"I've been watching him for weeks now, and he's not the same man anymore. I think Calandria was right, he came here to conquer the Winds. He was the agent of some other creature even more powerful. But that one is dead, and Armiger is free."

She was eyeing him now. He shook his head. "I can't explain it. You have to be there, you see, to see the difference. But he has a woman now, and he cares about her. And he's affected by things around him now, where he wasn't before. The siege, he's really bothered by it. People are dying, you know, starving and injured, and he's realizing he can't do anything to help them. He's not thinking about conquering the world anymore."

Tamsin frowned. "So how can he help you? Can he make the Boros' go away?"

"Maybe. If I can convince him to help me."

"How are you going to do that? By letting that," she nodded to the desal, "eat you?"

Jordan took a deep breath. "Well, this is the crazy part. He went to Queen Galas to learn from her why the Winds are the way they are. Why they persecute people. She told him enough to give him an idea of where to look—but he can't talk to the Winds, and he's trapped in the palace with her now. But I can talk to the Winds. And I can search the places he needs to go."

"So you want to be his errand boy!"

He winced. There was a little of her former haughtiness in her voice, though, and the thought cheered him. "Errand boy for a god is not a bad position," he said. "I want to trade him the information in return for him getting the curse off my back."

"Why should he trade? You said yourself he no longer wants to subdue the Winds."

He hesitated. She did seem interested; he wondered if what he was going to say would make her dismiss him as crazy, and turn her back on her own misery.

"The thing is," he said at last, "I think he should."

Tamsin didn't answer. She just cocked her head, and waited.

"This is the crazy part, Tamsin, and you have to promise to think about it before you laugh at me. See, I think we all of us could originally command the Winds. Everybody was once like I am now."

Tamsin snorted. "If everybody could do anything they wanted, it would be chaos! Why pay for anything, if you can just summon the Winds to create it?"

"The world began in chaos," he said. "Calandria told me Ventus was originally made for us, not for the Winds. Nobody in all the ages has ever been able to change it back, not even people from the stars like her. But Armiger could do it, if only he knew what their secret was. Before, when he was trying to find the secret for his own master, it would have been a disaster to have him win. Now it's different."

"You think he'd set things right?"

"He might. The man he's become, would try."

She didn't answer, just made an odd noise, and thinking she was laughing at him again he turned to fire a retort back. She wasn't looking at him, just pointing at the mouth of the alley.

"There they are!" Jordan saw a confusion of torches in the street, and the dark figures of a number of men.

"Brendan Sheia!" He knelt down. "Quickly, grab hold." Tamsin boosted herself up and he pulled her onto the wall.

"That won't do you any good," said a smug, familiar voice from the ground on the other side.

Jordan looked down, into the eyes of the magician from the marketplace.

"Thief! I'll have your head for stealing my power."

For a second old habits took hold: "I didn't steal him!" yelled Jordan. "I borrowed him and I gave him back." Then he saw moonlight glint off the blade in the man's hand.

There were six men on the alley side of the wall, and four including the magician on the other, which was someone's garden. The wall itself ran between two buildings; there was no exit to be had by running along its top.

Three of the men in the alley had torches, as did the magician.

"Let us go!" said Jordan. "I don't want to hurt you."

The magician laughed. "Nice bluff."

"Get ready to jump" Jordan hissed to Tamsin. "Torch, crack!"

Sparks and burning wood flew everywhere as the torch in the magician's hand exploded. He screamed and fell, batting at the embers in his hair.

"Now!" Jordan and Tamsin landed in the dirt next to the magician, whose friends were smacking him on the head to put out his hair. There was an open gate at the far end of the garden, so Jordan made for that. Tamsin kept up easily.

They entered a moonlit street. In the distance he heard running feet; the others were coming around the end of the block. "Ka! Come to me."

"Ka." The ghost of a butterfly wafted through the open gate.

Tamsin tugged at his arm. "They're coming!"

"I know. We can't stay here. Ka, we need horses. Find me two of them, right now!"

"This way." The butterfly flitted off down the street—thankfully away from the sound of running feet.

"So now I am the thief he accused me of being," panted Jordan. "He deserves it though, the bastard."

"What's going on?" They entered another alley, this one shadowed by the high walls of buildings to either side.

"There! They went down that alley!"

It was too dark here to see anything. Jordan closed his eyes and looked with his other sight. "This way." He followed Ka to a stable door; inside he could see the outlines of two sleeping horses.

"Ka, speak to the horses. I want them awake and ready to go with us if you can do that."

"I have no power to compel. But I can present you to them as a Wind, if that is your desire."

"Yes!"

Torches appeared at the mouth of the alley. Jordan made these explode as well, and their pursuers retreated in dismay. Jordan proceeded to saddle the sleepy horses in complete darkness, relying on touch and the ghost-light of his mechal vision. The horses were pliant and appeared unsurprised at this intrusion.

Tamsin had craned her neck out the door to watch the alley mouth; as he was cinching the second horse she said, "They're waking the people in the houses. This house too. I think they know what we're doing. Smelled the horses, maybe."

"Well, we're ready. Come on." He led the horses outside.

"But where are we going? What about your plan to visit the desal in the bay?"

"You said there was another one in the middle of the desert," he shot back. "You wanted to go home, Tamsin. Well, that's where we're going to have to go."

He dug his heels into the flank of the horse and it bolted through shouting men, and when he looked back Tamsin was following, crouched low on her horse, wearing a grin that could be terror or satisfaction—and maybe was a bit of both.

General Lavin laid his quill down wearily, and peered at the manacled prisoner Hesty had led in. "Why is this of interest?" he asked.

Hesty grimaced. "I hate to bother you with trivial matters. This man is a looter, we caught him skulking in the ruins of one of the outlying villages."

"Yes? So execute him." Lavin turned his attention back to his plans.

"He claims to have valuable information to sell. About the siege."

"Torture it out of him."

"We tried."

Lavin looked up in surprise. The prisoner was a small man, wiry and grey-haired. He stood in an exhausted stoop, trembling slightly. His left arm was broken, and had not been set, and there were burn marks up and down his bare torso, and rope burns around his throat. He glared dully but defiantly at Lavin from his good eye; the other's lid was bruised and swollen, as were his lips.

Lavin stood and walked around him. A large portion of the skin was missing from his back; the flesh there wept openly.

"He completely defied the torturer," Hesty explained. "He insists on speaking only to you. And," he shook his head in disbelief, "he wants to bargain!"