Slivers of her last nightmare remained as she got up and paced. She did not feel like going back to sleep and so she performed an exhausting series of exercises and practiced with her heavy sword, hoping to tire herself. Finally, when she had given up on a decent night's sleep, Myrmeen sat before the small window, looking out at the city of her birth. A single image from her dream refused to fade:

She had seen a man standing on the muddy earth in the middle of a terrible storm, a dark man who raised his arms to the sky. Two ragged bolts of lightning shattered the night with their blinding intensity, their jagged paths cutting across the horizon from opposite directions. Suddenly they met where the man stood, each of his out-thrust hands receiving a single blast of lightning. He became transparent for a moment as the searing white light coursed through him, and Myrmeen could see that his anatomy was not that of a man, but of something considerably older and more threatening.

Was this Talos, god of the storms? She was not a worshiper of any particular god, but if she had been, Talos would have been her last choice. Storms terrified her.

Myrmeen felt an odd scratching sensation on her left arm and held the arm out to the soft blue-white illumination from the window. She was shocked to see three sets of black eyes open on her forearm.

Suddenly she was aware of a knocking at her door. Myrmeen yawned and felt a strange warmth on her arms. She looked up and saw sunlight pouring through the open window. The raw heat of the day caressed her. Examining her left arm several times, she found no trace of the curious eyes that had materialized within her flesh. She did not remember falling asleep after she shook herself from her nightmares and sat before the window, but the eyes must have been part of them. Worried that the line between her dreams and her waking reality was beginning to blur, Myrmeen became anxious to fill her mind with other thoughts. She checked her dress to ensure that her gown would not offend her visitor's sensibilities and said, "Come!"

The door opened and Lucius Cardoc stepped inside. She was not surprised. From the tentative nature of the knock, she had guessed that it would be him.

"Myrmeen," he said as he entered and lowered his gaze in a form of respectful greeting. The mage looked exactly as he had the night before. If he had missed out on a night's sleep, the effects had not manifested.

She stepped away from the chair that she had been straddling and turned to face him. Her neck and back ached. She had fallen asleep in an awkward position, her head resting in the crook of her arms. Unconsciously, she raised her arms over her head and reached back to link her fingers behind her neck, stretching like a cat. Then she suddenly became aware of the sensuous image she was providing for the mage. Her thin shift had hardly been shocking, but it was not modest either. She was aware that the light from outside was serving to reveal her body's perfect lines.

Cardoc did not seem embarrassed in the least, and she found that she liked his reaction. He came to her from behind, raised the back of her shift, and said, "Sit on the side of the bed."

With a tentative smile, she did as he commanded. He delivered a powerful and soothing massage to the tense, knotted muscles in her back. His hands were stronger than she had anticipated. She resisted the urge to let him know exactly how pleasurable his touch was becoming as she bunched her hair in her hands and lifted it to give him clear access to her neck. He somehow knew exactly where to touch her and with how much pressure.

She appreciated that he said nothing of the scars lining her bare back.

"I have the information," he said, a trace of amusement in his tone as he gently lowered her shift and backed away. "Would you like a few moments to dress? I could wait downstairs with the others."

She almost asked him to stay, then thought better of it. Her heart was racing as she turned to see him exit the room.

An hour later, the Harpers were on the street. They had retrieved their mounts from the stable master, who had charged them an inflated fee, a common occurrence in Calim-port, and rode through one of the designated routes set aside for intracity travel. They brought their supplies.

Reisz chose to ride beside Myrmeen, with Lucius taking point. A thought had weighed heavily on him for the last few weeks, since he had responded with the others to Myrmeen's summons and listened to her story. During the long ride to Calimport and through the trials that followed, there had been no appropriate moment to bring up his observation. Now, he felt, was as good a time as any.

"Myrmeen, you said that your mother first told you of the Night Parade to explain what happened to your stillborn sister. Isn't it possible that the monsters took her, too?"

She drew a deep breath, as if she had been stung by his words. "Anything is possible," she said evenly, betraying the fact that the thought had occurred to her, too.

Lucius called for the company to halt, and he pointed at the sight that had arrested his attention. They were close to the shipping lanes, traveling between endless rows of buildings that had been converted into warehouses. Ahead they could see the bay's sparkling, clear waters, along with nearly one hundred ships in the docks. Above one of the ships, like an angry black fist, rose a cloud of smoke. A small boat had been set on fire and was sinking into the waters.

The mage dismounted and led his sleek black horse to the others. Reisz took the animal's reins as Lucius offered to go ahead and learn what had happened. Myrmeen and Burke agreed. As they waited for him to return, she thought of Kra-cauer, the baby merchant who had been slain by the strange weapon charged by a form of magic that had unnerved Cardoc. She considered the possibility that the assassin had been close enough to hear the names Kracauer had given them. Having mentally traced the trajectory of the second blade, the one, presumably, meant for her throat, Myrmeen knew that, without Lucius's interference, the knife narrowly would have missed her.

The killing had been a warning.

Lucius came back and announced what Myrmeen had already guessed: The boat that had been sunk belonged to Ivan Nehlridge, the smuggler who frequently shuttled Kracauer's stolen freight from the city. Witnesses had seen him engulfed in flames, screaming for his life, as the boat had gone down.

"Martyn Johannas is the only one left," Lucius said. "What I learned about him was a bit more vague. That could work in our favor."

"Perhaps," Burke said as he ordered the company to follow the mage. They left the docks and cut across the dark heart of the city, the meaning of Cardoc's words apparent: Their only possible advantage depended on the quality of the information received by the killers, who were attempting to seal off Myrmeen's avenues of inquiry. If they had been given the same odd phrases as Cardoc to explain the whereabouts of Martyn Johannas, then the Harpers had a fair chance of getting to the man first.

The morning was a bitter memory by the time they arrived at the outskirts of the city's financial district. Guardsmen ordered them away from the busy streets. The Harpers put up their mounts at the first stable they spotted, which had been filled nearly to capacity. Myrmeen was doleful at the idea of leaving the mounts in the oppressively hot stables. Fortunately, the stalls they rented were the responsibility of a young stable boy who seemed to genuinely love and respect the magnificent animals left to his care. She gave him an extra coin for his troubles.

Before they left, the boy took her to a private room, where she changed into an elegant gold-and-white dress from her travel bag. When she emerged from the room, her hair was piled up in a regal style and held in a beautiful headdress. She wore white gloves that covered her forearms and ended above her elbows. Her shoulderless gown plunged in the front, revealing the creamy tops of her breasts, which had been thrust upward by a wire corset that chafed against her skin. Her bearing and style of walk had changed, too.