Naevros syr Tol was the greatest swordsman under the guard, perhaps the world, and it had been seventeen years since he had last felt the impact of another’s blade, in practice or in a real fight.

Before this morning. The second time he felt the blunted end of his pupil’s practice sword graze his left arm, his eyes grew hot, and a broad angry smile spread like burning oil across his dark handsome face.

He brought his pupil’s sword into a bind and knocked him off balance, and delivered what would have been a killing blow to the chest, if Naevros had been using a real sword. It must have stung a bit, even so.

The other man’s pale hard face hardly twitched. The gray eyes took on a knowing look, though, and Naevros could not even pretend to himself that he had not overreacted out of vanity.

“You hold yourself a little out of true, because of your shoulders,” he said to his pupil. “You’ll want to watch that. It makes you unstable, as you see.”

“I’ll remember,” said Morlock Ambrosius wryly.

“That’s enough for today. My blood is running a little hot, I’m afraid.”

Morlock nodded impassively and turned away to put his practice sword in the wall-sheath. He picked up his red cloak and threw it over his forearm; he was still sweating from the practice bouts. His shirt was an unusually stylish one this morning. If Naevros wasn’t mistaken, the garment had been run up by his own tailor. But it was the sort of thing one only wore on formal occasions; Naevros himself was wearing a raggedy old thing he usually threw on when he was exercising.

“You’ve done some real fighting since we last fenced,” Naevros said as they walked from the courtyard to the front door of Naevros’ modest city house.

“In Kaen,” Morlock said, nodding.

“Real fighting makes all the difference somehow. The same sort of decisions appear in a different light when one’s life is riding on the outcome. Kaen, eh? Haven’t been there for a hundred years. Is it as bad as ever?”

“I only saw part of the coast. Hope I never go back,” the crooked man added with a grimace.

Naevros could not cordially like the man, but he refused to dislike him either. For one thing, the fellow was dangerous, and Naevros made it his practice never to dislike someone who was dangerous, even if he had to kill them. It was easier to see someone’s strengths and weaknesses without a cloud of dislike in the way. They said that love was blind, but in Naevros’ extensive experience it was really hate that kept people from seeing, or understanding what they saw.

“It’s lunchtime,” he said to Morlock, as they stood in the street. “Come down to the cookshop and we’ll split a chicken and a pitcher of wine.”

Morlock was about to give one answer when all of a sudden he paused and then gave another. “Sorry. Must go. Thanks lesson. At Illion’s?” If the last was a question, as it seemed to be, he ran off without an answer.

Naevros was still decoding this, and pondering a few other matters, when a familiar contralto voice broke into his meditations. “I find you deep in thought, Vocate Naevros. Planning your strategy for the new Station?”

“Nothing is ever decided at Station,” he answered reflexively. “Though some things get settled at the parties before and after. A good midday to you, Vocate Aloê. Will you split a chicken and a pitcher of wine down at the Benches cookshop? I am dying of hunger.”

“I will not split a chicken,” Aloê Oaij replied. “But I might eat part of a chicken someone else has split. They cook it well with peppers down at the Benches. They have good pastries, too. Those puffy glazed things filled with ellberry custard? Glorious.”

“You’re a glutton, Aloê,” said Naevros, smiling as he turned to walk down toward the Benches. “How do you maintain your girlish figure?”

“It’s a womanly figure,” Aloê said, not walking alongside him, “and I maintain it with frequent exercise. Speaking of which, were you going to change?”

“Change what?” Naevros was surprised. “My clothes? To go down to a cookshop? Are you serious?”

“I’ve noticed that excessively handsome men are sometimes careless about their appearance. I suppose they think they can afford to be.”

“I hadn’t noticed that at all.”

“That’s why I brought it to your attention.”

Naevros grumbled a bit, but when he saw that Aloê was serious he went back into his house. Aloê waited downstairs, reading a book, while he took a quick run through the flood room and threw on some decent but not gaudy clothes. He was not rich, and he was saving his gaudy clothes for the social events surrounding the Station. Besides, he had no need to show off in front of Aloê: they were old friends; he was her sometime mentor, now ally. And she thought him excessively handsome. He liked to dwell on that last part especially.

Naevros ran into his housekeeper, a gossipy old queck-bug named Verch, on his way downstairs. “The Vocate Aloê is waiting downstairs!” the housekeeper said eagerly. “Is she staying for lunch?”

“We’re going out for lunch, Verch. There’s no need to trouble yourself.”

Verch pouted a bit. “Are you at least taking her to the Dancing Day at Vocate Illion’s?”

“I’ll be accompanied by the Honorable Ulvana, as you well know, Verch,” Naevros replied, a warning tone in his voice.

Verch’s face fell further. “Honorable,” he repeated rebelliously under his breath and stood aside to let his employer pass.

Aloê was perched on a chair close enough to the foot of the stair to have heard this whole exchange. She grinned at Naevros as he descended, and then he was sure that she had.

“Verch is still taking good care of you, I see,” she remarked when they were safely out of doors.

“Nearly unbearable. But he’s cheap, and I’m broke.”

“And Noreê says you were saying the same thing two hundred years ago.”

“Some truths are eternal.” He looked sideways at her. It seemed odd to him that he had not known her two hundred years ago, that he hadn’t always known her.

She was worth knowing. She was nearly as tall as Naevros himself; her skin was dark brown; her hair: dark ringlets of gold; her irises: brighter rings of gold; her lips were darkly rosy and full. She had the hard balanced muscularity of a dancer or a wrestler. But to say that she was the most beautiful woman in A Thousand Towers—and many did say it—was hardly to scratch the surface of this remarkable woman. That she was daring and courageous in mortal combat was a fact Naevros had witnessed with his own eyes. That she was deeply learned in the intricacies of Wardic custom he had been assured by those who knew and cared about such things. Most importantly, for Naevros, she had a kind of mental deftness, a feel for situations.

He admired her very much, and from almost their first meeting there had been a rapport between them, an unstated bond of admiration and trust. It had never, somehow, become a sexual relationship. He had many of these (the Honorable Ulvana being merely his latest partner and perhaps not the most notable one), but somehow they never lasted, and none of them had ever mattered like his bond with Aloê.

He dreaded the day when she made a public union with someone. There were many suitors, male and female, in A Thousand Towers and elsewhere, who would have gladly paired with her. But somehow she walked untouched among them all. If she coupled with anyone—he assumed she did—they must not have mattered to her; she never walked with them in the light of day as she was doing with him, now.

He was glad of that. He hoped, knowing it was selfish, that this would never change. But he feared it must: someday she would find someone, and their bond would be transferred to that other . . . and then Naevros would kill him. It would be pointless and horrible, and Naevros knew all that, but somehow he thought he would do it all the same, the way barbarian kings ordered slaves executed at their funerals. His link with Aloê had swiftly become the most important bond in his life; its death might require a barbaric funeral, some sort of sacrifice.

“That mushroom of yours is back in town,” he said aloud, to turn the conversation into a safer stream.

“Mushroom. Mushroom,” she mused for a moment, and then said, with an indifference that warmed Naevros’ heart, “Oh, you mean Morlock. I thought I saw him standing with you, but he ran off so fast I couldn’t be sure.”

“It was him.”

“Back for more lessons? Hasn’t he learned all you can teach him yet?”

“Only about swords.”

She moved her darkly golden head to indicate her indifference to swords and the people obsessed by them.

“I think he’s taking notes on my wardrobe.”

Aloê smiled gently.

“No, really,” Naevros said. “I’m fairly sure he’s consulting my tailor, anyway. He was wearing a wide-sleeved shirt with yellow silk inset, like one I was wearing a few years ago.”

“I remember.”

“I think he’s hoping to make a splash at the Station, or perhaps to catch someone’s attention. Poor woman.”

“Or man, as the case may be.”

“I don’t think so. He’s sporting a new bite mark at the base of his neck, and I’m pretty sure it was made by a woman’s teeth. Although the edges are a little ragged . . . I might be wrong, I suppose.”

Aloê shrugged.

“Someone is killing gods in Kaen,” Naevros remarked.

“That’s—Oh? Really? How do you know?”

“Their embalmers keep writing me for advice. How do you think I know? People travelling in Kaen have said so. A number of cities on the eastern coast of the Narrow Sea have lost their name-gods. Some cities have just gone vacant. Your mushroom was telling me an odd tale of a city taken over by a giant plant. But others say there are cities that have turned to the worship of the Two Powers.”

“Has there been an invasion from Anhi?” asked Aloê, naming the confederation of cities far to the east, where worship of the Two Powers was the state religion.

“Not a military one. Hard to say what the number of missionaries may be. The Court of Heresiarchs was encouraging foreign missionaries for a while.”

“Yes, I remember hearing they would soak them in pitch and use them as torches for their evening parties.”

“Kaen is a brutish place. But there’s something to be said for their attitude toward missionaries.”

“Have cities in the interior been losing their gods?” Aloê asked.

“Apparently not. Just on the coastline.”

“Facing us, across the Narrow Sea.”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like another invasion attempt, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s the best opinion among those who’ve heard the news.”

“You always have the best news, Naevros.”

“I hear it from my tailor. What do you think the Graith ought to do about it?”

By then they were at the Benches, but they continued to talk about foreign affairs and avoid talking about their own all the way through lunch.

A few days later, the Graith assembled at the Station Chamber, just inside the crumbling and disused wall of the city. In a ritual older than the Wardlands themselves, the Summoner of the City called the vocates to stand at the long oval table in the domed chamber in the early light of morning, with the light of the sun filtering through the windows on the western edge of the dome.

After the opening rituals, the day was given over to the news from Kaen. Five vocates and three thains spoke; all had travelled in or near Kaen over the past year, and all had news of some god who had been displaced from its name-city—all of them along the eastern coast of the Narrow Sea. Morlock spoke briefly of his experience over the summer past, but did not join in the discussion that followed.

Neither did Aloê, but most of the vocates present had one or fifteen thousand words to say. Even Naevros spoke at some length, smiling wryly as he caught Aloê’s bored eye. Another time Aloê saw Morlock looking—not at her, exactly, but in her direction. He was dressed less splendidly than the previous day (if Naevros hadn’t been joking about that), and his face looked a little haggard, as if he weren’t sleeping well. The sight made her want to sneak off and take a nap. How they all talked and talked and talked. . . .

Of course, nothing was decided. The sun was setting when Illion asked leave to stand down. His request was granted by acclamation, and the Summoner of the City adjourned the Station until the next day at noon. Many of them had been attending Illion’s parties on the opening night of Station for more than three hundred years, and the rest had other plans for the evening.

In the scramble that followed adjournment Aloê met up with Illion and Naevros, who were talking about the government of Anhi.

“Vocates,” Aloê said coolly. “You’ve seen more of these than I have. Is the first day of Station usually so boring?”

“Only if something important is happening, or likely to happen,” said white-haired Noreê, coming along behind her. “Then everyone wants to get his oar in the water, so that he can say afterward he helped steer the Graith in its crisis.”

“But nothing ever gets done at Station—only talking. So those-who-know tell me,” replied Aloê, with a quick glare at Naevros, who grinned unrepentantly back.

“There’s some merit in deliberation,” suggested Illion.

“Only if it leads to useful action.”

Illion the Wise smiled and did not disagree.

“Come away with me, Aloê,” Noreê said. “These gentlemen have deliberating to do.”

Aloê would have rather stayed sniping and snarking with the men. They amused her; and Noreê, with her bitter scarred face and bitter blue eyes, rather scared her. But she was not inclined to give into her fears, so she took the older vocate’s arm and they walked together out of the chamber and into the street. Both places were crowded, but wherever Noreê walked a way opened up before her.

“I won’t keep you long, young Aloê,” Noreê said. “But I wanted to keep you from sliding into the error that many members of the Graith fall into.”

“What is that?”

“They think the Graith is important.”

“Oh.” Aloê looked at the woman who had slain two of the Dark Seven with weapons, and a third with her bare hands—a woman who had dedicated her life to the defense of the Wardlands, a woman who had worn the red cloak of a vocate for four hundred years. “The Graith is not important?”

“Of course not. A pack of silly old fools, full of talk and empty of action, just as you saw it today.”

“Then—”

“But the individual Guardians—especially the vocates one by one: they matter. Today was just talk. Tomorrow will be just talk. Stations are mostly talk. But talk can spark ideas, and ideas can fire some person, some individual, to action. That is why we do this.”

“I think I see.”

“Good. Run and play, then. Perhaps I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The deadly old woman walked away, leaving Aloê stunned by the double blow. Run and play? If she’d patted Aloê on the head, she couldn’t have been more patronizing. And: perhaps she’d see Aloê tomorrow? Why perhaps? Was that a second insult . . . or a piece of veiled advice?

She was still pondering the matter when Jordel walked up to her and asked her why she was standing there in the street like a silly cow.

“To get your attention, of course,” she replied. “What else does any woman in A Thousand Towers want to do?”

“I consider that remark a violation of the Treaty of Kirach Starn,” Jordel said coolly, referring to the memorable day a few years ago when they had agreed to stop hating each other’s guts.

“Then let’s have less cow-talk,” she replied briskly, and he shrugged and nodded. “What’s up?” she continued.

“Baran and Thea and a few of her friends are all getting something to eat and then going over to Illion’s.”

“I guess I’ll chew the cud with you, then.”

“Enough with the cows. I’m sick of cows.”

“Did another one break your heart, J?”

Jordel was still obsessing about cows when they arrived at Illion’s an hour or two later, so Aloê took the opportunity to sneak away into the already-dense crowds.

It took a lot of people to crowd up Illion’s place. It had belonged to Illion’s family for some portion of forever, before the city had stretched out this far, and the garden walls rambled over a group of hills that had stayed green and fairly wild as the web of stone streets spun itself on every side. But the family had built a medium-sized house and a rather gigantic dance hall in the center of the hills, and (ever since Illion and his brother had inherited the property) they held a Dancing Day on the first and last days of Station. Practically everyone in the world attended them.

Everyone in the world seemed to already be there. She saw Callion the Proud and his wife, whatshername; they were bickering, as usual. She gave them a wide berth. She ran into Rild of the Third Stone and talked for a while about herbs. Afterward she met Vocate Vineion and talked for a while about his dogs. Eventually Vineion drifted away in search of a beer. As Aloê wandered on, she came across Morlock Ambrosius shuffling a deck of cards and explaining to a few hangers-on how they worked. Since she was interested in the matter herself, she stood nearby drinking a glass of cool wine.

“How do the archetypes know the future, though?” someone was asking.

Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders. From the expressions of a few people watching, they would have preferred that he hadn’t. Aloê wondered if he had done it because he knew it would bother them, or because he didn’t care. Either way: good on him.

“The cards, and their archetypes, don’t know anything,” Morlock replied, after a pause to choose his words. “A well-made archetype is connected to the future and the past. As the future changes direction, the cards are inclined to fall in different patterns. A good reader reads the patterns.”

“The future changes direction?” someone wondered.

Morlock nodded. “Until it becomes the past.”

“Well, I don’t know. I’m not really interested in the future.”

“You can also use them to play games,” Morlock replied. “Patientia, or Púca, for instance.”

“Púca? What’s that?”

“I’ll show you.” Morlock, with a deadpan expression, shuffled the deck and began to deal out cards on a nearby table.

“The man is a shameless whore,” a voice remarked quietly from near her elbow.

“Ath, rokhlan,” she said, raising her glass, when she recognized the speaker as Deor syr Theorn. She didn’t know exactly what ath meant, but she knew it was a polite greeting for a dwarf who could claim the rank of dragonkiller (rokhlan).

The dwarf’s dark gray eyes moved in slightly different directions, an oddly lizardlike behavior that she had learned to associate with dwarvish embarrassment when she was in the north a few years ago.

“Ath,” he replied. “Ath, rokhlan, sael.” He raised the mug of beer in his fist.

“I hadn’t realized that whoring was among your harven-kinsman’s talents,” Aloê remarked easily. She knew about fifteen words of Dwarvish and liked to trot them out whenever she had the chance, which wasn’t too often in A Thousand Towers.

“Neither had I,” Deor replied. “But poverty brings out new sides of people, it seems.”

“Poverty? God Sustainer: I thought the Ambrosii were as rich as filth.”

“I’m not sure what that means, rokhlan, but I am sure that Morlock is poor as a fish.”

Aloê wasn’t completely sure what that meant, but she nodded and gestured with the wineglass to continue.

“I mean, if he’s going to keep striking the tower with lightning, how can he expect to keep workers?”

“Um. I’m not sure.” In fact, she was not sure what the metaphor striking the tower with lightning meant; it sounded vaguely salacious.

“The old workers have to be paid off; the new workers have to be hired; it all costs money. And a little goldmaking would solve all our problems.”

“Don’t do that,” she said reflexively. “No one will do business with you anymore. Not that lots of people don’t do a little goldmaking now and then,” she admitted. “But the trick is to do it when you don’t seem to need money. Uh. So I’ve heard.”

“And so I’ve heard. So we have to sell things, right? Morlock is a master of makers, perhaps the greatest of all since, well, you know.”

She didn’t, but nodded anyway.

“So Morlock is teaching these rubes to play Púca so that they’ll all want packs of cards. Which we happen to have stacks of in Tower Ambrose; we spent the last couple days inking them.”

“Hey, I got a regal velox!” someone at the card table was shouting.

“Remarkable,” Morlock said coolly. “A very rare hand.”

“Where can I get some of these?”

“Take the pack away with you. I have more at home.”

“Thanks, Crookback! Who’s in for the next hand?”

Morlock’s left hand clenched as he turned away to look straight into the pale scarred face of Vocate Noreê.

“Good fortune, Vocate,” he said politely.

“It’ll be good when you and all your kind are dead,” remarked the terrible old woman, loudly enough to be heard by Aloê and a number of other people in the crowd nearby, who turned to look pointedly at the exchange.

Morlock shrugged. “Then. Bad fortune to you, I suppose.”

The crowd laughed and turned away, judging Morlock the victor in the exchange.

Aloê herself thought that he’d handled it well: his calm indifference to Noreê’s naked hate seemed especially wounding to the old vocate.

“Morlock’s pretty good at backchat,” Deor conceded grudgingly. “If he says only one word in a conversation, it’ll be the last one. What in the canyon is wrong with him now?”

Morlock had turned away from Noreê’s hate-filled gaze and taken one long haggard look in the direction of Deor and Aloê. Now he turned again and walked away into the crowd.

“Noreê must have stung him pretty deeply,” Aloê guessed, grabbing a fresh glass of wine and another mug of beer from a passing steward. “Here.” She handed the beer to Deor.

“Thanks!” the dwarf said. “I always have trouble getting their attention, for some reason.” Now he had two mugs: his full and his empty.

Aloê had left her empty glass on the steward’s tray, but the man hadn’t waited for Deor’s mug. “Steward!” she called out, and the man came back as if she’d grabbed him by the ear.

“Take my friend’s empty also, please,” she said.

The steward looked at her, gazed vacantly about, finally saw Deor waving the empty mug, and lowered his tray to accommodate the dwarf. He stole one last glance at Aloê and walked away into the crowd.

“I like how you did that,” the dwarf said approvingly. “I usually have to whack them on their belt buckles to get them to notice me. But I don’t think it’s your height. There are lots of people here taller than you. You didn’t scream at him, either. It was as if he had a reason to listen whenever you talked to him. I—oh. Uh-oh. Oh, God Avenger.”

“What is it?” Aloê said with some concern.

“Nothing too important. A question has been bothering me the last few days, and I think I just figured it out. You—um, you’re not looking especially well tonight, Vocate Aloê, are you? You always look pretty much like this, don’t you?”

“You’re not flirting with me, are you, Deor?”

“Eh? God Creator: no. Our relations are much better regulated than the conniptions you of the Other Ilk twist yourselves into. For instance, I just got a note from the gynarch of my clan, indicating whom I am to mate with and when, subject to the Eldest’s approval and my consent. It won’t be too much trouble, and I’m looking forward to raising a few younglings. No, I was just asking a factual question.”

“All right. In that spirit: no. I think I must look as I usually do. My tunic isn’t especially new; it’s one of the three I wear regularly. Why do you ask?”

“Just a kind of . . . a kind of esthetic interest, I guess. What do you think of this Kaenish mess?”

They talked for a while about the dying gods of Kaen, and then the currents of the crowd carried them apart.

Later she found herself sitting with Thea on a stone bench by a fountain outside of the entrance hall. Thea was fending off questions from a woman who wanted her to do something Thea had no interest in doing.

“But if those statues aren’t wrong, nothing is wrong!” the strange woman was insisting. “There they are, naked, doing things no one should do in public! Someone should do something about it! But the Graith has refused my plea many a time!”

“I don’t say it’s right,” Thea replied. “I just say it’s none of my business. I don’t judge; I defend. Those statues are not a threat to the Wardlands.”

“They are a threat to the Wardlands’ morality and ethical fiber. What is more important than that?”

“Them,” Aloê corrected absently. “Those are two things.”

“Look,” said Thea patiently, “if you think the statues are so dangerous, why don’t you take them down yourself?”

“But they’re on his property!”

“Why do you assume we can do what you can’t do? Why assume you can’t do what we can do?”

“But . . . but . . . you’re the Graith.”

“‘A pack of silly old fools, full of talk and empty of action,’” Aloê quoted dreamily.

The strange woman glanced with horror at Aloê, still wearing her bloodred vocate’s cloak, and seemed to be about to say something.

“We have no more rights than you in the matter, madam,” Thea intervened. “The Graith is a voluntary association with a specific purpose—like the Arbiters of the Peace or the Road-mender’s Union. But we are not a government. We’re just people who are responsible for what they do—like you.”

“But I had to send my children to school by a different route!”

“That seems like the best solution, all around.”

“But I want a better one!”

“Maybe you’ll find one. But, God Avenger witness my words, I hope it does not involve the Graith, or me. And now, if you’ll excuse us, madam, my friend and I are going to go in and dance.”

They left the woman sputtering behind them and re-entered the entrance hall.

“I’m not sure if I’m dancing tonight,” Aloê said.

“I’m sure that I’m not,” Thea replied. “A horse stepped on my foot at Baran’s place a halfmonth ago, and it’s still giving me trouble. But I was tired of explaining to that woman that she did not live in a monarchy.”

“I was at dinner at Earno’s the other day—”

“Namedropper.”

“—and someone . . . it was Thynê, the chronicler, as a matter of fact, if it’s names you want. Anyway, she was saying that monarchy is a natural instinct, that people want to follow a leader like sheep want to follow a shepherd, that the Wardlands is destined to fall back into a monarchy someday.”

“What do you think?” Thea asked.

“I don’t know. There are lots of people who are afraid to take responsibility for their own lives, like that woman back there. But there are just as many people, some of them the same people, who are afraid of having their lives interfered with. So. I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I don’t think anything’s inevitable. Except my next drink.”

There was a stewards’ table near at hand, and Thea tapped on the red-cloaked crooked shoulders of the man standing in front of it.

“Order us a drink, won’t you, Morlock?” Thea said cheerily.

“Eh,” said Morlock, and stood aside.

“I guess that will be more efficient,” Thea agreed, and they stepped forward. Thea had a mug of beer and Aloê a glass of gently steaming tea. Morlock sipped one of his own and eyed them gloomily over its rim. He still hadn’t recovered from his encounter with Noreê, apparently. Anyway, whenever he met Aloê’s eye his face seemed haggard, his expression wounded.

“You’re not saying much today, Morlock,” Thea said, after a pull or two at her beer. “What do you think of this Kaenish mess?”

Morlock shrugged. “If the Kaenish gods are dying: what’s killing them? I don’t care about the Kaeniar—”

“It’s not nice to say so.”

“—but a threat to them might be a threat to us. That’s all.”

“Well, that’s our business, isn’t it?” Thea reached out and touched the scar at the base of Morlock’s neck. “What’s that? Any threat to the Guard there?”

“Woman bit me.”

“Did she have reason?”

“She thought so.”

“Business or pleasure?”

Morlock’s face took on a remembering expression. “Both.”

“Oho. I didn’t think you were the type to pay for it, Morlock.”

“I do not. I did not. You will excuse me.” He brushed past them and walked into the crowd.

“Will we excuse him?” Thea wondered. “I’m not so sure. I thought he was a little terse when we were fighting dragons together up north, but he was positively chatty compared to the way he’s been lately. What the rip is wrong with him?”

“Noreê’s getting at him, I think. They had words, earlier.”

“Oh. Yes. She does hate all the Ambrosii. That’s nothing new, though. I mean, she tried to kill him on the day he was born.”

“What? You’re joking.”

“What’s the punchline, then? No, I think it’s true. The dwarves stopped it somehow; I heard about it from them when we were up north. They don’t care for her much up there.”

“Ick.”

“Well, I used more syllables when I heard, but yes. Come on; let’s mingle. Maybe we’ll see Morlock and Noreê mix it up. Maybe we’ll see some pretty fellows dancing. Maybe Naevros will show up without that vile whore he’s been squiring around town. The night is full of possibilities, and beer.”

“I hate beer.”

“Then try the possibilities.”

Morlock was walking through the crowd, as blind as a stone, when he heard someone say quietly, “Hwaet, Morlocktheorn.”

In that crowd, there was only one person that could be. It was against dwarvish custom to speak a language that those nearby didn’t share—unless what was being said was none of their business, as this obviously was.

“Hey, Morlock-my-kin,” Deor was saying in Dwarvish. “Did you talk to her?”

“Thea?” Morlock replied. “A little.”

“No, thump-head. Did you talk to her? Please don’t pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about.”

“What would be the point?” Morlock said, opening his hands concessively.

“The point of talking to her? Those-who-watch, guide my steps. How in Helgrind’s stone jaws should I know what the point is? If you of the Other Ilk had sensible arrangements like us, the question wouldn’t even arise. But I tell you something, my harven-kin— No, you will not turn away; you will listen to me.”

“I am Other Ilk. To you. To her. To everyone here. To everything that lives.”

“What? No, don’t try to explain it. Listen, I said, and listen I meant. You don’t have anyone to arrange a mating with her. Stop writhing; that’s what you are thinking about, I take it?”

“It’s not thinking,” Morlock said miserably.

“All right. Whatever you call it. No one can set you up. You will have to do it yourself.”

“I’ve seen others talk to her. She sends them all away. It’s no good. Nothing would be any good.”

“Is she mated with Naevros? Is that it? I’ve heard some people say so.”

“No,” Morlock said thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.”

“Then I don’t see what you have to lose. If you are waiting for her to be attracted by your air of mystery and make the first advance, I’m afraid your strategy doesn’t seem to be working. Just talk to her. About the Graith. About Kaen. About that sword you are making. About cards. About anything. Give something a chance to happen.”

“I can’t.”

“Are you . . . are you afraid?” The notion seemed so bizarre that Deor hesitated to even suggest it.

Morlock reflected for a moment, then said, “Possibly. But I mean I can’t. When I see her—when I am near her . . . I can no longer see her nor anything else. A golden haze hangs in front of everything and my tongue turns to stone. I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t speak. I have been afraid; I have been insane with anger; I have been ashamed, exultant, forgetful, remembering. None of it was like this. Yet it was all like this.”

“Um.” Deor thought of the poem he had read in Morlock’s workshop. “Sounds like love, I guess.”

Morlock shook his head, not as if he disagreed, but in bewilderment. “I loved Oldfather Tyr. I love you, my harven-brothers, Trua Old, and my other friends. I love my work. I love the mountains of Northhold. This is not like that.”

“It may be the wrong word. Your mating, the mating of your ruthen kin I mean, isn’t just a necessary thing, like eating, but something wrapped with emotion, delight, and pain. They call that ‘love’ around here. But maybe there’s a better word.”

“I have mated with women before. It was not like this.”

“You have?” Deor hadn’t known this. “Well, you are full of surprises, Morlocktheorn. Perhaps you should seek out one of those women again to relieve your—er—whatever it is you’re feeling?”

“Another woman?” Morlock muttered. “Besides her?”

“Precisely. Precisely that. Do you think it would work?”

“No. I’ve no better notion, though.”

“Then.”

Morlock nodded solemnly, punched him gently on the shoulder and walked away into the crowd.

Thea and Aloê had joined up with Jordel and Baran again. After a quick raid on the refectory, they drifted on the currents of the crowd. These carried them finally into the great octagonal dancing hall at the center of the honeycomb of smaller rooms.

“What is that music?” Thea asked, as their ears were assaulted by a barrage of drums, lightened by the harsh bright voices of bells.

“Dancing drum-choir,” Jordel said, with feigned reluctance. “You get them in Westhold. I guess we’re for it, Baran.”

“Speak for yourself,” Baran replied. “You’re the one who likes to kick his heels up.”

“The people demand it. Who am I to deny them what they want?”

“I want you to take a vow of silence.”

Jordel held a finger in front of his mouth and silently offered Thea his hand. They spun away onto the dance floor—in spite of Thea’s foot, in spite of Jordel’s cruelty in the past, in spite of everything. Aloê looked at the transfigured expression on Thea’s face, looked away, and shook her head. She wondered what it was like to feel that way about someone. The drummers and bell-ringers of the choir were all skipping about in unpredictably coiling patterns; the other dancers dashed between them whenever they found an opening. It seemed to be half dance, half competition.

“There’s your friend Morlock,” Baran pointed out.

Aloê followed Baran’s gesture and saw Morlock whirling through the tangled lines of the drum-choir. Wrapped in his arms, and vice versa, was a tall cold-faced dark-haired woman.

“Why do you call him my friend?”

Baran was surprised. “He is often with Naevros and you. Or so I thought.”

“With Naevros, but not me.”

Baran shrugged. His eyes were still on the dancers. Morlock and his partner—whatshername, that frosty woman, the Arbiter of the Peace up in that horrible little town by the Hill of Storms—anyway, the two of them were plunging back and forth through the choir, who were laughing and trying to block them. But whenever a gap in the line closed, another opened up, and the deft-footed couple spun through.

“He’s good,” the big man said reluctantly.

“She leads as often as he does,” Aloê disagreed.

“That’s part of being good—letting your partner lead when she knows what to do.”

“Then why don’t you say, ‘She’s good’?”

“She is.”

“B,” Aloê laughed, “you’re trying to get me to dance.”

Baran blushed a little and admitted, “I do kind of like it. But the girl is supposed to ask. Woman, I mean.”

“I’ll never figure you Westholders out. Baran, will you dance with me? I am not good, and have no idea what I’m going to do out there.”

“I’ll clue you,” said Baran eagerly, and took her outstretched hand.

It was something just short of a disaster. Their first time through the drum-choir, Aloê knocked a bell right out of the ringer’s hand by smacking it with her elbow. The next time she inadvertently stomped on some poor drummer’s toes.

But her feet soon learned the rhythm that the drummers were making, and she also learned to trust Baran’s gentle guidance. He was surprisingly light on his feet for such a big man, and quick in his mind if not quick with words. On the one occasion when she saw a collision coming (and he apparently didn’t), he responded immediately to her alarmed look and her increased grip on his arms. He swung them both into a clear patch of floor and then back into the whirl.

“You’re good!” she shouted, over the drums, over the bells, not really sure he would hear her. But he smiled down on her and nodded agreeably.

He didn’t appeal to her eye particularly (his fistlike bumpy face was repulsive to her), but he was a remarkable man in many ways. Unfortunately, he didn’t like girls, except as dancing partners.

After a few more numbers the drummer’s choir retired and pair of citharodes began singing a slow ballad. Aloê and Baran dropped out by mutual agreement and retreated to the edge of the room where there were steward-tables set up. Aloê took a glass of water, and Baran grabbed a mug of dark tea that smelled like tar.

“Ick,” she said cheerily, gesturing at his beverage.

He grunted absentmindedly, gazing off into the crowd, and downed the boiling hot mugful in a single gulp. “Ow,” he said then, still somewhat absentmindedly.

“What are you looking at so intently, B?”

“Not what. Who. That boy Zalion is here. That young man. I. He. Well.”

“You should go talk to him,” Aloê urged him.

“Talk. Huh.” He looked at her with tortured eyes.

“Dance with him, then. B, you talk better with your feet than most people do with their mouth.”

“Boy isn’t supposed to ask. The man, I mean.”

“When it’s two boys, someone’s got to. I don’t know what rules are bothering you, B, but you’re not in Westhold anymore. No one is going to be shocked if you ask Zalion to dance.”

“Uh. See you.” He handed her his mug and walked off toward his heart’s desire.

Silently wishing them both luck, she sniffed the dregs left in his mug, shuddered, and set it aside on the steward’s table. Each to their own.

She ran into Callion and his wife, who had passed the bickering point of the evening and were in a more convivial mood. She talked with them for a while about the news from Kaen, and Callion had some interesting things to say about how one actually killed a god. He was so handsome and so impassive that one sometimes forgot there was a mind under that marbly surface.

Joyous shouts broke out behind them, and they all three turned to see the triumphant and calculatedly late arrival of Naevros syr Tol and his woman-of-the-hour, the Honorable Ulvana.

Naevros was looking well, she had to admit. He was wearing a tight-fitting suit of dark red with a plenitude of dark shining buttons—tight enough to display the taut lines of his remarkably fit body, but loose enough that he could move with his natural grace.

As for the Honorable Ulvana . . . Her dressmaker had run out of dresses, it seemed, and had settled for covering the minimal amount of her client’s pasty skin with semitransparent gold bandages. That skin. It always reminded Aloê of various types of stinking cheese with the mold just scraped off: quivering, pale, and full. Ulvana had decorated herself with gobs of makeup like dabs of jam amongst the cheese. But the chief thing you noticed about Ulvana was her voice.

When Aloê was a girl she’d had a speckled hunting brach who had a bad habit of yowling through the night. Her yowl was particularly harsh on the ear, demanding attention, comfort, company, food. Ulvana’s voice always reminded Aloê of that desperate lonely bitch.

“God Creator,” muttered Callion’s wife. “How can he stand that intolerable woman?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Callion.

Aloê turned away with a muttered excuse. She did not want to be present if their mood turned to barking again, nor did she want to have to make polite conversation with Naevros and Ulvana.

Unfortunately the currents of the crowd brought her face-to-face with Naevros before too long. He was standing at a steward’s table with some sort of chocolatey confection in his hand and a quiet smile on his face. Fortunately his abominable cheese-woman was somewhere else at the moment.

They greeted each other by name and stood in silence for a while, listening to the music. It had turned more lively again: a band of horn-players, string-pluckers and bell-ringers was playing a sprightly tune with a simple rhythm.

He knew exactly how she felt, of course. His smile said it all. And he would not let her feelings change his behavior one jot; he would not apologize for his mate-of-the-moment. And, really, it was none of her business; she felt that strongly—as strongly as she felt repelled by the whole business.

They might have reached some sort of peace, standing there, listening to the music, letting their rapport speak for them. But the crowd parted like waves, and from them stepped forth the technically honorable but certainly deplorable Ulvana. She held a glass of some milky fluid in her hand and a vacantly cheery expression on her face.

“Oooh!” She gave her raspy, whine-edged wail. “Naevy-dear, you have one of those yummy treats. Gimme.”

She dropped her head down and ate from his hand like an animal. He let her, his quiet smile lengthening a little as he looked down on her, giving him a fierce predatory look. Her busy tongue was licking the last traces of chocolate from Naevros’ palm, a long milk-white thread of phlegm connecting tongue and hand.

Aloê turned, her throat knotting with revulsion, and walked away into the crowd.

“Veuath, rokhlan!” came a cheery greeting from a gap in the crowd ahead of her.

“Rokhlan Deor,” she said, nodding.

“Hey, you haven’t, um, you haven’t seen—”

Aloê wondered desperately if there was something in the drinks that was robbing males of the ability to speak.

“—haven’t seen my harven-kin around here anywhere, have you? Sorry for asking.”

Aloê had no idea why he was apologizing but said, “I don’t think I’ve seen him since the drum-choir retired.”

“Excellent. Excellent.”

“Um.” Now she was doing it! “Why do you say that, if may ask? Are you trying to avoid him?”

“No. No. Maybe I shouldn’t say it, but I was hoping he would slip out of the party with an old friend of his. If you know what I mean.”

“Oh. Well, that’s why some people come to these things—to leave with the right person. Or any person at all,” she added grimly, batting away the thought of Naevros and his trull. “Things a little tense around Tower Ambrose these days?” she added.

“You have no idea. Really, you don’t. I’m sorry to rush off, but I’m slated to play in the next set.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Aloê said.

“Thanks,” said the dwarf. “I won’t have to stomp on so many feet that way.”

They forged their way through the crowd to the dais where the band was playing. As they approached, the band wound up their tune and stepped down to general if unenthusiastic applause from the crowd.

There was a crowd of dwarves standing nearby, and they leapt up on the dais and started setting up their instruments. Two of them were putting together a great wooden wheel studded with extrusions like wineglasses tinted in the whole spectrum of colors, a glass rainbow running around the edge of the wheel.

Deor took his place in front of the wheel and made a few adjustments. There were pedals that turned or slowed the wheel, and he wanted them set exactly right. Then he worked a pedal to bring the wheel up to speed: the glass bells shone like colored lightning, reflecting the cold lights of the dancing hall. Deor took up two strikers, each with two business ends. The one he held in his right hand terminated in a flange of silvery metal on one side, with a thumblike wooden end on the other. The one he held in his left hand had a cloth-muffled end and an end like a long-haired metallic brush.

With casual skill, Deor spun both strikers in his hands. The other dwarvish musicians took up their instruments: recorders and drums and some odd stringed instruments played with some kind of stick or bow. All their eyes were on Deor.

Deor began to play, and the other dwarves joined in.

Aloê was spellbound by the glass wheel, and Deor’s skill in playing it. He would let the brushes trail continually over the bells, issuing a long unearthly bloodless stream of sound, while he struck the bells swinging by on the other side of the wheel with a hard striker to rap out bright bitter exclamations of sound. The wooden end made a slightly different sound than the metal one, and Aloê was amazed at Deor’s deftness. Either he was hitting those bells with exactly the right strength, to issue a maximum of volume without so much force as to break the glass, or else the bells were made with something stronger than ordinary glass. But the music was more wonderful than the instrument that made it.

Soon she realized that she knew the tune. It was a country round from Westhold. She had even danced it a few times, while staying at Three Hills, where Illion and his brother lived. Her feet itched to join in. She danced a little by herself, unable to refrain.

A hand touched her elbow. She turned to face a man she didn’t know. His face was red as a beet, but it was split by a bright agreeable smile. He nodded toward the dance in progress.

“Yes!” she shouted, and leapt after him into the coil of dancers.

She didn’t actually kick or maim anyone, and her partner was as enthusiastic but not necessarily more skilled than she was. She stayed with him for a second dance, since she recognized that tune as well.

But it wasn’t long before she realized the second dance was a mistake. Naevros and Ulvana were also on the dance floor, and this round required all the dancers to swing past each other, hand-to-hand, at one point or another.

She pondered stepping out of the line and walking away. But she thought she could at least pass by them in a round-dance without undue pain.

As they came nearer to her, though, and she weaved through the dancers hand-to-hand, plunging toward them, she became more and more repelled. And when she saw Naevros’ hand actually extended toward her she suddenly remembered how she had last seen it, his palm slick with Ulvana’s milky phlegm, and she knocked it furiously aside. She stepped out of the line and walked away.

“Aloê!” She heard Naevros’ voice behind her, rising over the music, tense with anger. She turned to face him, to shout at him that . . . that . . . she didn’t know what. But she welcomed the confrontation.

But Ulvana came out from behind Naevros, like a pale moon from behind a storm cloud. She shook a long white fleshy finger at Aloê and shrieked, “You can’t stand it! You jealous thing, you can’t bear it that Naevy and I love each other!”

“Love,” Aloê repeated incredulously. “Love! You silly trull, can’t you see how he hates you?”

She screamed the words at the shocked cheesy-faced woman. They rang out like bells in the suddenly silent dancing hall. The musicians had stopped playing. The dancers had stopped dancing. Everyone was turned toward them now, attending to this vile domestic comedy. Everyone was looking at her.

She turned on her heel and walked away through the crowd. It parted like mist before her. By sheer luck she found herself headed toward an exit. She plunged through it and into the sheltering night.

Outside, still laboring in the dark, were the men laboring at the impulse wheel that gave light to the dancing hall and heat to the kitchens.

“Is everything all right, Vocate?” one of them asked as she passed, and (unable to speak) she laughed unsteadily in answer.

Aloê’s fury left her with the light of the room. She thought ironically of the position she had left Naevros in, and shrugged. It would not faze him. Nothing that happened in a crowded room could faze him.

She leapt up the slope toward the ridge that stood over Illion’s dancing hall. She saw someone coming toward her down the slope. God Avenger, would she never be alone with her thoughts? But the person coming toward her showed no inclination to speak to her—in fact, gave her a wide berth as they passed each other. Aloê recognized her as the frosty mushroom who was one of the Arbiters of the Peace for the Rangan settlements up north. The woman had a bitter unsatisfied look on her frosty face. Aloê wondered idly what had annoyed her. Some man, no doubt: they were everywhere underfoot these days, like spiders in summer or snakes in spring.

She mounted to the top of the ridge and breathed out a sigh of relief before she realized that she still wasn’t alone: she could see the other’s crooked shape against the starlit horizon. She smiled to herself. She had thought about turning aside, but she would not now. She had come out to be alone and cool her overheated mind, but this was an opportunity she would not refuse.

“Stand fast there, Vocate!” she called out, as she saw the crooked outline start to move away. “I’ve something to say to you.”

She dashed up the last few paces and stood, facing the other on the height.

“Then,” the other remarked laconically.

“I think you’ve been avoiding me, Morlock,” she said, locking gazes with him. His face was split into halves: coldly in the starlight on one side, warm on the other in the light from the bright windows of the house.

He met her eye. “Of course.”

She raised one eyebrow. “‘Of course’? Why, ‘of course’? Do I annoy you so?”

“No,” he said slowly, “I should not say ‘annoy.’”

She would have thought he was flirting with her, if his voice were not so flat, so searchingly precise.

“What is it, then?” she demanded, challenging him. “Are you afraid?”

“I fear your presence,” he acknowledged, after considering the question carefully.

She was astonished, then annoyed in her own right. He was having her on, of course, in his fishlike Northern way. “I would have thought a dragonkiller wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”

He again considered carefully before replying at last, “You are a rokhlan, as I am; you earned that honor in the North, as I did. Yet you fled the house, as I did.”

A denial was hot on her lips—but she could not utter it. At last, she laughed and said, “I see your point, I suppose. God Sustainer, I’ve been rude to you! I’m sorry, Morlock.”

“Hurs krakna!” muttered Morlock.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said gently. “I’ve never known, Morlock.”

“It means . . . in this particular case . . . it means that I have taken no offense. I have welcomed this conversation,” he added stiffly.

“So that is what it means.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you have faced your fear boldly, my fellow-rokhlan. I suppose I should go and do the same. Good night.”

Morlock bowed wordlessly over his arm, exactly like a courtly hero in an old painting. She turned away swiftly and ran down the slope, covering her mouth with her hands to hold in the laughter. When she entered the open window she was sober, but smiling broadly.

The first person she saw was Illion, and she greeted him gladly. “Ah, Illion, I was just coming to talk to you.”

Illion bowed wordlessly over his arm.

She glared at him for a moment, then laughed. “Ah, you know it all, as usual, Illion. Well, Morlock has just been telling me I ought to leave. He says if I am going to run around raging like a banefire and insulting all your guests that I ought to go home, where people have the option of being rude back to me. So I’m leaving.”

“Hm,” said Illion thoughtfully, “I must go out and break Morlock’s jaw for him.”

“Too late! The word is spoken, and a true word, too, my friend. Oh, besides, you daren’t go outside now, you know. He’s running about, pounding on his chest, boasting of slaying dragons with his bare hands. Really, I was frightened, so I had to come back in.”

“Yes, I saw your grimace of terror as you came down the slope. Well, we’re sorry to lose you. Your misstep is more entertaining than another’s perfectly trod pavane.”

“Missteps always are, but how loathsome you are to mention it. Oh, Jordel, Illion’s throwing me out—says he can’t have me insulting his guests right and left. Walk me home and get me drunk, will you?”

“Walking!” protested the fair-haired vocate, who had just wandered by. “Not really?”

“Oh, it’s only three streets up and a couple more over. It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

“Walking!”

“Come along, you pampered youth,” said Aloê grimly.

His heart pounding, Morlock stood on the ridge staring into the darkness, drinking in the night air. The golden veil that always seemed to descend before his vision when she was there had faded into the shadows. His hands were trembling. He could not remember what he had said, or why. He remembered, with stinging clarity, seeing her laugh as she ran off. . . .

His hands were trembling as he raised them to wipe off his sweaty forehead. He was exultant (he had seen her, talked with her, stood with her) but in despair. (She was laughing as she ran off. God Creator, what a fool he had been. What had he said?)

He had to leave the city. He was weary of this obsession, weary of avoiding her, weary of being destroyed by exaltation and despair when he failed to avoid her. . . . God Creator knew how long it would last, whether it would ever go away.

It had not always been like this. When they had first met she seemed beautiful to him—the way a precious stone is beautiful. When he saw her again in the Northhold, she had troubled him deeply. And now whenever he saw her, heard her voice in the chamber of the Graith, heard someone mention her name, he went blind, paralyzed by longing; the bright world faded to the luster of her dark golden hair. . . .

He had to leave the city. Right away, before the Station was over. If anything would help, being away would help. He strode down the slope, consciously following her, and entered the house.

As he searched the crowded hall for Illion, he felt someone touch his sleeve. Turning, he saw his white-mantled senior in the Graith of Guardians, Summoner Earno.

“Morlock, my friend,” said the stocky red-bearded summoner, when they had greeted each other, “have you had enough of the entertainment?”

“I was just seeking Illion to say good-bye.”

“He’s upstairs, waiting to talk with us both. Come with me, if you will.”

Morlock would and did. They went together to the broad stone stair leading upward; Earno led him to a small room overlooking the street. Within were Illion and the other two Summoners: Lernaion, Summoner of the City, and Bleys, Summoner of the Outer Lands.

“Is this a meeting of the High Council?” Morlock said, a little sharply, naming the graith-within-the-Graith that was the Three Summoners.

“You are a stickler for formalities, Morlock Ambrosius,” Lernaion remarked. (He was a Southholder as she was; his skin was dark as varnished wood, in stark contrast with the white mantle of his rank.) “That’s well: if your father had been more that way he might still be among us. But this is nothing so formal. Nor are any of us trying to woo you for their respective factions—Illion’s presence is proof of that, I hope.”

Bleys’ mouth issued a warm musical hum of distaste. His hairless wrinkled head, oddly like a turtle’s against the high hump the white mantle made on his bent uneven shoulders, turned to Morlock. “You want to know why you’re here, I guess. Well, it’s your own damned fault—you and your father’s. I disagree with my peer, by the way. Merlin was born with a penchant for trouble, and no power in the worlds could have kept him in the Graith longer than he was. You seem to have inherited that penchant for trouble, young Ambrosius, and we intend to use it and you, as we use everything, to maintain the safety of the Wardlands.”

“Eh.” Morlock glanced at Illion, then Earno. “I have no objection to being used,” he said slowly, “for that purpose. But I, of course, will be the user.”

“Formalities,” muttered the oldest Summoner, and drew his head back among the folds of his mantle.

“Facts, rather,” Earno said. “Morlock, we brought you here not to browbeat you, but to ask you a favor. For the safety of the Wardlands, as Bleys correctly has said.”

“What favor?” Morlock demanded bluntly.

“We want you to leave the city—soon, before the Station ends. What was that?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“It is the Two Powers. You remember . . .”

And that was just it: Morlock did remember. He saw at once why the Summoners had turned to him. A few years past, during the invasion of dragons in the Northhold, Morlock had briefly come into rapport with his natural father, Merlin—and had somehow acquired a memory of Merlin’s about a confrontation with the Two Powers in Tychar.

“ . . . the dragon invasion was a gambit of the Two Powers,” Earno was saying. “That, now, is clear. We cannot suppose that, having failed in their first attempt, they will leave our realm in peace. The missionaries they are sending to displace the gods of Kaen may be the advance force for a new attack against us.”

Morlock grunted. “I’ll just dash out and destroy them, shall I?”

“Calm down, boy,” Bleys snapped. “We just want you to go to Anhi and ask a few questions. If we intended anything like a confrontation with the Two Powers we would send a serious challenger—Noreê or Illion himself. Killing a stray dragon is no particular—”

“Then Illion and Noreê will not go,” Morlock interrupted. He looked at Illion, whose grin told him his guess was correct.

“They both refused to go,” Lernaion acknowledged. “We respect their reasons.”

“No doubt we would, if we knew what they were,” Bleys remarked drily. “But it’s no great matter. You, young Ambrosius, can do the job. It’s only a mission to ask a few questions in Anhi, to learn more of the Two Powers than we now know. You are just insolent, bad-tempered, and childish enough for that. Further, whoever goes will have to deal with your father; that’s in the cards, as the modern slang expression is. He may be favorably disposed to the mission or not. If not, you have as much a chance against him as anyone in the Graith, though I don’t envy you those particular odds.”

“Why won’t you go, Illion?” Morlock asked the older vocate.

“I think it’s your job, Morlock,” the other replied. “If you will not go—and only you can judge the rightness of that—I would appeal to Bleys himself. Whoever goes will go sooner or later between the paws of the Two Powers. Only one person we know has done so and escaped: Merlin. So we need to send someone as much like Merlin as possible.”

“That’s poor reasoning. I am both like and unlike Merlin. I am my mother’s son as well—and my harven father’s.”

“Yet you cannot see yourself. I say my reasoning is sound. The choice is yours, though.”

“But what am I choosing? What do you ask me to do?”

“Find out what they want!” shouted Bleys. “We sit here, across the Narrow Sea and behind our hedge of mountains, and bother no one. Yet the Powers have sent their agents across the world to destroy us, and may be about to do so again. Why? It makes no sense.”

“It may never make sense,” Lernaion said quietly. “Evil exists; malice exists. Yet the truth is, we know very little of the Powers, compared to deadly enemies we have faced in the past. We need to know more before we can act. Morlock, go; find out what you can; and come back.”

Morlock raised his eyes to find Earno’s on him. “I have gone on such a mission before,” he said to the summoner frankly.

Earno flushed, but did not flinch. “All the more reason to send you now.”

“I will go,” Morlock remarked thoughtfully. “I should leave tomorrow if—”

They protested with one voice, telling him that “the ship” would not be ready tomorrow.

“What ship?” he asked suspiciously.

“The ship that will carry you to Kaen, to the Anhikh marches, to the Sea of Stones on the borders of Tychar if need be,” said Lernaion. “You were not thinking of walking, were you?”

Morlock was thinking about walking. He always had bad luck when travelling by sea, and anyway was prone to seasickness. He shrugged, rather than say any of this.

“And while you circumnavigate the world on foot,” Bleys remarked cheerily, “the Two Powers will rip the Wardlands open like a bag of oranges and suck them dry.”

Morlock sullenly acknowledged the advisability of sea travel.

“We’ve a fair ship and a decent crew of seagoing thains,” Lernaion remarked. “But we’re still provisioning, and looking for a vocate competent to command at sea. Now that we have your answer, we will approach Baran or Jordel, again: they have both travelled as shipmasters to the wilderness of worlds.”

Morlock grunted. The prospect of being shipmates for an indefinite time with Jordel, who loathed him, was not attractive. But he could at least hope that the converse prospect would make Jordel reluctant to join the cruise. In any case, he would not withdraw his word now.

He stood. “Then.”

“When our chosen captain tells us the ship is ready, we will send you word,” Earno said.

Illion rose as well. “Summoners, stay as long as you like. But I’m a shameful host, and should attend to my remaining guests.” He and Morlock left together.

Jordel was not one of the world’s great listeners, but he was listening tonight with great interest. His friend Aloê, sitting cross-legged on his refectory table, was raging with great detail, at high volume, and with a striking command of vulgar rhetoric against their mutual friend Naevros. That sort of thing is always interesting. Moreover, he had once had romantic designs on Aloê but had been balked by what seemed to be a relationship with Naevros. Yet, apparently, they were not in a relationship. Still, somehow they were. The matter perplexed him, and he welcomed the chance to understand it further (though he had long since given up the idea of Aloê as even a temporary bed-partner).

Still, although he enjoyed the vivid and brutal word-portraits she painted of Naevros’ last fifteen lovers, somehow when she ran out of steam and started to take a few pauses to pull at her drink, he still didn’t understand the situation any better than before. Did she herself want Naevros or not? If not, what did it matter to her what he did with his penis? If she did, why didn’t she reach out, grab him by his well-tailored collar, and drag him off to the nearest patch of shrubbery? It was clear to Jordel, anyway, that she could do so any time she chose.

Jordel swirled his drink thoughtfully. Maybe she didn’t choose to be a member of any parade that consisted of such lovelights as the Honorable Ulvana (who was not really so bad, Jordel felt, when she wasn’t trying so hard). There was something to that. And maybe that was part of it. But it wasn’t all of it.

In the several years Jordel had known Aloê, as thain and now as vocate, Jordel had never seen her with anyone who could be described as her lover—not even in the hand-holding, eye-gazing, poetry-writing sense. She walked alone. She had friends; she had colleagues; she had this thing, whatever it was, with Naevros. That was all. Maybe there was someone waiting for her back home in the Southhold, but Jordel doubted it. She never went there—rarely even spoke of her family.

This thing with Naevros. If it was not the center of the matter, it was close. It was what was hurting her now. Jordel had no great reputation for wisdom, but he could see things as they were, and he saw that she could neither bear to put down this torch she was carrying for Naevros nor stand to carry it any longer. He wished he could do something for her. There wasn’t much he could do but listen to her, so listen he did, although he was not one of the world’s great listeners.

Eventually, after a somber sip of Lyrmlok (the sweetest, clearest, bubbliest wine in Jordel’s none-too-extensive cellar), she said, “I should just get out. Out of the city. Out of the Wardlands. I’m no good here. How can I even stand at Station tomorrow with all those people looking at me and snickering about me?”

“It’s Naevros and his bimbo they’ll be snickering about. Or ought to be.”

“People never do what they ought to do. Do you, J?”

“No. But I am unique.”

“Everyone is. That’s what makes them all the same. No, I need out.”

Jordel listened with decreasing interest to Aloê’s various plans for escaping from the city until the Station was concluded.

“Listen,” he said reluctantly, when she had run through three of these. “I was offered a job by the Summoners. I was going to take it: it sounds interesting, which is more than I can say for the opinions of my fellow guardians at this Station. Still, if you want to get out of the city, maybe you should take it instead. You’d be commanding a ship bound for the unguarded lands . . .”

Bleys sat alone in an otherwise empty room on the third floor of Illion’s city house. He was waiting for the party to die away before he departed. For certain reasons, he did not choose to be seen in public these days. Eventually the scandal would die down, but for the time being he lived a solitary life—which he was inclined to prefer in any case.

Now, though, his pleasing solitude was punctured by Noreê, who appeared, a white shadow in a dark doorway, to glare silently at him.

“What is it you want, my dear?” he said as warmly as he could, although he disliked her and knew full well what she wanted.

“Is he going?” the pale bitter vocate demanded.

“Of course he is, my dear. We had only to appeal to his selflessness and prod his ego. The young are so pitiably malleable. The Guardians who go with him, of course, really deserve our pity, but that’s their lookout. If they wanted to avoid danger they should not have joined the Graith.”

“Jordel is the choice of a captain, I think. I will miss him.”

“I will not.”

“You are very happy with the night’s work, are you, Bleys?”

“So should you be, my dear. We want the same thing.”

“But we don’t want it for the same reason.”

“If you ever reach my advanced age, my dear, you will have learned to accept results and let motives look after themselves.”

She turned and left without a word.

That night she sent a message to the Two Powers by magical means.

In part it said, We are sending Ambrosius out of the Wards to you. Destroy him, if you like, and leave the Wardlands in peace.

She had little hope that the Two Powers would leave the Wardlands alone. But she did very much hope that they would dispose of the Ambrosii, once and for all.

And then, at last, she slept. It had been a long day, but a good one. She hoped tomorrow would be as good.