"How will we recognize him?" Ruha asked.

"Don't worry about that; he'll find you." Tombor stepped away from the fire, slipping into the dusky shad- ows as quietly as he had appeared. "Abazm always knows who's on the road to the Ginger Palace."

Save for an impression of impregnable reclusion, the

Ginger Palace had little in common with those hulking stacks of stone Heartland lords called home. Instead of the squalid green waters of a moat, the Shou citadel was surrounded by the soldierly ranks of a ginkgo forest, and sat not upon some windswept crag, but upon a square mound of pounded earth. The walls of its outer curtain were plastered smooth and painted white as alabaster, and they were capped along the entire length by a peaked roof of scarlet tiles. At every corner stood a tower with five stacked balconies, each one covered by a scar- let-tiled roof with upswept eaves. Inside the fortress, sev- eral buildings rose high enough above the outer curtain to display the same roof styling, lending an aura of har- mony and supreme order to the entire edifice.

"I still don't like this," hissed Fowler. He was walking beside Ruha as they followed their guide, Abazm, down a white-bricked avenue toward the palace gates. The cap- tain was dressed in a brown aba the witch had made for him the night before, and in his arms he bore the small wooden coffer Tombor had loaned them. "No one's going to believe we're spice buyers-not in these outfits!"

"If you do not like my plan, Captain, you may with- draw," Ruha whispered. She stopped and held out her hands. "There is still time."

Fowler clutched the box more tightly to his chest. "And let you out of my sight? When I've a new cog, and not a minute before."

Abazm, a greasy-haired dwarf dressed in a striped burnoose, whirled about in midstride.

"What is all this whispering, Master and Mistress?" He was surprisingly thin compared to most dwarves, with bushy eyebrows as black as kohl, a hawkish nose, and the stubble of a dark, coarse beard. "It is most unbecom- ing. The Shou will think you do not trust me."

"We don't," growled Fowler. "Keep walking."

Abazm glanced toward the palace and remained where he was. "If the Shou believe you have no trust for me,

they will have no trust for you."

The dwarf's gaze dropped to the coffer in Fowler's hands, lingering there just long enough to send a shiver down Ruha's spine. After joining them on the road, he had insisted on seeing their funds before he risked his own reputation by introducing them to the Shou, Though

Ruha had been careful not to let him reach into the chest,

Abazm had raised an eyebrow when he saw the Sembite coins. He had offered to check them for purity, remarking that a well-placed friend had told him a local thief was counterfeiting Sembite coins. The witch had curtly ordered Fowler to shut the chest, pretending to be suspi- cious of both the guide's story and his motives.

"It is not necessary that the Shou trust us," Ruha said.

"It is only necessary that they like the color of our gold."

"Of course, I cannot judge that without a closer inspec- tion." The dwarfs eyes flicked to the coffer and remained there, as though he expected Ruha to open the chest again.

"They'll like it well enough." Fowler bared his tusks at the little merchant. "Now walk."

Abazm sighed heavily, then continued down the white- paved avenue. Fowler let the dwarf get a little way ahead, then turned to Ruha.

"I don't like that little fellow, any more than I like this plan of yours," the captain commented. "I'm sure Vaerana wanted us to say we're from Sembia, like most spice mer- chants. We'd draw less notice than claiming we come from Anauroch."

"I do not care what Vaerana wanted." Ruha stepped to the captain's side and kept pace with him. "I am not from

Sembia. How can I pretend to be from someplace I have visited only twice?"

"I've been there plenty of times."

"But you are not the spy," Ruha whispered. "And I have learned better than to pretend I am someone I am not.

That is what caused the trouble at Voonlar. If I claim I

am from Anauroch, there is no need to explain my igno-

rance of Heartlands customs."

"And what about me?" Fowler grumbled. "I know less about deserts than you do about ships. At least you've sunk a ship."

Ruha reached over and straightened the checkered kef- fiyeh covering Fowler's head and neck. "Just look strong and mean. That's all that is expected ofBedine men."

They reached the end of the avenue, where their guide stood waiting. Abazm clambered up a broad set of marble stairs to a tile-roofed portico of simple post and beam construction. The lintel had a pair of elaborate, long- tailed peacocks engraved along its length, while the beam ends resting atop it had been fashioned into styl- ized dragon heads. On the far side of the porch hung a pair of glossy, red-lacquered gates decorated with the yel- low figures of rearing basilisk lizards. Next to each gate stood a Shou sentry armored in a conical brass helmet and a red silk hauberk imprinted with the tessellated pattern of its plate scale lining. Each guard held a long, curve-bladed polearm, the butt resting on the floor between his feet and the shaft rising vertically in front of him. Both men kept their slanted eyes fixed straight ahead, as though they did not even see the three strangers approaching.

Abazm strode straight between the two men and tugged on an ornate yellow pull cord. A muffled gong reverberated through the gates, then a small viewing portal swung open above the dwarf's head. A scowling

Shou official peered down his long nose at the merchant.

"We do not expect you, Abazm."

Abazm clasped his hands and bowed so low that, had he worn a proper dwarven beard, it would have scraped the floor. "I have brought merchants from the distant sands of Anauroch, Honored One." Without standing, he waved a hand at the coffer Fowler held. "They wish to have commerce with the Ginger Palace."

The Honored One's gaze flicked over the coffer, then back to Abazm. The dwarf stepped closer to the viewing

portal, drawing a silver coin from his sleeve and deftly displaying it between his cupped hands, where the two sentries could not see it.

"I ask Prince if he wishes to see you."

A sharp clunk reverberated through the gates, then one gate swung open. Abazm -led the way inside, slipping his coin to the Honored One so smoothly that Ruha did not see it change hands. Inside, a path of white marble led across a huge, yellow-bricked courtyard to a double- tiered mansion. The building was of the same post and beam construction as the portico, save that the spaces between the posts were filled with white-plastered walls, silvery windows of rare and expensive glass, or red- lacquered doors decorated with yellow basilisk emblems.