“I admire the path you’ve followed,” Hala said. “Given how alone you were, it’s admirable.”

“Uh huh,” Edeard said. He wondered if she was the one whose farsight had been following him over the years.

The ground floor of the cottage was divided into several large rooms, saloons typical of any private members’ club in Makkathran. It appeared deserted apart from a few ge-chimps cleaning up.

“We’re upstairs,” Hala said, and led him down the hall to a spiral stair. The steps had been adjusted for human legs.

Edeard’s curiosity grew. Someone obviously had a rapport with the city similar to his own.

There were children on the second floor. It was similar to a family floor in the ziggurat, with living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and bedrooms all jumbled together. The children laughed and peeked out at him from doorways before shrieking and running away when he pointed at them. He counted nearly thirty.

“Are any of them yours?” he asked.

Hala smiled proudly. “Three so far.”

The lounge on the third floor was a large one, probably the width of the entire cottage. Its curving rear wall was made up of broad archways filled with glass doors that opened onto a balcony looking out over Roseway Canal a couple of streets away, with Nighthouse rising up beyond the water. The walls were embellished with a tight curvilinear pattern of claret and gold, not that much of it was visible behind long hangings of black lace; it was as if a giant spider had bound the lounge in an ebony web. For such a large room there wasn’t much furniture: some muroak dressers along the walls, a couple of long tables. Rugs with a fluffy amethyst weave covered the floor. Fat chairs were scattered around, looking like clusters of cushions rather than Querencia’s usual straight-backed style. The Apricot Cottage Fellowship was sitting in them, watching Edeard with interest. Fifteen of them, six women and nine men, all young; not one was over thirty. And all of them sharing the same confidence Tathal had worn so snugly at their last meeting. He could feel the strength in their minds, barely restrained. Each of them was a powerful psychic, probably equal to himself.

He looked around until he found Tathal and smiled wryly. Then he saw a couple of youngsters standing beside a door to the balcony, and his smile broadened with comprehension. They were the two he’d caught a glimpse of in the tunnel. “Ah,” he said. “The nest, I presume.”

– -

Jaralee had told him of the name when she and Golbon presented their report. They’d arrived in his office soon after Salrana had departed, radiating a giddy mixture of alarm and excitement that he found slightly unnerving. His investigators were normally unflappable.

“You were right,” Golbon said. “The fellowship has business interests everywhere. So many, I’m going to need a month just to compile them all.”

“How is that relevant?” Edeard asked. “They have a lot of members now.” Including Natran, he thought miserably.

“Ah,” Jaralee said with a superior smile. “To anyone on the outside it resembles a standard commercial association. But when I looked at it closely, there is a core that has joint ownership and part ownership of over a hundred ventures and businesses. The other members are just a seclusion haze of legitimacy wrapped around them.”

“Not quite,” Golbon interjected. “The core members have commercial ties to a lot of other members’ interests.”

“They’ve created a very complicated financial web,” Jaralee said. “And from what I’ve seen, it extends a long way beyond the city. I’ve lodged inquiries with registry clerks in Iguru townships and provincial capitals. Only a few have answered so far, but the nest’s dealings certainly stretch to ventures outside Makkathran. Collectively, I’d say they’re a match for a Grand Family estate, certainly in financial size. Could be larger if they have an equal illegitimate side. I don’t really know.”

“Nest?” Edeard inquired.

“That’s what the fellowship’s founders are known as. They’re a tight-knit group. People who know them try to avoid saying anything about them. In fact, it’s quite spooky how they’ll try and slide off the subject. I have virtually nothing on any of them apart from hearsay.”

“So what’s the hearsay?”

“They really do act like brothers and sisters; they’re that close.”

“Are you sure they’re not?”

“As sure as I can be. The majority seem to have come from the provinces; three or four are cityborn. They started to band together seven or eight years ago. That’s when they registered a residency claim on Apricot Cottage. The fellowship itself began a year later.”

“Was Tathal one of the originals?” Edeard asked. The convoluted finances the nest had surrounded itself with sounded like something Bise would concoct. And he was sure Ranalee made an excellent tutor.

“Yes, his name’s on the residency application for the cottage.”

“All right, so what about Colfal?”

Jaralee smiled happily again. “His herbalist shop is on the way down. It’s getting so bad, he hasn’t even filed his tax statement this year, which is a big risk. The inspector is getting ready for compulsory submission proceedings. I checked around his usual suppliers. He’s made some bad decisions lately. Income is drying up. The finance houses are asking for payment.”

“So Colfal is in desperate need of a new partner, especially one who has a lot of cash,” Edeard observed.

“True,” she agreed. “But Colfal has been a herbalist for over seventy years. It’s only this last year he’s started to make bad decisions.”

“That’s what seventy years of smoking kestric does to a brain,” Golbon remarked.

“These are really bad decisions,” Jaralee countered. “He’s been changing his normal stock for stuff that hardly anyone buys.”

“Who did he get the new herbs from?” Edeard asked sharply.

She nodded agreement. “I’m looking into it. This can’t be done quickly.”

Standing in the Apricot Cottage’s lounge, facing the nest, Edeard finally knew that legal details such as who bought what from whom were of no consequence whatsoever. The nest was very different from Buate; they weren’t going to be blocked by any tax investigation.

“It’s not a term we favor,” Tathal said in amusement. “But it does seem to have caught hold.”

A multitude of fast thoughts flashed through the air around Edeard. The nest members were all communicating with one another; it was like the swift birdsong of a complex gifting, except Edeard couldn’t comprehend any of it. Real unease began to stir in his mind.

“I’m surprised,” he said, keeping the tone level, affable. “Nobody wants to say much about any of you.”

“We discourage attention,” one of the women said. She was sitting to Tathal’s left, covered in a shawl of thick, deep purple wool. It didn’t disguise her pregnancy.

The constant flow of mental twittering shifted for a moment, purifying. “Samilee,” Edeard said abruptly, as if he’d known her for years, even though she was only twenty-three. Her current favorite food was scrambled Qotox eggs with bearnaise sauce and a toasted muffin. The cravings were quite pronounced with only five weeks to go until her due date. Her son’s father was either Uphal or Johans.

Edeard shivered in reaction to the knowledge.

“Welcome, Waterwalker,” she replied formally.

Thoughts swirled again, as if the lacework shadows were in motion around the lounge.

“Can you blame us?” That was Halan, twenty-eight years old and so delighted to have found a home in the city after a decade and a half of unbearable loneliness in Hapturn province. His exemplary financial aptitude placed him in charge of the nest’s principal businesses.

“Look what the establishment tried to do to you when you showed them your ability,” Johans said. Twenty-nine and a very conscientious follower of city fashion, he designed many of his own clothes and those of the nest’s male members. Three of the most renowned outfitters in Lillylight district belonged to him, their original families eased out in that way in which the nest specialized.