«That's the question, isn't it?» I muttered. «He has nothing to gain by betraying us and we seem to get along passably well; but it still might amuse him to deposit us in some festering cesspit. On the other hand, he is a fellow Sensate… and I think he'll be impressed on with my work on his boat.»

«Maybe you should leave one face unfinished until he takes us somewhere safe.»

«Good idea,» I nodded. «It'll give Garou some incentive to live up to his half of the bargain.»

Yasmin watched me paint a few strokes, then asked, «Which gate-town do we aim for?»

«I don't know. Have you visited any of them?»

«No.» She shrugged. «Maybe one of the others has.»

«Why don't you check with them?» I suggested. «I'll be all right here.»

She stared at me for a moment, clearly debating whether she could safely leave me by myself. «Very well,» she said at last. «I don't want to watch you work on these pictures anyway. Too depressing.»

«Because the faces are so sad or because it's just a hack copy job?»

She didn't answer. I watched her walk away.

Time passed. Garou watched long enough to see me finish the high elf's face, then wandered off into the village. I took that as a vote of confidence; he had accepted I possessed sufficient talent for the job, and could work without his supervision. The umbrals were not so quick to drop the issue – I could feel their hollow eyes peering at me from dark vantage points under the trees, and could hear their rustling voices whisper unrecognizable words – but in time they too faded away, vanishing on unknown errands.

I was left alone with the grieving faces.

Whoever painted the originals had done good work: nothing too difficult in the way of technique, yet with a sure touch in capturing the pathos of each subject. It was easy to believe the faces had been taken from life; but I didn't want to pursue that line of thought. Sixteen people, heartsick people, herded together and forced to pose for the unknown artist… it didn't bear thinking about.

But I couldn't keep my mind off the subject. Garou's previous artist had done that old trick with the eyes, aiming them out flat so they seemed to follow me wherever I moved; and it is hard to bear up under such sorrowful scrutiny for long periods of time. Sad, mad eyes, always watching.

Among the faces was a human man, light-haired, full-bearded, nothing like my dark and well-trimmed father… yet the more the face stared at me, the more I felt this was Niles Cavendish: not dead, not lost these fifteen years, but still alive somewhere here in the Lower Planes and crushed by overwhelming grief. Time and again, I caught myself staring instead of painting. It was not my father, it was nothing like him – nothing like anything he could have become since I saw him last. And yet, when I was fleshing out other faces, I would repeatedly catch sight of the man from the corner of my eye and gasp. My father. Papa.

«Magic,» I muttered under my breath. «Sodding magic.» It could have been in the paint, on the boat, or hanging in the very air around me. Every plane lays its fingers on your soul and toys with you, trying to seduce you into its dance. Carceri wanted to embrace me with its ripe despair, and why not use visions of Niles Cavendish as bait? The man in the picture was not my father… any more than I was.

That was it: I was not my father. He had been a hero. I was a mere copyist; as Yasmin said, a hack. How long before she despised me for that? She knew I was the son of Niles Cavendish – we'd talked about it the night before, after… after we'd finished being inattentive sentries. Maybe my father was the only reason she cared a twig for me. Maybe she thought I was a savior with a sword, like him; and when she learned the truth, how I could scarcely bear thinking of him… would she walk away disappointed, longing for a real man, and a real life, and real emotion on the canvas…

«Painting more pictures, huh?» said a nasal voice behind my shoulder. «You must be really dedicated – working every chance you get. Uncle Toby says artists are like that.»

I turned and saw Hezekiah looming over me. For some reason, he didn't look like a gawky Clueless nuisance at this moment; he looked downright welcome. «I don't know sod about artists,» I told him. «I don't know sod about anything, except this piking place is playing tricks with my mind. Sit down on that stump and keep me sane.»

«How do I do that?»

«Grant me wisdom. Grant me truth. Grant me the secrets of life. Or failing that, tell me about your home town, the girls you left behind, and your piking Uncle Toby.»

Which he did.

Like every home town, Hezekiah's birthplace of Templeford had the dewiest dawns, the slowest horses, and the tangiest cheese in the multiverse. The barber was missing a finger and knew more jokes than any man in history. The tailor who sold men's clothes held a «going out of business» sale at least once a year. There were two blacksmiths, one competent, one not… and the well-to-do patronized the fumble-fingered fellow because the other man's smithy was always full of commoners. Of course, no one locked their doors at night. Of course, everyone went skating on the creek in winter time. Of course, there was an old house suspected of being haunted, a young woman suspected of selling her nights for silver, and a butcher suspected of adding cat-meat to the ground pork.

Born and bred in Sigil, I still knew Hezekiah's home. I'd never been there… perhaps no one had ever been there, including Hezekiah. In real towns, drunks are sad or intimidating, never innocently amusing; and the girl next door has a complicated life of her own, not centered on being your foil. In real towns, marriages are neither unending bliss or unmitigated disasters, but always somewhere in between; and the same goes for children, never purely angels or demons as the stories would have you believe. But none of us comes from a real town – we come from home towns, where everyone is a «character» and where our stories, smiling or angry, are all painted in primary colors.

At that moment, I liked primary colors; they were a welcome change from the subdued browns on the palette in front of me. Thus I let Hezekiah prattle on about the dances in Pecksniffle's pack-barn, and the blizzard three years ago that buried houses up to their eaves. Was the creek full of trout in spring? Of course. Did the leaves turn crimson and gold at harvest time? Every tree in the forest. And every grandmother could cook better than the greatest chefs in Sigil, every grandfather could whittle better than the most famous sculptors, every hunting dog could sniff out a partridge ten miles away…

What about Uncle Toby?

«What do you want to know about Uncle Toby?» Hezekiah asked.

«He raised you?»

«Yes.»

«And he taught you the tricks of mind over matter?»

«Oh sure – he taught me lots of stuff. But…» Hezekiah's voice trailed off and he sighed a sigh of theatrical proportions.

«What's wrong?» I asked.

«Well,» the boy said, «I think Uncle Toby skimped on one part of my education.»

«Yes?»

«He never… well, Uncle Toby was a bachelor, see. He knew about the multiverse, and the gods, and the powers of the mind, but he never really talked about… you know.»

Hezekiah looked at me with anxious brown eyes. I knew exactly what kind of guidance he wanted, and as a Sensate, I had plenty of experience to draw upon. The trick was not to unnerve the boy with excessively hydraulic details.

«What do you want to know?» I asked.

«Well… it's just that… ummm, well… I think Miriam likes me.» He lifted his eyes quickly, then lowered them again. «I could be all wrong about this, but…»

«But you're probably right,» I finished for him. «That trick you did back in the Spider – making yourself look terrifying – I think that caught her attention.»