"Oh, no!" the Sublimer girl said, her expression terribly serious. "What we believe in takes one completely away from such bodily concerns…"

Out of the corner of his eye he could see up the street, where the pondrosaur was shuffling forwards through a thick crowd of admirers. He smiled at the Sublimer girl as she talked on. He shifted a little so that he could see the other woman better.

No, it wasn't her. Of course it wasn't. She'd have recognised him, she'd have reacted by now. Even if she'd been trying to pretend she hadn't seen him he'd have been able to tell; she'd never been very good at hiding her feelings from anybody, least of all from him. She glanced at him again, then quickly away. He felt a sudden, unbidden sensation of fearful pleasure, a jolt of excitement which left his skin tingling.

"… highest expression of our quintessential urge to be greater than we…" He nodded and looked at the Sublimer girl, who was still babbling away. He frowned a little and stroked his chin with his free hand, still nodding. He kept watching the other woman. Out on the street, the pondrosaur and its retinue had come to a stop almost alongside them; a Tier Sintricate was hovering level with the giant animal's mahout, who seemed to be arguing angrily with it.

The woman was smiling at the other two Sublimers with what appeared to be an expression of tolerant ridicule. She kept her eyes on the Sublimer fellow doing the talking at that point, but took a long, deep breath, and — just as she let it out — glanced at Genar-Hofoen again with the briefest of smiles and a flick of her eyebrows before looking back at the Sublimers and tipping her head just a little to one side.

He wondered. Would SC really go this far to keep him under their control, or at least under their eye? How likely was it that he should find somebody who looked so much like her? He supposed there must be hundreds of people who bore a passing resemblance to Dajeil Gelian; perhaps there were even a few who had heard something about her and deliberately assumed her appearance; that happened all the time with genuinely famous people and just because he'd never heard of anybody taking on Dajeil's looks didn't mean nobody had ever done so. If this person was one of them, it was just possible he would have to be on his guard…

"… personal ambition or the desire to better oneself or to provide opportunities for one's children is but a pale reflection of, compared to the ultimate transcendence which true Subliming offers; for, as it is written…"

Genar-Hofoen leant closer to the girl talking to him and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. "I'm sure," he said quietly. "Would you excuse me for just a moment?"

He took the two steps over to the woman in the shadowrobe. She turned her head from the two Sublimers and smiled politely at him. "Excuse me," he asked. "Don't I know you from somewhere?" He grinned as he said it, acknowledging both the well-worn nature of the line and the fact that neither he nor she was really interested in what the Sublimers had to say.

She nodded her head politely to him. "I don't think so," she said. Her voice was higher than Dajeil's; more girlish, and with a quite different accent. "Though if we had met and you hadn't altered in some way and I'd forgotten, certainly I'd be far too ashamed to admit it." She smiled. He did the same. She frowned. "Unless… do you live on Tier?"

"Just passing through," he told her. A bomber, in flames, tore past just overhead and exploded in a burst of light behind the Sublimer building. On the street, the argument around the pondrosaur seemed to be getting more heated; the animal itself was staring intently at the Sintricate and its mahout was standing up on its neck, pointing the flaming mace at the darkly spiny being to emphasise whatever points he was making.

"But I've been this way before," Genar-Hofoen said. "Perhaps we bumped into each other then."

She nodded thoughtfully. "Perhaps," she conceded.

"Oh, you two know each other?" said the young Sublimer man she'd been talking to. "Well, many people find that Subliming in the company of a loved one or just somebody they know is-"

"Do you play Calascenic Crasis?" she asked, cutting across the young Sublimer. "You may have seen me at a game here." She put her head back, looking down that long nose at him. "If so, I'm disappointed you left it till now to say hello."

"Ah!" the Sublimer lad said. "Games; an expression of the urge to enter into worlds beyond ourselves! Another-"

"I've never even heard of the game," he confessed. "Do you recommend it?"

"Oh yes," she said, and sounded ironic. "It benefits all who play."

"Well, I'm always willing to entertain some new experience. Perhaps you could teach me."

"Ah, now; the ultimate new experience-" began the Sublimer lad.

Genar-Hofoen turned to him and said, "Oh, shut up!" It had been an instinctive reaction, and for a moment he was worried he might have said the wrong thing, but she didn't seem to be regarding the young Sublimer's hurt look with any great degree of sympathy.

She looked back to him. "All right," she said. "You stand me my stake and I'll teach you Crasis."

He smiled, wondering if that had been too easy. "It's a deal," he said. He waved the cloud cane under his nose and took a deep breath, then bowed. "My name's Byr."

"Pleased to meet you." She nodded again. "Call me Flin," she said, and, taking hold of the cane, waved it under her own nose.

"Shall we, Flin?" he said, and indicated the street beyond, where the pondrosaur had sunk to its belly, its four legs doubled up underneath it and both fore-limbs folded beneath its chin, as though bored. Two Sintricates were shouting at the enraged mahout, who was shaking the flaming mace at them. The hire guards were looking nervous and patting the restless kliestrithrals.

"Certainly."

"Remember where you met!" the Sublimer called after them. "Subliming is the ultimate meeting of souls, the pinnacle of…" They left the hushfield. His voice was drowned out by the thudding of projected anti-aircraft fire as they walked along the pavement.

"So, where are we going?" he asked her.

"Well, you can take me for a drink and then we'll hit a Crasis bar I know. Sound all right?"

"Sounds fine. Shall we take a trap?" he said, pointing a little way up the street to a two-wheeled open vehicle waiting by the kerb. A ysner-mistretl pair were harnessed between the traces, the ysner craning its long neck down to peck at a feed bag in the gutter, the small, smartly uniformed mistretl on its back looking around alertly and tapping its thumbs together.

"Good idea," she said. They walked up to the trap and climbed aboard. "The Collyrium Lounge," the woman said to the mistretl as they sat in the rear of the small vehicle. It saluted and pulled a whip out from its fancy jerkin. The ysner made a sighing noise.

The trap shook suddenly. A great deep burst of noise came from the street behind them. They all looked round. The pondrosaur was rearing up, bellowing; its mahout nearly fell off its neck. His mace tumbled from his grasp and bounced on the street. Two of the kliestrithrals jumped up and leapt into the crowd, snarling and dragging their handlers with them. The two Sintricates who'd been arguing with the mahout rose quickly into the air out of the way; people in float harnesses took avoiding action through the confusion of searchlight beams and anti-aircraft fire. Flin and Genar-Hofoen watched people scatter in all directions as the pondrosaur leapt forward with surprising agility and started charging down the street towards them. The mahout clung desperately to the beast's ears, screeching at it to stop. The stabilised black and silver cupola on the animal's back seemed to float along above it until the animal's increasing speed forced it to oscillate from side to side. At Genar-Hofoen's side, Flin seemed frozen.