Cusharlain stared at her. 'This young gamecock means to try to rob the very palace?' he said, feeling stupid instantly; so she'd said, yes.

'Don't scoff, Cusher,' Gelicia said, waving a doughy hand well leavened with rings. This noon she was wearing apple-green and purple and lavender and mauve and orange, all in a way that exposed a large portion of her unrivalled bosom, which resembled two white cushions for a large divan and which Cusharlain was singularly uninterested in viewing.

'If it can be done, Shadowspawn'll do it,' she said. 'Oh, go ahead, tip yourself some more wine. Did you hear about the ring he tugged from under Corlas's pillow - while Corlas's head was on it, sleeping? You know, Corlas the camel-dealer. Or've you heard tell of how our boy Hanse dumb up and stole the eagle off the roof of Barracks Three for a lark?'

'I wondered what had happened to that!'

She nodded wisely with a trembling of chin and a flashing wing of earrings whose diameter was the same as his wine-cup - which was of silver. Her wine-cup, that is; the one he was using. 'Shadowspawn,' she said, 'as Eshi is my witness. Had a prodigal offer from some richie up in Twand, too - and do you know Hanse wouldn't take it? Said he liked having the thing. Pisses on it every morning on rising, he says.'

Cusharlain smiled. 'And ... if it can't be done? Reaching the palace, I mean.'

Gelicia's shrug imparted to her bosom a quake of seismic proportions. 'Why then Sanctuary will be minus one more cockroach, and no one'll miss him. Oh, my Lycansha will moon for a while, but she'll soon be over it.'

'Lycansha? Who's Lycansha?'

Nine rings flashed on Gelicia's hands as she sketched a form in the air exactly as a man would have done. 'Ah, the sweetest little Cadite oral-submissive you ever laid eyes on, who fancies that leanness and those midnight eyes of his, Cusher. Like to ... meet her? She's at liberty just now.'

'I'm on business, Gelicia.' His sigh was carefully elaborate.

'Asking about our little Shadowspawn?' Gelicia's meaty face took on a businesslike expression, which some would have called crafty-furtive.

'Aye.'

'Well. Whoever you're reporting to, Cusher - you haven't talked to me!'

'Of course not, Gelicia! Don't be silly. I haven't talked with anyone with a name, or an address, or a face. I enjoy my ... relationship with some of you more enterprising citizens' - he paused for her mirthful snort - 'and have no wish to jeopardize it. Or to lose the physical attributes necessary to my availing myself of your dear girls from time to time.'

Her snickering laugh rose and went on up to whoops about the time he reached the street, assuring him that eventually the successful Gelicia had got his parting joke. Red Lanterns was a quiet neighbourhood this time of day, after the sweeping up of the dust and tracks of last night's customers. Now sheets were being washed. A few deliveries made. A couple of workmen were occupied with a broken door-hasp at a House down the street. Cusharlain squinted upwards. The Enemy, a horrid white ball in a horrid sky going the colour of turmeric powder laced with saffron, was high, nigh to passing noon. One-Thumb should be stirring himself about now. Cusharlain decided to go and have a talk with him, too, and maybe he could get his report made by sunset. His employer did not seem as long on patience as on funds. The customs inspector of a fading city whose chief business was theft and the disposal of its product had learned the former, and was ever at work on increasing his share of the latter.

'Did what?' the startlingly good-looking woman said. 'Roaching? What's roaching mean?'

Her companion, who was only a little older than her seventeen or eighteen years, stiffened his neck to keep from looking anxiously around. 'Sh - not so loud. When do cockroaches come out?'

She blinked at the dark, so-intense young man. 'Why - at night.'

'So do thieves.'

'Oh!' She laughed, struck her hands together with a jangling of bangles - gold, definitely - and touched his arm. 'Oh, Hanse, I know so little! You know just about everything, don't you.' Her face changed. 'My, these hairs are soft.' And she left her hand on that arm with its dark, dark hairs.

'The streets are my home,' he told her. 'They birthed me and gave me suck. I know quite a bit, yes.'

He could hardly believe his luck, sitting here in a decent tavern out of the Maze with this genuinely beautiful Lirain who was ... by the Thousand Eyes and by Eshi, too, could it be? - one of the concubines the Prince-Governor had brought over from Ranke! And she's obviously fascinated with me, Hanse thought. He acted as if he sat here in the Golden Oasis every afternoon with such as she. What a coincidence, what great good fortune to have run into her in the bazaar that way! Run into her indeed! She had been hurrying and he'd been turning, glancing back at one of those child-affrighters of Jubal's, and they had slammed together and had to cling to each other to avoid falling. She had been so apologetic and in seeming need to make amends and - here they were, Hanse and a palace conky unguarded or watched, and a beauty at that - and wearing enough to support him for a year. He strove to be oh so cool,

'You certainly do like my gourds, don't you.'

'Wha-'

'Oh, don't dissemble. I'm not mad. Really, Hanse. If I didn't want 'em looked at I'd cover 'em in high-necked homespun.'

'Uh ... Lirain, I've seen one other pearl-sewn halter of silk in my life, and it didn't have those swirls of gold thread, or so many pearls. I wasn't this close, either.' Damn, he thought. Should have complimented her, not let her know my interest is greed for the container!

'Oh! Here I am, one of seven women for one man and bored, and I thought you were wanting to get into my bandeau, when what you really want is it. What's a poor girl to do, used to the flatteries of courtiers and servants, when she meets a real man who speaks his real thoughts?'

Hanse tried not to let his preening show. Nor did he know how to apologize, or to fancy-talk beyond the level of the Maze. Besides, he thought this pout-lipped beauty with her heart-shaped face and nice woman's belly was having some fun with him. She knew that pout was irresistible!

'Wear high-necked homespun,' he said, and while she laughed, 'and try not to look that way. This real man knows what you're used to, and that you can't be interested in Hanse the roach!'

Her expression became very serious. 'You must not have access to a mirror, Hanse. Why don't you try me?'

Hanse fought his astonishment and made swift recovery. With prickly armpits and outward confidence, he said, 'Would you like to take a walk, Lirain?'

'Is there a more private room at the end of it?'

Holding her gaze as she held his, he nodded.

'Yes,' she said, that quickly. Concubine of Prince Kadakithis! 'Could anything as good as this bandeau be bought in the bazaar?'

He was rising. 'Who'd buy it? No,' he said, puzzled at the question. i' -

'Then you must buy me the best we can find after a short search.' She chuckled at the sight of his stricken face. The cocky creature thought she was a whore, to charge him some trifle like any girl! 'So that I can wear it back to the palace,' she said, and watched understanding brighten that frightening yet sensuous pair of onyxes he wore for eyes, all hard and cold and wary. She slid her hand into his, and they departed the Golden Oasis.

'Of course I'm sure. Bourne!' Lirain twitched off the blue-arabesqued bandeau of green silk Hanse had bought her, and hurled it at the man on the divan. He grinned so that his big brown beard writhed. 'He has such needs\ He is never relaxed, and wants and needs so badly, and so wants to be and to do. He is so impressed with who or rather what I am, and yet he would deny under torture that I was anything but another nice tumble. You and I both well know about low-borns who hunger for far more than food! He is completely taken in and he'll be the perfect tool. Bourne. My agent assured me that he is a competent sneak-thief, and that he wants to rob and gain a leg on Prince Kittycat so badly he can taste it. I saw that, right enough. Look, it's perfect!'