LOOKING FOR SATAN by Vonda N. Mclntyre

The four travellers left the mountains at the end of the day, tired, cold, and hungry, and they entered Sanctuary.

The inhabitants of the city observed them and laughed, but they laughed behind their sleeves or after the small group passed. All its members walked armed. Yet there was no belligerence in them. They looked around amazed, nudged each other, and pointed at things, for all the world as if none had ever seen a city before. As, indeed, they had not.

Unaware of the amusement of the townspeople, they passed through the marketplace towards the city proper. The light was fading; The farmers culled their produce and took down their awnings. Limp cabbage leaves and rotten fruit littered the roughly cobbled street, and bits of unrecognizable stuff floated down the open central sewer. Beside Wess, Chan shifted his heavy pack.

'Let's stop and buy something to eat,' he said, 'before everybody goes home.'

Wess hitched her own pack higher on her shoulders and did not stop. 'Not here,' she said. 'I'm tired of stale flatbread and raw vegetables. I want a hot meal tonight.'

She tramped on. She knew how Chan felt. She glanced back at Aerie, who walked wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her pack weighed her down. She was taller than Wess, as tall as Chan, but very thin. Worry and their journey had deepened her eyes. Wess was not used to seeing her like this. She was used to seeing her freer.

'Our tireless Wess,' Chan said. 'I'm tired, too!' Wess said. 'Do you want to try camping in the street again?'

'No,' he said. Behind him. Quartz chuckled.

In the first village they had ever seen - it seemed years ago now, but was only two months - they tried to set up camp in what they thought was a vacant field. It was the village common. Had the village possessed a prison, they would have been thrown into it. As it was they were escorted to the edge of town and invited never to return. Another traveller explained inns to them - and prisons - and now they all could laugh, with some embarrassment at the episode.

But the smaller towns they had passed through did not even approach Sanctuary in size and noise and crowds. Wess had never imagined so many people or such high buildings or any odour so awful. She hoped it would be better beyond the marketplace. Passing a fish stall, she held her breath and hurried. It was the end of the day, true, but the end of a cool late fall's day. Wess tried not to wonder what it would smell like at the end of a long summer's day.

'We should stop at the first inn we find,' Quartz said.

'All right,' Wess said.

By the time they reached the street's end, darkness was complete and the market was deserted. Wess thought it odd that everyone should disappear so quickly, but no doubt they were tired too and wanted to get home to a hot fire and dinner. She felt a sudden stab of homesickness and hopelessness: their search had gone on so long, with so little chance of success.

The buildings closed in around them as the street narrowed suddenly. Wess stopped: three paths faced them, and another branched off only twenty paces farther on.

'Where now, my friends?'

'We must ask someone,' Aerie said, her voice soft with fatigue.

'If we can find anyone,' Chan said doubtfully.

Aerie stepped towards a shadow-filled corner.

'Citizen,' she said, 'would you direct us to the nearest inn?'

The others peered more closely at the dim niche. Indeed, a muffled figure crouched there. It stood up. Wess could see the manic glitter of its eyes, but nothing more.

'An inn?'

'The closest, if you please. We've travelled a long way.'

The figure chuckled. 'You'll find no inns in this part of town, foreigner. But the tavern around the corner - it has rooms upstairs. Perhaps it will suit you.'

'Thank you.' Aerie turned back,.a faint breeze ruffling her short black hair. She pulled her cloak closer.

They went the way the figure gestured, and did not see it convulse with silent laughter behind them.

In front of the tavern, Wess puzzled out the unfamiliar script: the Vulgar Unicorn. An odd combination, even in the south where odd combinations were the style of naming taverns. She pushed open the door. It was nearly as dark inside as out, and smoky. The noise died as Wess and Chan entered - then rose again in a surprised buzz when Aerie and Quartz followed.

Wess and Chan were not startlingly different from the general run of southern mountain folk: he fairer, she darker. Wess could pass unnoticed as an ordinary citizen anywhere; Chan's beauty often attracted attention. But Aerie's tall white-skinned black-haired elegance everywhere aroused comment. Wess smiled, imagining what would happen if Aerie flung away her cloak and showed herself as she really was.

And Quartz: she had to stoop to come inside. She straightened up. She was taller than anyone else in the room. The smoke near the ceiling swirled a wreath around her hair. She had cut it short for the journey, and it curled around her face, red, gold, and sand-pale. Her grey eyes reflected the firelight like mirrors. Ignoring the stares, she pushed her blue wool cloak from her broad shoulders and shrugged her pack to the floor.

The strong heavy scent of beer and sizzling meat made Wess's mouth water. She sought out the man behind the bar.

'Citizen,' she said, carefully pronouncing the Sanctuary language, the trade tongue of all the continent, 'are you the proprietor? My friends and I, we need a room for the night, and dinner.'

Her request seemed ordinary enough to her, but the innkeeper looked sidelong at one of his patrons. Both laughed.

'A room, young gentleman?' He came out from behind the bar. Instead of replying to Wess, he spoke to Chan. Wess smiled to herself. Like all Chan's friends, she was used to seeing people fall in love with him on sight. She would have done so herself, she thought, had she first met him when they were grown. But they had known each other all their lives and their friendship was far closer and deeper than instant lust.

'A room?' the innkeeper said again. 'A meal for you and your ladies? Is that all we can do for you here in our humble establishment? Do you require dancing? A juggler? Harpists and hautbois? Ask and it shall be given!' Far from being seductive, or even friendly, the innkeeper's tone was derisive.

Chan glanced at Wess, frowning slightly, as everyone within earshot burst into laughter. Wess was glad her complexion was dark enough to hide her blush of anger. Chan was bright pink from the collar of his homespun shirt to the roots of his blond hair. Wess knew they had been insulted but she did not understand how or why, so she replied with courtesy.

'No, citizen, thank you for your hospitality. We need a room, if you have one, and food.'

'We would not refuse a bath,' Quartz said.

The innkeeper glanced at them, an irritated expression on his face, and spoke once more to Chan.

'The young gentleman lets his ladies speak for him? Is this some foreign custom, that you are too high-bred to speak to a mere tavern-keeper?'

'I don't understand you,' Chan said. 'Wess spoke for us all. Must we speak in chorus?'

Taken aback, the man hid his reaction by showing them, with an exaggerated bow, to a table.

Wess dumped her pack on the floor next to the wall behind her and sat down with a sigh of relief. The others followed. Aerie

looked as if she could not have kept on her feet a moment longer.

'This is a simple place,' the tavern-keeper said. 'Beer or ale, wine. Meat and bread. Can you pay?'

He was speaking to Chan again. He took no direct note of Wess " or Aerie or Quartz.