Vincus was not sure what the man said next. Something about "feast" and "come on over," but his gestures were large and violent-waving his arms and beckoning dramatically-and it could have been greeting or challenge. The other three brushed by the drunkard, headed up the street between the storefronts, and when Vincus stepped uncertainly toward the gesturing man, one of them turned and regarded him.

"Vincus?" the man asked, his tight face breaking into a grin. " "Us you, old post? Old cat-tongued barnacle?"

He recognized the taunts, the pet names. Pugio, who used to tease him when the gang of boys stole loaves from the bakery by the Welcoming Tower. Vincus walked toward the young man, smiling sheepishly.

Sure enough, it was Pugio.

Vincus gestured. It has been a long time, his hands said.

Pugio laughed and shrugged. "I don't remember none of that hand-jabber. No use for it in Bywall."

Bywall. Vincus had forgotten the name.

The worn, crowded settlement pitched in the shadow of Istar's original fortifications was known as Bywall. When the city had expanded beyond its original boundaries, wealthy Istarians had moved north of the Tower, or south into outlying country villas, leaving the older buildings to the itinerant, the unhoused, the poor.

The buildings had collapsed and burned in a fire two years before Vincus was born. In the midst of the rubble and ashes, the destitute survivors had built a city of tents and lean-tos, of capsized wagons and abandoned vendors' booths, carried from the festival grounds and the Marketplace to the filthy, shadowy strip at the foot of the ancient walls. While Vincus was growing up, he and his friends had avoided that part of the city where the plentiful and average dangers turned large and unmanageable.

Vincus approached reluctantly, already misgiving his hopes of renewing old friendships.

Pugio was hard, almost stringy, and there was an ashy sallowness about his skin. He was scarcely a year older than Vincus, yet his hair was wispy and matted, and a long purple scar laced jaggedly across his right forearm. No more than twenty, Pugio looked three times his age, and the men with him were even worse for wear-toothless and scarred, but not past menace and danger. Vincus watched warily as the three men spread out, walking slowly toward him across the torch-haunted square.

"Y'member Anguis," Pugio said, nodding at the man to his left. "And Ultion. Ultion done the games at the School under Angard."

Vincus nodded and lifted his hand to both men. He remembered neither of them, though Anguis looked faintly familiar-a face recalled in the red light of Lunitari… something about knives.

"Y'member us all, don'ya, Vincus?" Pugio asked, his street talk thickening the nearer he drew to Vin shy;cus. "Y'member us well enough for the handlin'?"

The- handling. Vincus raced through his memory for the word.

He remembered, shook his head.

"Livin' high put you out o' thievin', Vincus?" Ultion drew back mockingly and asked with a faint, pleasant smile. "I hear of it happenin' when you got three square an' all. Nice clothes they give ya."

Pugio and Anguis murmured in assent. "A one-timer?" Pugio asked. "Just an old-times handle on the rug merchant over to the Marketplace?"

Vincus shook his head. The three drew nearer.

"No?" Pugio asked, his voice filling with a steely coldness. "Then you'll be givin' us your food, I'm certain. You don't starve an old friend, Vincus."

Suddenly chilled, Vincus looked into their eyes. They returned his gaze steadily, calmly, almost inno shy;cently, and then, when his guard descended slowly, when he thought that perhaps his suspicions had all been wrong, that they had been the good and loyal friends he remembered …

Anguis glanced over Vincus's shoulder, a quick, flickering movement to his narrow eyes. Vincus saw it, and spun about…

In time to catch the drunkard's club, as it descended with swift ferocity.

For a moment Vincus stared his attacker face-to-face, saw the man's eyes widen, smelled the stale wine…

Then, with a strength born of life and health, of steady sleep and three squares, he pushed the man aside and, spinning with a fierce, desperate lunge, brought his fist crashing into the face of Ultion.

Ultion fell back with a cry, but the others leapt greedily onto Vincus. Strong fingers probed his throat, and a blinding punch, hurtling out of nowhere, struck him firmly on the side of the head.

He turned toward Anguis, but the air itself seemed to resist him, and one man hit him, and then another. The silver collar snapped and dropped from his neck, and Vincus fell to his knees on the cobbled square, the drunkard stalking toward him, club raised.

Suddenly, his assailants scattered. Shouts fol shy;lowed them from an alley, a rushing column of torches.

The Istarian Guard, Vincus thought. I am safe.

He looked down at the collar, the heavy silver bro shy;ken in two neat crescents at his knees. If the Guard caught him here even Vaananen could not help him.

Vincus crouched on the roof of the building, peering down like a bruised gargoyle onto the milling soldiers.

He had snatched up the collar and run, only steps » ahead of the torches and shouting into the nearest alley. The window into the adjoining brewer's shop was boarded, but not well. In less than a minute, his strength doubled in the desire to escape, Vincus had pulled down the boards and scrambled into the darkened brewery. Dropping into a stack of empty barrels, he clattered and rolled into the warm, yeast-smelling darkness, lying still until the torches and shouting passed.

Then he ascended the stairs to the attic, and, stack shy;ing barrel on barrel, he clambered through cobweb and rafter to the trapdoor in the ceiling, firmly bolted from the inside against acrobatic trespassers. Vincus threw back the rusty bolt and climbed to the roof, where he could see by starlight the dark maze of streets beyond the receding torchlight of the guardsmen, as far as the Old Wall, the settlements on the shore of a great lake, and on into the black foothills of a distant mountain range.

He had never ventured outside the walls, not even in thought or imagination.

Gaping, marveling, still shaking, Vincus lay down upon the roof and looked into the wheeling constel shy;lations.

There was a place where the city ended. Vaananen had told him so, talked about the way past those far shy;away mountains and into the desert. In the towers, all you could see was the city, and Vincus had always believed that Istar extended to the end of sight, and that the end of sight was the end of the world.

The collar, now two slivers of silver moon, lay cold in his dark hand. The breaks were clean, like they had been cut. Right through the letters of his name.

Dabbing at the cut over his right eye, Vincus held the pieces up before the lightening sky, so that his name was whole again upon them. The metal was deeply notched but for a hair-thin edge at both breaks. Let alone, the collar would have dropped off by morning, long before he could have made his way to the gates. Now he understood the druid's parting words.

"The rules are broken. . . . You have served well, Vincus. Well done."

Vincus smiled slowly and looked through the sil shy;ver circle to the wide country beyond the city. Here was a freedom and a country greater than any of his imaginings.

He would see if Fordus was real, too.

Chapter 18

The Old Wall faded into the darkness behind him as the first of the lakeside camps came into view.

For a moment Vincus stopped in the shadows, baffled.

The camp looked like Bywall, or Westedge, or Pierside-one of the sprawling communities of pau shy;pers that dotted the shimmering marble of the inner city. The tents were there, and the lean-tos, the banked fires, and the barrels set on their sides to house the poorest of the huddled poor.