"I can walk on my own." That he was so helpless, and she so competent, irritated him enough that he nudged her away. "Where do we go?"

After all, she was not immune. A smile chased across her lips. Her eyelids drooped, and for a moment she had the sleepy look of a woman woken after a night of passion, smug and certain and well pleased. "Does this mean you trust me now?"

He'd be a fool to try to walk unaided, this close to freedom. He grasped her arm just above the elbow. She had satiny skin, and taut muscle under it.

"I'm Joss, but you already know that. What's your name?"

"Zubaidit."

"Ah! Such poetry! 'Where the axe hewed, the man was stricken.' "

Now she was amused. "Not everyone knows the story of the woodsman's daughter."

He would have leaned in to speak intimately close beside her ear, had he been clean and sweet-smelling, but he was not, and although she had as yet made no slightest sign of finding him foul in his current state, he didn't care to chance seeing a grimace of disgust cross her face. After all, if he survived this, he would recover his strength, and take a bath, and then she would see what it meant to meet her match.

So he smiled at her, as well as he was able. "It's one of my favorite stories from the Tale of Fortune. Especially the ending."

She laughed, a clear sound that she made no effort to muffle or disguise. What in the hells had happened to the guards? But he didn't ask again. It was time to take his chances, and see where this tale of fortune led him.

"You would say so," she said with a smirk. "Come, now. We have to go see someone."

She doused the lantern, led him down the corridor, helped him up a set of stairs and through an open door into a spacious hall swallowed in night but which he recognized by the carved railings at one end as Assizes Hall. She moved smoothly, graceful despite the darkness, and he, leaning on her, was able to stumble alongside creditably. No one was about. It was weird how very quiet it was, all the guards lost. Murdered, maybe. And who in the hells were they going to see?

"It's a strange way to murder me," he muttered, unable to help himself. "Or have you some other more convoluted plot in hand?"

"I do, but you'll need all your powers of persuasion to help me. Now, hush."

They came to the wall of screen doors, all closed. A faint, wavering light could be seen through the papered screens. Nimbly, she slid a door halfway open and eased him onto the wide front porch that ran the length of Assizes Hall. A stocky man carrying a small lantern was waiting at the foot of the steps. Beyond him, Assizes Court was empty, all in shadow, no lamps at all.

"What of the eagle?" she whispered, dropping her voice now that she was outside.

"Without me, he won't fly until it's day. I can't call him until dawn."

She helped him down the steps. The man who waited was master of a handcart, which was empty except for a cloak bundled in the bottom.

"This is my friend Autad," she said. "He owns the Demon's Whip, a tavern in Merchants' Walk. He's agreed to cart you, since I wasn't sure how far you'd be able to walk on your own."

"You've thought of everything. Where are we going?"

She tilted her head back as if she'd heard something, and sprang up the steps to vanish into the hall, sliding shut the door behind her. She was gone as quickly as if he had only dreamed her.

"Get in, ver," said the man in a genial voice, pitched low. "Hurry. I'll cover you with the blanket." He moved up beside Joss, and even in the night Joss could sense that terrible grimace. "Whew! Begging your pardon!"

"Where did she go? Where are we going?"

"Where she tells me, ver."

"Do you trust her that much?"

"She's a true servant of the gods, that one. Very pious." The man hesitated. "If you wouldn't mind, ver." He indicated the cart, coughed, gagged a little. "Geh. Well. Best if we do this quick. If you don't mind."

Once in Haya, one summer when he was a lad, he'd been out swimming with his friends and been grabbed by a rip current that had dragged him out into the sea. But you learned growing up on those shores to let go instead of fighting what you could not resist, because fighting would kill you. Eventually, of course, the rip current had slackened, and he had worked free of it and swum back to land.

"Thanks, ver," he said to Autad. With the man's help, he clambered into the belly of the cart. Autad flipped the cloak over him. The cloth smelled of hay, but it was a good, honest, clean smell, one he appreciated. The cart rocked beneath him as Autad lifted and pushed and began walking. The wheel rumbled over stone. The movement jostled him.

For a long way Joss just lay there, thinking of nothing, really, too drained to fret or scheme. The streets were quiet around them. Evidently in Olossi people did not commonly walk out at night, while he was accustomed to the streets of central Toskala, which were more or less awake at all hours. Sometimes it seemed they rattled up a hill, and sometimes it seemed they rolled down one, and only once in that journey did Autad speak, in the manner of a man who has been mulling deep thoughts in his mind and finally found words to express them.

"I'd do anything for that girl. I do owe her, for saving the life of my sister. She had that rash that eats the skin. Poor thing, suffering so. Zubaidit spent her own coin to buy the oil of naya, which is the only unguent that cures it. I couldn't afford such a luxury."

"But-"

"Hush! Now we're coming to where folk are about. I don't want anyone suspecting. I'd lose my license, and be subject to exile. Or worse."

They moved into a neighborhood where there were, indeed, a few folk out even at this late hour, judging by the sounds of footfalls and soft conversation and the occasional clink or clatter of unseen objects changing position. Joss's hip was bruising where it pressed against the bottom of the cart, and every time they lurched forward his right shoulder knocked against wood. Autad hadn't brought any padding, more's the pity.

Abruptly, the cart rocked to a halt and Autad pulled the blanket off. "Can you get out?" He stood back, not offering a hand.

Joss got first to his hands and knees, and then awkwardly clambered out by levering his legs out first and following with his body. He was weak, but damned if he would inconvenience the man with his stink, when it was so obvious how appalling it was. They stood in an alley of towering white walls, both ends lost in shadow. A lit lantern hung from a hook protruding from one of the walls above doubled doors. These were broad and high enough to admit wagons, and a smaller "walking" door for foot traffic was set into the larger door. All around, the cobblestone pavement had been swept clean; there was no trace of litter or noisome debris. Indeed, it was pretty obvious that the only nasty thing in this tidy alley was Joss himself.

"Wait here," said Autad. He probed in his sleeve, withdrew a ball of rice rolled up in a se leaf, and without quite touching Joss gave it into his hands. Joss was so hungry that he ate it at once, trying not to choke on big bites, forcing himself to chew. Autad moved off with the cart while Joss had his mouth full, but when Joss tried to speak, the other man paused, hoisted the cloak, took a whiff, and tossed it at Joss, then with the cart trundled off down the alley until he vanished into the night.

Joss finished the rice, then chewed up the se leaf-beggar's food, as they called it, but despite being stringy and tough, it was edible and it settled lightly in his stomach.

Neither bell nor device adorned the door, by which a man could signal that he stood outside. Any night noises were here muted by the walls and the isolation. He could not even tell how long the alley was, or how far it reached on either side, but he guessed that he stood between two large compounds that were likely either temple establishments or the households of rich men.