From the water's edge to the uppermost of the Captains' stout brick homes the slope stretched more than a mile and rose five hundred feet in that mile. Beyond the houses another wall studded with towers wrapped itself around the whole base, and beyond that rose the frowning peak of the Mountain. Not only did this base represent an incredible amount of labor, it also represented incredible wealth. Blade could easily see why the Neralers had bled the Four Kingdoms white for a century, where the wealth had gone-and how the masters of such a fortress might begin to think of becoming masters of a Kingdom.

There was a sudden flurry of running figures all up and down the slopes as Thunderbolt slid across the basin toward her dock. At Blade's side Tuabir grinned. «So we are indeed the first back from all the fleet that took the duke. I thought that, from what Cayla said, but it was almost too much to hope.»

On the roof of one of the covered docks somebody stood now, frenziedly going through a complicated series of passes with a pair of orange and black signal flags. Tuabir barked an order, and a sailor sprang up onto Thunderbolt's prow and set a similar pair dancing. A moment's pause ashore, and then cheers that spread like a fire around the basin and up the slope until it seemed the whole vast bowl was ringing with them. From two stout, high red brick towers of a building on the Captains' street yellow smoke began to stream up into the sky in a sinuous cloud.

«Eh, the call to Festival!» said Tuabir with another grin. «And few of the fleet will be home to share the wine, the women, and the joy. Have you a stout head as well as a stout arm, Master Blahyd? You'll truly be needing it tonight for a Festival of the Brotherhood.»

Blade nodded absently. Festival-some sort of massive celebration? It would be one way of getting a chance to look around him, meet people, get a better impression of this colossal den of thieves which had sucked him in. But he would rather have had a chance to be alone and think out his next move.

He was utterly certain by now that Khystros' assumptions about a pirate conspiracy were absolutely right, and he was more than inclined to believe the duke's suspicions about the Chancellor as well. He had heard too much over the past eighteen days, and now these cheers were one more piece of evidence. Fighting and intriguing. In every world, it seemed he sooner or later wound up doing one or both.

Tuabir armed four of his toughest sailors to the teeth and escorted Blade, Brora, and Alixa up to a house on the Captains' street. Like its neighbor, from which the Festival signal was still streaming, it had two high towers with slit-narrow windows. It was into a room high up in one of these towers that Tuabir led his charges, up a winding circular staircase. Although the room was comfortable and well heated, there was a certain austerity about it that made Blade ask if he and his companions were guests, prisoners, or something in between.

«Say that you are prisoners for the time of Festival, so you'll still be living when it's over,» replied Tuabir. «No Free Woman and no man not prepared for a fight goes out beyond locked doors tonight. And for you three, not yet initiated into any status among the Brotherhood…» The sailor shrugged. «The Master Blahyd may well go out with proper care, being a well-set-up fighting man even if not yet known as such. But even he would do well to wear a Candidate's belt.» He pulled out of his pouch a length of blue and gold cloth and handed it to Blade. «That shows you be Free but not Initiated. You can neither challenge nor be challenged to duel.»

After a moment's hesitation Blade tied the belt around his waist. He intensely disliked going out and relying on anything but his own strength and skill. But he had to get out and look around before he could do any planning for anything. And it was too soon to get caught up in any more fights, not if his status was so uncertain.

After removing all of his weapons except a sheathed dagger in his belt for eating and another knife concealed in his boot top, Blade turned to Brora and Tuabir. «I call you both friends now. May I ask you, as friends, to take care that nothing happens to the Lady Alixa?»

Brora nodded and looked hard at Tuabir, who also nodded after a moment. During the nearly three weeks of the voyage to Neral, Blade had seen something far short of friendship but close to mutual respect growing up between the two tough sailors. Each saw that the other was a man who could handle a ship and a crew nearly as well as himself, and neither could quite bring himself to wholly reject such a man. So Blade knew that he had at least two friends to guard his back as he went out to sample the Festival.

He found that he needed more than a hard head to get through the Festival. He needed a strong stomach also. And even with both of these, he found it beyond him to enjoy the Festival.

Tuabir, as bloody-handed as any other pirate of long standing, still had considerable decency and self control. And while at sea on a raid the pirates had been as tough and well disciplined as any crew of fighting seamen who want to die in bed must be. But now, safe on shore and with money in their pockets and a victory to celebrate, the pirates ran wild. After a few hours of watching their notions of amusement, Blade knew he would have to get free of Neral as soon as possible before his own revulsion caused him to make some slip that would sign his death warrant. And he also knew he was willing to spend as much time here in this Dimension as might be needed to defeat the pirates' plans to seize the Kingdom of Royth. The idea of any civilized country in the hands of the pirates made Blade's stomach turn.

There was only a pale glow on the western horizon when he went out. But the light from the torches spluttering in brackets on the walls of the taverns and brothels made the streets noon-bright. There were sentries patrolling the streets in ominous groups of four. The sentries cast sharp looks at Blade's size and other looks at his belt but left him alone. Otherwise, everybody was too intent on his own pleasures to pay much attention to the huge newcomer striding along among them and trying not to look disgusted.

There was a House of Dreams. Blade was practically dragged inside it by two burly doormen who bellowed in his ear, «All the dreams Druk can send for only five silver bits! Come, worthy sir, come seek our dreams!» Inside some forty men and women were sitting on padded quilts spread across the stone floor, breathing in blue smoke rising from glazed bowls. As he watched, he saw one of the men turn slowly around, stare at one of the women, then fall backwards on to his quilt and curl up like a dog, knocking over his bowl. It spilled a smoldering dark blue-black powder out onto the floor. A slave attendant rushed across and hastily swept up the powder with a brush.

Blade backed out hastily. Even after only a few whiffs of the blue smoke, he found his head swimming and his eyes peculiarly sensitive to the light. He wondered briefly if the powder was addictive as he brushed past the doormen and headed farther down the streets.

There was a House of Whips. From inside it sounded wild screams of delight and other screams of pain. Blade nerved himself to step inside. He was rewarded by the spectacle of two women dancing, or trying to dance, nude in a sand pit while four brawny attendants sent long lashes tipped with metal slicing over their heads, about their feet, and occasionally into their flesh. They must have been dancing for hours already. Their hair was matted with sweat and their bodies were glazed with sweat, oil, and blood from half a dozen open whip cuts. A man beside Blade muttered, without taking his eyes off the dancers, «They think they will be allowed to go afterwards. But they are to be killed in honor of the Festival. Wait and see that big fellow in the black tights lay on the kill-whip.» Blade swallowed hard and left the House of Whips even faster than he had left the House of Dreams. The pirates, it seemed, were addicted-in mind if not body-to sadism, drugs, everything ugly. Blade wondered if this were deliberate policy on the part of their leaders, who were unwilling to rely on a freely given loyalty and instead chose to manipulate their men in this gruesome fashion.