I grimaced as I helped myself to some of Sorgrad’s bread and scooped a piece of the seared fish he was carefully easing away from its bones. “What were you doing at the cockpits?”

“Sandy there said he wanted to take a turn around the guild halls again and told us to go and amuse ourselves.” Sorgrad smiled at Usara but the wizard didn’t rise to the new nickname. There was definitely something awry there.

“Is this Harquas someone significant?” Usara looked at us each in turn.

“He’s one of the biggest villains in this city,” I explained. “Anyone working with him will be as false as a pawnbroker’s welcome, not someone we want to travel with.”

“Order your food at the kitchen door, my girl,” said Sorgrad as he moved his plate out of my reach. “No, this pair looked fresh off their donkeys, all dressed up and sticking out like a cut finger.”

“Then Harquas will have them stuffed like squabs from a dovecote before the festival’s out.” I munched on some cress filched from Sorgrad’s plate.

“Are there likely to be other Mountain Men in the city?” inquired Usara.

Sorgrad shook his head. “Very few. It’s only the bigger valleys, the kindreds with labor to spare can afford to send their goods all this way. For all the profit you can make, you lose so much time on the trip—”

Movement by the door silenced him. I looked over to see Reza hurrying toward us. “Niello said to give you this, soon as you come in.” The lad pulled a twice-folded and sealed note out of his overlarge and shabby jerkin.

I signaled to the potboy before cracking the wax. “Sit down, Rez, have a drink.”

He smiled at me, exposing the toothless side of his mouth, permanent legacy of the hunger and beatings that had been his lot before Niello picked him out of the gutters. I winked at him but my good humor faded as I read Niello’s unpracticed scrawl gracing the back of some ancient masquerade dialogue.

“What’s the problem?” Sorgrad was reading my face as closely as I was studying the parchment.

“Did you and ’Gren run into any bother this afternoon?” I asked casually.

Sorgrad shook his head, unconcerned. “No.”

“And was ’Gren with you all the time?” I inquired.

“Until we got back here and he spotted Kelty adjusting her garters at him,” he grinned. “He’s never one to find fault with a fat goose.”

I nodded slowly. “According to Niello, they had the Watch in here asking questions earlier. Seems they want to talk to a pair of Mountain Men on account of a beating they gave some nailers.”

Usara opened his mouth and if I could have I’d have kicked him under the table to shut it. “Is this likely to be a problem?” His tone was both courteous and conciliatory.

I tried not to show my relief he hadn’t implied doubt in Sorgrad’s word. “Yes, to be honest. Niello wouldn’t have bothered straining his wits with this,” I waved the note, “if he hadn’t reckoned it was serious.”

“They cursed near tore the stage apart, in case anyone was hiding under it,” supplied Reza. “Emptied out all the costume baskets.”

I laid my hands on the table in front of me. “If their own have taken a hammering, the Watch will be pulling in anyone who fits the cry and like as not giving them a kicking for good measure. That’s the way of it here, the same as anywhere else. At any other time of year, we could find ourselves an advocate and argue the case in the courts, get a few witnesses to swear for us. Kelty for instance, she’d be good for convincing a judge ’Gren never left her bed.” I shook my head. “Not at a festival. The assize will father the bastard on the first face through the door and that will be that.”

“I don’t think we want to come to the attention of the Watch, do we?” I saw the face of Arle Cordainer reflected in Sorgrad’s eyes. Another consideration to add to the balance.

“Niello says Vadim took one of the nailers off into a corner,” I said to Sorgrad, ignoring the others. “Close as a miser and his money.”

“We can shut his mouth for him,” shrugged Sorgrad.

“If he turns up dead before the end of festival, that’ll just cause more trouble,” I warned.

“He won’t turn up,” Sorgrad grinned evilly.

“Why don’t we just leave?” asked Usara in some alarm.

“Because no minstrel is going to hit the road until the very last moment of the fair.” I hid my annoyance. There’s no point in trying to buck the run of the luck so I had to play these runes as best I could. “You could play the second clown, couldn’t you Rez?” The lad nodded hopefully.

“Then Niello can tell Vadim to take his coin and be on his way or we’ll use it to buy his ashes a niche in a shrine,” I said firmly. “He won’t argue. His type are all bark and no bite.”

“Who plays the dog?” asked Sorgrad.

“ ’Gren?” I suggested. There’d be no holding him back.

“So we’re going to the Forest, not the Mountains?” asked Usara, looking from me to Sorgrad and back again. “At the end of the festival?”

I nodded. “Do you have any problem with that?”

“No, none at all,” Usara spread his palms in a placating gesture. “I am bound to follow your lead.” He smiled with self-deprecating modesty.

I wasn’t fooled; he’d used magic to bespeak Planir in Hadrumal some time during the afternoon. It was a safe bet he’d been told to chain up his dog and make himself agreeable. That was all very well—at least he’d be likely to get along with ’Gren and Sorgrad—but I wasn’t about to trust a wizard, not completely, not even when he sat eating his supper, demure as an old whore at a wedding.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Sorgrad asked. “The shrine confraternities will be playing at piety in the morning but the tumblers and animal trainers will get their place in the sun after noon.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to see this minstrel about a song or two.” And not just about the ancient songs. Usara could keep his secrets and I’d keep mine. I’d been thinking about songs, their power and their persistence. Learning the secrets of old aetheric magic was all very well but perhaps I could make more prosaic use of a good tune and rousing words. If Frue could set some song doing the rounds that warned people about the Elietimm threat, word would spread faster than fire in a thatch. If I was careful to tell the tale so I didn’t feature at all, no one would be able to trace it back to me, either.

Kehannasekke, Islands of the Elietimm,

Spring Equinox

He was so absorbed in distant contemplation that he did not register his father’s soft-footed entrance, not until a breath stirred the hairs on the nape of his neck with a question. “Eresken?”

Startled, he could not prevent a sharp intake of breath, his shoulders tensing involuntarily beneath his unadorned tunic of undyed wool.

“How do you fare?” The question was genial enough; the older man was in a good humor and Eresken breathed more easily.

“Badly, sire,” he admitted frankly. “I have spent night and day in the search and might as well be wandering lost in fog. I had hoped the stasis of Equinox might aid me, but so far I’ve felt no advantage.”

The white-haired man snorted and crossed to the narrow window, where iron bars laid black stripes of shadow across his plain dun garb. The pale sunlight forced its way past, only to be reflected back from the bare white walls and floorboards scrubbed to the color of straw. He looked down into the courtyard four stories below, where black-liveried men-at-arms moved with set purpose and servants in drab cloaks hurried out of their path. “Perhaps we should make an example of some wrongdoer, kill a bantam to cow the rest of the flock.” He glanced sharply at his son. “What do you think?”

“I don’t feel the problem is a lack of commitment among our people,” Eresken replied carefully. “I sense their strength well enough and the focus of the stones is as strong as ever. It is rather that Tren Ar’Dryen is somehow shielded, barriers ranged against us. Even with the clarity of the balance, I cannot penetrate the deceptions.”