'They couldn't get loose for a roomful of gold, Thales. Now how in the name ofevery god am I to get you out of here and back to town, friend?'

Tempus required five minutes and more to make himself understood. Don't. Lay meback. I'll heal. The toes first. Tomorrow I'll be able to walk. Wine?

Hanse laid him back. Hanse fetched wine and blankets and some sort of gruellypudding. Knowing that Tempus hated his helplessness, Hanse fed him, helped himguzzle about a gallon of wine, arranged him, covered him, checked Kurd and hisservant, made sure the house was locked, and roamed it.

Surgeon's tools, a bag of coins, and a pile of bedding he piled outside the doorto the chamber of scientific experimentation. He would not lie in a monster'sbed, or on one of those tables! He slept, at last, on the floor. On bedding fromthe gardener's chamber, not Kurd's. He wanted nothing of Kurd's.

Valuable knives and the bag of money were different.

He awoke at dawn, looked in on three sleeping men, marvelled, and left thatplace that was nine times more horrible by day. He found a sausage, considered,and chose flatbread instead. Only the gods and Kurd knew what sort of meatcomprised that sausage. In a shed Hanse found a cart and a mule. He had to dosome chopping and some seating. At last he got Tempus out of the ruined houseand into the cart padded with hay. Hanse covered him amid shudders. Tempus'scuts looked days older, nearly healed.

'Would you like a few fingers or nose or something of Kurd to accompany you outof here, Thales?'

Almost, Tempus frowned. '

'0,' he said, and Hanse knew it was a, no. 'You want to, uh, leave them for... later?' Tempus's reply was almost a yes, for me.

Hanse got him out of there. He used much of Kurd's money to buy the place andservices of a tongueless, nearly blind old woman, along with some soft food,wine, blankets and cloak, and he went away from them with a few coins andhideous memories.

The coins bought him expensive treatment from a leech who dared not chuckle orcomment as he cleaned and bandaged a buttock with multiple lacerations, which hesaid would heal beautifully.

After that Hanse was sick in his room for the better part of a week. Theremaining three coins bought him anaesthetic in the form of strong drink.

For another week he feared that he would encounter Tempus on the street orsomeplace, but he did not. After that, amid rumours of some sort of insurrectionsomewhere near, he began to fear that he would never see Tempus, and then ofcourse he did see him. Healed and scarless. Hanse went home and threw up.

He traded a few things for more strong drink, and he got drunk and stayed thatway for a while. He just didn't feel like stealing, or facing Tempus, orKadakithis either. He did dream, of two gods and a girl of sixteen or so. Ilsand Shalpa and Mignureal. And quicklime.

'So why did you come back?' Gilla's shrill retort interrupted Lalo's 'attemptsto explain why he had not been home the night before. 'Has every tavern inSanctuary shown you the door?' She planted her fists on her spreading hips, themeaty flesh on her upper arms quivering below the short sleeves of her shift,and glared at him.

Lalo stepped backwards, caught his heel on the leg of his easel, and clatteredto the floor in a tangle of splintering wood and skinny limbs. The baby began tocry. While Lalo gasped for breath, Gilla took a long stride to the cradle andclutched the child to her breasts, patting him soothingly. Echoes of their olderchildren's quarrels with their playmates drifted from the street below, minglingwith the clatter of a cart and the calls of vendors hawking their wares in theBazaar.

'Now see what you've done!' said Gilla when the baby had quieted. 'Isn't itenough that you bring home no bread? If you can't earn an honest livingpainting, why don't you turn to thievery like everyone else in this dungheap ofa town?' Her face, reddened by anger and the heat of the day, swam above himlike a mask of the demon-goddess Dyareela at Festival time.

At least I have that much honour left! Lalo bit back the words, rememberingtimes, when one of his merchant patrons had refused to pay, that the limner hadlet fall the location of rich pickings while drinking in the Vulgar Unicorn. Andif, thereafter, one of his less reputable acquaintances chose to share with hima few anonymous coins, surely honour did not require him to ask whence theycame. -

No, it had not been honour that kept him honest, thought Lalo bitterly, but fearof bringing shame to Gilla and the children, and a rapidly deteriorating beliefin his own artistic destiny.

He struggled up on one elbow, for the moment too dispirited to stand. Gillasniffed in exasperation, laid down the child and stalked to the other end of thesingle room in the tenement which served as kitchen and chamber for the family,and, too rarely, as the painter's studio.

The three-legged stool groaned as Gilla sat down, set a small sack on the table,and began with ostentatious precision to shell peas into a bowl. Late afternoonsunlight shafted through the shutters, lending an illusory splendour to thetarnished brocade against which his models used to pose, and leaving inobscurity the baskets of soiled clothing which the wives of the rich andrespectable (terms which were, in Sanctuary, roughly synonymous) had graciouslygiven to Gilla to wash.

Once, Lalo would have rejoiced in the play of light and shadow, or at leastreflected ironically on the relationship between illusion and reality. But hewas too familiar with the poverty the shadows hid - the sordid truth behind allhis fantasies. The only place he now saw visions was at the bottom of a jug ofwine.

He got up stiffly, brushing ineffectually at the blue paint smeared across theold stains on his tunic. He knew that he should clean up the pigments spillingacross the floor, but why try to save paint when no one wanted his pictures?

By now the regulars would be drifting into the Vulgar Unicom. No one would careabout his clothing there.

Gilla looked up as he started towards the door, and the light restored hergreying hair to its former gold, but she did not speak. Once, she would have runto kiss her husband good-bye, or railed at him to keep him home. Only, as Lalostumbled down the stairs, he heard behind him the vicious splatter of peashitting the cracked glaze of the bowl.

Lalo shook his head and took another sip of wine, carefully, because the tankardwas almost empty now. 'She used to be beautiful...' he said sadly. 'Would youbelieve that she was like Eshi, bringing spring back into the world?' He peeredmuzzily through the shadows of the Vulgar Unicorn at Cappen Varra, trying tosuperimpose on the minstrel's saturnine features the dimly remembered imageof the golden-haired maiden he had courted almost twenty years ago.

But he could only remember the scorn in Gilla's grey eyes as she had glared downat him that afternoon. She was right. He was despicable - wine had bloated hisbelly as his ginger hair had thinned, and the promises he had once made her wereas empty as his purse.

Cappen Varra tipped back his dark head and laughed. Lalo caught the gleam of hiswhite teeth in the guttering lamplight, a flicker of silver from the amulet athis throat, the elegant shape of his head against the chiaroscuro of the Inn.Dim figures beyond him turned at the sound, then returned to the even murkierbusiness that had brought them there.