The rocket's propellant charge burned out. The flame died, only to be replaced a few seconds later, a few degrees higher in the sky, by a bright green flash that expanded into a globe of fiery points, and then was gone.

Jason climbed back up, donning his damp leather gloves so he could pull the launching rod out of the soil. Heated by the flames of the signal rocket, it hissed against the gloves.

By the time he made his way back to the road, the others were saddled up. Bren Adahan had finished nailing a piece of parchment to the tree. They'd thought of using paper, but the parchment ought to wear better.

They'd thought about the date, too. With the increasing popularity of English numbering over the Erendra addition-based notation, it was entirely possible that somebody might decode the date. So they'd spelled that out phonetically, and followed it with a short message in English, similar to other notes that they'd left in various places across Salket over the preceding tendays.

It read: Mother's health delicate; it's important that you abort this and reach Holtun-Bieme before word reaches her. We are heading into the Triple Hamlet; others waiting aboard a single-master, the Gazelle, at Tesors, until this Tenthday. Rendezvous, with Ellegon on Mipos, next Ninthday. Next rendezvous, with Ellegon, two tendays later, outside of Elleport.

Be there.

a"Jason

Jason tossed the launching rod into the back of the flatbed, and stripped off his gloves.

"Let's go," Bren Adahan said. "I want to be a good ways away from here before we make camp for the night." They'd be in the Triple Hamlet tomorrow, and see what could be found there. Apparently that was the only Slavers' Guildhall left on Salket; the others had been closed down.

If Karl Cullinane, Walter Slovotsky and Ahira were hunting slavers on Salket, they'd be hunting them there. If.

"You're too impatient, Baron," Jason said. The baron wasn't the only one who was too impatient. As Jason climbed into the saddle, his mare whinnied and took a prancing sideways step. He tightened the reins firmly, then patted her gently on the neck as she settled into a slow walk.

"You think they saw it?" Durine asked Jason.

Why was Durine asking him? What did Jason know? "I hope so," he said. "Even if we had another rocket, we wouldn't get any benefit from setting it off, not with that storm moving in. And I hope they're here, and if they're here, I hope . . . I just hope."

He shrugged it away, and gave another hitch to the reins.

The storm had long since broken when they rode into the Triple Hamlet of Kalifeld, Bredham, and New Runsek.

While lightning flashed across the sky and thunder crashed in his ears, cold rain clawed at Jason like an animal, icy fingers clutching at his face, his neck, his shoulders. Rivers of water ran down his back; he hunched forward, over the pistol under his tunic, trying to shield it with his body. He doubted that it was working, but maybe the rounds in his saddlebags were dry.

His trembling fingers, twisted tightly in the reins, were wrinkled from the wetness, and his jaw ached; the only way he could stop his teeth from chattering was to clamp his jaw tightly.

He was thoroughly cold and thoroughly miserable. But he couldn't complain. Bren Adahan and Durine, every bit as utterly water-logged as he was, didn't say a word. They just rode on, Durine stolidly ignoring the water that ran down his neck, Bren Adahan pulling his sodden cloak around him, a single hand emerging to handle the reins of the flatbed.

The road had been dirt; it was now a treacherous, clinging, stinking mud that clawed at the legs of their tired mounts, pulling the horses down.

Only the mules seemed unaffected. Despite the way the mud threatened to cover the iron-rimmed wheels up to the hubs, the mules simply put down their heads and trudged on miserably.

An oilskin tarpaulin covered their gear in the flatbed; Jason hoped that the water hadn't gotten to everything important, although he was sure that the rifles were soaked, and would have to be carefully dried and oiled when they stopped, lest they rust through their blueing.

Thankfully, at the crossing leading into the villages, the mud turned to cobblestones, and the horses' steps ceased to be a sullen, leaden plodding. Their hooves, cleaned somewhat as they walked through the pools and rivulets and streams that coursed over the cobblestones, actually resembled hooves now, instead of muddy stumps.

But the rain intensified, almost blinding him.

"Ahead, there," Bren Adahan called over the crash of thunder, and, sure enough, Jason could see the sign of an inn ahead, a piece of hammered silver that waved in the wind, beckoning them. It looked like a silver mushroom.

Across the road and further along it, another tavern's sign, this one a mounted cow's head, seemed to nod at them. But the Silver Mushroom Inn was the closer, and that was where Bren Adahan got down from his horse, tying it to the hitching rack.

Jason and Durine were quickly at his side. The three of them walked up the steps, and on to the covered porch, out of the rain.

Jason had been fantasizing about getting out of the rain, but it didn't help much. He was still wet and shivering, and thoroughly miserable.

The thick door was closed. Durine lifted the heavy bra.s.s goathead knocker and slammed it down twice.

There was no answer, but warm light peeked out through the shuttered windows, and Jason fancied there was a distant whiff of hot soup in the air. He tried to dismiss it, but his mouth began to water.

The door swung partly open; a fat, red-bearded man stood there, wearing a pullover cotton tunic, blousy pantaloons and a grease-spattered ap.r.o.n. He eyed the three of them for a long moment before he spoke.

"There's no room at the Silver Mushroom," he said. "Try the Steer's Head, down the street."

Bren Adahan started to turn away.

Voices whispered inside. "There's three of them, but the big one's kind of fat. N' if one of them's a dwarf, it's the biggest f.u.c.king dwarf I ever saw."

"We'd best be sure. About all of them."

"Hold one moment." The innkeeper swung the door open and beckoned them in. "The lad is shivering. You should at least come in for a mug of hot wine," he said. "I wouldn't want you to think unkindly of the Mushroom."

They walked inside. The entryway of the inn was a conventional mud room, barely lit by an overhead lamp; boot sc.r.a.pers mounted on the floor to make a first pa.s.s at the mud, gra.s.s mats farther in to catch the remnants.

Jason was shivering; he stood on the stone floor, water running off him in rivulets. Bren Adahan, his finery a sodden mess, leaned against a wall, brushing his hands down his arms, trying to get some of the water off.

Only Durine seemed unmoved: he stood to one side, silently, indifferently, methodically sc.r.a.ping the mud off of his boots, looking more like a corpse fished out of the river than anything else.

Two men walked quickly through the inner door, one holding two pairs of steaming silver tankards; the other, a tall, slim blond man, held only his own tankard.

The first was almost a caricature of a guild slaver: he was a sullen, thick-jowled man, a crop tucked into the left side of his belt, a truncheon into the right, his bulging belly threatening to slop over both weapons.

The other, a small-boned man who stood half a head taller than Jason, smiled gently at Jason and Durine before turning his attention to Bren Adahan.

"My name is Laheran," he said, striking a pose. He was slim, and studiously elegant, from the silver pin stuck through the collar of his short cape, down to the polished, pointed toes of his boots. A light rapier hung from the left side of his waist, and while the scabbard was trimmed in silver and sh.e.l.l, the weapon's basket hilt was wound with simple cord and bra.s.s; it was a weapon that advertised itself as something that was to be used, not merely displayed.

Jason kept his hands away from the hilt of his sword as Laheran set his tankard down on a dressing table, then pa.s.sed out the steaming mugs of mulled wine.

"I th-thank you," Bren Adahan said, his teeth chattering. He stripped off his leather gloves to accept a mug of spiced wine, then started to raise the mug to his lips.

"No, Trader Hofna," Jason said. "Durine. Mix them, if you please."

Durine blankly accepted the mug from Laheran, then walked over to the table and picked up Laheran's, pouring wine from his tankard into the other's and then back. It was very quiet for a moment while Durine offered Laheran a tankard.

The slaver smiled as he accepted it, then drank. "Laheran wishes you luck," he said. "Although your precautions are excessive," he said, tilting his head to one side, as though idly considering the matter. "The guild doesn't drug or raid here."

"Durine wishes you luck," the big man said, "although I try to make my own. Perfunctory apologies," he said, "but Taren and I have been hired to guard the trader, here, and we do our job." He accepted the tankard from Laheran.

"So I see."

"Taren wishes you luck," Jason said, drinking.

"Why did you do that?" Bren Adahan hissed as soon as they were back outside, in the rain. "If you thought that the wine was drugged or poisoneda""

"I wouldn't have accepted it at all," Jason said. He hadn't been warned about that; the locals wouldn't let the slavers simply go around poisoning or drugging travelers at random. The time Uncle Chak had been tricked was a special case; he and some other mercenaries had been decoyed away from Pandathaway, off the trade routes, and then drugged, chained and sold. "I didn't want to seem to be too eager to please," he said. "They're already suspicious there; that would have raised their suspicions."

Durine's ma.s.sive head nodded slowly, heavily. "It was just the right move."

The three of them sat on the floor facing the fireplace, each with a steaming mug of tea next to him.

Jason reached up and felt at his hair; it was only slightly damp. He was finally getting dry. It would be good to be dry, if only for a short while.

Their room in the Steer's Head Inn was cold and drafty, the air smoky, the straw-ticked bedding musty and bedbug-ridden, but the fire was hot and so was the tea. It tasted mainly of sa.s.safras, Jason decided, although there were definitely overtones of ferique and cinnamon. Too much honey, though. Still, on a cold, wet night, who was going to complain about that?

The thing he liked best of all was the private bath off the room, the kettle-like tub elevated over an iron stove that vented to the outside. A hot bath would be wonderful.

It had once been a more elegant place, perhaps long ago. The oaken columns at all four corners of the room were carved to resemble towers of dwarves, each standing on the shoulders of the one beneath. Under the smoky residue that covered the walls, Jason could make out the outlines of ancient murals depicting deer frolicking in a woody glen.

The chill was relieved by a ma.s.sive fireplace on the wall opposite the gla.s.s-paned doors to the balcony; the fireplace was crammed full of blazing logs. To the right of the fireplace, their clothing, both what they'd been wearing and what had been in their bags, hung on a cast-iron drying rack. Jason could actually see wisps of steam rising from his sodden jerkin.

A blocky iron rested on a heating plate by the fireplace, and a heat-scarred oaken ironing board stood in front of a woven-gra.s.s kneeling mat, but none of them had used it, either to press the clothes or to finish drying them.

The clothes could wait. Their gear had all survived, but it was all soaking wet; it would be late evening before they'd be finished with it all.

Durine looked more silly than threatening as he sat on a floor cushion, the hair on his face, chest and belly sweaty from the fire, his skin reddened, a woolen blanket wrapped around his waist, his big smoothbore on his lap as he worked over it with a few handfuls of cotton batting and a mottled green bottle of olive oil. The latter was one of the nice things about Salket; olive groves stood all over the island, and there was always good oil, reasonably cheap.

Jason had finished oiling the second of his revolvers, and had it pretty much squared away. But the cartridges, spread out on the blanket like nuts fallen from a tree, were a problem. Water wasn't going to harm the lead bullet, or the bra.s.s casing, and the built-in igniters were sealed, too, but the powder itself was suspect.

Would it fire? Best to be sure.

He took a pair of pliers from the tool kit on the floor between him and Bren Adahan, and setting a round backwards in a quickloader for leverage, carefully pried the bullet out, then tipped the powder on the worn floor boards in front of him.

It didn't look a whole lot different from the usual Home powder, although it was finer. Just black dust, seemingly dry.

He took a spare flint from Bren Adahan's kit and, taking his now-oily bowie from the blanket where it rested, stroked the flint down the length of the knife. The bowie was awfully oily; it took three strokes to get a spark.

The powder flared into fire and smoke and then was gone, leaving behind only an acrid smell and a lot less smoke than Jason would have expected if he hadn't fired a few rounds at Home.

Bren Adahan and Durine were all eyes, but neither of them said anything. Everybody knew that the Engineer had given Jason some new pistols, but they'd been secret, up to now.

They were for his use. And his, if he still lived.

Jason shook his head. That didn't make sense, not now. The purpose of guns was to kill people who needed killing, not to be a Cullinane family secret. Both Durine and Bren Adahan were trustworthy, within their limits; Ellegon had sworn to that.

"You said my instincts were good when we braced the slavers," Jason said.

Durine nodded. "Yes. They were. Some of him has rubbed off on you."

That was arrant nonsense; Valeran had a lot more to do with how Jason turned out than Karl Cullinane did. But maybe the old soldier had taught Jason wella"before he'd fallen to the ground, the smooth wooden hilt of a throwing knife projecting from his eyesocket.

"Then they'd better be good now. I want to lend you these. If I don't come back, they're yours to use. Return them to the Engineer; he'll decide what to do with them." He checked to make sure that the cylinder was still empty before he clicked it into place, then dry-fired the gun half a dozen times, the barrel carefully pointed away from either of them. "They are operated like thisa""

"Excuse me?" Bren Adahan's brow furrowed. "You're giving us your guns?"

"I can't risk any gunshots, so I shouldn't take them with me." Jason shrugged.

"You don't mean to say that you're going out into the rain?" Bren Adahan shook his head. "To what end?"

"Think it through, Baron," Jason said. He was glad that Adahan had missed the obvious; it gave Jason a chance to lecture him. "Salket has been left conspicuously alone by this warrior and his men. Janea"and she knows her father better than anybody elsea"thinks Salket is next.

"So do the slavers; they've closed down their other houses on the island, leaving this one as the only target. This whole place smells of a trap within a trap. We ride into town, and the largest inn is completely taken over by slavers, who are advertising who they are, in case we missed it. Can't you smell a trap?

"And we've put them on guard, brought their alertness 'way up. You think they haven't noticed the signal rockets? Whether he's seen our notes or not, the rational thing for Father to do under the circ.u.mstances would be to give Salket a bye.

"Now, somebody real subtle would let them rot here forever, waiting. Let them spend tendays waiting here for an attack that'll never come.

"But Father's not that subtle. He's always figured that the right way to scare slavers is to kill them. He'll go for it. Somebody's got to see where the trap is."

"Walter Slovotsky is with him," Durine said. "He can do a better job of reconnoitering than you can."

Jason shook his head. "But not if he's not here yet. Tonight I've got a storm to hide in; tomorrow he won't." And Jason might not have too long to hide in the storm, at that. A storm that moved in fast could move out fast, too.

Durine nodded, rummaging through his gear for a moment before coming out with a long strip of black cloth. "You'd best blindfold yourself until you go; give your eyes a chance to adjust to the dark."

Jason nodded. "Good idea."

Bren Adahan shook his head. "You're going back out in that? To see if you can find where the traps are?"

No, Jason wanted to say. I'm seventeen years old, and I'm so f.u.c.king scared that it's all I can do to not s.h.i.t all over the floor. But the first time I ever faced real danger I ran away, and I can't ever let myself do that again. I've got to be Karl Cullinane's son, and that means that I do what's necessary, in cold blood, whether it's hacking a rebellious baron to death or putting my own a.s.s on the line.

His father was a legend. A legend was, above all, a lie. And Jason was the son of a legend. But maybe lies could become real, maybe you could twist the universe, bend it to shape, and make the lies real, if you could only keep your voice from shaking, your hand from trembling.

"Of course I am, Baron," he said, as he stood, drawing the damp, smelly, woolen blankets around him as though they were robes of state. "I am a Cullinane."

The baron didn't quite know how to take it, so Jason forced himself to meet his gaze until the baron looked away.

"I guess you are," Bren Adahan said.