"Sorry," he muttered, and took up the reins and got the horse away, slowly downthe street.

Robbed-not of the money only. There were vast gaps in his memory-where he hadbeen; what he had seen.

Roxane. Ischade. He had come back to the river-house. The memory got so far andstopped.

He touched his throat on reflex. You've always mistaken me, she'd said.

The sun was up. Tradesmen went bawling their wares, the housekeepers were outdusting off the steps.

He would have ridden from the gates and saved himself; but like the bay horse hehad learned patterns and was caught in them, kept to the path and to duty.

I promised something, he thought in a chill, half-recovered memory.

Gods-what?

Offer a prize for the lowest, skungiest dive in Sanctuary, and Sly's Place willwin it hands down. That's a good place for hands at Sly's Place, too. Down, nearyour belt-purse and weapons. Sly's Place is sphinctered in the improbable threeway intersection of Tanner and Odd Birt's Dodge and the north-south wriggle ofthe Serpentine (near Wrong-way Park). Those are "streets," to those who don'tmind a certain looseness or downright ludicrousness in terminology, in that areaof town called the Maze. 'Way back deep in the Maze, which is the lowest,skungiest hellhole in Sanctuary and probably on the continent, and let's don'ttalk about the planet.

Every Maze-denizen and most Downwinders know where Sly's Place is, and yet noone can assign a proper address to it. Its address is not that winding maze-linkcalled the Serpentine. It isn't given as being on the streetlet called Tanner.And no one gives Odd Birt's Dodge as an address. Sly's Place is just there, atthat sort of three-way comer, that preposterous intersection where that littleHanse-imitating cess-head Athavul got his comeuppance a couple of years ago, andwhere Menostric the Misadept, hardly sober and fleeing, slipped on a pile ofhuman never-mind and actually skidded onto three streets before he came to anindecorous but appropriate stop in the gutter, sort of wrapped around the comerso that his head was up against the curbing on Tanner and his feet were actuallyin Wrong-way Park. It is also the area in which welled up so many disagreementsswiftly escalating into encounters, sanguine fights, brawls, and worse that aphysician named Alamanthis wisely rented space a couple of doors down on Tanner,and hired a mean ugly nondrinking bodyguard, and made street calls. He chargedin advance, and slept most of each day, and was getting rich, damn and blesshim.

Sly's Place! Name of Father Ils, Sly had taken dropsy and died three years agone,and the dive was still called Sly's Place because no one wanted to admit toowning it or to take responsibility either.

On the other hand, since all that Beyfishfacesin/sorcery problem in the VulgarUnicorn and the pursuant edict and raid-or raid and edict; who in power could bebothered with niceties where anything in the Maze was concerned? -business waxedat Sly's like the tide when the moon is right, like the moon when the heavensare favorable, like the heavens when the gods are getting along. Someone had tobe getting rich off Sly's Place, damn and bless him. Or her.

Sly's was where a pair of rebels/patriots met, and awaited the advent of aninvited guest. In a town first occupied by those rank Rankans and then by themuch ranker Stare-Eyes from oversea, rebels/patriots could not, after all,arrange such a meeting in some fine uptown place such as the Golden Oasis orHari's Spot or even the Golden Lizard.

The two had been waiting quite a while and already one knife-fight had playedabsolute havoc with a winejar, two mugs, an innocent bysitter's pinky, a poorlymade chair, and a kidney.

"Wish that little son-of-a-bitch would hurry up and get here," one said; hisname was Zip and he had eyes that would look better on the other side of ironbars.

The other young man frowned, glancing distastefully at the mug on the tablebefore him. "No call to say that-you don't even know who his mother is."

"Neither did his father, Jes."

Jes tried not to smile at that one, and shrugged. "Fine. Call him a bastard,then, and leave slurs to womanhood out of it."

"Lord, but you're sensitive."

"True."

Zip didn't say anything about the reflection on womanhood implicit in the veryexistence of bastard offspring, because he didn't think of it. His mind was notgiven to the formulation of such retorts, or much cleverness. He was a rebel anda fighter, not a thinker. On the other hand, he was the very hell of a patriotand rebel. His name was Zip and he had always thought quite a bit of a certainspawn of the shadows and tried to emulate him, until lately. Now he had lostrespect for that one, but needed him.

"That's him," Zip said. "A bastard. Both by birth and by nature."

This time Jes went ahead and smiled. "That's pretty good. Zip. Oh-the barkeep'sstaring at us again." Jes's name was really Kama, and she was nothing at alllike Zip except that tonight, like Zip, she was in disguise. Yet she had madeone of those astonishing discoveries that come all unsuspected on unsuspectingpeople who might wish for better: she liked Zip, and she liked him more thansomewhat.

"Oh, no. If I have to order another of those rotten cat-urine beers, I'll-ah.Here comes the son of a-the bast- here he comes now," he said, gazing past her.She didn't have to turn much to see the doorway; they had got themselves seatedso as to be able to note who came in without seeming to show interest.

A step above the room, the doorway of Sly's Place was graced by thirty-onestrands of dangling Syrese rope, each knotted thirty-one times in accord withthat superstition. They hung just short of the oiled wooden flooring. Throughthat unlikely arras had just come a narrow lean wraith of a youthful man ofaverage height, above-average presence, and a weening cockiness that showed inface and stance and carriage. Several years younger than Zip he was, and dressedall in black except for the (very) scarlet sash. His hair was blacker than blackand seemed trying to decide whether to curl above almost-black eyes to make aperson step aside while his own hair tried to curl. The falcate nose belonged ona young eagle. Good shoulders on him, and no hips worth mentioning.

His wearing of weapons was overdone the way a courtesan overdid her gems: asadvertisement and braggadocio. Over the sash he wore a shagreen belt; from it acurved dagger swung at his left hip and an Ilbarsi knife, its blade twentyinches long or worse, on the right. The copper-set leather armlet that encircledhis right upper arm was more than decoration: it housed a hiltless, guardless,long black lozenge of a throwing knife. So did the long bracer of black leatheron that arm. More than one patron of Sly's Place knew that the decoration on hisleft buskin was the hilt of a knife sheathed within that soft boot. (They werewrong; he'd moved that sticker to the other buskin, and it didn't show.) Maybehe wore other blades and maybe he did not; there were rumors.

From beneath raven's-wing brows he surveyed the place as if he owned it and yetdespised it and might turn it into a pet shop or fishmonger's tomorrow morningearly. (He didn't own it.) He did own the imperiously Imperial Rankan eagle offthe roof of Barracks Three, because he had stolen it for a lark and to use as apissoir; and for a time he had owned the Savankh, too: the wand of Imperialoffice and authority of the Rankan governor, which he had stolen from within thevery palace (which everyone knew was impossible of clandestine access) andransomed it back to its rightful possessor, a nice well-meaning blond of abouthis age.