"I only ever tickled you like that once," Megan whispered.

Shkai'ra used her free arm to rearrange the blankets; through closed eyes the Zak could feel the greater darkness as they shadowed her face. This feels good, she thought; let the sigh be audible, this time, and relaxed, listening to the strong slow pulse under her ear. Strange to be so comfortable so close to a naZak, but the years had made it so; you learned each others bends and crannies, until somehow you fit with a person."And I like to brained myself on the beam over the shutbed when you did," Shkai'ra replied. "Ah, well, you were drunk," she continued charitably. Megan lay against Shkai'ra's warmth and felt colder than the steppe.

An anxious chruuut? came from under the bed; Ten-Knife scrambled up to the covers, walked over their hips and ribs and thumped down to the pillow, curling up behind the Zak's neck and butting a cold, wet nose against her shoulder.

Shkai'ra sighed and gathered her close, drowsily, sliding down back into sleep. Ten-Knife purred at Megan's shoulder but it didn't help as the Zak lay in the dark, listening to her lover's distant breathing. Even in your arms I'm alone, Shkai'ra. Why can't I make you see?

Exhaustion dragged her into sleep as false dawn tinged the skv.

Chapter Twelve.

ENTERING RAND BASIN,.

MORNING TENTH IRON CYCLE, TWENTY-FOURTH.

DAY.

The Zingas Vetri oar-walked into Rand on a bright cold morning that crackled with hoarfrost. The bare feet of the deck crew left prints dark and wet on the frosted planks; rigging chimed with blue ice shards, as delicate as the fragments left by hatchling hummingbirds. Chips spun free and ran downwind, sparkling. Breath smoked; Shkai'ra felt the chill wind pouring over the high rim tighten the skin of her cheekbones with a kiss that tasted of home.

Steppe country to the east, she thought. Megan stood by the wheel, wrapped in the cloak of dark feathers and silence. She won't tell me what's wrong anymore, Shkai'ra thought. I don't understand you any more, kh'eeredo-mi. Revenge isn't that important.

The river narrowed, swinging east of north. The Zingas Vetri dipped her sharp prow; the mallet-beat quickened as the long,narrow hull rolled, shipping water the color of jade across tbe fbc'sle deck, to fall back in white froth through the scuppers. It smelled of cold purity, rock and distant glaciers.

"Quarter-point to port," Megan said quietly. "You know the drag under the Watchers." Then: "Mateus, peace pennant to the peak, we're coming up in the Shadows."

The first mate's whistle fluted, and a narrow green banner ran up and snapped free in the east wind. Ahead, the Brezhan surged between cliffs that rose sheer barely a chiliois apart; the current ran deep but very swift, rising in long, smooth wells like the muscles in an athlete's legs. The steersman grunted, leaning into the spokes as eddies jerked at the rudder, and the rowers braced their feet and shortened their stroke, chopping the slender ash blades into the water as the river gripped keel and planks like a hand.

Megan ignored the Watchers; four black pillars, two hundred meters high and thirty through, smoothed by water and patient labor. Her eyes narrowed on the face of the river where it rushed past their feet. The Watchers stood where the river had crashed through the crater's lip; folded against their sides like wings were the cranes that could swing thick chains across the current.

For a long moment the Zingas Vetri hung between two of the monoliths, shuddering as the rhythmic thrust of the oars hung in balance with the power of the water. Then the motion smoothed, and the galley surged into the calmer waters beyond as if slipping downslope on a gentle hill.

The basin was an oval ten kilometers across, as if the earth had opened an eye to gaze at heaven.The walls stood sheer, rippled in a regular pattern of grooves and swellings. Volcanic rock, pearl-grey granite, green marble and onyx-colored basalt.

Nearby, where the wall fanned out on either hand, the colors glowed softly in light reflected from the water and beneath it as the long rays of the morning sun glanced back from the surface.

Westward they blazed, as bright as the disk of sun rising over the cliffs.

Ahead stood the islands of the same stone, in a cluster fromthe center of the caldera. Rand, they were named in the old tongue: the steepness where the world ends. Some were tiny, thread-thin at a distance that made children's toys of ships; others bulked almost squat, their sloping surfaces larger than farmers' fields. From this distance the eye could link them into the shape of a great flat-topped cone.

The bridges heightened the likeness, slender arches soaring from shaft to shaft; on the upper slopes were gardens, terraces and mansions carved from the rock. Below, the vertical stone was worked in balconies and doors, where sleepers could wake to see mast tips swaying by; spouts channeled off springs to fell for long seconds in silver threads before they misted into clouds and merged with the canals below.

Shkai'ra glanced over the rail. The water was very clear; she could see long slopes of smooth rock below, a bowl of muted color sloping down into darkness. The shadow of the Zingas Vetri sculled across those curtains of stone, tiny, as if they floated in unclouded air ten times mast height above the ground.

For a moment she felt giddy, feeling the ship about to fall. A school of Brezhan gar slid beneath the keel, seven-meter river wolves as narrow as eels, with the undershot, toothy jaws of pike.

She blinked, looked up again at the city of islands.

"Looks like a firemountain, what's the Zakos word?" Megan started. "It is," she said. "Aflahmbrug, a volcano." She looked at the group of islands as if they were new-sprung from the river.

"When the Phoenix rose to burn the world, the land blew up in the river's path. That made the cup." She waved a hand at the walls of cliff around them. "Then from the bottom a new flahmbrug broke through. Since the river had a hold on the stone when it formed, it wore through when the Worldfire died."

She was silent a long moment, and the only sound was the oarmaster's beat. "The Rand have been here, they swear, ever since. Even before lyesi fell. I don't know if I believe them, but they treat all foreigners the same; like dirt."

RAND, BOTTOM LEVEL, HSIANG ISLE,.

LATE AFTERNOON TWENTY-FOURTH DAYpain, pain in my chest, lungs are like stone, stone all around, always stone.

He crouched below the lip of the tunnel, in darkness. It was always dark here, air was too precious to waste on flame. The child cutters who followed the twisting vein of cardamorine could read the rock with their fingertips.

better no light, need no light, feet know the stairs like hands knew my wife's face- A grunt, loud in the small space, echoing over the drip-drip-drip of water. It had softened the scabs on his back; the rag pad on his shoulders was moving, and he reached a hand up to adjust it. A whistle, and a slab pushed out.

bend shoulders, pain! rough hard on shoulders flesh too thin, ulcers weep... turn, not to see, not to feel, one step up, brace, push, seven thousand steps to the light, second step. breathe: lungs thick with rockdust. push. better to hurt than to think, push!

A thick, gobbling noise filled the tunnel, and the tongue-less man climbed the stairway without end.

RAND, TOP LEVEL, HSIANG ISLE.

LATE AFTERNOON TWENTY-FOURTH DAY.

Piatr looked around the crowd at the entrance to the lower levels. Nobody touched them; Rand courtesy, perhaps, or the fighting-knife Shkai'ra was stropping on a leather strap wound about the knuckles of her left hand. But the bubble of space about them was uncomfortably small. This folk lived with crowding even more than most city dwellers, and the distance-of-courtesy was less than among his people, much less; something at the bottom of his mind was perpetually uneasy.

The crowds were worse here, of course. Height and class were one in Rand; the city was one huge, multilayered structure, tunneled down into rock, carved and sculpted and vaulted above.

On the surface the buildings rose in tiers with graceful sweepingroofs and gables wrought in scarlet dragon shapes, inlay and carving that cunningly followed the patterns of the rock lent color; so did rooftop gardens, potted waterfalls of flowers, hangings. The nobles and court and merchant princes of Rand lived there, in the sunlight, while the mass of the city dwelt below, honeycombed into the rock. Here it teemed with them: his memory prompted with remembrances of anthills he had broken open as a boy.

The Zak leaned back against the wall, hooking his thumbs in his belt and leaning on his stump for the pleasure of feeling healed flesh and smooth-fitting socket.

They make my skin crawl, he thought, scowling at the throng. Dark eyes that stared at you and through you, from under the heavy straight-cut black hair. Saffron skin and slanted eyes like cats. Hostility from those in the plain blue of the commons, laborers, dock-wallopers, porters. A thin disguise drawn by greed on the shopkeepers and craftsfolk; overwhelming naughtiness that ignored their existence from magistrates in brilliant silk and scholars in their robes. Pedigreed flittercats blinked, as disdainfully as their owners, from the sweeps of roof.

Impassive appraisal behind the faceless beast-masked helms of warriors in leather and enameled steel, plumes nodding as their heads turned. Gloved hands tightening on the hilts of curved swords, grips of long bows of bone and bamboo, spears whose heads were fantasies of hooks and spikes. Lord and worker, student and merchant, thief and warrior, all were Rand. You were not.

A street festival passed, clashing drums and leaping, many-legged dragons of paper and gilt; meter-long streamers of colored silk on the ends of poles wove and spun in intricate patterns; gongs blared... Children followed, running and shouting; vendors with carts that were piles of wicker baskets over vats of bubbling water, each tray holding a different delicacy in buns of steamed dough, or deft hands rolled lumps of rice between palms with green paste and raw fish.

Shkai'ra grunted beside him. "I want to find that jeweller, and the girl-brat needs a blade. Damned if I'm going to stand aroundlike a yokel seeing my first city, jaw drooping and grass seeds in my hair."

"Perhaps we should wait for the crowd to clear?" Piatr shouted to be heard.

"Plague or sack're the only things that would work, and I'm not waiting for either," she said, snapping the knife back into her boot and tucking the hone into her belt.

The entry ramp was even more crowded that the street outside, if possible; the ceiling was arched, and the peak cleared Shkai'ra's head by a bare handspan. She kept to the center of the street, left hand holding the scabbard of her saber just below the chape that hung it from her belt. That left it horizontal, in perfect position to jab with the brass pommel or the ivory-shod wood of the sheath's tip; the Kommanza walked with an arrogant swaying stride that sent hints of trampled heels and jarred elbows ahead and to the sides, winning them added inches.

"Like a black fur rug with occasional hats," she called back over her shoulder to Piatr.

He caught himself grinning. In this city he'd kept mostly to the Zak enclave; it was more comfortable. He was only a bit taller than most Rand and had never thought what it would be like to look down on the crowd. Their eyes slid off his, worse than most naZak. He felt as if they barely realized he existed. He smothered the grin and the wish that he had enough power to make them notice him. The Captain had enough but it was never smart to show off to naZak. They tended to notice you by seeing how long you took to bum.

The tunnelled roadway curled downward, broad enough for two; the air was damp but fresh, smelling of fried fish and vegetables and spice. The light was diffuse, a soft glow with no obvious source, unless it were the occasional square well in the ceiling overhead. "Have any idea why it's not smoky with torches?" Shkai'ra asked over her shoulder.

" 'Course, little sister," he said, looking up at her. She grunted."They do it with mirrors. Arkan-glass mirrors."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him, and slowed so he could keep up. "Truthfully, yes," he continued. "They sink light shafts from the surface and use Beornholm or Arkan glass for reflecting. See?" They were under one of the square openings in the ceiling. He gestured with his thumb. She looked up and away, squinting from the point of brightness.

"Smart enough," she said and continued down, hand resting on her saber. "Hate to have to fight my way into this place: not a good town to besiege, either." The moisture in the air was thicker as they got closer to the river surface tunnels. "Wouldn't mind looting the place, though."

"Loot and kill," he grunted. "Is that all you ever think about?"

For an instant there was a memory of fighting underground in her eyes; packed dark with dying, bleeding bodies. Then it was gone and she grinned at him amiably.

"No. I think of sex, too." She paused at a cross-tunnel and as she turned, her eye was caught by a carving in marble in one of the booths opening on the tunnel. She paused to pick it up and examine it.

I thought you were in a hurry."

But not that much. Megan knows how to deal with customs clerks and officials better than I do. I'd want to carve the sheep-faced little bastards into fish chowder." "Dah, so would she if she could." Shkai'ra nodded and turned to the sculptor.

step, straighten the leg. its not so hard, only four thousand more, harsh-grinding on my back-don't stop if i stop i wont start again, yes i will. The stone carrier staggered sideways a step, head down, panting, no extra steps, waste of steps, hoard strength like sand in two cupped hands, knees hurt, the block- dont drop it, crack it-flogging. He vaguely tried to think of something else, a child's face; couldn't remember it. A child's laugh, no laughter from the cutters only lonely tears, turn ahead, space to rest. He could feel the warm sting as the corner of the block wore through his skin where the pad did not reach,and wondered if he was bleeding again, or just sweating.

Shkai'ra watched the sculptor work a moment then asked, "This local stone?"

The man looked up and clasped his hands, bowing, his accent sing-song. "Ah yes. Very deep. Down..." He pointed. "They dig, yes. More come now."

He had pointed to the approaching figure. The porter was not a Rand; as tall as Shkai'ra and big-boned, light-skinned with the pallor of someone long underground. He had been a strong man once; now he staggered under the block of stone and the thin rag pad that covered his shoulders was sodden with red where the block had chaffed.

Another porter, Piatr thought. Poor bastard. Wonder how he had the shitty luck to be sold here. He turned back to the stall, nagged by another feeling that made him itchy, but he couldn't quite get at what was making him nervous. "Are you going to buy..." His voice choked off and he wheeled back to the slave. He found himself looking into the ruins of someone he knew. The porters brown hair, locks pulled loose of the sweaty headband, fell over his face as he looked down, away from Piatr.

"Tze?" Piatr took one limping step to where the other man had lowered the stone and knelt beside it, chest heaving. The man did not look up. Tze? I know you. Tze?"

The porter made a thick, garbled sound and shook his head, looking away. Tze Riverson!' The slave reached over his shoulder, fingers dabbing in the blood on his back and faltering, as if remembering something from a dream, scrawled, "was tze" on the stone. He staggered to his feet and, groaning, lifted the block again.

"No! Put that down, Farshot, help me, the Captain would want him. Carver, who owns this man? Tze, stop." Piatr held the porter there by one strap on the stone. The crowd around them was edging past the scene, or pausing to watch covertly. "Put it down!," he said again."Megan knows this man?" Shkai'ra said, blinking in puzzlement.

"Of course, the Captain knows him-he was her first mate on the River Lady, the dog-sucking DragonLord's people took him, we thought, just before Habiku-" he stopped. "Habiku came on board," Piatr said wonderingly.

There was a splintering sound as the block of stone hit the pavement. Tze braced one hand against a larger fragment of stone; fresh sweat cut runnels through the caked stonedust on his face as he strove to speak, coughed pink froth, seized Piatr by the arms and tried to shake him. The tall man quivered with frustration and an anger that Shkai'ra could feel even from behind him.

Piatr seized the hands on his shoulders and gripped them between his. "Easy, Tze, easy. The Captain's going for Habiku.

Easy."

Shkai'ra watched with narrowed, considering eyes and a corner of her mouth twisted with an increasing disgust. Habiku, she thought. The man is a jackal. No, a hyena. He tried to kill Megan. Everyone has enemies, I'd kill him for that. But this.

What did this man Tze ever do to him? Habiku, I'm beginning to... dislike you. Silently, she watched the two men.

Piatr was lowering Tze to the floor, an arm under the bigger man's to avoid touching the raw sores of his back. The slave's face had the lifeless stillness of dough left too long, that collapses after rising. A flicker of life ran over it at Habiku's name, even as the hands made faint grasping motions at a block of stone no longer there.

She turned to the sculptor. "What," she said quietly, "is the price of a stonechopper in this warren?" Her voice was calm, a husky alto burr under the liquid sibilants of the Zak tongue. He looked away, thinking. The outland porter was worn out, it would not be worth haggling overmuch.

Megan controlled her temper with an effort, clasping her hands and bowing to the official. Bow and bend your neck, shethought.

Always smiling that poisonous, superior smile as you regrettably inform the stupid foreigner that of course the fees and bribes are high, but unfortunately the High Lord... Sorry, so sorry, not possible, perhaps tomorrow... Her own smile grew tight and sore; her fingernails gouged splinters from the table, unnoticed.

"By courtesy, a cup of tea, Honorable?" He would refuse, they always did, but you had to offer it or lose zight, since it was a notion they claimed to have invented. Would you'd take it, would Marta had brewed it, then I could get some use out of having a poisoner for a father's sister.

The thought was a cold shock, not removing anger but focusing it. This scroll-shoveller was no worse than any other jack-in-office, no worse than a thousand she'd dealt with in half a thousand ports. Fat faces and thin, blond or black or saffron-skinned. Petty cunning and stupidity, and always the outstretched palm; it was like rats in the bilge, you cleaned them out when you could, endured them when you must.

But I want him off my ship, she thought, with a venom that was no less real for her knowledge that it was born of frustration.

After all the bowing and smiling and smiling and bowing required to get the official down the rope ladder and into his gondola-palanquin, she allowed her face to relax in a scowl, and went down to the cabin to write the letter to the Shrine of Joy, the healer shrine of the Grey Brothers, a sect answering to Saekrberk, where they'd have to leave Katrana.

She sits and smiles all the time. She can do simple things, if you speak slowly. Megan dropped her face in her hands. I've cried again, she thought, just as Katrana said. My tears won't do anything for Kat. She pressed her hands to her face and sobbed dryly. She was my friend. He hurts my friends. Anyone who had more of me than he did. He wanted me, and all he ever got was the Captain, untouchable, in control. It festered in him, respecting me. Kat. Her shoulders shook, then with a crack she slammed her fists on the table, sending the inkpot bouncingonto the floor. No, I can't cry, even for a friend. It won't serve.

She unclenched her fists and forced evenness on her breathing, at last opening eyes squeezed shut against tears. She looked at the spatters of ink on her boot and puddled on the floor. Sorrow won't serve; but hate will. This hate growing in me, ready to burst forth and poison like the amanita slipped into a dish of innocent mushrooms, lying like acid in my guts, it's the only thing that will serve me now. Nurse it, culture it, that it grows strong, she told herself.

There was another bustle on the deck that she ignored.

Perhaps if I think of what to do to Habiku when I have him in my hands, perhaps that will make me feel better.

"Captain." Outside the door, Piatrs voice was hesitant; that was unlike him. She'd heard his step, the soft scuff of his boot and the harder thump of the wooden foot. Slower than usual.

"What is it?" she snapped, flinging the door open. His face stopped her.

"Tze," he said. "We... found Tze. He's here, on deck."

For a moment, relief washed up from gut to neck, relaxing muscles that had corded like iron down the sides of her spine.

Not everything is lost, went through her. Then, That isn't the face of a good-tidings bringer.

"What is it?" she asked quietly. "Tell me." Her hand closed on his shoulder. "Tell me!" she shrieked.

Piatr's face twisted. He wrenched himself aside, heedless of the razor edges tearing through his blouse, tearing tracks through his skin, sank to the floor and cradled his head in his arms. Please, don't let her speak please, I can't tell her I can't hurt her any more...

Feet walked past him, slowly, with a heavy tread utterly unlike Megan's usual cat-light step. They passed him, down the corridor, up the companionway stair-ladder, to the deck, paused. Piatr waited; waited for the sound, biting his lip untilthe blood came, tasting grief thicker than pain. There was no cry; only the heavy steps, returning. They paused by him.

"No one," a voice said, in syllables of cold ash, "for any reason, is to pass this door." The door shut with infinite care.

Piatr sat on the sanded oak of the cabinway. There was not enough energy in him for movement, only enough to flinch, as objects broke against the door and wall; something heavy went through the stemcastle windows and splashed into the river. The sounds of breaking settled to a steady chorus of splintering and crunching. Behind it was the sound; it had started as a scream that broke and settled into a keening wail. It was sorrow, cold and grey as city slush in the last tired month before spring; it was loss like a child's too young for acceptance; it was a ship's hull moaning and tearing as the bow slipped below surface and the deeps had their way with the timbers. It was fury, and madness. The one-legged man felt the bile of fear mingle with the salt of tears on his tongue.

Sova lay on the poop, enjoying the mild warmth; the Vetri was berthed in a narrow slot cut into the black basalt of the island, and a day's sunlight was radiating back into the timbers of the ship. Behind her a carven dragon's head curved from the cliff, thirty meters up; its mouth was a spout that channeled a spring's runoff, and occasional droplets blew to her, a pleasant shock on warm skin. Her chin was through the railing, watching crewfolk about their work along the narrow deck; her hands were behind her, pulling one foot down towards her shoulder in a stretching exercise.

The official had been interesting, in the pretty silk robe and the funny little black hat with the wings. Sova would have liked to have a robe tike that, pale blue with lilies woven in; he had smelled like lilies, too. The Captain didn't like him, even if she smiled and was polite. Sova's mouth turned down slightly; it had been a good joke, to walk after the Rand holding the hem of her tunic up the way he did his skirt. The impassive, slant-eyed face hadn't moved when he turned, but his pupils had widened, then gone pinhead sized. Shkai'ra says you can always tell by the pupils, she thought, and it was true. She giggled again,remembering; she had giggled then, too, and run up the ratlines to the main spar. Mateus had turned his head to hide a smile, but the Captain had been too angry to notice.

She's angry an awful lot, Sova thought. I wish I knew why, it's scary even if she isn't mad at me.

There was a stir on the dock; she turned to see, sitting up with legs straddled and bending her chin toward the deck. Can't get up speed on a footblow without stretching the hamstrings, Shkai'ra said. It made everything easier, too. Tall, redheaded...