'Hai!' called the Beysib executioner as his left blade struck. The tip of hisvictim's index finger spun thirty feet across the Bazaar and pattered againstSamlor's boot. 'Hai!' and the right sword lopped the ends off the fourth andmiddle fingers together, so that the victim's right hand ended in a straightline, the four fingers all the length of the least, the only one to which afingernail remained for the moment. 'Hai!'

The auction block in the centre of the Bazaar had been used for punishmentbefore, but this particular technique was new to Samlor hil Samt. It was new aswell to many of the longer-term residents of Sanctuary, judging from theexpressions on their faces as they watched. The victim had been spread-eagled,belly against a vertical wooden barrier. That gave the audience a view of theexecutioner's artistry, which an ordinary horizontal chopping block would havehidden. And the Beysib - Lord Tudhaliya, if Samlor had understood the crier wasan artist, no doubt about that.

Tudhaliya held his swords each at its balance and twirled them as he himselfpirouetted. The blades glittered like lightning in the rain. The Beysib bowed tothe onlookers before he spun in another flurry of cuts. The gesture was asardonic one, an acknowledgement of the audience's privilege of watching himwork. Tudhaliya was not nodding to the locals as peers or even as humans. Forhis performance, the executioner had stripped to a clout that kept his genitalsout of the way when he moved. His arrival had been in a palanquin, however, andthe richly brocaded Beysib who stood by as a respectful backdrop to the activitywere clearly subordinates. And at the moment, his lordship was slicing off thefingers of a screaming victim like so many bits of carrot.

Well, the governance of Sanctuary had never been Samlor's concern. Blood andballs! How the Cirdonian caravan-master wished that he had no other concern withthis cursed city either.

The first link of the information he needed had come from an urchin for a copperpiece, sold as blithely as the boy would have sold a stale bread twist from thetray balanced on his head. The name of a fortune-teller, a S'danzo whoseprotector was a blacksmith? Oh yes, Illyra was still in Sanctuary... and Dubrothe smith, too, if the foreign master's business was with him.

Samlor's intended business was in no way with the blacksmith, but theinformation was none the less good to know. Before entering the booth, theCirdonian set his thumbs on his waist belt and tugged the broad leather afraction, to the side. That was less obtrusive than adjusting the belt-sheathedfighting knife directly.

'Welcome, master,' said the woman who had been reading the cards to herself on astool. Samlor looped the sash across the doorway hangings. There were the usualparaphernalia and a table that could be slid between the S'danzo and the lower,cushioned seat for clients. The young woman's eyes were very sharp, however. TheCirdonian knew that her quick appraisal of him as he slid aside the curtain ofpierced shells gave often as much information as a reading would require, whenretailed back to the sitter over cards or his palms or through 'images'quivering in a dish of water.

'You came about the luck of your return -' and Samlor would have said that hisface was impassive, but it was not, not to her. 'No, not a journey but a woman.Come, sit. The cards, I think?' Her left hand fanned the deck, the brilliant,complex signs that some said reflected the universe in a subtlety equal to thatof the icy stars overhead.

'Lady,' said Samlor. He turned up his left palm and the silver in it. It wasuncoined bullion, stamped each time it was assayed in a Beysib market. 'You gavea man I met true readings. I need a truth that you won't find in my face.'

The S'danzo looked at the caravan-master again, her smile still professional,but something new behind her eyes. Samlor's boot heels were high enough to gripstirrups, low enough for walking, and worn more by flints than by pavements. Hewas stocky and no longer young; but his waist still made a straight line withhis rib cage, with none of the bulge that time brings to easy living. Samlor'stunic was of dull red cloth, nearly the shade of his face. His skin never seemedto tan in the sun and wind that beat it daily. His only touch of ornament was asilver medallion, its face hidden until the man moved to show the bullion in hiscalloused palm. Then toad-faced Heqt flashed upward, goddess ofCirdon and theSpring rains - and the S'danzo gasped, 'Samlor hil Samt!'

'No!' the man said sharply in answer to the way Illyra's eyes flicked towardsthe doorway, towards the ringing of hot iron heard through it. 'Onlyinformation, lady. I wish'you no harm.' And he did not touch the hilt of hisbelt knife, because if she remembered Samlor, she remembered the tale of hisfirst visit to Sanctuary. No need to threaten what his reputation had alreadypromised, wish it or not. 'I want to find a little girl, my niece. Nothingmore.'

'Sit, then,' the S'danzo said in a guarded voice. This time the visitor obeyed.He held the silver out to her between thumb and forefinger, but she opened hispalm and held it for her gaze a moment before taking her payment. 'There's bloodon them,' she said abruptly.

'There's an execution in the square,' Samlor said, glancing at his cuff. But itwas unmarked, and even his boot had been too dusty for overt sign where thesevered fingertip had touched it. 'Oh,' he said in embarrassment. 'Oh.' Heraised his eyes to the S'danzo's. 'Life can be hard, lady... and there arematters of honour. Not my honour since I went into trade -' his lip quirked in awormwood grimace - 'but of the family, of the House ofKodrix, yes. I've foundlittle enough that brings me pleasure. But not that, not slaughter. Life ishard, that's all.'

Illyra released his palm. The silver clung to her fingers in what was almost asleight of hand, professional in that, though the reading was no longer simplyprofessional or simple at all. 'Tell me about the child,' the S'danzo said.

'Yes,' the stocky man agreed slowly. Little enough of pleasure, and none at allin some memories. 'My sister Samlane was ...' he said, and he paused, 'not aslut, I suppose, because she didn't bed just anybody, and the decision wasalways hers. And not a whore, except as a lark, as little coin as there was tobe had in our House ... She had a disdain for trade that did credit to the nobleHouse of Kodrix. Our parents were proud of her, I think, as they never were ofme after I found an honest way to buy their food - and replenish their winecellar.' The grimace again, calling attention to a joke that bit the teller likea shark.

The woman was quiet, as cool as the shells that whispered in the door curtain.

'But she was very - experimental. So we shouldn't have been surprised,' Samlorcontinued, 'that she'd whelped a bastard before her marriage, while she stilllived in Cirdon. Samlane's personal effects were sent back after she, she died 'Six inches of steel, her brother's boot knife, were buried in her womb, andvision as clear in Samlor's mind as the edge of the knife with which he hadreplaced that one. 'I think Regli wanted to pretend she'd never been born. Alumwon't hide stretch marks, but she'd passed for a virgin with Regli. I guessRankan nobles are even stupider than I'd thought. The tramp! Gods! The worthlesstramp!'

'Go on,' Illyra said with unexpected gentleness, as if she heard the pain andtortured love beneath the curses.