“I’m trusting Caiazzo can protect me,” Eslingen answered, with more confidence than he entirely felt. “If you’ll send to him tomorrow, after second sunrise, he’ll have the money for you.”

“We’ll be there,” Rouvalles said, and Eslingen thought there was the hint of a threat in his tone. He lifted an eyebrow in question, and the Chadroni spread his hands. “No ill meant, Eslingen, but I’m a week later than I should be, and I still have supplies and goods to buy, so it’ll be another two weeks before I’m on the road. Hanse–but Caiazzo knows all this.”

Eslingen nodded in restrained sympathy, “I’ll tell him, but, as you say, he knows.”

“If he knows,” Rouvalles said, and the good‑humored face was suddenly grim, “if he knows, why in all the hells hasn’t he sent the money I need?”

Eslingen shrugged, regretting his casual remark. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“Don’t think I haven’t,” Rouvalles answered.

Eslingen didn’t answer, but ducked through the improvised door into the hall. The group was still gathered around the brazier, he saw without surprise, making a very bad pretense of interest in the dice game. The carpets would absorb some sound, but not all of it; it was no wonder they had listened. He smiled cheerfully at them, and went down the staircase to the stables.

He was early at the landing, and sat in the sun nibbling half a dozen ripe strawberries purchased on the edge of the market while he watched Caiazzo’s boatmen bring the barge expertly across the current and alongside the landing. The longdistance trader sprang out almost before the ropes were snugged home, Denizard following more decorously, and stalked up the gentle slope toward the street. “Come on, then,” he said, as he drew level with the soldier, “we don’t want to keep madame waiting.

Eslingen fell into step half a pace behind him, wondering why not, but the look of mischief in Caiazzo’s eyes was enough to keep him from asking aloud. He risked a glance at Denizard, but the magist looked, if anything, a little bored. Eslingen sighed, and resigned himself to whatever would happen. Caiazzo led them through the Manufactory district, skirting half a dozen brick‑walled compounds that smelled of wood and glue and other, less‑identifiable substances, and up the queen’s‑road into a neighborhood where sober‑looking shops alternating with small, well‑built houses. He turned into the courtyard of one of the larger of the latter, and the door opened before he could knock. A servant in sober livery bowed them into a reception hall, murmuring something Eslingen couldn’t quite hear, and vanished through a narrow door.

As the door closed behind him, Eslingen glanced surreptitiously around the hall, impressed in spite of himself by the carved panels and the interlaced tiles that faced the hearth. There was real silver on the sideboard–put out for show as well as use, surely–and the livery had been of good linen, generously cut. The candles–unlit, at this hour, when the sun poured through the unshuttered windows, filling the room with light–were wax pillars as thick as a man’s wrist. Surprisingly good taste from a woman who was partner to a southriver rat, he thought, but his heart wasn’t in the sneer, not confronted by this restrained wealth, the dark wood that showed highlights as cool as the polished silver, the quiet service. Oh, the house itself might be on the wrong side–the Manufactory side–of the queen’s‑road, but the interior was as rich as any petty‑noble’s palace, or richer.

Caiazzo saw him looking then, and smiled. It was an expression Eslingen had already learned to distrust; he glanced sideways at Denizard, and saw her grave and unsmiling as ever, her painted hands folded into the sleeves of her master’s robe. That was reassuring–if there were real trouble, Denizard would be tensed for it–and Eslingen sighed as unobtrusively as possible. So it really was just one of Caiazzo’s jokes, something he thought would startle or shock his new knife, and Eslingen braced himself to meet the surprise as calmly as possible.

The door to the rest of the house opened then, and a liveried servant stepped through. “Madame Allyns,” he said, and Eslingen caught his breath.

The woman who swept through the doorway was enormous and beautiful, skin like rich cream from the top of her breasts to the roots of her golden hair, eyes blue as summer skies, lips–slightly pouting– the pink of the inside of a shell. A strand of pearls a half‑shade lighter than her skin wound twice around her neck, and vanished into the shadowed valley of her cleavage: A brooch the size of a man’s hand– Oriane and the Seabull, Eslingen thought, not quite incredulous, in full congress–clasped her bodice, drawing the eye irrevocably to the divide between her massive breasts. She was as large as any two women, and four times as lovely.

“Hanse,” she said, and swept forward, hands outstretched in greeting.

Caiazzo caught them, brought each in turn to his lips, bowing slightly. “Iniz. How pleasant to see you again.”

“I trust so,” Allyns answered, and turned, smiling, to the others. “Mistress Denizard I know–and I’m delighted to see you again, my dear–but this gentleman–” The smile was back, full of heavy‑lidded speculation. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

Eslingen swallowed hard, willing his arousal to subside. Caiazzo said, “May I present Philip Eslingen, late of Coindarel’s Dragons? My new knife.”

“A soldier,” Allyns said. “How charming.” She held out her hand, and Eslingen bowed over it. She smelled of roses, heavy‑scented, late season flowers, a fragrance men could drown in… And then she had twitched her hand deftly out of his grasp, and turned back to Caiazzo, one delicate brow lifting. “And I hear you have need of a knife these days, Hanse. I’m–concerned.”

“There’s no cause for worry,” Caiazzo answered, and Allyns smiled again, too sweetly.

“But there is for concern, is there not? Our partnership has been a profitable one. I’d hate to have to find another longdistance trader, especially this late in the season. But I’d hate it even more if my investments failed to materialize.”

“I doubt very much it will come to that,” Caiazzo answered. “Even considering your legendary prudence, Iniz. Shall we go in?”

Allyns regarded him for a moment longer, and then nodded. She turned away, the rich silks of her skirts hissing against the stone floor, against each other. Caiazzo, suddenly, startlingly drab against her opulence, followed, and the servant shut the door behind them. Eslingen glanced at Denizard, wondering if he should follow, but the magist shook her head fractionally. She seemed to be listening for something, and Eslingen tilted his head to one side, too, not sure what he was waiting for. The house was very quiet; in the distance, he heard a door close, and then, from the street, the rattle of wheels and the sound of a horse’s hooves.

At last Denizard relaxed, looked at him with a rather wry expression. Eslingen said, “It’s all right, then?”

The magist nodded. “Oh, yes. Or, if it’s not, it’s far too late to worry about it.” She saw Eslingen stiffen, and added, “They’ve been partners for fifteen years, Philip. We’re as safe here as in our own house.”

Eslingen nodded back, reluctantly. He knew that most longdistance traders–Merchants‑Venturer, as the guild called itself– formed partnerships with Astreiant’s Merchants Resident: each needed what the other could supply, goods exchanged for capital, and markets for each other’s products, but that didn’t explain the particulars of the situation. “She didn’t sound happy,” he said, and Denizard looked away.

“There have been some–difficulties this year,” she said, after a moment. “As you’ve probably gathered.”

Eslingen nodded. “Is it something I should know about? To do my job?”

Denizard sighed. “Hanse said I should use my discretion, telling you. And since you’ve said you’ll stay on… about five years ago, when Seidos was in the Gargoyle, Hanse and Madame Allyns bought a seigneurial holding in the Ile’nord–in the Ajanes, west of the Gap.”