She almost made it. The old door, full of dry rot,

SONG OF TIME i 0 9

burst inward as if a sand squall had hit it full force, and knocked Vashki to the floor, snapping her arm like a dry twig. She lay within a few feet of the alley- almost to safety. Two dark-robed men, one waving a burning torch, its acrid smoke swirling in the air, charged into the shop, armed with throwing disks, hooked daggers gleaming at their belts.

"Where is the foreign man? Where does he go?" barked the first, his kaffiyeh thrown across his face to muffle his voice. With her good arm, Vashki swung low with the crowbar, tripping the one with the torch. The rear of the shop suddenly blazed up as sparks from the fallen torch found Vashki's broken bottle of polish.

"The front! Now!" Vashki screamed, crowbar still in hand, as the second man bounded toward the counter. Claria snatched up the chroniclave and bolted through the front door, billows of black smoke and at least one assassin following her.

catching him by the tattered sleeve. "Here's a bootery."

"I really want the drink first."

"But the bootery is right here. Let's go." Cheyne turned in to the open stall, its well-tanned wares hung from poles that surrounded the owner, who was almost finished cobbling a sole back onto an impatient customer's boot. Cheyne looked around while the man finished, collected his fee, and came to help them.

Every tap of the hammer caused Og's head to pound like the drums of Caelus Nin on the first night of Thanatas. By the time the bootmaker had stopped, Og could hardly see which pair of boots Cheyne handed him, let alone find his feet. He shook his head as if to refuse their style.

The bootmaker nodded as Cheyne found another pair, but when set beside Og's foot, they were plainly far too small. Smiling widely, the bootmaker found them in the right size, but Cheyne grimaced when he held them up. The flourishes that had looked appropriate on the smaller pair suddenly became hideous on the larger one.

Til give you these for twelve kohli. They were

ordered by a Fascini who would not believe me when I told him how tasteless the design would become in his extreme size. They have hung uselessly in my shop for two years."

"Not good big." Og frowned, but he tried them on anyway. "Of course, they fit." He grimaced.

"Ten kohli," said Cheyne.

"Deal," said the bootseller.

"He would have taken five," Og wheedled.

Cheyne handed the cobbler his money and they started for Og's drink. Og's furious pace slowed somewhat, his feet unaccustomed to such lavish confinement.

Four streets over, with the raqa shop in sight, another throwing disk sailed silently over Og's head, missing it by a good two feet.

"Riolla must really be angry at you!" cried Og, taking cover in a rug market as the crowd melted instantly from the streets.

"That wasn't meant for me." replied Cheyne, racing down the empty alley where the disk had come from. "Come on, Og."

Og looked mournfully at the raqa shop and dragged his well-shod feet slowly the other way.

When he found Cheyne, the young man had engaged three slowly circling, dark-robed men, their daggers drawn and ready to strike.

"Oh, no…" Og wailed. "This is going to take forever."

A strong hand grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. "Well, come on, then, let's help him!" Claria gasped, her face flushed with the effort from outrunning the thugs. "I'm first in line for him, anyway. This lot isn't going to take my chance at him now," she railed.

"What?" said Og, trying to stall his involvement with the daggers.

"My shop is cinders and my girl has a broken arm." She pointed to Vashki, peeking out from behind a trinket seller's tent. "All I've got in the world now is this."

Teri McLaren

Claria pulled the musical clock from beneath her robes. "And it's all because of you two. Him, mostly. Him with his sweet smile and pretty manners," she snapped. "Now get in there and keep him from getting killed. That privilege belongs to me."

Og wrung his hands in confusion and, he was sure, the latter, probably fatal, stages of raqa deprivation.

"Well, at least hold this!" Claria raged, handing him the clock. "And if you try to run off with that, I'll hunt you down like a snake. I'm going in."

From her place behind the purple tent, Vashki trained her black, pain-crazed eyes on Og. Og just nodded, rooted to the spot. Claria had accurately guessed his first thoughts upon seeing the bundle, but his feet had too many new blisters to run anyway. And he had run from Vashki before. Broken arm or not, she was fast.

Whooping a strange war cry, Claria threw off her cloak, drew the brass combs from her hair, and charged into the fray, catching one of the assassins above the eye with the combs' flashing teeth, instantly bringing him down.

Surprised at her courage and amazed at her quickness, Cheyne took his opening, stepped back, and threw a head-high kick with one foot, catching the first assassin's nose, then followed with the other foot, knocking the hooked dagger from the man's hand. The second assassin went down, yowling in pain as Cheyne's elbow rammed him under the ribs. The first one, his nose crushed and bloodied, sprang from behind, trying to rake his knife across Cheyne's exposed neck, just below the left ear. His face in tatters, the third assassin had risen and moved to Cheyne's right, preventing the young man's attempt to drop and roll, and pinning him by the right arm.

Claria found her breath and went for that one again; she'd heard the sound of breaking bones once already today. With a rake of her boot heel down the assassin's shin and a ferocious stamp of her foot on his instep, she broke his concentration before he could

SONG OF TIME 1 i 3

break Cheyne's arm, brought her comb across his ear, and the thug dropped to the ground, his foot giving way under him, his eyes blind with blood.

Cheyne broke free and fell away in a somersault while the knife meant for his throat caught the third man in the center of his chest. Claria whirled around, looking for the next opponent, but the others had faded into the shadows, leaving not so much as a footprint on the sandy cobblestones.

"Phantoms?" said Claria as Cheyne picked himself up from the gritty street.

"No," said Og. "They belong to Riolla. They can move like the wind. But they were real."

He made his painful way to the fallen man and turned over the body cautiously. Taking the jeweled dagger from the dead man's hand, he flicked away the dark hood with his new boot. Og stood over him, studying his face and the rose-colored tattoo of two crescents, their horns aligned but not touching, now visible just behind the undamaged ear.

Vashki came up, clutching her arm, to stand with the others.

"The clockmaker," said Cheyne. "The one who told me to go and see Riolla."

The assassin bowed deeply, the pain nearly unbearable for an instant as the blood rushed to the slashes on his face. He thought of ten particularly horrible ways to kill the digger and the girl before he brought his head up again.

"Thank you, Saelin. Well done. Await my further orders from the outer room. Help yourself to the tray."

Saelin left the beaded curtain clinking before Riolla finished her sentence, the strings of ruby glass swinging together in his wake.

"Saelin?"

Riolla looked up and shrugged, then untied the red