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  Just as enchanting in their own way were the bustling throng of shoppers. The average Kothifiran clearly liked bright colors and wore them with abandon, in pleasing contrast to their copper skins and black hair. The natives tended to be short and squat verging on fat, but brisk and lively in their movements with sparkling dark eyes. Some were taller and fairer, though, with auburn hair, and there were even a few rare blonds. Among them passed the occasional minor noble, borne shoulder-high in a litter whose fluttering pastel curtains gave a glimpse of an unnaturally pale face peering out disdainfully.

  Such arrogance was matched by the silent visages of desert dwellers come to town to tend their shabby stalls. Only their eyes showed. The rest was wreathed by the voluminous folds of indigo blue cheches at least twice the length of the one that Jame wore.

  We know a secret, their withdrawn faces seemed to say.

  Jame wondered what it was.

  For all the avenue’s dash and glitter, however, the eye was drawn upward toward Kothifir’s famous “Painted Towers,” half obscured by lines of fluttering, bright flags and, higher up, by no less colorful laundry. Jame saw now that most of these towers were actually faced with travertine, limestone, and marble ranging in color from white to tan to moss green to rose to black. Some featured solid blocks in geometric patterns. Others were faced with mosaic tiles depicting faces, animal masks, crests, and other obscure symbols. It made one’s head spin to take in their lively variety even lit as they were by filtered sunshine, for wispy clouds cut off many towers some ten stories up. Rents in the cover let through shafts of light and gave filmy glimpses of the heights above, gold, bronze and verdigris copper, laced together by catwalks, bridges, and buttresses.

  Odd, thought Jame, craning to look up. She had observed no such cloud cover from below; but then one couldn’t see the city proper from the foot of the Escarpment.

  She felt a fumbling at her side and, reaching down, grabbed the hand that was trying to loosen the strings of her purse. A small face crowned with a mop of curly chestnut hair gazed up at her reproachfully, pouting.

  “You weren’t supposed to catch me.”

  “I can see that.”

  “We saw it too.”

  The last speaker sauntered toward Jame, backed by two followers, and the shoppers parted before them, murmuring. All three wore livery composed of gilded hauberks over russet linen tunics and carried truncheons swinging from their belts. Their eyes were fixed on the boy.

  “Do you know what we do to unlicensed thieves, brat? See those drain caps set in the pavement? They lift up, and underneath are dank holes in the earth, full of nasty things, all the way down to the Amar. Just last week we dropped a boy little older than you down one for stealing fruit. Shall we see if you snag on the way or if the river spits you out into the valley?”

  A stout, middle-aged man bustled out of the crowd and seized the child’s other hand. “Here now, Byrne, haven’t I warned you not to play with strangers? Your pardon, lady. Today my grandson wants to be a pickpocket. Tomorrow it will be something else.”

  The leader of the men drew himself up, an ominous glitter in his eyes. “We caught him red-handed, Master Iron Gauntlet. You know the punishment.”

  “Now, boys, I know you too. Has service to Lord Artifice—may the Change preserve him—altered you so much that you would make sport of an infant and an old man?”

  The two subordinates shifted uneasily, not meeting his reproachful gaze. In their place, Jame couldn’t have either; with a few words, the elder man had reduced the younger to guilty children. Not so their leader.

  “My Lord Artifice”—and here he defiantly touched thumb to forehead in salute—“is not sentimental, like some. He believes in the honor of his craft, and in his men.”

  “As well he might, to be sure, and so do I, but since when has he taken over the judicial duties of Master Cut-Purse?”

  “I wasn’t robbed, you know,” Jame put in mildly.

  The three ignored her.

  The boy, also ignored, craned to look up at her. “May I kick them in the shins?” he asked.

  “Unnatural child, no. Besides, my boots are bigger than yours.”

  The boy’s grandfather gave them both an amused glance. “Hush. Now, do you really want to seize this baby? What would all of these good people think of you if you did?”

  The three looked around, suddenly aware that they were at the center of an attentive, not very friendly crowd. The leader turned on his heel and bulled his way out of the circle. The other two followed him, looking rather sheepish. With that, the spectators broke up, either to discuss what they had just seen or, for the minority, to return to their own business.

  The older man turned to smile at Jame. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Gaudaric, Iron Gauntlet of the Armorers’ Guild.”

  As his broad, calloused hand gripped her own slim, gloved one, Jame thought that despite his age he looked quite capable of such a demanding profession. If need be, those muscular arms should serve him well in any fight.

  “Jame, a second-year randon cadet.”

  “By that white cheche, I judge that you’re rather more than that.”

  “I suppose so.” Jame eased the unfamiliar headgear where its tight folds pinched across her brow. He too wore white, she noted, in the form of a silk sash tied over richly dyed but practical leathers. “The Highlord of the Kencyrath is my brother. I’m his lordan. Who is this Lord Artifice and why does he hate you so much?”

  Gaudaric sighed and rubbed his bald pate, ruffling its surrounding fringe of gray hair. “For no good reason, I should say. His given name is Ruso, a former pupil of mine who wanted not only my trade secrets but also my daughter, when she had chosen elsewhere. As for the title, you must be new in town.”

  “Very. I’m here to meet King Krothen.”

  “Are you?” He gave her a considering look, then began to walk, towing Byrne after him. “I’ll show you the way.”

  “I want a sugared fig!” declared the boy, trying to free himself.

  “Will you behave yourself this time? Then go.”

  They walked on as Byrne darted from stall to stall, circling back to beg for an orange, a date, a candied newt. Half of the time his fond grandfather indulged him.

  “My only grandchild,” Gaudaric said proudly, “although I hope for more. It does one good to see our city through new eyes. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Jame agreed, eyeing an intricate, tessellated mosaic that gave the illusion of looking into a stately apartment. Changing light hinted at elegant figures moving about in its depths, then at wandering beasts in a forest. How could mere stone achieve such subtlety?

  “About Lord Artifice…?”

  “It would help if you understood our guild structure. Know anything about guilds in general?”

  “A bit,” said Jame, remembering her days in Tai-tastigon as apprentice to the eccentric master thief Penari. How distant those shining nights seemed now. “Masters, journeymen, apprentices. Lots of rules and infighting,” she said, remembering the vicious guild wars in which she had been involved. “One big scrappy, happy family, not very tolerant of outsiders.”

  “Do you know what we do to unlicensed thieves, brat?” A figure sprawling on the Mercy Seat, its skin splayed out like a heavy cloak. “Steal a peach, steal a plum, see to what your carcass comes…”

  Gaudaric nodded. “You’ve got the basic flavor of it, if not all the nuances of political spice.”

  “Including Iron Gauntlet and Master Cut-Purse?”

  “Indeed. Each guild needs a grandmaster, after all. Paper Crown, Leather Hood, Silk Purse, Intelligencer, Scalpel, Pliers…I lose track, but there must be a hundred at least, many with sub-chapters. Beyond that, all guilds are divided into crafts, merchants, and professions.”

  “Those who make things, those who sell them, those who profit by their individual skill. Hence Lord Artifice?”

  “Yes, may the Change be kind to him. The Armorers’ Guild was honored b
y his rise and no, I’m not the least bit jealous of it, whatever he thinks. Also there are Lord Merchandy and Lady Professionate.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned some sort of Change.”

  Gaudaric shrugged this off. “Ah, never mind. It’s ill fortune to speak of such things.”

  With that he started pointing out civic features as they passed them like a tour guide. Jame put aside her questions for the moment and listened. She had already noticed that the city was divided into four to five rings, crossed by the curved spokes of the avenues, further subdivided by streets and alleys. Buildings in the outer rings were quadrilateral, composed of obtuse and acute angles to fit the curve of the street, at least for those structures that still stood.

  “We used to be a much larger city,” said Gaudaric wistfully. “Three times as many people lived here when the Salt Sea was still fresh, before the desert came.”

  Jame remembered the scrollsman Index’s words as reported by her cousin Kindrie. “That was during Rathillien’s Fifth Age, some three thousand years ago, correct?”

  “Just so. Now the outermost rings are mere ruins, their stones quarried to build up the innermost. Kothifir is a shell of what it once was.”

  As they approached the city’s heart, the edges of buildings were rounded off more and more until the towers became ovals, their summits disappearing into the clouds. These last appeared to be privately owned, probably by rich merchants and minor nobility. Certainly, they were more ornate than their fellows. Gardens now occupied the spaces between them while vines climbed their walls and balconies blazed with flowers.

  The avenue swerved again, and debouched on the edge of a central plaza filled with more stalls and teeming with shoppers. Here, all the avenues met—Jame counted seven. Over the noisy throng, in the center of the square, loomed the only round tower she had yet seen in Kothifir, although it was aggressively asymmetrical. With its recessed floors, it looked a bit like an inverted tornado ascending into the clouds, with a dizzying twist to its structure. It was made of white and pink marble. Carved roses climbed its window frames and the balusters of its circling, open spiral stair, giving it a lacy, almost insubstantial appearance.

  “That’s the Rose Tower,” said Gaudaric proudly. “You’ll find His Magnificence at the top of it.”

  Jame thanked him, promised to look in on his shop, and pushed through the crowd to the foot of the spiral stair.

  The lower floors were occupied by servants. Jame passed doors and windows opening into domestic spaces, kitchens billowing with fragrant herbs, bedchambers mostly empty at this time of day, and watch rooms where guards sat playing at dice. Children ran up and down the stair shouting to each other, shouted at in turn by their harried mothers. Tradesmen came and went.

  Her legs ached by the time she left the bustle of life behind and neared the level of the clouds. They appeared solider than they had from the ground, and darker. Soon she was enveloped in their twilight world. Thinner patches revealed other towers curiously drained of color.

  Now the mist was growing lighter above her, and a moment later she emerged into dazzling sunlight beating fiercely on the fleecy backs of clouds. The latter slowly circled the Rose Tower and spread out to a hazy horizon—again, something that she had not seen from below. Here the tallest structures ended in glistening domes and spires, or in rooftop gardens.

  Another turn of the stair brought Jame to two pikesmen guarding the way.

  “I have an appointment with His Magnificence, King Krothen,” she told them.

  They looked down their noses at her. Perhaps Krothen chose his servants for their height, or for the length and hairiness of their nostrils.

  After a pause and a sniff, however, they let her pass.

  Here was a floor with filmy curtains blowing out the windows. Through them, Jame glimpsed an apartment of almost overwhelming elegance. Krothen’s?

  Another twist of the stair, and she found herself at the top of the Rose Tower, in a circular room some seventy feet wide. The floor was paved with pale green, golden veined chalcedony. Petals of pink marble carved so fine that the sun glowed through them made up the walls. A thin, hot breeze edged around the overlapping folds. It was like being in the heart of a giant, overheated rosebud sculpted out of stone.

  Through this roseate light scurried servants, carrying musical instruments, bowls of flowers, and tray upon tray of delicacies. Half-naked acrobats tumbled among them, disregarded. Clowns pranced.

  Others more somberly clothed stood like pillars amidst this rout, ignoring it. Some appeared to be officials; others, foreign emissaries. One was a thin, elderly man in a midnight blue robe spangled with silver stars. Jame recognized a high priest when she saw one. After all, Krothen was a god-king.

  Where, however, was he? Presumably, taking a break from his duties. When he arrived, perhaps he would recline on that dais piled high with silken pillows near his high priest.

  Then the mound shifted.

  A head perched on top of it, wearing a snowy turban. Heavily lidded hazel eyes regarded her speculatively across the room out of rolls of fat. Beneath that, rosebud lips pursed over a fringe of ginger beard which in turn was mounted on too many chins to count. Trinity, was that all him, beneath that sprawl of white damask? He shifted again and released a muted, subterranean fart. Incense covered the smell, but not that of so much overheated flesh.

  Krothen, God-King of Kothifir, selected a candied slug from a plate held out to him by a lackey and popped it into the moist hole that was his mouth. As he chewed and swallowed, Jame saw that the dais on which he reclined hovered a foot above the floor and that the hems of his robes floated about him as if in a slow ocean current. Here was a god-king indeed.

  An emissary clothed in layers of white lace stood before him, impatiently waiting to capture the monarch’s wandering attention.

  “Ahem,” he said. “Sire, we understand that you have a complaint against our fair Rim city of Gemma.”

  “Yes.” Krothen’s voice was a surprising nasal tenor, as if all of that fat had pinched his throat into a thin pipe. “Gemman raids on our trade caravans have increased of late. We understand that your governing council now sells letters of marque to such enterprising bandits.”

  “They have official sanction, yes, which you refuse to recognize.”

  Krothen opened his eyes as wide as their surrounding rolls of fat allowed. “My dear man, we never agreed to any such code.”

  “You should. It would be the civilized thing to do, given that it guarantees humane treatment for any captives.”

  “But we never raid you. Given that, why should we consent to being robbed?”

  “At least let us ransom our captive raiders.”

  “Ah, but Gemma has nothing that Kothifir wants.”

  The emissary was turning red in the face with anger and frustration. “Someday your arrogance will be your downfall.”

  “Perhaps. In the meantime, any raider whom I catch will be hung from the thorns of my tower to the delight of the citizenry and any passing crow.”

  “And that is the message I should carry back to my masters?”

  Krothen selected another morsel. “Carry what you please,” he said, chewing with his mouth open.

  The Gemman gave a stiff bow and retreated.

  Jame was the next visitor in line. She cleared her throat nervously.

  “Er…Sire, my brother, Lord Knorth of the Kencyrath, sends his greetings.”

  She gave the rolled parchment that contained her credentials to the majordomo, who handed it to a servant, who passed it to another, and another, and another. The high priest fastidiously flicked back an embroidered cuff to receive the scroll and presented it to his master. Krothen passed it from one plump hand to the other without looking at it, then to a lackey and so on around the circle, left to right, end over end, hand to hand, flip, flip, flip.

  Now what? Jame wondered, receiving it back, its seal unbroken.

  A commotion arose o
n the stair behind her.

  Servants and minor priests alike hastily retreated to the edges of the room. Jame also withdrew, to be on the safe side. A contingent of ladies entered, one veiled, another in servant’s attire. They were led by a noblewoman so haughty in her bearing that it took a moment to realize that she was very short, almost a dwarf, mounted on very high heels. Trailing after them all came a handsome young man, heavily made up and dressed in a frilly robe.

  “So, Nephew,” growled the short noblewoman in a surprisingly deep voice. Jame realized that this must be the redoubtable Princess Amantine, first lady of the court. “I understand that you have refused yet another match. Your half-sister Cella is, of course, heartbroken.”

  The veiled lady clapped hands over her face. She might have been crying. Then her fingers slipped and a crow of shrill laughter broke through them. The servant whacked her on the back, at which she gulped and stood still, if subtly aquiver.

  “Heartbroken, I say!” boomed the princess, glowering at her.

  Krothen spoke behind a plump hand to the priest.

  “Your Mellifluous Highness,” said the latter, with a respectful bow. “My lord wonders if Lady Cella’s heart was truly in this proposal. It was his understanding that she prefers to play with her…er…doll.”

  The lady in question nodded so vigorously that her veil fluttered up, revealing a middle-aged face painted white, with buck teeth, protruding eyes, and no chin to speak of.

  “Then go,” Krothen said to her in a nasal, not unkind voice. “Play.”

  She gave a hoot of glee, grabbed the handsome boy by the hand, and scrambled off down the stairs, pursued by the servant. Two flights down they collided with someone. The new arrival could be heard lumbering up the stairs in their wake.

  “Well!” said Amantine, drawing herself up and swaying ominously. “You still need an heir, Nephew. What will happen to this city after you are gone?”