"So you are meant to believe," Liloyve replied. "Kill someone and you'll hear from the King of Dreams, no question of it. But there are how many people on Majipoor? Eighteen billion? Thirty? Fifty? And the King has time to foul the dreams of everyone who steals a ride in a street-floater? Do you think so?"

"Well—"

"Or even those who falsely sell title to other people's palaces?"

Inyanna's cheeks flamed and she turned away.

"Where are we going now?" she asked in a muffled voice.

"We're already there. The Grand Bazaar. Out!"

Inyanna followed Liloyve into a broad plaza bordered on three sides by lofty towers and on the fourth by a low, squat-looking building fronted by a multitude of shallow-rising stone steps. Hundreds of people in elegant white Ni-moyan tunics, perhaps thousands, were rushing in and out of the building's wide mouth, over the arch of which the three emblematic birds were carved in high relief, with jewels again in their eyes.

Liloyve said, "This is Pidruid Gate, one of thirteen entrances. The Bazaar itself covers fifteen square miles, you know — a little like the Labyrinth, though it isn't as far underground, just at street level mainly, snaking all over the city, through the other buildings, under some of the streets, between buildings — a city within a city, you might say. My people have lived in it for hundreds of years. Hereditary thieves, we are. Without us the shopkeepers would be in bad trouble."

"I was a shopkeeper in Velathys. We have no thieves there, and I think we never felt the need for any," said Inyanna dryly as they allowed themselves to be swept along up the shallow steps and into the gate of the Grand Bazaar.

"It's different here," said Liloyve.

The Bazaar spread in every direction — a maze of narrow arcades and passages and tunnels and galleries, brightly lit, divided and subdivided into an infinity of tiny stalls. Overhead, a single continuous skein of yellow sparklecloth stretched into the distance, casting a brilliant glow from its own internal luminescence. That one sight astounded Inyanna more than anything else she had seen so far in Ni-moya, for she had sometimes carried sparklecloth in her shop, at three royals the roll, and such a roll was good for decorating no more than a small room; her soul quailed at the thought of fifteen square miles of sparklecloth, and her mind, canny as it was in such matters, could not at all calculate the cost. Ni-moya! Such excess could be met only with the defense of laughter.

They proceeded inward. One little streetlet seemed just like the next, every one bustling with shops for porcelains and fabrics and tableware and clothes, for fruits and meats and vegetables and delicacies, each with a wine-shop and a spice-shop and a gallery of precious stones, and a vendor selling grilled sausages and one selling fried fish, and the like. Yet Liloyve seemed to know precisely which fork and channel to take, which of the innumerable identical alleys led toward her destination, for she moved purposefully and swiftly, pausing only occasionally to acquire their dinner by deftly snatching a stick of fish from one counter or a goblet of wine from another. Several times the vendor saw her make the theft, and only smiled.

Mystified, Inyanna said, "They don't mind?"

"They know me. But I tell you, we thieves are highly regarded here. We are a necessity."

"I wish I understood that."

"We maintain order in the Bazaar, do you see? No one steals here but us, and we take only what we need, and we patrol the place against amateurs. How would it be, in these mobs, if one customer out of ten filled his purse with merchandise? But we move among them, filling our own purses, and also halting them. We are a known quantity. Do you see? Our own takings are a kind of tax on the merchants, a salary of sorts that they pay us, to regulate the others who throng the passages. Here, now!" Those last words were directed not to Inyanna but to a boy of about twelve, dark-haired and eel-slim, who had been rummaging through hunting knives in an open bin. With a swift swoop Liloyve caught the boy's hand and in the same motion seized hold of the writhing tentacles of a Vroon no taller than the boy, standing a few feet away in the shadows. Inyanna heard Liloyve speaking in low, fierce tones, but could not make out a single word; the encounter was over in moments, and the Vroon and the boy slunk miserably away.

"What happened then?" Inyanna asked.

"They were stealing knives, the boy passing them to the Vroon. I told them to get out of the Bazaar right away, or my brothers would cut the Vroon's wrigglers off and feed them to the boy roasted in stinnim-oil."

"Would such a thing be done?"

"Of course not. It would be worth a life of sour dreams to anyone who did it. But they got the point. Only authorized thieves steal in this place. You see? We are the proctors here, in a way of speaking. We are indispensable. And here — this is where I live. You are my guest."

Liloyve lived underground, in a room of whitewashed stone that was one of a chain of seven or eight such rooms beneath a section of the Grand Bazaar devoted to merchants of cheeses and oils. A trapdoor and a suspended ladder of rope led to the subterranean chambers; and the moment Inyanna began the downward climb, all the noise and frenzy of the Bazaar became impossible to perceive, and the only reminder of what lay above was the faint but unarguable odor of red Stoienzar cheese that penetrated even the stone walls.

"Our den," Liloyve said. She sang a quick lilting melody and people came trailing in from the far rooms — shabby, shifty people, mostly small and thin, with a look about them much the same as Liloyve's, as of having been manufactured from second-rate materials. "My brothers Sidoun and Hanoun," she said. "My sister Medill Faryun. My cousins Avayne, Amayne, and Athayne. And this is my uncle Agour-mole, who heads our clan. Uncle, this is Inyanna Forlana, from Velathys, who was sold Nissimorn Prospect for twenty royals by two traveling rogues. I met her on the riverboat. She'll live with us and become a thief."

Inyanna gasped. "I—"

Agourmole, courtly and elaborately formal, made a gesture of the Lady, by way of blessing. "You are one of us. Can you wear a man's clothing?"

Bewildered, Inyanna said, "Yes, I imagine so, but I don't under—"

"I have a younger brother who is registered with our guild. He lives in Avendroyne among the Shapeshifters, and has not been seen in Ni-moya for years. You will take his name and place. It is simpler that way than gaining a new registration. Give me your hand." She let him take it. His palms were moist and soft. He looked up into her eyes and said in a low intense tone, "Your true life is just commencing. All that has gone before has been only a dream. Now you are a thief in Ni-moya and your name is Kulibhai." Winking, he added, "Twenty royals is an excellent price for Nissimorn Prospect."

"Those were only the filing fees," said Inyanna. "They told me I had inherited it, through my mother's mother's sister."

"If it is true, you must hold a grand feast for us there, once you are in possession, to repay our hospitality. Agreed?" Agourmole laughed. "Avayne! Wine for your Uncle Kulibhai! Sidoun, Hanoun, find clothes for him! Music, someone! Who's for a dance? Show some life! Medill, prepare the guest bed!" The little man pranced about irrepressibly, barking orders. Inyanna, swept along by his vehement energies, accepted a cup of wine, allowed herself to be measured for a tunic by one of Liloyve's brothers, struggled to commit to memory the flood of names that had swept across her mind. Others now were coming into the room, more humans, three pudgy-cheeked gray-faced Hjorts, and, to Inyanna's amazement, a pair of slender silent Metamorphs. Accustomed though she was to dealing with Shapeshifters in her shopkeeping days, she had not expected to find Liloyve and her family actually sharing their quarters with these mysterious aborigines. But perhaps thieves, like Metamorphs, deemed themselves a race apart on Majipoor, and the two were drawn readily to one another.