"Why not return to the Capital with me?" the Commissioner said expansively. "Anew talent! My wife would be so pleased."

Lalo smiled back, his vision expanding in images of marble columns and pavementsof porphyry that far outshone the face-lifted splendors of Prince Kittycat'shall. Would Gilla like to live in a palace?

"But we need not waste the few weeks I have to spend here-"

Lalo's skin chilled as Lord Raximander went on.

"A picture of me, for instance-you could do that here in the palace as a smalldemonstration of your skill."

Before Raximander had finished, Lalo was shaking his head. "Someone must havemisinformed you-I never do portraits!"

Some of the others, attention attracted by the raised voices, had drifted towardthe mural again. Zanderei was watching with a faint smile.

Coricidius motioned towards the wall with a bony finger. "Who poses for all yourpictures, then?"

Lalo twitched like a nervous horse, trying to find an answer that would notalienate them... Anything but the truth, which was that a sorcerer's spell hadenabled-nay, compelled him, to portray the true nature of his sitters' souls.After a few disastrous attempts to paint Sanctuary's wealthy, Lalo had learnedto choose his models from those among the poor who were still uncorrupted.

"My lord, that one was done from imagination," he said truthfully, for the IlsigKing had been inspired by his memories of fleeing through the Maze just ahead oflocal bullies when he was a boy. He did not tell them that he had got the HellHound Quag to boast of his feats on campaign while he posed for the figure ofthe Rankan Emperor.

One of the eunuch pages scurried towards them and Coricidius bent to hear hismessage. Released from his gaze, Lalo stepped backward with a sigh.

"You are too sensitive, Master Limner," Zan-derei said softly. "You must learnto accept what each day brings. In these times, ideals are an expensive luxury."

"Do you want a portrait too?" Lalo asked bitterly.

"Oh, I would not be worth the trouble-" Zan-derei smiled. "Besides, I know how Iappear to the world."

Cymbals crashed, and as Lalo's startled pulse began to slow he realized that theother end of the room was flaring with the colored silks of the dancing girls.He should have expected it, having watched them rehearse almost every afternoonwhile he worked on the paintings here.

Such a commotion, he thought, for a few strangers who will make notes onSanctuary as most artists make portraits-recording only the surface of realityand then will be gone.

Happily abandoning their conversations, the Commissioners let the purple-cladpages usher them to couches below the dais on which the Prince was alreadyenthroned. The dancers, chosen from among the more talented of Kadakithis'lesser concubines, moved sinuously through the ornate topography of their dance,pausing only from time to time to detach a veil.

Trembling with reaction, Lalo drifted towards the row of pillars that supportedthe vaulted and domed ceiling. Someone had left a goblet on the marble bench,nearly full. Lalo took a long swallow, then made himself put it down again. Hisheart was pounding as loudly as the drums.

Why am I so afraid? he wondered, and then wondered how he could be anythingelse, in a town where footpads dogged your steps by day, and if you heard ascream after dark you ran not to help but to bar your door. It must be better inthe Capital... there must be somewhere Gilla and I could live in safety.

He lifted the goblet once more, but the wine tasted sour and he set it backhalf-full. Coricidius would not care if he left the celebration now that he hadexhibited both the pictures and their creator. Lalo wanted to go home.

He got to his feet and stepped around the pillar, then halted, startled assomething in front of him seemed to move. After a moment he laughed, realizingthat it was only his reflection in the polished marble that faced the wall.Dimly he could see the glitter of embroidery on his festival jerkin, and thesheen on his full breeches, but they could not disguise the stoop of his narrowshoulders or the way his belly had begun to round. Even the thinning of hisginger hair was somehow mirrored there. But through some quality of the darkmarble or some trick of the light, Lalo's face was as shadowed as that of theIlsig King.

Lalo worked his way around the outside of the Presence Hall to the side door.The corridor seemed quiet after the clamor of music and the wine-fueled babbleof conversation, and the government offices that occupied the spaces between theHall and the outside of the Palace were empty and dark. As he had expected, theside-door leading to the courtyard was bolted tight. With a sigh he went theother way, passed through the Hall of Justice that fronted the Palace as quicklyas he could, and out through one of the great double doors that led onto theporch and broad stair.

Torches had been fixed in the pillars at the top and bottom of the stair, andtheir fitful light gleamed on the armour of the guards who stood at attention oneach of the four wide steps, and glowed on the purple pennon tied to each spear,then rayed out across the inner courtyard in uneven ribbons of brightness andshadow, as if the soldiers had become part of the Palace architecture.

Lalo paused for a moment, noting the effect. Then he saw that the first guardwas Quag, nodded, and received in answer the flicker of an eyelid in the woodenpatience of the Hell-Hound's face.

Lalo's sandals crunched on grit as he crossed the flagstones of the innercourtyard, punctuating the patter of applause that drifted from the Palace, atthis distance as faint as the sound of wavelets on a shore. He supposed that theconcubines had stripped off their final veils. He must remember not to showGilla the sketches he had made of them practicing.

One of Honald's many nephews was on duty in the guardbox set into the massivearchway of the Palace Gate. Tonight the double doors were opened wide, and Lalopassed through unquestioned, though he remembered a time when all he owned wouldnot have been enough to bribe the Gatekeeper to let him enter here. He feltdizzy, although he had hardly had any wine.

Why can't I be satisfied with what I have? he wondered. What is wrong with me?

He crossed the expanse of Vashanka's Square more quickly, heading diagonallytowards the West Gate and the Governor's Walk. For a moment the east windbrought him the rank, fuggy smell of the Zoo Gardens, then it shifted and hefelt on his face the cool breath of the sea.

He halted just outside the Gate and with a sigh reversed his cloak so that itsdull inner lining concealed his festival clothes. It was well known in theappropriate places that Lalo never carried money-in the old days he had neverhad any, and now Gilla controlled the family treasury- but he would not wantanyone to make a mistake in the dark.

A waxing moon was already brightening the heavens, and the rooftops of the citymade a jagged silhouette against the stars. Not since he was a boy, slippingfrom his pallet behind his father's workbench to join his friends' adventur-ing,had Lalo seen Sanctuary at this hour with sober eyes. Just now, with all itssordidness obscured by shadow, it seemed to him to be possessed of a kind ofhaphazard but enduring integrity.

His feet had carried him almost to Shadow Lane without his attention when theyencountered something soft. He leaped awkwardly aside to avoid stepping into thecontents of a honeypot which someone had emptied into the street to stink andsteam, until the rain washed it into the city's underground maze of sewers andit was carried off by the tide. He had been into those tunnels once, on a dare,through an entry shaft near the Vulgar Unicorn. He wondered if it were stillthere....