“So you’re looking for someone closer to the old ways to translate them?” Sorgrad ran a pensive finger around the rim of his finely engraved goblet.

“I am, and from every inquiry I’ve made that means going into the wildwood and up into the heights. There’s no one I’ve found between here and Toremal can be sure of all the words.” I’d learned enough to convince me these songs rang with Artifice, though.

“Are you getting paid up front or on results?” demanded Sorgrad suddenly.

“I got a handsome retainer before I set out,” I assured him, “and I’ve authority to draw funds on D’Olbriot reserves in all the major cities hereabouts.” The bronze amulet bearing the D’Olbriot seal hung warm and solid beneath my shirt, but I wasn’t about to attract unwanted attention by showing it to him here. “Final payment depends on exactly what I find out. Yes, I want the songs translated, but with any luck anyone who can master the ancient tongues will point me toward people with useful knowledge of old aetheric lore or some such. I can get myself to the Forest, being half-blood and using my father’s name to vouch for me. Once I find some real Folk, I should be able to talk someone into helping me. What I need to get me into the Mountains is someone who knows how things work up there, who can speak the language, who can make the right introductions.”

“What you need is me and ’Gren.” Mischief lurked in the back of Sorgrad’s eyes. “It might just be worth doing, if we can agree a decent price.”

His amusement was unnerving me and I realized I’d never quite learned why the pair of them had left the mountains in the first place. “We’re not going to be running into handfuls of people eager to skin you for some price on your hide, are we?” I asked sternly.

“No, not as long as we steer clear of a few places.” Sorgrad looked into his empty goblet, thoughtful again. I poured him more wine. “Let me think about it,” he said at length. “I’ll need to talk to ’Gren.”

“Come and see me tomorrow morning. I’ll show you the book.”

I turned to the stage, where dancers were flirting their garters at the audience again. There was no benefit in pressing Sorgrad; he’d give his answer in his own good time and then ’Gren would do what his older brother recommended. ’Gren didn’t concern himself with much beyond taking on life with an eagerness that frequently slipped into recklessness. That was doubtless why they had left the mountains; ’Gren had done something without thinking through the consequences and they’d had to get clear. They’d have worked their way to Lescar, like exiles from every corner of the map. ’Gren’s propensity for casual violence would have soon proved an asset in the mercenary life, rather than the liability it can be elsewhere, so they would have stayed on, seeing that rich pickings could be made from the endless circle of civil wars.

The dancers left the stage to the masqueraders and I soon caught up with the plot. The miser who aimed to marry her money had abducted our heroine and he was working her as a scullery maid until she agreed.

“Why doesn’t he just force the issue by raping the silly poult?” Sorgrad murmured quizzically.

“She doesn’t look as if she could fight off a winter cold,” I agreed. The cook and the housekeeper came on for another of those convenient masquerade conversations, where two characters tell each other things both of them already know. “There’s your answer!”

“The old man in The Orphan’s Tears was impotent as well.” Usara leaned around behind ’Gren to speak to me, looking puzzled.

“It goes with a droopy-nosed mask as a rule,” I whispered. Saedrin save me from these wizards with their sheltered lives.

Next for a turn by the garden gates were our hero and heroine. He was all for calling the Watch and simply having the old wretch arrested.

“First sensible thing I’ve heard him say,” Sorgrad whispered with a grin. “An honest citizen should always turn to the Watch, after all.”

“Bet you a silver Mark she won’t,” I replied. My coin was safe as our heroine replied with undeniable truth and convincing histrionics that no one would believe the old skinflint hadn’t had a finger in her purse, her reputation would be ruined, and our hero’s parents would never allow them to marry. I beckoned for more wine as we sat through the usual romantic nonsense that followed.

I found myself thinking about Ryshad, the Tormalin swordsman Sorgrad had mentioned. Our paths had crossed when he’d been pursuing Ice Islanders on Messire’s account. Elietimm had been sneaking ashore to rob and kill in Tormalin through the last couple of years, stealing the valuables that they hoped would lead them to the lost colony of Kel Ar’Ayen. I’d been after those self-same valuables, reluctantly thieving at the behest of the Archmage.

A fire of sudden passion and the sensual delights that followed were nothing new to me but the real surprise had been the unwelcome sense of loss when Ryshad had returned to his patron. I’m not inclined to pine over men or anything else as a rule—the runes play themselves out and I move on—but I began to suspect we’d become one in more ways than just between the sheets. When chance and the Archmage’s connivance brought us back together, I’d found myself compromising and yielding so Ryshad and I need not part. I wasn’t dressing up my feelings in scented, senseless words like the heroine fluttering about the stage, but I’d finally had to admit I wanted to be with Ryshad and not just until the turn of the year nullified all deals. At least I had learned he was as set on me, a discovery that left me both elated and wary.

I looked up at the artificial lovers with faces of wood and paint and lives drawn from the masquerader’s stock of characters: the noble lover, the lost heir, the wronged beauty, the cheerful rogue, the wise old man, the comic artisans. Their predicaments and the solutions fitted like pieces in a child’s puzzle box; not so, life for Ryshad and me. We’d reconciled my flirtations with necessary dishonesty on the road with his duty as sworn man to a noble House, largely by ignoring the subject, if truth were told, but finding any hope of a future together, for however long we might want one, was proving mightily difficult. Whatever else I might tell Sorgrad, Sorgren, the Archmage or D’Olbriot, that was what all my present contriving was aiming to achieve. But that was my secret.

Niello’s ringing tones dragged my attention back and I realized the two tradesmen were offering to steal the heroine out of the miser’s house, so she could be found wandering in the woods by our hero and returned to her loving family.

“And what am I supposed to be doing in the woods?” the hero asked in puzzled tones.

“Picking pretty flowers?” leered the moon-faced clown with a meaningful gesture at our hero’s hose, which was definitely padded. “What else would a young man be doing in the springtime?”

Laughter swelled. “I don’t think Daddy’s little treasure will be coming home untarnished,” I commented to Sorgrad with mock disapproval.

The masquerade romped down comfortably predictable paths: the improbable lovers chasing in and out of the back-cloth with the clowns, the dog, the cook and the miser raising ever louder laughter as the double-edged jests flew thick and fast. The miser made the mistake of trying to enter his own house by the back gate in an attempt to foil the heroine’s escape and was duly stripped of breeches and, shirt tails flapping, was chased off by his own dog. The knife-grinder seized his opportunity, first to rescue the heiress and then to get his boots under the cook’s table. The dancers came on to draw down the pace with a sedate display of lace and ankles and the piece ended with our hero and heroine emerging from the backcloth in their wedding clothes, her hair duly cut and laid on Drianon’s altar.

The Explanatory raised his voice determinedly above the people stirring and calling for ale, proclaiming the moral conclusion, even if the tales would have shocked any priest who stumbled across the threshold by mistake. I was quite surprised that Niello hadn’t cut that, as so many companies do nowadays, but this was a festival after all, when people like to see the old ways duly observed.