"We have it," Dr. Toth announced suddenly, "we have it!"—startling her awake, startling her hands to her sides hunting the edges of the stool among her skirts as the doctor held up his paper.

"Woman, up, don't dawdle! There's precious little time."

She stood and wobbled. Dr. Toth slid down from his perch and came and seized her by the arm, dragging her with him.

"But," she said.

"Time," he said. "Come along, walk, woman. Melot Cassissinin. Good gods, keep your feet under you. I trust you know where this Othis lodges."

"Can't you magic it?" She caught her balance as the door opened and left the stairs gaping darkly in front of them, with him dragging her along in the dim light of candles which lit themselves in the stairwell, above the books and the litter. "Can't you—"

"A practical suggestion if I had the wherewithal. I'm not wont to have to race with fools. Tomorrow you say. But which tomorrow, tomorrow of the dawn or tomorrow of the wizards, or tomorrow of the clock? Do you know? No, I thought not." Thump, thump, around the turning and down into the first hall, into the bizarre maze of books, all the candles in the sconces agleam.

"Do come on, woman."

"Yes, sir. Yes, sir." Melot skipped and ran as best she could being hauled upon in time to his long steps. The door opened for them, and the wind skirled the candles and they went out onto the porch and down, down the steps to the nightbound street.

Melot was staggering when they had reached the Avenue, reeling along with the doctor's fingers clamped upon her wrist and tugging at her to more haste. She ran and ran still, and brought up short against the doctor's side when he stopped and gave a piercing whistle. More magic? She blinked. There was the least small chill; but it might have been the wind. And there down the Avenue came a public cab, a-rattle on the pavings, one of the wheeled sort, the cabman jogging along at a fair pace—a cabman without a hire, at this hour, just where the doctor needed him. Melot blinked in amazement and as the cab rattled up to a stop by the curb—"Wizards' Row, fast as you can," the doctor said to the cabman, tossed him a coin that made his jaw drop, and opened the door himself and flung Melot in, the third only time in her life she had seen the inside of a cab—

"—but, but," she said, smothered in her skirts as the doctor shoved her over against the wall and wedged himself in, "Dr. Toth, that's wrong, it's the Rains, it's—" But the cab was off, rattling along fit to make her teeth clack. "Wizard's Row," the doctor said firmly. And the cab lurched and jolted. For that coin that had sailed through the moonlight with a wicked golden glint the cabby would run his gut out. He was doing that, and the wheels jolted and bounced. Melot clenched her jaws and clenched her fist on the hanging-strap and swayed this way and that with the doctor as they bounced along, clack, thump, and a missing stone, thud-clack. Her breath refused to come back. Her brain reeled. But I can't pay, that was gold he threw to a cabby-man, and that's all it is to him, he's rich, rich as a priest and rich as a lord, and I'm nothing, my money's not enough for him and he's young and handsome and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, can't even pay him that way, nothing I can offer—

— Does he take souls? Is that what he trades in?

Thud-clack-clack. She heard the cabby panting now, felt the cab steady into that holding pace now the cabby had come to his senses and realized he had to stay alive and stay moving. It was a long, long way; but the man had gold, had gold enough to buy the cab and a soul or two, might be . . .

Thud-clack. Sway and skid at the corners, jog and jounce. In time Melot heard the cabby panting up ahead as if his gut would burst and his life-blood spew, but he ran on, and they swayed and bumped one against the other, the doctor in his fine coat and her in her cloak, and outside the windows of the cab the neighborhood changed and changed again. The cab slowed to a walk a while, picked up: they kept moving, by fits and starts.

And at long, long last they stopped altogether, and the cab tipped, and the cabby came round to their window, panting like a beached fish. "What number was you wanting, milor?" The doctor peered out. "Close enough," he said, and flung the door open and gave the man another something in his hand. The cabby stood there while Melot got out, and tried to help her; but there was dark running from his nose in the moonlight. Melot felt his hand shake and when she stepped clear the cabby just stopped and collapsed there on the curb, head between his knees. And the doctor grabbed Melot's wrist and pulled her along willy nilly. Down the street, the peculiar street where more magic was than was comfortable anywhere, and some of the houses with their peculiarities . . . like fire and smoke; like ice and a permanent shimmer of recent rain. Melot quaked in her steps and came on, panting and desperate as the doctor started up long wooden steps to an unpretentious house of beams and towers. The door-emblem blinked at them and the door swung wide with a gust of chill hardly worse than that all up and down this street, chill to sting the lungs and make a body glad of a cloak. Candles sprang to life inside, and an old man came out of a brighter-lit room.

"Dr. Toth," that one said—a wizard, sure he was a wizard. "What's this?"

"An excellent question," the doctor said, and dragged Melot with him as he swept into the lighted room—a library, but ever so much neater and cleaner than his own. Melot goggled at the giltwork and the leather bindings and the lamp in dragon shape and the brass camel that held up a table on which rested an interrupted dinner and an open book.

"Do look lively, woman!" The doctor spun her round by the arm and her startled eyes fell full on the wizard, for wizard he must be, a small gray man in a blue robe, with sad mustaches and lively blue eyes. "What does she seem like?"

"Why—no one, no one in particular—"

"Ah," said Dr. Toth, and he pushed Melot into a chair near the camel-table; he took the divan and helped himself to the wine. "Have some, my dear?"

Melot reached. The goblet he put in her hand weighed ten times what it seemed, and she slopped the wine over in her startlement. Gold, it was gold. She blinked at one and the other of them, and looked doubtfully at the gray wizard as he sat down on the remaining chair.

"Read this," said Dr. Toth, and handed the gray wizard a paper from his pocket. "Does that make sense?"

The gray wizard held it up to his eyes and adjusted it this way and that in myopic concentration. His mouth moved and stopped moving and he looked up with his blue eyes wide. "Who does this describe?"

"Her. It describes her, Master Junthin. Two idiots are fighting over her brother—"

— Gods save me, Melot thought with a mouthful of wine half-choking her. Her eyes watered in pain and she swallowed and tried not to sneeze it up, a hand clamped to mouth and nose as she stared at the wizard and the doctor in panic, frozen like a bird between two snakes. "—and one of them has invested him, if she can tell a straight story. That's how her luck works, don't you see? They tracked the thing straight so far, and when they got close, their eyes bent right around her and they went for second best. Her luckbrought her to me. It had to. She had no choice. It was her luckbrought the trouble on her in the first place and cozened those fools Othis and Hagon—a luck like that, there's nothing stops it. It rolls downhill and it arranges things—"