The boy looked at him quizzically. "You can't learn them. They got no words. An't no one understands them, anyway."

Orem pulled his wrap halfway down and hoisted himself to the lip of the cistern to empty himself. The voices came more clearly, an echo of wails and high singing that suddenly filled him with fear. Why should I be afraid? he wondered. Then he looked at the young thief and thought he saw murder in his eyes. Yes, murder, and what better time than now, with Orem helplessly over a pit that went deep into the earth where no one would find the corpse even if anyone bothered to look for a scrawny young man with a pauper's pass. The boy could just run up and push him and he'd be dead. And there—yes, the boy was poised, wasn't he? And leaning in! "Stay back, or by God—" And then his bowels opened and emptied and he sprang from the cistern wall and backed away from the thief.

"Just a fancy," the boy said, smiling. "Didn't mean nothing. Meant just to put a scare in you."

Orem did as the boy had done, wiped himself and then his hand in the dirt. Then he pulled up his wrap. He was trembling. Not just because the child had thought to kill him, but because the voice in the cistern had seemed to warn him so. Was this, perhaps, a touch of true magic? For the first time in his life had a spell touched him?

"I'm sorry," said the boy, watching Orem's face. "It was a joke."

Orem said nothing, just walked from the cistern and out into the road. Only a few steps and he knew where he was, Piss Road, with Piss Gate at the western end of it.

"Don't leave me," said the boy.

Orem faced him angrily. "Don't you know when you're not wanted?" "My name is Flea Buzz."

"I'm telling you anyway. It was the name my mother gave me. She's from Brack, it's ever so far to the east, she was stolen by sea pirates and eventually ended up here as a pisser. She got a pass. They give names like Flea Buzz there, because it was the first thing she saw and first thing she heard after I was born. Her husband is dead at the bottom of the sea. He has pearls instead of eyes."

"What makes you think I care?"

"You're listening, aren't you? Anyway, it's all lies. My father, he's alive enough. He calls me Pin Prick, and worse things when he's angry. He's got no pass, so he has to hide in the Swamp when the guards come. I get no pass until my mother marries another pass man. So I steal. I do all right. I'll

steal for you, if you like."

"I don't want you to steal for me."

"The truth is my father's dead. My mother killed him when he went at her with a club. We buried

him in the garden. He'll be flowers all over if the dogs don't open him up. Only last night."

"It's a lie."

"Only partly. Let me come with you."

"Why? What do I have that you want? If you think I'll give you a copper to leave me alone

you're going to weep at the tale I have to tell."

"My mother's gone, pass and all."

"What's that to me?"

"Her lover took her away after they killed my dad."

Lover. It was a strange word. What part had love in Inwit? Yet the boy looked afraid, his eyes

looked weak and he was ready to spring, ready to run at a word. Was this true, then? Had he no parents?

"I've got nothing," Orem said. "Little enough for me, nothing for you."

"I know the city. I'll be useful."

"I'll find my own way."

"If the guard catches me I can be your brother, and then I won't lose an ear for having no pass."

It hadn't occurred to Orem. That they'd take an ear from a child.

"They wouldn't." "God's name they would."

Flea Buzz grinned, and suddenly all the pathos was gone. Was he a fraud, after all? Orem

cursed himself for a fool. Yet he did not send him away, even so.

"What's your name," asked the boy.

"They call me Scanthips."

"By God, a name that's worse than mine."

"I'll call you Flea. That's not a bad name."

"And I'll call you Scant."

"You'll call me Sir."

"Like hell. Come on, them as I've heard was hired was hired on Shop Street." And they plunged

into the crowd on Piss Road.

Flea was a companion such as Orem had never had before. He was so jaunty that even the coldness of the shopkeepers was cause for laughter. Flea would bow and elaborately compliment the shopkeepers that they met—those that didn't drive them out immediately. And when they had been sent away, Flea would parody and mock. "Oh, I love you like a son, but if I had a son I'd have to send him away without work, lads, you must understand, times is so hard that if it goes on like this another twenty years I'll waste away and die myself, die myself!"

Orem laughed often because of Flea, and covered far more ground because Flea knew his way through Inwit, but by late afternoon it was clear there'd be no work for him on Shop Street. He needed to rest, and Flea led him into the huge cemetery. The trees were a haven to Orem, like a touch of home, even if there was no underbrush and the trees were cropped and tame. A touch of home, only there were no birds. Orem noticed it and said so.

"The dead take them and ride," Flea said. "They go everywhere on birds' backs. It's why you

never kill a bird. There might be a spirit there who can't get home, and he'll haunt you forever."

"The dead are gathered up in the nets of God," Orem said.

Flea looked at him blankly. "I thought you weren't a priest."

"I'm not anything if I don't find work," Orem said. "A man is what he does to earn his bread. A

carpenter, a farmer, a halfpriest, or a beggar."

"Or a thief?" asked Flea. There was an edge of anger to his voice.

"Why not, if it's how you live?" "I steal, Scant, but that's not what I am."

"A man is the greatest, boldest thing he dares to do. I play the snakes."

Orem shrugged. "I don't know what that means."

Flea grinned. "Then you'll have to see, won't you, Scant."

At the Snakepit

Orem guessed they were near the Swamp when the smell of the town became a reek, and what huts there were stood on stilts. "Got to stick tight to me," Flea said. "There's sinking sands here, and clay sucks you down, if you step in the wrong place. Stick tight."

Orem stayed right behind him, imitating as best he could the intricate path that Flea followed among the great-rooted trees and the cattail stands. After what felt like a mile through the meaningless maze, Flea abruptly stopped. Orem jostled him.

"Stand back," said Flea. "You never know what the snake's going to do."

Flea picked up a stick with a short fork at the end—it looked as if it had been cut that way. He dug with it, scraping dirt away from a board hidden in the ground. Then he pried under the edge of the board. A high whining sound came from the hole. Orem flinched involuntarily. Not a child in Burland didn't know that the whine of a keener meant death if you didn't get away. They lived only in places like this, where the country couldn't decide whether it was lake or land. It was as good a reason to stay away from swamps as any.

Flea laughed, but not at Orem. "Three days, and he didn't suffocate. Now that's luck, that's luck!"

Orem watched with fascination as Flea inched the board open, always with the stick. When a keener moved, it moved like a bird, quick and invisible until it stopped again. And there it was, a flash of green skittering over the ground, straight toward the nearest standing water. It got no farther than a few feet away, though, and then it lay wriggling, neck neatly pinned under Flea's stick.

"Can I trust you with my life?" Flea asked.

"Today."

"Then hold this stick and don't let up the pressure."

"No."

"Once this keener hits water and drinks, it'll follow us out of the swamp, you know that." "Tale to frighten children."