While Chance was wondering what the grundoon that meant, Linnana was aborting the lifting of nicely peppered fish to her mouth. Strick and Chance had given the shapely woman a brief description of the outre mis-happening in the open market. Now she said, "And that poor woman's cat?"

"Cats," Strick announced with uncharacteristic portentousness, "are plentiful and not at all expensive."

But the man called Chance was staring at a blank wall blankly, remembering, and he said nothing.

The quite spartan apartment that Chance kept was not at all far from the considerably nobler estate of his friend, but as sometimes happened, the retired Shadowspawn spent the night at Strick's. When he entered his two rented rooms next morning, he discovered that he had been visited. Someone had neatly arranged on his bedspread the amethyst off Strick's desk and another little clay tablet.

"While yur frend was trying to learn about me," the note said, "I was learning about you, Shadospawn. Sign me if yu hap to be at same table at Bottomless Well this night."

He who had been the ultra-cocky Shadowspawn, invader of so many dwellings not his own, felt violated and was righteously outraged, but that night he was at the table he had shared with Strick the night the spider sprouted wings and the "professional barker" outside became a "good dog."

The boy, as Chance thought of Lone, was not present, and Ar-istokrates understood the reason of this influential patron for drinking "wine" that contained more of the well than the grape.

The ever-patriot and former professional thief had lived a long time, and played many games, mind and otherwise, and so was not surprised when after the turn of the hourglass on the counter the boy had still made no appearance. Neither had he sent a message, which admittedly Chance had half-expected. He rose, step-thudded to the counter, paid, and leaned close to the host to murmur a number of words for his ears only. Aristokrates agreed, and Chance departed the establishment.

And time passed in The Bottomless Well. At last through the arched doorway he came, in his gliding gait called catlike, a lean young man of no great height but at least five lengths of sharp steel that showed. He wore black, black, and black, tonight unalleviated even by the red sash, and the soles of his soft buskins made not a sound on the hardwood floor. From arrestingly dark eyes beneath rather thick, black brows he scanned the place as if in a casual way, but which his host knew was quite purposeful indeed.

The catwalker wore no happy look when he turned to the counter and those nearly black eyes bored into the mild, medium brown ones of his host.

"I was to meet the man who calls himself Chance here," he said. "I don't see him…"

Aristokrates bobbed his head in such a way as to make it obvious that he was attempting to be ingratiating. "Yes. He was here, Lone. Alone. He sat at the back wall, and sipped a mug very slowly like a man waiting for someone to join him. After more than an hour he had still not bought another cup and I despaired of ever selling him one. Then he came up here on that cane of his, and paid, and looking not at all pleased, told me that if you came in I was to say these words, and I repeat them exactly, Lone: 'I waited a long time; too long for a boy so young and inexperienced.' "

Immediately he had spoken, the balding man from Mrsevada took a step back from the counter and the stormy face on its other side. That face had darkened, and its features were writhing, and the eyes seemed ready to emit flashes of fire.

"That bastard!" Lone blazed, and louder than Aristokrates had ever heard him speak.

"I… think you are right," the bigger man said mildly, while judiciously reserving all comment on Lone's lack of parentage.

Lone slammed a fist down on the counter. "That blag-dagged blaggard! This is—this is—you said his words exactly, Aris?"

"Absolutely! D'you think I would say such a thing to you?"

"That blag-dagged bastard!" Lone spun about as if in hopes that someone would hurry to pick a fight with him, or that he could find an excuse to assault someone. Anyone.

No such opportunity knocked.

"I can understand that you are not amused," Aristokrates said. "Let me pour you something."

Lone wheeled back to him with such speed and such a stormy face that the other man bethought himself of the thick hardwood club he kept under the counter. But Lone proved not the sort to take out his anger on the message-bearer.

"Not tonight, Aris. Damn! Damn him for an arrogant blaggard!" Aristokrates considered that his wisest course was to say nothing.

"Shit!" the young man snapped, face still writhing, and with a swish of cloak dark as midnight he whirled away toward the door. "Oh, Lone," the man behind the counter said. "Wait a moment. He did bid me give you a few words of

council when you were about to leave."

Dark clothing did not rustle despite the speed of Lone's turn. Wickedly menacing eyes met those paler ones of Aristokrates. "Council?" "He bade me do you a favor," the proprietor of The Bottomless Well reported. "I'll just bet!" "Umm. He said to warn you not to enter Angry Alley." Lone stared. "Huh! That's all?" "Yes." Aristokrates nodded solemnly. "Hey, Aris! How about another mug over here!" That call sounded in a voice with a bit of surliness in it. Aristokrates waved a hand at the patron, one of several at his table. Two of them also signed for another.

"Oh oh. Sorry, Lone. Uh… good night…"

Lone did not return that ritual well-wishing as he glided to the door and in a second as much as vanished into the darkness outside. Naturally, being angry and more, being Lone, he headed directly for the dark, dark opening between two

close-set walls—a passage that too often reeked of urine. Although he saw no one in Angry Alley,

someone was. "The carelessness of rash-brash youth," a voice quiet as a tiptoe in shadow said, "is not bravery, Lone. The real Shadowspawn would not be so rash as to charge in when such a clear warning was issued."

"Shadowspawn!" Lone gasped, cloak swept back and hand frozen to hilt. It was as if the darkness had

spoken, for still he saw no hint of person or even movement. "The same. And well armed, and vexed at you with reason, but only talking instead of letting steel speak for me."

Lone of the prickling scalp and armpits considered that, and swallowed, and actually devoted a few

seconds to thought, and for once he answered from his brain, not his bravado. "You left word that I must stay out of this alley only because you knew I would have to accept the challenge!"

"It was a safe assumption," the darkness said. "You have just restrained yourself. You must learn to do that much more often, which is to learn to think. Else you will die a very young man, and who could possibly give a damn."

The final words were no question, really, but spoken flatly as a statement of fact. And once again Lone felt assaulted… and once again, somehow, he found discipline within himself, and exercised it. "I will try, Master of Thieves."

"You do not make it easy, do you."

"I have had no easy life, Lone. My mentor was hanged when I was only a boy, younger than you. I was a cocky little piece of cat shit, but I learned that I must learn, and so I tried, and I learned."

Lone swallowed and, even in pitch darkness, blinked. It had not occurred to him that his idol was capable of such profundity.