"I deliberately choose to throw in with you, if you'll have me. Place a bet, Master Requin. The odds are favourable."

Requin pulled his optics out of his coat pocket and slipped them back on. He brooded over the card; nothing was said by anyone for some time. Locke sipped quietly from his glass of wine, which had turned pale blue and now tasted of juniper.

"Why," said Requin at last, "all other considerations aside, should I allow you to violate the cardinal rule of my "Spire on your own initiative and suffer nothing in exchange?"

"Only because I imagine that cheaters are ordinarily discovered by your attendants while other guests are watching," said Locke, attempting to sound as sincere and contrite as possible. "Nobody knows about my confession, outside this office. Selendri didn't even tell your attendants why they were hauling me up here."

Requin sighed, then drew a gold solari from within his coat and set it down atop Locke's Master of Spires.

"I shall hold fast with a small wager for now," said Requin. "Do anything unusual or alarming and you will not survive long enough to reconsider. At the slightest hint that anything you" ve told me has been a lie, I will have molten glass poured down your throat." "Uh… that seems fair." "How much money do you currently have on the ledger here?" "Just over three thousand solari."

"Two thousand of that is no longer yours. It will remain on the ledger so Master de Ferra doesn't get suspicious, but I'm going to issue instructions that it is not to be released to you. Consider it a reminder that my rules are not to be broken on anyone's recognition but my own." "Ouch. I suppose I should be grateful. I mean, I am. Thank you." "You walk on eggshells with me, Master Kosta. Step delicately" "Then I may go? And I may think of myself as in your service?"

"\bu may go. And you may consider yourself on my sufferance. We will speak again when I know more about your recent past. Selendri will accompany you back down to the first floor. Get out of my sight."

With an air of faint disappointment, Selendri folded up the brass fingers of her artificial hand until it was whole once again and the blades were hidden. She gestured toward the stairs with that hand, and with the look in her good eye she told him precisely how much patience she had to spare for him if Requin's should start to wane.

Jean Tannen sat reading in a private booth at the Gilded Cloister, a club on the second tier of the Savrola, just a few blocks down from the Villa Candessa. The Cloister was a labyrinth of dark wood enclosures, well padded with leather and quilting for the benefit of diners wishing an unusual degree of solitude. The waitstaff, in their leather aprons and drooping red caps, were forbidden to speak, answering all customer requests with either a nod or a shake of the head.

Jean's dinner, smoked rock eel in caramel-brandy sauce, lay chopped into fragments and scattered like debris from a battle. He was making his way slowly through dessert, a cluster of marzipan dragonflies with crystallized sugar wings that glimmered in the steady glow of the booth's candles. He was absorbed in a leatherbound copy of Lucarno's Tragedy of the Ten Honest Turncoats, and he didn't notice Locke until the smaller man was already seated across from him in the booth. "Leocanto! You gave me a start."

"Jerome." They both spoke in a near-whisper. "You really were nervous, weren't you? Nose buried in a book to keep you from going mad. Some things never change." "I wasn't nervous. I was merely reasonably concerned." "You needn't have been." "Is it done, then? Am I successfully betrayed?" "Quite betrayed. Absolutely sold out. A dead man walking." "Wonderful! And his attitude?"

"Guarded. Ideal, I'd say. Had he been too enthusiastic, I would be worried. And had he not been enthusiastic at all, well…" Locke mimicked shoving a knife into his chest and wiggling it several times. "Is this smoked eel?"

"Help yourself. It's stuffed with apricots and soft yellow onions. Not entirely to my taste."

Locke took up Jean's fork and helped himself to a few bites of the eel; he was more partial to the stuffing than Jean had been. "We're going to lose two-thirds of my account, it seems," he said after making some progress on the dish. "A tax on cheating to remind me not to presume too much on Requin's patience."

"Well, it's not as though we expected to get out of the city with the money in those accounts. Might" ve been nice to have it for a few more weeks, at least."

"True. But I think the alternative would have been desktop surgery, whether I needed a hand amputated or not. What" re you reading?"

Jean showed him the title and Locke feigned choking. "Why is it always Lucarno? You drag him everywhere we go, his damn romances. Your brains will go soft with all that mush. You'll end up more fit for tending flower-gardens than for running confidence games."

"Well," said Jean, "I shall be sure to criticize your reading habits, Master Kosta, should I ever see you develop any." "I" ve read quite a bit!" "History and biography, mostly what Chains prescribed for you." "What could possibly be wrong with those subjects?"

"As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decisions ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It's not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination."

"But romances aren't real, and surely never were. Doesn't that take away some of the savour?"

"What an interesting choice of words. "Not real, and never were." Could there be any more appropriate literature for men of our profession? Why are you always so averse to fiction, when we've made it our meal-ticket?"

"I live in the real world," said Locke, "and my methods are of the real world. They are, just as you say, a profession. A practicality, not some romantic whim."

Jean set the book down before him and tapped its cover. "This is where you and I are headed, Thorn — or at least you are. Look for us in history books and you'll find us in the margins. Look for us in legends and you might just find us celebrated."

"Exaggerated, you mean. Lied about. Trumped up, or stamped down. The truth of anything we do will die with us and nobody else will ever have a bloody clue."

"Better that than obscurity! I recall you once had quite a taste for drama. For plays, if nothing else."

"Yes." Locke folded his hands on the table and lowered his voice even further. "And you know what happened to it."

"Forgive me," said Jean with a sigh. "I should have known better than to bring up that particular red-headed subject once again."

A waiter appeared at the entrance to the little booth, looking attentively at Locke.

"Oh, no," said Locke, and set Jean's fork back on the eel plate. "Nothing for me, I'm afraid. I'm just here waiting for my friend to finish his little candied wasps."

"Dragonflies."Jean popped the last one into his mouth, swallowed it nearly whole and tucked his book away within his coat. "Give over the bill and I'll settle up with you."

The waiter nodded, cleared away the used dishes and left a scrap of paper pinned to a small wooden tablet.

"Well," said Locke as Jean counted copper coins from his purse, "we've no responsibilities for the rest of the evening. Requin is no doubt setting eyes on us as we speak. I think a night or two of light relaxation would be in order, to avoid upsetting him."

"Great," said Jean. "Why don't we wander around a bit, and maybe catch a boat over to the Emerald Galleries? They" ve got coffee houses there, and music. Would it be in character for Leo and Jerome to get a bit tipsy and chase tavern dancers?"

"Jerome can murder as much ale as he likes and bother tavern dancers until the sun chases us home to bed. Leo will sit and watch the festivities." "Maybe play spot-the-shadow with Requin's people?"