Finishing in scant moments, Dysan slipped around the walls and onto the Avenue of Temples. Even in broad daylight, he found little company on the street. Every altar desecrated, every priest brutally massacred, every wall blood-splattered or smashed reminded the inhabitants of the worst of Dyareela. The inner shards of the broken walls of Dysan's home still held paint that had once probably fit together as a mural depicting some pantheon and its miracles. The altar contained stains that reeked of urine and sex, blood and death; and he had disposed of lumps of animal and human feces left where valuables had once sat as offerings. Even those gods who might bother returning to Sanctuary could want nothing to do with the defiled remnants of their once great temples. Except, apparently, a small, confused group of Rankan women. Dysan kept to the smaller alleyways, preferring to risk robbery over the need to exchange small talk. Though he had lived his entire life here, few knew his face and only a handful his name. Though he had kept "Dysan" throughout his life, a tribute to Kharmael, he could see no reason why anyone from his past would recognize it. He had seen the corpses of the other orphans buried by strangers. If others had survived the Pits, and he had heard rumors that a few had, they must have escaped before the poisoning and the fire. Re-portedly, the Dyareelans had been destroyed to a man; and good riddance. He only wished they could have suffered the same terror, the same protracted and agonizing deaths they had inflicted on so many others.

Dark men hidden deeply in shadow paid less attention to Dysan than he did to them. He seemed a most unlikely and unnecessary target in his bare feet and tattered clothing. He knew how to draw attention away from his hidden purse, how to let the others know he saw them without giving away their concealment, how to listen while seeming distant and disinterested. This language, too, he knew, the one that kept a small man alive on dangerous streets.

Dysan also knew where to take his money, the only place he trusted to give him a fair exchange for his coins or for the merchandise he acquired. As he trotted past the Maze, he realized the time had come to enter it again, too. He had spent a lot of time there with the Hand, usually in the Vulgar Unicorn; but, in the last ten years, he went only often enough to keep tabs on the shifting landscape, or when hired business brought him there. Though great places for information, he otherwise found taverns boring. Strangers saw him as a child. He rarely found himself invited directly into discussions or games of chance, and the barmaids usually diluted his drinks to water. He had learned to appreciate that, as his slight-ness gave him little body mass to offset even one full-strength beer, it also gave him nothing much to savor.

Dysan turned onto Wriggle Way and headed for the shop of Bezul the Changer. A pair of women passed him, discussing intended purchases in the market. He heard more than watched a dark-clad figure slink into the Maze. Ignoring them, Dysan tripped the gate latch and headed into the shop yard. He had taken only three steps when an enormous, muddy goose waddled from behind a bush with a snake-like hiss followed by a honk loud enough to wake the dead. More geese answered in ringing echoes from the back courtyard. Dysan turned his quiet saunter into a run for the door, the goose honking, flapping, and biting at his heels.

Dysan charged into the changer's shop, attempting to slam the door without breaking the goose's neck. But the huge bird crashed in behind him, and the door banged shut an instant too late. Loose in the shop, the goose ran in crazed circles, huge wings walloping the air into whirlwinds and sweeping a line of crockery from a low table. Clay pots spilled to the floor, some smashing, some clomping hollowly against wood and tile. Shards scattered like frightened spiders.

Bezul scrambled from behind a table where he had been servicing a customer. "No! No!" His sandy disarray of hair looked even more tousled than usual, and he moved spryly for a man in his late thirties. He rushed the goose.

Dysan threw the door back open, hoping no one expected him to pay for the damage. He had no idea of the value of such things, but he had enough trouble keeping himself in food and clothing. The customer back-stepped, presumably to steer clear of the growing wreckage, but stepped on a crockery shard. Balance teetering, he flailed, lost the battle, and landed on his backside. A thrown-out arm barely missed the row of empty jars and vials he had been examining a moment earlier.

Stop it! Dysan chastised his imagination. He had not projected an image of the Hand over an innocent in years. He shook his head to clear it, just as Bezul returned, leaving the door open as a welcome to customers. Dysan tried to apologize for letting the goose in, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

As if nothing had happened, Bezul leaned his broom against a display and approached the stranger. "Were we finished, Pel?"

"Yes," Pel said, his gaze on Dysan, his voice too gentle and deliberate to have ever served the Hand. "We're finished."

Dysan knelt and started picking up pieces of broken crockery, feigning excessive interest in his work.

"I think the boy's a bit shaken by your deadly man-eating attack goose."

"Who, Dysan?" Bezul's attention turned to him, much to Dysan's chagrin. "He's a regular. Not the first goose he's tangled with, eh Dys?"

Dysan hated when Bezul shortened his name. It reminded him that the first two letters matched those of the goddess he despised.

When Dysan did not back-banter, Bezul's tone changed to one of concern. "You all right, boy?"

"Eh, Bez," Dysan returned belatedly, though Bezul was already a shortened form of the man's name: Bezulshash. "I thought you locked those nasty critters up during the day."

"Must have missed one." It was the standard answer. It seemed like Bezul always forgot a goose or two when he shooed them from the main yard in the morning. Usually, they had the common sense not to follow someone inside the shop.

Dysan swept the clay shards into a pile so he did not have to force a smile. He owed no one an explanation, especially not in Sanctuary, but he still felt obligated to say something. He forced himself to look up. Then, uncertain what to do with his now-free hands, he rubbed his nose with a not-quite casual gesture. "It wasn't the goose. It was the thought of who's going to have to pay for this." He made a gesture that encompassed those shards that had escaped his crude attempt at cleaning.

Bezul shrugged off the concern. "My goose. My mistake."

Pel headed for the door, and Dysan gave him plenty of space. "We'll all pay for it, ultimately." He looked down at the younger man from a frame at least a third again as tall as Dysan's and winked. "You, me, everyone. Believe me."

Dysan knew he ought to make small talk before launching into business, but jokes about shins bruised by the goose might force him to display the real ones he had gotten from falling building stones. He could ask about Bezul's mother, wife, and children; but he always sounded nervous when he did. Chatter made him uncomfortable; and, under the circumstances, he preferred to stick with the familiar. "I need something to put on my feet." He raised a bare foot, then returned it to the floor, careful to avoid the piled shards of clay. "Some live rats or mice. A couple of snakes."

Bezul's brows crept upward. "You're keeping odd pets these days, Dysan." He did not question; Bezul never questioned. But he left the point hanging if Dysan wished to discuss it further.

Dysan gave an evasive answer. "Need more meat in my diet." Knowing what he could buy depended on what he had to exchange for it, Dysan untied the purse and spilled its contents on the counter. Bezul's head bent over the coins, revealing pale scalp where his hair had begun its southward march. He picked up the soldats, sep-arating them from the padpols. "Not pure, but decent. Worth about—"