We were sitting in the hallway outside a very splendid room hung in shades of azure and violet silk. That room always gave the impression of dusk, like twilight over a mountainside. We sat out in a sunlit embrasure, waiting for Marcus to be called for, and played knucklebones; Marcus didn't seem to know it was only a game for girls and was quite good at it.

A slightly built man with sleek black hair and fashionable clothes brushed softly past us on his way to the twilit room. Despite his finery, he moved like someone who knew how not to be noticed; he looked like a very stylish otter, swimming through the halls. So I looked hard at him, seeing the nice rings, the soft shoes, the very fine velvet and very wrinkled linen and the hair a little long, clearly tended to stay just that way. Hands that he held very still, even while he waited at the door to be admitted. I looked, and it occurred to me that I had seen him somewhere else, if only I could remember where.

"Who's that?" I whispered to Marcus.

"Who do you think?" When the young man had safely closed the door behind him, Marcus elaborated, "It's one of his fancy-boys. From Glinley's."

"Glinley's what?"

Marcus cleaned dirt from under his fingernail, saying casually, "Glinley's Establishment of Try-and-Guess.... Well, why would you know, a nice girl like you? It's the finest brothel in Riverside.

That fellow comes here once a week to pay a little visit. They won't be long." I stared at the door. "I like the way he looks harmless, don't you? But my dear, he is riddled with vice. He takes money for engaging in sexual congress with strangers. Are you shocked? Say you are shocked, Katie."

"Shut up, Marcus," I said automatically; but then, because I really did want to hear more, "Iam shocked, I guess. But not because of that. I don't think he's really a-one of those brothel people. He's a nobleman. I've seen him before."

"Re-eally? Where?"

His drawl made me giggle. "You can't imagine who you sound like."

"What do you mean?"

But I did not have to answer him, because the door opened and the young man stepped out, his linen a little less disheveled. His back to us, his hand on the doorframe, he bowed into the room and said one word: "Tremontaine."

Then I knew where I'd seen him.

I clutched Marcus's sleeve, but said nothing because the man was turning towards us as he closed the door. I lowered my head and busied myself picking up knucklebones so he would not see and recognize me. He had laughed at me at my friend Artemisia's, when I went to her for help. Maybe it was his faultshe'd never answered my letter. Maybe he was her brother, or one of her beaux. If so, she had no idea what he truly was.

It was Marcus who spoke up, bold as brass. In the duke's house, he feared nothing. "Do you need help, sir, finding the way out?"

"I know the way," he said mildly.

"Can I summon you a chair?"

The man's voice smiled. "I'll walk, thank you."

He turned down the hall away from us. As soon as he turned a corner,"What's his name?" I hissed in my friend's ear.

"I don't know it. Shall we ask the duke?"

"No!I'm going to follow him."

"You'rewhat? Why? Katie, whatever is the matter with you? Why are we whispering?"

"I'll tell you later."

I noted which corridor the man turned down, and left the house by another door where I could see him leave and catch his direction. Marcus was right behind me. I gave him aGo back! glare, but he just grinned.

Our man crossed the Bridge into the lower city. It was a warm day for winter and the city stank. But dipping and dodging the people and puddles behind the mysterious man sent me back to the stalks with the master, the green green fields and trees, the silver sky, the cool wind's breathing and the musky deer waiting. It was strange to be in both at the same time. We left the docks behind, heading for the newer part of the city. The wider streets, more light, more air, made it harder to stay in the shadows, but there were more people and distractions to hide amongst.

Our young man went quickly. He seemed used to walking, and he knew his route well. He never checked behind him, and he did not stop to look at anything or to shop. Marcus stayed just behind me, only sometimes reaching out a hand to caution when I started to move forward too fast. It was hard not to be distracted by the shops with their displays and tantalizing smells; here was a part of the city I'd never seen before, and I liked it very much. We seemed to be heading toward the Hill, though; perhaps he was leading us to his noble family's house, and then what? Maybe even back to Artemisia's...? But, no. He turned down a side street full of pretty little houses and gardens.

Marcus and I fell back on the quiet street, and sank into a doorway when our quarry stopped suddenly before a little gate. He had the key. We watched him slide it from inside his jacket, look up and down the street, then turn it in the lock, and slip like an afterthought through the gate and into the house.

We shot down an alley around the back. There was a garden wall, with a fruit tree limb hanging tantalizingly overhead. "Boost me up. I think I can-" But the tree branch wouldn't hold me, and I tumbled ingloriously back to earth, smudged with whitewash from the wall.

"You have to go over thetop, " Marcus said, uncharacteristically dancing with impatience. "Country girl,climbing trees. Anyone can see you've never tried to break into a house before."

"Don't come all Riverside with me," I growled. "You never have either, and I've skinned my palm." He produced a clean handkerchief. "Do you want to try again?"

"Not now," he said. "Maybe at night would be more..."

"Discreet?"

"Just so."

We noted the house, and started back downhill.

"That was fun," said Marcus, brushing whitewash off his knees. "Now are you going to tell me why we did it?"

"Marcus...do you remember that day, my first day on the Hill when you found me all lost and took me back home? I'd gone to see a girl I met at the duke's party, a girl my age who was there on a dare or something. When I went to visit her,that man was there, sitting in her day room. He said something nasty about Tremontaine House, I remember now."

"Did he? What a nerve. He's been coming there since last year, at least. And I don't see signs of him finding it especially nasty."

"Perhaps we ought to warn her. If he's a relative, or he's even courting her...don't you think she'd need to know he's doing this?"

"Living in a house near the Hill? It's not an outrage, that."

"First of all, we aren't sure he lives here, he's just got a key. Second, you know that's not what I meant.

If I were betrothed to someone who worked at Glinley's, I'd want to know it!"

He said, "Oh, I'm sure it won't come to that. Your uncle's weird, but he's not that weird." I ignored this. "Is your friend betrothed to him?"

"She'ssomething to him, or he wouldn't have been with her that day. Maybe he's her brother, I don't know. But I think it's important. You're sure," I demanded, "about Glinley's?"

"Oh, yes."

"But are you sure about what he does there? Maybe he just does-other business."

"There is no other business at Glinley's." Marcus was smug. "I'm sure."

"But why would he work there if he didn't have to?"

"Maybe he does have to. Or maybe he's just bored," Marcus said airily, sounding more like the duke than ever, "and too lazy to relieve it any other way."

"Lazy? You think that's lazy?" "Of course. Or he would take the trouble to learn something new. As we have. Everyone already knows how to copulate."

We had to be quiet while some people passed us: other servants, carrying baskets and looking harried.

"Well, why would he go all the way down to Riverside to do it?" I persisted.

"Glinley's," Marcus explained importantly, "is a very particular establishment. It is expensive, and caters to specialized tastes."

I did not know what he meant, but I wasn't going to tell him that. "Then I'm surprised the duke doesn't live there," I said tartly.

"He doesn't need to. He's part owner. Our man was bringing him his share of the take."

I drew breath hissing in between my teeth. "That's disgusting." We were passing into the part of the city with all the lovely shops in it. "Marcus," I said suddenly, "do you have any money on you?"

"A little. Why?"

"Could we go in somewhere and eat cakes? And drink chocolate?"

"We could."

"Well, I want to."

He said, "People are going to take you for an actress."

I looked down at my legs, encased in breeches and high boots. "As long as they let actresses drink chocolate, I don't mind."

We found a place called the Blue Parrot where they served us excellent cakes. When we'd eaten and drunk all we could afford, we went to the Ramble by the river and watched children running races with hobbyhorses. Then we were hungry again, and bought gingerbread with some coins I found in the bottom of my jacket pocket. We watched a trained dog jump through hoops, and heard a fiddler playing "Maiden's Fancy," and whistled it all the way home.

The duke met us on the stairs of the Riverside house. He looked sober and displeased. "Do you have any idea what time it is? No, I suppose you were off courting murder and mayhem, and couldn't be bothered to wonder whether any was occurring at home."

"We went out for gingerbread." I offered him the bag. He took a piece and ate it.

"Well, I've been calling all over for you," he said, licking powdered cinnamon off his fingers. "I can't find my-" For the first time, he looked fully at Marcus. "Why is there dirt on your knees?"

Marcus looked down. "I dropped my money. When we were buying the gingerbread. I had to pick it up."

"Oh? And did Lady Katherine drop hers, too?" My own breeches had a smear of whitewash from the wall we'd climbed, plus mud from where I fell. "I was helping."

"Nice try." The duke was smiling with the pleasure undoing a knotty problem gave him. "But a couple more questions, asked of you independently, and your whole story would unravel. You see-" he crouched down so he wasn't towering over us-"it's not street dirt, for one thing; it's whitewash and garden mud. Your palms are scratched. And this is Robertson gingerbread, with the cinnamon, and that is not sold on the street."

I felt at once very annoyed, and thrilled with the sort of challenge that a good swordfight gave me.

"Some boys knocked us down and ran off."

Amused, the duke's eyes glowed green deep behind his crinkled features. "The gingerbread bag was closed at the time? And where did they push you down?"

"On the West Bank," Marcus said, "by the river."

The duke unfolded himself back up to his full height. "It is very annoying, I know," he drawled, "to have to account for all your time to someone older than you are. Very annoying. But I take care to be an annoying person."

"I give you my word," I said earnestly, as I had heard my brothers do when they'd been caught out, "we didn't do anything-"

"Gingerbread," Marcus overrode me coolly. "Katie told you."

Tremontaine's hand flashed out and gripped his shoulder. The sudden movement had sent my hand to my swordhilt; I admired my friend's ability not to flinch. "Marcus," he said, "I had a visitor this afternoon.

You offered to fetch him a chair, and then you disappeared."

"He didn't want the chair. If you heard me asking, you heard what he said back."

"Katherine, please take your hand from your sword. It's a bad habit to get into; it makes people think you're about to start a fight."

I saw Marcus press his lips against the sharp grip on his shoulder. But I took my hand from my hilt; I did, indeed, know better than that.

"Do you know this man's name?"

"No," I said, and the duke lessened his grip on Marcus and turned to me.

"Then why did you follow him?"

I looked at Marcus; Marcus looked at me.

"You were seen," the duke said, "leaving the house after him."

I shrugged. "We lost him in the city."

"I'm going to ask you again. Why did you follow him?" I drew in my breath, opened my mouth to ask him the questions only he could answer-and then I shut it again. He had plenty of his own secrets already. This one was ours. "For a test," I said. "I'm learning to be a swordsman. This is part of it."

"Did Master Drake assign you this test?"

"No." I stared him in the eyes, telling him where I had learned it, and from whom.

The duke looked away. "Well, then," he said. "If you lost him so easily, you'd better practice harder.

Just not on my guests, that's all."

We started to turn away, but the duke's voice stopped us, hard and serious. "Understand this, both of you, about people who come to this house. Their business is my business. Their secrets are my secrets.

Stalk whom you like, but not my guests. Like just about everyone in the city but you, it seems, that man is not supposed to be here. It would go very ill for him if anyone outside this house learned of his presence here. Do you understand?"

Marcus looked down at the floor. "We're sorry." I nodded in agreement, looking penitent as a good niece should.

"Where's the rest of that gingerbread?" my uncle asked.

We shared it out, and then went down to the kitchen together looking for more cake. The pastry cook was creating little icing flowers to decorate something. The duke appropriated the flowers and bore them and us off to the library, where we saw the sun down playing a complicated gambling game using them as tokens, joined by a couple of resident scholars. Winners got to eat their own sweets; Marcus occasionally was sent down for more plates of flowers to keep the game going. No one wanted any supper-instead, the scholars started quizzing each other on points so obscure that the joking guesses Marcus and I threw out were sometimes right. Candles were lit. The duke scrambled up and down ladders fetching volumes to adjudicate between them.

The night went on, the candles burned down and we sent for more, and the kitchen started sending up jellies and syllabubs, along with cakes decorated with the little flowers. The duke's homely friend Flavia came in, looking for a book, but she refused to play. She picked a few flowers off the cakes, listened for a bit, and then said, "I didn't know it was possible to get drunk on sugar, but I think you've managed it,"

and went off grumbling. She may have been right, though. One moment I was screaming with laughter, and the next it was all I could do to keep from falling asleep on the window seat.

"The untroubled dreams of youth," one scholar said, and the duke asked me, "Where did you learn so much about the Battle of Pommerey?" and Marcus said, "Bedtime, Katie."

I felt faintly sick, and altogether happy. Before he shut the library door behind me, I got the chance to whisper to Marcus, "There's something going on! He doesn't want us to know. I'm going to find out-are you with me?"