Amiel sat sobbing on one couch, and Mar&i was trying to comfort her. She calmed, and told me what had happened.

About five years ago, she and her husband had taken a couple, the Tansens, into their service.They'd been perfect in every way, so much so that Lord Kalvedon asked the couple to move into one of the cottages on their estate. The couple had performed almost every service for the family, from groundskeeping to shopping to simply keeping their masters company. They'd had two children, "babes like I'd want," Amiel said, "if I ever wanted children. Beautiful little ones." The woman had been supposed to go with Amiel that morning to visit her milliner. But she had not come up to the Kalvedans'

mansion when she was supposed to, and so Amiel went to see what was the matter.

"I thought maybe one of their children was feeling poorly, and I'd tell her to forget it. I'm a big girl, and could buy ribbons by myself."

The cottage door was unlocked, and Amiel pushed it open, then screamed.

Sprawled on the floor was the woman, and beside her one of the children. In another room lay her husband. All three of then were dead, strangled with a yellow silk cord.

"But that wasn't the worst," Amiel said, and started crying again. "I went into the little room they used as a nursery. The baby... she was dead too. Killed like the others!

"What kind of a monster could do something like that?"

I knew what sort. Tovieti. So the yellow cord was now more in Nicias than whispers and a bauble worn by a foolish rich woman.

But what did this have to do with me? Hadn't she reported it to the wardens?

She had, but it seemed as if they didn't care. Either that, she went on, or else they were afraid.

"Probably."

"More than that," Amiel went on, thinking aloud. "They acted like... like this was just some sort of horrible routine. I know the Tansens weren't rich like I am... but they were my friends!"

"What should she do?" Maran asked. "I called you because my husband said something once, back when you and the seer were testifying before the Rule of Ten, that you'd encountered a cult of stranglers in the Border States that the councilors closed the room to hear about."

I said I didn't think I could discuss that, but that there had been some truth to what her husband had heard. I knew of these people, and how dangerous they were.

"If they came into our estate, past the guards, over the walls without anyone crying the alarm... they could come back," Amiel said. "Do they want me? Do they want my husband next? What should I do?"

Privately I thought that if the Tovieti wanted you, you would probably not be safe in the middle of an army camp. Instead, I said mat they kept apartments in town, did they not? They should move into them this very night. As for being secure, I suddenly remembered a man, no, four men, very unlikely to be Thak's stranglers.

"Write the address down," I told her. "I shall have tins man call on you this evening. Pay him well, he and any a.s.sociates he brings, and obey his orders exactly. You can trust him, even though he looks a bit disreputable. He's held my own life in his hands. "His name is Yonge."

I finished telling my story about the slaughter of Amiel's servants, and how the wardens treated it as commonplace, and was silent. Tenedos made no response, but turned to the young warden.

"Kutulu?"

"Routine is exactly what it is," he said. "There have been four hundred and sixteen such murders within our jurisdiction within the last two months. Rich, poor, it does not seem to matter. Sometimes the place is looted, sometimes not. It seems that the murderers' campaign is less for gold than to create chaos and dread."

"Yet there's no outcry," I said.

"We are doing our very best to keep the matter hushed," Kutulu said.

"Why?" Tenedos asked.

"Those are the specific orders of the Rule of Ten."

"What the h.e.l.ls good does that do?" I said angrily. "Ignoring it won't make them go away. What the h.e.l.ls will it take- Thak dancing on their G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned skulls?"

"Thak?" Kutulu looked puzzled. Evidently the Rule of Ten didn't even trust their lawmen with all the facts.

Tenedos looked at me.

"Go ahead, Damastes. We can't follow the Rule of Ten's orders anymore. The times are far more perilous than any of them... and perhaps we, as well... realize. Tell him everything."

The next evening, I was riding to meet Maran when I saw a rider coming toward me. I recognized him before he saw me, and pulled Lucan behind a high-piled produce cart.

It was Elias Malebranche. He wore a hooded cloak, the hood pulled back. He rode close, but didn't recognize me, since I'd slipped from the saddle and was pretending to examine one of Lucan's hooves.

As he pa.s.sed I chanced a look, and saw, above his beard and burying itself into it, the savage redness of a half-healed scar. I'd marked him well.

I wondered where Malebranche was going. We were in a shabby section of Nicias, a route I habitually took to make sure I had no followers. I wondered what devious business he had in this district As much as I wanted to see Maran, I knew what my duty must be, remounted, and rode after the Kallian. Of course there'd been several times we'd not been able to meet-the price of a clandestine affair. We'd even developed a device for such an eventuality, and" would" meet in the same place the following night unless advised otherwise.

His route twisted and turned, but eventually led to the river. We were almost to the ocean docks, as bad a part of the city as existed. I loosened my sword in its sheath, and my eyes darted around the shadows.

The cobbles were loose, and I had to walk Lucan, afraid of making a noise.

Malebranche turned his horse down a narrow alley, I counted fifteen, then went after him.

I could see clearly down the narrow way all the way to the water. But there was no sign whatsoever of the landgrave.

I rode all the way down and out onto the pier at the foot of the hill and back, but the Kallian had completely vanished. I looked for hidden pa.s.sageways that would permit a horse to enter, but saw none.

There was nothing but solid brick and then the dark water.

I was a failure as a spy. I looked up at the rising moon, and my disappointment fell away. I still had more than enough time to meet Mar n.

I held Mar&n's ankles stretched apart as we drove together, her body curled up, lifting from the bed, feeling the power of that great warm avalanche growing inside me. She moaned, pulled at me, and I released her legs and lowered myself onto her, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flattened against my chest as her heels pushed against my b.u.t.tocks, forcing me deeper and deeper into her.

My breath rasped as her body shuddered, shuddered again.

I opened my eyes and looked down into hers, staring at me, staring beyond me, her wet mouth gasping for air, head thrown back in sweet agony.

"Damastes, oh G.o.ds, Damastes," she groaned as her hips thrust, "I... I..."

"Say it," I said. "Say it!"

"I... oh G.o.ds, I love you! I love you!"

"And... and I love you," I said, the truth as naked as our sweating bodies as the stars exploded in our roaring cry of ecstasy.

Now there could be no turning back.

*"Interesting," Kutulu mused. "Something I did not know about the good landgrave."

"So you keep track of him as well?"

"Of course. I keep track of everyone that I... or the Seer Tenedos... thinks worthy of concern."

"But what," I said, trying a small jest, seeing if there was anything in this precise little man resembling humanity, "do you do for pleasure?"

"Why," Kutulu said, "that is my pleasure." He made a note on a small yellow card. His shambles of an office was already filled with a thousand of them.

"I'll let you know what your friend is about. a.s.suming, of course, Tenedos approves."

At first the city looked as it always had at dawn, but then, as the sun's rays struck it, I saw it was terribly different. Now each building, each cobblestone, and-most horrible-each tree sent the sun's reflection flashing back, and I realized the city had changed, had become a monstrous crystal, where nothing human could live.

But then I saw movement in the streets, and there were people, but they, too, had transformed, and the sun sent its rays bouncing from them into my eyes.

Each of them, man, woman, child, carried something stretched between his hands, and when I peered more closely I saw they all carried yellow silk cords. As I saw them, they saw me.

At that moment, the lake in the center ofHyder Park boiled, and up from it rose Thak!

He saw what his people were looking at, and raised his head and "saw" me. The air shrilled as when a wet finger is rubbed around the rim of a crystal winegla.s.s, but far louder, and I saw the crystal trees shake and the city itself tremble.

Thak took a giant step and another, coming toward me, and his arms lifted.

I woke, shaking. I don't dream very often, and when I do, it's almost never unpleasant.

I had to light a lamp, get out of bed, and go look out, across the deserted barracks square for almost an hour, composing myself, before sleep came back.

I knew this dream was more than a dream.

Thak was in Nicias.

And he remembered me.

"Your Kallian is not behaving as a diplomat should," Kutu-lu said. "He has business with people, and in places, no proper envoy should."

"Have him sent home," I suggested. "Or, better yet, seized and tried as a traitor."

"Ah, but then he would be replaced by someone who we didn't know, and I'd have to start all over again trying to identify Charin Sher's new agent.

"The practice is for us to let him run his course and then we'll take appropriate action at the appropriate time." Kutulu frowned. "That's a.s.suming, of course, my superiors will listen to me, and the Rule of Ten will listen tothem."

"So that is the way of police work," I mused. "I'd never be suited for it"

"Of course not," Kutulu said. "Until you learn that no man does what he does for the reasons he says he is doing it, and men find there's frequently yet another,real motive behind even his most closely held beliefs... you'd best remain a soldier."

I looked closely at the small man to see if he was attempting a jest, but he was perfectly serious.

"At any rate, I've discovered where Landgrave Male-branche goes when he visits the docks," Kutulu went on, "although I haven't yet followed him all the way to his lair.

"I plan to do so this evening, since he's not that devious a person, and holds to far too close a schedule.

Tsk. He should know better.

"Would you wish to accompany me?"

"I'd like nothing better," I said. "But won't I stand out?"

"Not by the time I finish with you," Kutulu said, and that was how I learned a bit about disguise.

First was finding me the proper clothes. Kutulu sent for a subordinate, and gave him orders. In a few minutes the man returned with a rather soiled uniform from one of the lesser infantry regiments.

"Since you are stamped a soldier, a soldier you'll remain. But not an officer. No more than ... oh, a sergeant. The best mask is a partial one, Captain. No one would ever think a captain would appear as a warrant."

" 'Damastes' from my friends sounds better to my ears than 'Captain.'"

Kutulu looked uncomfortable. "Very well. Damastes. Next, we need to alter the way you walk. Man remembers man in strange ways, by his walk, speech, even smell, as much as appearance, but he is never aware of that. So someone will look at you, the sergeant, but somehow 'know' it isn't Damastes the Fair."

I grinned at that last "Do you know everything?"

Kutulu sighed. "No, and there'll never be time enough to learn it Worse, I won't even be able to learn what I should be learning.

"We'll further fool your friends," he said, rummaging in a drawer. "Here. Stick this on your nose with some plaster you'll find over there, under that skull with the ax blade in it."

He'd given me a beautifully realistic duplicate of a boil. I stuck it into place, looked in a hand gla.s.s he gave me, and shuddered. Kutulu examined it and nodded approval. "Anyone who sees your face will see Man with Terrible Boil, and be completely unable to distinguish or remember the rest of your features.

"Now for the final touch." He picked up a spray bottle, and misted its contents over me. I curled my nostrils-now I smelled like a soldier who'd not been bathed in a month.

"A dirty, smelly warrant from a line unit who's probably in trouble with his superiors," Kutulu approved.

"Exactly what we want. Just the sort who'd be skulking around the docks looking for trouble. And with your size, they'll never notice the small mouse who's creeping beside you."

So I was going to be Kutulu's "ap.r.o.n." I grinned, then remembered my dream of Thak.

"We may need more than physical disguise," I said. "I'll bet there'll be magic about."

"Probably not a concern," Kutulu said. "Wizards are as p.r.o.ne to let their eyes fool them as any common man. However ... I take your point. I think we'll drop by the Seer Tene-dos and see if he can't provide a bit of a foggy counterspell. There is no gain in being overconfident.

"Now, for arms," he said, "although if we need to use much force it's likely we're doomed." "I have my sword."

"Where we are going will not call for gentlemen's tools, but those of a footpad or worse. Can you use a knife?" ' can."

"Here." He pa.s.sed me a flat-handled blade in a sheath. "Strap this to your forearm. You can shave with it-I had it sharpened this morning. What else? Ah. It's chilly down by the water, so no one will question these."