The sun shone bright in a clear, pale sky. In the small formal garden of the family compound, Kuang Yu Chien's beaming face was almost as bright.

"Yu Mao," he said.

Li watched his brother step forward, stiff and dignified, trying his best to imitate their elders. Heir to the workshops and fortune of Kuang, how could he do any less? Li tried his best to remain calm himself. It wasn't easy with a feeling like a hundred bees buzzing through his belly. In two years he would stand where Yu Mao did now. For the second son of Kuang, he knew, the ceremony would be less impressive, but what did that matter at a moment like this?

Yu Mao bowed low before their father, holding himself in the submissive posture for exactly the length of time that propriety demanded, no more, no less. Li could have counted the time, too-he had watched Yu Mao practicing for hours. There was so much that the future head of the family needed to know, so many small details of etiquette, so many little rituals. Some day Yu Mao would be one of the most important men of Keelung, negotiating with traders and Imperial officials for the fine fabric of the silk families. Inscrutable, unflappable. Li had stood behind Yu Mao and peered through a screen watching Yu Chien negotiate, and on those occasions, their father was like some kind of wondrous automaton, flawless in his self-control.

Not today. The only rain of the fine summer afternoon stood out on Yu Chien's cheeks. Even so, his voice was strong and easy. "Blessings upon you, my son."

"Blessings on you, honored father." Yu Mao's voice was already deep. The formal words of the ceremony rolled out of him like cartwheels. "May your years be as numerous as leaves on a tree. May each of them give you memories as sweet as a peach."

"Leaves fall in winter and new buds come forth each spring. Every peach must ripen. Every boy must grow into a man." Yu Chien's smile quivered slightly with emotion as, for the first time, he bowed to Yu Mao. It was really little more than a nod, Li knew, but it might just as well have been the humblest abasement. "Mayjyowryears be as numerous as leaves on a tree. May each of them give you memories as sweet as a peach." Yu Chien straightened. "Now, my son, take up the tools of a man."

He tapped his thumb and second finger together. To the left of his chair and standing beside Mother, Great-Aunt Ya made a more vigorous gesture and from behind a screen of bamboo stepped Cousin Mei, dressed all in red. Li caught his breath. She looked beautiful, more than a suitable match for the next patriarch of the Kuang. Yu Mao, however, seemed more interested in the red-stained case that she carried. Mei knelt before him and opened it. Resting on silk within was the most beautiful pair of butterfly swords Li had ever seen-easily as beautiful as Cousin Mei. They were adult weapons, heavier and much keener than a child's training blades. Yu Mao removed them carefully, inspected them, and bowed twice-once to his future wife and once, more deeply, to his father. "I will make the ancestors of Kuang proud," he promised. He bowed again and sunlight flashed on the butterfly swords…

… just as lantern light flashed on the cheap brass mesh that restrained the considerable bosom of the woman who walked boldly up to Li. "Olore, elf-man," she said with naked interest, "have you had a long voyage?" She leaned over so the shiny mesh shifted and exposed more of the shadowed chasm of her cleavage. "Maybe you're feeling a little lonely."

Li was saved from having to respond by the sudden appearance of an older woman, rouge and powder thick on her face. The bawd seized the other woman's arm and hauled her roughly back toward one of the curtains at the rear of the Eel. Li didn't quite catch the words she muttered, but their tone implied that an interest in making love to an elf was barely a step above perversion. He didn't bother trying to correct their misperceptions regarding his race. Clearly there were times when it was good to be thought of as an elf. Not many, though, not around the dark cave of the Eel. The woman in brass was the only denizen of the tavern who seemed interested in more than beating the lights out of the "elf-blood" who had wandered into their midst. It made the skin on his neck crawl, but he turned around and put his back to the noisy room, standing shoulder to shoulder with Tycho.

"If he's not here," the short bard was asking a big, bald bartender, "where is he? This is important."

The bartender just shrugged. "Always is when Black Scratch might be waiting for you, isn't it?"

Tycho flushed. "When will Brin be back?"

"Do I look like a bloody appointment book?" the bartender growled. "Brin doesn't tell me his comings and goings. He tells me how much to charge for ale and when to water it down." He plunked two mugs on the counter. "Buy yourself a couple and wait for him."

Tycho sighed. "Why not? Nothing better to do." Li winced and nudged him.

"We can leave and come back again," he said in Shou. "Why don't we go to the Wench's Ease and wait there?"

"You haven't had enough of tramping around in the cold?" Tycho replied.

"I'm afraid that if we stay here, I'll catch some kind of disease." Li's first sight of the Eel had convinced him that he had made the right choice at the docks. Filthy, dark and stinking, foul with thick smokes and loud with the shouts of customers already deep in their cups, Brin's establishment had the feel of a place teetering on the brink of desperation. The moment he and Tycho had walked through the door in search of Brin, Li had wanted to turn around and walk out again. The Wench's Ease was smelly, smoky, and loud as well, but at least there had been a lightness of spirit about it, a sense that its patrons were there to enjoy rather than lose themselves. "Can we go?"

Tycho crinkled his nose. "I want to get this over with. Let Brin go after Jacerryl and the Hooded if he wants his beljurils back. If you still want to talk to Brin about your brother, you should do that now, too. If Brin and the Hooded start a war, there's no telling when or if you'll get another chance."

The muscle along Li's jaw tightened. "I suppose not," he said, "but nothing will happen until we talk to him." He shuddered as angry shouts erupted from behind the other curtain at the tavern's rear, the one Tycho had said hid gambling tables. "You said you've got until tomorrow."

Tycho turned up his hands in defeat. "Water the beer for someone else," he told the bartender in Common. "We're going. If you see Brin, tell him I was looking for him."

"Didn't I say I'm not an appointment book?" The bartender flicked a rag at them. "Get your elf-blood friend out of here."

The air outside was chill and damp, but sweet. Li breathed it in gratefully as Tycho led him through the shadowed streets toward the Wench's Ease. The other man gave him a sideways glance. "You traveled the length of the Golden Way and you didn't see worse places than the Eel?"

"I saw them," said Li. "I didn't enjoy them. There was an oasis deep in the Endless Wastes where the natives refuse to allow any permanent buildings and the only tavern was a kind of vast tent that served ale brewed from millet in enormous goatskin bags. The tent walls were so thick with decades of greasy soot from braziers that they could have stood on their own. The women of the area seemed addicted to millet ale and to playing a game that involved knives and carved rune-bones."

"What did the men do?" Tycho asked curiously.

"Stayed away from the women. They spent most of their time out raiding and extorting tribute from caravans."

"What else did you see along the way?"

"A lot of grass." Li dredged his memory to come up with things that might be more interesting. "Ruins. Burial mounds so ancient no one knows who raised them. A pillar of smoke in the distance that the caravan masters said was likely the cook fires from a Tuigan wedding feast. A great tower that they hustled us past in the dead of night because legend said an ancient mage lived there and would enslave anyone he saw by daylight. Another night we heard something screaming in the distance, a sound like nothing any of us had ever heard."