Teri McLaren

thing, but I really want to help you on your way. I will buy this piece," she said generously. "I'll give you twenty kohli for it, and you'll never have a better offer, tell you why: it's really not worth even ten kohli-it's just that this particular totem comes from the time before the Wandering, and as you see, I collect things from that era." She waved her sharp nails around the room.

"Thank you, Riolla, but it's sort of special to me, too, even though it has no other value."

He swept up the totem from the table, his hand accidentally sending the delicate dagger sliding to the very edge of the little table, where it teetered on its hilt, blade pointing toward his host. Riolla followed the path of the knife and then slowly looked up at Cheyne, saying nothing. He stuffed the ganzite block into his pack and made ready to leave. Riolla's painted smile dropped an inch and her eyes hardened into glittering sapphires.

"Of course. That will be fifty kohli for the consultation, then. And leave my calling card here," she pronounced flatly.

After paying every antique dealer in the Mercanto, fifty-two kohli was all the money he had left. He reached into bis pack and gave it to her, noting that Riolla's adoption of caste law didn't seem to affect the exchange of money, took the paper she had drawn the symbols' meanings upon, and left Riolla Hifrata sitting frozen in artful rage at her table, her calling card pushed under the sticky blade of the jewelled knife. Before he had found the front door, the steward had stripped the cloth from the velvet chair, folded it, and laid it neatly atop the trash heap in back of the shop.

Just as the Arcanum's door slammed behind him, he heard the last bells ring three times, a few minutes apart, signaling the closing of first the Citadel's doors, then the Mercanto's, and finally the outer gates of the Barca. That meant two walls to try to scale if he didn't make it in time.

He rushed down the narrow, winding streets, trying to

remember just how he had found the Arcanum to begin with. The shadows confused and redirected his memory, making certain shops appear where he had not seen them before, and losing the prominence of other landmarks in their long crawl across the city. Cheyne began to feel the edges of panic. He was a stranger with no name and no standing, and now no money, caught in a city where those were the only things that could pry you out of trouble. And trouble, he had been told by Muni time and again, always came out at dark in Sumifa.

Thoughts of favin's distress at his absence rattled through his mind as well-in all the times Javin had taken him to help crew the digs, Cheyne had never so directly ignored Javin's warnings. The trip hadn't even been worth the expense of Madame Hifrata's information, much less Javin's trust. His concentration caught up in this whirl of guilt and angst, he did not notice the beggar he tripped over until it was too late.

It was a fortunate fall. Had Cheyne's head not dropped as he rolled over the oddly familiar vagrant, the well-aimed throwing disk that sailed over them both would have taken it from his shoulders. The discus bounced hard off a basalt wall, brass blade ringing sweetly as it spun into the sand.

"Stay low!" the beggar growled, listening intently to the tone of the disk. "And follow me."

He drew his short dagger and rolled around the corner of a bungalow, dragging Cheyne along with him. They pressed themselves against the hot brick walls for a moment, then when the footsteps passed by, the vagrant motioned to Cheyne to follow him up a rope ladder. Cheyne had little choice. He could already hear the soft footfalls of the assassin heading back toward them, the man no doubt having figured out their trickery.

Cheyne hauled himself up the rope to the flat roof of the building, its surface baking his feet through his boots with the lambent heat of the desert day. It wouldn't take the assassin long to figure this out, either. Cheyne was about to raise that point, but the beggar

Teri McLaren

had no intention of staying up there. He drew the young archaeologist to the edge of the bungalow facing the street where Cheyne had been attacked, and when the thug came trudging back the same way, let out a piercing wail and leapt off the roof onto the man below.

By the time Cheyne had found a safer way down a trellis, the vagrant had joined the killer in a knife fight, which was far more evenly matched than Cheyne would have thought possible. The vagrant had some acrobatic skills, and he was giving the assassin all he could handle, though neither had drawn blood yet. When he saw his chance, Cheyne waded in and threw a staggering roundhouse punch, dropping the assassin like a sack of salt.

Cheyne dusted himself off and took the ornate, curved dagger from the assassin's hand. It was the same one he had seen on Riolla's table, the juice of the orange still sticky on its blade.

"Oh, nicely timed," congratulated the vagrant. Cheyne turned to face his benefactor.

The beggar's hood had dropped in the scuffle, and Cheyne now saw why he looked so familiar. The beggar's nose was a veritable colossus, reminding Cheyne of the twenty-foot-tall head of Nin outside the crushed wall at the dig. The eastern face and the statue's gargantuan ears had long ago weathered away or broken off, leaving the head's stem western face an unbalanced joke for all time. As if he read Cheyne's mind, the vagrant quickly pulled up his ineffective hood, his sunburned nose still protruding noticeably from it.

"Wait-you were outside the clockmaker's shop…" Cheyne began.

"Yes. And now I am about to be there again, unless you give me a better place to be…" The beggar crooked his finger toward the swinging sign on the raqa shop up the alley. "Nothing like a little rumble to work up a thirst. Would you care to buy me a drink?" Cheyne noticed that he swerved oddly, and moved to take his arm.

"Here, are you all right? Let me help you. But I can't buy you a drink. All I have left is two kohli," he apologized, searching for the coins.

Which were missing, of course. The beggar shook his head, his nose exaggerating the motion. "No, No. I'm perfectly all right," he wheezed heavily in Cheyne's face. The smell of soured raqa nearly succeeded where the assassin had failed. Cheyne realized he had discovered the apparent source of the beggar's remarkable bravery.

"Here. Please let me help you to some shade. I'll get water-" Cheyne said, fumbling.

"Water? No, I think not, my good man. What is called for now is vintage raqa, the sweet, crushed heart of the desert prickle, left at least a week in its delicious grief, and perhaps a loaf of solid bappir, probably the same age," the grinning beggar disagreed, his verbal abilities, like his bravado, seeming to rise to the occasion. "I'm fine, truly, young sirrah. A few bruises when I sober up. But then I'll never feel them now, will I? And thank you for the coins." Cheyne checked his pocket and frowned. "Now, now, a generous man will never go hungry. You can get out just the other side of that stall. Best be going now. Before that gentleman who wanted your head wakes up."

Cheyne knew he was right, but the bells had stopped ringing, and outer gates were closed by now anyway. He was stuck here overnight, and this poor soul seemed to be his only friend in the city, even if he had taken his last two kohli. He wasn't going to let him part company just yet. But when Cheyne turned to see where the man had pointed, the beggar immediately disappeared into the deepening shadows.