She now traded banter freely with Goldie, though the mare admitted privately to spotting the girl points in order to encourage her. Goldie had also taught her to ride. Otherwise, Chen was still pretty oblivious to those people who did not actively engage her interest: Still-hawk, Shield, the boys-and men-who increasingly sought to catch her dark maroon eye. However, if still not a diplomat, Chen had learned at least a modicum of manners, and while Zaranda herself had little use for altruism, she had guided the girl to a point where she was no longer self-absorbed to the point of being a men-ace to navigation.

Chen had also begun to take some trouble with herself. She kept herself scrupulously clean now without Zaranda having to remind her. And she seemed to have gotten past believing anything she could wrap or hang around her was suitable garb.

Tonight, for example, she was quite handsomely turned out, in white linen blouse with deerskin lacings up the front. Just like the one Zaranda wore. She had on form-fitting dark blue breeches and soft boots with fringed, downturned tops. Just like Zaranda's. Her heavy hair swept out behind her head like a dark red comet tail, confined by a silver fillet… just as Zaranda's straighter dark hair was.

Clearly, a problem existed.

Chen pointed heavenward, where the few lazy-drifting slate clouds weren't bothering to obscure many stars. "What's that group of stars there called? Like an hourglass, sort of, with three bright stars across the middle?"

"Kind of a lopsided hourglass-but as it happens, that's what they call it down here in the Empires of the Sands. In the north it's the Huntsman, to the Tuigan the Horse-Bowman."

Chen gave her a skeptical look. "That's about the tenth constellation you've told me the Tuigan have named after something to do with horses," she said in that very prim way she had when she thought she was being made fun of.

Zaranda laughed and hugged her. There was a time when such a suspicion would have brought on a concentration of uncontrolled dweomer to lift the hairs at Zaranda's nape. Sometimes she dared hope she might actually civilize the girl.

"Honey," she said, "to the Tuigan, everything has to do with horses. Most of their constellations are named for them, and those that aren't have names from the 'hunt or war: the Hare, the Falcon, the Yataghan. But mostly, it's horses, horses, horses. Did you know that one major tribal group has an epic poem a quarter of a million lines long about a hero whose horse is smarter than he is?"

Chen's underlip jutted, most fetchingly. Zaranda felt the faint tingle of power in the air around them. "Now you're teasing me!"

"No. Really I'm not. The Tuigan have some strange and wild ways-wonderful ways, I can see now that they're out of our hair. They're very different from us." "Oh." Interest fell like a veil from the girl's face. When talk turned to people, she quickly grew bored. In-stead she pointed again to the sky. "How about that star away up there, that big red one?" Zaranda smiled. Was the girl genuinely interested, or merely trying to emulate her in yet another way? But the air was warm and sweet, the stars seductive in their brilliance. Chen could not be called a sweet child, yet she did lack malice. Her mind was quick and keen, and now that the soot had been rubbed away from the outside of her, her spirit shone clear and bright as any star. In her way she adored Zaranda, and Zaranda, in her way, loved her.

So they walked and talked beside the wide, complacent river, and left unpleasant necessities to the province of a different day.

Through lengthening shadows Zaranda walked back to the Ith-Side Inn with long-legged strides. Nothing had been decided in the day's negotiations with the town council-but, of course, nothing was intended to be. That was the way of negotiations, that they dragged on, and while that fact was little to Zaranda's taste, it was nonetheless a fact, and she could as readily draw the moon down from the sky as alter it. Striding the brick walkway that ran alongside the river and was flanked by weeping willows, she was not displeased with the talk's progress, such as it was.

The Ithmong council would come around to her way of thinking, she was confident. Right now they had trouble seeing past the short-term pain of losing the income tolls brought. However, they and all Ithmong stood to gain from increasing trade-had already profited from the new commerce Star Protective Services had helped set flowing. Cutting Ernest Gallowglass's tolls for the Ithal Bridge and river passage would serve the economy of Tethyr like a healing spell cast on a wounded warrior.

Of course, the town council would not be unique in the history of Faerun if they attempted to have it all- tariffs and expanded trade-through a little well-timed treachery. Zaranda seemed to invite such a ploy by leaving most of her retinue, including senior partners, camped outside the city.

She was not quite so ingenuous. The two hundred Star Protective employees without the walls were recruited from the very best trainees who had passed through the program-smart, brave, and idealistic, devoted to Zaranda Star and to Shield of Innocence, who served as captain in Zaranda's absence. While they were too few to storm the walls if the council got up to mischief, they were more than capable of rousing the countryside-where Gallowglass's legacy ran to abiding distrust for all who dwelt behind Ithmong's high stone walls-and shutting off trade. After all, grain and livestock didn't have to be gathered inside the city before being shipped to the rest of Tethyr.

Zaranda began to whistle. She thought the town council got the point.

Life wore a far more cheerful face than when she had fled Zazesspur. Star Protective Services had extended operations across much of Tethyr. Zaranda drew sufficient salary to meet payments on her county in the east. She was herself an employee now, having quit as lender in a dispute last fall over what direction the company should take. To get her back, the others had been compelled to offer a contract making explicit her powers and duties as chief executive. The possibility had existed that they would not so offer. But she had found attempting to be everything to everybody increasingly intolerable. Had they made no effort to win her back, she would have mounted Goldie-with Chenowyn behind her, if the girl still cared to be her apprentice-and ridden away. She loved Morninggold, but if she had to, she could put it behind.her and start again anew. She had done as much before. Of her comrades, Stillhawk remained mistrustful of Shield, though he was with him now, outside the urban confinement he so hated. After Zaranda walked and was hired back, Balmeric had quit, declaring the enterprise far too strange for him. He let Zaranda buy him out and rode to Myratma, and there, he said, he would take ship for Waterdeep, where a man could still find straightforward sword-swinging employment.

Chenowyn remained with Zaranda, of course. And Farlorn… Farlorn was where he happened to be at any given moment. He was like a cat, the beautiful half-elf bard. What she expected of him, even what she wanted of him, Zaranda could not have said.

The inn's courtyard was surrounded by an eight-foot wall topped with broken glass. Attack from the river was reckoned no major threat; Ithmong had always had a respectably sized and reasonably professional town guard, which Gallowglass's administration had only strengthened, and its riverine patrol kept careful watch for would-be marauders as a byproduct of enforcing the tolls. Thieves, however, were as intrinsic to urban Tethyrian life as houseflies, and found the river a convenient avenue, patrols notwithstanding.

Approaching the courtyard gate, Zaranda heard a familiar female voice crying, "Hah! Hah!" and the ring of steel on steel.