Looking about wildly, he saw few options, with the Palace Gardens fence hemming him in to the right and the buildings crowded wall by wall along the Circle to the left People were ducking out of his way as he ran now, which would give his pursuers a clear shot at any moment.

Could he get to the Palace? The gate was close by, and he could see the alabaster curve of the main Palace dome above the trees beyond the Gardens. And if he reached it, what else could he expect except to be arrested or shot? Besides, he saw the flash of gold and green on the black-surfaced drive behind the gate. The Palace Guard was there, too, at least a company of their grim-faced, white-helmeted ranks.

A ragged thuttering sounded behind him, and bits of brickwork disintegrated in clouds of stinging dust and flakes of stone close by his head. A woman screamed, and people on the walkways scattered for cover. He collided with a young man in ragged street clothes, nearly knocking them both to the ground, and then he was past and running wildly down the street.

"Halt!" Halt or we fire!"

They were closer! Which way? He twisted between a pair of businessmen in richly dyed formal cloaks and tunics, leapt across the legs of an old man sitting on a crate beside the alley entrance, and plunged into the shadows of a narrow alley between two buildings to his left. Behind him, Grayson heard piping whistles and the clatter and shouts of running men.

As he ran, he saw a two-meter-high fence directly in his path. Putting on even more speed, he launched himself from an overturned produce crate, throwing his arms and one knee across the top of the fence. It creaked and swayed as he pulled the other leg across, but he landed like a cat and continued racing toward the next street.

Down this street... turn... down another... turn again. Could he lose them running blindly this way? He had come to a narrow, cross lane that curved between two of the major avenues leading out from the hub of the Palace Gardens. It was an ill-kept area. The sunshade had collapsed in places, filling the street with flat chunks of jagged-edged ferrocrete. The rest of it was layered with wind-swirled mounds of sand, empty bottles, and garbage steaming in the sun.

There were people here, too, dozens of them stooped in the shade pools of surrounding buildings, or sprawled with their legs in the street. They wore rags and layers of caked mud and dust. Many were barefoot Some appeared asleep or unconscious amid the litter of empty bottles of alcohol, but the rest watched Grayson with wary, shuttered eyes.

Forcing himself to slow to a walk, he made his way along the debris-choked road. Somehow he had to find a place to hide or at least a place where he could blend in with the background. Glancing continuously over his shoulder as he went, Grayson's heart froze, then began to hammer at his throat when something behind him moved. He relaxed then, thinking at first it was just another derelict. But no, it was the man he'd collided with on the street in front of the Palace Grounds. Had the man been following him? It could well be that any citizen who turned him in to the Guard would be rewarded, which certainly would be a temptation for any of this ragged lot. Grayson quickened his step. He didn't KNOW that he was being followed, but...

Moving down the littered street, he was so startled to feel the squish of mud against his boots that he stopped where he was for a moment. All along the street there were places where secondnight ice had melted off roofs, flowed down rusted gutterspouts, and pooled in curbside depressions worn hollow over the years. In most spots, the surface water was sucked away by the thirsty sand, but here the meltwater was trapped in pools of black mud, where it would remain until the next freeze. The sight of it gave him an idea.

Removing his cloak as he walked, Grayson dropped it beside a half-naked derelict leaning against a worn stone wall. There was no time to hide it. The soldiers were mere seconds behind him. Then he went to work unraveling his head bandage, which he crumpled and stuffed into an already overflowing garbage bin. A bit farther ahead, there was a stretch of road unoccupied by street people or anyone else. Kneeling by a mud pool, Grayson gathered a double handful of the stinking stuff, and lathered it over his head. It burned like fire when it touched the inflamed wound on the side of his head. He knew he was begging for an infection, but the thought of the Interrogators drove him on.

By the time he was done, Grayson's yellow hair, his face, and his tunic were generously coated with black mud. What else? he thought, mind racing. His clothes were nondescript enough, except for his boots, so tight his feet were aching now. They were much too shiny and new to belong to a mud-smeared derelict

After a moment's thought, Grayson pried off the boots and carefully set them together nearby, then muddied his feet as well. The final touch would be two empty liquor bottles he found in a mound of garbage across the street. Grayson then lay down with his feet sprawled well into the middle of the street, his head close by the noisome pool, with a bottle cradled in each arm. It was only seconds later that he heard the scuffing of booted feet rounding the curve of the street.

There were five of them, Palace Guards in dark green and gold, four with wicked-looking assault rifles held at port arms. They picked their way cautiously along the street, stepping around or past the worst of the mud and garbage.

"Here!" one of them shouted. "His boots!" The soldier swooped down and grabbed the shiny boots. Grayson opened his eyes in his best imitation of bleary-eyed dullness, and saw that one of the soldiers already had tucked his cast-off cloak and the bloodied strips of bandage under one arm. Another one — probably the leader, judging by his imperious hands-on-hips stance and lack of a rifle — stood over Grayson and nudged him with the toe of his boot. "You!"

Grayson clutched the bottles tighter, and gave the man a wit-befuddled smile. If he could convince the soldiers that he was a street drunk, that someone else had dropped the boots beside him as he lay there in the mud...

"You," the soldier said again. His upper lip curled even as he spoke, as though the man were trying to avoid breathing the stench of the noxious mud and garbage. "Where'd these boots come from?"

"Wha-a?" Grayson slurred his speech and turned his grin idiotic.

"Sergeant!" Here was a new voice. Grayson followed its sound and saw another squad of soldiers coming up the street from the other direction. They must have sent this second patrol ahead to another main street so that they could work back, hoping to trap him between. The newcomer was an officer, his Guard's Lieutenant uniform more gold than green, looped with aiguillettes and tassels that glittered in the red sunlight. "Any sign of him?"

"He came this way, sir. Look."

The two examined the cloak, bandages, and boots for a moment, their own boots only a meter from Grayson's bare, muddy feet. The lead officer shook his head. "He didn't get past us. You must have missed him."

"He might be trying to blend in with the street scum, sir,' the sergeant said. At this, the bottles trembled in Grayson's hands and his heart pounded so furiously he was certain it would give him away. "We could round them up and question them all."

"Pah! Or shoot them."

"I might be able to help you, Lieutenant." That new voice sent chills along Grayson's spine. Rags moved down the street, and a filthy and unshaven man lurched into view. It was the young man he'd thought was following him. He must have been close enough behind Grayson to see him preparing his hasty disguise!