"Have a good time," was all Megan replied to that.

"Well, I did promise the little bastard I'd take him out,"

Shkai'ra sighed. "Look, we'll be back by one... It would really do you good to come in and get drunk, throw some dice, maybe break a few bones..." She stamped her feet into the boots to settle them; they were broken in, but only just. She braided her hair with angry jerks. "All right, be that way." She swirled the cloak around her shoulders, fastened the broach and cast it back from the right to free her sword-arm.

Francosz was waiting outside, in the new-bought best tunic and breeches; his equally new shortsword was at his belt, the pommel glittering with polishing. Shkai'ra sighed and hooked it loose, dropping weapon and scabbard on his bedroll beside Sova, who was hugging her knees, sulking.

"Why-oww!" Francosz rubbed the ear she had tweaked.

"Because, boy, some of the places I plan on going, wearing a sword is considered the same as saying you can use it." She nodded at his knife. "You remember what Megan said; as long as that stays in the sheath, it's for roast meat. Draw it on a living human, and you'd better be prepared to use it."

Sova mumbled something inaudible. Shkai'ra squatted and put a hand under her chin. "Sova," she said softly. Then more harshly: "Sova!"

The girl looked up sulkily. "Yes, khyd-hird?" she said, her lower lip protruding.

"Sova, Megan is not... she's not feeling well," Shkai'ra continued in the same almost-whisper. "You understand?" A reluctant nod, and a nervous glance toward the cabin door."Now, she's very angry, because Habiku hurt her friends to hurt her. She doesn't want to be with me or anyone she's grown-up friends with, because we might quarrel. You understand that?"

Sova knitted her brow, considered, nodded. "It, well, it doesn't seem very, well, grown up," she said. "She was so mad, I mean, I've been that mad but she's... Well, it was scary."

"You're growing up fast, little one: adults can't afford to get as angry as children, because they can really hurt people instead of just wanting too. Now, I need you to help me."

"Help you?" she said, the pout fading a bit.

"That's right; I'm not just leaving you behind-" although all the gods know you're a few years too young and a mite too tender for the sort of dive I feel in the mood for "-I need you to help with the Captain. She won't get angry with you, because she knows you're an apprentice and too young to quarrel with." I hope. "So I want you to take her her dinner when Piatr has it ready, and ask her to give you your next reading lesson." Give Megan words and she can forget what hurts her. "Don't be upset if she says no, just say you'll sit outside the door and practice, and she can call you if she needs anything. That way she won't get so wrapped up in things. Understand?"

Sova took a deep breath and firmed her jaw. "I understand, khyd-hird," she said resolutely. "You can count on me."

"Good," Shkai'ra replied, giving her a slap on the shoulder.

"Don't wait up. "

The lower bulk of the mountain city was hidden in darkness when they went down the gangplank. Francosz strode out jauntily, resting his thumbs in his belt. All the girl's stuff and hard work and worrying about boring businesses is dumb. I'm learning. She said so. I wish she hadn't made me take off my sword. I'm a man now and should carry one. "Why do you put up with all that fussing of Sova's?" he asked. "She's just a girl."

Shkai'ra reached back without looking and cuffed him behind the head. "Ow!" he said. "What was that for?""Boy, there was a time when I was just a girl, and don't forget it. Now, shut up and listen. When we go in, you sit behind me to the left. Left, understand? Don't get too caught up in what's ahead of us, and keep an eye out behind if we're not back to a wall. Don't drink anything unless I say you can and it's paid for.

Incidentally, always pay for your drinks when you get 'em; oldest trick in the book is to wait until you're fuddled and add a round to the score."

He caught sight of a Rand fire-eater, standing in an overhang and twirling his flaming rods, running them up and down his bare arms and into his mouth, then juggling them in arcs and streamers of fire. The thickening snow hissed around him in the halo of lamplight that came through the peacock's fan of colored glass above the tavern's door. Shkai'ra reached back and snagged him by the ear. "Not that one."

"Whv?" He rubbed the side of his head. That hurt. "It looked like a good place. Why are you always grabbing and hitting me?

Khyd-hird," he added hastily.

Shkai'ra looked sideways at him and laughed. "Habit.

Remember my back? That's the way my people handle youngsters." She grinned at his worry. "But I've gotten soft among outlanders. As for that place, remember what I told you about women?"

He tried to swagger, slipped in the slush and looked back at the man who was spitting a tongue of flame out into the air.

"Certainly."

"Well, maybe I ought to send you in there. It's got a peacock's fan over the door." He looked puzzled. "It's a high-class whorehouse. Overpriced drinks, and the games might not be honest."

"Oh." He blushed, the feeling hot against the cold air, and pulled up the hood of his cloak. They plunged into a section of tunnel, a staircase-road with gutters at either side running with snowmelt, black with only a glimmer from around the curve of the road. Shkai'ra began to whistle, loudly and only near the tune."Never sound furtive in a dark place in a strange city," she said as they rounded the curve. "Alley-leapers can sense weakness the way wolves do in herd-stragglers... Ah, now that's worth seeing."

They stopped, looking up the terraced mountainside. The temples and villas of the rich were like rubies and sapphires scattered up the steep slope; great glass lanterns cast shadows from dragon-carved eaves and gilded, sweep-sided roofs, blurred through the gathering snow. Moving lights marked palanquins and carriages on the spiderweb of bridges that connected the peaks. A gong rang steadily, faint and mellow and golden.

Francosz felt excitement humming like jittery sunlight in his blood at the sight; vague tumbled stories of heros and princesses and treasures in ruined castles fell through his head, and he came to himself with a jump when Shkai'ra nudged him.

"Here's the place," she said. He looked around, bewildered, then saw the small door set into the cliff-face to then-right.

"Don't be so disappointed; it's bigger inside. More to the point-" she pounded on the black stone portal, a faint dull thudding. A trap opened at eye-height for a Rand, level with his brow and her throat. "-Mateus said they don't mind non-Rand here."

The door swung open, letting out a blast of noise and heat and smoke, smells of food and sweat and beer and wine and acrid dreamsmoke. The keeper was naked to the waist, a Rand squat enough to look almost square, blubber-smooth but with a dimpling ripple that spoke of muscle under the fat; shaven-skulled save for a topknot and sporting a thin drooping mustache. He looked at them suspiciously, fingering the meter-length, steel-tipped hardwood rods in his hands, then grunted in satisfaction as Shkai'ra showed a single silver coin.

They ducked through, onto a dais that overlooked the long room.

"Don't look hungry, and don't show too much," Shkai'ra shouted over the uproar. "And stop goggling, boy: never been in a port city tavern before?"

Francosz shook his head wordlessly, forcing his mouth closed.There was a bar all along one side of the room, fifteen meters back into the rock, with red-lacquered mirrors and round spigorted ceramic tuns labeled in the spiky Rand script. Bowls and plates were displayed, warmed over spirit-lanterns and giving off spicy alien smells and smokes. Pasted-on strips of calligraphy covered the other walls, where they were not hidden under slateboards chalked with much-corrected messages. The rest of the ten-meter width of the room was crowded with low tables; men and women sat about them, drinking and eating and playing incomprehensible games with dice, cards, ivory plaques, board games with colored stones, chess... and money was changing hands on each and every one, onlookers hanging over the players' shoulders and shouting their odds.

"Ahh," Shkai'ra sighed. The far end was curtained off with a thick, hanging fringe of strung wooden beads; it was warm enough to bring a sweat to her forehead, dim enough to let the flames and mirror-reflected light cast a smoky red glow over furniture, faces, eyes. She swaggered down the stairway and slipped into the crowd, shouldering her way toward the bar with a decent minimum of elbow-work.

"Now's the time to keep your hand on your pouch," she shouted back over her shoulder to the Thane boy. "Better still, put it under your shirt." She unhooked her own, opened the neck of her blouse and hung the soft leather bag between her breasts.

He followed suit, fumbling and scowling about.

"Are there thieves?" he shouted back. In the crowd the noise was worse, and he was uneasily conscious that most were two inches taller than he at least. Only about half the crowd were Rand, the rest a mixture of all the folk who lived along the Brezhan and some from the shores of the Mitvald; none looked too ragged, but there was a disconcerting number of scars, broken noses, enlarged knuckles and worn-looking swordhilts pressing in on him from all sides. He stumbled slightly, caromed off a hard-muscled shoulder that threw him back like a wall. The owner whirled and cursed, a black, one-eyed Ibresi woman with a gold hoop through her nose, wearing Yeoli steel bracelets that had to have been plundered and a broad machete-like chopping blade across her back.She snarled and reached for his throat with a gloved hand whose fingertips glinted sharp. Shkai'ra looked back and rapped a polite knuckle into the Ibresian's shoulder, just where the nerve bundle surfaced.

"Sorry," she said. To Francosz: "Thieves? Oh, no more than usual. Mateus said nobody much under quarterdeck rank gets in here. And professional gamblers, of course; dreamsmoke merchants, whores, mercenaries... cutpurses everywhere. Ahi-a, here we are."

They reached the bar, a solid plank structure fitted like a ship's bulwark, the outer rail scarred and pitted and worn greasy-smooth by hands and bellies. Shkai'ra whistled piercingly between thumb and forefinger, pointed, waved a coin, a F'talezonian halfClaw. The expressionless Rand woman behind the counter turned and shouted orders in sing-song, reached and poured. A tall wooden stein of beer appeared for him, the same for Shkai'ra with a small tumbler of clear yellowish liquid. Then a tray: two cheap ceramic bowls, full of steamed wheat grains and grilled lamb and fish with a brown sauce full of chilies; two pipes also, with an ember in a clay stand and a container of shredded leaves and stems.

"To Death," Shkai'ra said, raising the tumbler to her lips. She took a slow mouthful, then swallowed suddenly. Her eyes closed, and she blew out with satisfaction, following it with a draught of the beer.

Sova tapped on the door, balancing the wooden tray with one hand. "Enter!" Megan snapped. Sova started, the tray tipped and she grabbed for the saltcellar just before it slid off. She steadied everything, tip of her tongue between her teeth, hoped the lid on the borscht hadn't slipped, opened the door and Ten-Knife strolled imperiously in with her, right between her feet.

It had been cleaned up since yesterday, the floorboards scrubbed, the scars in the wood filled and sanded and oiled. The window had been replaced with rose-colored glass, the hand-sized, diamond-shaped panes set in strips of brass. The oil lamp was lit, but turned low and Sova couldn't see into the shadowy corner of the bed.Ten-Knife batted at a missed feather, sauntered toward the bed then changed direction, folding his greying paws under his chest beneath the dry-sink. Sova stood for a moment, then put the tray on the table, clearing her throat. "Umm. Piatr made your favorite."

"Thank him for me." Megan's voice was calm, flat, dull. The Thane girl shifted from foot to foot, looked at the floor, at the ceiling, at the cupboards, at the tray. What do I say? She said ...

when she was nice to me, what did she say that made me feel better?

"Umm. Care for some company?" She almost felt the second look Megan must have given her. There was a brittle sort of laugh, a rustle and the Captain slid out of the dark, blinking. Her hair was loose, the first time Sova had seen all of it. It hung to below her knees. She looked Sova up and down and her eyes glittered as if there were tears there, but none showed on her cheeks. Maybe she'd feel better if she cried, like me, Sova thought.

"I'll eat. You don't have to baby-sit me."

"Oh, I wouldn't do that! You're no baby." Sova settled down on her khyd-hirds chest as Megan pulled the chair out and uncovered the tray. "Umm. Francosz isn't here tonight and I sort of need to do my next reading lesson, could you show me?"

Megan looked up from where she was shredding a slice of bread into a pile of crumbs. Sova squirmed a little. It sounds so ... fake.

Maybe she's seeing that Shkai'ra told me to ask her. She looks...

I don't know how she looks. I've never seen anybody look like that, except when Mama sold Malae.

"Right." Megan pushed the tray away. "Get your waxboard."

She unslung an ornamental blue-green ceramic bottle from its niche in the wall and poured a thimble-glass full of green liquid.

Saekrberk, Sova thought, leaving the door swinging behind her.

I know what that looks like. "Korukai." Megan toasted the air and drank it in a gulp, then poured herself another, left it standing on the table. It was still there when Sova scampered back into the cabin.Francosz finished the last of his beer as they sat by the dice table and fanned his tongue. That sauce had been good, but it was hot. He positioned himself to Shkai'ra's left and sank down on the low padded bench, with the extra softness of his folded cloak beneath, looking around the circle of gamesters. Sweat glistened on their foreheads, but their features and hands were steady; piles of coin, rings, chains, jewelry sat before their places. What had Shkai'ra said? Ah: Look where they wear their knives. If they're sitting on the sheaths with the hilts next their right hands, walk out. If the blades are standing point-up in the table, run. Here the blades stayed on the belts; it was the eyes that stabbed.

"More?" The voice spoke in his ear. He jumped, turned his head and found himself staring down the serving girl's tunic as she bent to speak to him. It was half-unlaced, and the breasts within were unbound; full, pear-shaped, dark-nippled. His tongue locked, and he gasped after breath. She leaned forward, and the rounded softness pressed into his shoulder, he could feel the nipples through the thin fabric of their shirts. Lines of heat and sweet, thrilling chill stabbed down from the spot to his groin, and the passage of his throat closed completely.

"Ngggghhh," he choked, and forced his eyes up to her face.

She was young, only a few years older than he; half-Rand, moon-faced and plumply pretty. Her eyelids drooped, and she moistened her lower lip.

"More beer, young sir?" she said again. He could feel her breath on his cheek, warm and smelling of the mint leaves she had chewed; her body gave off warm scents of sweat and floral scent.

"Aggghk," he grunted, and nodded frantically at his stein. She raised the pitcher and leaned forward further, pressing herself harder against him as she poured. He raised the wooden mug without moving his eyes, hand wobbling and cool tingling wet sopping down his wrist. Took a mouthful and tried to swallow, coughed and blew foam out his nose.

Shkai'ra glanced back and gave a shout of laughter, nudging her mug close. "Me too: just the beer." The barmaid complied,pouring for the Kommanza and then helpfully offering her apron for Francosz to wipe his face.

"Here," Shkai'ra said, tossing a coin that flashed unnoticed silver past the boy's head. The maid's free hand plucked it out of the air with the quick motion of a trout rising to a fly and slipped it into her pants pocket.

"More later, come back for our refills," the Kommanza shouted, her clear husky voice cutting through the crowd's roar.

Over Francosz's head she winked broadly at the girl and jerked her head downward at the boy. The girl fluttered lashes, rising and turning in a way that accidentally brushed the surface of her bodice across his lips. Francosz twisted his head to follow her swaying retreat, the full buttocks twisting against each other in the tight cotton knee-breeches.

Shkai'ra thumped him on the back to help the last cough.

"Breathe, boy, breathe, you're turning purple and the night is young!" She cut a nick of resin from the small cube, warmed it and put it in the pipe, handed it to him with a match. "Here, calm down. Breathe, I said. Light this and draw on it, then a swig of beer; hold the smoke in your lungs."

Franc fumbled with the clay pipe, struck the match and puffed as he'd seen her do, trying to look as if he'd done it thousands of times before. The smoke coiled at the back of his throat and burned. He gulped, coughed, choked, and Shkai'ra pounded on his back again, absently, her mind on the dice. "Are you trying to kill yourself? Inhale it, don't swallow it!"

He tried again and this time managed to inhale the pipeful of sweet herb smoke. His head was floating a little and it was as if the smoke detached his mind from his head completely. He exhaled like a dragon blowing a small cloud out of his mouth and soothed his throat with more ale. "Here." Shkai'ra handed him the brown cube. "Enjoy yourself, don't stray too far. The barmaid'll find you to refill you."

Francosz looked down at the pipe in his hand. Why am I moving so slowly? Who cares? I don't. Look at the blue haze twist as people move through it. That's funny. He saw thebarmaid passing behind another table; she turned and waved with the tips of her fingers. Francosz slid lower on the bench and took another puff; puff and sip, that was it. The lights... the lights are so interesting, he thought.

"... and the Great..." Sova stumbled over the word and stared at it for a bit. "Puh... Poh..."

"Ph is pronounced F," Megan said patiently. "F-ee-nix.

Phoenix." She ruffled Sova's hair. "Enough of that. Why don't you go see if Piatr has something for you to do?"

"He'll just have roots for me to peel or something." The Captain doesn't look as bad. I can help. "Can I stay with you a little longer?" Megan was locking the book and hanging it on its peg. She looked over her shoulder, surprised.

"All right." She came back to the table, looked at the cold remains of her untouched dinner and the glass of Saekrberk.

"Well. We've been left while everyone else goes to town. It doesn't mean we have to be dull here. You may have one glass of Saekrberk with me. We never celebrated your becoming a woman, why don't we do that?"

"Oh!" Sova blushed, then looked up with a shyly radiant smile. "You don't think it's, you know, dirty?"

Megan snorted and drained the last of her glass. "If it were dirty, half of all humans would be dirty." She refilled her own and one for Sova. "Like Arkans." She poured another and stared down into it.

Sova sniffed the glass and blinked. The smell goes right up inside your head. "Do I... do I say anything?"

"Oh, a toast. You can if you like." Megan refilled her own glass again, set the bottle down with a thump. "I toast the Goddess.

Or you can toast... Well, it's your womaning celebration. Here's to being a woman with all the pain and joy of bearing children."

They drank.Gothumml, I'm dying. My throat's on fire, I can't breathe.

I...I...Her breath came back with a wheeze and she tried to see through watering eyes.

"And here's to the goddess-damned bastards who hurt women, or try. May they... rot... in... Hal...ya." The sob came hard as if every tear were made of ice. Megan set the glass down with a chime as the stem broke and put her face in her hands.

She clenched her teeth and dried her face. "Tears are no good to anyone else. I'm going to get good and drunker than I am. Sova, off to bed with you. It's late."

"Six," Shkai'ra shouted happily. The others around the table had dropped out, sitting silent. That was the only silence in the tavern; the noise had peaked, a continuous thudding roar that echoed back from the solid stone of the walls.

The Kommanza reached out to rake in the final pile, chortling happily. There was a buzzing in her ears and the room was hazed; not enough to spoil the twist-the-gut tension of the dice, just enough to enhance it. She swallowed to break the smoke-dryness in her mouth and looked up to see the dark half-Lakan face of her last adversary taut with anger.

"I think," she said, nodding at the meager stack of coins and single necklace left before him, "that you're sacked and pillaged, my man. Empty, drained, out of a stake and out of the game."

She giggled, an odd sound from a woman her size.

"I think," the man grated in heavily accented trade-Zakos, "that you should stake me to another game. With fresh dice."

His sword hand clamped down on hers, quick and very strong.

"Oh, friend," she sighed, with a genuine smile. "This is perfect. So perfect." Shkai'ra blinked back moisture. It was perfect, after a day when every god with an orifice had shat on her head. Her left hand shot across, under the table, between the man's thighs.

And he's not even wearing a cup, she mused happily,clenching and twisting with all the strength of thick wrist and corded forearm. The slitted dark eyes flew open wide, bulging; the mans mouth opened, but no sound came out, only his tongue, waving like the feeding-frond of a deepsea fish. Shkai'ra rose and the man came with her, shuddering; the table tipped and spilled.

His grip on her wrist lost strength, turned to a feeble pawing.

She flicked the hand free, cocked a fist behind her right ear.

"Juuust hold still, friend... yes..."

The blow landed with a snapping twist, just as she released his testicles; the aquiline nose squashed flat with a satisfying crunch of cartilage and the man went over on his back, glazed eyes staring at the ceiling as slow red bubbles formed and popped around his nostrils.

Shkai'ra licked her knuckles. "Zaik smite me, not too drunk 'r smoked to judge it," she muttered soundlessly under the sudden increase of the tumult. Half a dozen were glaring at her, and others were turning; she could feel the focusing of their attention. She was not a regular here, and the crowd just might be chancy enough to mob a stranger...

She came to her feet with a handful of the scattered winnings, and shouted in a voice trained to carry over a battlefield, "