CHAPTER 2 THE ROAD AND THE SKY

Brook led Varic out of the Parliament building and across Clarity Park. Brook strolled energetically, tipping his high hat to people who knew him and people who didn’t, flipping a silver plate to a ragged but competent juggler, who caught it, whirled it round her cascade of cloth beanbags, and vanished it away.

Varic said, “It is pleasant to see you in a good mood.”

“It’s pleasant to be in a good mood. And to be out of the charnel house of laws for a few days.” He looked straight at Varic. “And also to hear you express a pleasure.” He turned at once, stepped up on the low marble ring around a fountain, walked heel-and-toe halfway around it before hopping down with a thud and a suppressed groan. Varic took a few brisk steps to catch up.

“Thank you, kind sir,” Brook said as Varic drew close, “but my parents taught me never to speak to strangers, especially near a government building.” He looked past Varic, across the park. “Though if you’d take me to see that fellow over there, I might make an exception.”

Varic turned. Some distance away, a fingersmith was performing for a crowd of perhaps a dozen. Brightly colored silk scarves floated above him, and shiny bits of glass and metal flashed through the clear, still air. It was difficult to see the worker himself, but he seemed to be wearing a long robe of dark velvet, gilded with the skysign symbols. It was known in the South as the Sheath of Night, or the Starmantle, and several other exalted and portentous names. Among themselves the sleighters called it the Black Rag, and prized its power to blend into a shadow when a bailiff was too close behind.

“I want to see the miraclist,” Brook said with deliberate childishness. “Once one found a coin in my nose and the prettiest green marble in my ear.” With a mock pout, he added, “I suppose you’re going to tell me it was just a trick.”

“Where did you plan to have lunch?” Varic said very calmly. “I mustn’t miss my train.”

Brook touched Varic’s sleeve. “Yes, of course,” he said, his voice immediately adult again. “Just down this way; you know the spot.” They turned away and walked east.

Larkrise Street, on the park’s east edge, was clotted solid with holiday traffic. Varic and Brook wove between horses and high-spoked wheels. A delivery wagon dripped steadily as the ice cooling its cargo melted down; an ubicarriage was piled with luggage and packed with complaining passengers. The driver, safely outside the riders’ compartment, had the reins wrapped loosely around his wrist and was riffling intently through the Book.

Varic knew their destination now. He followed Brook down a dire-looking side street, dim and cutthroat-crooked, to a building just by an even narrower alley. The corner door was open. A lamp hung above it, curved glass petals, the deep blue of a winter sky, enclosing the mantle. A broad street-side window, gold-leafed in sweeping curves, showed only a few soft glows from within.

Brook stepped through the doorway, removing his hat. Varic followed.

It was dim inside, the high ceiling in almost total gloom; stained-glass table lamps made little puddles of brightness on table covers of heavy figured damask. Scents of tea and cinnamon drifted through the warm, still air. The whole space was L-shaped, tables and chairs in the larger space, a glass case of pastries in the smaller limb, which led to the kitchen.

A thin man, slightly taller than Varic, appeared from behind an ornately carved wooden screen. He wore a kitchen-stained white apron over a white shirt. “Brook, so pleased. And, Varic, good to see you. Lunch, I should hope?”

Brook said, “Good day, Linnet. Lunch, please. No cards. Surprise us.”

“Find a seat, then. I won’t be long.” Linnet gestured with both hands, inclined his head, and turned toward the kitchen. Fine blond hair trailed down his spine, almost to his waist; the queue was wrapped in net and white ribbon.

Two of the ten tables were occupied; a couple here, three there. Someone looked up briefly and smiled, but no one paid them serious attention. Brook sat down at a table right on the point between the main room and the case alcove; Varic adjusted his chair so that its back was to the wall and his view of the entrance was clear, and sat down.

There was a tall, narrow vase, holding four blue blossoms, in the center of the table. Varic shifted it to the edge.

Brook said, “There’s room. Or was that a symbolic gesture?”

“You will allow me my unromantic boredom with the idle symbols of romance,” Varic said without heat.

“Blue roses are rare and delicate.”

“Scarcity is relative, and delicacy’s a virtue of situations. In the North, they sprout and die with insane determination. The farmers who send them down here consider it money for weeds. Of course, they do take the money, and don’t expunge the weeds.”

“How long has it been since you were north, Varic? To Corvaric, I mean.”

“Six years … no, seven. It was just after the Bridges and Roads Act. You thought I should vacate for a while, remember? So I decided to see the old family crypt.”

“I had supposed you would visit Strange.”

“I value Strange’s hosting too much to abuse it.”

Brook protested with his look, but didn’t speak.

Varic said, “And I thought Agate might visit. I wasn’t in a fit state to see her.”

Brook said, very quietly, “Now I think you do abuse Strange’s hospitality, to assume he could not deal with that.”

“Brook, I am sorry.”

Brook shook his head, said, still quiet, “I cannot ask you not to speak of her. I regret few things in my life so much as the hurt I caused her.”

“Yet there is in Agate’s hurt none of grudge nor rancor, and your regret would bring her naught save grief.”

Brook said, “Is it my talk of the North or something else that puts the accent back into your voice?”

Linnet came out of the kitchen with a covered plate in each hand, a basket of bread caught in his left elbow. He set them on the table. “I think you’ll find these pleasant. Promise me this, though: my lord Brook, that you’ll taste it before salting it, and, my lord Varic, that you’ll taste it at all while you’re eating it too fast.”

They agreed to this, and Linnet took away the fogged glass covers. “I’ll have your tea in a moment.” He disappeared again toward the kitchen; Varic watched Brook watching him go.

Varic had been given thin strips of redfish, grilled and seasoned with herbs, on a nest of superfine noodles lightly coated with cream. Brook had an omelet with chicken; the chicken was almost as red as the redfish, and Varic could taste the pepper sauce from across the table. Brook sliced out a large piece and chewed it. Sweat appeared on his forehead. He smiled.

Varic said, “And you won’t eat smoked fish.”

“I appreciate the pungent, not the acrid. Oh, my.” He picked up his water goblet and drank off a third of it, followed by a piece of Linnet’s herb-and-cheese bread.

Linnet brought the tea, and a large crystal water pitcher to refill Brook’s glass. “Well?”

Brook said, “That warning about salt was a bit much, Linnet.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Very well, it wasn’t. And it is, of course, excellent.”

Linnet nodded and looked at Varic, who said, “Very good, thank you, Linnet. Isn’t it early in the season for redfish?”

“I thought you would know that. Those were brought in by an Alinsea trader. A steam-power ship, weeks ahead of the sail fleet. Now, have I told you something you did not know?”

“Yes,” Varic said, “thank you.”

Linnet bowed and went back to the kitchen.

Brook was holding his knife and fork delicately poised, in thumbs and forefingers, their points just pricking the omelet. His eyebrows were elevated, and his whiskers twitched like a curious rabbit’s.

“No, Brook,” Varic said, “I am not going to begin a discussion of engine-powered shipping. It is the holiday recess.”

Brook’s face relaxed and he returned to his lunch.

There was a small commotion at the street door. Varic turned as a plump little man came in. He held a brown leather portfolio tightly to his chest; his stare wandered urgently around the room. He took several uncertain steps toward Brook.

“Oh! My lord Parliamentarian—Leyva was good enough to say you might be here.”

“As indeed we are, Hawken.”

Hawken was short and slumped, broad and curiously proportioned, with a head and arms that appeared to belong to a much larger man. His feet seemed more of an impediment to than the means of walking.

He was the member in Commons for Mark Pinegirt, a town of moderate size but no great ambition; its Coronage was Black Vale, just southeast of and touching Varic’s own lands of Corvaric.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, milord Coron—”

“Nonsense, honored member,” Brook said. “Would you care to join us?”

“The redfish is very fine today,” Varic said, so that they were both welcoming him.

“Oh! I can’t. Truly. I’m supposed to be home for the ’Nocts, and there’s a three-twelve train—at any rate, I’ve only just acquired the Coal Exchange figures for Bowenshield, Deerleap, and Thunders, and the decline is—”

“Thank you, Hawken,” Brook said.

Oblivious, Hawken put the portfolio on the table, began to open it. “Page eight, lines sixteen through forty indicate a serious—”

“I shall pay the most careful attention to those lines, once I am in a better light for reading.”

Hawken finally got the idea. “Ah. Yes. Of course.” He shut the folder. “I am sure,” he said, loudly enough to bring Linnet out of the back, “that the figures will speak for themselves.” He shook Brook’s hand and nodded deeply to Varic, then bought a bag of popovers from Linnet and went out. Through the gilded window, Varic saw him pull one of the hot pastries out of the bag and wander off chewing contentedly.

Brook had tucked the portfolio under his chair, without any fuss. Now his expression was placid and amused.

Varic said, “Yes?”

Brook said, “Every time you see that dear little man, you look as if you wish you had a weapon to hand.”

“I’m sorry it’s so obvious.”

“Are you telling me you … mistrust him?”

“My ancestors spent considerable effort trying to conquer his ancestors, or at least kill them and pick up what their dead hands let drop. Blood melts down much time, North, Brook.”

“The Northern accent fascinates me. So softly spoken, for such hard people.”

Varic said, in an even heavier Northesse, “An thou taste on blood, drink deep, and cease not till the cup be dry. For it will surely sour and turn to poison.”

“Quercian,” Brook said. “Quercian survives most in Northesse and Westrene. The South had more contact with more of the world, because of the ocean, and its language diluted more completely with others. And the Empire never controlled the East.”

“Silvern’s told me of gravestones. ‘Beneath this monument lie the best of the Seventeenth Legion. This stone be their curse on these stony people.’ The Estra leave the markers alone, of course.”

“You are statesmanlike when you’re angry, Varic.”

“Am I angry?”

“The more dangerous a Northerner is feeling, the softer he speaks, and you were almost to a murmur. I’m sure you wanted to be at the rump session this morning. But it truly didn’t matter. And a few of the Lords Sorcerous had little suns in their eyes for you; they found out who their novices had been drinking with. Give them the recess to forget.”

“Or else lay this batch up to age with all the other grievances.”

“I see why you don’t trust Hawken.”

“I trust Hawken. I also think him capable of more than his appearance might indicate.”

Brook ate a few bites more, doused the fire. He sipped his tea thoughtfully and said, “Assess Hawken for me. As a type, I mean. Why is he here and not running a mine or a mill?”

“Because his family isn’t the sort that operates mere trade,” Varic said. “Not an uncommon Northern type: a first child looks unlikely to carry your hopes on, displays no Talent Archain, and the Church has become so particular … so you find him a nice seat in Parliament.”

“Can you think of a better place for him?”

“Of course.”

“Which university?”

“Coron Black Vale.”

Brook laughed.

“What can be said for that paperweight Snowbed except that she’s better than the creature born to the job? What can be said for Coron in Residence Fledger except that he sent Snowbed to the City and keeps himself home, where they know to keep little girls out of his reach?”

Brook turned his head slowly, and Varic knew he was looking over the other patrons for signs of interest, and also silently telling Varic to mind his comments. But no one else had stirred. And nothing had been said that was secret.

Nothing could be said that would change anything, and wasn’t that the pity.

Brook said, “Perhaps that can be your great project, after I’m gone: the selection of Corons on merit.”

That effectively ended the discussion, and they returned to their lunches, which were certainly too good to let go cold.

Linnet appeared now and again to refresh drinks, bring desserts for the other patrons, clear their tables. Eventually only Varic and Brook remained in the restaurant. Varic said, “May I ask you again to come with us to the House?” He almost added, And be forgiven by Agate, but did not.

“You may ask. I will say thank you, no.”

Linnet came out, swung a chair around, and straddled it, his arms folded on the chair back. “I was planning to close early today,” he said, “and there are some things that will just spoil. So I’m having a small party for the regulars. I hope you can stay?”

Varic said, “I have a train. I am sorry.”

Brook tapped his fingertips on the table. “I should be delighted to help you save an innocent pastry from doom.”

“Excellent, Brook. And, milord Varic—Ironway food? Let me send something with you. A jam linka, perhaps; that won’t get crushed too easily in transit. Don’t say no.”

“Yes, then.”

“Apple, cherry, or Ruesberry?”

Brook laughed. Varic said, “Cherry, please. And thank you, Linnet.”

When Linnet had slipped back to the kitchen, Varic said, “Silvern will appreciate it. Though I’d better not mention that swipe at the Ironways. Edaire, contrariwise, would laugh, that’s the odd thing.”

“You don’t know much about husbands and wives, Varic.”

“And you do? Beside which, they’re not husband and wife, they’re conseil.” Varic managed to smile slightly. “And I know nothing at all about that condition.”

“Nor I, nor I, nor I.” Brook looked toward the kitchen door, the glass case full of sweets and savories. “Do you think that if Lescoray had suffered a Great Flood, or a Plague, or a Fire, a thousand years ago, instead of a Great Famine, we’d constantly be giving each other boats, or medicine, or buckets of water? Well.”

Varic looked at his watch. “It’s nearly one thirty. I must go, Brook.”

“Is there such a hurry? Linnet can signal a cab—”

“You saw the streets as well as I did. I can walk faster; I can probably walk it on the roofs of cabs.” He stood up. “Thank you for a lovely lunch, Brook. The pleasantest of holidays to you.”

“But no wish of finding Goddess? Wait. Come here.” Brook plucked a blue rose from the vase, snapped its stem, tucked it in Varic’s lapel. “Now you’re disguised as a romantic, and no one will recognize you. Fair parting, Varic, fair return. Remember me to Strange.”

“I will.”

Varic tucked the bag under his arm, picked up his stick. He paused in the doorway, looked back. Linnet was standing by the table, holding Brook’s hand carefully in both of his own. That was good, Varic thought as he went through the door. Brook would at least not be alone.

Now Varic had to cross Lystourel. When he got to Larkrise Street, it was difficult to tell if any motion at all had taken place during his lunch; the ubic’ seemed perhaps half a block farther along, but the passengers were still complaining, the driver still ignoring them and dealing his Book.

There really seemed to be no hope for the City’s traffic. A proposal to widen the streets around Clarity and Highgate Parks, trimming several spans in from their edges, was presented and vetoed every year. From time to time, someone had the idea to stack iron-framed causeways (or, if the inventor was in a monumental mood, stone viaducts) on top of the existing main thoroughfares. The latest variation on that theme called for the bridges to carry Ironway tracks. None of these exercises in cat-belling explained how to get light and air to the ground level, what to do about rust and drainage on the upper, or how to deal with sparks and cinders, metal dust and ash from motives and carriages grinding by overhead.

Cinders. Fire above. That was another issue Parliament had not even begun to consider. There were iron-fronted dwellings ten and twelve floors high in Lystourel; Varic could look up right now and see one, a dark mass of stone veneer and dark hooded windows looming beyond the parkside shop fronts. How could firefighters reach the top of such a thing, let alone pump water to it?

His mind could see people jumping from those impossible upper windows, amid flame and smoke, as if a volcano had suddenly appeared within the City, and the dark aspect of Goddess demanded sacrifices—

He noticed that his steps had quickened. He was beginning to hate Lystourel, to want out and away from the ancient and beautiful City. It would not do, he thought, it really would not do to leave angry, slamming a mental door on the way out. There was no Parliament anywhere else. There was no place for him, none that really mattered, anywhere else.

Strange House was a sweet distraction, a good and friendly and perhaps even necessary refuge from the hard world. But that was exactly what it was, a refuge, far away, and not the world.

Some of the other guests thought that Strange meant for Varic to inherit the House. Varic himself found the idea too distant to consider, too flattering to take seriously. Supposing Strange did die, ten or twenty or fifty years from now. Edaire might be ready to retire by then, or Birch. Edaire would be the best choice, Varic thought: the sanest of them, the most understanding. Even Birch, who would in a few days be fourth priest in the nation, would have agreed about her understanding.

There was a clatter; Varic stepped aside as a two-wheeled cab put one iron-rimmed wheel on the walkway, trying to pass a slow coal wagon. Varic muttered something unpleasant, snatched a pencil from his pocket, and wrote the cab’s number on the wrapper of Linnet’s pastry.

Traffic again. Shelter Bay was experimenting with electrical trams that did not scatter sparks among sails and rigging, did not puff soot on cargoes of tea and silk and rice. The motive units were not very powerful, and the electric fluid could not be sent a long distance from the dynamo house. It might not work beyond the limited needs and space of the central docks. Still they ran, and the dockers who had begun by making ward-signs against the sparking motive, daring each other to ride behind it, now accepted the equipment, posed with it for lucives, seemed proud of it. Lystourel would surely have one soon; City pride would demand it.

He turned down an alley too narrow for wheeled traffic; it was lined with bookshops and stationers, almost the entire wall surface to either side shouting signs for inks and papers, nibs and pencils, job printing, No Job Too Large or Small, Read Collected Essays from the Star by “Waspish,” APIARIA’S FABULAND ROMANCE SERIES: New Numbers Weekly Price Only ⅔ in Sturdy Glued Bindings, Root’s Shaving Soap (what was that doing here?).…

It was quiet in the alley; most of the stationers would have closed for the holiday. Varic emerged, turned the corner, and the Terminus rose before him, across a sea of cement and flagstones bobbing with humanity.

The front of the Terminus was an inward curve of gray granite, as long as two ordinary blocks and four floors high, fronted with half columns and a central spill of stairs. Carved along the upper coping was a frieze representing Transportation, pedestrians trudging behind carts chasing horsemen hot after Quercian chariots in pursuit of six-horse rigs trying vainly to overtake the earliest steam motive hard on the rear buffer of Lescorial Majesty, winner of the Blackslope Power Trials.

The space within the building’s curve was simply full of people, and luggage, and pigeons, all in constant motion. Only the news vendors were idle, here in the low spot between early and late papers; the evening sheets would be out in an hour or so, plus however long it took the wagons to actually get here. A few bailiffs urged along anyone else who stood still, presumably, Varic thought, to keep the confused and weary from impeding the labor of pickpockets and baggage fishers.

Varic went up the steps neither slowly nor hurriedly, narrowly avoiding half a dozen collisions. He went through the doors and into the Great Hall.

The Hall stretched for two full blocks, curving back to his left and right. It was almost twenty steps across, its ceiling vault the full four storeys above. Dividing its length were thirteen arches, separating the twelve gates leading to the tracks. They were open about two-thirds of the way up, in double arches, the point-topped arches of the Midreigns. Above and to either side of the openings the stone was elaborately carved, and at the upper trackside corner was a picture in colored glass. Sun came through windows on the track side in angled, dusty shafts, and echoed voices and footsteps made the whole Hall boom.

He looked up at the nearest arch-panel. They were designed in the ratio of the square’s side to its diagonal, the absolute rectangle of the Quercians. The space below the arch was a perfect square, which made the panel above the opening another absolute rectangle, and the square of stained glass at the top generated another. The corners of the smaller frames were connected by an arc of fluted stone that curved from the trackside apex to the street-side floor. That curve was known as the generative spiral, and it was echoed in flowers and snails’ shells. It was sacred to Shyira, for those who cared.

The architect’s original vision for the Hall had been of the fanned Book, each panel a gigantic card on end. The Readers’ Guilds were flattered but furious: just which cards did this amateur propose to make the reading for the Capital Terminus? Because that (they said) was what it amounted to.

Coron Deerleap, younger then than Varic was now, had come up with the solution. He proposed that each of the panels should represent, and be the gift of, a particular city (Lystourel had the two centermost, flanking the doors): so the carvings displayed fish and sea freighters for Shelter Bay, coal and timber for Black Vale, sheep and college spires—some saw a joke in that—for Ascorel. Somehow Deerleap had persuaded the towns to compete for generosity and beauty rather than blank-faced pride and power. The wily old hart had even gotten the Archreaders to contribute to the general building fund, on the ground that the spread of panels would put travelers in mind of a reading—if not any particular reading.

The entrance side of the Hall was all shops at ground level; food (Linnet was not the only soul to mistrust Ironway cooking), newsagents, hats and gloves and umbrellas for the forgetful or the sudden change of weather. Signs announced with discreet pride that accessories from Ivory, Ivory & Co. and Canemaker’s and Felton, Spline were sold here, along with less exalted names. A level up were sit-down restaurants, grooming salons, a pleasant and surprisingly quiet tavern called the End Carriage, and a Book parlor—which might have proven something about sympathetic sorcery.

The floors above that housed the offices of the Ironway administration. At almost top center was the Directors’ Dining Room, with a splendid view of the City. Varic had dined there twice, with Edaire. Both times the meals had been catered from elsewhere.

Varic decided he ought to have something for Strange; something that wasn’t food. A few doors along he found a small-goods shop, a long display counter of wood and glass tended by a thin girl with straight broomcorn hair.

It only took a moment to find what he wanted: a plump fountain pen, its barrel a black false marble trimmed with silver. A fine silver chain attached it to a castelline brooch.

The attendant was clearly a bit lonely, and when she spoke, the North was plain in her voice. “That’s a marvelous practical thing, honored,” she said. “I tris, myself at first could not see the use, but one’s always forgetting, eh? Or knocking the good pen to the hard floor. So—well, you do see?” She drew a much plainer pen from her own pocket, displaying its cord and castelline, and wrote up the bill of sale. “Is’t for yourself, honored, or a gift?”

“A gift.”

“Oh, then, if you would have something more elaborate, I have a brooch with a lapis inlay. It’s very beautiful. And this chain is but plate—full silver is available. I can do the work right quickly.”

“No, I think not.”

“Do allow me to wrap it? Won’t be long in doing, and no charge.”

“I would thank you. And time’s light yet.” As she cut the paper and spanned the cord, he said, “You would be from … Pineshadow? Woods Arch?”

“Pineshadow, yes,” she said delightedly. “And you?”

“Corvaric.”

“Oh, the Hard Coast,” she said, nothing showing in her voice, but for an instant she cupped her right hand, Shyira-Guarding-Seed. Varic ignored the sign and said, “My train home goes through Pineshadow.”

“Yes, through the Palisade. That is the great forest, north and west.”

Which kept my ancestors from burning your ancestors’ houses, Varic thought. “I do confess I am a town boy,” he said, watching her wrap and seal the package, dress it in gold cord. The work was perfect and human at once: warm geometry. He began to wish he had asked for the new chain, just to watch her attach it.

“I suppose I am, too, now,” she said, her voice at once all City. “Will you need a card?”

“No. I thank you.”

He paid, tucked the parcel into a coat pocket, tipped his hat, and went out. From the very corner of his eye, he saw the attendant settle back onto a high stool and draw a glueback novel from her apron.

She would live in one of the stacked flats south of the Grand, he thought, or perhaps share a town house with several other shop folk far from their birthfields, their cors coris.

He went back to the center of the Hall, looked up at the announcement board, a black wooden grille of small windows displaying train destinations, times, and track numbers. As he watched, more information appeared; behind the board was a team of youths on ladders, slipping cards into windows, right side up Or Else. Varic’s train would be at Gate 8, Track 16, and the lads had not yet dropped the LATE card.

A train for Vining, in the East, was boarding through Gate 6; the high doors were open, and Varic could see dimly through them to the train shed beyond, the curved glass roof above the concrete jetties, the varnished coaches.

Each gate led to a jetty, each jetty had a track to each side; twenty-four tracks twisted into an iron braid and then fanned out across all the country.

Varic had grown up without Ironways. His father had been noisily contemptuous of bringing rails anywhere near the Castle; fortresses, he said, were supposed to be difficult to approach.

So the tracks went to Corvaric, but the main Northern line terminated at Harktown, barely five stades into the Coronage. From there a slow (if scenic) branch wound on to a fishing town called Annets Point. A straighter, faster line would have better served the cod and salmon and sea skate, packed in ice and salt for the inland markets. But that would require two handfuls of negotiations with the Householders and townspeople on and off the present line or the new one. No one but the fishermen—who would see nothing but improvement, whose land would not be graded over or steamed through—really seemed to want it, and none of the inlanders seemed interested in doing anything for the fishermen.

He took a step toward Gate 8 and stopped still.

He would never be certain why he had noticed her, in the crowd, in the hurry, his mind on other things and expecting her long gone; but there she was, sitting on the end of a bench with a leather bag at her elbow and a canvas one with Ivory’s mark behind her feet, a book tight in her hands.

“Hello,” Varic said.

Coron Longlight looked up, her face tight as a fist. Then it softened. “Oh. Hello.”

“I thought you would be gone by now.”

“The cab got stuck. I was late. I can’t get back to the hotel either, even if there were a room, and there’s one more train west—on which I’ve been promised the very second seat someone cancels.”

“You’d be going…” He angled his head, looked past the arch at the great mural map of the Ironway system. “… to Great Gate?”

“I would, and will, if there’s a seat.”

“Will you trust me to stay here—exactly here—for exactly fifteen minimi?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have to see about something.”

“Wait. What do you have to see about?”

“If a man with no magic can pull coins from his nose,” he said, and left her.

Silvern was at Gate 8, not difficult at all to find. He stood almost a full head above the crowd, and they flowed around him like the Estuary dividing around the Castle. He was standing with a long leather satchel over one shoulder and a carpetbag between his boots; he might have been a monument, the Traveler as Hero.

He was wearing a hunter’s jacket of sueded leather, dark gray, with shell loops and game pockets; his trousers were forest-green moleskin. His cravat was pleated white silk, without a pin.

Silvern’s hair had once been dark chestnut brown, but decades of Craftwork had bleached it to a gray with veins of red, a kind of granite with quartz. His face was quite dark and somewhat battered. Along his left cheekbone was the trace of a scar; some people thought it looked romantic. Varic remembered the wound, the six seasons of bandages and sorcery.

Silvern’s eyes were the color of graphite: a deep metallic gray with a strange and evanescent shine. He had been named for his eyes. As had Agate—

As Varic thought of her, a hand seemed to finger over his heart. It could, possibly, be magic; he did not know where Agate was, if not at the House. If it were sorcery, there was nothing he could do without more information; and the present time pressed.

“Glad to see you made it,” Silvern said. His voice was deep and slightly scratchy, with the grinding consonants of the East. He held out his left hand, palm up, showing a ring: a broad band of gold and black enamel that wound twice around the third finger. Varic put his hand upon Silvern’s.

Silvern said, “I don’t think we can board for at least a quarter. Some tea? And what’s in the paper?”

Varic said, “I need your assistance in a complot.”

Silvern grinned hugely. “Aha! And will there be bold actions, hearts in peril, escape by the mourn of our fingernails?”

“All of those, I think,” Varic said, a bit absently, and Silvern’s eyes widened to match his smile. “Well, then,” the Palion said, “more to a blue rose than fancy, aiga?”

“You have a double compartment, correct? But Edaire won’t be joining you.”

“Yes, and I believe not.”

Varic nodded. “Leap one fence at a time.… All right. Stand right here, and if I lose track of you despite that, do not you lose me.”

“To the storming of the heights, my captain.”

Varic almost threw his hands in the air, but he still had the linka under his arm. “Hold this,” he said, and gave it to Silvern, who accepted it in both hands, with a small bow. Varic dodged through the crowd again, to Longlight again. She looked up.

“Honored lady,” he said, “a compartment has been located to your use.” He held up a hand to stop her reply. “Your own exclusive use. I can guarantee it only as far as Leith Meadows, but there is a good chance it will be available to the end of line, and if not, I personally guarantee transport will be arranged for you. Are these all your bags?”

She laughed aloud, then stopped it with a hand to her mouth. “There’s a trunk in the baggage room. A small one.”

“Then we should hurry. This way.” He picked up the Ivory’s canvas and led her to Gate 8.

“Silvern,” he said quickly, “I would present the Lady Longlight, Coron of the Great Rogue Hills, and at present in need of passage space homeward. My lady, this in turn is the Palion Silvern, Armiger of the First Degree, Military Liaison to Bryna Kóly. Silvern: give me your tickets. And you, my lady.”

Silvern produced an envelope at once; Longlight extracted hers from a pocket of her leather satchel. Varic took them, said, “Once again: if I lose you, lose me not.” Then he set down Longlight’s bag and was gone again, leaving Silvern and Longlight a tiny, calm eddy in the crowd.

After a moment, Longlight said, “Palion—and Armiger—”

“My name is Silvern, my lady Coron,” he said easily.

“And mine is Longlight.”

Silvern nodded. “It will be most pleasant to have a new guest at the House.”

“A what? I—Do you know what he means to do?”

“I thought I did. You’re not coming to Strange House with us?”

Longlight explained her situation. Silvern said, “Now I think I do understand. May I suggest a cup of tea to clear both our heads, and I’ll try to answer your question?”

“We won’t lose Varic.”

“Between your hunter’s sense and my perch?”

Longlight said sharply, “What scry you—” She stopped, pressed her lips tight, and said more quietly, “Hunter’s sense sees hunter’s sense.…”

“Of course,” Silvern said, his tone a shrug, and she nodded and followed him.

They walked only a little way, to a tea cart, and found a bit of wall to stand against with their bags safely warded and hot paper cups in their hands.

Silvern said, “Now. I have a double compartment, with no companion. Varic would have had a single. I should think he has gone to swap us around.”

“Oh,” she said, “oh. I see.” She smiled.

“What a smile is that,” Silvern said.

“He was careful to say the compartment would be exclusively mine.”

Silvern said, “In that case, it will be. And he will be sharing with me—and pop goes your smile.”

“This won’t be an imposition for you.”

“None.”

“And he—this is the sort of problem that pleases him, is’t not?”

“Aigashté. A salute to your perception.”

“Was that word Kólyan?”

“It was.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it spoken. Other side of the world from me.”

“Tré shin ye baród.”

“And that means?”

“‘I praise the person my friend loves.’ The Kólyan habit is never to speak in abstracts. They would not, for example, say that you were beautiful. They might say, instead, ‘Keshtine tseyt, knórowa kneyt sha.’ ‘Your gaze has caused the falcons to preen in envy.’”

She laughed, then said in a smaller voice, “Do you think I am the person your friend loves?”

“I see that which he could not help but find desirable. Beyond that, I have no place to speak.” He held up his left hand, showing the ring.

“That’s—you’re conseil.”

“Correct. Look at the band.” He spread his palm. Circling the braided ring were interlocking circles and straight lines.

“They’re swords and buckler shields,” she said.

“Yes. And also motive wheels and side rods. Edaire, my conseil, is with the Ironways.”

“Edaire,” she said. The word meant both “a surprise” and “a miracle.” Longlight looked closely at the ring. “I see how it’s both images. Was it your design, or—uhm, Edaire is—”

“Edaire is a woman. The design is Varic’s, and the rings were his gift.”

She drank some tea. “I should like,” she said with audible bitterness, “to have known him.” She told Silvern about the motion before Parliament, how she had overstated her case and ruined her chances.

Silvern said, “People solve problems according to their natures. To the heart: if Varic were of another nature, he would have had another carriage attached to the train, just for the three of us.”

“He could have done that?”

“He could have.”

“Dwillsey, Peritepalion—”

Silvern waved a finger through the steam rising from his teacup.

Longlight nodded, said, “Silvern. Who is he?”

“Someone who will leave Lescoray a better place, if he can only find the time. My often distant but always very good friend. Do I think he loves you, Longlight? Ask me if I think you love him. But ask it quickly: here he comes.”

Varic held out ticket envelopes to Longlight and Silvern. “Your ticket to Leith Meadows,” he said, “Compartment One, first cabin carriage. Your trunk should be waiting for you there. While you, old friend, get my company and baggage.”

“And glad of them both,” Silvern said, his voice oddly flat. “Would you like a tea, Varic?”

“Let me buy the first cup of the voyage.” He pointed at the paper parcel atop Silvern’s carpetbag. “Something to go with it as well. Now I think we ought to move toward the gate.”

They joined the queue forming before the door, showed their tickets to the guard, passed onto the jetty. Under the glass triple vault of the train shed, the echo of voices and footsteps was shorter, hollower, with an overtone of humming iron. To their left, Track 15 was occupied only by an open carriage piled with restaurant supplies. On 16, they passed the parlor, its tail roofed and sided with glass, then a sleeper. The carriage sides were the deep maroon color of the Ironway Western lines, with tracings of gold leaf around the windows; the wheels were almost out of sight, below the level of the concrete platform.

At the forward end of the sleeper, where it connected with the next, a woman in a brass-trimmed uniform was carefully checking a piece of equipment on the forward car’s end. Varic stopped short and looked long and straight at her.

Longlight said, “Varic? Are you all right?”

Varic turned away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For a moment she looked like Edaire.”

“Not a bad guess,” Silvern said, “but I’m harder to fool about some things.”

Longlight said, “Your wi—conseil works for the Ironways, you said.”

“No,” Varic said, “she is not a carriage mechanic.”

“Mostly,” Silvern added.

Longlight waited for an explanation.

“This is our carriage,” Varic said. “Yours is one closer to the motive, and the restaurant will be one farther still. The last car is the cabin passengers’ parlor. Shall we meet there, say, just after the captain has checked tickets?”

“Agreed,” Longlight said.

The two men entered the car, turned left down the narrow corridor, went through a door about halfway along. Silvern clicked the electrical lights to life.

The compartment was a little more than two steps wide, three times that long. There were two upholstered chairs, a wide bed at the rear, and at the front a toilet cubicle and an alcove desk. The ceiling glasslamps were softened and diffused by a half tube of fluted and frosted glass.

A sturdy trunk, Silvern’s, was against the inboard wall, and next to it Varic’s traveling desk and old leather Linkman bag. Varic bent to examine his equipment, and looked at the carpet, which had a fussy pattern of colored dots. He said, “I thought Edaire objected to these carpets.”

“Indeed. Drop anything smaller than a shoe and you’ll never find it again. But apparently the passengers object to plain carpets; they want the sense of something expensive to go with their cabin tickets.”

“Yes,” Varic said distractedly. “I suppose they are expensive.”

“You could ask Edaire.”

“Hm. Brook’s got shelves full of handifactors’ sales books—no one in Lords knows the price of a step of carpet or a spool of lampwick, and if it comes up, they’ll suggest you wade down to Commons and ask. This is considered a great jest.”

“I’m sure,” Silvern said.

“Leyva—you recall her? The third-floor caretaker, Eastern?”

“I do.”

“Brook lets her come in on her idle time, and she reads those swatch and show books as if they were fabulands.”

“How Craft bends the soul,” Silvern said, almost laughing. He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Three people, and compartments for three. Craft bends the soul.”

“I asked Brook to come, and he said no. If I had power, would I have used it?”

“Still denying your talent.”

“For what? Making women late for their trains?”

“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms. Now that you say it, however…” Silvern curled the fingers of his right hand. His face set, and there was a flash of blue lightning from his eyes, a streak of fluid light through his hand. When the afterimage cleared, he was holding a dagger, its grip square and plain, the blade a stubby triangle, the whole apparently carved out of a solid block of blued steel.

“The blade’s a bit short,” Varic said dryly.

“No one here I wanted to kill.” Silvern relaxed his grip, tilted his head, and the knife shattered into streaks of light; they faded to specks, a wavering in the air, and then nothing. Silvern said, “Talent, hazhna. Compared to what you’re talking about, this hardly seems worth the effort.”

Varic sat on the chair nearest the window, looked out. The next track was empty; on the Gate 9 jetty, passengers were boarding another train, painted in the deep green of the Northern lines. One of the people, by shape and gait, appeared to be Hawken. Varic silently wished him joy of the North.

There was a bump, a long screech, and Varic’s train began to move. Varic looked at his watch: the hour mark had just touched three. He looked at Silvern; the other man was flat on the bed, apparently asleep.

They slipped out of the Terminus shed, into full daylight. The wheels clacked and banged over the complicated intersections of the distributing tracks. Switchmen in bright red coats were moving quickly but not hurriedly from throw bar to throw bar, piloting the rails.

Through an iron arch hung with signal lights, then another, and they were on the City through-tracks. Their speed built. Varic could see into back gardens and yards of middle-class houses, see their washing hung to dry, their rosebushes, their children flicker past. A park opened up between houses, a football ground with a scatter of scrumming players. All of it was well back from the tracks, separated by grass and gravel, walls and fences, and back alleys.

Then the houses closed in. This was Midlington, the zone of laborers’ dwelling blocks that edged the City north and west. There were no yards, no green spaces, and it would be mad to hang clean clothes here against the motive’s plume. There were children playing, on the very slope of the track embankment; they were a blur as they passed, but if Varic twitched his eyes to follow he could stop a face for a moment, see it grimy and open and jeering. The train ran faster.

The house backs here were plain stone and black brick, with a few crooked stairways of iron or wood, a few small windows. They seemed to waver toward and away from the train, and here and again there were gaps between walls, opening on more walls; Midlington streets followed a pattern from the Midreigns, twisting deliberately to confuse and disorder any hostile forces—foreign invader or domestic rebel—marching against the City proper.

The train plunged like a steel bolt through the arcs and winds of Midlington. It was possible to live in a jetty house almost over the tracks, smoked and cindered every time a motive passed by. Landlords argued in Commons that it was no worse than living above a blacksmith’s or a tannery, and people had done that for ages before Ironways. And besides, Cinder Hall was always clearly advertised as such, and the rents were accordingly cheap. No one was compelled to live there, and if no one voluntarily did so, the rooms would be promptly pulled down to spare upkeep.

Indeed, the same voice said, and a shoeblack who raises his prices is a waster of polish and an idler; chalking portraits on the sidewalk ought be taxed as an unfair use of city pavement; medicine for those who could not afford it merely prolonged the suffering of the weak and extended their threat to the healthy. Indeed and truly, keep the streets crooked in the workers’ districts, lest ease of movement ease revolt.

In the coal regions of the Midlands and North, there were underground fires that had been burning for generations, mine disasters that hung on and on. Now and again they burst out, sulfurous fumaroles that might consume a grove or a house.

These tenements, black and grainy as a coal face, dark and winding as a mine gallery, made Varic think of those buried slow fires. He turned away. In a moment they would be into the mill district, where those laborers went to work, and whatever his interest in the means of production he was in no mood just now to see them.

There was a knock at the compartment door. Silvern was on his feet in an instanta, and admitted the train captain, who examined and punched their tickets, asked if the baggage was in order, touched the visor of his cap, and moved on.

Silvern said, “Tea in the parlor?”

“Right after you.”

The open parlor was almost twenty steps long. It was set with stuffed chairs covered in cloth of a deep wine color, trimmed with gold braid; there were tables with heavy iron bases and rosewood tops circled by small brass rails. A larger table, suitable for cards or reading the Book, was near the forward end. Low bookshelves and racks of the day’s newspapers were mounted along the long walls. At the rear, the walls were all glass from waist height upward to nearly the roof peak. The panorama windows were rigged with roller blinds that could block direct sunlight from any angle—at least, when set by the purser; few passengers could master the system of pulleys and cords.

The carpet was woven in a strong, sweeping figure of black and gold, orange and red, more pleasing to Varic’s eye than the fussy compartment rugs. In the parlor it was permissible to suggest power and motion, rather than coziness. The carriage ceiling was of blond wood, highly lacquered. Four brass candelabra frames held shaded glasswicks, and smaller, brighter lamps arched above the tables.

Electrical lights were much safer in the carriages than anything with a flame. This was not universally believed. Now and then a squib went off in the roughsheet press about ACID!! FLESH-BURNING “BATTERY FLUID” KEPT MERE SPANS FROM SLEEPING PASSENGERS!! Being burnt by lamp oil, or rent by a gas explosion, was a commonplace of life, but the serial novel and the stage shocker kept one mindful of the horrors of acid.

Longlight was standing at the rear, watching the mills and smokestacks pass the glass. As Varic approached her, the last breaker’s yard went by and was gone, and they were in the open country of Lystourel West.

“Trees,” Longlight said, as if she had never expected to see another one. Varic felt himself lighten inside; partly the landscape, hills, and copses, partly the pleasure in her voice.

He said, “Have you ordered tea?”

“It should be here right away,” she said, and looked at the package in his hands. “Now what is that?”

He put it on a table. “Have you a pocketknife? Silvern, would you ask the steward for some table service? Quite a bit of it, I think.” He took Longlight’s knife, unclasped it, and slit the paper open. He started to cut out the corner with the errant cab’s number, then let it go. A forgiveness for the holiday.

Within the open paper, the linka was red and golden, a long braid of thin-layered pastry, sparkling with big crystals of sugar, the vivid red of cherries and jam showing through the slits. It made Varic think of Linnet’s braid, the golden hair woven over and under down his back.

Longlight said, “But what’s this?”

Silvern appeared, holding a stack of plates. “A good old custom: tea for the voyage. Give the lady back her slicer, Varic; we may insult the Ironway’s food, but none can fault their tableware.”

Varic stepped back; Silvern cut slices from the pastry and passed them onto plates held by Longlight, while the parlor steward distributed forks. The thick porcelain and the heavy silver bore the curving National Ironways emblem. Silvern kept up a steady patter as he cut and served: “One for you, happy holiday.… This one’s a bit bruised, is that well, honored?… Goddess in your way also.… You’re welcome, young friend, and please thank my generous friend there.… And Goddess in yours … Oh, come now, don’t you think Goddess forgives what is eaten in Her respect?”

When all were seated with tea and dessert, Silvern said, “What shall we talk about now?”

“I think you were about to let me in on the joke,” Longlight said, “about Silvern’s conseil, and platform attendants.”

“Edaire is a Chief-Inspector-at-Large of the Lescorial National Ironways,” Silvern said with real but unexaggerated gravity. “That means she is answerable only to the Inspector-General—except for the season in each two years she serves as the Inspector-General. As part of the tasks of the Inspectorate—”

“Keeping the sinews of Republic limbered.”

“Thank you, Varic. How is Deerleap, by the way? Valahsh, she is liable to appear in any uniform, or any other character, to see how the employees behave when they think no one is watching. My lady, the shapeshifter.”

Longlight said, “Not really,” and Varic noticed her left hand weave fingers into Wyss’s Catch.

“No,” Silvern said. “Skill, not Craft; material talent.” He finished his slice of linka, drained his teacup, and said, “If you will both pardon me, I believe I shall nap before dinner. Shall I expect to see you there?”

“I cannot imagine why not,” Varic said rather firmly.

Silvern stood, bowed, and went out. Varic looked at Longlight, and with her look back a heaviness overtook him; he knew perfectly well what it was.

He pointed out the window, and she obligingly turned away. “That’s the Western Barbican,” he said, “the farthest outpost of the City during the Midreigns. Second Kestrel built it, on a Quercian foundation—you can see how squared it is, not round like true Middle castles.”

So they talked about fortifications for a while; Longlight described her family castle, a rambling accumulation of rectangular keeps, able to be besieged, or just snowed in, for months at a time. Varic told her about Castle Corvaric, on a rock three hundred steps away from shore, accessible only by an easily blocked or destroyed causeway.

She said, “It sounds … You had happy times, I’m sure.”

“Of course. And you?”

She leaned back in her chair. “I loved to hunt, when I was younger—oh, still do, but now it’s the Coron’s Hunt, all very proper. Then I went alone, mostly, after deer, or sometimes mountain cat. I’d cache my shoes and my heavy stuff somewhere.…”

He could see that at once, see her silken and leathered in a glade crystalline with rain and alive with track-scent, a living aspect of Coris, the Goddess he refused to believe existed. In the thought, she was bare limbs stalking golden-pelted (and being stalked in turn), bare paws on black stone in a dark ravine of his mind.

An idea crystallized around the image. He excused himself and went back to the compartment.

Silvern was awake as soon as Varic entered. Varic said, “Another idea to waste some of your time.”

“You have a bad habit of saying ‘waste’ when you mean ‘invest.’”

“Whichever. I was thinking about hunting.”

Silvern’s “Yes?” dripped meanings.

Varic said, “It was, curiously enough, the new Ferangarder Ambassador who provided the idea.”

“Wait. My mind won’t turn that corner. The Ferangarder Ambassador suggested what?”

“He made some pleasantry to me about hunting—in Corvaric, of all places. But there is good hunting in the Great Rogue Hills.”

“True,” Silvern said patiently.

“It would be a fine place to build a hunting lodge, would it not?”

“From what I know of it, among the finest.”

“If you stood a step back from a survey to best site a hunting lodge, could you tell it apart from a general military survey?”

Light broke in Silvern’s face. “Not for a long while, if ever.”

Varic nodded. He sat down in one of the chairs and was instantly sleepy. His head tipped forward.

In what seemed like a moment, he was on the bed, his clothing loosened and his boots off, and Silvern was in the chair, reading. The lights were on and the window was dark. “Kes’baród,” he said.

“Barchei,” Silvern said, “and your Kólyan still has an awful accent. I had thought to swap rooms with the lady down the corridor, but—well, I don’t know why I didn’t, unless I just didn’t want to miss dinner with the two of you. Dress now, and let’s dine as well as the rails can serve.”

“While I’m getting presentable, will you call on Longlight?”

Silvern seemed about to say something, but he only nodded and went out.

The restaurant car was lit by electric candles on tables draped in white linen. The dinner was, in fact, acceptable if not spectacular; there was a lamb roast, beef in brown gravy, two good wines. Longlight recommended a sparkling water from her Coronage; it had a salt-and-ginger taste, and Varic stopped after one glass but made a note of it for Brook.

The steward brought berry flans and strong tea, and a brandy for Silvern, and the three of them sat and talked for most of an hour about remembered or half-remembered meals and drinks.

Silvern said, “I think, once again, I shall leave you and retire. Good night, honored friends.”

“Wait,” Varic said. “No sense in my waking you up.”

“I appreciate your consideration,” Silvern said with a dismissive wave, but Varic was already standing. He held out a hand to Longlight, said, “Until tomorrow, then, my lady? It has been quite a day.”

“Yes,” she said, touching fingers with him, “It has been quite a day.”

And Varic followed Silvern back to the compartment. Varic sat down, heavily, in the window-side chair, worked at the buttons of his waistcoat.

Silvern leaned against the wall, folded his arms. “Are you actually going to go on with this unnecessary and uncomfortable business?”

“In two nights I’m going to see Agate.”

“I was thinking of Agate. What good will tension do you then?”

Varic just sat. Silvern pointed a finger at Varic’s hands; Varic looked down and saw that his fingers were knotted white.

Silvern said, “There’s a chair in your compartment, too. If you really want to make a full battalia with bandsmen of it, I could lend you a sword, and you could stand right vigil.” He paused, said more gently, “And I’ll be right here. If she makes a desperate sally, call and we’ll hold the pass together.”

“What is the use?” Varic said to the wall.

“None, when power bends you.”

“I was born without Talent Archain. As aside from the claim that I was not born at all, but manufactured. Or simply unearthed.”

“That wasn’t necessary, Varic.”

“Not to you, perhaps,” he said, staring out the window. “But an aspect of the reality, nonetheless. Say true that I am not like others; well, is anyone really like anyone else?” He turned back, looked directly at Silvern. “You and Edaire are not alike. But there is a marvelous jointness to your differences.”

“As you with Agate,” Silvern said, quiet as a Northerner.

“Does it really appear so?”

Silvern’s voice rose slightly, but remained infinitely patient. “If it is no more than an appearance, then it is an appearance of Goddess.” He folded his left hand, the thumb between the second and third fingers, so the pad of his rather long thumb was caught firmly against the swords-and-wheels ring. He looked straight ahead, somewhere past Varic’s shoulder, past the compartment wall, past the world; Varic could see his pupils dilate, black opals set in steel. Silvern’s lips moved; the unspoken words might have been “And you.” Then he blinked, breathed deeply and easily, and said, “Edaire’s train is passing through Little Oxbow. She is having a patcake—chicken salad in dark wheat, I think—and a pot of cider.” He clasped his bare hand around the ringed one. “How can you stand to be alone, Varic? How is it you can bear to go among all the loose souls in the world without one voice waiting for you?”

Varic thought for a moment about things to say; he knew that Silvern would receive any of them, even the bitterest, with calmness and grace. And without even closing his eyes, Varic could see Longlight’s face, eclipsed by her dark, dark hair. He stood up, picked up his Linkman bag. “Good night, friend,” he said, “and same to the friend you love.”

“And fair return to our friends.”

Low-power glasslamps lit the lacquered wood of the corridor a deep honey color. In the apse between carriages, the train captain was having a smoke with a passenger; the window was open, letting in the cool night air and the beat of wheels on rails. The passenger was a small, trim woman with a long, white pipe. As Varic passed, she reached into her pocket and held out a cheroot. There was too much noise and draft for a reasonable conversation, so Varic just shook his head and went on through the next carriage door.

That put him right outside the compartment. He knocked lightly.

“Yes?”

“Varic. Good evening.”

The door opened. “Good, ay minden so,” she said, her speech all Westrene now. “Dwillsey come ere?”

He almost answered her in Quercian, as a joke, but it would have been the wrong joke. She had not dropped her City speech to tease him or be coy. Just the opposite. He went in, turned to shut the door, and set the latch without thinking.

“So you have me now secure,” she said. He turned sharply, almost banging his shoulder against the narrow wardrobe.

She was wearing a long, sleeveless shift of soft black wool, a tube of cloth that cowled her head and fell in gentle arcs to her bare ankles. Behind her, the bed was made down, white linens with the Ironways emblem embroidered at the neat corners. She took a half step backward and sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing her arms in her lap.

Varic bumped a knee against the chair and sat down, setting his bag to one side with perhaps too much care.

“Why,” she said, “since you’re here, are you over there?”

“So we both can talk, and think about what we’re saying.”

“I know full well what I’m saying. We’ve both turned lights in forenow. I’m sure we may both lie fallow when we choose: my mother taught me Wyss’s Cares when I was ten years old … bandits, dwillknow?” She spoke as if dreaming. “Tryan, my father had been teaching me how to deal with bandits, faith, years already.”

“I think, physically, there is no question of what we both want,” he said, wondering if he was making her understand at all. “I’m trying not to think only physically.”

In clear City form, she said, “Do you still feel that this is wrong? That we’re still compromised?”

“Less, perhaps, than…” He shook his head. “You did say there was someone else.”

“Who will not be hurt by this. Wella know, no supposing.” She paused. “And you?”

“No one who will be hurt,” he said as carefully as he could. “Certain this is, and neither wishful only.”

“I like it when you speak Northesse. It’s very beautiful. So … gentle.”

“I don’t think you know enough about me.”

“Then tell me what I need to know. Am I”—she spoke more lightly—“not playing the game as you wish? Must you argue me into your point of view? Or stalk me into surrender?” She pulled the cowl back, letting the cloth fall around her throat, shook out her hair. Her eyes flashed at him, darkly feral above a grin that might have been only playful.

“You recall my friend Brook. The Parliamentarian.”

“Certainly.”

“I was most unkind to him, earlier today, over something that wasn’t at all his fault. If I could do that, to Brook—”

“If you are unkind to me, I am thorough able to toss you into the corridor, latched door or no. And supposing I believe you were causeless hard to Brook, what does that say? I was verra sharp with Silvern, a minima after meeting him, for no good cause either.”

Varic said, “Yes?”

“Do I tell first?”

“Perhaps you should. Silvern didn’t speak of it.”

“And may Brook wouldn’t either. But. He said I was a hunter, before I’d told him; and for a moment I thought he’d pried my mind with magic. He’d not, of course, it was just knowesway.”

“Silvern would never—”

“I know. Enough of that for now,” she said. “Your go: How were you hard to Lord Brook?”

“We were crossing the park, and there was a conjuror performing. Brook proposed we stop and watch him awhile, and I—there’s no excuse for how I behaved.”

“I did not ask for an excuse. I asked what and why.”

“When I was small, a conjuror visited the town closest to our castle. He was, I gather, quite boastful even for the trade, one of those who liked people to believe he had real magic and not just tricks. One of his tricks was the Miser’s Dream, as they call it; pulling coins out of the air. That always goes over very well with adults. Children are pleased with glass and silks, but grown-ups … well.

“My father invited him out to the estate for a performance, which he gave. He found coins, and he bragged too much. At the end of the evening, he was shown to his room—and the door was locked behind him. He was told that when exactly a hundred coins had been pushed under the door, he would be fed; and not until.”

“I’ve heard this story.”

“Yes. My father was not a creative soul. In the old tale, the King slowly fills the room with sand, to provide raw material for the miraclist and urge the process along; but that was too difficult to actually arrange. Since then I’ve always … turned away from fingersmiths. I know some; there’s one I hope to see at the House. So there, too, I am inconsistent.”

“Aside that. Does Brook know that story?”

“I think he … Do you know, I don’t remember. I keep thinking that he must, but when I try to recall just that story … That only makes it worse, doesn’t it?”

“If you say it does,” she said, tiredly, flatly. “No bad but leads to worse with you, is there?”

Varic fought the automatic impulse to nod and agree, even as a joke, perhaps especially as a joke. He said, “May I moot the issue?”

“Coris raise tide! Now he’ll call for a vote before he strips my shift! Please, please, Varic—if we’re to talk away the night, by all means let us do so, but if not—well. Dwilla hear a tale from me? An old hurt, like yours, and then we won’t be lonely at least in that?”

“Tell me.”

“I told you about my hunting. When I was—younger but old enough to know things, I went out for a horseback chase with one of the guards. He was no more than two years older than I—a trainee, really, a real guard’s son. We rode half a day onto the woods, but saw no game worth the stopping for. We had lunch in a small clearing, by water. I remember the stream. It was a pretty day, just after the end of summer.” She turned her face to the window for a moment. “Like this.… We sat for a while, after we ate, and then he asked me to play the couple game. I knew the Cares, and he said he did as well; there was water to wash—I think he was as new as I was.”

She turned her head. Her hands tightened against the edge of the bed. “I told him what game I would have first. I would chase him, on foot, without a bow. This is an old tale, too: Coris and the deer.”

“I know,” Varic said.

“If I took him, he was my prize; if he could turn on me, the stag on the hunter, and gore me with his horn—well.”

“Yes.”

“I pulled his hands behind him, tied them with a spare bowstring, cut away his shirt. He wasn’t expecting that. Deer can’t climb trees, I said. His face when I did that—” Bitterly: “What was he to ask such a thing?”

“Go on.”

“She gave him a lead of a hundred count

She followed his track without arrow or mount

All light-foot she chased him through dapple and down

And ere the sun slanted she brought the stag down.”

She looked Varic in the eyes. “It wasn’t fair. I could run those woods all day, with shoes or without, naked if I’d pleased; I might have caught him had he been a stag. A cavalry colt didn’t have a chance.

“When I decided to catch him, he was in a clearing, leaning against a great round stone, out of breath. I don’t think he heard me coming, so I made some noise, and he turned. I think he was going to stand back against the rock, try to look cornered and dangerous. Or perhaps pinned and fetching. Whatever, he fell, faceup with his hands beneath him, and he was pinned then.

“I looked down at him; he was scratched, bloody. He looked up at me, and his eyes were bright: he was my prey and he knew it, his eyes said just how he knew it.”

Varic put a hand out to touch hers. He knew what came next; it was deep in what they were. “And you killed him.”

“He groaned once when I cut his throat. I hung him head down to drain—it was no different, then, from any other hunt—found the horses and took him home.”

“Did you know what would happen then?”

“I had seen Coronal Courts. But never really thought about it. So when the court was called, it was like moving through a dream, knowing what would happen a moment before it did, with no power to shift or stop. The Suren-draw—that’s the sorcerer—”

“In the north we say Vericate. It’s the same. Go on.”

“She was our healer. I told you about her.”

“You did so.”

“Though of course I told the truth. Did he consent? Yes, to the game. Did he agree to be bound, even playing? No, I forced that. Then they asked, did he protest? And I said, no, he did not. So in the end they paid his mother the pound of gold.”

“And his father paid half back,” Varic said quietly.

Longlight nodded slowly, a tightness around her eyes that Varic knew was long experience of not weeping. “It’s not a Cityer story,” she said, “but I thought you may’d seil it.”

“That was the real cause you were afraid of Silvern. When you thought he’d looked in your mind.”

“Yes. Now to a vote: Do you want me?”

“Aye.”

“Carried by acclamation.”

She moved to clutch and encircle him, her bare leg cool-then-warm against his calf, his body suddenly in an agony of confinement. His head ached with the pressure of blood, and his eyes hurt; he grasped her wrist and pressed the hand to his mouth, kissing her fingers hard as her other hand worked to free him. He let her go, put the heels of his hands against his temples and pressed, hearing her moan as through a waterfall, trying to work the beat of pain out of his skull through her pleasure, preconsciously afraid of spreading the ache by touch and symparchy. Her swordplayer’s fingers circled his wrists then, pressing gently on the rocketing pulses; she guided his blind hands to the hem of her soft woolen gown, drawing it up to her knees, and from there he stroked, raised, revealed.

He wanted to be tender, and he could not, he hurt too much; he wanted to pleasure her artistically, philosophically, admiring her response, keeping control—and she would not let him, drawing a breath into a breath, a groan for a groan, turning lights in, as the Westrene said.

The pain drowned in blood and water. Salt dried it. Sweetness balmed the mutual wound.

---

“Look at this,” Varic said, and turned in the bed so that Longlight could see out the compartment window.

Outside, rolling green farmland was under a thick cover of white fog. The mist glowed pearlescent, and stone walls and slate roofs gleamed with dewfall. In a large enclosure, a herd of black-faced white sheep were standing, as if clumps of the fog had touched down on legs.

Longlight watched it with soft, happy eyes, and kissed Varic. “Where are we?”

“This would be Red Barrow. It should be somewhat after six, perhaps nearly seven. The next Coronage is Cedarrun; we have a stop there, at Three Cedars town. We take on coal and water; it will be a good two hours.”

“And is there something wonderful I ought see in Three Cedars?”

“Not that I know of. They cut the original trees years ago, and planted a new set a convenient distance from the principal inn.”

“Not truly.”

“Verily yea. But my thought was, if you don’t trust the breakfast aboard, we could dash off there for something fresh.”

“Would Silvern be up for that?”

“In what sense do you ask that? Silvern has been awake, I assure you, since before dawn. As for food, if we wish to stay aboard, he will consider it ‘relaxed’ and approve, and if we choose to go off hunting the wild egg and chop, he will call that ‘an adventure’ and join in.”

She laughed. “How long have you known him?”

“Almost twenty years. Since a little after I came into the Coronage and started visiting the House.”

“Strange House.”

Varic nodded.

Longlight said, “My grandfather knew a Strange. He spoke very highly of him, as a wise man. Is that an ancestor?”

“The same man. Strange is … old. I don’t know anyone who knew him young.”

“A sorcerer, then.”

“No. Strange—I can hardly tell you.”

“Very well,” she said. “Tell me about Silvern’s conseil.”

“Edaire is … perhaps what you said. The wave and the rock. She’s always in motion—and I don’t just mean by Ironway. She has seen so very much.”

“Are you in love with her?” Longlight said, so abruptly that Varic had to consider an answer. He stroked his thumb over Longlight’s broad, rough knuckles, and she made a soft noise and shifted against him. She said, barely above a whisper, “I shouldn’t have said that—”

“Don’t be sorry. She’s one of the particular guests at Strange House. A Player. It’s not an easy thing to describe. I do love her, and admire her … and the fact that she is sealed to Silvern seems only to clarify that, to eliminate the distractions.”

“I like you when you’re distracted. But I understand. It seems, an times, things ought be simpler than they are.”

“Yes,” he said, hoping he did not sound too lost, “things should be simpler than they are.”

They idled awhile longer, until Longlight said, “Silvern will wonder what’s keeping us.”

“He will not. But we ought to give him some company.”

They got up, bumping into each other as the train shook. Varic screwed a steel guard to the blade of his razor, braced his shoulder against the corner of the toilet cubicle, and shaved with no loss of blood.

“You needn’t do that for my sake,” Longlight said when he was finished.

“Maybe tomorrow I won’t.”

They found Silvern in his compartment and agreed to deboard for breakfast. Not long after, the train heaved to a stop.

The Three Cedars station was of yellow brick, trim painted Western Lines maroon, with a cedar-shingled hip roof. They passed through the building and were on a small crescent, a pair of cabs waiting by the gaslights. They passed them and walked on.

The town was in a small valley. The sky was overcast, but the air had a fine transparency. The land was clear green to the blue horizon, soft hills marked off in hedged fields, stands of cedar and maple, orchards nearing full fruit.

The station crescent led to a curved arcade of shops, most shut with the hour or the holiday. A florist’s was open, a boy arranging baskets of blossoms by the door, and a newsagent’s, a bundle of the Banner-Tribune still tied on the front steps. The arcade in turn opened on an ellipse, three-and four-story buildings around an oval of parkland. The three famous cedars were in the center, suspiciously equilateral in their placement, within a waist-high but impressively spiked iron fence. A horde of sparrows and a few dazzling redwings clustered on their branches.

At the center of one of the ellipse’s long sides was the inn, white-painted brick below and (perhaps inevitably) cedar-shaked above, its door flanked by twelve-pane bay windows and crowned by a fake-Quercian lintel.

So the breakfast was leisurely, from porcelain and crystal more delicate than would have served on a train, and nothing rattled. Silvern disposed of four eggs with bacon, Longlight three, Varic one egg and two kippers, along with generous bufferings of mushrooms and muffins and tea.

With Varic carrying a basket of muffins and jam, they went back to the elliptical park. Silvern sat down, rather heavily, on a bench. Squirrels approached him warily.

Varic held out a bit of muffin in his palm, stood entirely still. A sparrow circled him once, then lighted on his thumb, snapped up the food, and flew off.

Longlight’s mouth opened. Silvern said softly, “Hunting does not interest him.”

She said, “They’re tame, surely—they must be fed all the time.” She looked at the squirrels. Varic had a small smile; he gave her a half muffin, and she fed it to the eager little beasts.

Silvern burped, and a squirrel and three birds fled. “I think,” he said, “I shall return by way of the florist’s and find something for my beloved. I will see you aboard.”

Longlight said, “How long before the train?”

“Three-quarters of an hour.”

“Do you want to go back now?”

“We can. I shouldn’t have thought you’d want to, not on a pretty morning.”

“I don’t. But I asked what you wanted.”

Varic put a hand around one of the fence spikes, gripped it hard.

“Dwill tell?” she said.

“I almost said something … quite cruel. Again. It is an unforgivable trait.”

“You’ve no power to command me forgive or not. What did you think to say?”

“You have no power to compel my saying.”

“Then tell me something about your family. Freewill.”

“And have you owe me more of your hurts? Let them be buried.”

“Do you think I will not understand? When you so well knew my death’s-work?”

Varic said flatly, “My father was a far-province Coron of a particular kind. I can well believe his sort had to exist, once, and I can almost be convinced that it was necessary, once in raw old time. If he had lived, I might have learned how to tolerate and forgive and love him as my father; I am told that most of us do. But day by day I see more clearly that the world is well rid of him.…

“Your father,” he said suddenly and gently, “was he a good man?”

“I can recall his faults,” she said, “but yes, he was good, and kind, and just.”

Varic nodded. “I thought it would be so. I just wanted to hear it, before you went back to him.”

“Varic, he’s dead these many—”

“Milady Coron,” he said, “well I know.” He crumbled the rest of a muffin, tossed it to the birds and squirrels. “Let’s walk and say nothing awhile. Summer hath but hours to live.”

That was what they did, walking the straights and arcs of the trim planned streets, saying nothing. When something interesting appeared—a shop display, a fine bit of iron ornament, a spectacular window box—one would point, and the other nod. After a few minimi, they were carrying on a commentary all in gesture. When their circuit brought them around to the station, Longlight was nearly laughing, Varic smiling again.

The rest of the day’s travel passed idly. Silvern found an aged cavalry officer in the parlor to trade drinks and lies with. Readers of the Book and arcquet games took turns on the card table. Outside the windows, the vast Lescorial midlands flowed by; old sprawled towns and neat new planned ones, orchards and farms, roads the Quercians had first laid out. A rain shower passed over, soft drops on the carriage windows, only soothing. Anyone wishing to sleep had plenty of cows to count, or sheep, free choice.

Before dinner, in a quiet corner of the parlor, Longlight said to Varic, “The next time I am like to see you, all your City reasons will rule again. When I bid all good ’den tonight—follow me; set any wait you think proper, but follow.”

Which he did.

Very late, Varic had a dream of walking through mud, sinking with each step, driven on both by fear of the depths and some push of need he could not identify. It was dark; there were trees in front of him, which he saw in delirious clarity, and beyond them darkness. The moment he passed a tree, it vanished behind him and another appeared ahead. Any way he turned—and he was sure he was turning without knowing it—it was the same, endless corridors of trees. An owl cried unseen. The bog sucked at him, and his head began to hammer with the effort of motion. He began to rage at the mud and the forest. The anger felt good. It felt as if it might do something, something real.

Deep violet light, blacker than the darkness, burst from him. The trees quaked and the mud heaved. Trunks cracked and branches fell.

He stopped, staring. Needles and broken limbs lay on the ground. Varic took a step, and the brush bore him up; it crunched and shifted beneath his step, but it kept him above the bog.

So the trees would fall to anger, he thought, rage would harden the bog. Very well, then, very well. Anger was easily come by, rage was easily found—

A shout woke him. His face was pressed hard against Longlight’s bare shoulder; his arms were tight around her, his legs tangled with hers.

“Is it morning?” she said, though there was only blue moonglow through the window. There was no fear in her voice, no unease at all.

“Not yet. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I think I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We’ve a way to travel yet. Sleep now.”

She shut her eyes, and her breathing stilled.

Varic slid out of the bed. He rinsed his face and dressed, then walked back to the parlor car. It was dimly lit by two of the reading lamps, empty except for a dozing purser, who woke enough to ask Varic if there was anything he desired. Varic shook his head, went to the very end of the car, and sat down.

It would be dawn in about an hour. The nearly full moon was very low and cast long, deep shadows, black on silver. The morning was clearer than yesterday’s, though clouds of fog crouched in hollows. The train passed through a grove of tall poplars then, making the car very dark; the woods were misty and unreal, like the trees of his dream. He covered his eyes with a hand.

It was, after all, only a dream. He was no Archdreamer, sleeping true; he was no Archanything, had no sorcery at all, no more than he possessed Goddess. He had nothing at all that the quick hand of death or the long arm of distance could not separate from him. Until, perhaps, the Constitution was ratified; and if Brook were right, perhaps that would not do either.

The Talent was well enough if you could heal; there was always a demand for that. Even better was healing livestock: a good, studied horse-mender or cow-save could expect not only a pleasantly supplied life but admiration, even love, more so even than most priests.

Long ago there had been Archirons, but good steel and quality iron required constant high heat, and that was gotten more easily from a machine-drafted furnace than from sorcery.

It was an art in decline, that was the truth. The Ironway replaced the cloud-horse; the talking trance and the Long Mirror were supplanted by the click of the magnostyle. It was not impossible that in a few years some of the Lords Sorcerous would be giving up their seats to Lords Mechanic. That would blur the distinction between Lords and Commons, and after that, who could say? Perhaps the collapse of Parliaments and Republic, the rule of direct vote, all for all, what some called Poplicate and others King Mob. He thought of what Brook had said about Varic’s great work to follow the Revised Constitution. No, he told himself most firmly.

As long as there was work before him, as long as Strange House stood full of life and friendship, he had what he needed.

At approximately the same moment, Silvern was seated, fully dressed, in his compartment, reading. There was a knock at the door.

He admitted Longlight. She said, “I thought Varic might be here.”

“No. He must be in the parlor, or the restaurant. Shall we look for him?”

“Soon,” she said. “May I sit down?”

Silvern gestured toward a chair.

She sat, hands and feet together, looking unnaturally prim. “You’ve known him nighan twenty years, he said.”

“That’s so.”

“Does he ever frighten you?”

“Contrary to certain beliefs,” Silvern said very slowly, so that the words were like iron breaking gravel, “Palions are not incapable of fear. I think, having known him longer than you, I have been frightened by him as many times more in proportion.”

Longlight’s hands tightened.

Silvern said kindly, “Hunter’s sense sees hunter’s sense.”

“You say he doesn’t hunt,” she said, her dark eyes locked directly to his metallic ones, “but he’s no prey either.”

“Varic is among my dearest friends dear indeed, and there is no aid I would deny him. But some passages must be held by single soldiers.”

“I’ve known souls who were bright as the sun,” she said, “and some so black they went all nothing in a shadow. He’s bright, but it’s cold bright; he’s like the moon a thousand times. And he loves not Goddess.”

“Then he affects you more than She. No small thing.”

She smiled in spite of things. “I’ll have that on a blazon. In Quercian, so it will be taken for an ancient wisdom.”

Silvern laughed, a merry sound, no bitterness in it. “How he must have had to fight wanting you.”

“Am I being flattered?”

“You are. Respectfully so. Look here now, why don’t you come to the House? Strange would be delighted to meet you. And Edaire, and everyone there.”

“I’m expected…”

“Is it something a magnostyle can mend?”

“I have responsibilities.”

“Against that there is no appeal,” Silvern said, almost seriously. “But allow me to say this: Varic has suggested that I visit your territory. He wants the ground surveyed, for a country property. A hunting lodge, if such would meet with the Coron’s approval.”

“If I understand you rightly, the Coronage would be much enhanced by such a development.”

“Very good. Now, my responsibilities keep me at Strange House for the Equinoctials. But as soon as they end, I shall be available for Varic’s commission, and I would be both pleased to escort you home and happy of your advice along the journey.”

“If I return accompanied by a Palion,” she said thoughtfully, “then I have not come home from Lystourel with nothing.”

“I am certain my lady Coron knows her people well.”

“They want me to secure the Coronage,” she said. “If I won’t have heirs, at least take a lover who will. We had nearly a century of that, just after the Middle Kingdoms ended—the age of the Consorts Visitant, an’s called. But ‘secure’ means a few things, and we needn’t have ’un all at once.”

“Then you will visit.”

“Then I will.”

“Then we should find our friend and tell him. And by now there should be fresh tea and hot bacon in the restaurant.”

---

Some hours later, on another Ironway train a distance to the south, the train captain encountered a passenger at the fore end of the single sleeper, smoking in the apse. The man wore a green-and-black checked suit, a high-collared white shirt; his dark brown hair was loose and long. His face was thin, fine-boned, almost pretty. He gestured amiably with his white clay pipe.

The captain thought about telling the man not to stand in the apse, but just nodded and went by. Country gentlemen with no sense of fashion tended to be very unpleasant when told the rules. Besides, he had other things on his mind.

The captain went on into the chair carriage. It was a third-class car, fixed wooden bench seats padded with carpet. In the last seat on the right, a frayed brown sack of a man was sitting, his hat on and a scarf around his neck; he was hunched over a small book with a fancy leather binding. The captain stopped for a moment, looking sidelong at the man, who ignored him; then he went to the front end of the car, where one of the pursers was waiting.

“Is that the fellow?” the captain said.

“Been there with his book since Bluehollow Halt,” the purser said. “Hasn’t stirred except to turn pages. No baggage at all. Didn’t take tea.”

“Maybe he doesn’t like tea. Did you see a ticket?”

“Showed me one from Archways Cross to Coldmere. That’s the point of it.”

The captain thought. This train had passed through Archways Cross six hours ago, before dawn, and would reach Coldmere in another hour and a half. Bluehollow Halt, where the rumpled man had boarded, was halfway between—and the Halt was not much more than a water tank and a coal bin, an unlikely place for passengers at any time. It all seemed rather irregular. “Anything odd about the ticket?”

“The ink was smudged. Though he’s all a bit of a smudge, isn’t he? If he’s got a plate to his name, I’ll count it a wonder.” She looked suddenly doubtful. “Unless—he couldn’t be one of those eccentric sorcerers, could he? With the old book and all.”

“I doubt it. No baggage, you say?”

“Just that book, and whatever’s in his pockets.”

“Sorcerers generally have some gear. At least a Linkman, or a carpet satchel. Well, no harm in a look.”

They went back to the seated man. The captain said, “Your pardon, honored.”

“What am I supposed to pardon?” The man’s voice was a brassy squeak; the tone might have meant anything.

“May I examine your ticket?”

“She saw it.”

“I’d like to.”

The man closed his book, tucked it inside his shapeless coat, rummaged around within it for a moment, and produced a crumpled ticket.

“You didn’t get on at Archways Cross,” the captain said.

“I should think I know that.”

“How did you come to board halfway along?”

“It’s a tiresome story and I don’t choose to tire you with it. Is there something wrong, young man?”

The captain looked closely at the ticket. “This is punched twice.”

“She punched it twice. I didn’t ask why. Suppose you know what you’re doing.”

The captain looked at the punches. Train crews’ punches had different patterns. But the creased ticket had snagged on something, and a bit was torn away; it could have been the same punch, but—“Did you punch it twice?” the captain said.

“No, cap’n, I didn’t. Look how beat up it is. That could’ve hid the old hole. And he hardly wanted to give it up.”

“You hardly wanted to touch it,” the old man said with a particularly unpleasant cackle.

“It’s a used one, isn’t it?” the purser said hotly. “You got it out of a trash bin, or maybe someone’s pocket.”

“Is that indeed what I did?”

“It seems to me,” another voice said from behind the two train crew, “that there was quite a bit of commotion in this carriage just after Bluehollow Halt.”

The captain and purser turned. The man in the green checked suit was standing in the doorway, tucking his pipe into a pocket. “Something with the tea cart, I recall.”

The captain looked at the purser, who said, “Sandy had a row with one of those kids, opened a packet of sweets he couldn’t pay for. I may have looked up, but I didn’t double punch.”

“Have you compared the punch marks, captain?” the man said. “I think that Purser Lighter, here, employee number one four one six eight, was using a half clover, half square.”

There was an abrupt silence in the end of the car. Even the old man looked up, his mouth a small O.

The captain said quietly, “You know a bit about procedure, honored.”

“I keep an eye on what’s happening, Captain Stones. Number nine two two three. Now, I’d noticed the scholar here, as I was waiting to buy a tea, and I thought I’d offer him the hospitality of a tea in my cabin. If there’s a question about his ticket, however…”

The captain looked again at the purser, who said, “I … could have hit it twice.”

“Then I think we’ll assume you did,” the captain said firmly. “Pleasant trip, honoreds.” He handed the ticket back to the old passenger, nodded politely, and walked forward. The purser followed.

“Would you accept my invitation?” the gentleman said, and the old man said, “With the greatest pleasure.” They went aft. The man in the checked suit opened the door to a drawing room compartment, ushered the other into the parlor. The bedroom door was shut. “Do sit down,” the gentleman said. “I’m afraid I lied. There isn’t any tea.”

The old man sat down, and said, “I really do not know what to say,” in a voice that was not an old man’s.

“‘Thank you, but I didn’t want any tea’?”

“Lix,” Inspector of Ironways Edaire said, “this isn’t your compartment.”

“It was paid for by a hard-goods merchant from somewhere around Windscapel. We met in the station tavern at Two Blades last night. He wanted to buy some fellow commercial traveler a pint or five, and once he found out I was also in sashes and eaves”—Lix shrugged, palms up—“nothing would do but that we continue the conversation. I don’t think he was quite aware we were boarding. Mere minimi after that, he was asleep. I did present his ticket to the cabin-car purser.”

“Who didn’t check the bedroom?”

“No. The wheel noise just barely covers his snoring, too—do you mark it?”

“I congratulate you on how well you do my job.”

“Accepted thankfully.”

“I don’t suppose that would be one of your friend’s suits you’re wearing.” She raised a hand. “Only borrowed, I know.”

“Oh, Edaire, please.” Lix opened the wardrobe and displayed two hanging suits, in at least as overstated a pattern as the one he wore, but fully half again as broad. He moved close to Edaire, displayed the fraying at his cuffs, the thin patches at the elbows. “By your grace,” he said, and unbuttoned the jacket to show an enormous L-shaped tear in the white linen shirt, neatly stitched up. “Some years ago, the old Coron of Whitewater gave me this, part payment for entertainment at his daughter’s eighth birthday party. It is my country gentle’s suit; you can tell it would never pass in the City.”

Edaire nodded. “That was rude of me, I’m sorry. I know you’re no thief.”

“I knew you weren’t an old man, either,” Lix said lightly, “but I didn’t go around telling people.” He reached inside the checked jacket, brought out a wooden object: a taddelix, the emblem of Lix’s trade and the source of his name. It was a polished wood block as long as his hand, with a hinged wooden spoon on each side. This one was in a fine, polished cherrywood, and it had a small brass bell set into one end. Lix shook it; it made no noise. The wooden sounders were fastened by a silk band that must have been crimson once, and a thick felt cylinder held the bell clapper. “All tongues silent, you see.”

Edaire said, “How far did you intend to travel?”

He tossed the taddelix in the air with his right hand, made a taffy-pulling gesture with both, then caught the clacker in his left. “As far as would.”

“Say to Coldmere, then. That’s my destination, and the captain won’t be surprised when you vanish.”

“A fine town. Not that long a hike from Whitewater Town, either; perhaps I should see if the Coron will have her father’s suit mended for a song. And on the subject of clothing—do you have something more like yourself to wear? Or may I bring you a damp towel, to cure your premature age?”

“I’ve a bag waiting at Coldmere station. And I won’t change the other until we’re off. It might frighten the purser.”

“Yes. What of her? Did she really double the ticket?”

“Once before the tea cart fracas, once after. I frayed the hole, and then acted as suspicious as I could manage without irritating another passenger, just to see. You saw, too.”

“As the gentles of the road say, most rabbits keep a snare about them.”

“I don’t think she lied, at first, because I don’t think she remembered. But the captain gave her every chance to admit she didn’t remember. The word will have to go in.” She looked up at him. “You’ll get the blame for that.”

“Borne as all things, with equanimity.”

“Very well. Then until Coldmere, I’m traveling on my valid if miscanceled ticket, and you’re traveling on my pass, and as the compartment is paid for, no one is shorting the service. Just promise me something.”

“I know. I promise that I will not take the rails from Coldmere. As I said, a walk to Whitewater will do me good, on such a fine end-summer’s day.”

Edaire rummaged in her clothes. “You should have a plate in your pocket. Even nice towns turn out vagrants.”

He waved his hand, and a silver coin appeared between his fingers. “For which cause I have a plate in my pocket. This same one, near on thirty years.”

She looked at his face. She knew he was at least ten years older than she was; she could make out a hint of makeup on his narrow face, but mostly it was just a refusal to be other than young.

They reached Coldmere within a minima of the schedule. Lix assisted Edaire onto the platform. “Oh, my,” he said. “Do you hear that?”

There was a low, whispery hum in the air. It came from no identifiable direction; people looked around nervously as they caught it. It was a sorcerous sound.

“Something’s quite wrong,” Edaire said.

Lix made a hand gesture that meant I knew that much, and said, “There appears to be some difficulty with the women’s lavatory.”

“Now how do you know that?”

“The manner of that lady’s walk toward the inn just up the road.” He tilted his head to direct Edaire’s look toward the street beyond the station. “You may have to change clothes elsewhere.”

Edaire reflected that, when Lix had told the train crew his business was observation, he’d been telling the plain truth. “Let’s see.”

Inside the station, the head hum was drowned by conversation. A group of people stood in an arc around the door to the women’s lavatory; a porter stood by the door, but they were clearly hanging back of their own accord.

Edaire said, in her elderly-scholar voice, “Some difficulty with the plumbing, is it?”

A woman in a straw hat said, “Someone inside’s a bit sick, I believe.”

A man in a scuttle cap said, “I heard she’s got a pistol.”

“Oh, go on,” someone else said.

Edaire went to the agent’s desk. She showed her pass and badge, with a gesture for quiet. “What’s happening in there?”

“A woman took terribly ill,” the agent said. “I think she may be a sorcerer.”

“Did anyone see this?”

“There were two others in there with her, but they both fled and haven’t come back. One was screaming. Carter took a glance”—he indicated the porter by the door—“but she come back scared, and I’ve never known Carter to scare.”

“Scared how?”

“Shaking, stark white. She was clutching her chest as if she thought her heart would burst.”

Edaire knew then. She could have kicked herself for not seeing it at once. “I’m going to go in. If you possibly can, get the crowd away; have the arrivals go home and the departures wait on the platform. If nothing else works, tell them the service will stand them a drink—wait. A drink at the inn down the road.”

“We have a tavern—”

“I know that. But we need quiet. Now, you’re keeping a bag of mine. Would you put it outside the door as soon as you can?” She put a silver cartwheel on the counter. “Tip in advance for Carter. Just have her set it down, don’t knock or open the door. Understood?”

“Yes, honored.”

Edaire and the agent went back to the arc of the crowd. The agent spoke softly in Carter’s ear. She nodded, said loudly and clearly, “Please to come this way, honoreds?”

The only response was more low chatter. Edaire felt the hum rise, thought she saw the lavatory door bow outward. No use to wait; she walked straight to the door and went through.

The women’s lavatory was a long, narrow room, finished in dull green paint and brownish tiles like grouted sea-gravel. On the right were three wooden stalls, all empty, on the left two sinks below an iron-framed mirror. Someone had vomited into one of the sinks. There was hissing yellow light from a double gasmantle and a fair amount of day through a diamond-paned window at the far end of the room. Edaire noted automatically that the place was in good repair and had been clean.

A woman was on her knees below the window, leaning against the wall. Her hair was sunbleached in streaks, light brown to gold; a loose blue ribbon had been holding it back at one time. Her hands and face were tanned as a sailor’s. She was wearing a blue denim walking jacket over a light blue shirt of fine cambric; below that, a long, comfortably full skirt of puckered cotton, striped blue and white. There was mud on the hem, and a lot of mud on her high-buttoned boots.

Her hands were raised, the fingers locked through the window grate, knuckles bone-white on brown. Something shimmered on the backs of her hands. The lozenge panes were melting out of the leading, and weeping down the woman’s arms and shoulders, soft and thick as gelatin, red and green and white. One slid to the floor, landing with a kind of crisp plop among others already there.

Edaire turned a tap to wash the vomit away. The woman on the floor shuddered, and the mirror above the sinks wavered and began to sag. Edaire sprayed the water about with her fingers, then closed the tap. It shrieked brassily, but the woman made no further response.

Then the woman said, “Edaire.” The name rang off the tiles, echoed like faraway thunder; Edaire felt something like a scrabbling of fingers behind her breastbone. One of the few panes still in the lozenge window shattered into red dust; Edaire thought of a hard cherry sweet crunched between the teeth.

“I’m here, Agate.” Edaire took a step forward.

“Don’t … touch me.”

“I won’t. There will be a train here soon. To the House. Is that why you’re at this station?”

“Train … and you.”

“Can you manage the train? What can I do to help?”

“Too much noise. Maybe a little … silly.”

“Can you keep things down?”

Agate nodded her head toward the sink. “Someone else. Scared her.”

“I’ll be back, then.”

“No one … else.”

“No. No one else will come in.”

Edaire paused for a moment before the door, trying to frame a statement for the crowd. outside. Comforting? Officious? Dismissive?

When she opened the door, no one was there, and her carpetbag was leaning by the jamb. She shoved the bag inside the door and shut it. The crowd had gathered outside, around Lix, who was gleefully busking away, juggling a remarkable assortment of objects: his bowler hat, an apple, his clackers of office, and a walking stick were tumbling in cascade.

Edaire went into the station tavern. The bartender was a pale, plump woman, polishing mugs as ever idle barkeeps did. “How’s the sick’un doing?” she said, almost jovially.

“We’re on our way to a holiday rest. She’ll be fine then.”

“Friend of yours, then.”

“Yes. I want half a waterglass of Harkamber and a small Clarrez-Foy.”

“I shan’t ask which is the med’cine. Compliments on your taste, and your friend’s.” She poured out four generous fingers of the dark Northern whisky, and a precise measure of Alinsea’s palest brandy. “Any chaser?”

“Maybe we’ll be back,” Edaire said, and carried the drinks to the lavatory. Agate had not moved.

Edaire said, “I’ve brought you a drink. Is that what you were asking for?”

Agate’s shoulders moved. With a visible effort she unlocked her fingers from the window grate. Soft glass slid from her, fell hard to the tiles, and broke. “There. Thank you.”

Edaire put the large whisky on the floor within Agate’s reach, took a step back, waited as Agate closed her hands around the tumbler.

Edaire said, “How about a toast, Agate?”

Agate smiled, though her eyes were pain itself. Her features were beautifully shaped, though air, earth, fire, and water had all worked well on them. “Daren’t, love. We’ll be … House for dinner?”

“Yes.”

“Dinner, then. A’ sky don’t fall.” She took a long swallow. “Oh. Fine malt to make madwomen stupid.”

Edaire said nothing. The less sound, the better. They drank in silence. Edaire turned, saw herself in the mirror, and shook her head. She set her glass aside, moistened a towel (careful not to let the water thrum or splash) and wiped off the cake-flour makeup that had aged her.

Agate breathed audibly, and Edaire’s image wavered and bulged in the mirror. She turned away, still holding the towel. Her stomach was solidly mounted, but that explained the vomit well enough. She wet another towel, moved close to Agate. “May I?”

“Lightly, I think.”

Edaire sponged Agate’s forehead. Even without touching the skin, she could feel warmth just short of fever.

“N’more. I’ll keep. I’m fresh enough to’ve come from Blackice Gorge.”

“Agate, that’s a day’s walk.”

“A night’s. Calmer at night. Don’t ask now.”

Edaire looked again at the mud caking Agate’s shoes.

“Careless,” Agate said suddenly, “and you’re all a-dust.” She put her glass down, tapped it, picked up its note with her voice. She leaned forward, palms on the floor.

Edaire said, “Agate—”

Agate spoke then, and there was Craft in her voice; the air shook with it. The walls shook. Edaire’s bones trembled.

“Don’t confuse the cost with cost,

What I lose is well, well lost.”

Edaire was gripped, held, compelled upon position. She knew that Agate was only protecting her from the uncertainty of whatever Craft she intended, its inevitable wildness. And it was, in truth, only a touch; whether Agate intended it so, or stronger, or gentler still, Edaire could, if she really desired it, walk away, right out the door, and scream.

“As fashion is the scansion of the fabric,

So tailoring and cleaning are its descants;

For cloth like verses should be measured clean.”

A fresh gale blew through her coat. It whipped at her clothing, though she felt nothing against her skin but the flap of fabric.

“The buttons fall like pipe stops to the fingers,

And hem meets hem in a drone chant of stitches,

As fashion is the scansion of the fabric.

“The soap may ease the burden of the water,

As stones wear out what was of stones eroded;

For cloth like verses should be measured clean.”

She understood. Agate was out of tune with the world, full of undirected power. Craft was explosive within her, bleeding out. This little gasp would make it possible for them to go on to the House. To Varic.

“We only start to understand the fiber

As we match the pattern, as we drape and dart it,

As fashion is the scansion of the fabric.

“The Goddess spins and stretches out our living

For to fit the pattern of Her cloth’s designing;

For cloth like verses should be measured clean.”

Edaire shut her eyes. She could not help it. Magic frightened her. She loved Agate. Silvern she loved more than all things, and the link between them was welded with Craft. Silvern knew this; he could not not know it. Perhaps that was how she endured the constant brush of Craft in the world: the knowledge that there were greater powers.

“The Spirit and the Flesh shall find a mirror

In the close spare cutting to the sign of bodies;

As fashion is the scansion of the fabric,

For goods like verses should be measured clean.”

Edaire’s clothing seemed to explode; eyes still tightly shut, she could feel a cloud of whirling fiber scrape her skin, buttons patter her. Then all stopped.

Her ragged, frayed outfit was now trim and crisp and pressed, fitted neatly to her body, every hole rewoven away, and absolutely clean—as a bandage boiled in carbolic, Edaire supposed.

Agate was standing straight now, her arms outstretched; her outfit was clean as well, her boots unpolished but spotless. There was a ring of soil on the floor around her. Edaire turned: behind her, the direction the Crafted wind had gone, was her own silhouette, hazy in dirt against the tiled wall.

Agate said, “Better now,” her voice slurred but not so weak, “but please let’s go.”

“Do you have any bags?”

“Pen and pad in my pocket.”

Edaire picked up her own carpetbag and held the door for Agate, careful not to touch her as she passed. Lix had gone, and the people on the platform seemed barely to notice the two women. The station agent was standing on the platform, looking down the rails for the next train. Edaire quietly handed him another coin. “That one’s for the cleaners—there’s a bit of mess in there. You’ll have to call a glazier as well. Don’t worry, none of it’s on your hook. You did very well.”

“Honored,” the agent said, looking no little embarrassed.

Edaire and Agate went to the extreme end of the platform, as far as possible from the other passengers. Edaire could see the train coming.

The motive was a Crowns Works, she could tell that a quarter stade off. Crowns machines had distinctive elliptical boiler-fronts, and pointed golden half coronets to either side of the headlamp. Their product had come in second at the Blackslope Trials, and they had never since stopped straining for distinction. Steam pulsed from her stack, glimmering in the clear air. Valve gear whirled and air brakes whined. Agate barely seemed to notice; the noise was arrhythmic, and please Goddess the whisky was dulling her sense.

They boarded hurriedly, Edaire using her badge to clear a way past the purser direct to her compartment, a small single.

Edaire said, “You must have the bed.”

“I suppose.” Agate sat down, slipped off her jacket, and tossed it just short of the chair, clenched her teeth as Edaire unfastened her boots. She tucked in, lay on her back on the Ironway linens.

Edaire picked up the denim jacket, hung it from a brass hook, pulled the chair to the bedside, and sat. “Can you rest now, do you think?”

“Possibly. With your help. I’m very glad of your help, lovely wonder.”

“You knew I’d be at the station.”

“I read the lines. Iron carries far, veins of society. I tried to reach Varic, but couldn’t, of course. Silly.”

“Hush. Sleep now. You must be very tired.”

“Just a stroll by easy dark. The owls knew me from the other mice.” She stared at the lacquered curve of the ceiling. Her gemstone eyes were uncomfortably flat.

The motive blew down steam, preparing to start. The captain’s voice called out “Boarding and parting! Boarding and parting, all!”

Agate shuddered. “It won’t do, Edaire. I’m still too wound, wound up, tick, tick, oh stop, stop. Please, love.”

“You’ll wake with a dreadful headache.”

“Prob’ly, throbly, could be bad. But click’ty, snick’ty’s surely bad.” She unbuttoned her shirt collar, pulled it open to show her evenly tanned neck, corded and hollowed. “Needs do, now.”

Edaire’s hands went slowly, slowly, to Agate’s throat, circled it without touching the skin. It was certainly easy to find the pulses. Her thumbs stabbed in.

Agate’s blood, prisoned in her fingers, heaved and fought; Edaire felt her own neck go rigid. If this wasn’t over quickly—

Agate groaned, and her head rolled to one side. Edaire felt ice thawing in her own body. She covered Agate with a blanket, tucking and smoothing it without conscious thought. The tension around Agate’s closed eyes was still visible.

Agate’s eyes made Edaire think of Silvern’s. A voice, calm and dear, prickled behind her brain. She grasped her ring. “All is well,” she said, “all is well. Oh, and you, always and always.”

She rang the purser for tea and a patcake. Then she took the leather-bound book from her pocket, set it on the table, and opened her bag—clean or not, she wanted different clothes for arrival. Inside the bag, her fingers found a small paper packet she knew she hadn’t packed.

It contained a tiny yarn doll, three strands of green yarn knotted into a figure no bigger than her thumbjoint, and two oatmeal cakes, thick and moist and almost still warm. Lix must have slipped them in somehow.

She tucked the doll into the buttonhole of Agate’s jacket, so it sat perched on her lapel.

The purser brought the lunch tray. Edaire sighed at the first bite of the patcake; the salmon salad had been sugared, apparently to conceal the sourness of the sauce. Something else for her report. She drank the tea, which was acceptable, and she ate one of the cookies, wrapping the other tight for Agate.

It was not far now to Leith Meadows, and the coach should be waiting; perhaps, now that Agate was sleeping, she would sleep until they arrived.

Then it would be Varic’s turn.

Edaire put the book in her lap, shut her eyes, and drifted into sleep herself without noticing at all.