'Which is why there are pre-planned routes for you all to get here,' Isak said. 'It may not befit my position to sneak through attics and alleys all the way from Cold Halls, but anything Lesarl considers safe for himself is good enough for me.'

'Not everyone has that luxury,' Whisper persisted, her voice gaining a slight edge. 'Prayer has to be loaded into a barrel upriver of Holy Docks; Conjurer's route takes two hours to travel and more to prepare. The shorter the notice you give, the more likely it is that the routes are compromised – even without the increased patrols of Ghosts round here to catch the interest of our enemies.'

'Perhaps 1 didn't make myself clear,' Isak replied after a pause.

Even in the dim candlelight her eyes flashed and he could see Whisper had caught the warning. She was surprisingly young for her position, no more than thirty summers, and a handsome woman. Right now she was dressed like a merchant's son, apart from the mass of wavy black hair that shadowed her face. When she'd slipped through the single attic window it had been tied back. Isak guessed she was new enough in her position to be wary, even of the rest of the coterie. Unlike the others, he suspected she'd put some thought into her attire, for he could see she was wearing nothing unusual or identifiable, not even a piece of jewellery.

'I wanted this meeting to take place,' he continued, 'and so it is. I know you have rules in place to protect your identities, but at the moment that's not what I'm concerned about.'

There was silence. Isak inspected the faces, trying to decide who would be the key to winning over the group. Lesarl was leader, sure enough, but Isak had grown up on a wagon-train and he knew full well there was always a leader among the equals. Carel had been the commander of the wagon-train guards, but Valo Denn was the mercenaries' man, the one who formed their opinions and presented their arguments when necessary, the person who was just that fraction more than his peers.

So who've we got here? he wondered, managing not to jump when he got a reply from the privacy of his own head.

'Isn't it obvious?' came the scornful mutter in the corner of his mind: Aryn Bwr, last king of the Elves, or at least what remained of his tattered soul. The last king, unable to fully possess Isak's body and return to life, had been reduced to a bitter memory of former glory, while forever fearing the retribution death would bring.

'To you I'm sure it is,' Isak replied. 'How many years were you king of your people? For the rest of us, it takes a little more thought.'

He looked around at the nine faces, men and women as different as you could find, each bound within the fabric of those communities they represented. Whisper, newly chosen by Lesarl to lead his spy networks, working hard to live up to the standard her father, the previous incumbent, had set; Dancer, marked out as a knight or a marshal by the single gold hoop in his left ear – and Isak had no doubt he was a marshal, born to the title. Perhaps it was Sailor, sitting next to Dancer, a scarred veteran with a crumpled nose. He was dressed in red, typical of his trade among the Farlan, though he was risking a flogging by eschewing the macrame knotting on his shirt that marked his ship – and made him traceable. Con-jident in his ability to manipulate a superior? I wouldn't bet against it, Isak thought.

He couldn't judge Conjurer, so affected was her manner, and Soldier looked so terrified to be sitting in the presence of his lord that it looked like he'd forgotten he was a sergeant-at-arms of twenty years' service. Merchant and Farmer couldn't meet Isak's gaze for long, so he discounted them, and he doubted any group chosen by Lesarl would follow a priest's lead.

And then there was one. So, Citizen it is, and doesn't she look a formidable bitch? 1 doubt she even needs that fat lump on the door downstairs to keep control of her patrons.

As if to acknowledge his conclusion, Citizen met his gaze. She showed no trace of deference as she replied to his unspoken ques-tion. 'You're worried about it all,' she said in a rough local accent, her gravelly voice betraying a lifetime of pipe smoking. 'Not even your da's injuries are enough to take priority, though; it's the sound of the city that's got you troubled.'

Citizen was a thickset woman with hair trimmed almost as short as Isak's. Her face was a mass of laughter lines, and she had a jaw-linc (o make a Chetse warrior proud. She sported three thick gold rings in each earlobe, and even in his inexperience, Isak realised it was intentional that they bore a striking resemblance to the earrings of a duke.

'Explain, please,' he said politely.

She shrugged and gave a smile, more than comfortable with the attention of the whole room. 'Lived in this city my whole life – I know its sounds and its moods better'n any lord. You're a white-eye, so you feel it too, though you mayn't yet have recognised it as such.

'Some days 1 can just hear there's an ugly mood in the city, and those days the Cock don't serve, 'cos it's those days that there's riots. The city ain't like that right now, but it's stinkin' of men crammed together like too many bulls in a field.'

Citizen raised a forearm as solid as a man's calf and patted Prayer's shoulder. The priest, who was sitting on her left, ignored her and pulled his cloak tighter around his body. 'Then you got the fact that all this mob are actin' even worse than the nobles, preachin' war and whippin' honest folk in the street for stupid reasons.' She cocked her head at Isak. 'My guess is whatever's pissed on their mood – and I hear that's the Gods bein' so angry after Scree that their priests are feelin' the effect – it's done the same for you.'

'So your conclusion is that everyone's just a little bit tense?' Isak said irritably.

He had never been to the Cock's Tail before. Not even Carel's white collar would have stopped someone taking exception to a white-eye here, but the tavern – and Kepra Dei, its formidable landlady – were renowned throughout Tirah. She was tough, and could be heartless to anyone who wasn't family; anyone working the docks knew it was asking for trouble to mess with anyone bearing the Dei name. Even her sons-in-law, big men themselves, had been glad to break with tradition and adopt the Dei name as their own. And those three earrings aren't a joke with anyone but herself, I'll bet, he thought. To the rest it's a warning that round here her word's law as much as mine – maybe more so, if it came to it.

'Tense ain't even the start of it, boy,' she replied equably. 'It's the confusion in the air I'm talking about: no one's agreein' with anyone else, not the nobles, not the priests, not the soldiers. What's gettin' you concerned is the chaos this city's in – can't fight a war when you're fightin' yourselves, can you? And you've got it going at every level of society – as well as within yourself.'

Isak didn't reply immediately. The woman's calm expression nagged at the swirl of frustration and anger inside him. He knew she was right, but he hadn't wanted her to be quite so right. However the priests were being affected, he was too, albeit to a lesser degree, thanks to the Skulls which were acting as a buffer for his mind – and that wasn't information he wanted the Land to know.

'It sounds like you've put some thought into this,' he said after a moment. 'You've got a suggestion for me? Your job is to advise after all, not just to state the bloody obvious.'

She shrugged and broke his gaze, affecting a deference that he was sure she didn't feel. This one really is sharp, Isak thought. She knows that even here – for all the informality of the coterie, and her own position within it – that it does no good to issue me with instructions.

'Well, I can't claim to understand the trouble with the priests,' she began slowly, 'you've got that knowledge, not I, so I'm just goin' on guesswork-'