About a tenth of a daytenth later, as he and Fer carried empty ration packs to the disposal bin, the other Trench Park staffer elbowed him in the ribs and said, “You have all the women after you, eh, Radnal vez?”

Radnal elbowed back, harder. “Go jump in the Bitter Lake, Fer vez. This group’s nothing but trouble. Besides, Nocso zev Martois thinks I’m part of the furniture.”

“You wouldn’t want her,” Fer replied, chuckling. “I was just jealous.”

“That’s what Moblay said,” Radnal answered. Having anyone jealous of him for being sexually attractive was a new notion, one he didn’t care for. By Tarteshan standards, drawing such notice was faintly disreputable, as if he’d got rich by skirting the law. It didn’t bother Evillia and Lofosa — they reveled in it. Well, he asked himself, do you really want to be like Evillia and Lofosa, no matter how ripe their bodies are? He snorted through his nose. “Let’s go back inside, so I can get my crew moving.”

After two days of practice, the tourists thought they were seasoned riders. They bounded onto their donkeys, and had little trouble guiding them out of their stalls. Peggol vez Menk looked almost as apprehensive as his henchman who’d gone to search the stable. He drew in his white robe all around him, as if fearing to have it soiled. “You expect me to ride one of these creatures?” he said.

“You were the one who wanted to come along,” Radnal answered. “You don’t have to ride; you could always hike along beside us.”

Peggol glared. “Thank you, no, freeman vez Krobir.” He pointedly did not say Radnal vez. “Will you be good enough to show me how to ascend one of these perambulating peaks?”

“Certainly, freeman vez Menk.” Radnal mounted a donkey, dismounted, got on again. The donkey gave him a jaundiced stare, as if asking him to make up his mind. He dismounted once more, and took the snort that followed as the asinine equivalent of a resigned shrug. To Peggol, he said, “Now you try, freeman.”

Unlike Evillia or Lofosa, the Eye and Ear managed to imitate Radnal’s movements without requiring the tour guide to take him by the waist (just as well, Radnal thought — Peggol wasn’t smooth and supple like the Highhead girls). He said, “When back in Tarteshem, freeman vez Krobir, I shall stick exclusively to motors.”

“When I’m in Tarteshem, freeman vez Menk, I do the same,” Radnal answered.

The party set out a daytenth after sunrise: not as early as Radnal would have liked but, given the previous day’s distractions, the best he could expect. He led them south, toward the lowlands at the core of Trench Park. Under his straw hat, Moblay Sopsirk’s son was already sweating hard.

Something skittered into hiding under the fleshy leaves of a desert spurge. “What did we just nearly see there, freeman?” Golobol asked.

Radnal smiled at the physician’s phrasing. “That was a fat sand rat. It’s a member of the gerbil family, one specially adapted to feed off succulent plants that concentrate salt in their foliage. Fat sand rats are common throughout the Bottomlands. They’re pests in areas where there’s enough water for irrigated agriculture.”

Moblay said, “You sound like you know a lot about them, Radnal.”

“Not as much as I’d like to, freeman vez Sopsirk,” Radnal answered, still trying to persuade the Lissonese to stop being so uncouthly familiar. “I study them when I’m not being a tour guide.”

“I hate all kinds of rats,” Nocso zev Martois said flatly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eltsac said. “Some rats are kind of cute.” The two Martoisi began to argue. Everyone else ignored them.

Moblay said, “Hmp. Fancy spending all your time studying rats.”

“And how do you make your livelihood, freeman?” Radnal snapped.

“Me?” Flat-nosed, dark, and smooth, Moblay’s face was different from Radnal’s in every way. But the tour guide recognized the blank mask that appeared on it for a heartbeat: the expression of a man with something to hide. Moblay said, “As I told you, I am aide to my prince, may his years be many.” He had said that, Radnal remembered. It might even be true, but he was suddenly convinced it wasn’t the whole truth.

Benter vez Maprab couldn’t have cared less about the fat sand rat. The spiny spurge under which it hid, however, interested him. He said, “Freeman vez Krobir, perhaps you will explain the relationship between the plants here and the cactuses in the deserts of the Double Continent.”

“There is no relationship to speak of.” Radnal gave the old Strongbrow an unfriendly look. Try to make me look bad in front of everyone, will you? he thought. He went on, “The resemblances come from adapting to similar environments. That’s called convergent evolution. As soon as you cut them open, you’ll see they’re unrelated: spurges have a thick white milky sap, while that of cactuses is clear and watery. Whales and fish look very much alike, too, but that’s because they both live in the sea, not because they’re kin.”

Benter hunched low over his donkey’s back. Radnal felt like preening, as if he’d overcome a squadron of Morgaffo marine commandos rather than one querulous old Tarteshan.

Some of the spines of the desert spurge held a jerboa, a couple of grasshoppers, a shoveler skink, and other small, dead creatures. “Who hung them out to dry?” Peggol vez Menk asked.

“A koprit bird,” Radnal answered. “Most butcherbirds make a larder of things they’ve caught but haven’t got round to eating yet.”

“Oh.” Peggol sounded disappointed. Maybe he’d hoped someone in Trench Park enjoyed tormenting animals, so he could hunt down the miscreant.

Toglo zev Pamdal pointed to the impaled lizard, which looked to have spent a while in the sun. “Do they eat things as dried up as that, Radnal vez?”

“No, probably not,” Radnal said. “At least, I wouldn’t want to.” After he got his small laugh, he continued, “A koprit bird’s larder isn’t just things it intends to eat. It’s also a display to other koprit birds. That’s especially true in breeding season — it’s as if the male says to prospective mates, ‘Look what a hunter I am.’ Koprits don’t display only live things they’ve caught, either. I’ve seen hoards with bright bits of yarn, wires, pieces of sparkling plastic, and once even a set of old false teeth, all hung on spines.”

“False teeth?” Evillia looked sidelong at Benter vez Maprab. “Some of us have more to worry about than others.” Stifled snorts of laughter went up from several tourists. Even Eltsac chuckled. Benter glared at the Highhead girl. She ignored him.

High in the sky, almost too small to see, were a couple of moving black specks. As Radnal pointed them out to the group, a third joined them. “Another feathered optimist,” he said. “This is wonderful country for vultures. Thermals from the Bottomlands floor make soaring effortless. They’re waiting for a donkey — or one of us — to keel over and die. Then they’ll feast.”

“What do they eat when they can’t find tourists?” Toglo zev Pamdal asked.

“Humpless camels, or boar, or anything else dead they spy,” Radnal said. “The only reason there aren’t more of them is that the terrain is too barren to support many large-bodied herbivores.”

“I’ve seen country that isn’t,” Moblay Sopsirk’s son said. “In Duvai, east of Lissonland, the herds range the grasslands almost as they did in the days before mankind. The past hundred years, though, hunting has thinned them out. So the Duvains say, at any rate; I wasn’t there then.”

“I’ve heard the same,” Radnal agreed. “It isn’t like that here.”

He waved to show what he meant. The Bottomlands were too hot and dry to enjoy a covering of grass. Scattered over the plain were assorted varieties of succulent spurges, some spiny, some glossy with wax to hold down water loss. Sharing the landscape with them were desiccated — looking bushes — thorny burnets, oleander, tiny Bottomlands olive plants (they were too small to be trees).