She wasn't deterred by the panicky stories circulating about the Felk using wizardry to aid them in their campaigns. Magic was not feared on the Southsoil, though its practitioners were highly rare. After the Great Upheavals, wizards, once quite visible as healers, retreated into hermetic cloisters.

She had of course retracted her hooks into her leather glove, after wiping them meticulously clean. She had once fouled the tiny gears with blood. It hadn't happened since.

Most narcotics were not illegal in Isthmus cities. Substances were declared unlawful only when those in positions of power wished to profit from their distribution exclusively.

Radstac could have purchased her mansid leaves in the market. Could have laid out twice the silver for the three leaves she'd gotten at that fetid lair, paying the merchant's licensing tax for him. But the quality would have been mediocre. She didn't need to actually sample any of these legitimate leaves to know this. It was the way of things. Drag dens, like the one she'd visited, depended on the return business of addicts; addicts, having built up inhuman tolerances to every recreational poison in existence, required the highest potency. Thus, better profits were made by the lairs' proprietors—who got their product through the black market—than by licensed merchants in the marketplace.

Ah ... and it was fine stuff, she thought, still chewing the blue leaf. Clarity, clarity. The sense of things, unfolding all around her now.

As she walked, she didn't examine that thought that surfaced, that nagging one ... the one that said she only came north to the Isthmus because only here could she find leaves of this quality. After all, the mansid that the narcotic traders brought back to the Southsoil at the end of every summer were dry, stale, their potency gone. Mansid leaves did not grow anywhere but on the Isthmus.

The thought didn't last long. She turned off the street, into a pub. She ordered tea and took a table. Spirits were for weak people looking to be strong by killing those perceptions in themselves that proved, day after repetitive day, that they were powerless. She did not drink. Wine and the like provided an illusion of clarity, when in truth clarity receded with every sip, until everything became a false comforting lullaby.

The pub was fairly crowded, and that crowd was talkative. Radstac listened.

The landlord apparently didn't care for her taking up a valuable seat while drinking only her single cup of tea, which she nursed nearly an entire watch. When she finally grew tired of his malevolent glares, she crooked her finger at him, put her head close to his, and told him that blood that spurted from a suddenly opened heart was much darker than what one saw when, say, a face was sliced

wide. Then she smiled, which she knew was her most unnerving expression. The man hadn't come near her since.

In the meantime the effects of the small bite of the mansid leaf had mostly worn off. As with everything else about the narcotic, she handled the comedown ably.

"U'delph is a story. Something to frighten children. It makes no sense." The overdressed merchant sported ridiculous, elaborate facial hair—shaved here, waxed to points there. Must have taken him the better part of his morning to put his face together, and he was still old and ugly, despite the fine clothes.

Actually, Radstac thought, most of this pub's clientele looked to be on the affluent side.

Radstac had listened to the talk. It was dismaying. It was intentional blindness, not to see what was so surely coming. Sook was doubtlessly the next target for the Felk. It would put them one more city-state closer to Petgrad, though still some distance away.

"It's reliable news," said a man in a grey cowl. His voice was strong but neutral. Radstac hadn't been able to get a good look at his face, but his body was firm, and he moved in a way that spoke of sword training.

"Reliable." The merchant made it a contemptible word. "What does that mean?"

"It means credible, believable, trustworthy." His tone was as flat as before. The effect was droll, and a few titters rose among the assembled drinkers. A pair planted in one corner was playing a round of Dashes—one of those juvenile Isthmuser games of chance—as if to emphasize then-blasé attitudes.

The merchant's face moved in a way that caused the points of his mustache to sneer. "I know the definition, lad." Half to himself he muttered, "By the sanity of the gods, when I was a youth, we didn't handle our elders so." He took a swallow of beer, fixed the younger man again with scornful eyes. "What I question is the degree of credibility, believability ... and trustworthiness."

It hung there for a heartbeat, like a challenge.

"I don't bring the news personally," the hooded man said, utterly unruffled. "I comment on news we've all heard. Everyone, here in the city."

"To hear rumor and tradespeople's gossip is not to hear truth." The merchant pronounced this like he was quoting a verse of sacred wisdom.

Something flared red in Radstac's almost colorless eyes.

"And to spew shit like that," she said, a low growl that carried into every corner of the place, "is to say nothing."

She had sat still and quiet for quite some time now. She had come into this reasonably posh pub specifically to take the pulse of these merchants—these people who had much to lose if Petgrad were invaded and captured by the Felk. And now had heard enough.

Every head turned, including the one under the cowl.

Radstac pushed off her seat, standing, finally allowing her pent-up contempt to show on her scarred features.

"I can't make up my mind if you're all ignorant, out-right stupid, or just cowards."

"Now that's—" It was the landlord, lumbering over, not about to let her go on insulting his spending customers.

She whirled, reached out over the bartop, clamped his knobby pink nose between her thumb and a knuckle of her forefinger and twisted. He yelped, then disappeared below the level of the serving counter. If he rose with a weapon, she would know it before the top of his head came back into view.

She wasn't done addressing the assembly, and they were all still staring. Some had the good sense to look scared.

"The war news comes. You all hear it. It washes down from the north, no different than news of crop failures in other cities—stories you place great faith in, seeing how there's a potential for profit there for some of you. You know what you hear of the Felk is true. You know this war is categorically different from those you've known in the past. Different from those your grandmothers and grandfathers knew. This is a war beyond the scope of you childish Isthmusers. And yet it's real. And it's coming this way. Frightens you, doesn't it? Petrifies you. Because by the time the Felk reach here, they'll have absorbed the man-power and resources of gods know how many city-states. You'll be calling it the Felk Empire by then. And they've got magic on their side, and that's maybe most terrifying of all to you. They'll be unstoppable. Certainly more than a match for your army as it now stands. And you—you people of some wealth, maybe of some rank and power— what do you do? Sit on your asses, swill beer, and reassure yourselves that the danger doesn't exist. Stories for children you said, you pathetic fop?"

She might have spat then, might have hurled her cup into the faces turned her way. But her tirade had done nothing but make her disgust rise to a boil. They were still staring, still in shock. It was a fair guess that these merchants and landowners weren't often spoken to in this manner.

The landlord with the tweaked nose stayed out of sight as she marched out of the pub, using the exit that led to the latrine.