"No, Master!" the young man said, bowing obsequiously.

"Will this money purse buy dat whole cartful?" the goblin asked, pulling a bulging sack from his robes. He tossed it to Atalla, and it chinked with a sound like coins-or, perhaps, river stones.

Tucking the bag into his own robes, Atalla cried, "Wine for everyone!"

"Not the prisoners!" the sandy-faced man said greedily, grabbing two skins for himself.

"Why would Squee buy wine for filthy, scummy, stupid, ugly, bad-stinking prisoners?" the goblin asked, giving a big wink to Sisay.

She sneered in order to hide her smile.

"Might I also offer the work of my brush?" Atalla asked, producing a whisk broom and beginning to clean the dust from the guard captain. "That'll be just one copper more per soldier!"

"Ain't these guys worth a brush-off?" the goblin wondered amiably.

The captain squirted raga wine into his mouth, swallowed, and said, "You're going to earn this copper. I got dust everywhere."

Atalla quickly worked over the riding cloak and then coaxed it from the captain's shoulders. "I'll brush off your uniform too. Lift your arms. There. Your belt is really dirty." The whisk worked furiously over the set of keys hanging there. The captain began to look down.

Squee shouted in sudden startlement, "Is this here claptrap cage safe? Can it hoist these real good soldier guys up ta the uppity city? Doesn't dat console there look kind of banged up, like as if it'd been gotten into by somebody dat shouldn'ta gotten into it? Who's s'posed to fix this?"

A woman standing quietly nearby shoved forward. She didn't look very Mercadian-her face was suspiciously lean. Even so, she had greasy hair, grime on her cheeks, and a bit of a paunch beneath, her yellow cloak.

Sisay's secret smile deepened-Hanna was in on this too?

Hanna bowed, her eyes averted toward the toolbox in her hand. "I am assigned to maintain this lift today, Master."

"Will you open dat console ta show me it's all right and not messed up by… guys trying ta… mess up things?" "Saboteurs?" the woman supplied. "Do Squee not know how ta talk?"

"Yes," the mechanic lied. She ducked past the goblin, set her tool case on the floor of the lift, and began working at the console.

Oblivious, the guards gulped their wine.

The boy had moved on from the captain to brush down Sisay. As clouds of dust went up from her shoulder, she whispered, "Surprised to see you, Atalla."

He flashed her a smile. In a wry murmur, he said, "Father told me I could come back to the city as long as I returned with another thousand gold."

"You will if you get us out of this," Sisay pledged. "What's the plan?"

"Drugged wine," Atalla replied. He brushed the shackles on her hands, and they clicked open. "A skeleton key… a rewired lift… Once Gerrard joins us, we'll soar to the city and disappear."

Sisay nodded. "The best place to hide in hundreds of miles-"

"Hey! What'th thith?" the guard captain slurred. "Why're you brushing off the prithoners?"

Atalla blurted, "To keep your hands clean when you grab them."

The captain nodded blearily and took another drink.

Atalla meanwhile moved swiftly to Tahngarth and Takara, intent on "cleaning" their shackles.

A soldier sprawled beside them, overcome by the drugged wine. Others turned on rubbery legs and stared down stupidly at the fallen man. One man tried to lift his comrade, but he fell too. Realization crossed the faces of the others.

"What thort of wine ith thith-?"

A third went down, and a fourth. The slumping soldiers were beginning to attract attention from the crowd nearby.

"I wish Gerrard would get here," Atalla growled as he unlocked Tahngarth's shackles.

"He's not coming," the minotaur rumbled, pointing toward the crowd.

In chains now, Gerrard rode away from the city aback the snow-white Jhovall.

"The prithonerth are loothe!" shouted the guard captain even as he crumpled to the floor of the lift. "They're loothe! Guardth!"

Nearby, an officer heard the slurred call for help. He turned, gestured toward the lift, and barked orders to his contingent. Swords flashed out. Soldiers converged.

"Take us up, Hanna," Sisay shouted. She flung away her shackles, grabbed up a trident from one of the fallen guards, and swung it about, smashing the butt into the face of a new arrival. "Take us up!"

Sudden motion flung down the last of the drugged guards. The lift lurched upward. It pulled free of the ground. Its cage door clanged loose. Soldiers leaped, grabbing onto the gate, but Sisay kicked their hands away. They fell, and in moments, the lift rose out of their reach. It accelerated toward the city above.

"It'th no uthe," the guard captain laughed blearily. "They're going to exthecute your friend." He slowed down to speak more clearly. "They're going to bury him in the wall of garbage."

Tahngarth's eyes slitted. "Not if I can help it." With a roar, he flung himself from the soaring lift.

"No, Tahngarth!" Sisay shouted, extending her hand futilely after him. The lift was higher than he could have realized-a hundred feet and rising. As Sisay watched in horror, Tahngarth plunged toward ground. "Take us back down! Reverse, Hanna! Reverse!"

"I can't!" Hanna shouted. "It's hard wired now!"

"But Tahngarth!" Sisay shouted, staring down as his body shrank to a tiny point. Hands grasped her shoulders and pulled her back from the edge.

"Think of Gerrard!" Takara hissed as air rushed down over them. "If we can find the dump site, can stop them- we can save Gerrard."

Sisay collapsed atop her arms. "Yes. We can do nothing for Tahngarth. Think of Gerrard. Think of Gerrard."

Tahngarth had thought only of Gerrard when he flung himself from that lift. Now, he wished he'd thought of himself-and of basic physics.

Roughly speaking, every ten feet of a fall means another broken bone. This fall would leave Tahngarth with multiple contusions of legs, arms, spine, and skull. Those last two were the bad breaks. The shattered skull seemed almost a certainty since Tahngarth was flipping slowly over as he fell.

The marketplace spread out below him. Spectators crowded on either side of the road where Weatherlight rolled. Giants dragged the ship across logs and toward a huge door that gaped at the base of the mountain.

That was all Tahngarth saw before his face turned toward the spinning wall. Why had he thought of Gerrard? A few month ago, he couldn't stand the man, and now he would die for him?

Tahngarth somersaulted a second time. He glimpsed Gerrard's snow-white Jhovall marching amid a military escort. Gerrard was headed for the rubbish wall, for the section dug out to allow Weatherlight through. He would be buried there, in more rubbish.

Just before flipping to the wall again, Tahngarth saw a silver flash below-Karn? And what did he hold? A canvas tent roof?

Karn ran to the base of the lift shaft and hurled the canvas upward. The cloth's upper edge snagged on a lift bracket. Karn yanked on the lower edge, drawing it into a taut, beautiful, slanting slide.

Tahngarth struck the canvas slide-face first-and shot down the fabric slope. The rug burn on his nose was agony, but it was better than a skull spattering on stone. In whizzing moments, he ran full speed into Karn, who clutched the base of the slide.

There came a terrible chime sound that jarred minotaur and golem, both. The two tumbled to the ground side by side, their ears ringing.

That tone might have been bearable if it weren't accompanied by the roar of hundreds of booted feet converging around them. In moments, Tahngarth and Karn gazed at a ring of tridents and angry faces.

"I could slay twenty of them… before going down…" Tahngarth panted breathlessly.