The bully wheeled on his accoster, who was a burly swordslinger hired by the market manager to police the place and protect its users. No longer a young man, he was intelligent enough to be standing about a yard back, holding a one-handed crossbow aimed at the bully's middle. It was cocked.

"Huh! Big man! Tough when you've got that sticker aimed at my gut, arencha, old fart!" Again Sirrah Hostility heard a hostile voice from behind: "Argalo, Would you have to arrest me if I was to crack the skull around this ugly little fellow's big noise-hole with my little walking stick?"

Hanse-I-mean-Chance laughed. The former bravo he called Ar-galo laughed. Strick laughed. Several others nearby laughed. The heavily intimidated bully proved that he retained a modicum of intelligence by suddenly remembering his urgent need to be somewhere else.

Thanks and good wishes were exchanged, and Strick bought some fish that smelled good enough to eat provided he didn't put it off, and he and Chance made their way to the east entry to the marketplace. There, just inside, they had time to sit down and, without incident, knock back a small measure of wine. Then it was about time to step outside and look for transportation.

It had arrived: here was Strick's man Samoff with the one-mule-cart which the Spellmaster chose over a carriage, in order not to look as well off as he was. It was in accord with Strick's desire that Samoff of the thick, droopy, rust-colored moustache wore nothing that even approached livery. He who had named the mule "Killer" dressed as he wished and wore arms as he wished. In his case that meant he was well armed with sword and dagger and crossbow and back-up knife, and as mean-looking as he could look in mostly leathers with boots well up his thighs and his big wide-brimmed old desert hat with a sweat-stain about the size of some small animals. He was a much wrinkled man of one and fifty who had put in a lot of years traveling from town to town across the desert as a caravan scout. The job meant keeping to himself and riding ahead and on the flanks all along the way, on the alert for possible menace.

Samoff was a man of few words and considerable respect who knew how to use his weapons, although he was handicapped by an old leg injury.

He knew he was lucky to be employed by the Spellmaster, too, who also provided food and housing, and had spelled away the personal problem that Samoff called the worst: a pair of feet whose sweat had smelled worse than a hound-dog's mouth. Samoff was also privy to the former life of his boss's dark, unfriendly looking friend. One afternoon a couple of years back he had heard an old acquaintance of Chance ask him if the change of name really worked; what about people who had known him as Hanse the roach for many years?

"They are mostly all dead," Chance replied, and no one could disbelieve that, for nearly everyone who had lived in Sanctuary a half-century ago no longer lived anywhere.

Today Samoff greeted that man, along with his employer, with respect. He was pleased to accept with a low nod of his head the half-measure of beer that Chance had been so thoughtful as to purchase for him, saw the two men seated in the cart, and mounted its forward seat to make the long drive to the much better area of town and the Spellmaster's home. The drive was leisurely and without incident of any significance.

The door of that spacious dwelling was opened from within and they were greeted by a quite shapely, thin-faced woman in her late thirties or early forties. She was Linnana, who was as always rather garishly attired in several items of jewelry and at least as many colors, not all of which were compatible.

Chance was one of the very few who knew that this S'danzo "housekeeper" was Strick's woman. Since her people tended to shun liaisons with outsiders and frown upon those who broke that unwritten "rule," she pretended to be no more than his housekeeper, and they maintained the fiction that she dwelled in the small building attached to his large home. In fact, long ago a S'danzo had been the one true love of the hardly lovable thief named Hanse and called Shadowspawn, and he had lost her because he had persisted in being Hanse called Shadowspawn—and never ceased to blame himself. It was because of his lost Mignureal that he had long secretly channeled money to one Elemi, a widow, because she was S'danzo and he was sentimental—a fact that even now, so close to the end of his life, he would never admit, even to Strick.

"But he left this," she said, handing her lover a tiny tablet of hard clay and soft wax. It had been sealed with Strick's wax and seal.

He gave Chance a look. "Want to risk a wager as to who left this?"

"I like him more and more," Shadowspawn said. "It's what I would have done!"

Smiling—rather tightly—Strick broke the seal and lifted the tablet's cover. Very neatly scratched into the soft wax coating the inside of the tablet were the words "Why not just ask me stead of them uthers?"

Strick chuckled. "That would be Lone, all right. All is well, Lin-nie. We are in no danger from this intruder."

While she showed visible relief, she also remained close to her man.

Chance added his assurance: "A certain youngster just wanted to show us he could do it."

"Wants to be like his idol," Strick appended, now with an arm about his woman. "You remember hearing about a certain Shadowspawn, don't you Linnie?"

She heaved a sigh and showed the two men a wan smile. "Never heard of him," she said. "But I do smell something that needs to be taken outside and cleaned."

"Sorry," Chance grinned. "Strick did do some sweating…"

With an indulgent smile she took over the fish. The Spellmaster headed for his private sanctuary, his home office-divinery, while Lin-nana took charge of the market purchases. She presented no real argument when Chance said it should be his job to clean the fish. Strick was still in his sanctuary when he finished, so Chance went out to visit with Samoff and "maybe lend a hand in tending to the mule and cart."

He and the former caravan scout sat in the barn and reminisced, as they had on several other occasions. Most of what each told the other was true.

Over dinner, Strick surprised no one by advising that he had been at a little private divination, an ability enhanced by a few things he had learned not from his stepfather, but from a friend of his, a dauntingly large man named Ahdio.

"The lad who continues to cast bad spells over Sanctuary is named Komodoflorensal," he told Chance and Linnana.

Chance paused over a slice of onion-rubbed bread the color of old leather. "Now that," he said, "is a lot of name!" Strick nodded, using his tongue to explore the morsel of fish in his mouth for bone. "He is apprentice to a master mage named Kusharlonikas, who is older than dirt. Do you know of him, Chance?"

So many years he has lived, Strick thought, and still so defensive and quick to take offense! For him not to be happy, and so low of self-esteem as to feel it, especially for a man so very good at his life's work, was to Strick one more miscarriage of justice—and proof once again that the whole "justice" concept came not from the gods but was solely a human invention, and did not exist in any natural state.

Or so believed Strick, Spellmaster.

"No," he told Chance, "because I believe this Kusharlonikas to be old enough to have whelped you."

Chance jerked erect in his chair. "All gods forbid!"

"No argument offered," Strick said.

Linnana chuckled. "What an irony that would be!"

Strick went on, "I should not have much trouble learning where Kusharlonikas lives, since I have seen the neighborhood behind my eyes. I intend to have a talk with him. Sorcerers are wont to claim— even believe, in some cases—that any and every event that takes place—or fails to take place, as expected!—is demonstration of their magnificent ability. This one needs to accept responsibility for the bad, too. The incompetence of his apprentice is a danger to everyone. And certainly his master owes that couple in the market for the tent destroyed by that excrementitious spell."