'If information is all you need, you can get it less expensively than by hiring a sorcerer.'

'Are you a sorcerer?' Wess asked.

Lythande looked at her with pity and contempt. 'You child! What do your people mean, sending innocents and children out of the north!' He touched the star on his forehead. 'What did you think this means?'

'I'll have to guess, but I guess it means you are a mage.'

'Excellent. A few years of lessons like that and you might survive, a while, in Sanctuary - in the Maze - in the Unicorn!'

'We haven't got years,' Aerie whispered. 'We have, perhaps, overspent the time we do have.'

Quartz put her arm around Aerie's shoulders, for comfort, and hugged her gently.

'You interest me,' Lythande said. 'Tell me what information you seek. Perhaps I will know whether you can obtain it less expensively - not cheaply, but less expensively - from Jubal the Slavemonger, or from a seer -' At their expressions, he stopped.

'Slavemonger!'

'He collects information as well. You needn't worry that he'll abduct you from his sitting-room.'

They all started speaking at once, then fell silent, realizing the futility.

'Start at the beginning.'

'We're looking for someone,' Wess said.

'This is a poor place to search. No one will tell you anything about any patron of this establishment.'

'But he's a friend.'

'There's only your word for that.'

'Satan wouldn't be here anyway,' Wess said. 'If he were free to come here he'd be free to go home. We'd have heard something of him, or he would have found us, or -'

'You fear he was taken prisoner. Enslaved perhaps.'

'He must have been. He was hunting, alone. He liked to do that, his people often do.'

'We need solitude sometimes,' Aerie said.

Wess nodded. 'We didn't worry about him till he didn't come home for Equinox. Then we searched. We found his camp, and a cold trail...'

'We tried to hope for kidnapping,' Chan said. 'But there was no ransom demand. The trail was so old - they took him away.'

'We followed, and we heard some rumours of him,' Aerie said. 'But the road branched, and we had to choose which way to go." She shrugged, but could not maintain the careless pose; she turned away in despair. 'I could find no trace...'

Aerie, with her longer range, had met them after searching all day at each evening's new camp, ever more exhausted and more driven.

'Apparently we chose wrong,' Quartz said.

'Children,' Lythande said, 'children, frejohans -'

'Frejojani,'' Chan said automatically, then shook his head and spread his hands in apology.

'Your friend is one slave out of many. You could not trace him by his papers, unless you discovered what name they were forged under. For someone to recognize him by a description would be the greatest luck, even if you had an homuncule to show. Sisters, brother, you might not recognize him yourselves, by now.'

'I would recognize him,' Aerie said.

'We'd all recognize him, even in a crowd of his own people. But that makes no difference. Anyone would know him who had seen him. But no one has seen him, or if they have they will not say so to us.' Wess glanced at Aerie.

'You see,' Aerie said, 'he is winged.'

'Winged!' Lythande said.

'Winged folk are rare, I believe, in the south.'

'Winged folk are myths, in the south. Winged? Surely you mean...'

Aerie started to shrug back her cape, but Quartz put her arm around her shoulders again. Wess broke into the conversation quickly.

'The bones are longer,' she said, touching the three outer fingers of her left hand with the forefinger of her right. 'And stronger. The webs between fold out.'

'And these people fly?'

'Of course. Why else have wings?'

Wess glanced at Chan, who nodded and reached for his pack.

'We have no homuncule,' Wess said. 'But we have a picture. It isn't Satan, but it's very like him.'

Chan pulled out the wooden tube he had carried all the way from Kaimas. From inside it, he drew the rolled kidskin, which he opened out on to the table. The hide was carefully tanned and very thin; it had writing on one side and a painting, with one word underneath it, on the other.

'It's from the library at Kaimas,' Chan said. 'No one knows where it came from. I believe it is quite old, and I think it is from a book, but this is all that's left.' He showed Lythande the written side. 'I can decipher the script but not the language. Can you read it?'

Lythande shook his head. 'It is unknown to me.'

Disappointed, Chan turned the illustrated side of the manuscript page towards Lythande. Wess leaned towards it too, picking out the details in the dim candlelight. It was beautiful, almost as beautiful as Satan himself. It was surprising how like Satan it was, for it had been in the library since long before he was born. The slender and powerful winged man had red-gold hair and flame-coloured wings. His expression seemed composed half of wisdom and half of deep despair.

Most flying people were black or deep iridescent green or pure dark blue. But Satan, like the painting, was the colour of fire. Wess explained that to Lythande.

'We suppose this word to be this person's name,' Chan said.

'We cannot be sure we have the pronunciation right, but Satan's mother liked the sound as we say it, so she gave it to him as his name, too.'

Lythande stared at the gold and scarlet painting in silence for a long time, then shook his head and leaned back in his chair. He blew smoke towards the ceiling. The ring spun, and sparked, and finally dissipated into the haze.

'Frejojani,' Lythande said, 'Jubal - and the other slavemongers - parade their merchandise through the town before every auction. If your friend were in the coffle, everyone in Sanctuary would know. Everyone in the Empire would know.'

Beneath the edges of her cape. Aerie clenched her hands into fists.

Chan slowly, carefully, blankly, rolled up the painting and stored it away.

This was, Wess feared, the end of their journey.

'But it might be...'

Aerie looked up sharply, narrowing her deep-set eyes.

'Such an unusual being would not be sold at public auction. He would be offered in private sale, or exhibited, or perhaps even offered to the Emperor for his menagerie.'

Aerie flinched, and Quartz traced the texture of her short-sword's bone haft.

'It's better, children, don't you see? He'll be treated decently. He's valuable. Ordinary slaves are whipped and cut and broken to obedience.'

Chan's transparent complexion paled to white. Wess shuddered. Even contemplating slavery they had none of them understood what it meant.

'But how will we find him? Where will we look?'

'Jubal will know,' Lythande said, 'if anyone does. I like you, children. Sleep tonight. Perhaps tomorrow Jubal will speak with you.' He got up, passed smoothly through the crowd, and vanished into the darkness outside.

In silence with her friends, Wess sat thinking about what Lythande had told them.

A well-set-up young fellow crossed the room and leaned over their table towards Chan. Wess recognized him as the man who had earlier been made sport of by his friends.

'Good evening, traveller,' he said to Chan. 'I have been told these ladies are not your wives.'

'It seems everyone in this room has asked if my companions are my wives, and I still do not understand what you are asking,' Chan said pleasantly.

'What's so hard to understand?'

'What does "wives" mean?'

The man arched one eyebrow, but replied, 'Women bonded to you by law. To give their favours to no one but you. To bear and raise your sons.'