and left without a word.

When they were alone, Parradan Smith gestured awkwardly with one hand at the gang tattoo on his chest. “Know this?” he gasped.

“You’re a Bloodfire,” Smith replied.

He nodded. “Courier. Collected debt in Troon. He tried to get it back.”

“Who did?” Smith leaned closer. Parradan Smith gulped for breath.

“Lord Tinwick. Gambler. His gliders.” He watched Smith’s face closely to see if he understood.

“The gliders were trying to kill you and take back what you’d collected?”

Parradan Smith nodded. He made a groping gesture toward his instrument case. Smith pulled it close for him. He pressed a key into Smith’s hand.

“Open.”

Smith worked the complicated locks and opened it, and caught his breath. Nested in shaped packing was a jeweled cup of exquisite workmanship, clearly very old.

“Heirloom. All he had to pay with. My lord wants it bad. You deliver—” Parradan Smith looked up into Smith’s eyes. “And tell him. Pay well. Lord Kashban Beatbrass. Villa in Salesh. Find him.”

A shadow shifted across the outside of the tent and moved away. Parradan Smith followed it with his eyes and smiled bitterly.

“He stopped listening,” he said.

“Look, you aren’t wounded that badly,” said Smith, feeling he ought to say something encouraging. “I’m sure we can get you to Salesh.”

Parradan Smith looked back at him.

“Turn me,” he ordered.

“What?” said Smith, but he obeyed, lifting and half-turning the wounded man. He caught his breath; there was a red swelling on his back like an insect bite but immense, beginning to blister, and in its center a dark speck.

“See?” said Parradan Smith, breathing very hard. “Poisoned.”

Smith said something profane. He drew his knife and scraped gently, and the black thing came out of the wound. He turned Parradan Smith on his back again and held up the object on his knife blade, squinting at it. It looked like the tip of a thorn, perhaps a quarter of an inch long.

“This is like those darts we took out of the glider,” he said.

“In my back,” said Parradan Smith. Smith groaned.

“Somebody in the party shot you,” he said. “Maybe by accident?”

Parradan Smith looked impatient and drew a deep breath as though he was about to explain something too obvious to Smith; but he never drew another breath after that and lay staring at Smith with blank eyes.

Smith sighed. He closed and locked the case. Flowering Reed approached him as he came out of the tent, and he told him, “He’s dead.”

“He might have lived if you’d listened to me,” said the Yendri angrily.

“I don’t think so,” said Smith, and walked away to put the case in a safe place.

A while later he approached Lord Ermenwyr, who was puffing out rifts of purple weedsmoke as he watched the keymen digging the grave pit.

“We need to talk, my lord,” he said.

“My master needs to rest,” said Balnshik, appearing beside him as from thin air.

“I need to talk to him more than he needs to rest,” said Smith stubbornly. Lord Ermenwyr waved a placatory hand.

“Certainly we’ll talk, and Nursie can stand by with a long knife in case things take an unpleasant turn,” he said. “Though I think we’ve seen the last of this particular band of cutthroats.”

“Let’s hope so, my lord,” said Smith, drawing him aside. Balnshik followed closely, tossing her hair back in an insolent kind of way. Her shirt had been torn in the fight, giving him a peep at breasts like pale melons, and it was with difficulty that he drew his attention back to her young master. “You fought very well, if I may say so.”

“You may,” said Lord Ermenwyr smugly. “But then, I’ve had lots of experience fighting for my life. Usually against doctors. Today was a welcome change.”

“Your health seems to have improved.”

“I’m no longer rusticating in that damned dust bowl, am I?” Lord Ermenwyr blew a smoke ring. “Bandits or no, the Greenlands does offer fresh air.”

“What were you doing in Troon?” inquired Smith. Balnshik stretched extravagantly, causing one nipple to flash like a dark star through the rent in her shirt. Smith turned his face away and concentrated on Lord Ermenwyr, who replied, “Why, I was about my father’s business. Representing his interests, if you must know, with Old Troon Mills and the other barley barons. Doing a damned good job, too, before the Lung Rot set in.”

“Do you gamble, my lord?”

“Hell, no.” Lord Ermenwyr scowled. “A pastime for morons, unless you’ve got an undetectable way of cheating. I don’t need the money, and I certainly don’t need the thrill of suspense, thank you very much. I’ve spent too much of my life wondering if I’d live to see my next birthday.”

Smith nodded. “And the only reason you left Troon was for your health?”

“Yes.”

“You’d made no new enemies there?”

Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes glinted. “I didn’t say that,” he purred. “Though it wasn’t my fault, really. I made the most amazing discovery.”

“Master,” said Balnshik, in the gentlest voice imaginable, but it was still a warning.

“Did you know,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with barely suppressed glee, “that if you’re very attentive to wealthy widows, they’ll practically pay you to sleep with them? They’ll give you presents! They’ll take you nice places to eat! Good lord, I might have been a kitten on a string, and all I had to do was—”

“I’m sure the Caravan Master isn’t interested, my lord,” said Balnshik, putting an affectionate arm about his neck and locking it against his windpipe.

“How old is he?” Smith asked her.

“Sixteen.”

“Twenty-five!” said Lord Ermenwyr, pushing back her arm. “Really!”

“Sixteen,” Balnshik repeated.

“Seventeen,” Lord Ermenwyr insisted. “Anyway, the only problem is, the ladies get jealous, and they won’t share their toy. There was a Scene. A certain lady tried to do me an injury with her hairbrush. I only got out of it by pretending to have a seizure, and then I told her I was dying, which I am but not right then, and—”

“And his lord father thought it best my master have a change of air,” Balnshik finished for him.

Smith rubbed his chin, scratching the stubble.

“So… would any of these ladies have felt strongly enough to hire a band of mercenaries to ambush you out here?” he said, without much hope.

“Well, I don’t know—Lady Fristia was rather—”

“No,” said Balnshik. “And now, I hope you’ll excuse us? It’s time his lordship had his drugs.” She lifted Lord Ermenwyr bodily, threw him over her shoulder, and carried him off, protesting:

“It could have been Lady Fristia, you know! She was obsessed with me—”

They buried Parradan Smith in a separate grave and piled a cairn of stones to mark it, on Burnbright’s advice, she being the nearest expert on Mount Flame City gang customs. They felt badly leaving him there, in the shadow of the black mountain. Still, there is only so much one can do for the dead without joining them.

Two days more they rolled on, fearful at every blind turning, but the fire-colored forest was silent under a mild blue sky. No picturesque villains jumped out from behind the mossy boles nor arose from the green ferns.

On the third day, Crucible told Smith, “We’ll come to a Red House today. Might want their blacksmith to have a look at that rear axle.”

“Red House, right,” said Smith, nodding. “That would be one of the way station chain? I saw one on the map. Well, that’ll be a relief.”

Crucible laughed like a crow. “You haven’t tasted their beer,” he said.

By afternoon, when the long shadows were slanting behind the oaks, they saw the Red House. It stood on a bluff above the road, in a meadow cleared and stump-dotted, with high windowless walls of red plaster turreted at the four corners where watchmen in pot-helmets leaned. Burnbright announced the caravan’s approach on her trumpet, but they had already seen it from afar. By the time the keymen slowed for the turnout, the great gates were already opening.

Fortified as it was, an effort had been made to give the Red House a welcoming appearance. There was a quaint slated mansard built above the gate, bearing a sign of red glass that was illuminated after hours by lanterns: JOIN US HAPPY TRAVELER, it said. On either gatepost were carved the massive figures of folk heroes Prashkon the Wrestler and Andib the Axman, scowling down in a way that might be hoped to frighten off demons or any other ill-intentioned lurkers without the gates. As if that were not enough, the Housekeeper himself came running forward as the carts rattled in, screaming “Welcome! Welcome to Red House, customers!”

“Thank you,” said Smith cautiously, climbing from his cart and staring around. They were circled in an open courtyard of herringbone brick. To one side a high-vaulted hall stood, with blue smoke curling from its big central chimney. Built into the opposite wall were other long rooms: they might be storerooms and barracks for the watchmen. There was also a forge with a fire blazing, throwing on the dark wall the darker shadow of the blacksmith, who was clanging away lazily at a bit of glowing iron.

“You’d be out of Troon, Caravan Master, am I correct?” asked the Housekeeper, coming up to slap Smith’s arm heartily. He winced.

“That’s right,” he replied. “And it hasn’t been an easy trip. We’ve been attacked twice. No, three times, and lost a passenger.”

“Ah! Demons, was it?” The Housekeeper shuddered. “Horrible, horrible! But you’ll be all right here. We’re a bright speck of safety in a hostile land. Salves for your wounds and cheer for your heart. Everything for the traveler. Smithy, trading post with unique curios, dining hall with fine cuisine, splendid accommodations! Even baths. No shortage of water. You’ll dine with me, I trust?”

“Yes, thank you.” Smith glanced at the caravan, but the keymen were already wheeling the lead cart to the forge, covering the cargo and locking things down with practiced efficiency. “Hot baths for everybody first, though, I guess. Have you got a doctor here? Some of us are wounded, and there’s a Yendri passenger who’s helped out a little, but—”

“As it happens,” said the Housekeeper, lowering his voice, “Our medic is a Yendri. You won’t mind him, I promise you. Splendid fellow, knows his place, expert in all kinds of secret remedies his people use. Eminently trustworthy. Many of them are, you know. We’ve had him here for years. Never a mishap. I’ll send him to you in the bathhouse, shall I?”

The last thing Smith wanted at that moment was to have to deal with another supercilious green person, but his leg hurt badly, so he just nodded, and said, “Great.”

He was sitting in a long stone trough full of hot water, wishing it was deep enough to submerge himself, when the Yendri doctor entered the narrow stall and edged toward him. Like Flowering Reed, he was tall and regal-looking; but he wore a simple white robe and did not seem quite so superior.

“You are the wounded man?” he inquired, setting down a basket.

“It’s mostly me,” said Smith, sitting upright. “But the key-men are more important. They’ve got some bad gashes. In the name of the Unsullied Daughter, will you patch them up?”

The Yendri raised his eyebrows. “For the sake of the Unwearied Mother,” he said, laying a peculiar emphasis on the title, “they have been tended to. They asked me to see you next. You took a bolt in the leg?”

Smith nodded, raising his leg from the water. The Yendri hissed softly when he saw the bolt wound.

“This is inflamed. Dry yourself and step out to the massage table, please.”

He retreated, and Smith got hastily from the tub and toweled himself off. When he emerged from the stall, he saw that the Yendri had laid out a number of unpleasant-looking tools and bottles.

“You could just slap some salve and a bandage on it,” he suggested uneasily.

“Not if you wish to keep your leg,” the Yendri replied, helping him up on the table. Smith lay back and gritted his teeth, and for the next few minutes thought very hard about a cozy little bar in a seaside town, where from a window table one could watch blue dusk settling on the harbor and the yellow lamps blooming one after another on the ships and along the peaceful quay…

After far too long a time the Yendri was applying a bandage, and telling him, “The cut on your thorax will heal easily, but you’ll have to keep the leg elevated. Can they make a pallet for you on one of the carts?”

“I think so,” said Smith, unclenching his jaw with effort. “It was just a flesh wound. Did you really have to dig like that?”

“It had become—” The Yendri paused in tying off the bandage and looked at him. “Hm. Let me explain it like this: There are tiny demons who feed on wounds. They’re so tiny you can’t see them, but they can get into a cut and make you very, very sick, do you understand?”

Smith thought it sounded like the most idiotic superstition, but he nodded. “Tiny demons. All right. What’s keeping my leg up supposed to do?”

“Well, there are—hm—tiny warriors in your heart, you see? And they’ll do battle with the demons if they can get to them, but if you constrict the—hm—the river of your blood so they can’t row their tiny warships along it—” The Yendri, observing Smith’s expression, threw his hands in the air. “Let’s just say you need to keep off your feet and rest, will that do? And perhaps it won’t scar too badly.”

“I’m too old to care about scars,” said Smith, rubbing his leg.

“You’re fortunate, then,” said the Yendri, eyeing him critically. “Given the number you’ve got. You’re a mercenary, I take it?”

“Have been,” Smith replied warily.

“You’ve survived a great deal. You must be sensible enough to follow a doctor’s advice.” The Yendri bundled up his instruments.

“I’ll do my best,” said Smith. “Thank you. Thanks for being polite, too. Flowering Reed sounded like he hoped I’d die, even when he was putting on the bandage.”

The Yendri looked at him sharply. “Another of my people treated you?”

“He’s one of our passengers.”

“Hm. Would that be where you learned the expression ‘Unsullied Daughter,’ by any chance?”

“Yes. I thought it was something we had to say so you’d treat us.”

“No,” said the Yendri quietly. “Any true follower of the Lady in question must heal the sick and the wounded, whether or not they invoke Her name. And regardless of who they are. Good evening, Caravan Master.”

He took his basket and left. Smith pulled on his clothes and limped out of the bathhouse. It was twilight, with one star in a purple sky above the red walls, and the firelight from the forge threw his tottering shadow out black beside him as he made his way across the courtyard to the high hall.

“Caravan Master!” cried the Housekeeper, descending on him with a drink in either hand. “Come, sit with me. Your bath was enjoyable, yes, and you’ve had your leg seen to? Excellent. You’ll enjoy a complimentary beverage and our unique regional cuisine while relaxing around the blazing warmth of our fire.”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Smith dazedly.

He let himself be led to a seat by the central fire pit, and sank into it with a grateful sigh, as a drink was pressed into his hand. Utter bliss. His state of euphoria lasted until he took a sip of his drink.

“What—what’s this?” he gasped, turning to the Housekeeper in disbelief.

“That’s our special acorn beer,” said the Housekeeper, a little defensively. “It’s made nowhere else. We don’t even brew enough to export.”

“It’s very unusual,” said Smith.

“You’d really like it if you had a chance to get used to it,” the Housekeeper told him. “It has a marvelous subtle complex bouquet.”

Like a burning barn, thought Smith. He swirled the flat sour stuff, and said, “Delicate carbonation, too.”

“Exactly,” the Housekeeper said, and drank heartily. “None of your nasty gassy flatlands ale!” He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and leaned toward Smith with a gleam in his eye. “Though I’m always interested in news from the flatlands, you understand. We’ve got almost everything here—fresh air, fine water, radiant health—of course it’s a little dismaying at first, always looking over one’s shoulder at the, er, mountain up there, but one soon grows used to that—still, we’re a little out of touch, I have to admit. Almost miss the flatlands, sometimes.”

“Really,” said Smith, having another mouthful of his beer in the hope that it would improve upon acquaintance. It didn’t.

“Yes,” said the Housekeeper, staring into the fire. “Not so much at this time of year—the forest isn’t so bad, the leaves look like flames now, and soon the branches will be bare so you can see things, good clean honest open spaces. Not like in summer when there’s this smothering blanket of impenetrable green and anything could be hiding out there, anything could steal up behind you and—one gets a little edgy in the summer, yes. Demon-country, after all.”

Smith nodded. “Do you get attacked much?”

“Attacked? No, no, not in here, this is a fine safe outpost. The odd demon over the wall now and again, but I think they’re only after our beer.”

Smith thought that very unlikely indeed.

“One just doesn’t want to venture outside the walls, into all that—green,” said the Housekeeper, and shuddered. “Well! Tell me of your travels, Caravan Master. Tell me the news of Troon.”

Smith obliged, for the next quarter of an hour, and while he talked he surveyed the high hall. Other guests of the Red House, a mixed lot of Children of the Sun, Yendri and unclassifiable half-breeds, sat here and there eating, or drinking, or settling down for the night.

Across the fire pit, the keymen were lined up on a long settle, basking in the warmth in happy mutual silence. In the dining area, Mrs. Smith and Burnbright were sitting at a table, though they were not eating: Mrs. Smith had pushed away her laden trencher and sat smoking furiously, glaring at it. Burnbright was sawing away at a piece of meat with great difficulty. So formidable did it seem to be that it slipped out of the trencher now and then and had to be stabbed and dragged back by main force.

In the quiet area at the back of the hall, the Smiths had made up a couple of beds, and the children sat upright in one, chattering like starlings, while their mother rocked the screaming baby in the other and their father attempted to erect a makeshift curtain to screen them from the firelight. Other guests, having bedded down for the night, were rising now and then on their elbows to look threateningly at the little family.

Ronrishim Flowering Reed sat alone at a table, a carafe of something that looked like rainwater in front of him. Smith gazed at it longingly and rinsed his mouth with more of the beer. As he gave detailed descriptions of all the costumes he’d seen at Troon’s Festival of Masks to the Housekeeper, Smith observed a hooded stranger rise from a seat in the shadows and approach Flowering Reed.

The stranger leaned over him and said something in a low voice. Flowering Reed looked interested, made a reply. The stranger sat down across from him and, taking out a long rolled envelope of supple leather, spread it open on the table to display some kind of small wares packed inside.

“But the ladies,” said the Housekeeper. “Tell me about the ladies in Troon. I dream about sophisticated feminine graces, you know, day in, day out, as the caravans come and go. Ladies and their brocades. Their perfumes. Their tiny little jeweled sandals. Their refined accents!”

“Don’t have the bloody Mixed Grill plate, whatever you do,” muttered Mrs. Smith out of the corner of her mouth, dropping heavily into a chair beside Smith. “It’s unspeakably horrid.” She stuffed more amberleaf into her smoking tube and, leaning forward, lit it from the fire pit.

“I always thought inland men had lots of Yendri mistresses,” said Smith to the Housekeeper. “Or half-demonesses or something. Wild forest girls who won’t keep their clothes on, with breasts like…” Words failed him, as an image of Balnshik’s bosom rose before his eyes.

“Don’t tell me that thing was a kidney,” Mrs. Smith growled, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Grilled handball is more like it. And those creamed woodpeas! Inedible.”

The Housekeeper was shaking his head sadly. “Oh, Caravan Master, I can see you’re a stranger to the Greenlands. The Yendri women keep to themselves. As for any wild forest girls, well, first you’ve got to persuade them to bathe on a regular basis, and then you’d better keep a weapon under your pillow. And when you’ve had the bad luck to take up with one who’s got some shapeshifting blood! No, no; one soon learns that a female and a lady are not necessarily one and the same. How I crave the sight of a real lady! The delicate ankles. The gauzy underthings. The cosmetics—” He had to pause to wipe saliva from the corner of his mouth.

“Ladies,” said Smith to the Housekeeper. “Well—We’re carrying cargo for Lady Seven Butterflies.”

“Seven Butterflies!” The Housekeeper was ecstatic. “What a charming name. Is she delicate and fair, as it suggests?”

“I guess so,” said Smith, remembering the mask with its black tongue. “I couldn’t see her very well for her costume. But it was a pretty costume.” He was distracted as Balnshik entered the high hall, evidently fresh from the bath. Her damp shirt clung to her breasts, which stood up proudly, as she carried on her head an elaborate construction of wood and canvas, with both hands up to steady it.

Behind her Lord Ermenwyr strutted, with his wet hair curling over the lace collar of his long nightshirt. He wore embroidered slippers and a matching nightcap, and carried a bedroll. His long smoking tube was still clenched between his teeth.

Balnshik selected a suitably remote section of the hall and set down her burden. In a moment she had it all unfolded and standing: a camp cot of ingenious design, complete with its own attached insect tent of gauzy netting, surmounted by a gilded cherub blowing a tiny trumpet. At least, it looked like a cherub. Was that a tiny tail it sported? Lord Ermenwyr passed her the bedroll and as Balnshik leaned between the curtains to arrange it on the cot, he wandered over to the fire.

“Good evening, all,” he said, puffing out a great rift of purple weedsmoke that mingled a moment with Mrs. Smith’s white amberleaf fumes, turning a sickly lavender before vanishing up the draft of the fire hood. “Splendid baths, Housekeeper. Not quite deep enough to have satisfying sex in, but all the hot water one could ask for.”

“And this young man would be?” inquired the Housekeeper, mildly affronted.

“This is Lord Ermenwyr of the House Kingfisher,” Smith explained, and the Housekeeper leaped to his feet.

“My lord! Honor, honor, all possible honor to your house! Delighted to receive you at Red House. Please, here’s a cushion, sit by the fire. A drink for the lord,” he shouted to the bar.

“Er—he’s very young,” said Smith. “And an invalid besides. I don’t think beer would be a good idea.”

“Oh, if he’s an invalid, he must try our acorn beer,” said the Housekeeper earnestly, settling Lord Ermenwyr in his own chair and arranging pillows around him. “It’s got plenty of health-giving qualities. Very tonic. And, begging your pardon, Caravan Master, but any fellow with a beard is surely old enough for strong waters.”

“Of course I am,” said Ermenwyr complacently. “Pray, Caravan Master, don’t trouble yourself. Is this the famous acorn beer?” He accepted a cup from the slavey who had hastened up to present it to him. “Thank you so much. To your good health, Housekeeper,” he said, and drank.

Smith cringed inwardly, watching as Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes popped wide. He swallowed, bared his teeth, turned the grimace into a fearsome smile and said, “How original. I wonder—could I purchase a barrel of this stuff? It’d make a perfect gift for my older brothers.”

Tears of joy formed in the Housekeeper’s eyes. “Oh! The honor you do us! My lord, it’s in short supply, but for you—”

“Name your price,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“Please, accept it as a gift! And grant only that I may claim the honor of your patronage,” gushed the Housekeeper. Lord Ermenwyr frowned at that, and some of the glittering nastiness went out of his eyes.

“You have my patronage,” he said seriously. “There. See that a barrel is packed with my trunks before we leave.”

The Housekeeper twittered so that Smith was afraid he was going to flap his arms and fly into the rafters. Mrs. Smith watched the scene in disbelief until Burnbright came wandering up forlornly.

“I can’t find my bedroll,” she said. “I think one of those strangers took it. Come help me look.”

“They won’t rape you, for heaven’s sake,” said Mrs. Smith. “Not with all these people here anyway.”

“But they look like bandits,” whined Burnbright, twisting her hands together. “Please?”

Grumbling and puffing smoke, Mrs. Smith hauled herself out of her chair and stamped off with Burnbright. At that moment the Yendri doctor entered, carrying his basket, making for the dining area where a guest was doubled up with indigestion. Smith nodded at the doctor, who did not notice, because his eyes were tracking across the room as he walked. He spotted Flowering Reed. Smith thought he looked disgusted, and wondered briefly if the Yendri disliked one another as much as they seemed to dislike all other races.

The doctor’s gaze slid off Flowering Reed and he turned to go on, but paused again as he saw Lord Ermenwyr, who was laughing at something the Housekeeper had just said and tilting back his head to blow a smoke ring. The doctor halted, stared a long moment before going on to his patient.

Smith’s attention was drawn away as a slavey came bustling up with a tray.

“Your supper at last, Caravan Master,” said the Housekeeper. “I’m proud to present our local specialty: Huntsman’s Mixed Grill with creamed woodpeas!”

“Oh. Thank you,” said Smith. He sat straight, putting his drink aside gladly, and accepted a trencher and a rolled napkin full of utensils from the slavey. As he looked around for a place to set one of them down, he saw out of the corner of his eye the hooded man staring at him. He turned to meet his gaze. The man jumped to his feet, starting toward him.

“You! You’re the Caravan Master. Those are your people, right? Can’t you tell them to shut their damned baby up?”

“Well—I can try, but—” said Smith, awkwardly juggling utensils and thinking that the stranger was yelling louder than the baby.

“Wait a minute. I know you from somewhere,” announced the stranger, raising his voice even more as he approached. “You’re that thief they were looking for in Karkateen this summer!”

“What?” Smith gaped at the stranger, who had come up on him so rapidly they were now face-to-face. “No. You’re mistaken. I’ve never been in Karkateen—”

“Are you calling me a liar?” shouted the stranger. His arm flashed out, and Smith’s trencher went flying as he tried to fend him off, but there was no weapon in the stranger’s hand. Instead there was a small bag of purple-dyed leather palmed there, and the stranger made a snatching motion at Smith’s belt and held up the bag as though he’d just pulled it loose. “This is mine! Damn you, here’s my mark on it!”

But he played the game a second too long, holding up the bag in righteous indignation for all to behold, because Smith saw him going for his knife with his other hand. That gave Smith time to drive his fork into the stranger’s leg and roll forward out of his chair, under the stranger’s guard. He came up behind him as the stranger was turning, and hip-checked him so he fell forward across Smith’s empty chair with a crash.

“I’m not a thief, I’m not from Karkateen, and I didn’t take that pouch from you because you had it in your hand the whole time,” Smith babbled, drawing both his pistolbows and stepping back. “What the hell’s going on?”

But even as the stranger turned, yanking the fork from his leg with a murderous glare, Smith knew what was going on. Burnbright, over in the sleeping area, screamed as four shadowy figures leaped to their feet and came forward. Surprisingly for men who had retired to their blankets, each was fully clothed and armed with a cocked pistolbow.

Smith gulped and retreated a pace farther, as the foremost stranger drew his knife and hurled it at him. Smith dodged the blade and fired both bolts straight into the stranger’s chest, and couldn’t imagine why the man looked as surprised as he did when he fell.

Then there were bolts whistling through the air toward him. Smith threw himself flat behind a table and chairs, heard the bolts plunking home into wood and into plaster, and heard more screams and inarticulate shouting, the loudest of which was the Housekeeper calling for his watchmen.

Reloading, Smith peered through table and chair legs and saw that Lord Ermenwyr had sensibly thrown a table down and got behind it on his hands and knees. Balnshik was in the act of flying to him, bounding over the scattered furniture. Smith leaned up to see where his assailants were and beheld to his astonishment that one was down, tackled from behind by Mrs. Smith and Burnbright, who were shrieking like mismatched furies and clubbing him on the head with trenchers. The keymen had as one risen to their feet, grabbed a wide settle, and made a shield of it as they blocked two of the other attackers.

The fourth man came on, however, reloading as he ran, evading the keymen and actually vaulting across the fire pit to get to Smith. Smith jumped up, kicking a stool toward the man to foul his legs as he landed, and the stranger managed to avoid the stool but stumbled on his fallen companion. Smith fired at him, one bolt skittering off into the debris and one smacking home into the man’s side.

His assailant cursed, but lurched to his feet anyway and drew a short sword. He stood swaying, waving it at Smith, though his face was ashen. Smith grabbed up the stool and swung it at the man, knocking the sword out of his fingers. Another blow with the stool, and the man collapsed backward, bleeding from his mouth.

Smith backed away, hearing a commotion behind him that was perhaps the arrival of the Red House watchmen. He looked up and was amazed to see that the two remaining strangers had turned from the keymen and were engaging Balnshik, attempting to pinion her. They weren’t succeeding very well; in fact, Smith heard the distinctive sound of snapping bone and a gibbering scream from one of the men; but they had successfully drawn her attention.

Behind her, Flowering Reed was moving quietly along the wall. His face looked odd. Was that something in his mouth? And what a strange look in his eyes, too, fixed as they were on Lord Ermenwyr, who was making himself as small a target behind his table as he could, and whose lips were moving in—prayer? But he could not see Flowering Reed advancing on him.

Smith knew the truth, suddenly, without understanding. Bawling “My lord!” he ran around the table to block Flowering Reed’s advance, pulling his machete.

Something white was flowing toward him from his left with tremendous speed. The Yendri doctor? Something was coming thunderously up behind him. Flowering Reed looked at Smith with purest hatred in his eyes, and grimaced around the tube between his clenched teeth.

Then Smith was down, he was hit and he seemed to have struck his head on something, because it hurt a lot, and there was some other injury but minor, a little stinging in his arm. Smith turned his head and saw three tiny feathered darts sticking out of his wrist. Knowing that he must get the thorns out, he raised his machete to scrape them away; but the room blurred in bloody darkness before he could tell if he’d succeeded. Oh, he thought, I’m dead.

He was listening to Lord Ermenwyr talk, smoothly, persuasively, and what a silky manner the lordling could summon when he wanted to!

“…assassins, without a doubt hired by my father’s enemies. Professionals, artfully disguised. Why, you hadn’t any idea they weren’t simple traders, had you?”

The Housekeeper was moaning apologies.

Smith opened his eyes and looked up at the Yendri doctor, who was stitching up Smith’s scalp. At least, that was what he looked as though he were doing. Smith could neither feel the jab of the needle nor any other sensation. He tried to speak and discovered that he was limited to fluttering his eyelids. The Yendri noticed his panic.

“You can’t move because the darts in your arm were poisoned. We got them out, and I gave you an antidote. The paralysis will go away, in time. You’re a fortunate man,” he said, and resumed his task.

“A very fortunate man,” agreed Balnshik, looming at the doctor’s elbow. “Do hurry and recover, Caravan Master. I’m going to thank you personally for your act of heroism.” She caressed him in a way that suggested something very nice indeed, and Smith’s heartbeat quickened.

“What, is he conscious?” Lord Ermenwyr leaned over him from the other side. “Bravo, Caravan Master! Yes, you certainly don’t want to die before you’ve been personally thanked. Nursie’s quite talented. Have you ever heard of the Dance of Two Feathers and One Piece of String?”

Balnshik smiled gently and, placing her open palm on the lordling’s face, shoved him backward. The doctor looked horrified. She leaned low into Smith’s line of sight, and he almost felt the weight of her breasts.

“You have the gratitude of his lord father,” she crooned, and kissed Smith. Of all times to be paralyzed, he thought. That was all he knew for a while.

“The boys have sworn up and down you’ve been our caravan master for years and that you’ve never even been near Karkateen, so all that rubbish about a charge of theft has been dropped,” Mrs. Smith told him, exhaling smoke.

“What about Flowering Reed?” Smith asked, speaking with difficulty.

“Not a trace of him,” she replied in disgust. “Slithered out into the night like a snake and must have gone over the wall like a shadow. Bloody backstabbing greenie. No way to tell if it was him set those assassins on you, as they’re all dead, but it seems likely. You’ve made some enemies in your day, haven’t you, dear?”

“They were all members of the Throatcutters, did you know?” Burnbright said. “I saw their tattoos. They cost an awful lot to hire. That’s why I can’t think they were after you, see; they must have been after whatever Parradan Smith had in his case!”

“Were the carts broken into?”

Mrs. Smith shook her head. “The boys had a good look. Everything’s secure. Nobody else hurt but you, and at least you were spared the Mixed Grill and creamed woodpeas.”

“So, you see? Everything turned out all right,” Burnbright concluded cheerfully. “The Yendri says you’ll be on your feet again in another day or two, and we can push on. And think how much more room there’ll be in the carts, now we’re down two passengers!”

However, a solitary traveler came forward on the day Smith was well enough to leave and bought a passage to Salesh-by-the-Sea. His name was given as Mr. Amook, his occupation was given as Mercenary, his race was indeterminate, and he gave no address. He was very large and said very little. He took a seat in the cart just forward of Lord Ermenwyr’s baggage cart and slouched there with his arms folded, and the screaming of the Smiths’ baby didn’t seem to bother him in the least.

Smith staggered out to the cart leaning on the Yendri doctor, who helped him up to a sort of couch the keymen had made out of the flour bags from Old Troon Mills.

“You must continue to take the infusion each night until the new moon,” the doctor told him. “Your cook has the mixture; she promised me she’d make it up for you. When you reach Salesh, go to the hot baths in Anchor Street and ask for Levendyloy Alder. Tell him you need a detoxification, the full treatment. You should feel much better afterward.”

“What’ll it cost me?” Smith asked crossly, trying to find a comfortable position. He had just settled accounts with the Housekeeper, and was very glad his cousin had a business expense letter of mark.

“You can pay for it with this,” the doctor replied, pressing something into his hand. Smith squinted down at it. It was a pendant of some kind, a clay disk on a woven cord. He slipped it about his neck.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Be careful, Smith,” said the doctor.

“I will be,” Smith assured him. “Flowering Reed’s still out there somewhere. You know, for all your people’s talk about how much nicer you are than us, I always thought you were probably right. It’s a real disappointment to find out you’ve got hypocrites just the same as we do. Or does your religion permit murder?”

The doctor made a wry face. “Hm. Not my religion, Caravan Master.”

“How’s a man like Flowering Reed become a killer, then?”

After a long silence the doctor answered sadly, “Who knows what is in his heart? But love can leave more death in its track than the most ardent hatred.”

Smith nodded. He had learned that lesson elsewhere, long since.

“Go in peace, Caravan Master,” said the doctor, and touched Smith’s forehead briefly in blessing.

The carts jolted forward as the keymen hauled them into the ruts. The watchmen worked the gate capstans. There was a last-minute boarding scramble. Burnbright trumpeted their departure from the Red House. They rolled away into the forest of bright leaves and left that place of smoke and death behind them.

It was rough going, uphill and down, and the keymen pedaled until their bulging calves seemed ready to burst outright. The red stone road was uneven here and there too, or buckled and cracked from the roots of trees, imperfectly patched with cement. Sometimes it crossed the faces of high hills, hairpinning and skirting breathtaking drops into gorges far below; sometimes it ran through the bottoms of valleys, following watercourses, and cool air flowed with them as they shuttled along through willows going bronze in the frosts.

The black mountain loomed still above the red leaves. Smith, watching it from his elevated position mile after mile, had the eerie feeling that it was watching him in return.

Sometimes he thought he could make out structures at its peak, when no slate clouds obscured it: black walls and battlements, sharp obsidian spires, megalithic giants scowling blind in the sunlight. Sometimes he could see nothing but tumbled stone, a high field of basalt and fallen stars above the tree line.

But no one descended howling from that vast height, and when they made camp at night a profound stillness ringed them in. Even the Smiths’ baby seemed subdued. Smith took to sleeping by day as much as he could, to watch the shadows beyond the trees after dark. Only once, one night, was there a distant scream that cut off abruptly. It might have been an animal. There was no sign of anything untoward having happened when they broke camp next morning.

Mr. Amook neither said nor did anything suspicious, but rode in stolid silence. He had no tattoos that Burnbright could spot, no matter how much she lingered near the watering huts. She was half-mad with curiosity about him.

The day came when the road began to slope downward again, a little obscured by drifts of leaves, and there was undeniably more light and air getting through the ancient branches. Not only that, the black mountain began to diminish behind them. They could glimpse the smoke of distant cities below on the plain, and far off a level horizon so perfect, it could be none but the sea itself.

Smith was roused from his jolting nap by Burnbright signaling with her trumpet. He leaned up on his elbow to peer along the road, and sought in his memory for the signal codes. As she trumpeted again he identified the message: another caravan sighted. In the next few seconds he sighted it too, racing along the floor of the valley into which they were just descending.

It was immense, fully sixty carts long, coming on with speed and power. The runner pacing before it was a sleek muscular goddess, the steel hats of the keymen (and there were dozens of keymen) were polished, the carts were freshly painted with a flying dragon logo and loaded with cargo of every kind. Even the passengers looked prosperous, gazing out from blank dust-goggled eyes with cool indifference.

They came charging smoothly up the hill toward Smith’s caravan seemingly without the least effort! And there was their caravan master, sitting tall in the foremost cart, arms folded on the front of his long duster. No pistolbows for him; a long-range bow was displayed in its own rack on the side of his high seat, and a quiver just visible over his shoulder showed the red feathers of professional-quality hunting arrows. Smith gaped, and the caravan master acknowledged him with a majestic bow of the head as they came up on him and sped by.

The Smith children shrieked with excitement and waved. Even Mr. Amook turned his head to watch. Nobody could take their eyes off the grand spectacle, it seemed; and so everybody saw the last cart hurtling toward them with its outsize load, construction beams bound athwart the cart, protruding outward over its side just far enough to catch the protruding cargo net full of violet eggs on their last cart.

“Hey—” said Smith, watching in horror over his shoulder, and then it happened.

With a sound like a bowstring snapping the net was yanked away, the cart was jerked completely out of its ruts and came down at an angle so it toppled over, dragged along on its side after the rest of the caravan flaring sparks, and the eggs it had held went spilling, bouncing, tumbling out and down the embankment.

“STOP!” howled Smith, but the keymen had already seen and were manfully braking. The other caravan, meanwhile, had cleared the top of the hill and gone racing on all unmindful. The cargo net fluttered after it like a handkerchief waving good-bye.

As soon as the carts had ground to a halt, Smith slid down from his couch and staggered, groaning as he saw the extent of the damage. Lady Seven Butterflies’s holistic containers were bobbing end over end down the hill into the bushes. The cart lay on its side, still disgorging eggs at a slow trickle. Under its wheels one egg had smashed, and lay flattened on the road. Smith hobbled over and picked it up. Fragments of bright glass sifted out, bits of iridescent wing fragile as a dry leaf, colored like a rainbow.

Smith said something unprintable. He slumped against the cart and stared at the wreckage.

Crucible and the other keymen leaped from their seats and came running back to inspect the cart, hauling it upright.

“Watch out for the eggs, you lot!” shouted Mrs. Smith, making her way along the line. “Oh, no, did they break? Bloody hell.”

“That’s it,” muttered Smith. “We broke goods in transit. My cousin will lose Seven Butterflies Studios as a client. Two passengers gone and a client lost! So much for this job.”

“Now, now, young Smith, this sort of thing happens all the time,” Mrs. Smith told him, but there was a certain awe in her face as she looked around at the devastation. She took out a small flask, uncapped it, helped herself to a good shot of its contents, and passed it to Smith. “Drink up, dear. Despicable Flying Dragon Lines! I saw the way they had those beams loaded. Rampant heedlessness.”

“Don’t hang yourself yet, Caravan Master,” Lord Ermenwyr told him, approaching in a cloud of purple weedsmoke.

“You’ll find yourself another job in no time.”

“Thanks,” said Smith numbly, taking a drink from the flask. The liquor burned his throat pleasantly, with a faint perfume of honey and herbs.

“Let’s just get this mess collected, shall we?” said Lord Ermenwyr, peeling off his tailcoat. He draped it over the next-to-last cart and started down the embankment, then turned to look balefully up at the passenger carts. “You! Horrible little children. Get off your infant bottoms and be of some use. We’ve got to find all of these eggs for the poor caravan master!”

With yells of glee, the three older Smith children jumped from the cart and ran obediently down the embankment to him. Burnbright came running back to help them. They set about hunting through the bushes for the remaining violet eggs, most of which had stopped rolling around by then.

“The wheel assembly’s undamaged, sir,” Crucible reported. “Both axles sound, but the hitch is wrecked.” He held up a hook-and-rod twisted like a stick of Salesh Sweetvine. “We’ve got spares, of course. We’ll just replace it, sir, shall we?”

“Go ahead,” said Smith. He had another gulp from Mrs. Smith’s flask, watching the children following Lord Ermenwyr about like puppies. He had stripped off his shirt, and they were putting all the eggs they found in it. “This is good stuff. What is it?”

“It’s a cordial from the Abbey at Kemeldion,” Mrs. Smith informed him. “The Father Abbot’s own private receipt. We invented it together, he and I, when we were a good deal younger and less spiritually inclined than we are now.” She groped in her pocket for her smoking tube and lit it. “Lovely man. Always sends me a barrel at the holidays. Nothing like it for a restorative when one travels, I find.”

“Think it’ll stick glass butterflies back together?” Smith wondered. “Maybe if we pray a lot?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to pray. Don’t worry, Caravan Master.” Mrs. Smith kissed his cheek. She smelled of amberleaf, and food, and good drink. It was a comforting kind of smell. “Whatever happens, I’ll fix you a dish of fried eel when we get to Salesh. You’ve certainly earned it.”

“My cousin won’t think so,” said Smith morosely, and had another drink as Lord Ermenwyr clambered up the bank toward them, accompanied by the Smith children with their arms full of violet eggs. He carried a great number of eggs in his shirt. His bare skin was pale and fine as a girl’s, though he was otherwise quite sinewy and masculine.

“You know, Caravan Master, I don’t believe this is quite as bad as we thought at first,” he said. “None of these seem to be broken at all.”

“So maybe only that one smashed?” Smith felt his mood lifting, or perhaps it was the cordial.

“I saw a man get his foot crushed in a wheel rut in Mount Flame City once, and there was just nothing left of it even to be amputated,” said Burnbright encouragingly. “No wonder that one egg broke! I’ll bet the rest are fine, though.”

“Perhaps it’s Lady Seven Butterflies’s ballocky holistic packing method saving the day yet again,” said Mrs. Smith.

Lord Ermenwyr threw his head back and laughed, in the fox-yipping way he had. Smith felt Mrs. Smith stiffen beside him and catch her breath. He looked at her, but she had turned her head to stare intently at the young man as he emptied his shirtful of eggs into the righted cart. When he had added Burnbright’s and the Smith children’s contributions, they started back down the embankment again for more, and Smith leaned over and murmured, “What’s the matter?”

“Remarkable thing,” Mrs. Smith said, more to herself than to him. She followed Lord Ermenwyr with her eyes as he waded through the bushes, barking orders to the children. “May not be important. I’ll tell you later.”

To Smith’s immense relief, it turned out that only the egg that had been ground beneath the wheels had broken. The remaining violet eggs, all 143 of them gathered from the embankment, proved to be whole without so much as a crack. The cart was repaired, a spare cargo net tied down over the surviving eggs, and they were on their way again.

That night at the camp, after the passengers had retired and the fire was beginning to think about settling down to coals, Smith edged over to Mrs. Smith. She sat regarding the autumn stars in silence, sipping a drink. She had been uncharacteristically silent all that evening.

“What did you see today?” Smith inquired in a low voice.

She glanced aside at him. “It had been nagging at me the whole journey, to be perfectly truthful,” she told him. “Something about that big strapping wench. Something about that dreadful young man. Rather amazing sense of déjà vu, though I could not, simply could not place what was so familiar. This afternoon it all came back to me.”

“What came back to you?”

Before she replied she fished out her smoking tube and packed it expertly, one-handed, and lit it. Exhaling smoke, she said, “It must have been fifteen years ago. I was working for the Golden Chain Line then; they ran the Triangle Route, from Salesh to Port Blackrock to Konen Feyy-in-the-Trees and back to Salesh. So just skirting the Greenlands, you see? Close enough to have that mountain glowering down at us half the trip.

“We took on new passengers in Konen Feyy. A family. Just like the Smiths over there, in a way. Father and mother and a handful of little children, one of them a babe in arms. Bound for Salesh-by-the-Sea, too. But they were quite wealthy, these people. A whole retinue of nurses and servants and bodyguards they had with them. Dozens of trunks! And a private pavilion that was quite outrageously grand.

“They called themselves Silverpoint. He was a big bearded blackavised man, didn’t speak much, but you should have seen his servants leap to his least word. And she was—well, she was simply the most beautiful woman anyone in the rest of the caravan had ever seen. She wore a veil, but even so, half the men in the party fell in love with her. Even with a little screaming child on her shoulder the whole way.”

“Their baby cried too?”

“Incessantly,” Mrs. Smith said, with a grim look across the fire. “Half the night, every night. Until he stopped breathing altogether.”

“He died?”

“Nearly. Four or five times, in the course of the journey. I don’t know what was the matter with the poor tiny wretch. Perhaps he simply wasn’t strong. Sickly, whey-faced little thing with limp curls, he was. Big wide eyes that looked at you as though he knew he wasn’t long for this world and was keenly aware of the injustice of it all.

“It was the fifth night out it happened. The child had some sort of fit, turned quite blue, and died. Not a breath in him. Their servants howled like mad things, drew their own knives and started hacking at themselves! The other children woke and started to cry, and their mother reached out a hand to them, but in a distracted sort of way because she was praying, quite calmly you’d think from the look on her face.

“I was awake—half the Camp was, with that tumult, but I’d got up and was coming to see if there was anything to be done. And I tell you I saw the father come running up from wherever he’d been, grab a knife from a servant, shoulder his way into the lady’s pavilion, and cut the throat of his own child.

“Thought I’d pass out where I was standing. But before I could scream, the baby trembled, kicked its legs and drew in a breath, hideous whistling sound. The mother bent over him and I couldn’t see more, but I heard him begin crying in a feeble kind of way. The servants all threw themselves flat on their faces in the dust and began moaning. I backed away, but not before I saw the father come out with that knife in his hand. I shall never forget the look in his black eyes. He didn’t say two words, but one of the servants jumped up at once and ran to fetch a basin of water and a box from their trunks.

“She was a tall girl, the servant. Buxom. Hair black as a raven’s wing. Splendid-looking creature,” said Mrs. Smith, laying emphasis on the word creature. “Well. Nothing more to see, as the City Guard are so fond of saying. I crept off to my bed and had nightmares. Next morning the child’s as peevish as ever, though a good deal more quiet, picking at the bandage about his bitsy windpipe. Not a word about what had happened from his parents, though the lady did apologize for all the noise.

“We took them to their hotel in Salesh, as per contract. Last I saw of the child he was peering over the servant’s shoulder with those big eyes, looking as though he was thinking about throwing another tantrum and winding his little fist in her black hair.

“She hasn’t aged a day. A few other details gave her away, as well. I’d bet a month’s salary she was hurt fighting off that cat-sending. She’s a demoness; and I know of only one man in the world with the power to bind demons reliably.

“The baby’s grown, and he goes by the name Kingfisher now; but he’s still got the scar on his throat,” Mrs. Smith added. “I saw it this afternoon, when he laughed.”

“I ought to have kept my shirt on,” said a smooth voice from out of the shadows.

Smith jumped. Mrs. Smith set her drink down, and with great care and deliberation drew a pistolbow from inside her coat. It was larger than either of Smith’s and, to judge from the size of the gears and the bolt, much more powerful.

“Oh, now, surely there’s no need for unpleasantness,” said Lord Ermenwyr, stepping into the circle of firelight. “Aren’t we all friends here? Aren’t we fellow travelers? Have I done anything evil at all?”

“You’re the son of the Master of the Mountain,” said Mrs. Smith, training the weapon on him. In the dim light of the fire his skin had an unearthly green pallor, for he had dropped the glamour that disguised him. Eyes wide, he held out his open hands.

“Can I help that? Let’s be reasonable about this. You’ve such a remarkable memory, dear Mrs. Smith; can you recall Daddy and Mummy being anything but perfectly law-abiding passengers? I’m sure we even tipped handsomely when we left the caravan.”

There was a black mist flowing along the ground, out of the darkness, and it began to swirl behind him in a familiar outline.

“To be sure you did, on that occasion,” agreed Mrs. Smith. “But your family has quite a reputation amongst the caravans, and not for generous tips.”

“Oh, Daddy hasn’t taken a caravan in years,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Really. Mummy made him give it up. I can’t vouch for my brothers not engaging in some light raids now and then, one of those stupid masculine rite of passage things I suppose, but they’re brutes, and what can one expect?”

Behind him, Balnshik materialized out of the night, regarding Mrs. Smith and Smith with eyes like coals. She too had dropped the glamour. Her skin was like a thundercloud, livid with phantom colors, glorious but hard to look at.

“Put your weapon down,” she said.

Mrs. Smith looked at her thoughtfully.

“Certainly, when his lordship gives me his word we’ll come to no harm,” she replied.

“You have my word, as my father’s son, that neither I nor mine will injure you nor compass your death in any way,” said Lord Ermenwyr at once. Mrs. Smith laid the pistolbow aside.

“That’s the formula,” she told Smith. “We should be safe enough. I’m pleased to see you did contrive to grow up after all, my lord.”

“Thank you,” he replied. “It’s been touch-and-go, as you can see, but I’ve managed.” Throwing out his coattails, he sat down cross-legged by the fire and took out his smoking tube. Balnshik remained on her feet, hovering over him watchfully. He continued:

“Just you try living the life of a normal young man when people are always lurking about trying to kill you. It’s not fair,” he said plaintively.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you a demon?” inquired Smith.

“Only one-quarter,” the lordling explained, angling his smoking tube like a pointer. “Half at most. Daddy was a foundling, you see, so we’re not sure. But what does it matter? When all’s said and done, I’m not that different from the rest of you. Do you know why we were all going to Salesh on that memorable occasion, Mrs. Smith? Daddy was trying to give us a holiday by the sea. Buckets, spades, sand castles, all that sort of thing.”

“Perfectly innocent,” said Mrs. Smith with measured irony.

“Well, it was! And Mummy felt the sea air would do me good. We were just like any other family, except for a few things like Daddy’s collection of heads and the fact that half the world wants us all dead.”

“That was why Flowering Reed was after you,” Smith realized. “He knew who you were.”

Lord Ermenwyr sighed. “It’s not easy being an Abomination. Saints aren’t supposed to get married and have children, you see. It’s sacrilegious. Anyone who can kill a walking blasphemy like me gains great spiritual merit, I understand. Of course, Flowering Reed disdained to do the job himself; wouldn’t get his pure hands dirty. But his hired killers kept failing, thanks to you and the late Parradan Smith being so good at defending us all,” he added, looking at Smith with affection.

“Was that why Flowering Reed shot him in the back?”

“Exactly. Nasty little darts. Flowering Reed’s people rationalize any guilt away by saying that it’s the poison on the thorn doing the killing, not them. Charming, isn’t it?”

“But that greenie doctor was quite respectful to you,” objected Mrs. Smith. “Even reverent.”

“Well, madam, there are greenies and greenies. Flowering Reed belongs to a particularly vicious fundamentalist sect sworn to avenge my mother’s, er, sullying, by whatever means necessary.” Lord Ermenwyr lit his smoking tube with a small blue fireball and took a deep drag. “Mummy’s disciples, on the other hand, were willing to admit that she knew what she was doing when she married Daddy and brought all of us semidevine semidemonic brats into the world.” He blew smoke from his nostrils.

“I’m intrigued, young man,” said Mrs. Smith. “Are your parents happily married?”

“I suppose so,” he replied. “I won’t say they haven’t had their quarrels, but love conquers all. I believe that was Mummy’s point in bedding the old bastard.”

“You’re being disrespectful, Master,” crooned Balnshik, winding her hand into his hair. “You know that’s not allowed.”

“Ow! All right. Well, anyway—you can see, can’t you, that there’s no need to be alarmed by my presence in your caravan? All I want is to get to Salesh-by-the-Sea for a nice long stay at the spa, so I can recover what passes for my health,” Lord Ermenwyr assured them.

“Your father’s supposed to be the most powerful mage who ever lived,” said Smith. “Can’t he just magick you well?”

“My mother can heal the sick and raise the dead, but nothing she tries works on me either,” retorted Lord Ermenwyr. He yelped in protest as Balnshik got a grip on his collar and hauled him to his feet.

“My master has the blood of two planes fighting in his heart,” she told them. “It makes him unstable. Unreasonable. Rude. But there are advantages to being under his protection, dear Children of the Sun, and dreadful disadvantages to harming the least hair on his wicked little head. You understand, don’t you?”

“Don’t mind the death threats,” Lord Ermenwyr told them. “It’s her job to protect me. I’m sure you’d never do anything so stupid as to betray me to my enemies.”

“No,” said Smith hastily.

“I won’t, either. But I shall refrain from doing so because I find the idea of your parents’ love match rather sweet (somebody ought to have a happy marriage now and then) and not"—Mrs. Smith looked up severely at Balnshik—"because of your threats, my girl.”

Balnshik smiled, showing all her gleaming teeth.

“Lady, I am seven thousand years old,” she said.

“Well, I feel seven thousand years old,” Mrs. Smith replied. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we, and remain friends all around?”

“You are as wise as you are skilled in the arts of cuisine,” Lord Ermenwyr assured her. “You won’t regret it. And now, will you excuse me? The night damps are settling in. Terrible for the lungs, you know.”

“Bid them good night, Master,” said Balnshik, dragging him off.

“Bye-bye!” he called, waving his smoking tube at them.

Smith sagged backward, shaking.

“What the hell do we do now?” he murmured.

“Oh, we’ll be quite safe,” Mrs. Smith said, picking up her drink. “As long as we keep our mouths shut. I know demons.”

And after all nothing had changed. Next morning both Lord Ermenwyr and Balnshik had resumed their ordinary appearance and made no reference whatever to the previous night’s conversation. Breakfast was served, camp was broken, the carts got back on the road again as usual. It was so mundane that Smith, resuming his couch on the flour bags, wondered if he hadn’t had a bizarre nightmare.

That day they came down out of the Greenlands at last, onto the plain. The caravan seemed to skim like a bird, speeding along the flat miles. They began to spot other cities lifting towers above secure walls, other roads crossing the distance and even intersecting their road, and now and then they passed caravans bound for regions unknown or dull merchants’ carts rattling along. The Smith children waved and shrieked happily at them all. Mile after mile fell away, and every mile brought nearer the gray hills of Salesh-by-the-Sea, the only interruption of the expanding steel horizon.

They spent one last night at a way station, though it was so palatial it scarcely seemed to fit the name. There was a shop there selling sweets and fruit, biscuits and wine; there were all of three stone watering huts (no waiting!); there was even a booth with a scribe who would, for a price, copy out a map of your immediate destination, guaranteed to be accurate for any city precinct. In the dark the wind shifted and brought them the strong rank salt smell of the tides. Smith felt as though he had come home.

Salesh, like most cities on the sea, had only a half circle of city wall, a high curve of white flints at its back that gleamed in the sun like a shell mound, when the dense fogs now and then parted to let any sun through. There the resemblance to anything so formless as a mound stopped, however, for the wall was neatly laid with mile-castles along its top, patrolled by watchmen whose armor was enameled in a pattern like fish scales. Within the wall the city was laid out in a fan of long streets, each terminating on the seafront.

The city gate was standing wide when they arrived, and Burnbright trumpeted their arrival with glee, pausing only to flash the license and manifest at the city guard. As soon as they were waved through she leaped into the lead cart next to Pinion and flung both her fists toward the sky.

“We made it,” she shouted, dancing. “We’re safe! I’m great, I’m the fastest runner in the world, and Mount Flame City rules!”

“Oh, sit down and watch your mouth,” said Pinion, but he was grinning too. He steered them down the long hill in splendor, riding the brakes, and the iron wheels shot sparks like a fireworks display celebrating their arrival. Expertly he took them around the sharp turn at Capstan Street, and they rocketed into the vast echoing hall of the Salesh-by-the-Sea caravan depot.

It was crowded and very loud, for another caravan had arrived just before them. Porters were lined up along the arcades, displaying their muscles as they awaited employment. The runners had taken an entire arcade for themselves and sat or leaned there, gossiping together, a blaze of scarlet uniform in the shadows. Clerks worked their way along the line of carts with manifest checklists, recording the arrival of goods and overseeing their unloading. Smith slid hastily from the flour bags and turned to collide with the Smiths and their baby.

“Well, here we are at last,” he said.

“At last,” Mr. Smith agreed. “And I must say I—Children! Come back here right now! I must say I’ve never beheld such personal bravery in a caravan master. Both my sons have told me they want to be just like you when they grow up, isn’t that right, boys?”

“No,” said the smaller of the boys. “He gets hurt all the time.”

“That man is stealing our trunks!” screamed the little girl.

“No, no, that’s our porter! Meefa, stop kicking the nice man! I—will you excuse us? Thank you so much,” said Mr. Smith, and hastened away. Just beyond him, Mr. Amook was shouldering his one bag. He slipped off into the crowd and disappeared.

“Safe haven at last, eh?” said Lord Ermenwyr, emerging from his palanquin and yawning. “Good old Salesh-by-the-Sea. What memories of innocent childhood! Burying one’s brothers in the sand. Watching all the nude bathers. How I used to love toddling up to pat their bottoms! You can get away with it when you’re three,” he added ruefully.

“Master, the porters are here,” announced Balnshik, swaying up at the head of a line of massive fellows who followed her with stunned expressions.

“Right. You! Four of you on the palanquin poles, all the same height, please, and if you can get me to the spa without making me motion sick you’ll get a bonus. Mind those trunks! Now, Caravan Master,” Lord Ermenwyr said, turning back to Smith. “Here’s for your efforts in the line of duty.” He took Smith’s hand and set a purse in it, quite a heavy purse for its size. Then he leaned close and spoke in an undertone. “For your efforts beyond the call of duty, will you come be my guest at the spa tonight? Dinner, drinks, and general fun. Eh? Nursie would still like to thank you personally, you know.” He elbowed Smith meaningfully.

“Honor on your house, my lord,” said Smith. Lord Ermenwyr hooted in derision.

“Talk about impossibilities! I should tell you about the time—”

“Master, we don’t want to keep the gentlemen waiting,” said Balnshik. She caught him by his collar and the seat of his trousers and forcibly assisted him up into the palanquin, which had been hoisted onto the shoulders of four stolid porters. Having shoved him inside and closed the curtain on him, she turned to Smith with a dazzling smile. “Do come tonight, please.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Smith stammered.

“Until this evening, then,” she said, and, turning to the porters, she ordered them follow her in a voice that lashed like a whip, and strode from the caravan depot, breasts jutting arrogantly. They followed her, needless to say.

Smith stared after her until his attention was pulled away by a clerk approaching him.

“Caravan Master"—the clerk peered over his spectacles at the manifest—"Smith? What’s this I hear about damaged goods?”

“It’s only one unit of one consignment,” Smith explained. “The flour and the mineral pigments are fine.”

“Yes, they’re already claimed. But the shipment to Lady Katmile?”

“There was an accident,” said Smith, sweating slightly as he turned and rummaged in his pack for the broken egg. “Minor collision. Not our fault. Just this one, see? But all the others are intact!” He waved at the 143 violet eggs reposing under their cargo net.

“Eggs?” The clerk frowned. “Most irregular. Who on earth authorized packing containers like that?”

“The sender, if you must know,” said Mrs. Smith, bustling up to Smith’s rescue. “All her own design. We hadn’t a thing to do with it. Bloody nuisance the whole trip. She’s lucky it’s only the one!”

“We were attacked a lot, sir,” Smith told the clerk. The clerk’s eyes widened behind his spectacles, which magnified the expression freakishly.

“You’d better fill out an Assault, Damage and Loss form,” he said.

“He’s going to get off his feet and have a drink first,” stated Mrs. Smith, linking her arm through Smith’s. Behind her, the keymen and Burnbright assembled themselves to glare at the clerk. “Aren’t you, Caravan Master? Anybody wants to see us, we’ll be in the Stripped Gear over there.” She pointed to a dark doorway set invitingly at the back of an arcade.

“That’s right,” said Crucible. “This is a wounded man, you know.”

“And if he dies, there’ll be all kinds of trouble, because he’s the owner’s cousin,” said Burnbright, pushing forward assertively. “So there.”

“Come along, boys,” said Mrs. Smith, and, towing Smith after her, she made for the Stripped Gear, with Burnbright and the keymen flanking them. “You’ll like this.

Charming little watering hole for the trade. Doesn’t try to foist one off with plonk, and, moreover, rents rooms quite inexpensively.”

“And we get our own bloody palanquin,” said Burnbright, which made no sense at all to Smith until they got through the dark doorway and he saw the rows of booths built to resemble big palanquins, complete with curtains and thickly padded seats. Apart from that bit of theatrics, the Stripped Gear was just what a bar should be: cozy, dark but not too dark to spot an attacker, crowded but not too loud for conversation. Smith felt his spirits rising as the keymen vaulted into the booth one after another and pulled him in after them. Mrs. Smith and Burnbright followed.

“My treat,” he said.

“No, no; at least, not the first round,” admonished Mrs. Smith. “Pray, allow us. We’re really quite pleased with you, Caravan Master, aren’t we, boys?”

They keymen all chorused agreement.

“Coming on at the last minute like you did after poor old Smelterman took that bolt,” said Pinion.

“Considering it was your first time and all,” agreed one of the other Smiths.

“I had my doubts, but you held up,” said Crucible. “You’re no coward, I’ll say that for you.”

“And a good man in a fight, too,” said Bellows.

“I never saw anybody bleed the way you did and live,” offered Burnbright. At that moment the publican came up.

“Mrs. Smith! Charmed to see you again,” he said, bowing. She extended a regal hand, and he kissed it.

“Delighted to have returned, Mr. Socket. Six of your best Salesh Ambers for the gentlemen, a peach milk for the young lady, and I shall have a dry Storm Force Nine with a twist,” she said. “Later we’ll need to inquire regarding suitable accommodations for the night.”

He hurried away, and after a pleasantly short interval returned with their order. When he had departed, Burnbright held up her peach milk. “Here’s to our caravan master,” she yelled, hammering on the table with her little fist. “Death to our enemies!” They all clinked glasses and drank.

“I have dreamed of this moment,” said Mrs. Smith, lighting her smoking tube and filling the booth with amberleaf fumes at once. “I shall take in a show along the Glittering Mile.”

“I’m off to the Winking Tit,” said Crucible, and the other keymen nodded in emphatic unison.

“Are there any places like that for ladies?” Burnbright asked.

“Not at your age, you silly thing,” said Mrs. Smith. “What you’ll need to do is get yourself over to the local mother house to clock in your mileage. You should be very nearly certified by now. What will you do, Caravan Master?”

Smith had been thinking in bemusement about the Winking Tit, but roused himself, and said, “I’ve got something I have to deliver, so I guess I’ll do that first. Tonight I’m supposed to go see Lord Ermenwyr where he’s staying.”

“And Nurse Balnshik too?” Pinion dug him in the ribs.

“You’d better order up some oysters,” chortled Bellows.

“You know what you really ought to do first,” said Mrs. Smith, pointing at the disk Smith wore about his neck, “is go over to the baths in Anchor Street and redeem that thing the greenie doctor gave you. You’ll feel much better afterward, fit for the lists of love or whatever you get up to after dark.”

“That’s a good idea,” agreed Smith, thinking of hot water and clean towels. “I’ve still got Troon dust places I don’t want to think about.”

“It’s awfully hard to get it out of your ears,” said Burnbright seriously.

At this moment Smith glanced over and saw that the clerk had come into the bar with another person, and was staring about. He spotted Smith and the others and pointed, and the other person followed his gesture. Then she started toward Smith, and her attractive countenance was made less appealing by her expression of murderous rage.

“Uh—” said Smith.

“Caravan master! Can you sit and brazenly drink after such perfidy?” she hissed at him. Everyone in the booth drew back from her. She was clearly wealthy, with embroidered robes. Her hair was done up in an elaborate chignon held in place by jeweled pins. One expected to see her palanquin shopping or in a stage box at the theater, but certainly not leaning into a booth in the Stripped Gear, let alone with the veins in her neck standing out like that.

“Lady Katmile of Silver Anvil House?” guessed Smith. “Look, it was only one butterfly. Accidents happen and—”

“If it were only one!” she cried, and the clerk wrung his hands.

“Damage more extensive than reported,” he said. “Contents examined with certified witness present. Every egg opened contained broken merchandise. Estimate fully half shipment in unacceptable condition.”

“What d’you mean, damage?” shouted Mrs. Smith. “None of the damned things had so much as a crack in ’em, except the one we squashed!”

“Outer casings intact,” admitted the clerk. “But inside—”

“What did you do, play handball with them?” demanded Lady Katmile. Smith closed his eyes, remembering Balnshik kicking violet eggs from her path as she ran, remembering Lord Ermenwyr juggling with them, remembering them bouncing down the high embankment. He said something profane.

Lady Katmile reared back like a snake about to strike.

“You wantonly destroy irreplaceable works of art, and you have the insolence to use that kind of language too?” she said. “Well. This matter goes to the Transport Authorities, Caravan Master, do you understand me? I’ll have your certification. I’ll have the certifications of your underlings. I’ll have your owner’s house and lands and movable chattel. No fiend of the desert has thirst great enough to drink dry the sea of your debt!”

She turned and swept out, drawing her furred cape about her. The clerk lingered long enough to shake his finger at them menacingly. He muttered, “Complaint will be filed immediately,” and scurried after Lady Katmile.

Stunned silence at the table for a long moment.

“Did she mean she was going to get us sacked too?” said Bellows at last.

“That’s what she said,” Smith told him.

“But—she can’t do that. We’ve got a union!” he said.

“It won’t do you any good if she has your keyman’s certification canceled,” said Smith. “Or my cousin goes out of business. Both of which seem pretty likely right now.”

“I never even got my certification,” Burnbright squeaked, and began to cry. She fell over against Mrs. Smith, who stared into the palpable gloom.

“Damn them all,” she said at last. “I was planning on retiring soon anyway. May as well do it here. I’ve set aside a little money. Perhaps I’ll open a hotel. Don’t despair, boys. We’ll think of something.”

“Could you use a message runner?” asked Burnbright, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Perhaps. They’re going to be hardest on you, young Smith.” Mrs. Smith turned to him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not so bad,” said Smith, still numb with shock. “It’s not like I’ve got any money anyway. I can just disappear again.”

“Again?” Crucible lifted his head from the table.

“It’s a long story,” Smith said. An idea occurred to him. “Look. Parradan Smith gave me something I was supposed to deliver for him—”

“We have been carrying around gangster loot, haven’t we?” Burnbright looked awed.

“I might get a reward. If I do, you can have it for opening your hotel. Less whatever I need to buy a ticket to—to wherever I’m going next,” said Smith.

“That’s extraordinarily good of you,” said Mrs. Smith quietly, tipping ash.

“Aw, Nine Hells,” said Crucible. “Why is it the best caravan masters either die or leave the business?”

Smith remembered the purse Lord Ermenwyr had given him and pulled it out. “Here. I’ll go make that delivery. You get us rooms with this, get our stuff out of the carts and stowed away before the Transport Authorities seize it all. I’ll be back tonight after I visit his lordship.”

“Maybe he’ll help us too!” said Burnbright.

“Never count on a favor from the great, child,” said Mrs. Smith. She drew the pouch toward her and squinted into it. “Even if they are remarkably generous. Well! We are resolute. I’ll just step over and have a word with dear Mr. Socket. Boys, leap hence to secure what is ours. Burnbright, stay here and blow your nose, for heaven’s sake.”

She stood ponderously in the booth. “And you, young Smith. If you’re able to rejoin us, there’s a back door to the lodgings here on Fish Street, seldom watched after dark. If circumstance dictates otherwise—” She leaned forward and patted his cheek. “I’ll make good on that fried eel dinner sometime or other. Go now, dear.”

Having taken Parradan Smith’s instrument case, Smith asked one of the porters where he might find the villa of Lord Kashban Beatbrass. Upon discovering that it was at the residential end of Anchor Street, he crossed over a block and descended the long hill. He could look down on the roofs of the grand town houses, almost see into their private gardens, though around him was all the windy bustle of the poor end of the street. Fry vendors with their carts shouted their wares, beggars hobbled or rolled along bearing signs listing famous sea battles in which they’d lost various body parts, shabby-looking men went in and out of lodging houses and ship’s chandlers’.

The sea gleamed out beyond all his misery, under a band of middle air clear of fog. White sails moved on the horizon, making for Port Ward’b across the bay. Smith reflected that he’d probably head that way himself in the morning and sign on to a ship, preferably one about to leave on an extended voyage, under a new assumed name. Flint? Stoker? Ironboot?

An icy wind hit him, piercing his worn clothes, making his wounds ache, and fluttering before his eyes a green poppysilk banner. He peered at the writing on it. Yendri characters, advertising something.

Turning, he saw the shop flying the banner bore a large sign with the word BATHS. He groped and found the clay disk on its cord inside his shirt.

“Might as well,” he told himself, and went in.

The warm air hit him like a blast from a furnace, but it felt heavenly, rich with steam and Yendri perfumes that made him think of wild forest girls who wouldn’t keep their clothes on. Smith could hear a fountain tinkling somewhere and the splash of water echoing on tile. He made his way to the counter, which was almost hidden behind hanging pots of ferns and bromeliads. A Yendri in a white robe leaned at the counter, reading a city broadside. He did not look up as he inquired, “You have come for a bath, sir?”

“Actually—” Smith pulled the clay disk off over his head. “I’m supposed to find Levendyloy Alder and ask for, uh, detoxification. The full treatment.” He held out the disk. The Yendri looked up and focused on him intently.

“I am Alder,” he informed Smith. “You have been ill? You have been, hm, wounded.” He leaned over and took the disk. He passed it under his nostrils and scowled. “Poisoned. Hm. Please. Come inside.”

He led Smith behind the counter into a changing room with shelves. “Your clothes and belongings in there,” he said. He vanished behind a curtain as Smith stripped down and filled a shelf, setting all his knives in his right boot and resting Parradan Smith’s case on top of the pile with great care. Peeling off his bandages too, he considered his battered body and sighed. One of these days, he told himself, I won’t be able to run fast enough.

When the Yendri returned, he was carrying a teapot and small cup. “This way,” he said, gesturing with the cup, and Smith followed him through the curtain and into a tiled corridor. They passed arched entrances to rooms with hot and cold pools, where other people swam or lounged in the water and talked. The Yendri led him to a room with a heavy door, handed him the teapot and cup, and worked the valve lock that opened the door. Steam billowed out, hot enough to make the hall seem chilly by comparison. Smith peered in and caught a glimpse of boulders and swirling water.

“Go in,” said the Yendri, “Sit, and drink the tea. All of it, as quickly as you can. It will cleanse you. In an hour I will bring you out.”

“All right,” said Smith, and stepped in cautiously. The door closed behind him, and in a moment the air cleared enough for him to see that the room was tank-shaped, with a drain at the bottom. Water gushed from a tap in the ceiling and streamed down the rock walls, which radiated intense heat, and splattered and swirled off the boulders before finally cycling down the drain. There was one curved stone seat, awkward to sit on.

“Drink the tea,” said a disembodied voice. Smith looked up and saw a grate in the wall, high up. He could just discern the Yendri’s face behind it.

“You’re going to watch me?” he asked.

“Sometimes your people faint,” the Yendri replied. “The tea, please.”

“All right.” Smith sipped it grudgingly, but found it surprisingly good, hot and spicy. He drank it all and only when he had emptied the teapot did he notice the aftertaste.

“This isn’t a purge, is it?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Yendri replied. Smith groaned.

In the next hour a great deal of nasty stuff went down the drain, including a couple of old tattoos, exuding from his frantic skin like black syrup. Smith saw dirt from every place he’d ever lived coming to the surface, the yellow dust of Troon, the red dust of Mount Flame City, some gray residue he didn’t want to think about. Occasionally jets of hot water shot from the ceiling, flooding the filth down the drain and almost washing Smith away with it. He clung to the stone perch and cursed the Yendri steadily. The Yendri watched him, impassive; and at the end of the hour shut off the water and came to let Smith out.

Smith had planned to throttle him the minute he could reach him, but collapsed on him instead. He let the Yendri support him back down the hall to a room with a tepid pool. The Yendri toppled him in and told him to swim. Smith decided to drown, but found to his astonishment that his strength was returning, and with it an extraordinary sense of well-being. After he had splashed about a while a pair of hulking bath attendants came to haul him out, slap him with cold towels, and make him drink a lot of plain water.

They led him at last to a massage chamber, where he was soaped and rinsed and oiled and kneaded. Then they applied fresh bandages to his wounds.

By that time Smith felt wonderful and no longer wanted to kill anybody. This made the events of the next few moments all the more unfortunate.

When the attendants had done with him, they indicated he should dress himself again. He floated out to the changing room, seemingly ten years younger than he had been when he left it.

A bulky man in very fine clothes was removing them in there, and three other men stood attendance on him, taking his garments one by one and folding them with care. Smith nodded as he passed them and went to his shelf. It didn’t occur to him until his hand was on his clothes that he knew one of the men. Apparently it occurred to the other man at the same moment.

Smith heard the muttered exclamation and grabbed frantically in his right boot. He turned with a knife in his hand in time to see the other man advancing on him, drawing a blade fully ten inches long.

“This is for my cousins, you pig,” snarled the man, preparing to slash at Smith. Before he could do so, however, Smith acted without thinking and threw his little knife.

Acting without thinking was something he generally did under circumstances such as the one in which he presently found himself. The details of circumstance might vary, but the result was always the same: a corpse at his feet and a great deal of trouble.

He looked down now at the body that had his knife hilt protruding from its left eye socket, then looked at the other three men. Was that his heartbeat echoing off the tiled walls? The fight had taken place in almost complete silence.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

The bulky man nodded, staring at him with mild amazement. “Nice work, though,” he said. “Striker was one of my best.” He gestured, and his remaining vassals seized Smith, and forced him to his knees. He turned to draw a blade from his clothes. Smith spotted a tattoo on his bare back.

“You’re a Bloodfire,” he stammered. “You wouldn’t be Lord Kashban Beatbrass, by any chance?”

“I am,” the lord replied, turning with a curved ceremonial blade.

“I’ve got something of yours!”

“And I’ll have something of yours in a minute.” Lord Kashban grabbed him by the hair.

“No! Listen,” cried Smith, and hurriedly explained what had happened to Parradan Smith.

“That’s his case on the shelf,” he said, tilting his head in its direction with some difficulty. “I promised him I’d deliver it to you. He said you’d pay well. I was on my way to your house, I swear.”

The lord paused, looking thoughtful. He got the case down from the shelf and opened it. Lord Tinwick’s cup gleamed at him. He lifted it out, examined it, checked the inscription on the base.

“What did you do with Parradan’s body?” he inquired.

“It’s in a stone cairn on the north side of the road from Troon, about two days’ journey from the Red House up there,” said Smith.

“All right,” said Lord Kashban. He looked down at Smith, studying him. “You worked in Port Chadravac for a while, didn’t you? Weren’t you one of the Throatcutters?”

“Not exactly,” said Smith miserably. “I was sort of a consultant for them. A specialist.”

“Yes, you were,” the lord agreed, and awe came into his face, though his voice remained level and quiet. “Artist is more like it. Nine Hells! Nobody ever saw you coming. They said you could vanish out of a locked room. What are you doing running from anyone?”

“I didn’t want to do it anymore,” Smith explained. “Just because a man’s good at something doesn’t mean he enjoys it.”

Lord Kashban shook his head. “Unbelievable. All right; Parradan said I’d reward you, so I will. You have your life. Let him go,” he told his men, who dropped Smith’s arms at once.

“Honor on your house,” said Smith, staggering to his feet. He grabbed his clothes and pulled them on.

“What do we do about Striker, my lord?” one of the men wanted to know.

“What do we do about Striker?” Lord Kashban pulled at his lip. “Good question. I’ve lost a good man. All right, wrap a towel around his head and carry him out to the palanquin. Tell the greenie he’s sick. We’ll give him a nice funeral in the garden tonight. You.” He looked at Smith. “Had enough of retirement yet? Getting a little tired of looking threadbare? It pains me to see a man of your talents in the gutter. You could come work for me.”

“You do me tremendous honor, my lord,” said Smith, feeling his heart sink. “Though I have some other problems I have to take care of, and I don’t—”

“Understandable,” said Lord Kashban, making a dismissive gesture. “You don’t have to decide right now. But you think about it, understand? And come talk to me when you’re ready. You know where I live.

“Here,” he said, turning to his men, who had slung Striker’s corpse between them and were preparing to take it out. He dropped the case with Lord Tinwick’s cup on Striker’s chest. “Take that home, too, and lock it up. I’m going to have a massage.”

Smith pulled on his coat hurriedly and exited first. He walked quickly through the outer room, with the two that carried the dead man close behind him, and the Yendri turned to look at them. His eyes widened but he made no sound; only shook his head sadly as they stepped out into the street.

Not caring to watch the body being stowed away in Lord Kashban’s palanquin, Smith faded into the crowd and put some distance between himself and the bathhouse. It was getting dark, just the blue time of twilight he had always found comforting, and yellow lamps were being lit in every street and along the seafront. He found little to comfort him now, however.

He hated to think that he would have to accept Lord Kashban’s offer, but it was the answer to his current predicament. He’d be able to stop running, he’d have protection from the law. He’d have money. More than enough to compensate Mrs. Smith and the others for the loss of their jobs. All he’d have to do was kill people, though he had promised himself he’d never earn his living that way again.

Not that there was any societal stigma involved in professional killing, at least among the Children of the Sun. Murder in the cause of a blood feud was honorable, and murder in the service of one’s sworn lord a sure way for a bright young person to advance. Other races had difficulty understanding this cultural tradition, though one crabbed Yendri philosopher had advanced the opinion that, since the Children of the Sun seemed incapable of practicing any form of birth control, perhaps it was best to let them indulge their need to slaughter themselves as a means of keeping their population at manageable levels.

Smith respected tradition as much as the next man. He just didn’t like to kill.

But it was what he was best at, and he had no other options that he could see.

Other than a dinner date with demons.

He had nearly reached the bottom of the hill, and was in the neighborhood of the grand hotels, the gracious private houses fronting on the sea. Cold waves boomed on the empty beach, but along the Glittering Mile it might have been summer, so many lights were lit, so many well-dressed people were out and promenading on the seafront or being jogged from one fashionable address to another in open palanquins.

Smith hurried through them with his ragged coat collar turned up, looking for the spa. It was easy to find: it covered several square blocks. Everything was on a grand scale, with a lot of white marble and soaring columns and domes. The main entry hall was lit with barrel-sized lanterns brilliant enough to have guided ships at sea, and Smith felt dreadfully conspicuous as he scuttled in out of the night. The desk clerk stared at him in disbelief.

Fortunately, however, he was expected, and so the clerk led him out through the scented gardens to the grandest suite in the complex. It looked like a temple from the outside. It looked like a temple from the inside, too, as Smith was to discover.

“It’s our old friend the caravan master, Nursie,” Lord Ermenwyr yowled in delight, flinging the vast double doors wide. The clerk paled and vanished into the night. Lord Ermenwyr was stark naked except for a flapping dressing gown of purple brocade and what appeared to be a pair of women’s underpants on his head. His smoking tube was clenched in a ferocious grin, and his pupils were tiny. Behind him, a prostitute was attempting to depart discreetly, in evident distress at lacking a certain item of her attire.

“Welcome, Caravan Master!” The lordling flung his arms around Smith. “My, you smell a lot better. Come in, it’s a catered affair, don’t you know! Lots of lovely excess. What?” he snapped at the girl, who had timidly pulled at his elbow. “Oh, you’ve no sense of romance at all.”

He yanked off the underpants and handed them to her, then turned with aplomb and took Smith’s arm in his, towing him from the hall. “Look at it all,” he said, waving a hand at the vaulted ceiling with its mural of fluttering cherubs. “Pretty grand after all those nights of wretched wilderness, eh? Of course, a Yendri would purse his sanctimonious lips and say the glorious immensity of the stars was a far more splendid canopy for one’s repose, but you know what I say to that?” He blew a juicy raspberry. “Oh, I love, love, love decadent luxuries! Look at this!”

Dropping Smith’s arm he ran to the immense canopied bed and hurled himself into the middle of the scarlet brocade counterpane, where he began to leap up and down. The canopy was a good fifteen feet in the air, held aloft on a gilded finial, so he ran no risk of bouncing into it.

“I—despise—Nature,” he panted. “Whoopee!”

“Master, did you pay that poor girl?” Balnshik came into the room, attired in a white robe demurely tied shut. “You’ve left the door open, darling. Hello, Smith.” She turned and caught his head in both her hands, giving him a kiss that left his knees weak. “Don’t mind him. He’s overexcited. You haven’t even offered him a drink, have you, you little beast?”

“Eeek! What was I thinking?” Lord Ermenwyr scrambled down and raced into the next room, reappearing a moment later with a bottle and a glass. “Here you go, Smith. This cost an awful lot of money. You’re sure to like it.” He poured a glass and offered it to Smith with a deep bow.

“Thank you,” said Smith. Behind him he heard Balnshik slam and bolt the great doors, and realized that it was far too late to run. What the hell, he thought, and sampled the wine. It was sparkling and tasted like stars. Lord Ermenwyr drank from the bottle.

“Mm, good. Come on, let’s dine,” he said, and pulled Smith into the next room.

“Oh,” said Smith, starting forward involuntarily. He hadn’t eaten in hours and was abruptly aware of it at the sight of the feast laid out on the table. There were a couple of huge roasts, a hen, oysters, a whole baked fish in wine sauce, various covered tureens, hot breads and butter in several colors, more bottles, a pyramid of ripe fruit and another of cream buns and meringues, as well as a large cake sulking in a pool of liqueur. As is usual for feasts, candied kumquats and cherries decorated nearly everything.

“Room service,” said Lord Ermenwyr dreamily, lifting the lid on a tureen. “Floating islands! My favorite. Don’t stand on ceremony, Smith.” He plunged his face into the tureen, only to be collared and dragged back by Balnshik.

“Sit down and put your napkin on, Master,” she ordered. “Look at you, you’ve got meringue in your beard. Simply disgusting. Please be seated, dear Smith, and pay no attention to his lordship. I shall serve.”

And this she proceeded to do, carving the meats and arranging a plate for Smith with the best of everything, the most prime cuts, the most melting fruit, ignoring Lord Ermenwyr as he happily drank custard sauce straight out of the tureen. Then she loaded a plate for herself, filled Smith’s wineglass and her own, and sat down tête-à-tête with him as though they were alone.

“You followed that doctor’s advice, I note, and were detoxified,” Balnshik said, shaking out her napkin. “Quite a good idea. It’s a nasty poison on those little darts, just like its inventors. Devious. Lurking. It can lie dormant in the flesh, even if one is treated with an antidote, and leap out into the blood unexpectedly later on.”

“So—excuse me for asking, but—you really are a nurse, then,” Smith said, trying not speak with his mouth full.

“Well, I know a great deal about death,” she admitted. “That helps, you see.”

“Hey! He can’t pay no attention to me,” protested Lord Ermenwyr belatedly, lifting his dripping beard from the tureen. “He’s my guest.”

“It’s the other way around, darling,” Balnshik informed him. “You’re supposed to pay attention to him.”

“Oh. How’s the food, Caravan Master?”

“Wonderful, thanks,” said Smith earnestly.

“You should see what we have for the orgy afterward.” Lord Ermenwyr giggled. “Salesh Primo Pinkweed. What fun!” He stuck his head in the tureen again.

“I really must apologize for his lordship’s manners,” said Balnshik. “It’s a reaction. The journey was quite stressful for him.”

“I guess we’re all lucky to be alive,” said Smith. “Have those people tried to get him before?”

“Mm.” She nodded, taking a sip of her wine. “But seldom so persistently. His lord father had no idea they’d have the audacity to make an attempt within sight of his own house. There are probably going to be some rather horrible reprisals. Whatever my master may say, his lord father loves him.”

“Are the rest of the children like that?”

“No, fortunately.” Balnshik looked amused. “My master is unique.”

Lord Ermenwyr fell off his chair with a crash.

“Excuse me a moment, won’t you?” Balnshik requested, and, rising, she fetched a cushion and tucked it under the lordling’s head where he lay unconscious. She took the tureen from his hands and set it back on the table.

“Is he all right?” asked Smith, alarmed.

“It’s just the sugar hitting the drugs. He’ll sleep for half an hour, then he’ll be up and bouncing around again,” Balnshik said offhandedly, sitting back down and picking up a chop bone, which she proceeded to gnaw with unsettling efficiency. Smith noticed that there was nothing on her plate but meat, all of it blood-rare.

“Uh … I don’t mean to be rude, but… young as he is, and sick as he is, why was he sent to Troon in the first place?” Smith inquired. “Shouldn’t he be kept at home?”

Balnshik rolled her eyes.

“A joke got out of hand. One of his brothers and several of his sisters tried to kill him. Not very hard, you understand, but enough to cause terrible conflicts in the servants’ hall. When you are bound by oath to slaughter any who attack one of his lord father’s getting, and then the wretched little gets attack each other—well, what are you to do? It plays havoc with the semantics of one’s geas. Very inconsiderate of them, and their lady mother"—Balnshik bowed involuntarily—"told them so, too. We were all very grateful.

“In any case, his lord father thought the responsibility of a diplomatic mission would be good for him. My master managed the business very well, but once he’d done what he was sent for he became bored.” She glanced over at him in affectionate contempt. “He got into trouble, then he got sick. But, not being allowed home just yet, he was sent here.”

Smith felt a wave of sympathy for the lordling. “It’s hell not being able to go home. They ought to reconsider.”

“It’ll all blow over in time.” Balnshik shrugged. “And he loves Salesh-by-the-Sea. So much to do here.”

“That’s good anyway,” said Smith. “Should he really have all the drink and drugs and sex he wants, though? Maybe his problem is that he’s been spoiled.”

“That, and repeatedly raised from the dead,” Balnshik replied. “You have no idea how difficult that makes instilling proper values in a child.”

They ate for a while in silence. Despite its vast size, the dining room was warm, and Balnshik’s robe didn’t do much to conceal her bosom when she leaned forward. His other appetites having been handsomely assuaged, Smith found himself contemplating matters of the flesh.

If he thought too hard about who and what she was, his brain began to gibber and tell him to finish his wine, thank her, and leave with all possible speed. He found that he could ignore his brain if he gazed into her eyes and let her refill his wineglass. After the third glass his brain had stopped gibbering and lay in a quiet stupor in the back of his head, which suited him fine.

“Mmm.” Balnshik pushed aside her plate, stretched luxuriously, and rose to her feet, smiling down at Smith. “I seem to recall making you a promise, Caravan Master. Shall we retire to the adjoining chamber? I’d love to see if you’re a master at other jobs.”

“That’s right, the orgy!” cried Lord Ermenwyr, sitting up abruptly. He staggered to his feet, grabbed a bottle from the table, and lurched off into the adjoining chamber. Balnshik and Smith followed him. Smith paused to stare.

This was the private Temple of Health offered in every suite, as promised in the spa’s brochures. It was an oval room with a domed ceiling of glass, through which the stars burned distantly. More white marble columns held up the dome, and between them tall stained-glass windows stood dark and opaque, except when someone passed through the garden beyond carrying a lantern. In the center a blue pool glimmered softly, giving off a fine vapor of sulfurous steam.

To counteract the smell, censers were suspended here and there from the lamps, sending up long blue trails of perfumed smoke. All the steam and sweetness made it unlikely anyone would feel like using the exercise equipment that was dutifully set up on the far side of the pool. On the near side, the shallow end, were piled silken cushions, and a water pipe was set up beside them.

“Hey nonny no!” Lord Ermenwyr writhed out of his robe and plunged into the pool. “Light the hubblebubble, Nursie dearest.”

“Light it yourself,” ordered Balnshik, turning to Smith with an expression of radiant tenderness and opening his shirt. “I have a reward to bestow, you ungrateful little sot.”

“To be sure, you do,” Lord Ermenwyr replied, leering, and leaned up out of the water and lit the pipe with another blue fireball.

Smith was self-conscious about his various cuts, but once Balnshik threw off her robe he utterly forgot about his own body. They joined Lord Ermenwyr in the pool and shared the water pipe with him. After that things became somewhat confusing, but quite pleasant if one wasn’t easily shocked.

Lord Ermenwyr swiftly became so intoxicated he was in danger of drowning, but refused to leave the pool for the silk cushions. Instead he yelled an incantation, and from the suddenly roiling water a swim bladder emerged, of the whimsical sort generally provided for children. Instead of being a swan or seahorse, however, it was a mermaid with immense pneumatic breasts. He clambered into her embrace and bobbed about for a while making rude remarks until he passed out, tethered to the side only by the umbilical cord of the water pipe’s hose clutched in his fist.

“Now then, my lovely Smith,” whispered Balnshik, gliding with him to the far end of the pool. She wound her arms around him and kissed him, and they plummeted to the bottom of the pool in a long embrace. Smith could have happily drowned then, but she bore him to the surface again and set him against the coping.

“Just you lean there, darling, rest your arms,” she told him. She kissed his throat, kissed his chest, kissed her way down to the waterline. Then she went below the waterline.

Moaning happily, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. In addition to Balnshik’s other talents, she was evidently able to breathe underwater.

Though not to hear underwater, apparently; which was why Smith was the only one to notice the struggle taking place outside the nearest stained-glass window.

Dragging his attention back from sweet delight with profound reluctance, he opened his eyes. Yes. Even stoned as he was, he could tell that was unmistakably a fight out there. Blade clanging on blade, scuffling boots, a muffled curse. He was gazing up at the stars in the roof and wondering if he ought to do anything about it when the question became academic.

Something blocked the stars and then the glass dome shattered inward, as two hooded figures dropped through on ropes like a pair of spiders. Before Smith could react, something else crashed through the window behind him, sending blue and green and violet glass panes everywhere. Smith gulped, aware that he had no weapons of any kind.

But it seemed he didn’t need any.

There was a new roiling in the water, and something rose roaring to the surface. It was not a toy mermaid. It was gigantic, serpentine, scaled, writhing, monstrous, and it was the color of a thundercloud. Its teeth were a foot long. It snarled up at the men who had come through the ceiling, regarding them with eyes like glowing coals. They screamed.

Smith swam for his life to the shallow end of the pool, where Lord Ermenwyr still drifted unconscious.

“Up! Up! Out!” he shouted incoherently, grabbing for the first thing he could reach, which happened to be the lordling’s beard. It came off in his hand, loosened by its long immersion in custard sauce and bathwater. He stood, staring at it stupidly. Lord Ermenwyr opened outraged eyes. Then he saw what was happening over Smith’s shoulder, and his little naked punk’s face registered horror.

“You wear a fake beard,” said Smith in wonder.

“It’s a facial toupee,” Lord Ermenwyr told him furiously, rolling to the side as something hissed through the air from behind them. It smacked into one of the mermaid’s breasts, which began to deflate. Smith looked down and saw a feathered dart.

Turning, he beheld Ronrishim Flowering Reed in the act of drawing breath for another shot. A wounded man was dragging himself along the coping after Flowering Reed, stabbing at the Yendri’s ankles.

Smith acted without thinking. He had a false beard instead of a knife in his hand, so the effect wasn’t as drastic as it usually was, but satisfying all the same. The sodden mess slapped full into Flowering Reed’s face with such force it knocked the little blowpipe down his throat. He choked and fell backward. The man on the coping grabbed him and pulled him close, running the dagger into him several times. A wave broke over the coping and obscured them in bloody foam. Smith tried not to look at what was happening in the deep end of the pool.

Lord Ermenwyr had splashed out and was running for the dining room, and Smith raced after him. He barely made it through before the double doors slammed. Lord Ermenwyr leaned against them, gasping for breath.

“Better to leave Nursie alone when she’s working,” he told Smith.

“What are you, ten?” Smith inquired. Lord Ermenwyr just looked at him indignantly.

After a while the horrible noises stopped, and they opened the door far enough to see Balnshik lifting the wounded man in her arms. There was no sign of Flowering Reed or the other intruders.

“Bandages NOW,” she panted, and Smith grabbed napkins from the table. She carried Mr. Amook (for it was he) into the bedroom and bound up his side. Lord Ermenwyr stood by, wringing his hands.

“Please don’t die!” he begged Mr. Amook. “I can’t bring you back if you die!”

Mr. Amook attempted to say something reassuring and passed out instead.

There came a thunderous hammering and shouts from the front door. Lord Ermenwyr wailed and ran to stick on a fresh beard. Smith, in the act of pulling on his trousers, stumbled into the hall to face the clerk and several members of the City Guard.

“About time you got here,” he improvised. “We just chased off the thieves. What kind of hotel is this, anyway?”

After profuse apologies had been made, after crime scene reports had been filed, after Lord Ermenwyr’s baggage had been transferred to another suite and a Yendri doctor in Anchor Street sent for to see to Mr. Amook—

Smith, Balnshik, and Lord Ermenwyr sat around a small table in varying degrees of comedown and hangover.

“You promise you won’t tell anybody about the beard?” Lord Ermenwyr asked for the tenth time.

“I swear by all the gods,” repeated Smith wearily.

“It will grow in one of these days, you know, and it’ll be just as impressive as Daddy’s,” Lord Ermenwyr assured him. “You haven’t seen Daddy’s, of course, but—anyway, what’s a mage without a beard? Who’d respect me anymore?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Fortunately, the witnesses aren’t likely to blab. Horrible Flowering Reed is finally dead, and what a consolation that is! And those other two probably didn’t see me, and if they did, they’re dead anyway. You’re certain they’re dead, Nursie?”

“Oh, yes.” She closed her eyes and smiled blissfully. “Quite dead.”

“So that just leaves you, Caravan Master, and of course you won’t tell.”

“Uh-uh.”

“I’ll make it worth your while. Honestly. Anything you’ve always wanted but never had? Any personal problems you’d like some assistance with? You should have explained about your ‘special talents’ sooner! Daddy always needs skilled assassins, he’d give you a job in a second,” chattered Lord Ermenwyr, whose mind was racing like a rat in a trap.

Smith’s mind, however, suddenly woke to calm clarity.

“Actually,” he said, “there is something you can help me with. I need a lot of money and a good lawyer to defend me against the Transport Authorities.”

Lord Ermenwyr whooped and bounced in his chair. “Is that all? Daddy owns the Transport Authorities! There are more ways of making money off caravans than robbing them, you see, even when you’re forced to become law-abiding. Mostly law-abiding anyway. Name the charges, and they’re dropped.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Smith. Settling himself comfortably in his chair, he began to tell the long story of everything that had happened since they bade him good-bye at the caravan depot.

“Terrace dining with a splendid view of the sea,” said Mrs. Smith thoughtfully, waving a hand at a bare expanse of concrete. She had a drag at her smoking tube and exhaled. “We shall deck it over quaintly, and put up latticework with trumpet vines to make it gracious. Tables and striped umbrellas.” She turned and regarded the old brick building behind them. “And, of course, an interior dining room for when the weather’s horrid, with suitably nautical themes in its decor.”

“Are you sure you want this property?” inquired Lord Ermenwyr. Behind him, the keymen were methodically pacing out room dimensions.

Burnbright stuck her head out an upstairs window and screamed, “You should see the view from up here! If we fix the holes in the roof and put in some walls, it’ll be great!” She waved a small dead dragon, mummified flat. “And look what I found in a corner! We could hang it over the street door and call ourselves the Dead Dragon!”

Lord Ermenwyr shuddered.

“No, silly child, it’ll be the Hotel Grandview: Fried Eel Dinners A Specialty,” decided Mrs. Smith.

“The real estate agent said there was a much better location on Windward Avenue,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Surely you’d rather do business somewhere a bit less crumbling?”

“I like this. It’s got potential,” Smith assured him.

“Some people enjoy a challenge, Master,” Balnshik told Lord Ermenwyr, draping a furred cloak about his shoulders.

“But it’s so weather-beaten,” he fretted.

“I should prefer to say it has character,” said Mrs. Smith. “One can go a long way on character. Wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Smith?”

“Yes,” he said, slipping an arm about her and looking up at the improbable future shining in the clouds. “I’d say so.”