These days they were both strange, in a stranger land. Her camel riders had gone home, save for a lingering rearguard and a few would-be immigrants.

She, like Bijaz, had been touched by the noumenal. Also like him, she had been left wanting.

"Is this your desert I have grasped?" he asked politely.

She sat in the velvet chair next to his, reached to draw her fingers across the pale spray on the polished wooden floor. "No. Our sand is yellow as a coward's liver, harder than the flat of a sword. This was made for dancing or lovemaking, not fighting."

"I should hope." He signaled for more wine. He had paid for nothing in months. Somehow that was bothersome, too. "Drink?" he asked, as the waiter approached, stiff in his formal whites.

"Water," Kalliope said. "Filtered through cork and silk. Nothing from the river." She looked back at Bijaz. "No wine. It brings dreams."

He let that pass. Far too many people asked him to interpret their dreams.

Will my number be lucky now?

Why does the elephant stalk my sleep?

My grandmother won't quit shrieking.

The answers were always too easy. He had no idea if they were true, but people seemed satisfied. Then, once or twice a week, someone brought him a dream which lit white fire in his head.

That was when he cursed the Numbers Men. He might have died peacefully if not for their meddling.

Another wine was set before him, a tall blue goblet in front of Kalliope. The latening sun made the entire table glow. Drops beading off her glass were tiny diamonds, each a swelling reflection of the room. His wine swirled with motes from a distant harvest. Dampened, the table wood discharged the memory of forests.

"Trees," said Kalliope, stepping into his thoughts. "They walk. Not two-legged, like bark-clad men, but scrabbling on a thousand woody toes. Masts sliding with purpose through the soil."

"You dream of the timber harvest," Bijaz said almost automatically. He stared at the water-spattered tabletop. "The wealth of softwood come down the river from the Pilean Hills, the hardwoods carved out of the swamps along the Jade Coast."

"No." Palms flat on the table, disturbing the tiny droplet worlds, she leaned forward. "I am a sandwalker. My dreams are borne on the wind. I do not spend my sleeping hours considering economics, or the petty anxieties of foresters."

He looked up. Kalliope's eyes were storm gray, exactly the shade her brother Jason's had been before she'd killed him and brought him back. The same as their father, torn apart by a mob so many years before. Lenses, doors, opening in succession across the years. If he just stared hard enough into the black pool at the center of her gaze, he could see—

"You're glowing," she said.

Bijaz gripped the table's edge so hard his fingers ached. "I hate this."

"You would have died, otherwise."

"That was the idea. I only lacked the courage to do it all at once."

Her fingers brushed his, desert brown on city pale. "It takes more courage to live."

"Perhaps." He looked at the water droplets. Forests stood in each tiny lens, rippling like wheat in a summer field. "I know your dreams are real."

"You know too much."

"Yes." He released his hold on the past and took up the wine. The vintage seemed sour now. "We all gave too much."

They followed little streets and alleys toward the Limerock Palace. With the Imperator Restored cast down, being a wanderer was more-or-less safe again. No more monsters in the dark, sniffers or water fetches—the noumenal world had returned to the interplay of night and shadow.

The City Imperishable's usual run of beggars, pickpockets, footpads, and drunks abounded. They were as inevitable as head lice on a dockside whore.

"I've been wondering," Bijaz said. White rose petals fluttered from his fingertips toward the cobblestones, so many pale butterflies in evening's encroaching shade.

"Yes?"

Kalliope still moved with the bandy lope of an old Tokhari. She wasn't tall, for a full-woman, but Bijaz was still very conscious that his head barely came to the level of her breasts.

Almost six decades a dwarf in the City Imperishable and he still measured himself against those around him. Enough, he thought, though his gaze lingered on her body a moment longer.

"The last of your camel riders left the Sunrise Gate this past week. Yet you remain in the City Imperishable."

"My rearguard abides." He could hear the smile bending her voice. "I am not convinced they will ever leave."

It was a small force, but Bijaz knew that Lord Mayor Imago had his concerns. For example, the possibility of a more substantial Tokhari force lurking in the Rose Downs so long as their sandwalker remained in the City Imperishable. "And yourself?"

"The sand calls me back," she admitted.

They found themselves on Roncelvas Way. Downhill, the pale bulk of the Limerock Palace shone almost orange with the last of the daylight. Wind off the River Saltus carried the scent of spring from the Pilean Gardens within the palace walls.

"Do you wait for Jason?" asked Bijaz.

Kalliope had wrought a terrible sandwalker rite on her brother during the abortive Tokhari invasion of the City Imperishable, at the time of the Trial of Flowers. Between her death magick and the power of the Numbers Men, Jason had become sula ma-jieni na-dja, the dead man of winter. Since the overthrow of the Imperator Restored, he had gone into hiding.

"No, not him. I would see Jason again, but that is not need enough to keep me away from the sand."

"What then?" They passed two men pinned to the trunk of a linden tree in passionate embrace.

"We are not an order. Not like the philosophick doctors with their sworn convocations and bone-swallowing. Each sandwalker answers only to the spirits of her desert."

"Mmm?" A fig dropped from Bijaz's fingers. It glistened with dew from some distant morning. He snatched the fruit before it hit the ground, and sniffed. Rich, almost meaty. Riper than anything ever come in an oil-packed barrel.

He offered the fruit to Kalliope, who took it with an absent-minded murmur of thanks. She had become accustomed to his strange little miracles, unwanted and uncontrolled.

"The City Imperishable . . . " Her voice trailed off.

"She eats her children," said Bijaz softly, "this city of ours; eats them and spits them out again."

"I am Tokhari, skin and sweat." Kalliope sighed. "I have ridden the seven trials. I have seen three buried sunrises. I have prayed in each of the Red Cities. The sand took my spirit, and the sand gave it back to me."

She broke her stride. "I can do this." Kalliope closed her eyes and tightened her fist around the fig. She swayed slightly, focusing on some inward point. With a sizzling, crackling noise, a green tendril shot from each side of her hand.

The fig was sprouting. The cobbles at her feet smoked.

Bijaz was surprised. The magicks of the priests and petty arbogasters had always seemed mere sleights. His own experience of the Numbers Men had convinced Bijaz of the deep and abiding power of the noumenal, but that power did not lie in the hands of men. Or women.

He took the sprouted fig from her trembling grip. "I'd always thought sandwalkers a sort of tribal elder."

"And so we are." Kalliope resumed walking, with only a slight stumble. "But our deserts stretch a greater distance than a man can ride in a lifetime. Some are interrupted by oceans or forests or blackland farms, but there is always more desert. Between sky and sand, there is little room to mistake what one sees for what one wishes."

Bijaz laughed. "A man who walks far enough will find anything." That proverb was chiseled above the entrance to the old Messengers' Guild Hall.

She gave him a sidelong glance, her face almost puckish in the guttering of a corner gas light. "You of all people should understand the price and purpose of power."

"I maintain a firm hope in the segregation of the noumenal from the ordinary."

Kalliope laid a hand on his muscled forearm. He felt a crackle where she touched him, though her fingers were cool. Bijaz wondered when the tiny hairs curling across his skin had silvered.

"Power follows its own paths, my friend," she said. "The sand bids me stay awhile."

How long had it been since he'd simply made love? Perversions and miseries loomed in recent memory, but years had passed since Bijaz had laid his head upon his wife's breasts.

This woman could have been his granddaughter.

"I feel it, too," she told him. "I need it, too." She dropped her hand away. "But I fear the power more than I feel the need."

Bijaz felt regret mixed with relief. "I fear your dreams of trees, sandwalker."

"You should."

They walked on, sharing nothing more than each other's company.

Onesiphorous

Big Sister paced his office. The floor creaked with her step. Onesiphorous had barely gotten used to the space himself—a wooden structure slung from the bottom of an arched stone bridge connecting two of the myriad islands that made up Port Defiance. Axos and Lentas, in this case. The interior plastering and door-high coastal-style windows made the room seem normal until a strong wind or a heavy step disturbed the balance. Then it felt like a giant cradle.

His cradle was being rocked by a woman as iron-gray as any senior Tribade, but rather more plump than normal for the sisterhood. Not so much maternal, which would have been strange enough, but matronly. Yet it was she who Biggest Sister had sent with him to Port Defiance.

Bells rang outside, a complex code concerning the harbor traffic. She stopped, cocked her head. "Sails sighted, inbound from the Sunward Sea, not a local flag."

The dwarf was amazed that Big Sister had picked it up so quickly. They'd arrived on the same riverboat nine days ago. He'd brought gold and commissions and official seals. She had brought a knife. Each of them was sent to step into the dissent fermenting beneath a thin crust of despatches wending up and down the Saltus.

To a dwarf from the City Imperishable, Port Defiance was as alien as the moon. To the south the sea climbed toward a horizon which could never quite be discerned for haze and the long slope of the world. North across the muddy waters of the Saltus delta lay the jungles of the Jade Coast, a viridian wall where moss-green monkeys and parrots brighter than the tears of demons shrieked. East and west, the coast was an endless maze of swamps and jungles occasionally punctuated by the weathered stone outcrops on which the Jade Rush had been founded. Plantations rotted there as well, in water meadows or on cleared land.

Port Defiance was quite strange, with its close-crowded islands and rope bridges and stands of swamp-bound hardwoods. Too many city dwarfs lived here, most sent by Onesiphorous himself when things had been different in the City Imperishable. Too many disaffected scions of fallen houses, younger sons of Burgesses and trade factors brought by the Jade Rush half a generation past and now settled into louche disarray. Too many local families, stiff with contempt for the naïve parvenus disrupting their ancient prerogatives.

Worst of all were the fights. Not between settlers and locals, but amongst the dwarfs themselves. Demagoguery and sheer incitement mixed dangerously with the hardest question to come to his people in half a thousand years.

"You have a better ear than I," Onesiphorous admitted.

She quirked him a smile as she spun on her heel for another pass across his office. "Men never learn to listen."

"I'm listening now."

"No you're not. You're thinking. You're wondering, What's she want today? Why has she come into my office with that look in her eye? That's not listening, little man, that's looking ahead."

"And what would listening be?"

She stopped, the smile lingering a bit this time. "A listener might use his eyes as well as his ears. Have you ever seen me walk with a limp? Where is the copper butterfly I wear in my hair? Why is my right boot stained brown? What would bring me here in such haste, yet be so difficult to discuss that I would comment on the bells rather than simply arrive at the point?"

"You and I listen differently."

"We learned in different schools," she said. "You'd best lesson yourself in my ways if you plan to survive here."

"As I am a fool, please do me the courtesy of enlightenment."

"I came to report one thing, but on the way found cause for my loss of courage. There are two dwarfs floating out to sea right now who tried to permanently interrupt my trip."

"You were attacked." He managed to make it a statement rather than a question.

"Indeed."

"By singularly stupid dwarfs, I would think." Onesiphorous marveled at the foolhardiness of anyone attempting assault against a senior Tribade sister.

"I would also think." She stopped in front of his desk. "Lord Mayor Imago sent you here to act as his deputy. Neither of you understood what that would mean. Today it meant two dwarfs tried to kill me. Tomorrow they could be after you."

"Slashed or Sewn?"

Big Sister leaned forward. "Both. One of each."

Onesiphorous' heart skipped a cold, slow beat. "You jest."

"Would that I did."

Back in the City Imperishable, Slashed and Sewn had been implacable opponents, albeit through debate rather than murder. The Slashed were in a sense his. Onesiphorous had led the movement of discontented dwarfs who cut away their traditional lip stitches, abandoned fingertalk, and struggled for social and legal recognition. The Sewn clung to old ways, fighting to preserve the quiet power their kind had always weilded in the City Imperishable.

The two groups had come together only in the autumn of the past year, as the politics of the City Imperishable had for a while turned fatal. Onesiphorous and Bijaz, a leader of the Sewn, reluctantly cooperated to evacuate dwarf families from danger. Rather to his surprise, many of those then sent downriver to Port Defiance had since been in no hurry to return.

Now the dwarfs had found a new passion to divide them in novel and terrible ways.

"Do you know why they tried to kill you?"

She shrugged. "A message, perhaps. They shouted no slogans when they attacked, and had no dying words when I was finished with them."

"Will you exact further vengeance?" The Tribade was known for slow and thorough punishment.

"I would be forced to chastise half the dwarfs in this miserable place," Big Sister said. "I scarcely see the point. It should be enough that they do not return to their plotting. Let their fellows wonder."

"Wonder, indeed. My thanks for your restraint. What errand were you about before your interruption?"

She tapped her lips with an index finger. "There is a citizens' council forming. I was asked to participate."

"Ah." Port Defiance had been under the control of the City Imperishable since before the days of the long-vanished empire. Local lore held that the port had once been the seat of a mighty thalassocracy—something Onesiphorous found doubtful.

Various forms of governance had pertained over the centuries, ranging from a Judge-Intendant to a Board of Visitors to a Commissioner. In recent years, one local syndic or another had served by appointment as Harbormaster, who also stood as chief executive on behalf of the City Imperishable's Assemblage of Burgesses. That post was currently held by Borold Sevenships.

More to the point, administration of Port Defiance was not part of the Lord Mayor's responsibilities. Onesiphorous was here purely as a representative. He had no power over the affairs of this city. The Assemblage of Burgesses being in continued disarray, as a practical matter there was no higher authority attending to affairs here.

Hence, someone had dreamt up a citizens' council. "They intend treason?"

"They would scarcely name it that."

"Are dwarfs involved in this idiocy?"

"Yes. Slashed and Sewn alike."

Affairs in Port Defiance definitely needed tending to. He asked the next logical question. "Boxers?"

She nodded.

And there hung the crux of the thing. Should the traditional growing boxes be reduced to kindling and burned for a sacrifice? Or was there significance in being a dwarf of the City Imperishable once beyond those ancient, crumbling walls?

That was the crucial temptation here in Port Defiance: In a single generation, dwarfs could end their kind's time under the sun. Let the children grow freely. Once they were all full-men, no one would ever think to box a child again. Without the customs of the City Imperishable to constrain them, why would anyone subject their children to that terrible pain?

So said the Openers.

The Boxers decried the death of their race, the loss of their power, the melting of the dwarf families into the sea of full-men which covered the endless length of the world.

It was not a question of Slashed and Sewn, of politics and tradition. People would kill for tradition, but they would die for their children.

"Boxers." Onesiphorous drummed his fingers. He'd always detested the practice of boxing. Given all that business with the Old Gods after the Trial of Flowers, the purpose of dwarfs was so much more important: harbingers of the power and fortune of the City Imperishable.

Even though he'd spent years promoting the Slashed cause, he found himself in sympathy with the Boxers. He didn't want to imagine a world without dwarfs. The pain of the box was a price. What they gained for it could be debated endlessly, but his people did gain. Their home, the center of all things dwarf, was the City Imperishable.

And the City gained all the more. Civitas est.

"Why break away?" Onesiphorous let his line of thought drift loose.

"Control? Perhaps they fear reform at home." Big Sister leaned close. It was like being leered at by a homicidal grandmother. "I told them I'd meet with the council."

"Perhaps that was why someone sought to kill you."

One last smile. "See? You can listen if you put your mind to it."

With that, she was gone.

Onesiphorous let himself feel the gentle sway of the room a while as he watched the windows for the inbound vessel. Port Defiance was like a ship filled with unknown cargo, every crate a volatile surprise. He had no authority here, but neither did any council which might form.

And it galled him to trust the Tribade in this matter. Onesiphorous barely understood their ambitions, and he could imagine any number of advantages they might see in an independent Port Defiance.

He watched awhile, until even his untrained eyes could espy the sail visible beyond the curve of Barlowe's Finger.

Imago

"You are to be having an army as I am to be having a parade of washerwomen," said Captain Enero of the Winter Boys.

They were in Lord Mayor Imago's wedge-shaped office on the topmost level of the Rugmaker's Cupola. He'd moved two floors up from the tower's third level after the fall of the Imperator Restored to better his view and make a point about his oversight of the City Imperishable.

The floor was covered with hand-woven rugs, the walls papered over with maps, charts, and great running lists. Morning sunlight made a bright glare of his view south and west toward the river. He had not yet found time, or sufficient commitment, to relocate to the Limerock Palace. Besides, here he was under no one's control but his own.

Imago growled, a wordless mumble of frustration. He turned his remade chain of office over in his fingers, feeling the cool solidity of the new-cut gems. Finally: "I am well aware of that problem, my friend."

To say the training of the City Men had gone poorly would have been a kindness. The bailiffs had to a man refused transfer into the new force. Green Kelly's so-called Restorationists were disbanded, and no one sane wanted them under arms again. Most of Imago's early recruits had returned home to their jobs and families.

As a result, the walls of the City Imperishable continued to be guarded by the Winter Boys, a company of southern freeriders originally hired by the twice-late Imperator Restored prior to his accession to the Bladed Throne. Technically mutineers, Enero's men had acquitted themselves well opposing that brief, bloody reign.

Now they wanted to go home.

"I am to be receiving ever more pointed letters from the south," the mercenary commander added. "Higher authority is to be calling me home."

"Though the Tokhari have mostly departed, there are still several hundred Yellow Mountain tribesmen camped outside the River Gate." Imago rubbed his eyes—he was still troubled by the newly odd proportions of his body. "They seem in no hurry to return to their peaks."

"Men from the upper valleys. Until the high passes are clearing, there is being no point in their departure."

"I suppose they'd just fight if they rode home with the others."

"To be taking their women and horses, yes. This is being sport for them while awaiting the thaw."

A diffident knock echoed gently. Imago nodded and Enero tugged the handle.

It was Marelle, a pale dwarfess and one of the endless round of people seemingly needed to accomplish anything. "There is an incident in the street," she said. "At Little Loach Close, near the Spice Market."

"Fighting?" Imago and Enero shared a startled look.

"Not exactly. Arguing, I think." She glanced at a piece of paper clutched in her hand. "A runner came, from the Water Captain's office. They're worried."

Imago stumped across the room, each shortened footfall still a bit of a surprise, and took the despatch. The note was simple enough, written in a swift copperplate hand.

I urgently wish to inform the Lord Mayor of a disturbance in the Spice Market, requiring his full and immediate attention. Respectfully, Moraine Simpkins, Associate Water Captain, Northern Districts.

"No detail?"

"How would I know?" she asked with asperity. "A boy brought it in. He wanted two orichalks for his trouble. A runner, nothing more."

"I trust you tipped him?" Imago turned the note over. An ordinary piece of foolscap. The City bought the stuff by the wagonload from the Paper and Card Cooperative. Nothing to be learned from that.

"Boys are a city's best friend," she said.

Enero leaned over Imago's shoulder to look more closely at the letter. "You are to be going to the Spice Market now?"

"I've had a hankering for ginger all morning."

The curtained carriage rolled to a stop amid the racket of a crowd—not the full-throated roar of riot, but more like a festival out of place. Enero placed a finger on his lips and slipped a pistol from his belt. "Being a moment," he whispered, then pushed open the door and rolled out in a smooth, rapid motion.

Imago waited, bouncing impatiently on the leather bench. It would be beneath his dignity to draw the curtains and peer out.

How things have changed, he thought. During the desperate days of the Trial of Flowers, he would have been with Enero, sword in hand. But the Old Gods had made him over—now he was only four feet tall, with stumpy legs that pained every step. The wealth of the City Imperishable had been gleaned on the backs of the City's dwarfs, almost all of them specially grown so in their boxes. Being made short, on the other hand, galled him.

The pain was another matter. Jason might have reveled in it, but Jason had his own troubles now, grave-deep. Imago could hardly complain in the face of that.

The noise outside dissolved to raucous laughter. Enero opened the carriage door. "To be coming, then?"

"Of course," Imago said smoothly. He allowed the freerider to help him down.

There were hundreds here, if not more, spilling into the streets around the Spice Market. Someone was performing from the sound of it—another wave of laughter flowed across the crowd.

"To be following." Enero found his way to a wall.

They walked along the slimed brick, behind a series of stalls which reeked of roots and soil and dark things beneath the earth, before reaching a rickety wooden stair. Enero led the way up to a landing.

There Imago could see.

The Spice Market had ceased operation. At this hour there should have been buyers from the restaurants and chophouses, not to mention guildhalls, temples, and every other place with a kitchen. A great many people were going to be disappointed tonight if this gathering did not soon disperse.

From here he could see people crowded in around the market tables and standing amid the racks and barrels of peppers, herbs, and powders. Everyone watched a stage set up atop a large wagon, parked on the far side of the market from the landing Imago occupied. A white bear danced upon planks, wearing a harness of silver bells and blue silken cords. Three dark men with bone flutes played its tune. The only rhythm was the pounding of the bear's feet upon the wood.

Imago could not decide whether to be amused or irritated. "I was called out to see a dancing bear?"

"To be taking note of the men with flutes."

"I see," said Imago.

"From the north, I am to be thinking."

"You figure north because of the white bear?"

"I am thinking north because the Spice Market is being close to the River Gate."

The music came to a close in a skirling disharmony foreign to Imago's ears. The bear thumped its right foot three times on the planks and bowed. A shower of coins rose from the crowd to rattle onto the stage. The bear plucked a single bell from its harness and threw the bauble in a high overhand toss that seemed very human.

Imago watched hundreds of faces lift as the glittering bit flew in a great arc. He held out his hands. With the inevitability of prophecy, the bell landed there.

Enero grunted.

When the Lord Mayor looked back at the stage, the bear was gone, as were its pipers. A woman stood there now. She was of middling height, pale as any native of the City Imperishable, with chestnut hair. Not of Northern blood, despite Enero's assertion, though she wore Northern garb—a blue silk cloak matching the bear's harness, richly trimmed with pale fur. She did not appear to have any weapons about her. What she did have was the crowd's undivided attention.

"You have seen a spectacle." Her voice was ordinary, yet it carried across the expanse of the market square as firmly as if she were standing beside Imago. She turned and began to pace. The motion threw her cloak out in a billowing cloud the color of the sky. "Did it please you?"

The crowd roared their approval.

She stopped, the noise stopping with her. "Your city is nothing but spectacle. Your lives are a diversion. Madness came and went in your streets, and they called it flowers. I come to bring you a true spectacle. Worthy of your great City Imperishable and its timeless history. Worthy even of empire."

Her voice made that last word a spell and a curse at the same time, raising Imago's hackles.

The crowd roared once more. This time she waited them out. Impassive. Radiating cool power.

"She missed her calling," Imago said quietly. "The Burgesses could never stand before her."

"Your Burgesses are never being women, I am thinking."

"There is that. Thank the Old Gods she doesn't make her home here, or I'd be out of a job."

"I know something." The woman leaned forward slightly. The entire crowd leaned toward her in response. "I know where your secrets are buried." She straightened, threw her arms wide. "I know where your Imperator Terminus fell, to be entombed with his jeweled gods and his gold and silver treasures and coin enough to fund an army marching across half the world."

This brought a ragged cheer. "With your help, I can bring the power and the glory back to the City Imperishable." Her gaze locked with Imago's.

"By Dorgau's syphilitic paps," said the Lord Mayor.

Enero nodded. "You are being in great trouble, my friend."

Bijaz

He set out from the Temple of Inordinate Vice in search of lunch. Bijaz found two of Enero's Winter Boys astride their horses on the temple steps. Both smiled to see him.

"To be having the time for coming now, little dwarf?" asked Malvo, a grinning ape of a man with whom Bijaz had spent time drinking. He had three wives and four children, or perhaps the reverse, in ports along the Sunward Sea.

"To be having a choice, polygamist?"

"Ah, he is gaming." Malvo added something rapid in a Sunward language Bijaz did not speak. The Winter Boy hauled the dwarf bodily onto the cantle of his saddle. A spray of orange butterflies erupted like so much bright fire. "We are being off now."

It was not a pleasant ride. The only virtue of the trip was brevity. The midday streets were crowded, with a strange rhythm to the traffic which reminded Bijaz of the unrest of the past autumn. The ride along Cork Street was especially annoying due to a right-of-way dispute with the tram. Soon enough they were across the Bridge of Chances and hieing up Nannyback Hill, deep into the territory of the Numbers Men—a locale Bijaz avoided of late.

He preferred to stay south of the Little Bull as much as possible. The Numbers Men had been his patrons, saviors even, yet he felt a profound discomfort whenever his thoughts turned to them.

The rapid pace was a favor, he realized. Bijaz's divinity was well known in the City Imperishable—hence the open doors and welcome tables at every turn. He was widely considered a dwarfen symbol of the City's luck. As such he found it difficult to wander freely without being accosted time and again.

They soon arrived at the vast edifice of the Rugmaker's Cupola. The distinctive spiral-striped tower had been built long ago of red and yellow desert sandstone as an outpost of the Tokhari when they came to render tribute to the Imperators of the City Imperishable. The Worshipful Guild of Rugmakers who now controlled it had given their tower over to Imago when the Lord Mayor's accession had been in dispute.

Malvo unceremoniously dumped Bijaz at the entrance. "Not to be climbing too fast," he said with a laugh.

Bijaz flicked a handful of flax seed at the freerider. "Give my regards to your wives."

He turned to make the long ascent to Imago's office, only to find the Lord Mayor standing in the doorway with a grim expression on his face.

Imago eschewed the winding stairs and instead headed down a back hall Bijaz had never before used. He realized that it must connect to the larger complex next door. The smells were different, too, dominated by the spicy pungency of Tokhari cooking.

Then they were in a room with an enormous rectangular table topped by wooden panels. The chamber had the air of long disuse—threadbare wall hangings, cobwebs in the chair legs. Three narrow windows let in a bit of light. Enero waited, along with the pale, crook-backed little dwarfess who worked for Imago. Marelle, that was her name.

"Why here?" Bijaz asked.

"Rumor control." Imago's tone was clipped. "And a map, if we need one."

"You have maps in your office."

"There are being maps and there are being maps," said Enero, with a glance at the table.

It was a very big table, Bijaz realized. "If you want to start a rumor, having me dragged through the streets is a good way to do it. Besides, I'm hungry." He slapped the wood, leaving a tracery of dark, glistening fluid in the pattern of his palm.

"Marelle," said Imago.

She slipped out the door. Enero sniffed at the handprint. "Lamp oil," he said. "That is being a useful trick if you are controlling it."

"Hardly."

Marelle swiftly returned with a bowl of mashed chickpeas, a small plate of olives, and several fingers of a strong, salty cheese the color of a drowned man's belly. The food was accompanied by four warm rounds of Tokhari flatbread. "Thank you," Bijaz said before he popped an olive in his mouth.

He realized the three of them were staring at him.

"Talk," he mumbled as he chewed. "My ears are not eating."

"A woman has come to town," Imago began.

"Marvelous." Bijaz broke off a piece of the cheese. "I understand there has been a shortage lately."

"Not—" The Lord Mayor broke off. "We have a problem. She claims to have found the tomb of the Imperator Terminus. With much of his treasure still within."

Bijaz choked on a sliver of flatbread. "That's insane."

"If it is being true, it is being bad for your city," Enero said.

"We just got rid of one Imperator," Marelle added. "We don't want another. Even if he has been dead for centuries."

"The last one was dead, too," Bijaz said, "and he didn't work out so well. Imperator Terminus marched over the horizon six hundred years ago and never came back. Took a rotting lot of gods and priests and bureaucrats with him, I believe." Archer would have known, he thought, then put the godmonger's memory right out of his head. Archer's kind had virtually vanished from the streets since the battle of Terminus Plaza, another minor mystery in the ongoing existence of the City Imperishable.

A pity, too. How much that poor dwarf could have helped him now. Bijaz flexed a fist, willing that no raisins or pebbles dribble out of it.

"It doesn't matter whether it's true," Imago said. "It matters whether people believe her."

Enero nodded. "She was to be making speeches in the Spice Market. With a dancing bear. The people of the City Imperishable were to be cheering."

"She's a mountebank. The Temple District is full of them. I should know, I am a god."

Silence followed that statement.

"And . . . ?" he finally said.

"Her dancing bear threw me this." Imago tossed something small and bright onto the table. It jangled as it rolled.

Bijaz picked the thing up. Round, like a little harness bell. There was a slit at the bottom, and a smaller bit of metal within. Something stamped along the edge, the words too worn for him to read.

"Civitas est," said Marelle. "The city is. Our words. That's a bell from a herald's cloak, six or seven centuries old. There's several on display down at the Limerock Palace."

"We checked," Imago added.

Bijaz rang it next to his ear. "A dancing bear threw you a six-hundred-year-old bell from one of our own uniforms. And you think that it doesn't matter if her claim is true."

"It doesn't matter." Imago began to walk the boundaries of the great table. "True or not, she's a liar and a cheat, out for gain very much at our expense. A sensible explorer would have come to me." He paused, a sour look on his face. "Me or the Assemblage of Burgesses. Not made a public show of it, like some traveling fair."

Bijaz laughed. "And a sensible Lord Mayor might well have shipped that explorer off to the Sunward Sea at the bottom of a crate of pickled melons. There are truths too dangerous to set into the world."

"Perhaps." At that moment Imago looked capable of sending a full dozen explorers to their untimely deaths.

"The people are scarcely over their disarray from the recent unpleasantness," Marelle said. "This sort of thing will only incite new unrest."

"Absolutely," said Bijaz. "And if she produces the very body of the late Imperator Terminus, whose face is on every coin, we have a crisis of government. I believe we just resolved one of those."

"A problem for the Burgesses." Imago snorted. "I am Lord Mayor. A parade of Imperators will not change that. No, if she produces the very body of the late Imperator Terminus, we will have disruption on a grand scale. Almost half the City dwarfs are still hiding down in Port Defiance. Many may never come home. Do you know what wages for a skilled clerk are these days? Factors and trading houses are cutting back for a lack of them. That puts laborers on the street without pay. We thought the end of the Ignatius business would set things to rights, but the dwarfs had been pushed too far.

"Worse, there are almost no families with children in boxes. In five years' time, a skilled clerk will command tenfold even today's inflated wage. If there is anyone left to hire him."

"Or her," said Marelle.

Imago glared sidelong at the dwarfess.

"You don't want people haring off after some tomb," said Bijaz. "Fair enough."

"Not just that." Imago's voice was quiet, now drained of its frustrated passion. "I don't want people believing in that tomb. The dwarfs need to come home. I've sent Onesiphorous down to the Jade Coast to try to bring that about. Without them, our city will see such change as to bankrupt us all. With them, we can resume trading half the goods in this corner of the world."

"Yet you cannot kill her now, or run her out in dark of night. If she has raised a crowd in the Spice Market, too many already know of her."

"And she did excellently well." Imago sat down in one of the chairs. "There are few who could speak against her and be believed."

"No," said Bijaz, as understanding dawned. "I'm not taking to the streets against this mountebank. Let her raise some money, leave town. It's nothing to do with me."

Enero stepped to the table, collected Bijaz's plate and bowl. "You are being the City's little god." He set them on a chair. "You are being loved by many. Listened to, even. Other gods are being dead, or freaks. You are being special." He grabbed the edge of the table and began to pick up the first of the panels.

It was map beneath, Bijaz realized. The tabletop was little more than a thin wooden screen covering a map twenty feet long and half as tall.

"Even if I go shout her down in the market," he said, "so what?"

"So this." Imago looked at the map. "Somewhere in the North lies the Imperator Terminus' remains. This woman may have found the tomb. She had the bell, after all. We need to know where."

"You just told me it doesn't matter if it's true."

"You cannot be affording to think otherwise," Enero answered.

Bijaz shrugged. A crust of snow clung to each open palm. "North, you say?"

Onesiphorous

He paid a boy to row him out to Barlowe's Finger. The tide was slack, which meant two or three hours before he would be forced to head back. Even then, they'd be moving with the water, not against it.

Barlowe's Finger was more a rock than an island. It struck skyward sixty feet at low tide, rising stark from the foaming sea and making no compromise for its waterline. The Finger crooked slightly as if to beckon. A tiny stone dock jutted from the base. Generations of visitors had worn an upward path.

He hadn't been out here before, though various locals and City dwarfs had commended a visit to him. "You'll never get the spirit of Port Defiance 'til you've climbed the Finger," he was told over and over.

With rebellion in the air, Onesiphorous very much wished he did have the spirit of the place in the palm of his hand.

"Putting in," said the boy. A full-man youth, his name was Boudin. Pretty boy, too. Onesiphorous would wager on some beautiful sisters. "Mind the step," Boudin added.

Onesiphorous stood unsteady in the front of the little boat. The dock towered above him at this turn of the tide. An iron ladder was slimed with seaweed and moss. He timed the rise and fall of the boat to lean forward and grasp the rungs. As he put his weight on the ladder, barnacles cut sorely into his palms, but there was no helping it. The boat had already slipped away.

Resolving not to curse, he climbed.

The path followed vagaries of rock and weather, with no accounting for the shortness of dwarfs. As he inched his way around the Finger, Onesiphorous wondered whether any of his helpful recommenders had made this climb themselves.

The path was sometimes no wider than one of his feet. There was very little vegetation. Onesiphorous had a selection of slick rock and tiny vines with which to brace himself. Everything smelled of gulls and the sea.

Sixty feet didn't sound like so much until one had to climb it in an erratic, rising spiral. Three times around the Finger he stretched himself, reaching and pulling and stepping, before he found the top: a roughly flat area that covered fissured stone, gravel, and scraggly grass. Some helpful soul had affixed a brass marker in the middle.

The plate was small and round, with an arrow pointing inland, the words PORT DEFIANCE around the edge.

Onesiphorous lowered himself to a tailor's seat, legs folded together. The sea seemed so very close all around him, patterns of foam racing over the bottle-green swells. It made him feel as if Barlowe's Finger were moving.

He looked up instead at Port Defiance.

From the ocean side it was a different city.

Barlowe's Finger was the rock most distant from shore. A few jags further out came and went with the tide, but they scarcely counted. This was the beginning of Port Defiance, and the end of the City Imperishable's writ.

The Sunward Sea stretched southward behind him. The Southern Ocean lay beyond it. Port Defiance occupied the mouth of the River Saltus, an indifferent river delta blending with the forested swamps of the Jade Coast. Due to the lack of stable land along the shoreline, the city had been built on a collection of islets, rocks, and gravel bars standing off from the river's debouchment, wherever buildings could be raised high enough to withstand the occasional storm surges. These rocky outcroppings were part of the same irregular scattering of stone which dotted the Jade Coast for a hundred miles, some hosting the rich veins which had given the region its name. Bridges connected close-standing portions of the city, along with a network of ferries for wider channels.

Nearest to him, just north of Barlowe's Finger, were the Gaterocks—curved pillars facing one another, each tall as his current perch. They were bare of construction. He had been told they'd once supported a great arch. Onesiphorous fancied he could see the lines of caryatids weathered into the curves of stone.

He tried to imagine standing above the tide for half a lifetime to carve your goddess—or perhaps your queen—in the face of storm and sun and sea.

The city spread out past the Gaterocks. Clusters and groupings of the outcroppings were analogous to districts back in the City Imperishable. To the west he could see the low, blocky warehouses of Loska. Almost directly north, through the Gaterocks, were the Fairwinds. Beyond them loomed the Ivories, including his own Axos and Lentas. Borold Sevenships held court in the Ivories, too, in the Flag Towers, a keep that leapt across five or six foundation rocks with the sea ever churning beneath its arches.

The city ran on, marbled mansions side by side with the meanest driftwood shacks. Height meant wealth—further from the rage of the waters, when the worst came.

So many flags, so many boats bobbing, so many people toiling at the marge of the ocean.

So many dwarfs unwilling to go home. Here was an entire city unboxed, opened to the sea and the land, riding the tongue of the river. Port Defiance was so different from the City Imperishable crouched behind its walls, a withered shadow of what had once been a great empire. The City was a dwarf. This place was so many stone ships already on the ocean.

He might not have seen it so, had he not made the trip out here.

Boudin would be another hour coming back to fetch him. Onesiphorous spent his time watching the play of light on water, and trying to frame a letter to Imago which would make sense of what was happening here. Boxers and Openers. Dwarfs, changing as they had not in half a thousand years. The legacy of the Trial of Flowers stretched onward in unexpected ways.

Watching Boudin pull in from the city, Onesiphorous was startled by a shadow passing overhead. It was large enough to block the late sun. An Alate spilled air from its wings and dropped to share his pillar.

The flyers had circled the City Imperishable during the past autumn, eventually fighting on behalf of Enero in the winter battle that had overthrown the Imperator Restored. Onesiphorous had never understood their loyalties. Or indeed, whether they were a strange species of men or just creatures with intelligent faces and sharp weapons.

Up close the Alate seemed less human than from a distance. It was unclothed but for a harness which held three darts and a slim-bladed sword close to its body, exposing its slate-gray skin to the elements. The face was sculpted for wind. The features were almost manlike, except the yellow eyes with no dot of a pupil. The body was less familiar—the Alate had an enormous chest through which very narrow ribs showed, a thin waist, exaggerated hips with a featureless groin, arms and legs that seemed permanently bent. The wings were spread wide, balancing the Alate on the wind—feathered, with long, bright pinions contrasting with the skin. It smelled like a bird's nest.

Though he did not suppose his life was at risk, Onesiphorous lost several breaths to the racing of his heart. Why was the creature here? What did it want?

It opened one fist and extended a hand, palm upward.

Onesiphorous took what the Alate offered.

A silver bell. Something from a dog's harness, or a child's toy. He jingled it, feeling foolish as he wondered if some snow demon or Tokhari jinn would appear. "Thank you."

"Some debts are never forgiven," the Alate replied in a voice that piped like a child's.

He had not known they could talk.

The Alate nodded once, stepped back, and fell from the top of the rock. Its wings snapped to catch the wind before it skimmed off close to the surface of the water.

Onesiphorous tucked the bell into an inner pocket of his tunic and began the laborious process of climbing down. He had to focus on the footholds and handholds, but still he wondered what the encounter had meant.

A bell.

Why?

Even if it was pure silver, the thing was too small to hold much value. And the creatures had never come near him during the struggle. Jason had believed they might have been Ignatius' kidnappers, spiriting the Second Counselor away before he had returned to such disastrous effect as the Imperator Restored.

These Alates were no one's friends, in other words. Except possibly Enero's. The freerider gave good counsel but kept his own thoughts close as his skin.

Perhaps the southern mercenary would understand the bell.

Onesiphorous raised his eyes from the rock to see if Boudin was close. In doing so he lost his balance and tumbled into open air.

Where was that damned dock? Too late, he thought, arms and legs flailing though there was nothing to catch except the chilly water below.

He hit the ocean hard enough to knock his wind, breaking the surface amid a cloud of bright bubbles. The chill more than the impact robbed his will. Onesiphorous struggled for the light—he was no waterman, but panic had not yet trapped him.

Gasping, he found the surface in time for a rope to hit him on the head.

"Grab the line!" shouted Boudin.

Onesiphorous grabbed. He was then offered the blunt end of a boathook. With help from the boy, the soaked dwarf tumbled into the boat. He felt wretched.

"Here, sir," the boy said with a grin. "I have a blanket and some hot tea."

"Real tea, or some swamp swill?" Onesiphorous immediately regretted his words. "I'm sorry, Boudin."

"S'ok." The boy pulled at the oars, not meeting the dwarf's eyes. Then: "Don't make mock, sir."

Snake eaters, he'd been told in the port city. Jungle rats with no more sense than monkeys, not living in real houses nor doing honest labor. Onesiphorous understood prejudice, but his work here was among the dwarf refugees, not the local underclass. Still, he knew nothing more than the dismissive rumors.

"I didn't mean to." He huddled under the blanket. "I'm just . . . " He patted for the bell. It was still in the inner pocket.

"Everywhere's got its magick," Boudin went on, stubbornly. "Herblore and whatnot. Jungle's no different."

Onesiphorous shivered. "And it makes no matter to me, boy. Just take me home and I'll pay you double in thanks for the kindness of the blanket."

"A lizard told me you was going to fall," said Boudin with a shy smile.

"I see."

All the way back to the jetty at Lentas, Onesiphorous could hear the bell faintly jingling with the movements of the boat.

The day bells rang the trade exchanges closed just before Onesiphorous climbed the winding stair from the jetty. A group of clerks clattered by, the young full-men shouting as they pushed past him.

They barely knew he was there.

His joints ached. He made the first walkway, the tier known on most islands as the Tidewatch. There he paused a moment to let his legs tremble.

A young dwarf approached. Sandy-haired, pale-skinned, eyes brown as a polished nut, wearing the traditional muslin wrappings of their kind. Perneto, that was the name. A runner and aspiring clerk to the Stone House Factoring Cooperative—one of the local businesses that some of the City dwarfs had bought into after fleeing south.

Onesiphorous had been something of a rabble-rouser, to put it mildly, before he'd become a bureaucrat. In both lines of work, a good memory for names and faces was nigh essential. "Hello, Perneto."

"S-s-s-sir." The young dwarf blushed. A distinct reek of sudden perspiration washed outward.

By Dorgau's ruby testicle, thought Onesiphorous with a flood of pity, here's one not suited for a commercial life. He smiled, trying to breathe through his mouth without being obvious. "Yes?"

"Master B-b-brace s-s-sent me."

Surely the lad was used to how he affected people. Onesiphorous took a great gasp. "My best regards to Master Brace."

Perneto looked confused. "B-b-but I have not d-d-d-delivered the m-m-message yet."

"Of course." He waved a hand. "Please, carry on." It took an act of will not to echo the poor dwarf's stammer.

"I am ch-ch-charged to t-t-tell you that B-b-b-orold S-s-s-even-sh-sh-sh—"

"Sevenships," Onesiphorous said quickly, not waiting for Perneto to find his way out of the other end of the name.

"Yes." The younger dwarf glared. "He is t-t-t-treating with c-c-corsairs. F-f-from the S-s-sunward Sea."

"Ah." Onesiphorous didn't know what to make of this news. Corsairs and trade factors were natural enemies as much as wolves and shepherds. "Was there m-more?" Thunder and ruin, he'd gone and slipped into the boy's stammer.

"I don't kn-n-n-ow." Perneto looked miserable.

"My thanks."

The young dwarf stood, shifting his weight. Did he want a tip? "Are you hungry, lad?"

Perneto nodded.

Onesiphorous fished into his pocket and found a silver obol. Far more than a few minutes of a messenger's time was worth, but he'd given the last of his chalkies to Boudin the boat boy. "Here," he said, "go eat well."

As Perneto scuttled away, Onesiphorous walked slowly along the Tidewatch, jingling the Alate's bell. He wasn't certain this had anything to do with him, really, but Sevenships talking to corsairs didn't bode well. He wished he knew who he could trust here in Port Defiance.

It was time to talk to Big Sister again. And add this news to his next letter to Imago.

Imago

They spent the next several hours looking over the map table. Not even the redoubtable Enero had been further north than Sourapple Roads, less than a day's ride past the River Gate.

The map itself was an ancient masterpiece. It depicted the lands of the old empire, ranging from the Silver Ridges in the north to the Yellow Mountains in the west, and the great extent of plains and hills southeast along the Sunward Sea to the old tributary ports and the Tokhari deserts beyond. Cities and garrisons were marked with dusty pockholes which might once have contained gems. The boundaries of provinces lost to history were marked as well, painted borders crossing what were now wildlands or tribal strongholds or young nations with no memory of the Bladed Throne. Bright bars from the narrow windows marched across the map as the day went on.

What interested Imago the most was the northern boundary. Where had this mountebank come from? What could she possibly have found that would have given up the little silver bell from the time of Imperator Terminus?

"There are being only five good passes beyond the Silver Ridges," Enero said, pacing the north edge of the table—one of the longer sides. "To be seeing the marks? All of them were having a fortress at one time."

Bijaz ran his finger along a border, leaving behind a trail of grime. "Presuming she didn't rob a museum or dig up some grave in the Rose Downs, she still could have found Terminus anywhere between here and there."

"It is being your history."

"No," said Imago. "If the Imperator Terminus had died within the borders of the old empire, he wouldn't be a mystery. He marched out of history, remember."

"Or into it," said Bijaz.

Marelle studied the map. "The Whitetowers archives are in the old Footsoldiers' Guild Hall. We should look there, see what they said about that."

"What are the Whitetowers archives being?" asked Enero.

Imago looked up. "I'm afraid I don't know."

"The old universities," said Bijaz. Marelle nodded. "Abandoned, what, four, five hundred years ago?"

The dwarfess pointed to a bend in the Saltus far to the north and west of the City Imperishable, where the river made its closest approach to the Silver Ridges. "Here. There were four of them in the old days. Imperatorial University, now over in the Wine District, is the only surviving school. They moved it down the river after the Grain Rebellion, anno 202 Imperator Terminus. When the empire was collapsing. The Saltus School was founded about the same time by refugee faculty from two of the other universities."

Imago was fascinated. "The empire lost three universities? But kept their archives?"

She looked up. "A dwarfess named Marja-Louisa saved them. She was a Whitetowers dwarf, boxed and raised there, but she could not stand to see the libraries burned. She held off the Bloody Scythes single-handedly, then rousted those who couldn't flee the siege to load the books onto the last of the grain barges."

"What happened to her?"

"Hanged from Lame Burgess Bridge here in the City Imperishable less than a year later," Marelle said in a distant voice. "By a mob of students." Her eyes met Imago's. "Marja-Louisa was only a housemistress, you see. A dwarf and a female, twice over forbidden to touch the books."

"An ancestress of yours?" Imago asked, sympathetic.

"No. Merely a woman. Just like me."

"When we are done here, I would be pleased if you would show me the archives. I'm afraid I don't even know where the old Footsoldiers' Guild Hall is."

"It is being east of the Green Market," said Enero. "Along Heliograph Hill."

Imago had spent plenty of time on Heliograph Hill. A great deal of money lived in the fine houses on the crescents and closes up on that height, money which had firm opinions about how the City Imperishable should conduct its affairs. Still, he couldn't bring the building to mind.

"We will look, then, and see where the Imperator Terminus is said to have met his end," the Lord Mayor announced. "I can recall a dozen stories told to me as a child, each stranger than the next. Maybe the archives hold the truth."

"Or reliable rumor," Marelle said.

Bijaz bent slightly to achieve a spider's eye view of the table. "You're assuming north, though."

Imago nodded. "She came through the River Gate. She has Northmen in her train, and an ice bear."

Bijaz looked up at the Lord Mayor. "It might be an albino."

"Not that big."

"I am agreeing," said Enero. "There are being great bear skins in the market, from hills to the north, but an albino would not be having black eyes."

"North." Imago tossed the bell onto the table. "I want to know where she found this thing. I don't believe it was the tomb of the Imperator Terminus, but others will. At the same time, I want her gone from the City. In disgrace, or mockery. Something that will keep the people from following her." He looked at Bijaz.

"I know," the dwarf said. "I will not contest her directly, but I understand your need."

Enero rolled the bell idly in his hand. "It would be helping if we were to be knowing which pass she was using."

They all stared at the map, willing there to be some epiphany in the ancient lines of pigment. None came.

Imago and Marelle passed through town in an enclosed fiacre. Blue velvet curtains were drawn over the glass windows. A necessary subterfuge of his position, he was told time and again. Travel in closed carriages, keep armed riders close by. Sometimes carriages ran empty.

No one had tried to kill him since the battle at Terminus Plaza. Not even a close call. Nonetheless, Marelle, Biggest Sister, old Ducôte, and his other counselors would not let him walk the streets, nor ride. He no longer had the length of leg to control a horse, sadly, and the pain of that day had never quite left him, so Imago supposed he must be a passenger in any event.

"You said Marja-Louisa was a Whitetowers dwarf?"

She nodded. "Boxed and raised."

"I thought the boxes were peculiar to the City Imperishable."

Marelle gave Imago a puzzled look. "In the days of the empire, Whitetowers was part of the City Imperishable."

"They never boxed dwarfs down along the Sunward Sea," he pointed out.

"Those were tributary cities, not vassals."

He worked that out a moment. While the minutiae of urban governance had become all too familiar to Imago of late, the logic of empire was considerably more obscure. "Meaning they paid tribute to the City Imperishable but were not under its rule?"

"Exactly." She gave him another puzzled look. "How can you rule this place and know so little of its history?"

"I rule nothing." Imago laid his head back against the buttoned upholstery, took a deep breath of the musty, oily air. "I have limited authority over the affairs of some two hundred thousand people and several hundred trading houses, corporations, guilds, and great families. My powers are only persuasive. Even then, I only influence the City Imperishable, not the old empire. Such as it remains, the empire is the domain of the Assemblage of Burgesses. They rule over the River Saltus, the Rose Downs, and Port Defiance. As well as having the courts. What cities once paid tribute and what cities once paid vassalage, or whatever vassal cities do, is scarcely relevant to my concerns."

"You used to be a barrator, right?"

"Yes." Imago grinned. It had been an interesting life, though chronically underfunded. "Old statutes were my stock in trade. That's how I came to revive the office of Lord Mayor, after all."

And in the bargain, diffusing the power which had concentrated sufficiently within the Inner Chamber to draw the Old Gods up from their stony tombs beneath the streets.

"History is nothing but old statutes." She leaned close, grasping tight to his arm. "Consider this, Lord Mayor. A tributary city, or any tributary territory, would have been the concern of the Imperator and the Burgesses. The Tokhari, for example. But a clever man could argue that a vassal city was part and parcel of the City Imperishable. Should you feel the need to exert your influence."

"Still history," said Imago. "We have no vassal cities anymore. The old empire is either empty lands or in other hands. Besides which, the very last thing I want to do is further undermine the Burgesses. Keeping the powers in our city spread out is far safer."

"Port Defiance is a vassal city," she said.

The fiacre lurched to halt. The Winter Boy atop the driver's bench banged on the passenger box.

Imago found Marelle's remark about Port Defiance to be a curious thought as he lurched down to the cobbles. He still had sufficient pride to be annoyed by the little iron step provided for his convenience in making the descent.

Marelle had brought him to the Whitetowers archives. They were in a winding alley that sloped uphill, though he didn't recognize it. He could smell the Green Market—that many tons of vegetables and grain carried its own odor in the spring warmth.

The Footsoldiers' Guild Hall rose before them, a building in the late stages of terminal distress. It had a grand frontage for something that faced an alley—portico with six pillars in a classical style, though the plastering had long since shattered away to show the rotting laths beneath. Cheap construction. One would not have expected wealth from such a guild as this, even in its heyday. The location told the same story—far from the Limerock Palace and the seats of power, built in the days before Heliograph Hill became a posh address. Today the place was further from wealth than ever. The stoa was jammed with junk—everything from fruit baskets to velocipedes to old chaises longues rotting beneath the weight of birds' nests. Much of the mass was wired into place.

The guildhall looked like a madwoman's attic turned inside out. Smelled like it, too, Imago realized as he waddled up the steps after Marelle. "This is an archive?"

"No, it's a dump. The Whitetowers archives are inside because there was nowhere else for them to go."

Imago imagined the endless halls of the Sudgate, layer on layer of vast chambers and tiny closets, so many of them containing only dust and mice. "I see."

The entrance was certainly a footsoldier's door. It was higher than normal, to admit men carrying spears, and wider as well, for armored men who swaggered. Each pillar was carved as a soldier deep out of history—the right side carried a club and wore skins, the left side baroque armor and a short, wide sword. Under the portico roof, surrounded by junk, these carvings had survived centuries of weather. The building would have been unused four hundred years ago, he realized, for the archives to be deposited then. Land was available for the asking along the eastern wall, but it was hard to imagine that the wealth of Heliograph Hill hadn't since found better use for this building, or its location.

The things a mayor never knew about his own city.

Marelle tugged at the door. It slid partway open with a horrendous squeal, startling rats out of the porch junk piles. She squeezed into the darkness beyond. Glancing back at his man on the fiacre, Imago followed. Once he had entered the shadows, Marelle heaved the door to.

"No one is here?" he whispered, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

"This is a vacant guild." Marelle's voice was normal. "Charter still stands, and there's money in trust to pay the fees every year. Hasn't been a guildmaster in centuries."

Imago forced himself to a normal voice as well. "How do you know all this?"

"I'm a City employee. You wouldn't believe the paperwork we handle." He could hear her grinning, even in the dark.

"But the archives? And whatever else is in here."

"Think of this as a rent-free warehouse," she said. "It won't be torn down until the guild charter lapses, which won't happen until the trust runs out."

They stood a few moments, taking in the tangled, quiet space.

If the Sudgate is the attic of the City Imperishable, this is its midden, Imago thought. The mess on the portico had been a mere hint of the waste within. The bulking masses around him had an organic quality that spoke of long neglect.

Madness of Flowers byJoseph E. Lake