Else nodded and smiled but also rolled his eyes. "This is getting hard to follow. I'll be writing reports and sending them to me keeping track of what I've been doing and offering suggestions on how I can influence me to behave in ways that I'll find more useful toward accomplishing my goals where spying on

me is concerned."

Doneto smiled thinly. "There's a country folksong about a man who was his own uncle and brother-in-law. Hecht, I want to seize this opportunity before people have time to think. Come with me. There's somebody I need you to meet."

Else went, reluctantly. "You're the boss." He had hoped to ease into the Brothen scene gradually, quietly. But if he could get inside one of the Five Families …

Bronte Doneto led him to a shadowed corner. There they found an old man in a wheeled chair, alertly watching the Principatй's guests. Doneto said, "Piper Hecht, this is Salny Sayag. And his son, Rogoz. They represent the Arniena family. You might have run into Rogoz before. He worked in your line for a while, in the north."

Else considered the younger man who stood behind the wheeled chair. "I don't think so. Not that I recall, anyway." He offered his hand. "Have you seen me before, Rogoz?”

"No."

Rogoz was definite. And a man of few words. His grip was firm and confident. His coloring and appearance were not local. He was darker and uglier than was common in Firaldia. Else asked, "You aren't Brothen either, are you?"

"My father came over from Obrizok."

"I don't know Obrizok."

"It's a town in Creveldia. Creveldia is famous for its horses. He was an exile. This isn't the time for personal histories. Collect your possessions."

Else sighed. He was glad he was used to living on his own.

The Plemenzan captivity had been his longest settled passage in the past ten years.

"Where're you headed?" Pinkus Ghort wanted to know.

"New job. The Principatй wants me on it right now." He shrugged. "I'll see you on the streets."

"Don't smack me too hard."

“Take care of Bo and Joe. Keep Bo out of the brothels. He'll catch his death."

Else feared he would miss Pinkus Ghort as much as he did Bone and the others from the Andelesqueluzan adventure. Which now seemed like a story he had heard a long time ago instead of something he had lived himself.

THE SAYAGS EXITED BRONTE DONETO'S ESTABLISHMENT through a tradesmen's postern. Rogoz Sayag pushed his father's chair. A blanket covered the elder Sayag's lower body. It might have concealed tools or weapons. Two armed men joined them outside the gate. Rogoz Sayag explained, "Brothe is a dangerous city. There are a lot of hungry people on the streets."

Else carried everything he wanted to take along. He was accustomed to carrying his whole life and fortune on his back. Like he was some nomadic desert tortoise.

Else talked and pretended not to examine his companions or the surrounding city. It took the efforts of both Sayags and their escorts to generate enough return chin noise to qualify as a conversation.

At one point, Else protested, "I need to know something about this city. I've never been here before,."

"I understand," Rogoz replied. "But you aren't going to be part of our house. You don't need to know anything about us."

Else understood. Rogoz did not want him picking up anything he might pass along when he moved on to the Bruglioni citadel. "On the other hand, if I don't know anything about the Arniena, after supposedly having been with them for several months, the Bruglioni will wonder why."

Salny Sayag agreed. “Talk to him, Rogoz. All of you, talk to him. Don't hold back. Fill in the details. Let him take something with him when he goes. You. Doneto man. The one thing you aren't going to tell anyone is that the Arniena have an understanding with Principatй Doneto."

"Of course not."

ELSE SPENT NINE DAYS WITH THE ARNIENA FAMILY, LEARNING what they were willing to be let known, and about the Mother City. They gave him work to do. It was not overwhelming. He had several opportunities to go out and get the feel of the city.

The essence of Brothe was elusive. It seemed to be more than one city. In one sense it was almost parochial, with the intense focus of the native-born on family politics, petty feuding, and Colors. On the other hand, Brothe was cosmopolitan in the extreme. It swarmed with foreigners. Else heard dozens of unfamiliar languages. People from all across the world came to immerse themselves in the recollections of what once was the heart of the civilized world.

The glories of yesterday lay in ruins, some looted for building stone, overgrown, haunted by the poor and fugitives or, some said, by a thousand lingering recollections of the Instrumentalities of the Night. There were great sorcerers in Brothe everybody knew. And not just the tame Principatйs of the Collegium.

Foreigners came seeking their fortunes. Many of them had been villains in their own climes. And Brothe boasted a vigorous religion and pilgrim industry. Else found that amazing. Thousands came every month just to see the Church's central physical institutions, and in hopes of glimpsing the Patriarch.

During his stay with the Arniena, Else participated in two minor adventures with Rogoz Sayag and other family retainers. Salny Sayag said the orders came from Don Inigo Arniena himself. Don Inigo was the family chieftain. Neither mission amounted to much. Punishing a servant who had stolen from the Arniena. Avenging an insult flung at one of the don's granddaughters by a gang of street kids who had been stupid enough to open their mouths outside their hideout.

Those jobs did give Else a chance to be seen in the company of other Arniena goons.

“This all you do?" Else asked Rogoz.

"Don Inigo isn't big on squabbling. Unlike everyone else in Brothe."

"Uhm?”

"It seems the more chaotic things get, the more some people use that to cover their own mischief. Which only makes the chaos worse. The don would rather do it the sneaky, sinister way."

Else went along and showed he could be part of the team. He needed only be mildly evasive about his past. Rogoz Sayag was not eager to reveal his own background. Possibly Rogoz had not spent much time in the countries where he was supposed to have learned his trade. In lands where he might have crossed paths with a freelancer from Duarnenia, that little state on the eastern shore of the Shallow Sea.

Few mercenaries talked about their pasts. Somewhere behind them, in most cases, were people with grudges. Bad choices made at an early age were why freelancers left home in the first place.

While public order in Brothe deteriorated, the broader, world situation lent the Patriarch no comfort, either. Calziran pirates grew more numerous and bolder by the day. A sort of mob madness had taken possession of them. Their worst raids fell on Church or Benedocto family holdings, always within the bounds of the Episcopal States. There was hardly a rumor of piracy along the coasts of Alameddine. That kingdom, beholden to the Grail Empire, lay between Calzir and the Episcopal States. Nor did raiders appear anywhere else protected by the Grail Emperor or the mercantile republics.

Even dimwits who cared little about distant events began to think there was a conspiracy. Johannes Blackboots must be behind it all.

In Brothe everything was part of a plot. In Brothe nothing was what it seemed, or even what it purported to be. Whatever went wrong did so because of an inimical conspiracy.

Else suspected that any plot involving Praman pirates would be orchestrated from al-Qarn rather than the Grail Empire.

Anything that distracted Sublime from a crusade into me Holy Lands would be a good thing, from the Dreangerean point of view. Any delay moved the man that many weeks, months, or years closer to his blessed elevation into the Chaldarean heaven. Whereupon the beleaguered and long-suffering Collegium would, undoubtedly, replace him with someone less controversial, bellicose, and ambitious.