The attendant betrayed human emotions for the second time that night; relatively well-off as he was, one little wooden chit was half again his annual salary. He stifled a gasp when Locke threw him another dozen.

"Fortune is a lady who likes to be passed around," said Locke. "Buy a house, maybe. I'm having a little trouble counting at the moment."

"Sweet gods — many thanks, gendemen!" The attendant took a quick glance around and then spoke under his breath. "Those two ladies don't lose very often, you know. In fact, this is the first time I can remember."

"Victory has its price," said Locke. "I suspect my head will be paying it when I wake up tomorrow."

Madam Corvaleur was hauled carefully down the stairs, with Madam Durenna following to keep a close eye on the men carrying her card-partner. The crowd dispersed; those observers who remained at their tables called for attendants, food, new decks of cards for games of their own.

Locke and Jean gathered their markers (fresh ones, sans slobber, were swiftly provided by the attendant to replace Madam Corvaleur's) in the customary velvet-lined wooden boxes and made their way to the stairs. "Congratulations, gentlemen," said the attendant guarding the way up to the sixth floor. The tinkle of glass on glass and the murmur of conversation could be heard filtering down from above.

"Thank you," said Locke. Tm afraid that something in Madam Corv-aleur gave way just a hand or two before I might have done the same."

He and Jean slowly made their way down the stairs that curved all the way around the inside of the Sinspire's exterior wall. They were dressed as men of credit and consequence in the current height of Verrari summer fashion. Locke (whose hair had been alchemically shifted to a sunny shade of blond) wore a caramel-brown coat with a cinched waist and flaring knee-length tails; his huge triple-layered cuffs were panelled in orange and black and decorated with gold buttons. He wore no waistcoat, just a sweat-soaked tunic of the finest silk under a loose black neck-cloth. Jean was dressed similarly, though his coat was the greyish-blue of a sea under clouds, and his belly was cinched up with a wide black sash, the same colour as the short, curly hairs of his beard.

Down past floors of notables they went… past queens of Verrari commerce with their decorative young companions of both sexes on their arms like pets. Past men and women with purchased Lashani titles, staring across cards and wine decanters at lesser dons and donas from Camorr; past Vadran shipmasters in tight black coats, with sea-tans like masks over their sharp, pale features. Locke recognized at least two members of the Priori, the collection of merchant councils that theoretically ruled Tal Verrar. Deep pockets appeared to be the primary qualification for membership.

Dice fell and glasses clinked; celebrants laughed and coughed and cursed and sighed. Currents of smoke moved languidly in the warm air, carrying scents of perfume and wine, sweat and roast meats, and here and there the resiny hint of alchemical drugs.

Locke had seen genuine palaces and mansions before; the Sinspire, opulent as it was, was not so very much more handsome than the homes many of these people would be returning to when they finally ran out of night to play in. The real magic of the Sinspire was woven from its capricious exclusivity; deny something to enough people and sooner or later it will grow a mystique as thick as fog.

Nearly hidden at the rear of the first floor was a heavy wooden booth manned by several unusually large attendants. Luckily, there was no line. Locke set his box down on the counter-top beneath the booth's only window, a bit too forcefully. "All to my account."

"My pleasure, Master Kosta," said the chief attendant as he took the box. Leocanto Kosta, merchant-speculator of Talisham, was well known in this kingdom of wine fumes and wagers. The attendant swiftly changed Locke's pile of wooden chits into a few marks on a ledger. In beating Durenna and Corvaleur, even minus his tip to the dealer, Locke's cut of the winnings came to nearly five hundred solari.

"I understand that congratulations are in order to both of you, Master de Ferra," said the attendant as Locke stepped back to let Jean approach the counter with his own box. Jerome de Ferra, also of Talisham, was Leocanto's boon companion. They were a pair of fictional peas in a pod.

Suddenly, Locke felt a hand fall onto his left shoulder. He turned warily and found himself facing a woman with curly dark hair, richly dressed in the same colours as the Sinspire attendants. One side of her face was sublimely beautiful; the other side was a leathery brown half-mask, wrinkled as though it had been badly burned. When she smiled, the damaged side of her lips failed to move. It looked to Locke as though a living woman was somehow struggling to emerge from within a rough clay sculpture. Selendri, Requin's major-domo.

The hand that she had placed on his shoulder (her left, on the burned side) wasn't real. It was a solid brass simulacrum, and it gleamed dully in the lantern light as she withdrew it.

"The house congratulates you," she said in her eerie, lisping voice, "for good manners as well as considerable fortitude, and wishes you and Master de Ferra to know that you would both be welcome on the sixth floor, should you choose to exercise the privilege."

Locke's smile was quite genuine. "Many thanks, on behalf of myself and my partner," he said with tipsy glibness. "The kind regard of the house is, of course, extremely flattering."

She nodded non-committally, then slipped away into the crowd as quickly as she'd come. Eyebrows went up appreciatively here and there — few of Requin's guests, to Locke's knowledge, were appraised of their increasing social status by Selendri herself.

"We're a commodity in demand, my dear Jerome," he said as they made their way through the crowd toward the front doors. "For the time being," said Jean.

"Master de Ferra." The head doorman beamed as they approached. "And Master Kosta. May I call for a carriage?"

"No need, thanks," said Locke. "I'll fall over sideways if I don't flush my head with some night air. We'll walk." "Very good then, sir."

With military precision, four attendants held the doors open for Locke and Jean to pass. The two thieves stepped carefully down a wide set of stone steps covered with a red velvet carpet. That carpet, as the whole city knew, was thrown out and replaced each night. As a result, in Tal Verrar alone could one find armies of beggars routinely sleeping on piles of red velvet scraps.

The view was breathtaking; to their right, the whole crescent sweep of the island was visible beyond the silhouettes of other chance-houses. There was relative darkness in the north, in contrast to the aura-like glow of the Golden Steps. Beyond the city, to the south, west and north, the Sea of Brass gleamed phosphorescent silver, lit by three moons in a cloudless sky. Here and there the sails of distant ships reached up from the quicksilver tableau, ghostly pale.

Locke could gaze downward to his left and see across the staggered rooftops of the island's five lower tiers, a vertigo-inducing view despite the solidity of the stones beneath his feet. All around him was the murmur of human pleasure and the clatter of horse-drawn carriages on cobbles; there were at least a dozen moving or waiting along the straight avenue atop the sixth tier. Above, the Sinspire reared up into the opalescent darkness, its alchemical lanterns bright, like a candle meant to draw the attentions of the gods.

"And now, my dear professional pessimist," said Locke as they stepped away from the Sinspire and acquired relative privacy, "my worry-merchant, my tireless font of doubt and derision… what do you have to say to that?

"Oh, very little, to be sure, Master Kosta. It's so hard to think, overawed as I am with the sublime genius of your plan." "That bears some vague resemblance to sarcasm."