Kagar stood very erect, with only a scathing glance for the humbled drover. "I beg you, kind merchant-I ask no payment but the repair to our good name."

"Free is a good price," Shou agreed. "Though you will need to be provided food and shelter." He passed a thoughtful frown from the Tashek youth to Master Den, who gave no sign what he should do about this most recent supplicant. "Very well," he finally decided, "but if you make me regret my decision, I will leave you behind-even if that means abandoning you in the desert."

The young groom bounced a little on the balls of his feet, suppressing a grin with great effort. "Yes, sir!" he said, and with a final bow made a dash for the stables.

Llesho would have liked to leave them both behind. He was glad they were abandoning Harlol, at least for the present, but wondered why the emperor hadn't discharged the man who had tried to kill him. At the moment, however, Shou had turned his wrath from the Tashek who had attacked him and was targeting it on Llesho instead.

"I am capable of protecting my own guests against upstart challengers," Shou informed him with the steel of a blade in his voice. Llesho heard the silent rebuke that would have broken their cover identities if spoken aloud. Others could have rescued Adar. He was too valuable to Thebin to risk in a plaza brawl.

Which was fine, because Llesho was just as angry right back. He had the advantage of the emperor, however, that he was right in their true identities as well as by the parts their disguises gave them.

"My good sir." He bowed, rigidly formal as one accustomed to parade manners might to a merchant-with no great respect but with attention to the forms. "Please remember that your life is worth more than the guards who are paid to protect you. Let us do our jobs, for our reputations if for nothing else."

Shou saw the fear in his eyes, not of combat, but of losing the emperor of Shan in a stupid street challenge. "He wasn't that good," he assured with a grin, but promised, "I'll take your advice in future." The crowd had dispersed, giving the merchant and his guard no more than passing interest. No one would have noticed the narrowing of Shou's eyes when he added for Llesho alone to hear, "If you had fought him, you would have died. I couldn't allow that."

Apparently the Tashek drover was that good.

"At some point you will have to trust me to live or die by my own skills," Llesho countered. He was right, they both knew it, but Shou's struggle to accept it churned in his eyes.

Llesho nodded to acknowledge the conflicting emotions the emperor revealed. "That's how I feel when you do something as stupid as answer a challenge to mortal combat from a hotheaded drover," he said. With a sharp salute that belied the heartfelt nature of their disagreement, he turned and walked away.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

HOW do you transport two deposed outlander princes through an uneasy empire and enemy territory, and into the heart of their captive nation? Llesho asked himself. How do you sneak past forces that would see those princes dead or captive at any cost? According to Emperor Shou, you made a public spectacle of yourself as a merchant with more self-importance than means, and added those princes to your already eccentric caravan. You identified three callow cadets as your only visible means of protection. Then you paraded said princes before a cheerfully mocking crowd who would never imagine the movers of empire could be so stupid.

The emperor had great skill as a tactician in battle, and he'd shown equal competence as a spy. Even the mortal gods favored Shou. From Shou's very throne SienMa, the goddess of war, guarded his empire. ChiChu, the trickster god, traveled at his side. Llesho had serious doubts about Shou the strategist, however. Only a trickster could love the current plan; Llesho had the uncomfortable feeling that he was walking around with one of Lady SienMa's archery targets on his back.

The plan had worked so far, of course. With his songs and hymns Shou had declared himself a practitioner of the Gansau religion, so no one had seemed particularly surprised when he accepted the drover's challenge in the sword dance ritual. Few among the Tashek themselves had the skill to recognize how expertly Shou had moved from prayer to combat form as he responded to HarloPs attack. The attack had been no accident, however. No simple drover working for a minor merchant would have such skills of mortal combat. Harlol had brought the subtle craft of a warrior and a spy to the contest, and whoever had paid the young groom to maim or murder Shou must now wonder how the emperor would react to the attempt on his life.

Their neighbors in the caravan readied their camels for the next stage of the journey with an equal, though less lethal, curiosity. What would the Guynmer merchant do next? Shou didn't leave them in doubt very long. With a nod of his head, he signaled Dognut, his dwarf musician, and began to sing. The lively hymn recounted the droll tale of the first Gansau Wastrel to bring the sword dance to the faithful of Guynmer. At the chorus, the wary caravanners joined in as if the hymn were a drinking song, their worry about a vendetta on the road set aside. It seemed natural that the party ahead of them should answer with the long and ribald chant about the exploits of the trickster god. Llesho sang along when a clash of Dognut's cymbals marked the chorus.

By the time they had reached the end of the tale, with a stolen fig and a Jinn named Pig in a tree pelting the trickster god with rotten fruit, the camels were bellowing their mournful counterpoint to the raucous drovers. Even the Harnishmen had entered into the laughter, though Llesho couldn't tell whether they joined the spirit of the song or jeered at the foolish Guynmer merchant at the heart of the singing.

The hundreds of li they traveled had shaken loose the tightly ordered structure of the caravan, however. Boundaries of ownership and hire bent to loyalties seen and unseen. Hmishi and Lling ranged up and down the line, a hundred camels linked nose to tail in gangs that told the numbers of each merchant's wealth: Shou's twelve, led by the Tashek, Kagar; the Harnishmen's twenty-five at the rear; fifteen between; and another fifty or so ahead that belonged to a rich merchant of Thousand Lakes Province. According to Hmishi, the Harnish-men at the rear rode with one eye ever looking behind them, but seemed more nervous than scheming. Perhaps they worried that the emperor would reconsider the mercy he had shown to the merchants who had not participated in Master Markko's raid on the imperial city, and that he might yet send soldiers to stop and kill them. Or, perhaps they awaited their own reinforcements before murdering their fellow caravanners. Hmishi couldn't tell Llesho which was more likely.

Llesho tried to stay alert, but the regular clang of the caravan bells and cries of the drovers, the warmth of the sun overhead, the smells of camels and leather, of spices and incense and horses of the caravan, all lulled him with the joyful memories of his early childhood. The land reminded him how far he was from home, however. As the days passed, the water-rich fertility of the Shan Province gave way to gently rolling downs furred over in tough, gray-green grasses.

"What do you think of your first caravan journey, young militiaman?" Dognut asked him from his superior position atop the camel Harlol had named Moonbeam.

"I thought we would be crossing desert," Llesho admitted.

"Not yet. We've come what? Three hundred li? No more, give or take a day. Even when we reach Durnhag, the seasons will disappoint you. In the winter, when the rains come, the grasses grow thick and green, and the whole floor of the Guynmer track is afire with flowers. It's still early in the dry season. As the days grow longer, however, the water will grow more scarce, until you will find little enough to sustain a caravan of this size. The grasses will shrink back, leaving nothing but scattered patches where hidden springs survive the summer underground.

"At the height of the dry season there is more life than meets the eye. Where there is water there are living creatures, hiding sensibly in their burrows through the heat of the day. The farther south we go, however, the shorter the water season, and the more violent and poisonous the life that survives there. Once we have passed Durnhag, take a care to your shoes and blankets!"

"Will we pass close to the Gansau Wastes?" Llesho asked, his gaze crossing the landscape that was not as barren as he had expected it to be.

"Not this trip." Dognut trilled a few notes and, satisfied, put the flute away with the others in its quiver. "The water has retreated into the depths and the oases have dried up by now. Even the Tashek will have moved on," he said with a sharp sweeping glance that took in the flat land to the east. "No one will return to the Waste until the monsoons come in the fall."

Llesho's gaze fixed on Kagar, who was swearing at the lead camel while he dragged at the creature's head with a thin but strong arm. In summer, the Tashek migrated into Harnish lands. Some years they fought, but mostly they pretended not to notice each other. He wondered what they were doing this year, and what it meant to the Harnishmen traveling in their caravan, the Tashek drovers riding at their side.

Near nightfall their guide called a halt at a small byway. No more than a well and a rough corral for the animals, it would serve while they awaited the rise of Great Moon Lun to go on. As they moved toward hotter, drier country, they would begin to take their rest by a different set of customs than the towns: in the heat of the day, and in the deep dark between the setting of the true sun and the rising of Lun. Since they would be moving on after just a few hours, they left the tents in their packs, but broke out the cook pots and the blankets.

While the rice for dinner simmered over a low fire, gossips passed among the parties offering their wares in trade for a cup and a story in return, or an opinion if the merchant had no tales in stock. It surprised Llesho that Hartal's attack upon the "Guynmer merchant" had caused very little concern. Most cup-gossip said that Har-lol had let the bravado of youth overcome him. In this version, the jovially bombastic Guynmer merchant had simply turned an inexpert display of the sword dance into a lesson from the drover's elder and social better. Few in the camp had given a moment of uneasy sleep to the Tashek grooms and drovers bedding down with their camels. Of course, the scoffers didn't know the true identity of the merchant in question. They couldn't move against the Tashek drovers or the Harnishmen they suspected of hiring the attack without exposing the emperor, however. Llesho was pretty sure that the senior militiaman in the employ of the Thousand Lakes party shared his concern. He pretended not to recognize the officer who had kept a sharp eye on the public room at the Moon and Star, and who always seemed to be nearby when trouble brewed. He'd bet this one twitched at the feel of Tashek eyes focused between his shoulder blades, though.

"I'm Captain Bor-ka-mar, released from the emperor's service and hired on, like yourselves, to provide safe passage for this caravan." The soldier squatted in front of Hmishi, addressing him as their leader, though he stole quick glances at Llesho out of the corner of his eye. Lling nudged up against Llesho's side, her hand on the knife at her belt, but left the next move to her companions.

"Well met, Captain." Hmishi clasped the captain's arm in friendship, accepting the charade that took the attention of strangers and enemies away from the prince traveling among them. In Shou's personal service as a captain of the Imperial Guard, Llesho guessed, and not released from that service at all, but he took the man's arm in his turn and waited for Lling to do the same before Bor-ka-mar explained his presence at their cook fire.

"This plodding pace is making my men lazy," he began. "We need a bit of exercise to keep us sharp. You three are welcome to join us if you've a mind. And who knows-you might even learn something." The man's grin revealed several levels of meaning in the statement. He meant by that not only hand-to-hand combat training and weapons craft, but the lay of loyalties in the camp, and the intelligence of Shou's military spies.

Llesho looked to his companions, who were waiting for his decision. "We might at that." He threw a pat of camel dung into the slow flame of their campfire, letting his own many meanings sink in.

Then he stood up, leaving the task of cooking a supper to the grooms and Master Den, who puttered about the camp on errands suitable to his disguise as a lowly servant. After only two days in his new identity, Llesho was taking the god's service for granted. He couldn't decide if he committed sacrilege against the trickster ChiChu or betrayal of his teacher's honored place in his heart. Master Den would call it spycraft, of course, but it still made Llesho uncomfortable.

Hmishi and Lling accompanied him with no questions. They took their positions with unthinking attention to his safety-Lling in front and to his left, with Hmishi following at his right like an honor guard.

"Your friends are telling your enemies which among you is of value." Bor-ka-mar slapped Hmishi on the back with a hearty laugh to mask his businesslike comment.

Lling took his meaning at once and flung an arm around Llesho's waist. Tucking herself in all along his side, she protected him with her body while giving the impression that she had more seductive plans on her mind. Hmishi scowled at the two of them.

"Better," Bor-ka-mar muttered under cover of a lewd grin. "Though it would have more effect if you would at least pretend to enjoy the lady's seduction, Llesho. You look more in need of rescue than a private place for love-play."

Llesho blushed a deep mahogany right to the roots of his dark hair, but flung his arm around Lling's shoulders as they walked. He'd have apologies to make later, he figured. Hmishi knew it was an act, but if things had worked out differently he'd have meant it enough to make apologies necessary.

Captain Bor-ka-mar led them to a bit of pasture land marked off as a makeshift exercise yard by half a dozen torches thrust into the red marl soil. Clumps of grass threatened to trip them up, but real battles seldom took place in an arena with sawdust underfoot. News of the practice had spread, and a small crowd had gathered to watch, ready to trade wagers and cheer on their champion of the moment. Llesho recognized the dress and countenance of several Harnishmen wandering the edges of the circle of flickering torchlight, but he let them slip to the back of his mind.

At the center of the exercise yard, two hands of guardsmen tried their hardest to look less experienced than they were. Their battle-ready postures, so much a habit that it must have become instinctive long ago, gave them away, at least to Llesho and his companions, who fell into the same stance as they waited to begin. He wondered if any of these men had fought in the battles against the magician, Master Markko, that had deviled his journeying since Pearl Island. Shou would have his head if he asked; knowing the emperor trusted these men with all their lives would have to be enough.

The captain separated the cadets and matched each with an older partner. He ignored the short spear Llesho carried on his back as if someone had warned him not to draw attention to it. Instead he tapped the sword at Llesho's side and motioned that he should take up a fighting stance against a battle-scarred veteran who gave him a wink as he hefted his own sword in a callused hand. Then the workout began. Bor-ka-mar called out the weapons formations, simple, basic skills that shook off the worst of the rust but would scarcely compete with a lesson from Master Jaks or Kaydu.

"You have a good arm, young cadet." Llesho's partner countered his move and returned a smart follow-through of his own.

"And you, good sir." Gliding around a clump of coarse grass, he pressed the fight with a quick jab that Master Jaks had taught him. The soldier deflected the point of his sword with no great skill apparent to the onlookers, but they both knew what it took to counter that move. Something about the man's style of fighting reminded Llesho of Madon, the gladiator who had died at the hands of his allies for the honor of a broken lord. The memory hurt too much to think about for long, though, and the fight gave him no time for brooding. There was a message in the pairings, however. Shou's guards assessed the skills of the young cadets and they, in turn, judged their safety in the hands of the soldiers they traveled with. These were Shou's picked troops, hidden in plain sight. That notion would offer more comfort, however, if the emperor hadn't taken on his own Tashek drover in a one-on-one sword battle. Much good his guards would do any of them if the emperor got himself killed maintaining his disguise.

When Captain Bor-ka-mar decided they had had enough, he called a halt to the exercises. The onlookers dispersed to settle their wagers, leaving the soldiers to straggle, gossiping, back to their cook fires. Someone had heard that Harnish camps were massing on the border that divided the Shan Empire from Harn, they said. Just gossip, but given the source Llesho figured they could take it as army intelligence. Rest did not come easy after that.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

ONE day was very like another on the trail: waking at false dawn to prayer forms and breakfast, slogging forward, li by slow li, until the caravan broke in the heat of the afternoon to rest and graze the animals. Then up with Great Moon Lun for weapons practice while the camp packed up, and on again until the moonlight failed them. Shou hadn't been the only merchant with musicians in his train, and the players came together by the light of the cook fires for a song or two before they all tumbled, exhausted, into their bedrolls.

The caravan had grown more tense since they had passed over the border into Guynm Province. Gossip and rumor swept through the caravan as regularly as the tides in Pearl Bay. If Harn wanted to take the capital city, their massing hordes would have to sweep through Guynm to do it. And the Huang caravan stood directly in their path. The audience for weapons practice grew as the caravanners sought reassurance over entertainment.

"Mind on what you're doing, boy!" Bor-ka-mar's commanding voice latched hold of Llesho's wandering attention and pulled him up sharply to discover his sword resting at Sento's throat.

"Easy as you go, there." Sento took a wary step back.

Shou's servant never tried to hide his military background and regularly took weapons practice with the soldiers on private contract. Those who gathered to watch weren't likely to notice, but he could hold his own against their best, one of two or three Llesho figured he wasn't likely to kill by accident. Looked like maybe he'd figured wrong.

"My apologies." Llesho dropped the point of his sword and bowed humbly, trying to mask his confusion. He'd let his mind drift and his sword arm had carried on without him, not a matter of skill but of battle experience. Muscle and bone continued to act long after the mind had grown too numbed and broken to rule them.

"Accepted." The man discreetly did not inquire where Llesho had picked up such reflexes, but handed him a water bottle to share along with the most recent intelligence. "Have you heard the tale told by the Harnish merchants?" he started in a bland voice that suggested nothing more than gossip. "They say that the Harn have an ally, a terrible magician who searches for his familiar, a small boy lost in the desert. Some add that the ground bursts into flame beneath his feet, others that it means death to look on him." He gave a shrug, as if not really believing the stories. As Shou's servant, of course, he knew full well who this unnamed menace was and so his next statement had more meanings than it seemed.

"Whatever lies behind the stories, it frightens the Harn among us as much as it frightens their neighbors."

So the Harn among them did not, on the surface, share an allegiance with Master Markko's followers. "There's always something behind stories like that," he agreed. Llesho knew it from his dreams, but Sento confirmed that those followers were still looking for him.

"Always," Sento warned him before leaving to find his own bivouac.

For Llesho, the stories confirmed what his dreams had told him: Master Markko was still out there. That the Harn of their caravan feared the magician didn't necessarily mean anything. The raiders who had invaded Thebin hadn't needed the magician to goad them into action; the promise of wealth without effort had been enough.

"What news?" Lling joined him, wiping the sweat of her own mock battle from her brow. Absently, she swung her sword in lazy circles with one hand while she reached for the water bottle and drank with the other. When she was done, she wiped her lips with the back of her wrist and handed the bottle off to Hmishi, who was still blowing like a bellows from his own practice.

"The Harn at the back of the caravan grumble at their position in line."

"So I hear," Hmishi confirmed when he had drunk his own fill.

Strolling easily through the resting caravan, they weighed how much trust to give anything the Harn said in the hearing of others. Lling had come to the conclusion they shared and voiced it: "They have their own reasons to be where they are. I think Bor-ka-mar expects they will attack before we reach Guynm."

"Are they working with the Tashek?" Hmishi asked. "That's what I'd like to know."

The tribesmen out of the Gansau Wastes were scattered throughout the caravan, which made Llesho wonder if they didn't plan some assault independent of the Harn. Harlol hadn't given Llesho any reason to trust the Tashek even before he attacked the emperor. Kagar, who had replaced his injured kinsman in Shou's service, hadn't pulled a sword on anybody-yet. He did his job with the grim determination of one who wished himself in other circumstances.

"It's like he had his own plans and Harlol made a mess of them." Llesho explained the feeling he had about the groom. "Now, he seems to be trying to work the situation he's stuck with."

"I don't trust him." Hmishi ran a thumb thoughtfully along the edge of his Thebin blade. "Don't know that I trust that dwarf fellow either."

Lling snickered at him. "You don't trust anyone who rides that close to Llesho."

Hmishi ducked his head, embarrassed to be that easily read but not at all ashamed of his devotion to his prince. Lling felt the same way: they would protect him with their lives, and even their reputations.

The easy camaraderie between his two companions reminded Llesho of the old days in the pearl beds, but then he'd been part of that bond. Now he was its purpose, but outside of it. That hurt, but it would hurt his friends more to let them see the ache in his heart. He left them with an easy joke to find the slit trench before he gave himself away.

Play some music, please, please, Dognut! I'm about to fall asleep in my saddle here." Dognut! I'm about to fall asleep in my saddle here."

Llesho adjusted his seat impatiently and pulled the desert veil over his eyes to filter the dust and the light. The climate had grown hotter and drier the farther south they traveled. And more boring: no trees, clumps of dusty grass so sparsely scattered that for a while he'd entertained himself by counting them. Nothing but brown dirt below a sky pale with dust. Caravan life, he had discovered, came with all the hardships of a military campaign, but with none of the basic terror. He didn't miss the fear, but would have welcomed anything, even Dognut's songs, to occupy his mind. The dwarf was sleeping, however, and answered Llesho's plea with a gargling snore before settling back into his cushions.

So wrapped up was he in the complaints he muttered under his breath that he almost missed the subtle shift in the gait of his horse. But he heard it, the clop of hooves against stone.

"Dognut! Wake up! We're there!"

"What? What?" The dwarf's head shot up on his fragile neck and he stared all around him for a minute before subsiding again into his chair. "I thought we were under attack!"

"We've arrived!" Llesho explained. "Beds and baths and fresh food!" They had finally reached the outskirts of Durnhag.

"Oh. Well, that's different." The dwarf sat up, observing their surroundings with sharp interest. Quickly, however, his excitement turned to nose-wrinkling dismay.

Llesho agreed with the silent judgment. He hadn't envisioned anything as opulent as the Imperial City of Shan. As the center of trade and governing for Guynm Province, however, Llesho figured Durnhag would be at least as grand as Farshore. He'd hoped for something more exotic as befit its place along the caravan route, but at the least had assumed they'd find a decent inn with good food and mattresses free of bed ticks. First impressions didn't promise even that much.

A jumble of mud houses and tin sheds settled drunk-enly against one another on either side of the road dusted with sand by the wagons that carried trade wares in and out of the city. As they passed, the inhabitants of the ramshackle dwellings ran after them, grabbing at their packs, stealing brass lanterns, tin pots, anything that they could snatch or cut from the pack strapping. "It's not what I expected," he muttered.

"I think Shou did, though." Dognut looked worried.

Before he could say anything more, a mother swathed in veils that covered her hair grabbed onto Llesho's stirrup with one hand. With the other she held up a starving baby for his inspection. "My baby!" Her dark eyes bled her despair as she cried to him, "Help for my baby!"

Llesho slipped her a copper coin and was instantly besieged by beggars who cried out in half a dozen languages for food, or money, or milk from the udders of their camel mares. Street toughs intercepted the mother and stole her coin before she could escape the crowd.

Here was the point of the story Master Den had told him at the beginning of their journey. The emperor would never allow something like this in the imperial city, and he didn't look pleased to find it in Guynmer. Shou grew quieter, more brooding as they neared Durnhag proper. He scarcely looked up when the camel drovers, screaming at their beasts and slashing with their camel goads, joined the soldiers to push back the beggars.

"There's going to be trouble." To emphasize his words, Dognut gave an eerie trill on a flute not much bigger than his hand. He didn't seem surprised when, passing a dark and ill-favored inn that marked a divide between the shantytown and the lowest accommodations the caravansary offered, Shou called a halt and pulled his party out of the caravan. Llesho wondered what the dwarf knew about this place that the rest of them didn't.

Captain Bor-ka-mar, forced to break his cover or leave Shou to the protection of three cadets, gave his emperor a sour glare. Shou offered him no encouragement, but signaled him to continue with the party his cadre had hired on to protect as a cover for their real mission. Bor-ka-mar seemed almost on the brink of mutiny, but the emperor silently turned his back, closing the subject.

Out of Shou's hearing, the captain's vocabulary demonstrated a knowledge of swearing both wide and deep, in languages rich in obscenity and in others Llesho would have sworn had no such terms at all. But the soldier followed orders. He nudged his horse into motion with his knees and followed the caravan as it moved away from the man that Bor-ka-mar, like all Shan's imperial guard had sworn on his life to protect. Llesho felt an overwhelming urge to call him back, but he kept his peace and followed the emperor. Shou had a plan. Again. Which comforted Llesho not at all. He discovered that his own unsavory vocabulary had developed depths he didn't know he had.

At the door to the disreputable inn, Master Den abandoned them as well. The trickster god gave Adar a little bow in keeping with the role he played as servant.

"If you'll lend me a guard, I'll check out the stables. We'll bring the travel packs back with us," he declared in a voice loud enough for the innkeeper to hear. Harlol hadn't caught up with them yet, but Kagar still warranted watching. Shou sent Hmishi and together they followed the Tashek groom back out into the dust.

Desperate to understand Shou's reckless action, Adar looked to Llesho for an explanation or an argument that they continue with the rest of the caravan to the city. Llesho didn't have one either; he shrugged, and entered the inn after Shou.

Inside the thick mud walls, the inn was dirty but surprisingly cool. A small fire burned in the huge hearth at one end of the rough-timbered dining hall, with a teakettle hanging over it by a metal arm. A tripod next to the kettle held a cauldron that bubbled like a potion and released odors almost as foul. Llesho hoped some medicine was cooking, but he had a bad feeling it was dinner. Not surprisingly, the room was nearly empty, so there were more than enough benches for their company to sit together at one of the long plank tables. Shou led them to a place in a corner, with a wall at his back and a window to the side. They could watch the street as well as the innkeeper from here. He nudged Llesho in first, and drew Lling after himself, lounging back against the wall while Adar helped Carina to a seat facing them and Dognut settled his bag of flutes at his feet.

A barkeep with no belly to speak of wiped his hands on a dingy gray rag and approached their table with the rag slung over his arm. Close-up, they could see that the corners of his mouth turned down almost to his chin in an expression that appeared sour by habit.

"What can I get for you, sir?" He addressed Shou with a quick knowing scan. He didn't need to recognize Shou to know what a modestly dressed Guynmer merchant would want with his establishment.

The emperor set a worn purse on the table. "Whatever you are serving this evening, for myself and my companions."

The barkeep barely stifled a sneer at the thinness of the purse, but motioned to a sooty young girl at the hearth to bring plates for the customers. Llesho had hoped against good sense that a real kitchen with roasting fowl and fresh bread hid behind the door in the rear. They would never find out with the purse Shou had offered, however. While the girl was dishing lumpy gray goo from the pot over the fire, the barkeep turned his attention back to his customers.

"We'll be staying the night," Shou said, "If you can meet our needs.

"I think we can manage that," the barkeep said with a smirk. "We have one room to let upstairs. The bed is sturdy and large enough to accommodate the gentleman and his pleasures, male or female."

Llesho doubted that the inn had anyone else staying the night. What money the beds brought in came from hourly rates, and he didn't even want to think about the condition of the blankets in a place like this.