But he could run the scabbards for all six shortswords through his belt, and end up wearing a skirt of shortswords, but that’d be all right, wouldn’t it? But then, where would he carry the sharpers? One knock against a pommel or hilt and he’d be an expanding cloud of whiskers and weapon bits. And what about the cross-bows? He’d need to load them all up but keep everything away from the releases, unless he wanted to end up skewering all his friends with the first stumble.

What if-

What’s that? Back to Blend, please? Flesh against flesh, the weight of full breasts in hands, one knee pushing up between parted thighs, sweat a blending of sweet oils, soft lips trying to merge, tongues dancing eager and slick as-

‘I can’t wear alla this!’

Scillara glanced over. ‘Really, Antsy? Didn’t Blend say that about a bell ago?’

‘What? Who? Her? What does she know?’

To that entirely unself-conscious display of irony, Blend could only raise her brows when she caught Scillara’s eye.

Scillara smiled in response, then drew again on her pipe.

Blend glanced over at the bard, and then said to Antsy, ‘We’re safe out there now, anyway.’

Eyes bulging, Antsy stared at her in disbelief. ‘You’d take the word of some damned minstrel? What does he know?’

‘You keep asking what does anyone know, when it’i obvious that whatevei ihey know you’re not listening to anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Sorry, that so confused me I doubt I could repeat it. The contract’s cancelled-I’i.sber said so.’

Antsy wagged his head from side to side. ‘Fisher said so!’ He jabbed a finger at the bard. ‘He’s not Fisher-not the famous one, anyway. He’s just stolen the name! If he was famous he wouldn’t be just sittin’ there, would he? Famous people don’t do that.’

‘Really?’ the bard who called himself Fisher asked. ‘What are we supposed to do, Antsy?’

‘Famous people do famous things, alla time. Everybody knows that!’

‘The contract has been bought out,’ the bard said. ‘But if you want to dress as if preparing for a single-handed assault on Moon’s Spawn, you go right ahead.’

‘Rope! Do I need rope? Let me think!’ And to aid in this process Antsy began pacing, moustache twitching.

Blend wanted to pull a boot off and push her foot between Scillara’s thighs. No, she wanted to crawl right in there. Staking a claim. With a hiss of frustration she stood, hesitated, and then went to sit down at the bard’s table. She fixed him with an intense stare, to which he responded with a raised brow.

‘There’re more songs supposedly composed by Fisher than anyone else I’d ever heard of.’

The man shrugged.

‘Some of them are a hundred years old.’

‘I was a prodigy.’

‘Were you now?’

Duiker spoke. ‘The poet is immortal.’

She turned to face him. ‘Is that some kind of general, ideological statement, Historian? Or are you talking about the man sharing this table with you?’

Antsy cursed suddenly and then said, ‘I don’t need any rope! Who put that into my head? Let’s get going-I’m taking this shortsword and a sharper and anybody gets too close to me or looks suspicious they can eat the sharper for breakfast!’

‘We’ll stay here,’ Duiker said when Blend hesitated. ‘The bard and me. I’ll look in on Picker.’

‘All right. Thanks.’

Antsy, Blend and Scillara set out

The journey took them from the Estates District and into Daru District, along the Second Tier Wall. The city had fully awakened now, and in places the crowds were thick with the endless machinery of living. Voices and smells and needs and wants, hungers and thirsts, laughter and irritation, misery and joy, and the sunlight fell on everything it could reach and shadows retreated wherever they could.

Temporary barriers blocked the three foreigners here and there-a cart jammed sideways in a narrow street, a cart-horse dropped dead with its legs sticking up, half a family pinned under the upended cart. A swarm of people round a small collapsed building, stealing every dislodged brick and shard of lumber, and if anyone had been trapped in it, alas, no one was looking for them.

Scillara walked like a woman bred to be admired. And oh, yes, people noticed. In other circumstances, Blend-being another woman-might have resented that, but then she’d made a career out of not being noticed; and besides, she counted herself among the admirers.

‘Friendly people, these Darujhistanii,’ said Scillara as they finally swung south from the wall, heading for the southwest corner of the district.

‘They’re smiling,’ said Blend, ‘because they want a roll with you. And clearly you haven’t noticed the wives and such, all looking as if they swallowed something sour.’

‘Maybe they did.’

‘Oh they did, all right. The truth that men are men, that’s what they’ve swal-lowed.’

Antsy snorted. ‘What else would men be but men? Your problem, Blend, is you see too much, even when it’s not there.’

‘Oh, and what have you been noticing, Antsy?’

‘Suspicious people, that’s what.’

‘What suspicious people?’

‘The ones who keep staring at us, of course.’

‘That’s because of Scillara-what do you think we’ve just been talking about?’

‘Maybe they are, maybe they ain’t. Maybe they’re assassins, lookin’ to jump us.’

‘That old man back there who got his ear boxed by his wife was an assassin? What kind of Guild are they running here?’

‘You don’t know she was his wife,’ Antsy retorted. ‘And you don’t know but that was a signal to somebody on a roof. We could be walking right into an ambush!’

‘Of course,’ agreed Blend, ‘that woman was his mother, because Guild rules state that Ma’s got to come along to make sure he’s got the hand signals down, and that he eats all his lunch and his knives are sharp and he’s tied up his moccasins right so he doesn’t trip in the middle of his murderous lunge at Sergeant Antsy.’

‘I ain’t so lucky he trips,’ Antsy said in a growl. ‘In case you ain’t noticed, Blend, it’s been a run of the Lord’s push for us. Oponn’s got it in for me, especially.’

‘Why?’ Scillara asked.

‘Because I don’t believe in the Twins, that’s why. Luck-it’s all bad. Oponn only pulls now to push later. If you’ve been pulled, it don’t end there. Never does. No, you can expect the push to come any time and all you know for sure is it’s gonna come, that push. Every time. In fact, we’re all as good as dead.’

‘Well,’ said Scillara, ‘I can’t argue with that. Sooner or later, Hood takes us all, and that’s the only certainty there is.’

‘Aren’t you two cheerful this morning,’ Blend observed. ‘Look, here we are.’

They had arrived at the Warden Barracks, suitably sombre and foreboding.

Blend saw an annexe fronting the blockish building with the barred windows and set out towards it, the other two following.

A guard lounging outside the door watched them approach, and then said, ‘Check your weapons at the front desk, You here to visit someone?’

‘No,’ snorted Antsy, ‘we’ve come to break ’im out!’ And then he laughed. ‘Haha.’

No one found the joke at all amusing, especially after the sharper was found and correctly identified. Antsy then made the mistake of getting belligerent, in the midst of five or six stern-visaged constabulary, which led to a scuffle and then an arrest.

When all was said and done, Antsy found himself in a lock-up with three drunks, only one of whom was conscious-singing some old Fisher classic in a broken-hearted voice-and a fourth man who seemed to be entirely mad, convinced as he was that everyone he saw was wearing a mask, which was hiding something demonic, horrible, bloodthirsty. He’d been arrested for trying to tear off a merchant’s face and he eyed Antsy speculatively before evidently deciding that the red-whiskered foreigner looked too tough to take on, at least while he was still awake.

The sentence was three days long, provided Antsy proved a model prisoner. Any trouble and it could stretch out some more.