"Yes, there is something I'd like to ask, but it's not just as a favor. I'd pay you for your trouble."

Now suspicion returned. "The Three know that enough men come in here asking if I'll do the honors for their sons, but I can't say anyone's ever

conic in asking on behalf of his great-grandfather. I'm not going to let your ancient friend poke me, Tinwright."

"No, no, nothing like that!" It was too disturbing to think about, in fact, People Puzzle's age were done with the sweaty business of love, surely. It would be indecent otherwise. "I need to find someone. A… a tanglewife."

"A tanglewife? Why, have you got some castle serving-maid up the country way, then?" Brigid laughed, but she seemed angry again. "1 should have known what kind of business would bring you back begging to me."

"No. It's not… it's not about a baby."

She raised her eyebrow. "A love potion, then? Something to moisten up one of those wooden-shod harlots you're following around these days?"

He let out a long breath in frustration. Why must she make everything so difficult? Of course, she always had been a woman with her own mind. "I… I can't tell you, not yet. But it isn't the kind of thing you think. I need help to… to save someone a great deal of pain." His heart stuttered for a moment at the enormity of what he was thinking. "And I have another favor to ask, too." He reached into the sleeve-pocket of his shirt and pro¬duced a silver gull. He had needed to borrow money from Puzzle, money he had no way of paying back, but for once something greater than even his own self-interest drove him. "I'll give you this now and another just like it afterward if you'll help me, Brigid-but not a word to Conary. Bargain?"

She stared at the coin in real surprise. "I'll not help you murder some¬one," she breathed, but she looked as though she wasn't even certain about that.

"It's… it's complicated," he said. "Oh, gods, it is horribly complicated. Bring me a beer and I'll try to explain."

"You'll need another starfish to pay for the two beers, then," she said, "-one of them for me, of course! — if I'm to be getting that whole gull."

He couldn't remember the last time he had visited the neighborhood around Skimmer's Lagoon in daylight-not that he had come here so many times. It was surprising, really, since the Mint, the tavern in which he had lived and spent most of his time, was only a few hundred steps away on the outer edge of the lagoon district. Still, there was a distinct borderline at Barge Street, which took its name from an inn called the Red Barge at one end of it: except for the poorest of the Southmarch poor, who shared the lagoon district's damp and fishy smells, only Skim¬mers spent much time in the area. The exception was after nightfall,

when groups of young men came down to patronize the various taverns around the lagoon.

Tinwright turned now onto Barge Street and made his way along it toward Sealer's Walk, the district's main thoroughfare, which ran along the edge of the lagoon until it ended in Market Square in the shadow of the new walls. There was no sun to speak of, but Tinwright was grateful for such light as the gray, late-morning sky offered: Barge Street was so narrow that he could imagine Skimmer arms reaching out to grab him from door¬ways on either side. In reality, he saw almost no one, only a few women emptying slops into the gutters or children who halted their games to watch with wide, unblinking eyes as he passed. There was something so un¬nerving about these staring children that he found himself hurrying toward Sealer's Walk, a street he knew fairly well, and where he might find a few of his own kind.

Sealer's Walk was perhaps the only part of Skimmer's Lagoon that most castle folk ever visited, fishermen and their women to purchase charms- the Skimmers were said to be great charmwrights, especially when it came to safety on the water-and others to visit the lagoon-side taverns and eat fish soup or drink the oddly salty spirit called wickeril. Many though, es¬pecially from outside Southmarch, came for no purpose more lofty than to see something different, because Sealer's Walk, the lagoon, and the Skim¬mers themselves were about the strangest things that anyone in the March Kingdoms could see this side of the Shadowline. Even visitors from Bren-land and Jael and other nations came to the lagoon, because outside of the lake-folk of Syan and a few settlements in the far southern islands, the Skimmers of Southmarch were unique.

Their food came almost entirely from the bay and the ocean beyondthey ate seaweed! — and even wickeril tasted like something scooped from

the bottom of a leaky boat. The long-armed Skimmer men wore few

clothes above the waist even in cold weather, and although the women

generally wore floor-length dresses and scarves wrapped around their |i

heads, Tinwright had heard it was only for modesty-that they were no more susceptible to the cold than were their menfolk. In other circum¬stances, as with some female travelers he'd seen, even an occasional woman from Xand, bundled in secrecy to the eyeballs, he'd found the mystery quite appealing, but something about Skimmer women was different. He'd heard men boast of their exploits among the lagoon women-tellingly, though, never in front of Skimmer men-but he himself had never been particularly

tempted, liven in the bawdy house behind the Firmameut Playhouse, the knocking-shop Hewney and Teodoros had liked so much, Matt Tinwrighi had never found the Skimmer girls particularly interesting. They had cold skin, for one thing, and even bathed and perfumed they had an odor In-found disturbing-not fishy, but with a certain undeniable whiff of brine. And even the naked faces of Skimmer girls were disconcerting to him, al¬though he could not actually say why. The shape of their cheekbones, the size and slant of their eyes, the almost complete lack of eyebrows-Tinwright had always found them obscurely shuddersome.

Still, there were worse places to visit than Sealer's Walk; Tinwright had even been looking forward to seeing it again. It had a vigor unlike any other part of Southmarch, even the exciting bustle of Market Square. When the catch came in each morning just before dawn, or the fishermen who went far out to sea returned at evening, the place was alive with strange songs and exotic sights.

Today, though, the district seemed much more subdued, even for the doldrums of late morning. The people were quiet and fewer were on the street than he would have expected. Most of the men he saw seemed to be gathered at the site of a recent fire, where a row of three or four houses and shops had burned. Half a dozen adults and twice that many children were picking through the blackened rubble; a few turned to look at him as he passed, and for a moment he felt certain that they were staring angrily at him, as though he had done something wrong to them and then returned to gloat.

As he passed a fishmonger's warehouse, two other Skimmer men gutting fish with long, scallop-backed knives also stopped to stare at him, their heads swiveling slowly as he walked past. It was hard not to imagine some¬thing murderous in their cold-eyed, gape-mouthed gazes.

He came at last to narrow Silverhook Row and turned right as Brigid had told him, following its wandering length for a few hundred paces until he found the tiny alley that seemed to match her description. On either side loomed the windowless backs of tall houses, blocking out all but a sliver of the gray sky, but at the end of the short, dark passage stood the narrow front facade of another house, with a few steps leading down to the door.

Tinwright was about to knock, but stopped when he saw the long, knurled horn, as long as a man's arms outstretched, hanging over the door. A superstitious prickle ran up his back. Was it a unicorn horn? Or did it come from some even stranger, more deadly creature?