"Oh, right." Tathrin covered his confusion by gathering up the ribbons and lace spread across his blanket.

"Master Wyess has no duties for us today. Will you be coming to the hangings?" Eclan grinned. "Or are those for one of last night's dancers? That red-headed beauty was smiling at you and you know what they say about Forest girls. The pick of those pretties should win you a feel of her frills. This isn't your birth festival, is it? Give yourself a proper treat if it is!"

"I was born in For-Winter, and these are for my sisters." Tathrin dragged his private chest out from under the bed and swept the fripperies into it. "No, I won't be at the hangings. I want to buy a book of maps."

Then he'd visit Aremil, to make up for leaving him alone last night while he enjoyed himself at the playhouse.

"We'll see a merry midwinter," Eclan mused as they walked down the stairs. "There's more than half the senior clerks born between the Autumn Equinox and the Solstice, and Master Wyess puts up a gold crown for every one of us celebrating at each festival." They reached the half-landing and continued down the next flight. "Anyway, that's three of us this time round, so we'll be drinking Master Wyess's health at the Star in the Thorn after the last villain swings and there'll be high-stakes rune games if that takes your fancy."

"Maybe," Tathrin temporised.

He had little enough coin he could afford to lose, and anyway, gambling for high or low stakes held no attraction for him. He'd grown up playing the usual childish rune games and when he'd begun fetching and carrying in his father's taproom, he'd seen how a single cast of three could throw gamblers into ecstasy or despair. One quiet evening he'd sat down with a set of the nine three-sided bone tokens and a slate and worked through some calculations.

The heavenly rune had the Sun, the Greater and the Lesser Moon on its three sides. All the rest were different, carved with three symbols taken from the traditional sets of four: plants, animals, earthly domains, instruments, winds and elements.

That was one of the first things Tathrin had wondered about. Granted, the Wolf, the Pine and the Mountain went together naturally enough. So did the Deer, the Oak and the Forest. But the Drum, the Calm and Earth? The Harp, the South Wind and Water? Who had decided which three symbols should share a rune, why and when? Who had decreed that two runes from every set of four should be weak and two should be strong? That the Sun should be strong while both Greater and Lesser Moon were weak?

Nine bones and each gambler threw three. Each rune had three faces, one landing flat on the table, one face showing an upright rune, the other with its rune upside down. Tathrin began calculating the likelihood of each symbol turning up. He added in the uncertainty of the heaven symbols, since those had no up or down. Then he took account of the occasions when a strong upright rune would override a weak one.

By the time he had filled the slate with sums, wiped it clean, filled it again, cleaned it and filled it a third time, he had concluded that turning to rune games in hopes of making a fortune was as much folly as using the rune bones for telling fortunes, as the Forest Folk were supposed to do.

His father, seeing Tathrin working steadily, had come over to find out what was fascinating his son. He'd been relieved to learn that the boy wasn't succumbing to the lure of the bones. Then he'd paid a thoughtful visit to the shrine of Misaen on the Losand Road. The second son of Lord Camador, who had inherited that particular priesthood tied to the family's lands, had once studied at Vanam and earned the university's seal of scholarship. He had agreed with Tathrin's father that the lad's aptitude for calculation deserved more challenges than running an inn could provide.

They reached the ground floor and Eclan clapped Tathrin on the shoulder. "I'll see you later," he said cheerfully, disappearing into one of the strongrooms.

Tathrin watched him go. The senior clerks spent a great deal of their leisure time together. His father had told him not to hold himself aloof. If he was going to make a success of this apprenticeship, he didn't want the other clerks thinking he scorned them for not being scholars. But if he was going to go drinking with Eclan and the rest, Tathrin wondered how he would visit Aremil as often as he might like without causing comment.

Emerging into the sunshine of the counting-house courtyard, he saw Master Gruit chatting to Wyess's wagonmaster.

"Good morning, Tathrin. Let's seal that deal on your father's wine." Gruit swept his mantle back, tucking his hands into his brown tunic's pockets.

Tathrin walked with him towards the gate. "I don't recall telling you anything about my father."

"Jerich Sayron, whose family has owned the Ring of Birches Inn on the Losand Road for five generations. The house has a sound reputation for good food and clean beds. It's a safe place to house goods, and they say any guard your father recommends can almost always be trusted." Gruit slid him a grin. "You satisfied the mentors of your scholarship inside two years when the talented sons of Vanam's rich and idle usually take three or four years to earn the university's seal ring. Your friend Master Aremil isn't the only one who can find things out."

Tathrin wasn't about to be flattered. "What do you want with me this morning?"

"I want you to meet a couple of people." Gruit lengthened his stride. "You may also care to know that no one is particularly interested in the pitiable Lord Aremil for whom you fetched and carried while you studied."

"Master Aremil," Tathrin corrected him. "He sees no merit in unearned titles."

Gruit waved an airy hand. "Quiet as a dormouse and twice as dull, apparently. There's some curiosity over what will become of his house when he dies, since he's hardly likely to have an heir of his own body. He has no testament of bequests deposited at Raeponin's shrine, so it's assumed it'll be a simple sale." He looked more sharply at Tathrin. "How robust is his health? If he sinks into a decline, someone might go looking for his relatives, in hopes of making a pre-emptive bid on the property. If he doesn't want his birth to be discovered, he should think on that."

"Drianon be thanked, he is usually quite well." Tathrin tried not to scowl. Master Gruit clearly had excellent sources of information.

"Though often in pain," Gruit observed. "What befell him? Childhood illness or accident?" The merchant took the road leading up the spreading flanks of the Grastan Hill, where the pig hunters had caused such chaos the evening before last.

Tathrin hesitated. Was this his tale to tell? Doing so would save Aremil the awkward task. He knew how much his friend disliked discussing his infirmity.

"His mother laboured in childbed so long that they were both despaired of. Though they survived, he remained a weakly baby. As the duchess did her duty and bore more children, it became apparent that Aremil was not learning to crawl or to use his hands like any other infant. Fortunately, before he could be condemned as an imbecile, he was babbling and then talking."

Gruit glanced at him. "His noble birth presumably saved him from being dumped in some shrine to Ostrin?"

"He lived secluded with his nurse in a remote manor house," Tathrin said briefly. "Never mentioned, to avoid embarrassing his lady mother, and to deny his noble father's enemies the opportunity of arguing that his firstborn's afflictions were proof of the gods' displeasure with Draximal." He grinned despite himself. "Only no one thought to tell Lyrlen her nurseling was supposed to waste quietly away and oblige everyone by dying. She cherished him and taught him to read and write."

"So Duke Secaris found he had a crippled scholar on his hands and decided Vanam was the best place for him." Gruit looked thoughtful. "My opinion of His Grace has gone up somewhat."

They passed the house front where Tathrin had been crushed by the crowd. At the top of the street, the angular facade of the shrine to Misaen dominated a square crowded with booths and stalls piled high with books, new and old. The weathered bronze figure of the smith-god looked sternly down, the sun in one hand, the hammer he"d used to make it in the other.

"Almanac, Master?" A huckster waved a smudgily printed booklet at him. "Know the turn of every season, in every city from Selerima to Toremal?"

Tathrin ignored him. The calendar bequeathed by the Old Tormalin Empire had always irritated him. Why did almanacs printed in different cities give different dates for the turn from season to season? Worse still, when the calendar slid out of phase with the sun's year, each city's priests decided for themselves where extra days would be added to summer or winter festivals. Since coming to Vanam and learning how simple calculations could avoid all such confusion, the outdated system infuriated him still more.

"Master Gruit, I need a book of maps." He wondered if he had enough money with him.

"Later." Gruit pushed through the crowd to a stall where a narrow-eyed merchant stood guard over gold-embossed books bound in gleaming leather.

"I'll take this." A tall woman in a crimson gown handed one to the merchant.

Her hair was dressed tight to her head in a style that did nothing to soften her severe features. Tathrin knew his sisters would condemn her dress as hopelessly outdated and he was surprised to see someone of his mother's generation out without a shawl for modesty's sake, never mind the cold wind coming up off the lake.

"Lady Derenna." Gruit tapped her familiarly on one shoulder.

A noblewoman. Which explained the Tormalin cut of her gown, for all that her accent was clearly Lescari. Though Tathrin would never have expected to see a noblewoman shopping without any attendants.

"Master Gruit, a moment." She turned back to the bookseller. "With the Kaddisoke Alchemy and that Aldabreshin treatise on higher calculus, I'll pay you fifteen silver marks."

Her manner reminded Tathrin of the inn's least welcome visitors. But nobility could hardly be turned away and his father always said arrogance didn't stick to the coin.

"Lescari silver?" The bookseller was sucking his teeth dubiously.

"Do I look like a lead merchant?" the woman asked acidly. "Caladhrian marks."

"Eighteen marks and you have a deal, my lady." The bookseller began wrapping the books in a ragged woollen cloth. "You're at the same address as before?"

She nodded. "I'll have the coin waiting for your man. Make sure you send me word as soon as any of those other titles come into your hands," she warned.

Tathrin wondered how she could spend such a sum with only the merest pretence at hard bargaining.

"Master Gruit, fair festival." Lady Derenna turned to grant him her full attention.

He smiled. "My lady, I have just received a consignment of fortified wines from Dusgate."

"Good." She accepted Gruit's courteous offer of his arm.

As she did so, the wind coming up from the lake ruffled the fall of lace at her elbow. Tathrin saw that her forearm was pitted and blotched with ugly white scars.

"Who is your young companion?" She turned intense dark eyes on him.

"Tathrin, Carluse-born but no friend to Duke Garnot." Gruit cleared a path through the crowd with his free hand. "A scholar of the university who hopes to see an equitable peace in Lescar for all ranks, from highest to lowest."

Tathrin made the best bow he could amid the crush of people and offered his ringed hand as proof.

"A scholar?" Lady Derenna ignored such ceremony. "Of what discipline? Under whom?"

"I studied mathematics, my lady," Tathrin said politely, "under Mentor Peirrose."

"A sound man," she allowed, "if too much inclined to relish theory over practical application."

"You know him?" Tathrin was surprised.

"Are you one of those who cannot conceive of female scholars?" she challenged. "Asserting that the highest intellectual calling a woman can hope for is merely playing the whetstone to sharpen superior male minds?"

"No, not at all," Tathrin assured her.

"You're a rational man?" Unmistakable meaning weighted her words.

"A rational thinker, my lady," he said carefully, "but no Rationalist."

"A wise answer." Gruit laughed. "Let's get some refreshment."

They had reached a space in front of the shrine where an alewife was dispensing her brew from barrels carried by a patient donkey.

"You may come to a fuller understanding of Rationalist philosophy in time." Lady Derenna regarded Tathrin. "My own interests are alchemical, as are my husband's. We work together as equals, agreeing that a finer understanding of natural philosophy must surely lead to a better life for all, from highest to lowest."

"Will I have the honour of meeting your lord?" Tathrin asked politely.

"No." Derenna accepted a coarse pottery tankard from Gruit and drank without concern for such unladylike behaviour. "Duke Moncan of Sharlac has decreed he cannot leave our residence. A detachment of His Grace's personal guard sees to it."

"Why?" Realising that was an impertinent question, Tathrin hastily drank his own ale.

"My husband spoke out against a decree that Duke Moncan announced to his noble vassals last Winter Solstice," Lady Derenna said crisply. "If anyone, of whatever rank, cannot pay their land dues over the course of this year, Duke Moncan will transfer title to the property in question to anyone who comes forward to pay those arrears."

"That's monstrous." Tathrin had often heard his father call the Duke of Sharlac "Jackal Moncan". It appeared the epithet was well deserved.

"Saedrin save those who don't have friends or family abroad to send them coin," Gruit said with a pointed glance at Tathrin.

"My husband wasn't the only one to speak out. Many born to higher rank are as eager as anyone else to see an equitable rule of law established across Lescar." Lady Derenna held Tathrin's gaze. "But Duke Moncan has been looking for an excuse to punish my husband ever since he failed to show sufficient grief at Lord Jaras's death."

Tathrin wondered if the duke ever spared a thought for all the other fathers' sons who'd died in that awful battle at Losand where the heir to Sharlac had been slain. "Can you not return home, my lady?"

"I could return, but I doubt I could leave again." Lady Derenna smiled thinly. "So I travel in hopes of persuading influential men and women to write to Jackal Moncan and protest his actions until he's shamed into freeing my husband and repealing the property decree."

"While Reniack stirs up the common folk for you." Gruit grinned at Tathrin. "Do you reckon Lescari lordlings will risk telling their duke all these things he doesn't want to hear if enough disgruntled peasants are hammering on their gates?"

"Hush!" Derenna looked around crossly. "If Duke Moncan learns I have any connection with that man, my husband will pay dearly for it."

"I won't say anything," Tathrin assured her. Anyway, the name Reniack meant nothing to him.

"Thank you." Derenna handed him her empty tankard as if he were still the pot-boy in his father's taproom. She looked up as the loud bell in the shrine's tower rang out the third hour of the day. "I must return to my lodgings. Gruit, I'll call on you later today to sample those wines. I'm sure my husband will welcome a cask."

Tathrin watched her walk away. "Why did you want me to meet her?"

"To show you that not every Lescari noble is your enemy," said Gruit. "Come on, you should meet Reniack. Listen to what he has to say about the sufferings of the common folk of Lescar before you beggar them further." He went to give the alewife back her crocks.

That noblewoman might not be his enemy, Tathrin thought, but she still treated him like a servant. That was no more welcome than Gruit ordering him around. All the same, he was curious about this man Reniack. He knew Aremil would want to know of someone who could stir up the common folk of Lescar. "Where are we going?"

"The temple of Saedrin." The wine merchant turned with a slight frown. "Come on, lad."

Tathrin slowed. "I've no wish to see men hanged."

After the battle at Losand where Lord Jaras had been slain, the mercenaries who'd fought for Sharlac had turned brigand. Duke Garnot had sent the warband he'd paid to defend Carluse after them. Every last bandit had been hanged in chains along the high road.

"They won't start decorating the gallows till noon." Gruit began walking.

Tathrin followed reluctantly, promising himself he'd be long gone by then. He tried not to think about the two thieves who'd choked and writhed and soiled themselves as they swung from the gibbet by his father's inn. They'd been no older than he was, and he'd overheard his father telling his sister's husband that the duke's mercenaries had raped the girl before they strung her up.

It wasn't far to the temple to Saedrin up on the summit of the Grastan Hill, but the streets were choked with hawkers.

"Discover the secrets of Aldabreshin soothsaying." A girl with the dark skin of the distant southern islands tried to hand him a crudely carved circle of wood. "Read your future in the passage of the stars."

"A contest of dancing bears! In the Mercers' Market at noon tomorrow!" The burly man jangling a length of sturdy chain looked half-cousin to a bear himself with his bushy beard and long black hair.

"Come and see the two-faced pig! Two snouts, three eyes." A smaller man was approaching from the other direction. "A marvel of nature!"

The bear-ward rattled his chain violently. "Dancing bears, noon tomorrow in the Mercers' Market!" he roared.

"The two-faced pig and more freaks besides," the smaller man bellowed. "At the horse-market outside the Selerima Gate!"

"Dancing bears!" The bear man scowled ferociously and pulled the chain taut between his fists. "From the mountains of Gidesta!"

"A two-faced pig and a six-legged calf!" The pig's herald squared up to him, bold as a cockerel. "From the wildlands of Solura!"

The two men stood motionless in the middle of the street, gazes locked. Then the bear-ward threw back his head and laughed. The pig's herald grinned and offered the bigger man his hand. Relief rippled briefly through the crowd as people who'd slowed to see if there was going to be a fight began moving again. Tathrin wondered if the whole encounter had been deliberately planned.

"The wizards of Hadrumal keep you in ignorance while the dead can speak through those who can weave necromancy's spells!" A skinny man in a garish purple cloak shouted into the momentary lull. "The keys to Saedrin's door no longer lock away the secrets of the Otherworld!"

Tathrin saw a priest in yellow robes belted with an orange rope come out onto the steps of Saedrin's temple. He pointed the blasphemer out to three solidly built men also liveried in the god's colours.

"Want to know all the shields and blazons of Lescar's dukes and their vassals?"

Tathrin was about to brush the man aside when he saw Gruit accept the grubby sheet of paper.

The pamphleteer bowed to the merchant. "My congratulations on castigating the worthies of Vanam so eloquently, my friend."

He was a man of medium height and solid build, blunt-featured with brown hair and beard, both close-cropped and fading to grey. He wore a ragged blue doublet and grimy buff breeches, his lower legs bare and his shoes tied up with twine. Tathrin would have taken him for a beggar.

"If you can remember exactly what you said, I'll print it up." The man clapped Gruit on the shoulder. "It's time someone challenged Lescar's exiles to decide if they are sheep or goats."