"I can't afford a lot!"

The doctor pulled down his spectacles and turned and looked at her. "Melot Cassissinin. I'm not a wizard myself; I'm a specialist whose talent just happens to be keeping track of books and things in books. And that little talent has got me a few others— My clients usually don't come in broad daylight and my fees aren't as straightforward as you offer. The door downstairs, for instance. Hagon himself did that. Othis has contributed a few things about the place. Conveniences. They're very expensive for a wizard. But they pay them. They pay whatever I set, because I have a small talent at research—which means, madam, that no single wizard can master all of them, or many of them; a wizard's investment is too much and too deep in too few books to have any appreciation of interrelated consequences. My investment is shallow, but very, very wide. I am not, precisely, a barrister. I do not plead cases. I'm a consulting lawyer, which is quite another thing. I do not sue nor do I defend or prosecute. I merely advise. Do you understand, Melot Cassissinin? Nor do I practice a law which has to do with justice. I practice the law of nature. I render a simple service to those who meddle in it. I advise of consequences. So I suggest you have a seat, young woman, and wait."

"It's tomorrow."

"Yes. Quite. So is sunrise. The question is inevitability. Do sist down, madam, and don't utter a word, if you please."

Melot subsided over to the low stool she had sat on before, sank down and hugged her arms about her knees, her knees against her chest, watching as Dr. Toth went striding down the long line of shelves against the wall and pulled down one book after another. He carried them back to his desk, dumped them atop the last, pushed his spectacles up his nose and began leafing through the pages while dust flew up and danced in the light like stormclouds. "No," he said. "No, and no." And slammed the books shut one and the other, and got up and dumped them onto the stack beside the desk.

"If—" said Melot, thinking of the letter she had come for.

"Hush!" the master snapped, and folded one arm and rested the other hand on his brow, standing there with his head bowed and his eyes squinched shut.

The air chilled, not like a wind, like something had instead leached the warmth and the life out of it. That cold reached into Melot's bones and into her muscles and she could not shiver, she could only sit and sit. Then of a sudden the doctor flung up his head. "Ah!" he said, strode off on his long legs and whirled about to point a finger at her. "You! Stay on that stool. Touch nothing, hear!"

"Yes, s-sir."

He spun and strode off again, out the magical door and thump, thump, thump down the stairs before the door had shut; while Melot tucked her cloak about her and shivered and shivered, thinking of the small darkness with the teeth she had imagined on the stairs, in the hall below. It might have been a cat, might have been a dog or even some rat, but it had died here, it had become something awful; it lived here and it could have gotten in when the doctor opened that door, and it hated visitors, O, gods, gods, gods. Melot she sat with her teeth chattering in the shaft of light from the window and with her head spinning and her muscles weakening in their shivers.

At last she ducked her head down against her knees and shut her eyes and tried to get the shivers out, because she was Melot Cassissinin, after all—nobody much, but she walked the streets not with a mince or a flinch, but with a sure, businesslike stride that announced to the world that here walked a woman who wanted no trouble but who was prepared to make it. And thatfor the thing with the teeth, for she had a sharp square heel and a quick foot and a set of lungs that would bring the house down and bring master Toth on the run. So she rested as she could after the cold had taken the strength out of her and she waited and she waited while the sun crawled across the floor and left her in the dark. The beam wandered the length of the hall and lost itself in the stacks of books, so that only one tall mountain of them was alight. Suddenly a candle lit itself, sending another chill into the air.

Thump, thump-thump, thump—Up the stairs. Up and up the stairs, and round the turn, as the magical door opened and master Toth came in with an armload of books.

Melot started to stand up, started to blurt out a What now, and swallowed it and sank down again on her numb backside, because Dr. Toth paid her no more heed than if she had been another stack of books. He set his books down on the stand where the candle was, flung open one and another of them, threw a sheaf of paper onto the lot and sat down on the tall stool, immediately dipping a quill into an inkpot that uncapped itself. Another small chill. And Melot's stomach growled. She clenched her arms across her belly, trying to silence it. Tried to think of something else. The rumbling came again, loud; and the pen-scratching stopped. Dr. Toth looked at her through his spectacles as if she were something objectionable on his carpet, then pushed his spectacles a degree higher and started writing again, flipping pages and making the candle-flame shake and shadows dance.

Another rumble from her stomach. Melot hugged herself and sucked in air and tried to tense her muscles, which only started a shiver. Gods, gods. He would throw her out. He was only interested in his books. He did all this work and there was a fee; and she sold her other dress and Gatan's clothes, and her cooking pots and her mother's ring, and then she sold what she never had sold for money, except once for a doctor for their mother before she died. And it all came to those coins and a dull cold terror that they were not enough; that it was only the books interested Master Toth and he was working on wizard's business never thinking at all about Gatan or herself. She was only a lump sitting here bothering him in his work. It could not be a letter he was writing. What he had said he would do she could not make out, but it was all as if he was not in the habit really of doing anything beyond handing out advice; and what could she do with advice against a pair of wizards?

Her stomach rumbled again. The pen stopped scratching and she looked up as he looked down his spectacled nose at her.

"In the cupboard there," he said brusquely with a wave of ink-stained fingers. "Eat what you like, for the gods' sake, and watch where you're walking."

"Yes, sir." She looked desperately where he pointed; and got off her stool onto numb legs, limped over where a small path through the stacks led to a cupboard. A candle lighted there on the counter, blink. She shivered and carefully opened the doors, found a plate of bread and fresh seed-cheese and a bottle of wine. All fresh. All as if they hadn't been lying in a cupboard all day. The air inside was chill, and the wine bottle cold as she poured into a chill cup; and the knife cold as she cut a little bread and cheese.

Then she thought again and put it on a tray and walked timidly, fearfully up to Master Toth; but she knew how to get up to a table and deftly fill a cup with never bothering a gentleman. She set it there on the stack nearest and slipped back to feed herself, a bit of seed-cheese wrapped in bread and wine—gods, such wine, the Ramnever served the like. It hit her empty stomach and made her head spin as she tidied things and closed the cupboard.

More candles lit. The sun was going. The pen scratched away and stopped as Master Toth took a drink of wine and a left-handed nibble of cheese while he kept reading, all hunched over his books. The cheese slowly disappeared. He took up the pen again. Scratch-scribble, hastily. Melot crept back to her stool and sat down again, blinking owlishly. She was unbearably sleepy, three days with never but a little sleep and that dreadful, in a shameful bed. The wine sat in her stomach and hummed in her veins and whispered in her skull like bees in a hive.